selections from Micah 2-3
December 10, 2023
preached by Pastor Doug Cooper
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Time of Reflection Quotations

“Oft hope is born when all is forlorn.”

~ J.R.R. Tolkien (1892-1973) in The Return of the King

“If men will not understand the meaning of judgment, they will never come to understand the meaning of grace.”

~ Dorothy L. Sayers (1893-1957), English writer and poet

“The [Christian] message is that there is hope for a ruined humanity – hope of pardon, hope of peace with God, hope of glory – because at the Father’s will, Jesus became poor and was born in a stable so that thirty years later He might hang on a cross.”

~ J.I. Packer (1926-2020), Theologian, cleric, and author

“Advent is the time of promise; it is not yet the time of fulfillment. We are still in the midst of everything… Space is still filled with the noise of destruction and annihilation, the shouts of self-assurance and arrogance, the weeping of despair and helplessness. But round about the horizon the eternal realities stand silent in their age-old longing. There shines on them already the first mild light of the radiant fulfillment to come. From afar sound the first notes as of pipes and voices, not yet discernable as a song or melody. It is all far off still, and only just announced and foretold. But it is happening, today.”

~ Alfred Delp (1907-1945), German Jesuit priest and philosopher of the German Resistance

“Why would God come this time in the form of a baby, rather than a firestorm or whirlwind? Because this time he has not come to bring judgment but to bear it, to pay the penalty for our sins, to take away the barrier between humanity and God, so we can be together. Jesus is God with us.”

~ Tim Keller (1950-2023), American pastor and writer

Sermon Passage

selections from Micah 2-3 (NIV)

Micah 2:1-3

¹ Woe to those who plan iniquity, to those who plot evil on their beds! At morning’s light they carry it out because it is in their power to do it. ² They covet fields and seize them, and houses, and take them. They defraud people of their homes, they rob
them of their inheritance.

³ Therefore, the LORD says: “I am planning disaster against this people, from which you cannot save yourselves. You will no longer walk proudly, for it will be a time of calamity.

Micah 2:12-13

¹² “I will surely gather all of you, Jacob; I will surely bring together the remnant of Israel. I will bring them together like sheep in a pen, like a flock in its pasture; the place will throng with people. ¹³ The One who breaks open the way will go up before them; they will break through the gate and go out. Their King will pass through before them, the LORD at their head.”

Micah 3:9-12

⁹ Hear this, you leaders of Jacob, you rulers of Israel, who despise justice and distort all that is right; ¹⁰ who build Zion with bloodshed, and Jerusalem with wickedness. ¹¹ Her leaders judge for a bribe, her priests teach for a price, and her prophets tell fortunes for money. Yet they look for the LORD’s support and say, “Is not the LORD among us? No disaster will come upon us.” ¹² Therefore because of you, Zion will be plowed like a field, Jerusalem will become a heap of rubble, the temple hill a mound overgrown with thickets.