“Who is a God like you, pardoning iniquity and passing over transgression…?” (Micah 7:18)
Micah’s name means “Who is like the Lord?” As the prophet completes/concludes his book he identifies himself with a question, which is also his name: “Who is a God like you…?” (Mic 7:18) It is a rhetorical question that is an assertion of God’s incomparable glory and greatness. Micah is really saying, “There is no one like the Lord, for our God is greater than all gods!” The book of Micah reveals our God in 3 ways:
What does the Bible teach us about who God is? What does Micah reveal to us about God? 3 thoughts:
1. God’s Holiness. The book of Micah emphasizes repeatedly that God is a holy God, a God in a unique category, set apart from all others. God's thoughts/ways are never man’s thoughts/ways (Isa 55:8-9). The whole Bible sets “forth the awful gulf that separates the creature from the Creator” (J. Gresham Machen, 1923). It relates to God’s absolute separation from all evil and sin. “…he is exalted above the possibility of sin—in him, as the absolutely good, evil cannot enter” (Gerhardus Vos, 1994).
Micah confronts us with the reality of God’s holiness all through his book. God appears in frightening cataclysm, where “the mountains will melt under him, and the valleys will split open” (Mic 1:3-4). The reason? “All this is for the transgression of Jacob and for the sins of…Israel” (Mic 1:5). The holy God is always grievously offended by all sin. God is a just God who judges sin with great severity (Mic 2:1), until he regards his sinful people as an enemy (Mic 2:8).
2. God’s Almighty Power. The holy God also has power to judge sin. “I will make Samaria a heap…and uncover her foundations” (Mic 1:6). No one can match God’s power. No foundation can withstand God’s power. When Sennacherib, the Assyrian conqueror, besieged Jerusalem, the Lord struck down 185,000 soldiers of his army in a single night.
3. God’s sovereignty. No human king or authority determines the fate of peoples. Only God in his sovereign majesty reigns supreme. God is omniscient, knowing all our secret thoughts (Mic 2:1), while we know not his (Mic 4:12). God’s absolute sovereignty over all history includes the minutest details of the affairs of men and nations, as seen in the many and specific prophecies Micah makes regarding the future.
Micah spoke boldly about specific events that have not yet happened because he speaks for a sovereign God, who exercises perfect control over all things, past, present, and even into eternity.
II. Incomparable Grace
Is there 1 thing about God that causes Micah to celebrate his incomparable glory? The answer is in his final verses (Mic 7:18-20). It is that the majesty of the holy, almighty, sovereign God is seen most wonderfully in his grace. “Who is a God like you, pardoning iniquity and passing over transgression…?” (Mic 7:18). We observe 4 things:
1. What God forgives. What is it that God forgives? Micah uses 3 terms to describe sinful man’s offense to God.
All 3 of these terms—guilt, rebellion, and wickedness—have been ascribed not to pagans but to God’s people residing in Jerusalem where they worship in the temple of God. Judging by the standard of God’s perfect law, no one is righteous, not even one, and no one does God, not even one (Rom 3:10,12).
2. How God forgives. How can a holy God ever forgive his people’s sins? Micah’s language is vivid and instructive, containing the very heart of the Bible’s gospel. He virtually uses NT language that only Jesus is able to fulfill.
1. God pardons our iniquity/guilt. Nasa’ literally speaks of God lifting our guilt, taking it away (Jn 1:29). An Israelite would naturally think of the Day of Atonement, where the high priest sets the scapegoat free (expiation), while slaying the other (propitiation), which shows that God takes away our sin/guilt by the substitutionary death of a God-appointed sacrifice (Lev 16:8-10; Rom 3:21-26). God had to both bear and take away our sins (Bruce Waltke, 2007). The NT applies this directly to the cross, where God cancels our record of debt by nailing it to the cross (Col 2:14). This transfer of our sins to Christ is imputation (2 Cor 5:21; Isa 53:6).
2. God passes over our transgression/rebellion. The language here also points to the cross, through the events of the Passover (1 Cor 5:7; Mic 7:18). This passing over of our sins happens for those who have confessed their sins and believed in the gospel of Christ. What other God or deity ever responds to our wickedness against him by placing our guilt onto himself? This is the main difference between Christianity and all other faiths.
3. God’s attitude in forgiving our sins. Does God forgive begrudgingly, resentfully, or halfheartedly? “He does not retain his anger forever, because he delights in steadfast love” (Mic 7:18). Micah’s hope is in the incomparable God whose heart is moved by grace. Chesed, is the great OT word for covenant mercy and love of God, for God delights in tender, loving, mercy for his people. This word is so rich that it can hardly be given a single English translation. It is rendered as:
Seemingly, no godly people were left in the land (Mic 7:2-3). How could such depraved people be spared by a holy God? It is ONLY because of God’s mercy (Tit 3:5). Micah’s hope lay in God’s delight in mercy, and there he rested his burdened heart.
4. The finality of God’s forgiveness: God casts away our sins…
· God “will again have compassion on us” (Mic 7:19). Racham speaks of tender affection, the way a mother loves a child.
· Like a conqueror and a liberator, God “will tread our iniquities underfoot” (Mic 7:19). When God takes away the guilt of sin, that it may not condemn us, He takes away also the power of sin, that it may not rule us. Thus,
o Our guilt he takes away to the cross;
o Our rebellion he covers with Christ’s blood; and
o The corrupting power of evil in our hearts he treads underfoot.
· God casts “all our sins into the depths of the sea” (Mic 7:19). This allusion is to Pharaoh’s chariots in the Red Sea. Just as the Egyptians were prevented by God from catching the Israelites to destroy them, God will not allow our sins to catch up to us.
