Good morning. My name is Matthew Capone, and I'm the pastor here at Cheyenne Mountain Presbyterian Church, and it's my joy to bring God's word to you today.
Special welcome if you are new or visiting with us. We're glad that you're here, and we're glad that you're here not because we are trying to fill seats,
but because we are following after Jesus together, and as we follow Jesus together, we become convinced that there's no one so good that they don't need God's grace,
and no one's so bad that they can't have it. That's why we come week after week to God's word, because we believe that he has something to say to everyone.
We are entering this Sunday into what's known in the church calendar as the season of Advent, and Advent comes from a Latin word,
which means to come or to arrive, and so we're very simply celebrating the fact that Jesus came or arrived on earth.
That's what Advent's about. It's about Jesus coming. Now, we do two things when we think about Jesus coming.
First of all, we celebrate what happened in the past. We celebrate the fact that he came, and so that's when we sing songs like,
Joy to the World, the Lord Has Come, past tense. But we don't just celebrate what God's done in the past.
We also look forward to what he will do in the future, and so we sing other songs like,
O come, O come, Emmanuel, because we know that we're still waiting and longing for Jesus' second coming,
for him to return to the earth. And that's really, Advent is essentially what's happening at all times in the Christian life.
We are celebrating what God has done in the past, and we're looking forward to what he will do in the future
so that we can live faithfully now in obedience and love in the present.
We're going to be taking a special look at Advent this month, but this is not something that's different
than other parts of the Christian life or other parts of the year. We're always celebrating Jesus' coming,
even as we do it in a special way in December.
Now, when I started my first job out of college, there was a tradition.
We would have a white elephant party every year.
If you're familiar with the white elephant party, you know it's where everyone brings a different gift,
and then there's a gift exchange that happens and the gifts that are brought,
and the goal is to get the gift that you want. So sometimes there can be steals that happen.
Hopefully there's a limit on the number of steals. You can maybe only steal two or three times a certain gift,
and there's always one gift that shows up that everyone wants.
Well, I was a little late to the game. I mean, I showed up every year, but I didn't have a good strategy coming in.
And you know there's different strategies if you show up at this.
You could be the gag gift person. You know, you could bring a grow-your-own-boyfriend thing from the dollar store.
That's one option. You could bring Christmas decor that was on sale on December 26th, the year before.
And I kind of fumbled around trying to find the right strategy until I settled on it.
My third year, I finally had a clear goal.
And my goal, of course, if you're going to one of these things, you hope that your gift gets traded at least once.
That's the sign that you brought something good.
And I realized, okay, I don't have the gift of the gag gift. That's not my skill set.
I'm not going to go out on December 26th and buy Christmas decor for the next year.
But I do know something about everyone in this world, and everyone in this world loves food.
And so I adopted the food sampler strategy.
Well, no one's going to be sad about a food sampler, right?
You could get six different types of honey from different parts of the world, three different types of coffee.
And I'll just say it's always a winner.
So if you're taking notes, this would be something to write down.
Next time you're at a white Christmas party, take a food sampler.
You don't have to be the creative person who brings the gag gift.
You don't have to buy decor. You don't have to bring something random.
That is a winning strategy every time.
This month, in December, we are going to have a sampler pack from the book of Micah.
Micah is a prophet who lived in the 8th century, and the book of Micah is a collection of his prophecies.
It is seven chapters. We're only going to have four weeks.
So we're going to take a sample of what Micah has to say to us.
Now, Micah, living in this time in the 8th century, we're going to locate ourselves just for a second where we are in the history of the Bible.
We are in the time that has come after the great kings of Israel.
So Saul, David, Solomon, their past.
We're before the time of the exile.
So this is historically before where we were in the book of Nehemiah.
Remember in the book of Nehemiah, which we covered the very beginning of this year,
the exile had happened and people were now returning.
We're before that. The exile has not happened.
People are going to soon go into exile.
So that's where we are in terms of the history of the story.
It's after the kings, before the exile.
And Micah does what many prophets do.
He predicts what's about to happen.
He predicts the fall of Israel and then Judah.
And it's a book really about two things.
It's a book about judgment and it's a book about salvation.
It's a book about judgment.
It's a book about salvation.
And I'm just going to tell you off the bat, since this is a sampler pack,
one man has estimated that 70% of Micah is judgment and 30% is salvation.
