When prophetic warnings go unheeded
Posted at Reformation Scotland:
In hindsight, it seems so obvious that when the people of Israel and Judah persisted in unfaithfulness to the Lord their Redeemer, they would suffer the consequences. We might wonder why they didn’t just listen to what the prophets were telling them. But it seems to be one of the features of spiritual unfaithfulness that it goes unnoticed in the very ones who are flagrantly guilty of it. In our own context, we can perhaps be so concerned about what is going on in society around us, and on the global stage, and maybe even in other churches and fellowships, that we remain oblivious to the degree to which even our own ostensibly faithful congregations and denominations have strayed from God’s ways. George Hutcheson observes that, “although the Lord in His great mercy overlooks the infirmities of His people, yet rebellion, idolatry, and corrupting of His worship, especially when multiplied, He will not tolerate.” We may bemoan our infirmities in all sincerity, while yet choosing not to confront endemic forms of disregard for God’s Word which have become tolerated and respectable among us. Then if God was going to take us to court to argue His case against us, we might be as surprised as the people of Judah were to hear His long list of accusations against us. The prophet Micah used this metaphor of a courtroom to expose the sins of the church of his time, and to warn the people that opposition to God will never succeed. In the following updated extract, George Hutcheson comments on Micah’s message to a complacent church, noting at the end that a glimmer of hope remains even in God’s most terrifying measures against sin.Micah represents the Lord as if in a solemn day in court, where He appears with great power, severity and majesty to take order with Israel and Judah for their sins. The Lord will not spare His own people when they provoke Him, but He deals with them in equity according to the degrees of their provocations.
A public hearing
So that his teaching would come with authority, the prophet Micah summons all the creatures, and all people, to be witnesses to these legal proceedings against Israel and Judah, and to this solemn day in court, when the Lord would judge and witness against His people, and vindicate what His servants said against sin from all the contempt of unbelievers. “Hear, all ye people; hearken, O earth, and all that therein is; and let the Lord GOD be witness against you, the Lord from his holy temple” (Micah 1:2).The word of the Lord ought to be delivered by His messengers with all gravity and with all authority. By solemnly summoning all creatures to appear, Micah declares that his message had a grave purpose, it was not to be slighted, and that it was the Lord, who has command of all creatures, they had to deal with, and not other people only.
