Habakkuk 1-2

The banner we have seen flying over all the Minor Prophets is this: God always keeps his promises. But for many of you, whether or not you would say it out loud, that statement has a question mark behind it. God always keeps his promises? There are so many loose ends and unresolved situations in your life that you feel like there must have been some fine print that you missed somewhere. It’s like looking through the mail and finding that letter that informs you that you’ve hit the jackpot and Ed McMahon is on his way to deliver an oversized check for $10 Million. But by the time you can think about what color you want your first Hummer to be, you read the fine print that says, “…If the 12-digit number on this card matches the one we draw,” and the finer print on the bottom of the back side of the letter clarifies, “chances of winning are 1 in 217 trillion.”

Is there fine print on this banner, “God always keeps his promises”? That is what we are going to explore this morning in the book of Habakkuk.

Habakkuk has a fascinating structure, like a Cliff Notes version of the book of Job. Habakkuk asks God a question, and God answers him. That answer brings up another question that Habakkuk asks, and God answers that as well. Habakkuk then prays a long, beautiful prayer that Stevo will walk us through next week.

This sounds rather straightforward until you consider the type of questions Habakkuk was asking, not to mention the complex mind of God that received the inquiry. On our level it is like a child asking why he has to get a shot at the doctor’s office. A three-year-old doesn’t have the capacity to understand how something that hurts so much could be good for him.

This is what makes Habakkuk much more complex than a prophet asking a few questions and God giving a few answers. This isn’t like asking for directions to the grocery store or asking who won the ballgame. Even though Habakkuk could doubtless think of some simple, theologically correct answers to his own questions, God answers him in a way that shatters his assumptions and leaves him with more questions.

Let’s walk through the exchange between Habakkuk and the Lord. Look at Habakkuk 1:2-4: “O LORD, how long shall I cry for help, and you will not hear? Or cry to you “Violence!” and you will not save? Why do you make me see iniquity, and why do you idly look at wrong? Destruction and violence are before me; strife and contention arise. So the law is paralyzed, and justice never goes forth. For the wicked surround the righteous; so justice goes forth perverted.”

This is a common theme in all the prophets. There is injustice amongst God’s people and the prophet is crying out to Yahweh to do something about it. It’s the same type of reaction that we would have if we found out that a businessman in our church was embezzling funds at his workplace or if a mom were teaching her children that people with different skin color shouldn’t be trusted. Our hearts, like Habakkuk’s would cry out, “this is not right!”

Let’s see what God answers beginning in verse 5. “Look among the nations, and see; wonder and be astounded. For I am doing a work in your days that you would not believe if told. For behold, I am raising up the Chaldeans, that bitter and hasty nation, who march through the breadth of the earth, to seize dwellings not their own. They are dreaded and fearsome; their justice and dignity go forth from themselves.”

This is not the answer Habakkuk was looking for. There were all kinds of things the Lord could say, like “I’ll send a pestilence among the wicked” or “I will use Judah’s king to sift out the evil doers.” Instead, God says, “You’re right; Judah is plagued with injustice, so I’m going to raise up the Chaldeans to punish my people.”

To which Habakkuk says, “Whoa…hold your horses! Isn’t that being a bit severe? Sure we’ve got some problems and need to be disciplined, but you’re going to punish us with the Chaldeans?” The issue here is the fact that the Chaldeans were 10 times more wicked than Judah. Look at Habakkuk’s reply in 1:13: “You who are of purer eyes than to see evil and cannot look at wrong, why do you idly look at traitors and are silent when the wicked swallows up the man more righteous than he?”

Imagine being in the 5th grade and complaining to the teacher that the other students in the class are cheating on the test. So the teacher says, “You’re right; something needs to be done about this. I’m going to call cousin Guido and his boys from the Mafia to come teach these kids a lesson.” When your eyebrows are pasted back and your jaw on the floor at this reply, maybe then you will understand Habakkuk’s utter incredulity at God’s answer to his question.

