Micah's Image of the God of Righteous

MICAH’S IMAGE OF THE GOD OF RIGHTEOUSNESS

I want to look at the picture of God which the prophet Micah gives us.

Micah was just a small town artisan. He came from Moresheth, set amidst the green and fertile pastures twenty-five miles south west of Jerusalem.

He lived and prophesied towards the end of the eighth century BC in the southern kingdom of Judah.

On the international scene, the Assyrians had embarked upon an era of military activity. They had conquered Syria in the north in 732 BC. Israel in the north suffered the same fate some ten years later. Now, only the southern kingdom of Judah remained as a front line of defence against the Assyrian advance towards Egypt. It stood as a buffer state between Assyria and Egypt.

On the domestic front, the life of Judah was similar to that of Israel. The lifestyle of many was marked by extreme luxury. But a luxury achieved through the exploitation of the poor.

Micah speaks out on behalf of these poor people. He speaks as one of them. In another age he would have led a peasants revolt.

He condemns the rich who have got what they wanted at the expense of the poor.

"Alas for those who devise wickedness and evil deed on their beds!

When the morning dawns, they perform it, because it is in their power.

They covet fields, and seize them; houses, and take them away;

they oppress the householder and his house, people and their inheritance" (Micah 2.1-2).

Likewise he condemns those who are responsible for the administration of the courts which are used to the benefit of the wealthy.

"Listen you heads of Jacob and rulers of the house of Israel!

Should you not know justice?

you hate the good and love the evil,

you tear the skin off my people,

and the flesh off their bones,

you eat the flesh of my people,

flay their skins off them,

break their bones in pieces,

and chop them up like meat in a kettle,

like flesh in a cauldron. (Micah 3.1-3).

Micah also condemns the rulers and particularly the religious leaders who have been bought to uphold the corrupt society.

"Hear this you rulers of the house of Jacob and chiefs of the house of Israel,

who abhor justice and pervert all equity

who build Zion with blood and Jerusalem with wrong!

Its rulers give judgement for a bribe, its priests teach for a price,

its prophets give oracles for money;

yet they lean upon the Lord and say,

'Surely the Lord is with us!

No harm shall come upon us"' (3.9-11)

Whilst Micah was concerned about the corruption within society, it would be wrong to think that this was his main concern. He was far more interested in the cause of the corruption. This was his primary concern.

And the cause of the corruption was that the people had turned their back upon God and forgotten what he had done for them. Therefore they did not know how to live their lives. They no longer had a guide to right living.

If one loves a person, one automatically wants to live the kind of life that will give that person pleasure. Hence marriage partners endeavour to live lives pleasing towards one another. If one forgets the other partner and pretends they do not even exist, then that one will live a life which only pleases him or herself. And this is exactly what the nation of Judah was doing. They forgot that God existed and therefore lived a life which pleased only themselves. This was the cause of the corruption which Micah so fiercely condemns.

This he portrays in terms of a courtroom scene with God as the prosecuting counsel, and Judah in the dock as the accused.

So in chapter 6, God opens the case for the prosecution by reminding the accused of what He has done for them in the history of their nation. He does not appeal to any book of law but to their memory.

"O my people, what have I done to you? In what have I wearied you?

Answer me! For I brought you up from the land of Egypt,

and redeemed you from the house of slavery;

I sent before you Moses, Aaron and Miriam...

that you might know the saving acts of the Lord." (Micah 6.3-5).

The basis of the prosecuting case is the demonstration of God's steadfast love throughout the centuries.

To such a charge, Judah is unable to defend itself. All it can say in its defence is:

"With what shall I come before the Lord,

and bow myself before God on high?

Shall I come before him with burnt offerings,

and calves a year old?

Will the Lord be pleased with a thousand rams,

with ten thousand rivers of oil?

Shall I give my firstborn for my transgression,

the first of my body for the sin of my soul?”

(Micah 6.6,1).

The defendant is desperate to please God. The defendant is desperate to make amends. Unfortunately, all the defendant can think about is the material things of life such as burnt offerings, calves, rams, rivers of oil and even their firstborn of animals or their human families.

But this is not what God wants. They cannot buy God off with material goods as they had bought off the rulers, priests, prophets and even the judges.

All that God wants are lives. It is lives which give him pleasure. Lives which reflect the character of God. So Micah concludes this courtroom scene with probably the most famous passage of the whole book,

"He has told you, O mortal, what is good;

and what does the Lord require of you

but to do justice and to love kindness,

and to walk humbly with your God?" (Micah 6.8)

Religion is expressed not in the offering of material possessions to God but in the offering of lives. And the kind of lives that give him pleasure are those which express kindness and justice towards one's neighbour and humility towards God.

It is such a life we see clearly displayed in the life of Jesus of Nazareth. He said quite clearly that we demonstrate our love for God through our love for our neighbour. Christianity in not just about believing but also about living. It is about being right with God and right with each other.

Hence the one word which sums up the message of Micah is the word “Righteousness". Micah's God is a righteous God who expects his people to live right lives. Religion therefore had a moral dimension.

I do not believe that it is a coincidence that the moral decay which permeates so much of our current life has occurred at a time when fewer people attend church. I do not claim that church people necessarily always live better lives than those who do not go to church, though they should do. What I do claim is that those who go to church and therefore have some knowledge of God, have a standard by which to live their lives. A standard which is objective and not moulded and shaped by human whims and fancies. The current fashion is for everything to be relative. When we do that, we finish up by making God in our own image and we have no external point of reference to govern our behaviour. This is exactly what the people of Judah had done in the days of the prophet Micah.

When a nation loses its vision of God it leads automatically to a decline in morality.

So let us try to recapture this picture of the God of righteousness and may we live lives which give him pleasure.