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're following Jesus together as one community,
and as we follow Jesus together, we've become convinced that there's no one so good
that they don't need God's grace, and no one so bad that they can't have it,
which means that God has something to say to everyone in his word,
and that's why we come back week after week to open up the Bible
and to hear what God has to say to us.
We're in the last Sunday of Advent, and as I've been telling you this whole month,
Advent comes from a Latin word that means to come or arrive,
and so Advent is simply the time of year when we celebrate the fact that Jesus came.
He arrived as a man in a manger in this world on this earth.
And so we do two things.
We celebrate Jesus' first coming when he came,
and we also long for and look forward to his second coming,
the fact that he has not just come once, but he's going to come again.
He is, as some people say, the once and future king.
And now we're at the very end of our sampler pack of the book of Micah.
You remember the book of Micah is a book written in the 8th century B.C.,
and it's filled with the prophecies of a man named Micah who was a prophet to Israel,
the southern kingdom of Israel, Judah, in the 8th century, in between two times.
It was after the great kings of Israel, after the times of Saul and David and Solomon,
but before the exile.
And so things are not going well for Israel, but they haven't gone into exile quite yet.
And it's a book about two things.
It's a book about judgment and salvation.
We saw that at the beginning, and even in this last section,
we're at the very end of the book.
We're going to read the last verse of Micah.
It's still about both judgment and salvation.
Now, when I first came to this church,
I know I've told you before that I'm a podcast guy.
I listen to a lot of podcasts,
but there were some podcasts that I was not aware of until you all introduced me to them.
And soon after I came here,
a couple members of Cheyenne Mountain told me about the podcast called
The World and Everything in It,
which is a news podcast run by World Magazine.
And World Magazine, if you're familiar with it,
is a news magazine that comes out twice a month
that gives the news from a Christian worldview.
So give a Christian perspective on what's happening in the world.
I grew up reading the kids version of World Magazine.
And so it was fun to rediscover it in a podcast form.
And if you're familiar with this news blip,
it comes out on Monday through Friday.
And every Monday, they have a feature called Legal Docket.
And Legal Docket is a time where they look at
what are the cases that are coming before the Supreme Court.
And often, they'll look at a case before it's been decided.
So they'll say, here's the case that's coming up.
Here are the two sides.
Here's the issue at stake.
And then they might even play some clips
from different Supreme Court justices talking about it.
And they'll try to guess.
They might say, we're not sure how this one's going to go.
We might say, it's probably going to end in this way
based on the evidence they have.
But there will be a gap, right?
You may have to wait several months
between the time the case shows up
and the way that you find out how it's going to end.
This is familiar to me because growing up,
my dad was also a news junkie.
And he would read the Supreme Court cases when they came out.
And then he would discuss them with us at the dinner table.
He'd say, OK, this is the court case that was decided.
Here's how it ended up.
Here's why it ended up that way.
Anyway, we are finishing up Micah's legal docket.
If you remember all the way back three weeks ago
when we looked at Micah chapter 1,
I began by telling you that God had a court case
that he was suing his people.
And he was suing his people for the sins
that were outlined in chapters 1 through 3.
Now, we skipped chapter 6.
But in chapter 6, it's brought up again
that God is suing his people.
And so there's a court case that God is bringing against Israel
because of the ways that they have failed to obey his law.
And now we get to find out the end of the case.
We get to see how it's decided.
And so our question of this passage is simply,
how does it end when God sues you?
What is the outcome of God's court case against you?
That's what Micah is going to tell us in this passage.
We're in Micah chapter 7, and we're going to start at verse 8.
You can find this near the end of your worship guide.
You can find it at the end of Micah in your Bible.
You can certainly find it on your phone.
But whatever medium you're using to come to it,
remember that this is God's word.
And God tells us that his word is more precious than gold,
even the finest gold.
And it is sweeter than honey,
even honey that comes straight from the honeycomb.
That's why we read it now, starting at verse 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.
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.
Verse 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.
Verse 11.
A day for the building of your walls.
In that day the boundary shall be far extended.
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.
But the earth will be desolate
because of its inhabitants,
for the fruit of their deeds.
Verse 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.
As in the days when you came out
of the land of Egypt.
I will show them marvelous things.
Verse 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.
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.
Verse 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.
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.
You will show faithfulness to Jacob
and steadfast love to Abraham,
as you have sworn to our fathers
from the days of old.
I invite you to pray with me
as we come to this portion of God's word.
Father in heaven,
we thank you again
that you speak to us,
that you haven't left us
to figure out life on our own.
And we confess that we don't just need you
to speak to us,
but we need your help to understand your words.