Now, I know this will disappoint many of you,
but we're not going to follow that ratio here in Advent
because our focus is on the expectation of Jesus as the coming king.
So we're actually going to be less on judgment and more on salvation.
That's not to say that either one is more important than the other.
And we're going to be looking at judgment today.
But just to name the fact that we can't see everything that's in the book of Micah,
we're not going to talk about, for example,
the most famous verse in the book of Micah, Micah 6.8.
So this will be a sample for you to whet your appetite
to dig further and further into the book of Micah
as we look at four different passages.
And we start today with chapter one.
By the way, I told you that Micah is a book about judgment and salvation.
There's also something that's little known,
which is that Micah's name, which is also the title of this book, is a question.
Micah's name means, who is like God?
Who is like God?
That will also be a question that will be answered throughout the book of Micah.
We will get to see that no one is like God.
And that will be part of the hope that we'll see as we dig into this book.
And so without further ado, I'm going to turn with you all to Micah chapter one.
I invite you to turn with me in your Bible.
You can also turn at the end of your worship guide or open it up on your phone.
And I mentioned just a few seconds ago that Micah is primarily a book about judgment
and chapters one through three are almost entirely judgment.
We're going to look at chapter one today, this morning.
And our question is simply this.
What does judgment have to do with Christmas?
You would think that if we're celebrating Christmas,
we would only talk about things that are happy and fill us with joy, right?
Things that we would celebrate.
And judgment doesn't necessarily fit in that category.
And yet in this book, we receive prophecies like the prophecy that's going to come in two weeks
about the fact that Jesus is going to come to us from Bethlehem.
And so it seems that Micah believes that judgment has a lot to do with our understanding of Jesus coming.
It's with that that we'll turn to Micah chapter one, starting at verse one.
And let me remind you that this is God's word.
And God tells us that though the grass wither and the flowers fade, his word will stand forever.
And so that's why we read it now.
The word of the Lord that came to Micah of Moresheth in the days of Jotham, Ahaz, and Hezekiah, kings of Judah,
which he saw concerning Samaria and Jerusalem.
Hear, you peoples, all of you.
Pay attention, O earth, and all that is in it.
And let the Lord God be a witness against you, the Lord from his holy temple.
For behold, the Lord is coming out of his place and will come down and tread upon the high places of the earth.
And the mountains will melt under him and the valleys will split open like wax before the fire,
like waters poured down a steep place.
Verse five.
All this is for the transgression of Jacob and for the sins of the house of Israel.
What is the transgression of Jacob?
Is it not Samaria?
And what is the high place of Judah?
Is it not Jerusalem?
Therefore, I will make Samaria a heap in the open country,
a place for planting vineyards.
And I will pour down her stones into the valley and uncover her foundations.
Verse seven.
All her carved images shall be beaten to pieces.
All her wages shall be burned with fire.
And all her idols I will lay waste.
For from the fee of a prostitute she gathered them.
And to the fee of a prostitute they shall return.
For this I will lament and wail.
I will go stripped and naked.
I will make the lamentation like the jackals and mourning like the ostriches.
For her wound is incurable and it has come to Judah.
It has reached to the gate of my people, to Jerusalem.
Verse 10.
Tell it not in Gath.
Weep not at all in Beth Laaphra.
Roll yourselves in the dust.
Pass on your way inhabitants of Shaphir in nakedness and shame.
The inhabitants of Zanon do not come out.
The lamentation of Beth Ezel shall take away from you its standing place.
For the inhabitants of Meroth wait anxiously for good,
because disaster has come down from the Lord to the gate of Jerusalem.
Harness the steeds to the chariots, inhabitants of Lachish.
It was the beginning of sin to the daughter of Zion,
for in you were found the transgressions of Israel.
Therefore you shall give parting gifts to Moresheth Gath,
the houses of Axib shall be a deceitful thing to the kings of Israel.
I will again bring a conqueror to you, inhabitants of Mereshah.
The glory of Israel shall come to Adalim.
Make yourselves bald and cut off your hair for the children of your delight.
Make yourselves as bald as the eagle,
for they shall go from you into exile.
I invite you to pray with me as we come to this portion of God's word.
Dear Father in heaven, we thank you for the chance to gather today,
that you have called us to worship in this place.
And we thank you for your word that you give to us,
that you don't expect us to figure out life on our own.
But instead, you have provided instructions,
that we would know what your will is and what is for our good.
We ask that you'd send your Holy Spirit now to help us as we study your word,
that we would truly hear from you.
We ask these things not because we deserve them or earned them,
but we ask them because Jesus has.
And so we ask them in his name.
Amen.
It will come to no surprise to you, if you're an American,
if I tell you that we live in a society that's very litigious.
People are quick to sue each other and bring lawsuits.
I met someone in Colorado Springs not too long ago
who had moved here from another country.
And in that other country, she'd been a nurse,
and her hope was to be able to become a nurse here.
The only problem was she had to learn all over again
because, as she explained to me,
in America, there's so many more notes that need to be taken
because unlike in the country she came from,
it's much more likely for a hospital or a doctor to be sued.
And so there was a whole different protocol
for the ways to record these things.
And ultimately, she did not transfer in, as far as I know,
her ability to nurse into this country.
And the last I knew, she had gone into real estate.
But it just highlights that there's something unique about America.
Not every country in the world is as eager to go to law courts as we are.
I still remember when I was a teacher,
at one point there was a dispute between two elementary students,
and one of them said to the other,
I'll sue you.
And I thought, no, you won't.
You're eight.
As we begin, Micah chapter one, God has a lawsuit.
And he is bringing it.
We find out in verse two that the Lord God is going to be a witness.
It says, let the Lord God be a witness against you,
the Lord from his holy temple.
And he is a witness here against the peoples, it says, and the earth.
And so God has some judgment to bring.
And he's not just the witness here.
It turns out he's also the punisher.
So he fulfills multiple roles.
He's a witness in the lawsuit.
He's also coming, verses three and four, out of his high place.
Verse three, we get an image here,
poetic image of what it's going to look like
for God to bring judgment on the people he's bringing a case against.
And it's dramatic and overwhelming.
Verse four, mountains will melt under him
and the valleys will split open like wax before the fire,
like waters poured down a steep place.
And so the image here is of a king coming down on a mountain.
We could imagine someone stepping on Pike's Peak,
being so powerful that they would actually crush it.
That's the image that's given here of God in his judgment.
That is the kind of power he has at his disposal.
If he can crush the mountains,
what do you think is going to happen to you?
It's a dramatic display here of God's judgment,
the wrath that he brings for those who have sinned against him.
Now, this language here would have been used,
typically the people in Israel hearing this
would be used to this language used as God deals with their enemies.
And so at this point, they might be thinking,
yes, this is what we want.
We want God to come down and shatter the mountains
and bring justice against the peoples in the earth.
I want you to imagine for a second with me
that you're at your home at night
and you hear someone messing around on your roof.
And not only do you hear someone messing around on your roof,
they're crawling around.
It seems like they're up to no good.
You then hear some of the latches on the outside of your door moving.
And it becomes clear that there are multiple people
who are trying to break into your house.
At that point, maybe you call the police,
maybe someone else has called the police,
maybe your neighbors,
and let's say that you have a police scanner
and you listen and you find out they're on their way.
The police are coming.
There's been something bad happened that's reported.
We'll say it's my house on Cool Crest Drive.
And so as you're listening to this, you rejoice.
You think the police are coming.
This is only for a limited amount of time.
And before long, the man on the roof
and the men at the doors are going to get their full justice.
Police show up.
They ignore the people trying to get in.
And they knock on your door.
You come out and they say,
we're here to arrest you.
Not the scenario you had in mind, right?
The police were supposed to be coming to rescue you,
not arrest you.
They were supposed to bring justice for you
in this particular situation.
And then after they take you away
in their police car,
they allow those people breaking into your house
to then go on and pillage it.
That's what's going on here in Micah chapter one.
There's an announcement of judgment.
God's people would naturally expect
that this judgment would be coming for their enemies.
In fact, this is written at a time
when Assyria, the nation of Assyria,
is a threat to them.
And yet there's a quick switch in verse five.
We've heard in verse two
that it's the earth and the peoples.
And God's coming in judgment.
He's coming and gonna make things right.
Who is he coming for?
Not Israel's enemies,
but Israel itself.
Verse five.