And of course, your response to the teacher is, “The Mafia? You’re going to call the Mafia?!? Don’t you know what they do? The concrete shoes in the river?” Habakkuk has the same response in verses 14-17. Lord, don’t you know about these Chaldeans? They gather up their captives like fish in a net! They put hooks through their captives’ lower lips to march them in a shameful procession! These are idolatrous brutes, and you’re going to send them against us?!?”

Let’s read God’s answer to Habakkuk in 2:2-4: “And the LORD answered me: “Write the vision; make it plain on tablets, so he may run who reads it. For still the vision awaits its appointed time; it hastens to the end—it will not lie. If it seems slow, wait for it; it will surely come; it will not delay. Behold, his soul is puffed up; it is not upright within him, but the righteous shall live by his faith. ”

When my parents and sister were here last week, we read Habakkuk 1-2 for family devotion time. When we reached the words I just read and saw that they were preceded by the words, “And the Lord answered me…” we looked at each other in confusion. How is this an answer?

This is the point at which it might be helpful to answer our opening question: yes, there is fine print on the banner that flies over the Minor Prophets. God always keeps his promises. But here’s the fine print: God always keeps his promises in his timing and in his way. And that often excludes our sense of when he should do it and our sense of how he should do it.

What I’m getting to is this. God does not feel the need to defend himself about when and how he keeps his promises. The central question of Habakkuk is, “God, how can you, being good, use an evil people for your purposes? What about your promises to your people?” And for that matter, we might as well connect ourselves to this dialogue and fill in the contemporary blank. “God, how can you, being good, use cancer for your purposes?” “God, how can you, being good, use a layoff for your purposes?” “God, how can you, being good, use a wayward child for your purposes?” “What about your promises to your people?”

But God is not answering those questions. God always keeps his promises in his timing and in his way. One commentator said, “It should be noticed that God did not seek to defend his justice. Instead of answering the ‘why’ sort of question, he began by suggesting that human responsibility lay not in having all the answers, but in responding to God in the proper way” (Hill/Walton, OT Intro, p. 518). In other words, the fact that calamity is coming has been established. Now the question on the table is, “What kind of a person are you going to be? Are you going to be puffed up in your soul and arrogant like the Chaldeans and those doing injustice in Judah? Or are you going to live by faith along with the righteous? Are you going to believe that I will keep my promises, even if it isn’t when and how you think I should?”

I don’t know where you are struggling to believe God’s promises, but here is where we are in Habakkuk. We’re standing next to Habakkuk in front of this big marquee that says, “God, who is absolutely good, uses evil people and events to accomplish his good purposes.” And while we are baffled at what this marquee says, we realize that Jacob’s son Joseph is standing behind us, repeating his words to his brothers at the end of Genesis: “As for you, you meant evil against me, but God meant it for good.” And then it all makes sense. Joseph had no say in when and how God would fulfill his promises to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. So it was not for Joseph to shake his fist at God at the bottom of the well or in his jail cell and say, “God you aren’t keeping your promises!” Rather, Joseph was to trust God in whatever circumstance he faced, whether as prisoner or prince. The righteous shall live by his faith.

The book of Habakkuk has no circumstantial resolution. That is, we don’t read that the good guy wins in the end. All we know is that calamity is about to strike, God is at the controls, and our calling is to trust him no matter what. I don’t know what calamities are raging in your lives right now, but this feels immensely practical for being a poem from the 7th Century B.C. You’re imperative is not to make perfect sense out of the painful circumstances in your life or anyone else’s life. Connecting the dots and saying, “Oh, this is how God is going to keep his promises” sometimes doesn’t happen for 10 years, if it happens at all this side of death.

William Cowper, a believer who struggled intensely with depression, captured the heart of this in his famous hymn:

God moves in a mysterious way His wonders to perform; He plants His footsteps in the sea And rides upon the storm.

