MICAH 6 (NOTES OF A READING)
MICAH 6 (NOTES OF A READING)
Ques How would you account for the extraordinary change in expression in verse 1 of this chapter?
CAC He comes back to deal with the moral state of the people. The previous chapter is prophetic and looks on to the end of His ways and Messiah’s ways, making them victorious over all their enemies, and setting aside in them all that was natural and human. That finishes that section of the [p. 451] prophecy — the ultimate triumph of God in the blessing of His people. First He uses them as dew, then as judgment.
This chapter deals with their moral state, and He shows He has a controversy with His people. It is humbling to think of it, but the matter of controversy is rather a strange one. It is not their behaviour towards Him, but His behaviour towards them that is the controversy. And He says in verse 3, “O my people, what have I done unto thee? and wherein have I wearied thee? testify against me”. He assumes His people would not have turned away from Him without cause, and He wants to know what it is. Tell me, have I done anything that you do not like? What have I done wrong? It is a very touching appeal; there is something pathetic about it. It is extraordinary that God should take such ground with a creature.
Rem He tells them what He has done.
CAC He condescends to go over all His ways with them, to remind them that all through from Egypt to the end of the wilderness He had not omitted to do a single thing that was favourable to them; so they really had no ground of complaint. God’s people often turn aside and seek their comfort and happiness somewhere else. It is as much as to say God has displeased us.
Rem It shows He has very sensitive feelings.
CAC Yes, He cannot bear that His people should think badly of Him; that is what it amounts to. He would even remind us of how He has taken us up, and it would settle a thousand questions if we just kept before its that we are a redeemed people. In His redemption certainly He had triumphed gloriously and He had secured a people for Himself in His own way.
Ques Why does it bring in the mountains and hills in verses 1 and 2?
CAC He wants them all to know if His people have a complaint against Him. If they have, He would like it publicly known. God regards it as a public matter, He would like all the universe to know about it.
Rem “That the world may know that ... thou hast loved them as thou hast loved me”.
CAC The world is to know it.
God’s people as a whole are very weak as to redemption, and that lies at the bottom of the secret of a great deal of departure.
Ques Will you say what redemption is?
CAC Well, that God has undertaken at His own cost to secure His people for Himself in a way suitable to Himself, in a way in which there is no flaw nor defect. He brought them out of the “house of bondage” by the death of Christ.
Redemption is an accomplished reality; God has taken His people out of the world by the blood of Christ for Himself.
And there is no flaw in redemption and no flaw in the results of it. So in Romans the apostle dwells on certain divine facts, really the fruit of redemption; and we have to accept those facts.
Rem Hebrews 9: 12 speaks of Christ “having found an eternal redemption”, in a general sense.
CAC Yes, it is redemption in itself, the actual thing in itself. All God’s dealings with a lost world must be on the ground of redemption. God undertakes to secure things, to secure His people for Himself on the ground of redemption.
Rem Redemption is for God and salvation for us, as you sometimes say.
CAC Yes, I think it is true, and certain great fruits result. Look at 1 Corinthians 1: 30, 31 as an illustration of it. “But of him are ye in Christ Jesus, who has been made to us wisdom from God, and righteousness, and holiness, and redemption; that according as it is written, He that boasts, let him boast in the Lord”, that is God, “Lord” being the word used for Jehovah. So even of the saints in Corinth (and they were far from being right) he makes this statement without any qualification. It does not at all alter the fact that they were in Christ Jesus, “who has been made unto us wisdom from God, and righteousness, and holiness, and redemption”, and the work of God in the souls of saints progresses [p. 453] on that ground, because there is no flaw to it. Well, all eternity will not add one jot or tittle to redemption. After I have spent ages in eternity, it will not have less value then than now. It is just as great for one of us as for Paul or John.
He goes over it. It is a thing we have to accept and learn, that God has taken us out of the world and bondage, and put us in His own power and grace in Christ — it is the fruit of redemption. And all the blessings we have must be the fruit of redemption, and if I have anything that is not the fruit of redemption, the sooner I throw it away the better; it is rubbish. To get hold of that gives a great sense of liberty with God, and it makes the thoughts of God extremely valuable to us. We are apt to slip away from the thought of redemption and then we get feeble and dissatisfied with God, as if somehow He had failed to do His best for us. All murmuring and complaining comes from a lack of the knowledge of redemption.
Ques Why is it put, “house of bondage”?
CAC I suppose in contrast to His own house; God’s house is a house of liberty.
Rem “Let my son go, that he may serve me”.
CAC Liberty is really the fruit of redemption and it is liberty really to be for God, they had not to think for a minute of anything else. As a redeemed people that is all we have to think of, to serve the One who has set us up in Christ and given us the Spirit.
In redemption we have the complete thing, though in one sense we do not have it complete till we get our glorified bodies, the result of redemption. It has helped me to see that the fruit of redemption must be complete, and if Christians are unsatisfied and complaining there is some defect in their knowledge of redemption. So it is important to understand where redemption has put us — in Christ Jesus. It is all in God’s anointed Man — not a single bit is attached to me, but it is attached to Christ, and I get it in Christ. It is a most satisfying thing. I come into things as in Christ, knowing that not one attaches to me, but I get them all in Christ.
