Micah, for some of us, is an unknown book, and perhaps the very first thing we should do is to read the book of Micah from end to end. Micah is called a minor prophet, yet centuries after his death we find his prophecy playing a fundamental part in the search for Christ. So mighty is his prophecy that it is quoted to Herod by the rulers of the Jews and becomes the authority for the guidance of the wise men from the east. Will your words be accepted absolutely centuries later as the last authority in men’s search for God? Would to God we bred such minor prophets in our generation! And as Micah was accepted by Jewish princes, Gentile overlords and Eastern potentates alike as the one who pointed to Christ, so let us be humble enough to allow him to point us also to our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ. All the prophets, as many as have spoken, will, if we allow them, lead our hearts to Christ, and Micah is by no means the least of these. It is the word of the Lord which came to Micah, and it was indeed the Word which he saw. Micah looked forward and saw the Word. The apostles declared that the Word was made flesh, manifest among them. We, looking back, must not fail to see that this is the same Word. “Hear, all ye people; hearken, O earth, and all that therein is: ” cries Micah, for this message is not to the Jewish people only but to “all people that on earth do dwell,” for this is the great gospel of the Lord manifest in flesh among men. “And let the Lord God be witness against you.” The call is to repentance. The witness against us is the righteousness of Christ. It is only as we see His life on earth that we can realize how terrible is our sin and iniquity before God.

“Hear, all ye people;” says Micah, “hearken, O earth, and all that therein is and let the Lord God be witness against you, the Lord from His holy temple.” Who was it said, “Destroy this temple and in three days I will raise it up again?” Jesus said, “The words that I speak unto you are not mine but the Father’s.” God through Christ was speaking to the whole earth, and Jesus Christ on earth was the repository of the Spirit of God, His holy temple made manifest. God in Christ spoke to men from His holy temple, not from a temple made by hands. Christ was holy, from His virgin birth to His sacrificial death, and the iniquity of Samaria in our day is to obscure that fact, for Samaria represents the false gospel of works. Micah speaks in the days of Jotham, Ahaz, and Hezekiah, kings of Judah, concerning Samaria and Jerusalem. In other words, there is a sad three-fold decline in spirituality among the very elect, and if Micah is not relevant in our day, what is? Our so-called prophets do not point men to a holy God, to a spotless Christ, but to a new morality. The hill of Calvary is obscured by the hill of Samaria. Our ministers are kings of Samaria, not shepherds of the flock. Is Micah not relevant then? Is it not time to turn back to the greatest authority on the birth of Christ, an authority not even questioned by Herod? Is it not time to see again what Micah saw, the Lord God speaking from that holy temple manifest among men? Is not this the Word spoken of by John? Is not the righteousness of Christ the witness against us? Micah was not an Israelite but a Morasthite, an outsider, for all Israel and Judah were turned aside together. Christ came to Israel as an outsider, for Israel had piety and righteousness and holiness in abundance even as we, yet God called on them in that state to repent.

Now read the first chapter of Micah again and answer God’s question, “What is the transgression of Jacob, and what are the high places of Judah?” Micah says, “For, behold, the Lord cometh forth out of his place, and will come down, and tread upon the high places of the earth.” Christ was God come down. Did our Lord then tread upon the high places of the earth? Where are the idols today, and the Roman gods, the Greek myths, the Inca sun-worshippers? Trodden down. But by whom? By God come down. Christ was not some new teacher, but God come down, the holy temple of God manifest among men. His life is the witness against us. Man cannot be holy apart from God in Christ. Man cannot be righteous apart from God in Christ. Man has no piety apart from God in Christ. Micah follows Jonah, where the teaching is, “Repent.” Just as Christ was against the false teachers and religious leaders of his day, so God is against our modern religion. Christ came down and re-made the earth so that Calvary became the highest hill, seen from the four quarters of the earth. The mountains were molten under Him and the valleys cleft, as wax before the fire and as waters poured down a steep place, and only one hill was to be seen. At Calvary Christ re-made the earth, re-shaped its very foundations, treading down its high places and melting its mountains, in order that Calvary might be seen from pole to pole, from sea to sea. Was this then some new teacher? No, this was God come down, as Micah foresaw, as Peter declared, as we see looking back. “For the transgression of Jacob is all this,” says Micah. Yes, for the sin of the people, the elect of God, Israel. And because they refused the teaching of Micah though they could quote it verbatim, so we the Gentiles are privileged to see what they were too blind to perceive, God in Christ come down to earth.

Now what is the transgression of Jacob? Is it not Samaria? And what are the high places of Judah? Are they not Jerusalem? If religious leadership, religious teaching, religious discipline etc., tends to obscure the Cross of Christ, the work of Calvary, it becomes the “transgression of Jacob” whereby the people of God are made to sin. And this begins to affect even Judah, the very elect as we say. So as religion chips away steadily at the hill Golgotha, so the Cross of Christ diminishes in our sight, till other sacrifices appear more acceptable to God. Good works begin to rise in our estimation till even philanthropy assumes respectable proportions. So Israel turns from the sight of the Cross to a view of morality, and Judah turns from the contemplation of the Cross of Christ to regard holiness. It is for this cause that God will again come down to sweep away all our high places and bring in a new heaven and a new earth wherein dwelleth righteousness. We are wrong, wrong, wrong! How do we become right? According to Jonah we must repent, from the king on his throne (our religious leader) to the cattle in the field (our Sunday service)! According to Micah we must wail and howl, go stripped and naked. Why? “For her wound is incurable.” The disease among us is so deep-seated, so rooted in our religious beliefs that it is now incurable. If we are too late for Jonah, when we reach Micah there is no turning back. Only those who see as Micah saw can testify to the Lord’s advent. It is at Calvary we see that this was the Son of God, this was the descent spoken of by the prophets, this was God come down. If we keep our eyes on the Cross of Christ so that Calvary begins to rise again in our estimation and our former high places are trodden down in our sight, we shall get a fresh vision of God.

Micah says, “Woe to them that devise iniquity, and work evil upon their beds! when the morning is light, they practice it, because it is in the power of their hand.” When Christ came to earth, His fierce opposition sprang from the rulers of the temple, the great protagonists of Moses, the monotheists, the law-givers and their followers. Not, we note, from the heathen Gentiles, the Roman overlords, save only Herod who desired no competition. Not, we note, from the common people. Not from the business sector, nor the sinful sector, nor the sick, nor the soldiery, nor the worldly. Not from the Greeks nor the barbarians. Not from black nor whites. No, no. Christ’s opposition sprang from the religious leaders. Iniquity is connected with godliness, not worldliness. However depraved the worldly may be they seldom run to iniquity. It is left to religious leaders to devise iniquity. It is the thinkers and the thoughtful who scheme evil upon their beds, who plan ahead for the Sabbath day. We judge only by appearances. We do not judge as God judgeth. To us the one who plans the evening service is a good man, the murderer is a bad man. Micah brings his shocking message to us from God, and of course we fail to understand him. The tragedy of religion is that it must fiercely oppose the true God-life, it must seek to put to death the very Christ-life it is supposed to nurture, and this we see clearly in the gospels, where the Holy One of God is in daily deadly danger from the religious sects of that day, and seeing that, we should be aware of our own danger as we seek to follow Jesus today.

Now Christ came to die. He came down, as we saw in chapter one, to elevate Calvary above all other hills. The world could not be redeemed by teaching, nor by an exemplary life, nor by holiness – but by blood. If we take the Cross out of the gospel there is nothing left. Christ could heal the sick, but in the end they would get sick again and die. Christ could raise the dead, but in the end they would return to the grave which claimed them. Christ could feed the thousands, but they would still get hungry. Christ could calm the waves and still the winds, but the storm would arise again. Christ could cast out demons, but Satan is with us yet. The wine of Cana is drunk long ago, the fig-tree is perished, the herd of swine annihilated. Why? Because Christ came from eternity into the world of time, and time has now erased every trace of His footsteps. But the Cross is eternal. The Roman gibbet is gone, certainly, but the Cross of Christ remains, as that which was from eternity set up in a world of time. The Cross of Christ is our vital link with the God of eternity, and without the Cross we have no link at all. The Cross of Christ is the place where the shed blood of the Lord Jesus redeemed us. The Cross of Christ is the place where our sins were dealt with. The Cross of Christ is the meeting place between God and us, whereby our Intercessor, our One Mediator, reconciled the irreconcilable. Our life, our hope, our salvation, our reconciliation, our peace with God, our assurance, our destiny, our sonship, our faith, our brotherhood are not based on the life of Christ but on the Cross of Christ, and important as the life of Christ is to us both before and after His crucifixion yet the crux of the gospel is the Cross of Christ.

Now those who devise iniquity are religious people. They are persons who appear to us to be doing nothing but the will of God as seen in scripture. They are elevating such things as baptisms, confirmations, communions, Sunday Schools, prayers, worship, devotions, sacred music and orders of service. But the Cross of Christ is never uppermost. It is diminished. It is obscured. It is obviated. What, by sin? No, by good works. This, before God, is the transgression of Jacob and the high places of Judah. We see it in the life Jesus lived among men. He was sold like Joseph by His own brethren. He was trapped by the religious leaders of Jerusalem. He was tried and judged by those whose one object was to retain their own idea of godliness. It was the chief priest who declared that Christ had blasphemed. And the chief prosecutor of the church said of himself that he had been a Pharisee of the Pharisees. Micah says, “Woe to them that devise iniquity, and work iniquity upon their beds! when the morning is light, they practice it, because it is in the power of their hand.” He is obviously referring to the night before the judgment by Pilate, when for the first time Christ is in their power. But the description applies equally in our day, when the life of Christ is endangered by religion. Except we restore the Cross of Christ to its former elevation, between heaven and earth, all our efforts to be godly people will be wasted. We are only polluting our heritage. We are only devising iniquity. We are only working evil, for the life in Christ Jesus is always threatened by religion. Rising up, we are a threat, and lying down our dreams are iniquity, except when rising or lying down we give thanks to God for Calvary.

Micah goes on to say, “And they covet fields, and take them by violence: and houses, and take them away: so they oppress a man and his house, even a man and his heritage.” (For ‘heritage’ read ‘inheritance’.) The man spoken of is of course Jesus Christ. The plowers plowed long furrows violently in that field, and the house He inhabited they broke down. He was oppressed and He was afflicted, as we know. But they who devise iniquity do not stop there. They oppress His inheritance. They oppressed the early church, the middle church, and the late church. If we faithfully follow the Man spoken of by Micah, so that we are His heritage, we too must be oppressed if the prophecy is to be fulfilled, for we are His inheritance. They hated Him without a cause, and He Himself said, If they hate Me, they will hate you also. So we are oppressed. We run from church to church, from assembly to assembly, seeking only that the life of Christ in us may be allowed to breathe and feed. We are not allowed freedom of speech. We are not fed. We are not given living water. We scarce can stand, and we find no rest. Oh, there are sermons on morality enough, accompanied by beautiful music, but little to feed our starving souls. Oh there are speakers aplenty, but who will give us to drink of living waters? Who will shepherd us to green pastures where that water abounds for all? There are shepherds without number, all living off the sheep, but woe to us if we venture to raise our heads! And the Cross of Christ is no longer lifted up for us to see, but a multitude of good works has obscured it and depressed it. We are told to be involved in this or that, and all is based on scripture, but the worship of God alone via the Cross of Christ alone is a thing long past.

But Micah has not finished. His word is to us from God. “Therefore thus saith the Lord: Behold, against this family do I devise an evil, from which ye shall not remove your necks: neither shall ye go haughtily: for this time is evil.” We do well to mark those words. Because of our devising, God determines also to devise. Because our devising is evil, God devises an evil. If we devised food, would not God devise good for us? And who pray is God devising evil against? “Against this family.” This house of Jacob, this Israel, this elect of God. Look to the Jews and ask, Did God indeed plan and scheme that terrible destruction of a once haughty nation whose boast was in the law of God? Yes, indeed, and brought it to pass. But against us, the family of God, what will He plan? Well, the disease is incurable, according to Micah. In the days of Noah God repented that He had made man. In our Lord’s day God repented that He had made the Jews His people. In our day would God repent that He had set up the church? What happened to the people of Noah’s day? What happened to the Jews? What could happen to the church? But don’t worry – listen to the prophets. If there be one that prophesies evil, taking up a parable against you and lamenting with a doleful lamentation, saying, “We be utterly spoiled,” surely there are thousands of other prophets far less pessimistic who can prophesy of wine (joy) and strong drink (merry hearts). Listen to them then, for who could believe that God might devise evil against His own family? Micah is only a minor prophet irrelevant to our day, is he not? Or could it be that Micah’s shocking message, so strangely fulfilled in the Jewish nation, might have some bearing on a church that has down-graded the Cross?