Deep in unfathomable mines Of never failing skill He treasures up His bright designs And works His sovereign will.

Ye fearful saints, fresh courage take; The clouds ye so much dread Are big with mercy and shall break In blessings on your head.

Judge not the Lord by feeble sense, But trust Him for His grace; Behind a frowning providence He hides a smiling face.

His purposes will ripen fast, Unfolding every hour; The bud may have a bitter taste, But sweet will be the flower.

Blind unbelief is sure to err And scan His work in vain; God is His own interpreter, And He will make it plain.

So God answers Habakkuk’s question of “How can you use these brutish Chaldeans?” with “I know what I am doing and how I am keeping my promises. You live by faith.” But God doesn’t leave it there. He reassures Habakkuk of the promises that he is keeping so Habakkuk will know what he is to believe.

At the risk of redundancy I want to clarify what this life of faith looks like. God does not simply call us to have aimless faith. He gives us a focus, an object for our faith—himself. And he does not simply call us to have a general faith in him. He gives us promises where we can aim our faith; promises upon which we set our sights, even when the circumstances around us are contrary to what God promises.

So what promise does God give Habakkuk? Where can the prophet set his sights? In chapter 2, verses 6-20, God assures Habakkuk that he will bring the Chaldeans to justice. The first half of verse 8 best summarizes this: “Because you have plundered many nations, all the remnant of the peoples shall plunder you.” God reinforces to Habakkuk that he always keeps his promises, and he promises to execute his vengeance on the Chaldeans.

But the sweetness of God’s promises is that they go beyond a return to the status quo. God does not only promise Habakkuk that he will bring a foreign nation to justice. He promises that one day all foreign nations will know God’s saving power. Read verse 14 with me in Habakkuk 2: “For the earth will be filled with the knowledge of the glory of the LORD as the waters cover the sea.”

Again, the sweetness of God’s promises is that they go beyond a return to the status quo. Israel would have been happy to return to Egypt as slaves while they were wandering in the wilderness. But God had something bigger than Egypt for them—he had the Promised Land. Job would have been happy to be rid of his boils and unhelpful friends and are return to the way things used to be. But God had something bigger for Job—an encounter with the Almighty and the restoration of more possessions and family than he had before.

Brothers and sisters, the whole point of Habakkuk is that we must take the long view in believing the promises of God. What sets the righteous apart from the wicked is not his ability to make sense out of present circumstances. What distinguishes the righteous is that he or she believes that God always keeps his promises even when present circumstances speak to the contrary.

Micah 6:1-8

The story of the Old Testament is the story of Yahweh, the Creator of the cosmos, entering into a covenant with Israel, so that he might bless all the nations through them. The prophets fit into this story as the covenant enforcers. That is, God redeemed Israel as his chosen people, then set forth the law, saying, this is how to live in relationship with me. Israel responded by saying, “all that the Lord has spoken we will do.” The prophets entered the scene to hold up the law in one hand and Israel’s actions in the other hand, and say, “your heart has strayed from your covenant God.”

So Micah is the spokesman for God the judge, who brings charge after charge against his faithless people. The basic pattern in Micah is that God gives the charge against Judah, usually idolatry or injustice, the consequential discipline that he will send, like exile or destruction of their land, and then there is a word of hope for future restoration. Let’s look at an example of this pattern in Micah 3:9 and following.

First the charge—
“Hear this, you heads of the house of Jacob and rulers of the house of Israel, who detest justice and make crooked all that is straight, who build Zion with blood and Jerusalem with iniquity. Its heads give judgment for a bribe; its priests teach for a price; its prophets practice divination for money; yet they lean on the LORD and say, “Is not the LORD in the midst of us? No disaster shall come upon us.””

Then the coming discipline—
“Therefore because of you Zion shall be plowed as a field; Jerusalem shall become a heap of ruins, and the mountain of the house a wooded height.”