And so we ask simply
that you would send your Holy Spirit now
and that you would give us that help,
that we would be able to see
and believe
and understand
and rejoice
over everything that you've written for us
in your word.
And we ask these things
not because we deserve them,
but because Jesus intercedes for us.
And so we ask them in his mighty name.
Amen.
Now you know that if someone sues you,
there's all kinds of different strategies
you can pursue, right?
You can try to settle out of court.
You can try to maybe have a plea bargain.
You confess to some of the things
you're accused of
and maybe other things you're accused of
get wiped away.
Maybe you get a lesser punishment.
Things get changed.
You can decide whether you want to
plead innocent or guilty.
There's actually an option
that not a lot of people know about
where you plead neither.
It's called a nolo contendere.
I don't contend.
So I'm not saying I didn't do it,
but I'm not saying I did do it.
Regardless,
there's a lot of different ways
that you can approach a court case
and maybe you receive advice
from your lawyer
about what it is that you need to do.
There's only one strategy, though,
that's going to work
when God sues you.
We're asking what happens
when God brings a case against you
and there's only one good option
if you want it to end well.
And that is this,
to plead guilty.
That's what we see here
almost immediately in verse 9.
Micah tells us,
I will bear the indignation of the Lord
because I have sinned against him.
He's not trying to do a plea bargain.
He's not saying,
well, I'm going to admit,
yes, we were oppressing the poor.
Let's just focus on that one.
Let's not focus on the sins of the leaders
because we have enough of a punishment here.
Instead, he just admits to all of it.
He pleads guilty on every charge.
We see that not just in verse 9,
but then later in verse 18,
we have a reference
to the remnant of his inheritance,
who is a God like you,
pardoning iniquity
and passing over transgression
for the remnant.
Now, remnant's a rich word
in the Old Testament,
but it's essentially the people
who remain faithful to God.
So there are Israelites
who do not repent.
They are not part of the remnant.
They are not part of the portion
that will return from exile
and be able to worship God again
in Jerusalem.
Now, in the world that we're in,
we're used to maybe plea bargaining,
maybe settling out of court.
God doesn't do that.
God doesn't do plea bargaining.
God doesn't settle out of court.
And God doesn't give a lighter sentence.
Instead, he takes the sentence.
God doesn't give a lighter sentence.
Instead, he takes the sentence.
God doesn't change the punishment.
The punishment stays the same.
The one receiving the punishment changes.
The punishment doesn't change.
The one receiving the punishment changes.
We see this in verse 9,
a shocking answer to what happens
when God brings a case against us.
Because on the one hand,
Micah pleads guilty, right?
I have sinned against him.
And there's this next word, until.
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.
In other words,
this is a court case
where the prosecutor
is going to switch sides
in the courtroom.
He's going to walk over
from the prosecution side
to the defending side.
And after he's argued
his case against you,
he's then going to walk
to the other side
and defend you.
That's what happens
when God brings a case
if you choose the option
of pleading guilty.
If you repent before God
in faith,
he will switch sides
in the courtroom.
He will plead your case for you
rather than arguing against you.
So what happens
when God brings a case against you?
Well, it really depends
on how you respond.
If you plead guilty,
if you confess your sins
in repentance
and agree with God
that without his help,
you deserve his punishment
and his wrath,
God will come to your defense.
If you do not agree with God
and you plead innocent,
he will not come to your defense.
And so we see
the other option in verse 10.
The enemy of God's people
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.
In other words,
the nations that are coming up
against Israel
to take them into exile
because they are not repenting
before God
of their sins
will one day
experience the very judgment
that God is using them to bring.
There are two options.
Plead guilty
and God will plead for you.
Plead innocent
and God will punish you.
We see this in verse 13 as well.
The earth will be desolate
because of the inhabitants
for the fruit of their deeds.
God is bringing judgment
to the world.
But he offers to plead the case
of those who plead guilty
before him.
And so it all depends
on how you respond.
Do you agree with God
and plead guilty
or do you rebel against him
and plead innocent?
It's a very simple equation
that Micah gives us here.
And this passage
is a very simple summary
of the gospel.
The readers of this passage,
the original recipients,
people living in the 8th century
listening to Micah
would have known God's character.
They would have known
God's a God,
as we're going to see later,
a God of steadfast love.
He is going to come
and redeem us
and plead our case
after the exile.
They knew his character.
They did not know his solution.
They did not know
how God was going
to bring justice
and liberate
people who were guilty.
They did not know
how God was going
to free the guilty.
They just knew
that he would.
Now we,
27, 28,
hundred years later,
know not just God's character
but God's solution.