But Micah has a word of comfort for those whose glory is in the Cross of Christ. “I will surely assemble, O Jacob, all of thee. I will surely gather the remnant of Israel; I will put them together as the sheep of Bozrah, as the flock in the midst of their fold; they shall all make great noise by reason of the multitude of men.” If God devised evil against the nation of the Jews and carried it out, yet His promise is for a latter-day gathering together, as came to pass. But if we can take His word of it, as the Israel of God, all those who hold high in esteem the Cross of Christ are in the position today of a remnant. They shall be gathered together as a flock in the midst of their fold, gathered in union of hearts to the Cross of Christ, no longer silent but noisy in their appreciation of Christ. They shall give vent at last to the bottled-up praise of a multitude of men too long cowed down by religious leaders. They shall break out from under that yoke of confinement and meet together in true worship, and, in Micah’s words, “And their king shall pass before them, and the Lord at the head of them.” Amen. Soon may it be! Or has it already begun? Micah speaks in the past tense, not the future tense. “The breaker is come up before them: they have broken up, and have passed through the gate, and are gone out by it.” Does he mean the early church, the apostles, the saints of long ago? Perhaps if we listen, if we look around, we can find if these things are already so, and if we are in danger of being left behind, of being left out of this new movement. It would be too bad if we missed it because we were not aware of it. Is the Spirit pointing us to a new position, leading us to find others like-minded, and are we meanwhile resisting any change in the status quo?

Micah has a message for his day, for the Lord’s day, and for our day, simply because history repeats itself. “And I said, Hear, I pray you, O heads of Jacob, and ye princes of the house of Israel: Is it not for you to know judgment?” The conditions in Micah’s day were on a decline spiritually. The leaders of Israel, the teachers, the prophets were concerned with making a good living from their position. Religion was organized, institutionalized, and run on the lines of any other business. The leaders and prophets were salaried, well-dressed business men with resplendent robes and large houses. Everyone knew his job and was trained to fulfill his function. The result, of course, was that God was irrelevant to the proceedings, and everyone got along nicely without any divine manifestation or interference whatsoever. We need only compare the life style of Isaiah or elijah to such conditions to see that the whole set-up was far removed from the will of God. Yet Israel claimed to be the elect of God, the people of the one true God, the beloved for the patriarchs’ sake. In such conditions Micah is a jarring shock, a lamentation, an outburst of divine displeasure. “Hear, I pray you, O heads of Jacob, and ye princes of the house of Israel; Is it not for you to know judgment? Who hate the good, and love the evil: who pluck off their skin from off them, and their flesh from off their bones: who also eat the flesh of my people, and flay their skin from off them; and they break their bones, and chop them in pieces, as for the pot, and as flesh within the cauldron.” Micah describes the leaders of Israel as one would describe cannibals!

Now let us turn to the Lord’s day. The conditions are exactly the same, as we gather from the gospels. Religion is again a powerful force, organized, institutionalized, run by men in long robes and broad hats, men with a keen eye for business, whose houses are full of ‘objet d’art,’ as we say. Each man is trained to fulfill his function, and divine manifestation or interference is unnecessary to the smooth efficiency of the procedures. The leaders are again well-paid, efficient business men disguised as priests of the most high God, but in actual fact God is irrelevant in such a set-up. Into that life-style Jesus is dropped like a bomb. His words, like Micah’s seem blasphemous and incendiary to excess. His own life-style is reminiscent of Elijah, His doings marvelous, His sayings astounding, His wisdom miraculous. The utter contrast between Jesus and the religious leaders leaves people astonished. The chasm between organized religion and this amazing Man grows wider day by day. The leaders begin to fill with envy as they see Jesus doing what they – the chosen of God – are powerless to do. It cannot be allowed to continue, obviously, for their authority is being undermined. And now their great dilemma. How to murder Jesus in the name of the most high God? How to silence forever this thorn in the flesh and do it without compromising their holiness? How to follow Cain whilst serving at Abel’s altar? And the answer is as cunningly logical as their religion – make the Romans do it! “It is against our law to put a man to death,” they tell Pilate. Does the accusation of the Pharisees by Jesus in Matthew’s gospel seem wildly extravagant now? Hypocrites, whited sepulchers! Or as Micah puts it – cannibals! Which was truth?

We have to see the truth from God’s point of view rather than merely judging by appearances. God sent His only begotten Son into the world, not to condemn the world, but that the world through Him might be saved. Jesus Christ was the Father’s beloved Son. Jesus was sinless, spotless, undefiled, and unutterably holy. Our Lord was found in fashion as a man yet completely obedient to His Father’s will. Satan could not tempt Him. The wilderness could not discourage Him. The pushing, mawkish multitudes called forth only His compassion, and He begged His disciples to suffer the little children to come unto Him and forbid them not. But this, as we saw in chapter one, was God come down. This was the express image of the invisible God. And they hated Him, truly, without a cause. As Micah puts it, they were as those “who hate the good, and love the evil” for in condemning the sinless One they chose Barabas, who was a convicted murderer. But Micah goes on to say, “Who pluck off their skin from off them, and their flesh from off their bones.” At the infamous hall of judgment the innocent Victim of their envy had the hair of His beard with the skin attached plucked off His face in handfuls, and with the scourge the flesh from off His back. Ah, but the Romans did it! Not the people of God, surely! The facts are clearly presented in the gospels. But we must judge as God judges, not as man judges. We have to see the truth from God’s point of view. God called it cannibalism, for lack of a stronger word. Micah is bringing us the word of God alone. Chapter three begins, “And I said…” and in chapter one the Lord God is the witness against them, and in chapter two we read, “Therefore thus saith the Lord,” and the message does not change in chapter three. Micah saw the word, but the speaker is the Lord God omnipotent.

