A world without war. A world without fear. A world where the broken are made whole. A world where paradise is restored once and for all. This is God’s answer to the problem of sin, suffering, and ultimately death: The world will not always be like this. A new world is coming.

In high school, there was a kid who dressed all in black, proudly proclaimed himself to be an atheist, and dabbled in Wiccan practices. By his own admission, it was all largely for the shock value.

One day, a close friend of mine got a chance to speak with him about God. Surprisingly, he said that he didn’t believe in God because he hated God. You see, God had let his grandmother die, and she was his favorite person in the world.

Now, he knew the contradiction in what he was saying, that his admission of hating God contradicted his unbelief. That wasn’t lost on him. He just didn’t care. He was angry with God.

I don’t share that story to mock or belittle him in any way; rather, I share it because I find that he was honest in way that many people refuse to be. I suspect that unbelief, for many, is not purely intellectual. In fact, I’ve never personally had a deep conversation with an unbeliever that did not ultimately reveal a significant well-spring of emotion undergirding their unbelief, which might even have been unknown to them. Much unbelief is rooted in anger.

And that anger is often rooted in pain or suffering, especially death.

Being pastor means that I’ve seen death up-close. I’ve preached funerals, stood beside hospital beds, and watched people take their final breath. And because being a pastor requires prayer, meditation, and suffering (as Luther said), the Lord graciously gave me the experience of those things personally through my father and my father-in-law. Here is a piece of a letter that I wrote to my daughter after watching a church member named Judy pass away (just a month and a half before my father-in-law lost his fight with cancer):

Judy was dying for long time, but around 11:57 yesterday morning, the cord snapped. The deed was done. The spirit was gone. Only the flesh remained.

Vanity of vanities, says the Preacher, vanity of vanities! All is vanity. What does man gain by all the toil at which he toils under the sun? A generation goes, and a generation comes, but the earth remains forever.

Your mother and I walked outside afterwards into the bright, clear day. Cars passed by on the highway. The hospital continued to treat other patients. The world didn’t even blink at Judy’s passing. She, alongside her generation, are going, but the earth keeps doing what it has always done. My generation and I will do the same.

I bring this up because death is the only great unavoidable aspect of life and because we are thoroughly detached from it. Previous generations, stared death in the face constantly. They lived in multigenerational families, and they buried their own dead. Death was unavoidable.

We, however, do our very best to avoid it, and when it eventually strikes too close to ignore (as it will do), we are deeply perplexed.

But it is here that we most clearly see that we are not purely logical creatures. If we were, we would not be so unsettled by death. We would logically consider death’s track record. Scripture tells us that only two men escaped its grasp. Even the Son of God Himself felt death’s great sting.

We know, therefore, that death is coming. We know it can come in countless ways, for the young or old, the strong or weak. It will come for us and for everyone we love.

Why then does it take us by surprise? 

Why does death offend us?

Scripture’s answer is that we were not created for death. Death entered the world as a consequence of our sin. It feels so wrong because eternity is still etched in our hearts testifying that it is wrong. It is an enemy.

Of course, there is a sense in which death is a mercy from the Lord. It restrains evil, and it keeps us from being locked forever in our sin like Satan and his fallen are. But even so, death is still an enemy. It remains the great problem that every culture, every generation, and every person must wrestle with.

Why am I beginning with our mortality?

If we do not face honestly the weight of death, alongside the pain and brokenness of this world, then the beauty of this passage will be lost on us. We live with an abundance of clean, drinking water, and yet we struggle to stay hydrated. But a man in the Sahara does not need an app to tell him to drink. Whenever we put our earbuds in, close our eyes, and pretend that we are not in the Sahara, we will not recognize the beauty of the living water that Micah 4 is offering to us.

Micah 3 ended with a shocking promise of judgment: Jerusalem, the very center of Yahweh’s presence on earth, would be destroyed. Zion, the hill upon which Jerusalem was built, would be plowed into a field, and the city would become nothing but a heap of ruins. The city that held the temple, a reconstructed Eden, would be laid waste.

But immediately after that vision of destruction, chapter gives us a window into another world. A world where death, war, and suffering are gone. It is our world as God has always intended it to be.

Micah 4 shows us the world as it will be when God finishes His work: a world at peace (vv. 1-5), a world where the broken are restored (vv. 6-8), and a world where Christ reigns over all nations (vv. 9-13).

WORLD PEACE // VERSES 1-5

It shall come to pass in the latter days that the mountain of the house of the LORD shall be established as the highest of the mountains, and it shall be lifted up above the hills; and peoples shall flow to it, and many nations shall come, and say: “Come, let us go up to the mountain of the LORD, to the house of the God of Jacob, that he may teach us his ways and that we may walk in his paths.” For out of Zion shall go forth the law, and the word of the LORD from Jerusalem.

Notice what is described in these first verses. In the last days, God will lift the mountain of Yahweh, Zion, above everything else. Is this a literal rearranging of the earth? Perhaps. This text is very likely describing the new earth, so it could be a literal elevation of Mount Zion. The language may just as easily be figurative for Jerusalem becoming the most important place on earth.

We see a parallel picture in Revelation 21, where the New Jerusalem comes down out of heaven, as a bride prepared for her husband. And the point of that passage is that God’s dwelling place is now with men. Yahweh’s heavenly throne will now be on earth at the New Jerusalem, and all the nations will come to it, saying, “Let us go up to the mountain of the LORD…that He may teach us His ways.”

Can you imagine that? People no longer fight over truth but longing for it instead. No longer resisting God but desiring to know Him, wanting to walk in His paths. From Zion, God’s law will go forth. The whole earth will know His Word, and the nations will be drawn to Him.

The imagery of a mountain is, of course, not accidental. Mountains are a picture of where heaven and earth meet. Some theologians even argue that Eden itself was a mountain garden, which is why the tabernacle is described as a portable mountain of God.

Thus, the vision is of Eden being restored and fulfilled. What was lost in the garden, echoed at Sinai, and glimpsed in the tabernacle and temple will finally be accomplished.

Verse 3 continues:

He shall judge between many peoples and shall decide for strong nations far away; and they shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruning hooks. Nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war anymore.

This is world peace. Weapons of war shall be transformed into tools of cultivation. Instruments of destruction will become instruments of life.

Can you picture a world without war? A world where war is not only absent but forgotten entirely? Where nations no longer train for it?

Verse 4 then gives this beautiful image:

They shall sit every man under his vine and under his fig tree, and no one shall make them afraid, for the mouth of the LORD of hosts has spoken.

This is even better than global peace. This is personal, individual peace.

Every person has a place. The vine and fig tree are commonly used in Scripture to represent personal blessing, fruitfulness, and abundance. The fig tree gives fruit and shade.

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