And what we celebrate
at Christmas,
at Advent,
is God's character
and his solution.
Christmas is good news.
Christmas is good news
only for Christians
and Christmas is only good news
for Christians
because Christmas
is the good news
of knowing
how it is
that God will plead
the case of the guilty.
He's going to plead
the case of the guilty
because he sent his son
to become a man.
Gospel is a simple message
and it's this.
God sent his son
to become a man.
He sent his son
to become a man
so that he could die.
And he died
so that he could suffer
the penalty
for our sins.
And he suffered
the penalty
for our sins
so that he could
restore us to God.
And as we've seen
the last couple weeks,
he could restore
this world.
He's coming
for his citizens
and those citizens
are also part
of his kingdom.
God,
as we saw last week,
is sending his king.
And he's sending
his king
both to come
and restore
and to come
and die.
And we cannot
separate those two.
And so God's solution
is to give
forgiveness
to those
who have explicit
faith in Jesus Christ
who have repented
of their sins
and have pled guilty
to the charge
against them.
God will plead
their case
because of Jesus.
I mentioned
three weeks ago
that Micah's name
is also a question.
Micah's name
means
who is like
Yahweh,
who is like God.
And that in some ways
is the question
of the book of Micah.
Who is like God?
That question
becomes explicit
in verse 18.
Who is a God
like you?
The answer is this.
Who's a God
like Yahweh?
No one.
No one
is a God
like Yahweh
and no one
is a God
like Yahweh
because God's
vindication
means not
that he will
bring punishment
on his people
but that he will
do away
with their sin.
God's vindication
is different
from anyone
else's vindication.
He is different
from any other
prosecutor.
No other prosecutor
would try to lose
his case.
But this prosecutor
comes to argue
the case
of his enemy.
Again,
verse 9,
he's going to take us
from darkness.
Verse 8,
we're told,
I sit in darkness.
Verse 9,
he will bring me
out to the light.
God is the one
who's going to bring
his people
from darkness
into light.
His vindication
means he's going
to do away
with sin.
Now,
I'm focusing
just on a few
specific parts
of this passage.
This is a very long
passage that we read
that I wanted to give
you the context for.
We're not going to go
through everything in it.
I'll just quickly
summarize here
in verses
11 through 12,
11 through 13,
God's going to
restore Jerusalem.
And when he restores it,
it's going to be better
than it ever was before.
It's what we've seen
before in chapters 4
and 5,
that God is restoring
not just his people
but his kingdom.
And then what we saw
in chapter 5,
he is coming to be
a good shepherd,
verses 14 through 17.
He's going to restore
his people to their kingdom,
their place,
and he's going to
restore them to him.
And he's going to do
that vindication.
He's going to bring it,
verses 18 and 19,
because he delights
in steadfast love.
What gets God excited
is forgiving his people.
What God delights in
is being faithful
to his people.
This is the same word,
the steadfast love word,
that we saw
when we looked
at the book of Ruth
in 2018.
This is God's
never stopping,
never giving up,
unbreaking,
always and forever love.
That is what God
delights in.
That is what makes
God come to his people.
And what does he do
when he delights
in steadfast love?
Well, verse 19,
he will again
have compassion on us.
He will tread
our iniquities underfoot.
He will cast
all our sins
into the depths
of the sea.
When I was growing up,
we had some friends
who taught us
that when you put a can
in the recycling bin,
if you want to save space,
you don't just put
the can in.
You need to smash it first.
And so we would practice
smashing cans,
and it's a little bit
of an art
because you want to stomp it,
and you need to stomp it
fast enough
that it just crushes down
and it's a circle.
If you do a good job,
you'll get a perfect circle.
If you do a bad job,
it'll just be kind of
this flat landing strip.
And so we would practice
crushing the cans
before we threw them
into the recycling bin.
Micah tells us
that God doesn't just
throw away our sins.
He crushes them first.
God delights so much
in steadfast love
that the language here
that's used
is of a war against sin.
God is on the move.
We saw in chapter one
that God was coming
and shaking the mountains
with his feet
in judgment.
And Micah's a great poet
and so is God.
And so as he begins
the book crushing
the mountains,
he's going to end the book
crushing our sins.
As his feet come in judgment
in chapter one,
God's feet are going to come
in redemption
in chapter seven.
The same God
who comes in anger
and wrath
is the God
who comes to have
compassion on us.
And the same God
who comes on the top
of the mountains
is going to take our sins
and put them in the bottom
of the sea.
And so there's a beautiful
bookend here
between chapter one
and chapter seven.
We heard the beginning
of God's case
and now we see the end.
It's not two different gods
but the same God.
The God who comes to punish
is also the God
who comes to redeem
and he comes to redeem
anyone
and everyone
who agrees with Micah
in verse nine.
I have sinned
against him.
That's what God offers
to everyone
who has faith
in Christ
turning away
from their sins
and to Jesus.
And so as we come
to Advent
we can know
that God
takes our sins
and he stomps them
and then he puts them
in the bottom of the sea
where no one can find them.
Maybe you have repeated
over and over
the way that other people
have sinned
in an attempt
to make yourself
feel better
in the midst
of insecurity.
God takes that sin
and he treads it
under his feet
and he casts it
into the bottom
of the sea.
Maybe you're in
a sexual relationship
with someone
that you're not married to
and you thought
if someone would just
accept me in that way
and want me in that way
then maybe I could prove
that I'm really worthwhile.
You want to be desired
and accepted
and instead
it left you feeling empty.
God has stomped
that sin
under his foot
and he has cast it
into the bottom
of the sea.
Maybe you realized
the best that you could do
in school
were bees
and you were afraid
of what your parents
would think
and so you began
bringing things
with you
into tests
that you weren't
supposed to
so that you would
know the answers
that weren't
in your head.
in Christ
God has taken
that sin
and stomped it
under his feet
and he's cast it
into the sea.
Maybe there's a season
where you couldn't
fall asleep
without an addiction.
Maybe it was a
sexual addiction
maybe it was
narcotics
but that was the only
way you were able
to find rest.
God has tread
that sin
under his feet
and he has cast it
into the bottom
of the sea.
Maybe you're over
at a friend's house
and they had that movie
that your parents
won't let you watch
and that you've
never seen before
and you told them
that it was your
favorite movie
and you'd seen it
many times
and you just wanted
to see it
one more time.
God has taken
that sin
and treaded
under his feet.
And he has cast it
into the bottom
of the sea.
Maybe your kids
are grown now
and you still think
about the times
that you yelled
at them.
Desperate for them
to make you look good.
And now you wish
you could take it back.
God has taken
that sin
and he has treaded
under his feet
and he has cast it
into the bottom
of the sea.
maybe there was
that night
that you had
too much to drink
and you said
something to someone
that you love
that you would
give anything
to take back.
But you can't
unsay it.
God has taken
that sin
and he has trampled
it under his feet
and he has cast it
into the bottom
of the sea.
maybe you did
something wrong
and you covered
it up
rather than
fixing it
and you wish
you could go back.
God has taken
that sin
and he has smashed
it under his foot
and he has cast it
into the bottom
of the sea.
Maybe you felt
threatened
by someone else
and so you started
gossiping about them
and you can't
undo
the damage
that's been done.
God has taken
that sin
and he stomped
it under his feet
and he's cast it
into the bottom
of the sea.
Maybe you had it
in your power
to help someone
who was hurting
but you didn't
because it would
make you uncomfortable
and you always
wonder what if.
God has taken
that sin
and he's trampled
it under his feet
and he has cast it
into the bottom
of the sea.
Maybe you take
credit for your
accomplishments
and your success
looking down
on other people
who couldn't
get it together
and now you realize
God is the one
who gave you
and there's a wake
of bodies behind you.
God has taken
that sin
and trampled it
under his feet
and he has cast it
into the bottom
of the sea.
God came
at the beginning
trampling
on the mountains
and now he comes
at the end
trampling
on our sins
and he does it
because of his son
who came
not as a conquering
warrior
but as a humble
king
or in a manger.
And so how does it
end when God
sues you
for those
who have faith
in Christ
it ends
in this way.
You who have
humbly confessed
your sins
and seek
the mercy
of God
hear the good
news
from Micah
chapter 7
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.
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.
You will show
faithfulness to
Jacob
and steadfast love
to Abraham
as you have sworn
to our fathers
from the days
of old.
In Jesus Christ
the Lord
forgives you
all of your sins
and we'll remember
them
no more.
Let's pray.
Father in heaven
we praise you
that you sent
your son
so that without
fear we could
confess our sin
to you
knowing that
you are a
prosecutor
who will come
and help us.
You're a prosecutor
like none other
and so we ask
that you would
help us
to see that
to know the
safety that we
have to come
and confess
our sins to you
and the forgiveness
that you offer
that you don't
just forgive
but you trample.
You trample
our sins
under your feet
because that
is how strong
and how powerful
your steadfast love
is.
We ask that you
would give us
the knowledge of that
that would give us
joy
that would fill
our hearts
this week
as we celebrate
your coming
and we ask
these things
praising you
that it's in the
name of Jesus.
Amen.