And then a word of promise—
“It shall come to pass in the latter days that the mountain of the house of the LORD shall be established as the highest of the mountains, and it shall be lifted up above the hills; and peoples shall flow to it, and many nations shall come…”

Six times in the first 5 chapters God the judge slams his gavel, “Guilty!” then through his covenant enforcer Micah gives the word of coming judgment, followed by a promise that after that season of judgment he will restore his people.

But there is something we must know about this judge. This is not merely an emotionally detached judge who is doing his job to see that justice is served. Don’t hear me wrong, justice will prevail in God’s court. But as we come to Micah 6, we see God make an astonishing move: after 6 sentences of “Guilty!” he steps out of the judge’s bench and steps into the role of the prosecutor. But it’s not because the seventh issue is harder to prove and requires cross-examination. No, God questions Israel because they have broken covenant with him. They have rejected his love. He is not only a just judge. He is a husband who loves Israel his wife; he is a Father who loves Israel his child; he is a shepherd who loves Israel his flock.

Turn with me to Micah 6:3, where God opens his heart to his people, with the brokenness and befuddlement of a husband that finds his wife with another man or a father who catches his son stealing from his wallet. His questioning begins our ascent toward understanding what Judah’s relationship with Yahweh was supposed to look like.

“O my people, what have I done to you? How have I wearied you? Answer me! For I brought you up from the land of Egypt and redeemed you from the house of slavery, and I sent before you Moses, Aaron, and Miriam. O my people, remember what Balak king of Moab devised, and what Balaam the son of Beor answered him, and what happened from Shittim to Gilgal, that you may know the saving acts of the LORD.””

Here we see four “saving acts of the Lord” that were evidences of Yahweh’s covenant love and faithfulness to his people. And this is against the dark backdrop of Israel’s idolatry and injustice, that is, Israel’s covenant unfaithfulness. The first two—the Exodus and God’s subsequent provision for Israel in the wilderness—are well known to us. But let us look at the third and fourth “saving acts of Yahweh.”

In verse 5 Micah says, “Remember what Balak king of Moab devised, and what Balaam the son of Beor answered him.” This is a story from Numbers 22-24, where Balak, an enemy king, hired Balaam, a prophet, to prophecy against Israel as they moved toward the Promised Land. But each time Balaam opened his mouth, blessings came out. Four times Balak paid Balaam to curse Israel, and four times Balaam’s prophecy was blessing on Israel, making it plain that God had blessed Israel, and though he would punish them for their unbelief, his steadfast love for them would continue.

The fourth “saving act” that God lists is “what happened from Shittim to Gilgal.” This is a fancy way of referring to the crossing of the Jordan River, since Shittim is on the east bank of the Jordan, and Gilgal is on the west bank. Here God miraculously stopped the flow of the Jordan so that Joshua and the Israelites could pass through on dry ground, just as they had at the Red Sea.

What is Israel’s response to this? They completely miss the point. They import the notion of appeasing the gods from their idolatry and apply that to Yahweh. Look at Micah 6, verses 6-7. “With what shall I come before the LORD, and bow myself before God on high? Shall I come before him with burnt offerings, with calves a year old? Will the LORD be pleased with thousands of rams, with ten thousands of rivers of oil? Shall I give my firstborn for my transgression, the fruit of my body for the sin of my soul?”

Put in modern day English, God’s people are saying, “Ok, God, we know we’ve been faithless and have thrown ourselves to the idols of status, property, and lust. So what would make you happy? How big of a check do we need to write to the church? How much time do we need to give to the building project? How many services a week do we need to attend?”

God’s response cuts through these externals. Here is the essence of what it means to be in a relationship with God. Look at verse 8: “He has told you, O man, 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?” In essence, what God wants more than anything is your heart; your devotion; your affections; your commitment; your desires. He wants you, not your stuff.