Now if we begin to look at life from God’s point of view Micah will be an open book to us. We will begin to see that the conditions so strongly condemned once and then twice are again flourishing in our day. Religion is again a matter of organization. The priests of the most High God are again fully trained, salaried ones with whom procedure is more important than divine manifestations. Indeed, if God could die tomorrow, Christianity as we know it would scarcely be affected at all. The services could continue to be run on their present pattern. The sermons would hardly need to have a word altered. The musical accompaniment would continue unchanged. And even prayer would call for very little innovation. Because in today’s religious set-up God is to all intents and purposes irrelevant. True, it is the religion of the one God. True, it is the church of Christ upon earth. True, it is orderly, ancient and long-enduring. But it is cannibalistic, to quote Micah. It is a religion that feeds upon itself. It is a melting-pot religion, a caldron, as Micah says, a spineless, boneless conglomerate of people assembling to do the will of the leaders. Imagine, if you can, that you stood up and accused your church of hypocrisy, your leaders of being as whited sepulchers – what would become of you? They would have your flesh for breakfast, that’s what would happen! You would be labelled a heretic, a blasphemer, and a godless infidel. You would be oppresses, harried, insulted, scorned. If you persisted you would be cast out. And if you persisted yet you would be crucified, as men say. Why? Because religion apart from God is iniquity, and the history of organized religion is a tale of horror, of murder, cannibalism and hatred of the good in a love for that which God declares is evil.

Micah is using illustrative rather than literal language, in an effort to convey to us what he saw when he got God’s point of view. Our Lord Jesus Christ had to have a spine, as we say, back-bone, in order to stand up in His day with the words the Father gave Him to speak. His first sermon caused such a furor that the assembled people took Him out of the synagogue to cast Him over the edge of a cliff. His teaching brought Him the intense hatred of every other religious teacher. But His spine was prickly, like the spines of a cactus or the enraged porcupine. They feared to lay hands on Him. His back-bone was unyielding, uncompromising and straight. The bone is illustrative of resistance in that sense. And they had to break His resistance. Now scripture tells us that not a bone of Him was broken. But Micah says, “They break their bones, and chop them in pieces, as for the pot.” This apparent contradiction is the paradox of Calvary. Is the Cross a victory for God or for Satan? Obviously for Satan. He offered no resistance there. They could do what they liked with Him, and they took full advantage of the fact. He was inert, boneless, in their hands. As far as they were concerned His resistance was broken, He appeared weak to the point of being spineless, boneless, and how grimly they rejoiced at His helplessness when once He is securely nailed to the Cross. As Micah puts it, “they break their bones, and chop them in pieces, as for the pot, and as flesh within the cauldron.” It is a victory for evil. The wicked have prospered, the good is afflicted. His bone and His flesh are in the cauldron, the melting-pot. If they had used our own illustrative language they would have said He was stewing in His own juices. So they stare at the shameful spectacle and after His death they hurry back to keep – what? To keep the Sabbath, as good men should!

Now God has a surprise in store for them. His Holy One is not to see corruption. Their joy is short-lived. It turns to utter dismay on the third day. Having done their worst, they find that they are the ones who are now helpless. The ugly rumour spreads, in a whisper, “He is risen,” till it becomes a mighty voice condemning them. And the risen Christ appears to His disciples. “Handle Me and see, for a spirit hath not flesh and bone as ye see Me have.” God has triumphed over Satan, good over evil, the ending of every true story. Not a bone of Him has been broken. His flesh is intact. Only the shed blood, shed for sinners such as I, can never be recalled. And there are holes in His hands, His feet, His side which will never be filled. And now He turns to His followers. “You are to be the cannibals,” He says, “for except ye eat My flesh and drink My blood ye have no part with Me.” And hungrily we devour Him. Oh how sweet! Oh how pleasant to our taste! It is life to us, it was death to them. This is the meaning of Micah. This is the fantastic truth. We are taught to be cannibals that we may teach religious leaders not to be cannibalistic. But Micah holds out little comfort for the leaders of Israel. “Thus saith the Lord concerning the prophets that make my people err….therefore night shall be unto you, that ye shall not have a vision; and it shall be dark unto you, that ye shall not divine; and the sun shall go down over the prophets, and the day shall be dark over them.” For them, the darkness of eternal night. For us, the Sun risen with healing in His wings. How do we judge between darkness and light? Listen now to the Risen Christ – “But truly I am full of power by the Spirit of the Lord, and of judgment, and of might to declare unto Jacob his transgression and to Israel his sin.” The distinguishing feature is power, the power of God.

If in the face of declining spirituality our leaders are helpless, then God is not with them. If the power of God is not present to heal, to work miracles, to save souls, to give truly prophetic utterances, then God is not with them. If the Spirit of God, the living God and the risen Christ, is not active in the assembly, then God is not with them. Orderliness is not the mark of godliness, but power. Organization is not the sign of godliness, but power. Activity is not the hallmark of godliness, but power. Paul says the gospel is not in words of man’s wisdom, but in power. Noble orations, hour-long sermons preached by professors of theology, silver-tongued eulogies and clever phraseology leave God unmoved, however they may appeal to us. Where the power is, God is. Where the power is absent, God is absent, however much else may be present. Paul’s description of himself as a teacher hardly fits any teacher known today. Scripture’s description of Peter and John hardly fits any preacher today. Isaiah’s description of Christ hardly fits any Christian in your assembly, never mind yourself. But Christ had power. Peter and John had power. Paul had power. Can we not see that we have been misled, cajoled into error, shepherded far from God? Yet they say the same today as they said in Micah’s day, “Is not the Lord among us?” The heads thereof judge for reward, and the priests thereof teach for hire, and the prophets thereof divine for money: yet will they lean upon the Lord, and say, Is not the Lord among us? none evil can come upon us.” History has repeated itself. We are exactly in that set of circumstances. And the horror of it is that we are fooling ourselves, we are blind to our predicament, we are unaware that anything is wrong among us. So deeply rooted are our own ideas of godliness that the disease is now incurable, and only those who are dissatisfied with their lack of power are close to God.

In the fourth chapter of Micah we come to a rather more familiar passage, for who has not heard the words, “and they shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruning hooks: nation shall not lift up a sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more”? But apart from the general consideration of the prophecy of Micah we want to see its total relevance to our day and age, its character of emphasizing Calvary above all else, and so learn from Micah what the mind of God is regarding us, and what the will of God is for our lives. There are certain people who hold that the prophets prophesied only in regard to the Jewish nation, and who spend their lives observing the historical development of the Jewish nation, and who see nothing of Christ at all in these biblical books. Yet the New Testament clearly teaches that the prophets all spoke of Christ, and our Lord Jesus Himself said, “Search the scriptures…. for they are they which testify of Me.” We would be foolish, therefore, to relegate prophecy and the prophets to that sphere of historical Jewish continuing development whereby God is working out His pre-determined plan for the sons of Jacob, whilst missing out in its entirety the far more wonderful teaching of the Cross of Christ. It is the gospel which is the power of God unto salvation, not the historical or futuristic side of the truth however fascinating to our minds, even though we should be fully aware of the many-sided nature of God’s truth and not neglect the past and future aspects of it. Truth indeed is seven-sided, and each side is important, and we should accept the literal truth and the spiritual truth of scripture equally as we look to the Cross of Christ.