[p. 454] God effects redemption and then He provides leadership, and the leadership is perfect — “Moses, Aaron, and Miriam”, that is the character of the leadership. They could not really complain of that. You see, the mediator was very near to God, so that there was the effulgence of God in his face, so he was well qualified to give the people a divine lead at every point in the wilderness. And God has provided us with a true Mediator who is perfectly acquainted with God and with His mind, so if I go wrong it is by neglecting the perfect leadership provided.
Rem Hebrews 3: 1, “Consider the Apostle and High Priest of our confession, Jesus” (cf. Moses and Aaron).
CAC Under the lordship of Christ we are instructed in all the mind of God. I Corinthians is wonderful in instructing us in that; and the leadership is as perfect as the redemption. We should not perhaps quite have thought of Aaron leading. He leads in a priestly way. He was a wonderful priest to represent every Israelite in the sanctuary — all his infirmities would make him glad of the priest. Moses lays down the law, ‘You must do it, however you feel’; Aaron says, ‘You are a poor weak people, I must support you’. The two sides go on and the two thoughts are never separated, the provision in the priest for the weakness of the people, and all the blessed things of God. We need the priest whenever we come together for the service of God. He knows when we feel poorly, and when we get there the priest comes in to support us. We shall not want any priest in heaven, the priest always suggests some kind of infirmity in those that approach. There is leading in that — everything to encourage us. It is a strange controversy.
Miriam gives a lead, and she represents the feminine subjective side; she could sing. The hymn book represents Miriam to us. It is a good thing to get a hymn that is purified, because a wrong hymn gives a wrong lead.
Now, God says, have you any complaint about redemption? Where did Moses lead you wrong? God is raising that [p. 455] question with us, Have you anything to complain of? Then at the very end of the wilderness when you would think they had behaved so badly that God might have thrown them overboard — ‘You have been stiffnecked since I knew you’, Moses said. God said, ‘You are justified and set up in spiritual beauty’, and He says, ‘That is my righteousness’. We should have said, ‘mercy’ — no! it is the righteousness of Jehovah; that is, God has the last word. And God will place His people in all this value of redemption eternally. Israel got away from everything God cherished in His heart for them, but God did not get away, and He reminded them of it.
Ques Why is it Gilgal and not in the land? (verse 5).
CAC He only goes as far as Gilgal. He only contemplates His people in the wilderness, only looks at them in the wilderness as chosen in Christ, as redeemed, and having the Spirit, because they had come to the brazen serpent and the springing well, and even when we have exposed all we are, God says, ‘That has not altered My thoughts one bit’. This encourages holiness. The more I see God’s thoughts about me, the more I feel I must be a separate, holy man. ‘It might make me careless’, you say. It never does. God has a righteous ground on which all these things are true, so Paul at the end of his course says, ‘I am looking to be found in Him, not looking to have my righteousness but the righteousness of God through faith’. He was looking to be found in a righteousness in which there was no vestige of himself at all; Paul was looking for it. If we drop down from these thoughts, what we come to is something that is of the miserableness of man. The saints will be found in the grace of Another, the fruits of the righteousness of God. “Him who knew not sin he has made sin for us, that we might become God’s righteousness in him” (2 Corinthians 5: 21). That is the full result in glory, so these things are not elementary things, because redemption takes in the whole glorified condition; and what goes into that scene of glory is what is in Christ, nothing else [p. 456] goes in.
Ques Is it not entered into now?
CAC It is being reached, God’s ministry of the word is leading to bring us all into it. How few believers know they are in Christ. They know their sins put away, that God is good and favourable to them, will comfort them in sorrow, help them in difficulty and presently bring them to heaven, but people may have all that without knowing they are in Christ. You cannot say anything better of any saint than that he is in Christ; when you have said that you have said everything. So when that is taken in, it is impossible to think of doing anything or giving anything to improve our state with God. Nothing in earth or heaven could possibly improve it. Legality centres in self, grace centres in Christ.
All God wants is three things, “To do justly, and to love goodness, and to walk humbly with thy God”. It is the summing up of the whole fruit of grace seen practically in these things. It makes the christian life very simple, does it not? — to do justly and love goodness and then walk humbly with thy God. I have nothing else to do but that, and it is perfect happiness; and nothing can hinder me from doing what is right except my own will, so it is just as well to discard the element that hinders.
We could easily have a dozen readings on these verses and then we should not get all out of them. We have to put all these things together, redemption, the leaders and every challenge on the part of God’s elect answered. ‘Those’, God says, ‘are My thoughts’. Then as to practical life we are to do what is right, to love goodness and walk humbly with our God. It all applies just as much to us as ever it did to Israel.
Rem Offerings are mentioned with a sense that they do not add to the redemption of God’s people one bit.
CAC From the point of view of this chapter He does not want them. They do not improve a man’s relations with God.