All this is for the transgression of Jacob
and for the sins of the house of Israel.
God is bringing his judgment,
but there's a nasty twist for Israel.
He's not bringing his judgment on their enemies.
He's bringing his judgment on them.
He's not bringing his judgment on their enemies.
He's bringing his judgment on them.
And so that raises another question.
Why are we the ones
whose God's judgment is coming for?
And we find out very quickly.
Verse six.
God's going to,
well, actually we find out the end of verse five.
It tells us,
what is the transgression of Jacob?
Jacob was referring to Israel in the north.
At this point, we have a divided kingdom.
So Israel's no longer one nation,
but two nations.
If you're familiar with the history of Israel,
you know this happened.
God gave it as a punishment for the sins of Solomon.
And then under his son, Rehoboam,
the kingdom split.
So Jacob's the kingdom in the north.
What's the transgression of Jacob?
Israel in the north.
Is it not Samaria?
That's the capital city of Israel.
And what is the high place of Judah?
Is it not Jerusalem?
This is the capital city of Judah in the south.
In other words, these capital cities,
the place where the leaders are potentially
is the center of sin, of God's judgment.
Other people might say,
oh, this high place here is a reference to idolatry.
Whether it is or not,
we find out quickly that idolatry is the problem.
Verse seven.
All her carved images shall be beaten to pieces.
Those are idols that Israel was worshiping
instead of worshiping the one true God.
All her wages shall be burned with fire
and all her idols I will lay waste.
And then God compares the way that his people
have been behaving to the way of a prostitute.
In other words, instead of being faithful to God
in their marriage with him,
they have gone out to other gods
who they saw as being better for them financially.
And so not on the people outside,
but on the people inside.
Judgment is coming not on the nations,
but on Israel.
And judgment is coming because of their idolatry.
The fact that they have chosen not to worship only God,
but to add other gods instead.
We might say that they had a spiritual affair.
God meant for his relationship with his people
to be like a marriage,
that they would be loyal only to him,
that they would worship only him.
What God is saying is that his people
have committed adultery against him.
They haven't just worshiped him,
they've gone and worshiped other gods as well.
And so God's wrath and his judgment
is coming down on them.
They have put their hope and trust
in someone besides Yahweh,
the personal name of their God.
They have gone to worship other gods.
Now remember, we're just in a sampler pack of Micah,
so we're not gonna look at chapters two and three,
but I can tell you quickly
some of what we find out in those chapters.
Idolatry always has consequences.
And so their worship of other gods
has also led to sinful behavior.
They are doing things that are legal,
technically, but unethical to steal from the poor.
That's one of the sins
that their idolatry has led them to.
They're growing rich at the expense of others.
It's one of the things that God condemns his people for
in the Old Testament over and over.
There are also people claiming to speak for God.
Prophets, priests, equivalents of pastors today,
and these people that claim to speak for God
will say whatever you want them to say
as long as you pay the right price.
So if you don't wanna hear about judgment,
they won't preach about judgment
as long as you pay enough money.
If you want them to prophesy about peace,
they will prophesy about peace
as long as the price is right.
And finally, there's leaders
who are using their positions of power and influence
to profit themselves rather than other people.
They're using their power to push other people down
rather than to lift them up.
It's for all of those reasons
that God's judgment is coming
in a dramatic way upon his people.
This is a prediction of the exile
that's going to one day occur
to both Israel in the north and Judah in the south.
Now, the word idolatry gets thrown around.
By the way, idolatry is what we're talking about here.
They are literally worshiping literal idols.
There are carved images that they are bowing down to.
The word idolatry gets thrown around a lot
in certain Christian circles today
as sort of a way of explaining any and every sin.
And we need to be careful about that
because idolatry in the Old Testament
had a very specific meaning.
And idolatry in the Old Testament
talked about sins that were especially bad.
To put it in another way,
not every Israelite was an idolater.
Every Israelite sinned
and needed God's grace and forgiveness.
So I'll give you an example.
King Josiah, one of the great kings of this period,
was not an idolater.
In fact, he was passionate about pure worship
and he tore down idols as part of his kingship.
However, Josiah, like every other person
who's lived in the world, apart from Jesus,
was a sinner in need of grace.
And so we need to be careful
about throwing around the word idolatry too lightly.
