Some of us think God is lenient about sin. Or at least we think that God is more tolerant of sin for Christians. We rightly emphasize God’s grace: that “where sin increased, grace abounded all the more” (Romans 5:20). And we should emphasize God’s grace. But I sometimes worry that we’ve fallen into the mistake of thinking that God is tolerant of sin. Micah reminds us how seriously God takes sin, even, especially, among his people.

If you ever want to be encouraged then you may want to check out a book called The Book of Failures. It’s filled with all kinds of failures that people have made. For instance, the book introduces Arthur Pedrick, who patented 162 inventions, but not one of them was ever taken up commercially. These inventions include a car that could be driven from the back seat, a golf ball that could be steered in flight, and a plan to irrigate the deserts of the world by sending a constant supply of snowballs from the polar region through a massive network of giant peashooters. I kid you not.

One of the best stories is about an elderly lady in South London who called a group of firefighters to rescue her cat from a tree. They arrived with impressive speed and carefully rescued her cat. The lady was so thankful that she invited them in for tea. So they had tea, received another round of thanks from the woman, and drove off, waving goodbye. And as they backed out of her driveway, they drove right over her cat!

But most failures are not funny. They’re painful, wounding. They leave scars that throb with pain. A lot of people want to know where God is when we fail morally. And that’s the question we face in the book of Micah: What does God do with us when we’re at our worst?

Let me give you some background to the book of Micah. Micah was a prophet who lived around the same time as Isaiah and King Ahaz. If you were here last week, we talked about them. This was not a good time for God’s people. The northern and southern kingdoms had split long ago. Both had been violating their covenant with the God of Israel. Micah lived in the southern kingdom of Judah, but he had a word of warning for Israel. He says in Micah 3:8:

But as for me, I am filled with power,

with the Spirit of the LORD,

and with justice and might,

to declare to Jacob his transgression

and to Israel his sin.

Micah has an important message for us. God’s people had failed. Things had become really bad. It was hard to find godly people. You couldn’t even trust family. And the question comes: how will God respond to the sin that he sees in God’s people?

Micah answers, and his answer is important for us today.

God Exposes and Judges Sin

It’s easy to take a light view of sin and to think that it’s no big deal. It’s also easy to see God as tolerant and understanding. After all, nobody’s perfect. 

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