Read Micah 4:9–10
Questions from the Scripture text: What does v9a ask? What does the rhetorical question in v9b imply as an answer? What does the rhetorical question in v9c imply as an answer? How does v9d describe the intensity and helplessness of their pain? What command/curse immediately follows (v10a, c)? Upon whom (v10b)? From where will they depart (v10d)? To where will they go to dwell (v10e)? And where else (v10f)? But what will happen there (v10g)? Who will do this (v10h)? Redeeming them from what/whom (v10i)?
What hope is there for those in intense or justly deserved pain? Micah 4:9–10 looks forward to the hearing of God’s Word read in the public worship on the coming Lord’s Day. In these two verses of Holy Scripture, the Holy Spirit teaches us that God is pleased to redeem sinners right from the midst of the pain that they deserve.
The next three mini-prophecies each announce a judgment that is coming, pressing the urgency of the announcement with the word “now” (v9a, cf. 11a, 5:1a). And each announces God’s glorious, gracious intentions.
God’s gracious intentions for the future do not, however, minimize the intensity of the pain that one endures in the present. Jerusalem (“daughter Zion,” v10b) is going to be crying out in pain. Indeed, Jerusalem is going to be crying out in such intense pain that it will be “like a woman in birth pangs” (v10c).
Like so much of the latter prophets, the great effect of this particular crying out is to make us hungry for the Christ, the Messiah, the Anointed One. The anointed ones of Israel, at the time of Micah, are so far from helping that they have actually been part of the problem (cf. 3:1–3). The Word of God confronts them: “are you not finding deliverance from your king” (v9b)? Half a millennium after they rejected YHWH as king, in order to be delivered by human kings (1Sam 8:7, 19–20), it has not gone well. Also, they have amassed for them prophets who tell them what they want to hear (cf. 3:5–7), but when the real trouble arrives, these false counselors aren’t any more helpful than corpses (v9c). What a warning for preachers, who think little of people-pleasing in our sermons, over-against carefully communicating what the text itself says—that would make our congregations about as well off as if we were dead! And it should be a strong caution to the person in the pew who wishes sermons were more to his or her liking.
As Micah looks into Jerusalem’s future, and sees them in agony like a woman in labor, he affirms that this is exactly the right response for what they will come to endure (v10a). Being driven into the country side will not be like a camping holiday (v10d–e), and the journey to Babylon is not going to be like a vacation to another country (v10f). It will be painful!
BUT, it will also be the very place in which God’s grace seeks them out and finds them. “There” they will be delivered (v10g). What a glorious, gracious God! The timing and location of their redemption is intentional. Precisely for such a people, in such a condition, entirely through their own fault and justly brought upon them, He redeems them by His grace.
It is good for us that we feel the pain of what we deserve, and however the Lord justly and wisely chastens us. But, let us seek Him all the more in such circumstances. He is the God Who redeems such sinners and restores such backsliders. It is especially into the darkest night that He shines the light of His redemption!
What are you suffering that is painful? What are you suffering that you have brought upon yourself? Why might your suffering be justly inflicted? How does this passage encourage you all the more, precisely in such circumstances, to turn to the Lord and hope in Him?
Sample prayer: Lord, forgive us for hoping in earthly government to be our help. And, forgive us for desiring preaching that is according to our own preferences rather than being whatever Your Word actually says. We praise You that You are the God Who saves the helpless from the midst of their most painful and deserved judgments. Redeem us, we pray, to the praise of Your glorious grace in Christ, through Whom we ask it, AMEN!
Suggested Songs: ARP32AB “What Blessedness” or TPH180 “Kind and Merciful God”
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