Let us look then at chapter four of Micah in a new way, to see the Cross of Christ uplifted in its message. Micah says, “But in the last days it shall come to pass, that the mountain of the house of the Lord shall be established in the top of the mountains, and it shall be exalted above the hills; and people shall flow unto it.” We see in the gospels first that Golgotha is only a small mound, a slope, a hill outside Jerusalem. Then as we put our faith and trust personally in the shed blood of Jesus Christ we find that Calvary assumes a far greater significance in our eyes. The mound has become THE hill, on which the Cross of Christ is the central feature. Then as we begin to learn other truths, that God was in Christ reconciling the world unto Himself, that Christ was the sacrifice for the sin of the world, that the Cross was from eternity, we realize that the hill has become a mountain, and that Jesus Christ was God’s holy temple among men. So Micah tells us that in the end this mountain is established above all other mountains, and it is the mountain of the temple, the mountain of the house of the Lord. It is exalted above the hills and people flow unto it. “And many nations shall come, and say, Come, and let us go up to the mountain of the Lord, and to the house of the God of Jacob; and he will teach us of his ways, and we will walk in his paths.” Our Lord Jesus Himself said, “And I, if I be lifted up, will draw all men unto Me.” We are not disparaging here the meaning of prophecy regarding the Jews or the end of the world, but calling attention rather to that which tends to be overlooked, that God says that Calvary is the focal point in time and eternity and the work of the Holy Spirit is to point us to Christ rather than in any other direction. We will have opportunity in heaven no doubt to consider the wonderful plan of God for the Jewish nation.

We need to contemplate the Cross of Christ much more if we are to discover the rest of Micah and what he is telling us. The verse quoted was incomplete. It goes on to say, “For the law shall go forth of Zion, and the word of the Lord from Jerusalem.” Christ crucified is not the end but the beginning. Christ is now risen, glorified and seated at the Father’s right hand. He is now in charge. He is the law-giver in Zion who replaced Moses. He is the Word of the Lord from Jerusalem. He is the last word, as we say. We dare not turn back to Moses for law, nor look to Solomon for judgment, because since Calvary God has made Jesus Christ the all-in-all, the giver of all law and judgment where men are concerned. He must judge the world. He must judge us, not in condemnation but in reward. His word is now the final say, the law of God, the ultimate judgment. There is no higher court of appeal, none to advise Him, none to question His decisions. And all power is given unto Him. In His hands now lies the destiny of the nations, including the Jewish nations which rejected Him. In His hands is the scepter of the kingdom of God, and the keys of death and hell. In His hands, at this moment, lies your eternal destiny. Reject Him at your peril! And this is the same Holy One whom wicked men took and blasphemously crucified on that little hill outside Jerusalem so long ago. Now scripture tells us that they also shall see Him who pierced Him, and Micah says, Woe to them that devised that iniquity, and schemed the evil upon their beds, waiting till the morning was light to put their plan into practice, because it was in the power of their hand to do it. Would you willingly change places with them? Yet every one who rejects the gospel rejects Christ, and everyone who has rejected Christ is counted in the number that said, “Away with Him. Crucify Him, crucify Him.”

Thus Micah, in two brief verses, teaches us of Calvary and the resurrection and the final judgment, as we turn to look at the Cross of Christ. And brief though the book of Micah may be, to the point of terse, taut, instant communication, every word is the word of God. We have little excuse. We say we do not understand Micah’s words, that the interpretation from the Hebrew is faulty, but John tells us that with the guidance of the Holy Spirit we have no need of any other teacher, for we know all things. Yes, we do know all things, and Micah is not telling us something different from the apostles, but let us at least acknowledge that Micah is no minor prophet. If from Micah we get a vision of the Cross that we failed to get from the New Testament then surely we can be grateful to him for that. If from Micah we see the resurrection from God’s point of view then let us at least be grateful to him for that. And if from Micah we catch a glimpse of the Christ of glory who shall one day sit to recall and recount every event of our life here on earth, both good and evil, and give His judgment regarding it, let us be grateful that we have accepted Christ as our own personal Saviour and acknowledge that Micah saw long before the advent of Christ the same Word that we have seen, the Word of the Lord Omnipotent. We are not to glorify Micah, but to readjust the balance a little, as for centuries our leaders have denigrated this wonderful book, deeming it minor, obtuse and of little worth. Would to God they had written such books! Would to God they had as faithfully pointed to Christ! But the Lord, the righteous judge, shall in the end square the account! And now what shall we say? Read Micah. Read Micah every day, if you will, with your eyes fixed on Calvary, and ask the Holy Spirit to guide you into the truth concerning our Lord Jesus Christ revealed therein.

Micah, in chapter five, appears to be confused. In verse one he refers to the scene in the judgment hall – “They shall smite the Judge of Israel with a rod upon the cheek” – and in verse two prophesies of the birth of Christ in Bethlehem. Surely verse two should precede verse one as birth precedes death? But no, Micah is not confused. The death of Jesus Christ is the major event which takes precedence over His miraculous birth. We remember from Matthew’s gospel how the wise men of the east came to Jerusalem and called upon Herod, who in turn consulted the rulers of the Jews to find where Christ should be born. Now Jesus was born in accordance with the prophecies of Micah and others, and because He had no earthly father He was born of a virgin, Mary the blessed. This was God come down, as Micah showed us. But God come down for what purpose? He came to die, He was born in order to die, born into the world of men according to divine prophecies to fulfill the entire will of God, which was to redeem mankind. So much is clear from scripture. But who was born in Bethlehem? Was it not the Judge of Israel, the One they were to mite? And has not God given Him the Gentiles also, so that now He is the Judge of the whole earth, and will be the Judge of quick and dead at the last day? This was what Micah saw. “Now gather thyself in troops, O daughter of troops; he hath laid siege against us.” Calvary is God’s victory. At Calvary, God surrounds us with love and every good and perfect gift, and calls upon us to surrender. We are besieged, we are surrounded by His mercy.