Throughout our time in the prophets we have seen how our spiritual condition is displayed both in our horizontal relationships with people and our vertical relationship with God. Micah 6:8, more than any other verse I know, captures not only the horizontal and vertical, but how the two are connected. He begins with the horizontal—to do justice. He ends with the vertical—to walk humbly with your God. And in the middle is the connecting point—to love kindness, or steadfast love. I want to explore this, because this is at the heart of what it looks like to be in relationship with God.

This word, translated “kindness” in the ESV, is the word we have seen throughout the prophets that represents God’s loyalty to his covenant—his lovingkindness and mercy and faithfulness. There is no stronger bond in the universe than God’s steadfast love for his people. In fact, it is the only hope the prophets have that God will not obliterate Israel from the map, because he has this steadfast love for them that endures forever. When they are disobedient he will punish them, he will take them away from their land, he will allow their enemies to prevail over them. But ultimately he will preserve a remnant for himself and continue to uphold his promises to Abraham.

One of the clearest statements of this bedrock called God’s steadfast love is found at the end of Micah. Turn with me to Micah 7:18 as the prophet celebrates the assurance of God’s continuing faithfulness to Israel:

“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 under foot. You will cast all our sins into the depths of the sea. You will show faithfulness to Jacob and steadfast love to Abraham, as you have sworn to our fathers from the days of old.”

Getting back to Micah 6:8, the command is for God’s people to love kindness, to love steadfast love. And it is in this command that we see the hinge point between the vertical and horizontal. The text is ambiguous as to whether “steadfast love” refers to God’s loyalty to Israel or the type of mercy and faithfulness they were to show to one another. I don’t think we are forced to choose between the two—should I cherish the steadfast love God has for me or should I be merciful toward others. In fact, the rest of scripture attests to the interconnectedness between those two experiences. It is only because we feel and know and experience God’s mercy and faithfulness toward us that we are able to display true mercy and faithfulness toward others. The only true horizontal loyalty and kindness flows from the experience of the vertical loyalty and kindness God shows us. In this sense, any hope we have to do justice or walk humbly with our God is rooted in our experience of Yahweh’s mercy.

Micah 5:1-6

Those of you who have been on short-term mission trips or any trip abroad know that one of the most challenging things about re-entry into everyday life is answering the question, “So how was your trip?” You have been in a different culture eating different food around people who speak a different language and have a different exposure or access to the gospel than you do. So to sum up two weeks of that in a word or two is impossible. At the same time, your coworkers and acquaintances are not interested in the digital slideshow and 3 hours of video footage. So when we were in Indonesia last year, our missionary hosts made us write a one-sentence answer to the question “So how was your trip?” Then we wrote a three-sentence answer then an extended answer.

If one of your acquaintances hears that you have been sitting through sermons on the Minor Prophets since the first of the year, even if they are a believer they are likely to ask, “What are the Minor Prophets about anyway?” You and I both would be quite embarrassed if, after months and months in these books you hadn’t a clue how to answer them, so I thought I would use this morning’s text as an opportunity to give us the one-sentence answer, the three-sentence answer, and yes, the extended answer.

The one-sentence answer is so simple that you can teach it to your three-year-old. In fact, it is one of the most important things you can teach your three-year-old. It is this: “God always keeps his promises.”

The Minor Prophets are certainly more complex than this sentence, so here is the three-sentence explanation of the Minor Prophets. “Yahweh established a covenant relationship with Israel and made great promises to Abraham and David. The Minor Prophets were covenant enforcers who brought God’s message of judgment when Israel broke covenant with God. However, interwoven with their messages was the promise that God would ultimately restore Israel after he disciplined her.”

I want to use the three points in these sentences to set up one extended answer to “what are the Minor Prophets about?” The three points were (1) God’s covenant with Israel, (2) God’s judgment on Israel’s sin, and (3) the hope of restoration after the discipline. Don’t think that this is merely a history lesson on Israel. What we are about to look at is an entire paradigm for dealing with hardship and waiting on God. It is the experience of looking at what God has promised, looking at the circumstances around you, and saying, “God how can there be any hope here?” It is Abraham looking at the sand that his descendants will outnumber, looking at his old, barren wife, and all he can do is laugh and rest on the fact that God always keeps his promises.

Turn with me to Micah 7:1, and let’s step into Micah’s shoes as he wrestles with how God is going to keep his promises. “Woe is me! For I have become as when the summer fruit has been gathered, as when the grapes have been gleaned: there is no cluster to eat, no first-ripe fig that my soul desires.” Micah knows the covenant promises God made to Abraham and David, but when he sees the Israel’s situation, there are very few traces of those covenants being fulfilled. He likens it to having a deep craving for some grapes or figs, going to the vineyard, and finding zero fruit on the vines. He wants to see the fulfillment of God’s promises, and he doesn’t see it.

Let’s clarify what exactly Micah was seeing. On the one hand he was looking at God’s covenant promises to Abraham and David. God promised Abraham that his descendants would be many, that he would give them the land of Canaan, and that through them he would bless all the peoples of the earth. Then to King David he promised that his descendants would sit on the throne of Israel forever.

Put those together and Micah is looking at God’s promise of a mighty nation that would bless the world, lead by a king who would rule forever. Or to use the metaphor God spoke to David, “I will build you a house.” But when Micah looks at the building materials for this great house, all he sees are wicked people led by a weak king. If you are still in Micah 7, look at verses 2-3 to get a sampling of what the peoples’ wickedness was like; to see how rotten these 2x4’s are: “The godly has perished from the earth, and there is no one upright among mankind; they all lie in wait for blood, and each hunts the other with a net. Their hands are on what is evil, to do it well; the prince and the judge ask for a bribe, and the great man utters the evil desire of his soul; thus they weave it together.” You want to build a house out of that?

Turn back to chapter 5 where we see the weak king who is leading this wicked people. Verse 1 says, “Now muster your troops, O daughter of troops; siege is laid against us; with a rod they strike the judge of Israel on the cheek.” The king of Israel was supposed to rule with a rod of iron. He was supposed to strike down his enemies. He was to protect the nation from invasion. And here we see that this king was not ruling with an iron rod, he was being ruled by his enemy’s rod. He was not striking his enemy; his enemy was striking him. He was not protecting the nation from invasion; Jerusalem was under siege.

Can you understand Micah’s despair? Ringing in his ears are God’s promises that he will build a house for David, and all he sees for the materials are rotten boards and rusty nails. The reaction is, “God, how are you going to build a house out of that?!?”

How many times has this happened in the Bible? Abraham looks at barren Sarah and says, “How are you going to make a nation from us?” Gideon looks at his army of 300 and say, “How are you going to win a battle with us?” Israel’s army looks at little David and says, “How are you going to slay Goliath with him?” And here Micah looks at his people and asks, “How are you going to make a great nation out of us?” How is God going to keep his promises?

Thankfully the book of Micah gives us the answer. God is going to gather a faithful remnant of his people around a great king who will rule over them forever. All the passages in Micah that give hope for the future of Israel, especially in chapters 2 and 4, contain these strands of God gathering together a remnant and with them making a strong nation. And the Lord himself will rule over this nation through a new king that he will raise up.

Turn with me to Micah 5:2 and let’s see who this king is. “But you, O Bethlehem Ephrathah, who are too little to be among the clans of Judah, from you shall come forth for me one who is to be ruler in Israel, whose origin is from of old, from ancient days.” Skip down to verse 4. “And he shall stand and shepherd his flock in the strength of the LORD, in the majesty of the name of the LORD his God. And they shall dwell secure, for now he shall be great to the ends of the earth. And he shall be their peace.”

This is how God is going to keep his promises—he is going to raise up a great king who will shepherd the remnant of God’s people. This is the resolution to the tension between God’s grand covenant promises and the wickedness of his people. This is the hope that explains how God is going to keep his promises.

So if you are living in Micah’s day and you despair with him when you see the wickedness of your people and the weakness of your king, the place where you turn your hope is the reign of this new king. You can say, “things may be horrendous right now, but there’s a king coming who will make all things right. He will gather a remnant and rule over us forever!”

But what should you say if you are living in 2006, and you despair when you look at the wickedness and injustice of the world, the impurity that is always creeping in the church, and even the weakness of your own life before God? Where do you look when you hear all the great promises of God, and you simply don’t see it happening? You do the same thing that they did in Micah’s day—turn your hope to the reign of this king. You say, “things may be horrendous right now, but there’s a king coming who will make all things right. He will gather a remnant and rule over us forever!”

But you can say much more than that, can’t you, because the King has already come. When wise men from the east followed his star to Israel they said, “Where is he who has been born king of the Jews?” Do you remember what the chief priests and scribes answered them? They quoted the words of Micah, “And you, O Bethlehem, in the land of Judah, are by no means least among the rulers of Judah; for from you shall come a ruler who will shepherd my people Israel.” They followed the star to the house of a young couple named Joseph and Mary, and there they fell down and worshipped this little boy named Jesus, because he was the King.

So unlike Micah, we don’t only have the hope that a king will come, we know who this King is. He is Jesus of Nazareth—our Savior, our Master, our King. And King Jesus did all we’re reading about in Micah, didn’t he? He came from the ancient line of David. He said, “I am the good shepherd that lays down his life for the sheep.” But at the same time, when the people wanted to make him king, he slipped off into the mountains by himself. He didn’t ride into Jerusalem on a white horse to establish his eternal reign. He rode into Jerusalem on a lowly donkey and allowed his enemies to capture and kill him. And as he hung on the shameful cross, Pilate mockingly placed a banner over his head: “Jesus of Nazareth, the King of the Jews.”

But what nobody understood is that before this King came to reign forever he first came to die for the sins of his people. He came and made peace between God and sinners on the cross. Or as Micah says, he is our peace. And this King did not stay in the grave but rose again on the third day, showing that his kingdom is not a petty kingdom like the United States or Russia or China. No, this King conquered death, sin, and Satan. And he came to his followers and said, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Go therefore and make disciples of all nations.”

There is a crucial connection between this Great Commission and our text in Micah that we cannot miss. In Micah 5:4 the prophet says, “And he shall stand and shepherd his flock in the strength of the LORD, in the majesty of the name of the LORD his God. And they shall dwell secure, for now he shall be great to the ends of the earth. And he shall be their peace.” When you and I, as subjects of King Jesus, talk about him and the forgiveness and eternal life that is offered in his gospel, we are part of seeing Micah 5:4 fulfilled. It says that he shall be great to the ends of the earth. Jesus told us to make disciples of all nations. In Acts 1:8 he said, “you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the end of the earth.”

Jesus Christ came as the King that Micah foretold. But he came not to crush his enemies but to extend mercy to his enemies. And as more and more sinners repent or turn from their allegiance to Satan and self and bow the knee to King Jesus, his kingdom extends. As we labor in sharing this good news of the kingdom with others here in Phoenix and as we help others take the message to all nations, Jesus is doing exactly what Micah prophesied. He is gathering to himself a remnant and reigning over them as a strong King forever.

And as we enjoy the benefits of being under King Jesus’ rule, we still are in a situation like Micah where we groan because of the injustice that remains in our world. The violence, the racism, the sexual perversion, the greed—it makes us ask, where is the covenant keeping God? Where are his promises? And in that moment of despair we look to the same place where Micah looked. We turn our hope to the reign of this King. We fix our eyes on King Jesus who, after this window of mercy is over, will come and trample his enemies, rid this world of injustice, and reign over his people forever in the New Heavens and the New Earth. And he shall be their peace.