Micah 7:1-20
December 24, 2023
preached by Pastor Ryan Bouton
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Time of Reflection Quotations

“Justification by faith alone frees me to love my neighbor…for his or her own…, not as the calculated means to my own desired ends. Since we no longer have to carry around the intolerable burden of self-justification, we are free ‘to be Christs unto one another,’ as Luther put it, to expend ourselves on behalf of one another, even as Christ also loved us and gave Himself for us.”

~ Timothy George & John Woodbridge, theologian-scholars

“Hence appears the uniqueness of the Bible. All the ideas of Christianity might be discovered in some other religion, yet there would be in that other religion no Christianity. For Christianity depends, not upon a complex of ideas, but upon the narration of an event. Without that event, the world, in the Christian view, is altogether dark, and humanity is lost under the guilt of sin. There can be no salvation by the discovery of eternal truth, for eternal truth brings naught but despair, because of sin. But a new face has been put upon life by the blessed thing that God did when He offered up His only begotten Son.”

~ J. Gresham Machen, Christianity & Liberalism

“Christ Jesus, the Son of God, because of His surpassing love towards his creation, humbled himself to be born of the virgin. He Himself united man to God through Himself …His advent according to the flesh was the thing by which the blending and communion of God and man took place.”

~ Against Heresies by Irenaeus (c.180 AD, the Bishop of Lyon)

It is only in our ‘hours-off,’ only in our moments of permitted festivity, that we find an analogy. Dance and game are frivolous, unimportant down here; for ‘down here’ is not their natural place. Here, they are a moment’s rest from the life we were place here to live. But in this world everything is upside down. That which, if it could be prolonged here, would be a truancy, is likest that which in a better country is the End of ends. Joy is the serious business of Heaven.”

~ C.S. Lewis, Letters to Malcolm: Chiefly on Prayer

Sermon Passage

Micah 7:1-20 (ESV)

¹ 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.
² 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.
³ 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.
⁴ The best of them is like a brier,
the most upright of them a thorn hedge.
The day of your watchmen,
of your punishment, has come;
now their confusion is at hand.
⁵ Put no trust in a neighbor;
have no confidence in a friend;
guard the doors of your mouth
from her who lies in your arms;
⁶ for the son treats the father with contempt,
the daughter rises up against her mother,
the daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law;
a man’s enemies are the men of his own house.
⁷ But as for me, I will look to the LORD;
I will wait for the God of my salvation;
my God will hear me.
⁸ Rejoice not over me, O my enemy;
when I fall, I shall rise;
when I sit in darkness,
the LORD will be a light to me.
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.
¹⁰ Then my enemy will see,
and shame will cover her who said to me
“Where is the LORD your God?”
My eyes will look upon her;
now she will be trampled down
like the mire of the streets.
¹¹ A day for the building of your walls!
In that day the boundary shall be far extended.
¹² In that day they will come to you,
from Assyria and the cities of Egypt,
and from Egypt to the River,
from sea to sea and from mountain to mountain.
¹³ But the earth will be desolate
because of its inhabitants,
for the fruit of their deeds.
¹⁴ Shepherd your people with your staff,
the flock of your inheritance,
who dwell alone in a forest
in the midst of a garden land;
let them graze in Bashan and Gilead
as in the days of old.
¹⁵ As in the days when you came out of the land of
Egypt, I will show them marvelous things.
¹⁶ The nations shall see and be ashamed of all their
might; they shall lay their hands on their mouths;
their ears shall be deaf;
¹⁷ they shall lick the dust like a serpent,
like the crawling things of the earth;
they shall come trembling out of their strongholds;
they shall turn in dread to the LORD our God,
and they shall be in fear of you.
¹⁸ 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.
¹⁹ 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.
²⁰ You will show faithfulness to Jacob
and steadfast love to Abraham,
as you have sworn to our fathers
from the days of old.