Now the flesh does not wish to surrender. We are proud. Yes, we are too proud to accept God’s terms of unconditional surrender. We determine to hold out. We may hold out for years. We may hold out proudly, grimly, desperately all our lives and die without hope in the end. For this is the pride of man, that he can be as God. He can outwit, outthink, outsmart his Creator, and join the devil in hell. Yet he is besieged all his life by the sheer goodness of God. The folly of his ways never occurs to him, and anyone who does surrender to God’s love and mercy, he despises. He hates the good and loves the evil. He rejoices in violence, cruelty, murder, extortion, adultery and idolatry, even though he cloak himself with benevolence and self-righteousness. Now God is the exact opposite. Micah says of Christ, “And this man shall be the peace.” The warfare God carries on is the war of the Spirit against the flesh. Now flesh cannot abide in His presence, and any Christian can testify from his own experience, as Paul did, that the flesh continually wars against the Spirit, “that in me, that is in my flesh, dwells no good thing,” and that his flesh is his own adversary all his life-time. We should not be too proud to admit it after we have surrendered to God. Our peace comes from outside ourselves. We have peace with God through Jesus Christ our Lord. And He is our peace. He made peace by His blood. “Who shall deliver me from this body of flesh?” asks the apostle in despair, and answers immediately, “I thank God, through Jesus Christ the Lord.” “This man shall be the peace,” says Micah. What man? The Man born according to this prophecy. What did they do with this Man? They struck Him on the cheek, they wounded Him, mocked Him, scourged Him and then took Him from their place of judgment to crucify Him. All they were doing was putting to death their only hope of peace in this world.

After His death the world never saw Him again. He appeared only to His followers. But whom did Israel smite? The Judge of Israel. And whom did the Gentiles crucify? The Judge of all the earth. When the lawless take over the courtroom and smite so as to wound the Judge, what hope thereafter do they have of peace? They are then in the position of escaped convicts, a law unto themselves, desperately seeking some means to escape the arresting hand of death. But one by one they are inexorably caught, and will of course have to face in the end the very Judge they smote and wounded. Micah shows us an angry Judge. “And I will execute vengeance in anger and fury upon the heathen such as they have not heard,” is the promise of the Lord God. Let us beware therefore. It were better now to surrender to a God who promises pardon and peace, who will overlook our past, than to continue to resist, and twist and turn all our lives in an effort to escape, only to meet death without hope at the last and hear again the promise of our angry Judge as the doors of the great court open before us. The sentence has been pre-written like everything else. “They that believe on the Son are not condemned, but they that believe not on the Son are condemned already.” Men are not going to that courtroom to meet some liberal easy-going judge who will reprimand them and then release them. Far from it. “I will execute vengeance in anger and fury upon the heathen such as they have not heard.” They are condemned already, according to the New Testament, and the words are Jesus’ own. Hell with its banks of eternal fire, its everlasting torment, its remorseless vengeance stands ready to receive the Christ-rejecters. The day of grace draws rapidly to a close, and the day of judgment looms ominously larger as time runs out – and why will ye die?

But they that believe on the Lord Jesus Christ have a happier future prospect. As one by one we surrender to God, as we repent and turn to Christ for forgiveness and mercy, forsaking our foolish pride and asking for pardon from Him whom formerly we rejected, so we find we have surrendered only into the arms of Love. We find it true that we are and have been all our lives besieged by all that is good and gracious and kind and loving and compassionate. We step out of darkness into His marvelous light and rejoice in our salvation. We find the Man we smote is not our Judge any longer but our peace, for we have now no condemnation but are passed from death unto life. He is the door into His own kingdom, an inheritance made ready for us in the heavens. And though we be yet in flesh, yet are we given of His Holy Spirit so that the flesh may no more have dominion over us, so that we may not return to that proud state of false resistance to the love of God ever again. We become the remnant of Jacob spoken of by Micah the prophet. By Him our weakness is turned to strength, our helplessness into victory. Despised by the world we are loved by God. We receive the adoption of sons, we call Him our Father. A thousand blessings are at our hand, and the glory of heaven awaits us. We do not die as those who die without hope, but we fall peaceably asleep in Him who is our peace. We may be pilgrims and strangers now in a world of lawlessness, but we know we shall inherit the earth. We may be counted as sheep for the slaughter today, but we have on our banner written, The Lion of the tribe of Judah, and we shall be like Him. Micah says, “And the remnant of Jacob shall be among the Gentiles in the midst of many people as a lion among the beasts of the forest, as a young lion among the flocks of sheep.” We only await the day of our Lord.

Micah chapter six is one of those chapters in the Bible that a man would do well to learn by heart, as we say. Surely this is the word of the Lord, for it begins, “Hear ye now what the Lord saith,” yet few enough Christians have even read it hitherto. If we do not know what the Lord saith how can we be sure we are doing His will? Yet we are sure, are we not? It seems almost impertinence to assume we are so right before we even find what the Lord saith, but we certainly give the impression that we know and are sure that what we do is the thing God requires of us. Just for a change, then, let us this time listen to what the Lord saith and compare it with what we say is the thing to do. Here are Micah’s words; “Hear ye now what the Lord saith; Arise, contend thou before the mountains, and let the hills hear thy voice.” Now what does that mean? Can we not see that Calvary is to be the only mountain in our sight, Golgotha the only hill? We are to preach Christ crucified and no other gospel. We are to earnestly contend for the faith once delivered to the saints, contend with these many other mountains that obscure our view of the Cross, these other hills that hide the eternal sacrifice of Christ. Is that what we are doing? Are we doing what God says we ought to be doing, or are we simply doing what we think is right for us? “Hear ye now what the Lord saith,” rather than what has been taught by man. “Arise” – stand up and be counted, waken from sleep, lift up the voice, let us be hearing from you, and cease to be dumb and mute in your seat any longer. “Hear ye now what the Lord saith – Arise.”

