Major Truths from a Minor Prophet

Micah, one of the minor prophets (so-called because of the book’s short length), is best known for two of its verses, Micah 6:8 and Micah 5:2. The first is the oft-quoted rhetorical question telling us that the Lord desires us to “do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly” with Him. The second is the prophecy that specifies Bethlehem as the birthplace of the coming Savior. But as I was reading through Micah recently, another verse jumped off the page—Micah 7:9. And it’s this verse I’d like to dig into today.

In the beginning of chapter 7 Micah is lamenting the fact that “there is no one upright among mankind” (verse 2). He is overwhelmed with the weight of the world’s depravity where even the most stellar example of humanity has become so warped as to be a tangled, twisted mass (verse 4). No one within can be trusted (verses 5-6), and the enemies without sit ready to delight in Israel’s demise.

Micah is understandably distraught, but he makes a conscious choice to lift his eyes from the chaos of his environment to the One who sits enthroned over it all. He writes, “But as for me, I will look to the LORD; I will wait for the God of my salvation; my God will hear me” (7:7). He then reminds his enemies that although Israel’s situation might seem dismal, they will not have the satisfaction of seeing it defeated for long. He says in faith, “When I fall, I shall rise; when I sit in darkness the LORD will be a light to me” (7:8). And then he continues in verse 9:

                I will bear the indignation of the LORD

                                because I have sinned against him,

                until he pleads my cause

                                and executes judgment for me.

                He will bring me out to the light;

                                I shall look upon his vindication.

This passage is packed full of profound truth. While its immediate application was for the people of Israel and Judah who would soon be taken into captivity, as prophecy it speaks to larger realities as well. Let’s dissect it to get a closer look…

“I will bear the indignation of the LORD because I have sinned against him,”

First, we see that sin incurs the wrath of God. God, the perfect, holy, supreme Being, is righteously angry with us because we have wronged him, and we live under that indignation . . . period? Praise God, no! The period of finality is absent, and instead we have the promise of a comma and the little word “until.” But how will that promising comma be followed? Will it be “until we are utterly destroyed”? Again, praise God, no!

“until he pleads my cause”

Take a moment to think about how unexpected that ending to the sentence is. The perfectly righteous and just God, instead of taking out His justified anger by requiring the punishment of death from each of us, doesn’t simply decline to punish us but actually speaks out on our behalf. Say what? How is that possible? Crimes have to be punished, don’t they? Indeed, and let’s look at the rest of the sentence. God pleads our cause…

“and executes judgment for me.”

So He does execute judgment, which should be no surprise given the fact that He is a just God. But again, we’re met with a surprise. Micah just finished saying he/Israel has sinned against God, so we should expect God to execute judgment against him/them. Instead, Micah says that God executes judgment for him/them. So who does God execute judgment against, then?

In the immediate context, He judged the nations who were Israel’s enemies. In the bigger picture, though, the answer to this question is given in glimpses throughout the entire Old Testament but comes into focus hundreds of years after Micah writes these words in the person of Jesus of Nazareth, the God-man. He, an innocent, takes the punishment for all the guilty by dying on the Cross.

In short, God executed judgment against Himself. And He did it for us, the ones who owe our very existence to God yet spit in His face every day through our pride and self-centeredness. That’s how merciful and loving of a God He is. But He doesn’t merely absolve us from having to pay what we owe (our lives). Let’s keep reading…

“He will bring me out to the light; I shall look upon his vindication.”

God doesn’t just save us from something. He saves us for something. He brings us out of darkness, yes. But in bringing us out of darkness, He brings us into the light. From the very moment we turn from our sin and believe in what God has done for us, we are in the beautiful, glorious, peaceful light of a right relationship with God.

Does this mean that everything will be smooth sailing the rest of our days or that we’ll never dabble in darkness again? Not hardly. We still live in a fallen world, after all, and our growth in holiness will not be complete before Jesus returns. We will still stumble in sin and suffer the fracturing of fellowship with God that results. But the light is still there, and it’s still our home. The fellowship can be restored because the darkness no longer has a legitimate claim on our lives.

And one day, we will have the surpassing blessing of watching as God’s final vindication is carried out and we can behold Him in His righteousness. In that day, as we witness the judgment of God against the Enemy and stand before God clothed in the righteousness of Jesus, I imagine we will praise Him as Micah does in closing his book (7:18-19):

Who is a God like you, pardoning iniquity

and passing over transgression

for the remnant of his inheritance?

He does not retain his anger forever,

because he delights in steadfast love.

He will again have compassion on us;

he will tread our iniquities underfoot .

You will cast all our sins into the depths of the sea.

But instead of future tense, we’ll be using past. No longer will we be fighting to keep the faith, to choose to look upward instead of around at our circumstances. We’ll be literally looking at Jesus. Our faith will have become sight. Our lives will be forever and only filled with light and love. 

What a beautiful day that will be.