And I'm not going to say
that every Christian is an idolater,
someone who worships idols.
However, every Christian is someone
who by their behavior
deserves outside of Christ, God's judgment.
And so we may not be stealing from the poor,
but we may also be blind to the ways
that consumerism has affected us.
Even as we critique it in the culture around us,
we may use our resources in such a way
that it shows no concern for people in need.
We may not be a leader of a society accepting bribes.
That's one of the things that God charges
the leaders with in chapter three.
So we might not use our power in that way,
but we might use age and experience
to take advantage of our siblings
that don't have quite as much age and experience.
Or if you're a youngest,
you might use your wiles and your cunning
to blame older siblings for things they didn't do.
You might be a husband or a wife,
and you might use the power that God's given you
in each of those situations to manipulate and control
rather than to bless and build up.
You might be a Matthew 7 kind of person,
someone who's quick to see logs in other people's eyes
or specks in other people's eyes,
but slow to see logs in your own eyes.
And you're probably not a priest or a prophet
taking money to say things people want to hear.
But you might be avoiding hard conversations
and confrontations for the sake of your own comfort
in a way that doesn't show love for others
but shows protection for yourself.
Chris mentioned last week
that God doesn't just save us from the evil outside of us,
but he also saves us from the evil inside of us.
And so we begin this season of Advent
by talking about God's judgment.
Not his judgment on other people out there,
but his judgment on us.
God's people outside of Christ
deserve God's judgment.
God's people in Micah chapter 1
deserved God's judgment.
Now I listed some instances,
but the broader question is,
what is the evil inside of us,
as Chris mentioned,
that we need deliverance from?
The point of all this is that sin brings
God's wrath and his judgment.
His wrath and his judgment,
not just for other people's sins,
but for our sins as well.
Now I asked at the beginning,
I said our big question is,
what does judgment have to do with Christmas?
I'm going to ask it a different way.
What would Christmas be like
if there were no judgment?
There's one option.
Christmas would be merely sentimental.
If Jesus came,
but there's no judgment
that he came to save us from,
then we are simply celebrating
a nice story
about a man who lived a good life.
merely sentimental.
Or,
if judgment is not part of Christmas,
if it's not sentimental,
it's just another chance
to be self-righteous.
It's another chance for Christians
to be smug about the world around them
and complain
about the things that are wrong
outside of us,
outside of the church.
So if judgment is not part of Advent,
we will either be sentimental,
merely sentimental,
or we'll be self-righteous.
Isn't it great that Jesus came
for people who are good like us?
And those bad people out there,
if only they were as smart as we were.
So we need judgment at Christmas.
There's a reason that Micah chapter 1,
this book that is filled with hope,
starts with judgment.
Because hope is meaningless without it.
Second,
so that's what happens
if there's no judgment.
If there is judgment at Christmas,
if we take the message of Micah together,
both judgment and salvation,
it's judgment that actually makes us
long for salvation.
If we know how much we need God's rescue,
then it will not be challenging for us
to be filled with joy at Advent.
If we know how much we need God's rescue,
and we know how much we need God's rescue
based on our knowledge of God's judgment,
then it will not be challenging
to be filled with joy at Advent,
knowing that this is Jesus coming
as the one to rescue us from judgment.
We're told in verse 16 of this chapter,
excuse me, not verse 16,
in verse 9,
we're told,
for her wound is incurable,
that the problems of God's people
that are in need of judgment,
that are bringing judgment,
have no cure.
And we're told earlier,
in poetic language,
that God is visiting the earth.
Verses 3 and 4,
the Lord is coming out of his holy place,
and he's coming down to the earth.
We're told in poetic language.
We read,
John read for us earlier in our service,
not poetic language,
but literal language,
of God coming down to earth.
In other words,
this passage speaks in poetic language
about God visiting with judgment.
God visited in an even more powerful
and dramatic way
that was not poetic,
but literal,
to bring salvation.
And so Advent is good news
because of judgment,
because God's visitation here
to bring destruction and justice
reminds us that we have hope
because it's not God's only visit.
We also have,
not a image of a visit,
but an actual,
real,
literal visit
in time and space
where Jesus comes
not to trample down,
but to be trampled on.
And so that's the passages
that we had from John.
That's what we read earlier
in our confession of faith
about Jesus as our Redeemer.
That he came
and he visited,
not with judgment,
but salvation.
Finally,
we need judgment at Christmas,
as I mentioned before,
because judgment
is what brings us true joy.
It's the knowledge of judgment
that allows us to rejoice
in God's salvation.
Now,
if you find that counterintuitive,
I would suggest
that you have never
been exposed
to A Christmas Carol
by Charles Dickens.
A Christmas Carol
is a story
about judgment
and salvation.
Well,
I don't know
if I go so strong
and say salvation.
It's a story
about judgment
and restoration.
I'll talk about that
in a minute.
Scrooge
has to go
through judgment.
Remember,
he's this miser.
He's a man
who represents
some of the sins
that I listed earlier
in Israel.
He's a man
who uses his wealth
and his power
to profit himself
and he tramples
on the poor.
He's someone
who's interested
only in his own comfort
and not the comfort
of others.
And what rescues him
from that?
Scrooge
is rescued
by judgment.
He has the visitation
of three visitors.
He has the angel
of Christmas past,
one of Christmas present,
and one of Christmas future.
And they show him
images of judgment.
They show him
what will happen,
the destruction
that will come
if he continues
on the path
that he's on.
And what does that judgment
do for him?
It leads him,
of course,
to deep conviction,
right?
He is struck
to the heart.
But it's also
what allows him
to finally have joy.
It's that judgment
that reminds him
and shows him
a different way
of life.
That there is
still hope for him.
That he still
has time
to turn around.
Now,
his turnaround
happens relatively
quickly.
It happens overnight.
The story
does not discuss
his need
for forgiveness
for his sins
against God.
There's no
redemption.
No one pays
the price.
He tries to
pay his own
price,
right?
He goes out
and uses
his money
to redeem
himself.
And so there's
a hole in the story,
right?
We can't redeem
ourselves.
No matter how much
money Scrooge
gives away,
he's not going
to be able
to pay the price
for his sins.
But he is
a small picture
for us
of the way
that joy
can come
from judgment.
And so that
is why
we need
judgment
at Christmas.
we need,
first of all,
to know,
verse 9,
that our wound
is incurable.
But second of all,
that Jesus
has come
and is coming.
And he has
come and is
coming to cure
our wounds.
He's doing it
to remove from us
the penalty
of judgment.
And he allows
us to rejoice
because we know
that judgment
is not his only
visitation,
but that his
most important
and powerful
visitation was
when Jesus
came as a man
and took judgment
on himself.
And so that is
why we need
judgment
at Christmas.
I'll end
with this.
In his book,
Hidden Christmas,
Tim Keller
says this,
there has never
been a gift
offered
that makes you
swallow your pride
to the depths
that the gift
of Jesus Christ
requires us
to do.
Christmas means
that we are
so lost,
so unable
to save
ourselves,
that nothing
less than
the death
of the Son
of God
himself
could save
us.
That means
you are not
somebody who
can pull
yourself together
and live
a moral
and good
life.
To accept
the true
Christmas gift,
you have to
admit you're
a sinner.
you need
to be saved
by grace.
You need
to give up
control of
your life.
That is
descending
lower than
any of us
really wants
to go.
And so
what does
judgment have
to do with
Christmas?
God is
coming in
judgment
for sin,
but he also
came.
he came
as a baby
in real
human flesh
so that he
could receive
the judgment
for our sins.
And so
it's because
of judgment,
it's only
when we
understand
both
that we
can have
the true
joy
of Advent.
It's only
when we
have both
that we
can truly
sing
joy to
the world,
the Lord
has come.
And so
I invite you
to pray
with me
now.
Father in
heaven,
we thank
you that
you don't
hide hard
truths from
us,
but that
you tell
us what
is right
even when
it hurts.
And we
thank you
that judgment
is not
the last
word if
we are
Christians.
We have
true faith
in Jesus
Christ,
but that
the last
word is
that Jesus
came to
receive
judgment
for us.
We ask
that you
would use
this
knowledge
in this
season
to build
up and
grow our
joy as
we celebrate
what you
have done
to rescue
us from
judgment.
And we
ask these
things not
because we
have earned
them or
deserved them,
but in the
name of our
Redeemer and
our Rescuer,
your Son,
Jesus.
It's in his
name that we
pray these
things.
Amen.