Well now, obviously God is speaking to someone else. He is probably speaking to the Jews, or the fallen-off ones, or the early church, or the people of the last days or – someone. It is all very interesting, of course, but it clearly has nothing to do with us. We are not going to change our present way of going. Next week will be exactly as we planned it, no different from last week, and next year will be a repeat of this year. If God speaks, it is not to us. You see, we already do His will, and thank God we are not sinners like others we could name. No, no, Micah, please do not disturb the status quo. We are listening to God already, and we need no other message. What do you mean, “Hear ye now what the Lord saith”? We have heard, and, dear Micah, while we love your way of putting everything, we really don’t see that this applies to us. Why should we change if we are doing what our leaders and teachers have taught us to do? It is sinners who need repentance, not the people of God. Repent? Pray God to forgive us? Change our life-style, our whole way of going? The scripture says, “Moderation in all things” and, Micah, you are immoderate in your demands. Tomorrow is already planned out, so is next week, next Sunday, next winter, next summer. Surely God is not going to show us what to do and then expect us to do something else. We do so dislike anything controversial, anything unpleasant. God is not the author of confusion, Micah, but of orderliness and organization. We learned all that years ago. Yes, it is boring, but we are ever striving for unity, for sameness among us, and boredom is inevitable. Sorry, Micah, but repentance and change are alien to the people of God. Take your message elsewhere, and tell God from us that we read the words but we have decided to ignore them, as they cannot apply to us His people.

“Hear ye, O mountains, the Lord’s controversy, and ye strong foundations of the earth;” says Micah, “for the Lord hath a controversy with His people, and He will plead with Israel.” Ah, says Micah, ye are yourselves mountains, for ye are immoveable, unbending, imperturbable in your established positions. When Christ came to earth He found exactly the same thing. He looked round about on them in anger because of the hardness of their hearts. His teaching could not shake them. His love left them cold. His kindness and compassion could not melt them, and the only result of His marvels was a prouder rearing up of their unshakable resolve to remain as they were. It took the awful death of the Cross to make a difference and it took the revelation of the Resurrection to convince them. Here was a mountain they dared not climb, here was that which they could not overlook. It was too big for them, they had to give way before it. Christ by Himself was a stumbling-stone, a rock of offence, but the Lord of glory atop the hill Golgotha added up to a mountain that filled the whole earth eventually. Now Micah says that the Lord hath a controversy with His people, and He will plead with Israel. The controversy was over their judgment of Christ, and the pleading was done at Calvary. “What think ye of Christ, whose son is He?” Or again “What shall I do with Jesus which is called Christ?” And they all cried with one accord, “Away with Him. Crucify Him, crucify Him,” thinking that thus they might maintain their prestige, their own elevation, and little realizing that God was about to elevate His Son to a height unattainable. See the Cross, for it is glorious. Here God meets man, here eternity meets time, here love deals with hatred. This is the hill of the Lord. This, and only this, is the unshakable mountain today.

“And He will plead with Israel.” Listen then, and hear the word of the Lord to the people of the Lord. “O my people, what have I done unto thee? and wherein have I wearied thee? testify against me.” Was His word not clear when He stated He was our Creator that we had to believe in evolution? Were the scriptures so obtuse about the one God that we had to believe in three divine persons? Were the promises so untrustworthy that we had to believe in tithing? Was the law so abstract that we cannot judge between right and wrong? Were the pictures so blurred that we could not see Christ in Abel’s sacrifice, Abraham’s sacrifice of Isaac, in the passover lamb, in the Psalms, in Isaiah, in all scripture? Could we not see our salvation in God leading His people out of Egypt? Is baptism so complicated that the Red Sea confounds us? Is the inheritance so far off that we cannot see we were meant to live in it? Was the virgin birth of Jesus so unbelievable that we needed a new translation of the gospels? Was His life so poorly accounted for that we cannot believe in miracles? Is evil such a thing of the past that we cannot believe in Satan? Is the world in such a great state that we no longer reckon on sin? Is hell annulled? Is God dead? “O my people, what have I done unto thee?” Did no one tell us, or could we not read His words for ourselves? “And wherein have I wearied thee? testify against me.” Are we tired of hearing the story of the love of God in Christ Jesus? Are we weary of hearing about the Cross of Christ? Is there no hope any longer in the resurrection? Are we bored by the inevitability of death? Is heaven too far away? Is salvation not worth bothering about? Are all mountains higher than Calvary? “Testify against Me.”

“For I brought thee up out of the land of Egypt, and redeemed thee out of the house of servants; and I sent before thee Moses, Aaron and Miriam.” Moses revealed the will of God to the people of God, Aaron spoke the words to Israel, and Miriam danced before them. In our day Christ revealed the will of God to the people of God, and Christ spoke the words of the Father, and Christ performed the dance of death before them. “O my people, remember now what Balak king of Moab consulted, and what Balaam the son of Beor answered him from Shittim unto Gilgal; that ye may know the righteousness of the Lord.” Balak king of Moab represented the doctrine of salvation by works, and Balaam was hired to curse Israel. But God turned the curse into a blessing, freeing the people of God forever from the false doctrine of salvation by works, and revealing at Calvary a gospel of salvation through the shed blood of the Lamb of God, and righteousness to every one that believeth. We are redeemed from the house of bondage by the finished work of Christ on the Cross, and freed forever from all the works of the law, and herein is the righteousness of God revealed unto us. No other gospel is to be preached, no other mountain exalted, no other name given among men whereby we must be saved. God might allow us a difference of opinion on evolution, three Gods, tithing, judgment, the scriptures, baptism, our inheritance, the blessed Virgin, miracles, Satan, sin, death and hell – but not about the Cross. He has made the way of salvation so plain that the wayfaring man, thought a fool, need not err therein. He has elevated Calvary so that the Cross can be seen from the four corners of earth. He has sent us prophets and preachers and apostles to make sure we got the message, and He has given us His Holy Spirit to lead us into all truth. Are we listening?

Micah, prophet of the Most High God, lead me yet! Wherewith shall I come before the Lord, and bow myself before the high God? shall I come before him with burnt offerings, with calves of a year old? Will the Lord be pleased with thousands of rams, or with ten thousand rivers of oil? shall I give my firstborn for my transgressions, the fruit of my body for the sin of my soul? Micah, lead us yet. “He hath shewed thee, O man, what is good.” He has? Tell us again, Micah, tell us to repent, and humble our eyes, and bow our necks and humble our proud spirits and weep till our hardened hearts are softened, and elevate the Cross of Christ to its former position and cease to obscure with our own ideas the blood of our Redeemer. “He hath shewed thee, O man, what is good.” Let us judge righteously. We have listened to Micah, the prophet of the Most High God, and we have seen what he had to show us. Was it good or evil? Does it accord with the testimony of all the apostles? Was it the word of God? “He hath shewed thee, O man, what is good.” Faithful Micah, can we accept him as the absolute authority in our search for Christ? “He hath shewed thee, O man, what is good.” But surely his message was to the ancient Israelites, not the Gentiles, not to us in our day? “He hath shewed thee, O man, what is good.” Very well, if we accept Micah, if we accept his teachings, if we accept his message, what does the Lord want us to do? “And what doth the Lord required of thee, but to do justly, and to love mercy, and to walk humbly with thy God?” Is that all? Yes, says Micah, that is all. Judge the value of this teaching justly, love the mercy God offers from the Cross of Christ, and walk humbly in repentance and chagrin and with down-cast eyes. And so walk with God as revealed in Jesus Christ.

Micah’s little boom is only seven chapters long, yet in six of them he has taught us much, and having done so Micah now turns his full attention prophetically to the Lord Jesus Christ. It is as though he wearied of moving the stubborn mountains, and for relief he turns to see Christ Jesus as the One Perfect Man who should alone carry out the revealed will of God, fulfilling all the law and the prophets completely. Perhaps if we too follow Micah’s example we shall derive more benefit than if we see only the folly around us. The soul who delights in the Lord needs occasionally to sit solitary and view the Lamb of God in the glory of His perfection, as one would rest his eyes in a garden enclosed. But Micah’s view is of the Man of Sorrows. “Woe is me! for I am as when they have gathered the summer fruits, as the grape gleanings of the vintage: there is no cluster to eat: my soul desired the firstripe fruit.” Micah sees the Lord at the end of His ministry as it were. Christ Jesus has given of His best to all who same unto Him. The blind have received their sight from Him, the dumb have received speech, the deaf have received hearing. The lepers are clean, the demon-possessed are rid of their awful burdens, the paralysed are restored to health and strength. Even the dead have in selected cases received life from Him. The sick are healed, the people are taught, and the poor have had the gospel preached to them. And in the end this so-fruitful Vine stands stripped in the presence of His enemies. “Woe is me! for I am as when they have gathered the summer fruits.” Having given His all, and brought joy to so many, now stripped and alone He waits quietly for His own crucifixion.

“The good man is perished out of the earth: and there is none upright among men: they all lie in wait for blood: they hunt every man his brother with a net.” Micah turns his prophetic gaze to the scene outside the city wall. He sees the fierce cruelty of the mob, the insensate destructiveness of the soldiers, the lingering agony of the Cross. Behind the curtain of darkness he senses the death throes of the only good Man left on earth, and his cry is a cry of absolute despair, of most bitter anguish, of hopeless bereavement – “The good man is perished out of the earth.” Micah is only allowed two short verses in which to compass the whole scene, and in one line he packs all the bewilderment, the hopelessness, the desperate unreasonableness of that dark hour at Calvary. His cry is a wail of catastrophe – “there is none upright among men” – for he sees prophetically as the Light of the world is extinguished. Micah is standing by the side of God here, seeing the world from God’s point of view. His words come down to us as written in fire, words written with the finger of God. He sees the blood-thirsty mob, the liers in wait, as one steps forward to thrust a spear into the Lord’s side, and he hears the exultant shout as they see the blood. “They all lie in wait for blood.” This was what they were waiting for. And Micah sees that this is the outcome for everyone who wants to walk with God. He sees the church with its martyrs following in the footsteps of the Man of Sorrows, and how the world would delight to hound them down. “They hunt every man his brother with a net.” It is a sorry tale of murder and butchery than began to unfold at the Cross and continues to this day, and the prophets were by no means happy men. Micah is terse, but Micah gives us nevertheless the complete picture, the whole story, in two verses.

Then Micah sees that evil permitted becomes in the end an evil way of life. He says, “That they may do evil with both hands earnestly, the prince asketh, and the judge asketh for a reward; and the great man, he uttereth his mischievous desire: so they wrap it up.” Micah sees the evil of his own day continued as a way of life among the people of God. In his day the princes accepted gifts and ruled accordingly, and the judges accepted bribes and their judgment warped and the covetous got their own way. It is also a picture of our own nation today in fact. But in the end it is a picture of how Christ was betrayed. Judas Iscariot, numbered among the apostles, is literally the great one with the mischievous desire. He was a thief. He lusted after silver. He sold his Lord – and he sold his own soul – for thirty pieces of silver. The infamous betrayer is directly the cause of the Lord’s death. It is as an informer that Iscariot stands out. So he meets with the rulers of that day, and the money changes hands, and everyone stands to gain, and the bargain is struck – “so they wrap it up.” And Micah, standing by the throne of God, sees the truth in its stark clarity; the apostle selling his Lord, the chief priests paying the silver, the warped judge setting aside the law to curry political favor, the ruler of the land smiling approval. “The best of them is a briar: the most upright is a thorn hedge: the day of thy watchmen and thy visitation cometh.” Calvary is the hill of the watchers, they watched Him there, and the day of the visitation of the wrath of God poured out against sin on the head of the innocent Victim. But Micah sees also, ere he turns away in disgust, a startling sight behind the scene of the Cross of Christ, a momentary glimpse of a risen Christ, and revenge on the oppressors – and concludes with that grim sentence, “now shall be their perplexity.”

Few prophets have managed to convey more briefly than Micah, the whole counsel of God, yet, for all that, the account is complete. Every word is made to count, every line tells the story. We have neither the time nor the desire here to fully explore this little book, for a man could spend many days reading in Micah without ever exhausting the material. Our object is two-fold – to point out that Micah is no minor prophet and thus redress an ancient wrong; and to bring the teaching of Micah to the fore in a day and age similar to his own. Our land, once a Christian nation, is now corrupt, our leaders for political gain are again prepared to sell their own souls. The church as a religious body is in a state of spiritual depravity and iniquity. False teachers abound in every community, and heresy and blasphemy are accepted as a way of life. In such a situation we need to see again the place God has given to the Cross of Christ, and the hill of Calvary. We need to be reminded of our Redeemer’s precious blood, and we need to see again the appalling ugliness of sin. It is not enough to maintain the status quo. It is a time for believers to arise, to stand up and be counted, to band together as those who in their own life time seek to be true to the Cross of Christ. Micah goes on to warn us that a man will betray his own brother in the last days, and we must be prepared to suffer betrayal and death to follow Christ. Times will grow harder, not easier, as we hurry into the end of all things, until the Lord comes for us in the splendour of His power and glory. Then, as Micah puts it well, “The nations shall see and be confounded at all their might; they shall lay their hand upon their mouth, their ears shall be deaf. They shall lick the dust like a serpent, they shall move out of their holes like worms of the earth: they shall be afraid of the Lord our God, and shall fear because of thee.” Who is a God like unto Thee? – God, how great thou art!