This knowledge is crucial to our relationship with God, and to our peace and joy in salvation: the finality of our forgiveness in Christ. Heb 8:12 echoes Jeremiah when God declares to us: “I will be merciful toward their iniquities, and I will remember their sins no more.” How can an all-knowing God forget that we have sinned against him? In Micah’s language, God has:
III. Incomparable Faithfulness
How can we count on God extending such grace to us, when we stumble and stutter in sin? Only by God’s incomparable faithfulness to his covenant promises of old in the Bible (Mic 7:20). “Faithfulness” is emet, which also means “truth.” God will be true to Jacob (Gen 28:14) by working salvation for Jacob’s descendants. God will show “steadfast love (chesed) to Abraham” (Mic 7:20) to fulfill God’s promise to him (Gen 12:3; 15:5). God has sworn this “to our fathers from the days of old” (Mic 7:20). Thus, “we have this as a sure and steadfast anchor of the soul” (Heb 6:19).
In conclusion, God delivers us from the power of sin by first assuring us of our complete forgiveness through the blood of Christ. Why would he do this? Because “he delights in steadfast love (chesed)” (Mic 7:18). When we behold the cross, we can praise God like Micah and say, “Who is a God like you, pardoning iniquity and passing over transgression…?” (Mic 7:18)
"Come, let us build ourselves a city and a tower with its top in the heavens, and let us make a name for ourselves" (Gen 11:4).
The onslaught of atheism against God is not a modern invention, nor a recent 20th century occurrence. It already happened ions ago when man built the tower of Babel to do away with God, and to regard God as irrelevant, redundant or non-existent. Yet there is still a need to affirmatively declare their own independent autonomy and self-rule. They indeed lay claim to a heaven without God, while the world continues to pine away amidst the constant din of ongoing and escalating unrest. But don't we all build our own towers of Babel? Biblically, Babel reflects every man's utmost longing for significance and security. Before I became a Christian in 1980, what drove and motivated me was my intense desire to become a doctor. It was not that I really wanted to be a doctor. (All my 4 kids sensed that, and my life as a doctor did not inspire any of them to want to be a doctor!) What motivated me? It was the praise and recognition by others if I became a doctor. It was also my longing for financial security by being a doctor. So, I built my "tower of Babel" through 5 years of medical school, and after that by coming to the U.S. to solidify my status and security and significance as a doctor. Surely, all human beings are building their own "towers of Babel" in their own unique ways. For a time, they may seem triumphant. But the song that reflects the sentiment of the last century still cries out even among the affluent, "I Can't Get No Satisfaction!" Or in the ancient words of Solomon, it would be, "Vanity of vanities! All is vanity." (Eccl 1:1) In Gen 11:1-9, let's examine why God was so displeased with those who built the tower of Babel that he confused their languages? What was so wrong about building the tower of Babel? The ESV Study Bible says, "The Babel enterprise is all about human independence and self-sufficiency apart from God. The builders believe that they have no need of God. It presents a unified humanity using all its resources to establish a city that is the antithesis of what God intended when he created the world. The tower is a symbol of human autonomy, and the city builders see themselves as determining and establishing their own destiny without any reference to the Lord." Thus, "this episode is significantly more important than its length suggests." Previous/related posts: Sin, Faith and Salvation (Gen 6:1-14); Divine Judgment (Gen 6:5-13); Am I Really That Bad? (Gen 6:5). Gen 10-11 is the bridge between the story of Noah (Gen 6-9) and Abraham (Gen 12ff). Gen 11:1-9 is the last picture of what the world is like prior to Abraham. The rest of Genesis will concentrate on the line of Sham, especially the line of Abraham and Sarah. Gen 11:1-9 divides easily into 2 parts:
"Your beauty ... should be that of your inner self, the unfading beauty of a gentle and quiet spirit..." (1 Peter 3:3-4).
"What a beautiful woman she is! She is the kind of woman any man would want to marry!" This was my immediate thought when I heard the story on the radio years ago of how James Dobson (of Focus on the Family) came to marry his wife Shirley. (Related posts: Marriage as Unjust Suffering, The Search for One True Love, Abraham Lincoln's Very Unhappy Marriage.) Before marriage, Dobson and Shirley, both Christians, were dating in college with the understanding that they would marry in the future. But when Dobson had to serve in the National Guard he proposed to Shirley that they keep their options open when he was away on duty, and that they could each date other Christians if they wanted to. Because Shirley was in love with him, this shocked her. But she did not express it or react to his "hurtful" proposal. On their last date before he left, he wanted to kiss her good night as he usually does at the door of her house. But she politely refused. Rather abruptly, she went home and closed the door. This surprised Dobson. What he did not know was that after she closed the door she cried all night. But she did not reveal any of this to Dobson. Then when Dobson was away on duty, he did not date others. Instead, he kept writing her over and over, while she was quite lukewarm in her response to him. As a result, Dobson kept pursuing her until they married. Isn't Shirley the kind of woman with the poise, mystery and beauty that any man would want to marry?
Karl Barth (Swiss Reformed theologian, 1886-1968) was asked if God had revealed himself in many religions besides Christianity. His answer: "No. God has not revealed himself in any religion, including Christianity. He has spoken in his Son, Jesus Christ." The beginning of Hebrews tells us Jesus' short resume.
Hebrews is about persevering in the faith (Heb 13:22). It was written to (Jewish) Christians (in Rome) who were struggling in the faith (Heb 10:38-39). It was for drift prevention--for they were tempted to wonder away. Since Rome detested all things Christian, they endured suffering, ridicule, imprisonment, the confiscation of their possessions, and, under Nero, the possibility of being fed to the lions in the Coliseum (Heb 2:14-18). Should they give up being Christians? To the author of Hebrews, rather than forsake Jesus, they should be willing to surrender everything to have him. Why? It is because of who Jesus is. He is:
