I love that hymn. Christ is all when I am nothing. Sinners and a savior, completely unrighteous, no claim, no ground on which to stand in and of ourselves. And yet in Christ, sons and daughters of God Almighty, able to come into his presence. What a contrast and what a blessing.

I wanna ask you if you look with me to the book of Micah. Micah, our journey in the Minor Prophets began last June when we started with Jonah. So we're going to skip Jonah because we just finished Obadiah. But we did Jonah last June and July and then looked at Hosea and Joel and Amos and Obadiah. And now Micah. Micah. Micah's name translated means who is like God. Not that Micah is like God. Micah's name is a rhetorical question with an obvious answer.

There is none like him. Who is like our God? He's holy. He's undefiled. He's separate from centers. Who is like our God? The Lord is pleased to reveal a glimpse of his glory and his grace to us. We will conclude ourselves to be in need of that grace, completely dependent upon His grace and His righteousness for all of our acceptance before God.

There's a message that is repeated over and over again in these prophets. These prophets were all prophesying against the idolatry of Israel. And in their prophesying, there were some that that heard what the Lord was saying. And in hearing, they were brought to believe what the Lord had declared about their idolatry and were brought by God's grace to a spirit of repentance.

Moses said in Exodus chapter 15, who is like unto thee, O God, glorious in holiness, fearful in praises, and doing wonders. All men are reputed as nothing. The nations are but a drop in a bucket to him who, who is like our God. Micah chapter one, verse one, the word of the Lord that came to Micah, the Moresh site in the days of Jotham, Ahaz, and Hezekiah, kings of Judah, which he saw concerning Samaria and Jerusalem. Hear, all ye people, hearken, O earth, and all that therein is, and let the Lord God witness against you. The Lord. from his holy temple. God is looking down from heaven, Genesis chapter six, and he sees that every thought and imagination of the heart is only evil and that continually.

Our God is other than we are in every way. Left to ourselves, we will fashion an idol in our mind. We will create a God that is altogether such a one as ourselves. One that not only will serve us, but one that we can control. The God of man-made religion is an idol. He is a figment of men's imagination. The God whom we serve reigns sovereign over all the armies of heaven and over all the inhabitants of the earth. No man can stay his hand and no man can say unto him, what doest thou?

The omnipotent, immutable, holy God And if the Lord is pleased to show us just a little bit of his glory, we will come to the same conclusion about ourselves that everyone who ever met God ever came to. Brother Job came to it when he said, behold, Now that the Lord has revealed a glimpse of his glory, behold, I see something in myself. Job, well, for most of the part of the book of Job, Job is justifying himself before God. Job is saying this is not fair. I've been a good man. It's not right that I should suffer like this. And then he sees the Lord, and he confesses, I'd spoke without knowledge. I said things I didn't understand. Behold, I am vile, and I repent in dust and ashes.

What a great place to be. What a blessed place to be, to know that we have no hope of salvation in ourselves, that all of our salvation is in Christ, our Savior, our substitute, Our righteousness before God. All of these prophets, he says, this is the word of the Lord that came to Micah.

And it came in the days of Jotham. Jotham was not faithful. He was not a good king. He compromised in so many ways. And then his son Ahaz comes in behind him and Ahaz takes it to the next level. And he sets up idolatry in Jerusalem and in Samaria and leads the people into a worship of a false God, a God that they can control. And the Lord raises up a prophet. Micah is a contemporary of Isaiah. Isaiah prophesied during the same time that Micah did. And Micah declares this word of warning. And Hezekiah, you see his name here? Hezekiah hears.

Oh, what a comfort it is to know that though Jotham didn't hear. Ahaz didn't hear. They died in shame. I think Jotham died of leprosy. If I remember correctly, Hezekiah heard. Hezekiah believed. Hezekiah went in and he tore down all the temples of idolatry and brought back the worship of Jehovah. Turn with me to 2 Chronicles. 2 Chronicles chapter 29. Hezekiah is gonna hear what Isaiah said. Hezekiah is gonna hear what Micah said.

Here's our hope, brethren, that there are those who hear. Some believe, some believe not. But God's word will not return unto him void. It will accomplish the purpose for which he sends it. And what hope and what comfort it is to know that the Lord will give hearing ears and believing hearts to his people, and they will agree with him. They will confess. themselves to be sinners.

It's what happened to Hezekiah. Look in chapter 29 of 2 Chronicles. Hezekiah began to reign when he was five and 20 years old, and he reigned nine and 20 years in Jerusalem. 29 years. Lord called us together as a fellowship 29 years ago. Hezekiah was a faithful king, believing God because of the prophecies that the Lord had sent.

And his mother's name was Abijah, the daughter of Zechariah. And he did that which was right in the sight of the Lord, according to all that David, his father, had done. Now you understand when the word father is used, it doesn't mean immediate father, it just means forefather. Could have been a grandfather, great-grandfather, but the Bible calls it father. His father, David.

He, in the first year of his reign, in the first month, opened the doors of the house of the Lord and repaired them. First order of business. First hundred days. month, the first week of the first month, the first thing he did was reinstitute worship. And he brought in the priests and the Levites and gathered them together into the East Street and said unto them, hear me, you Levites, sanctify now yourself and sanctify the house of the Lord your God, the God of your fathers, and carry forth the filthiness out of the holy place.

This is the confession of sin. This is the work of the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit was working with Hezekiah. He still works in the same way. Causes his people to put away their idols, those gods that they would set up. What did the Lord Jesus say in John chapter 10? We just looked at it the other Sunday. All that come before me, are thieves and robbers.

When the Lord gives faith to believe the gospel, the believer knows that he can send nothing before the Lord Jesus Christ to recommend him to God. He can't send his free will. He can't send his works. He can't send his knowledge or his wisdom or his understanding. He cannot send anything before the Lord Jesus Christ.

All that come before me are thieves and robbers. They rob Christ of his glory and they rob the believer of the hope of their salvation. Micah, who? is like our God. We stand before Him as sinners, completely dependent upon His mercy and His grace. And what comfort and hope we have in knowing that our God receiveth sinful men, only sinful men. This is a faithful saying and worthy of all acceptation. Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners.

Are our hearts and our flesh and our eyes distracted toward the glitter of this world and the comforts and pleasures of this world? And in a sense, we could call that idolatry, but I'm not talking about that. I'm talking about the idolatry of a false god, the idolatry of a false gospel. And this is what the child of God puts away. by the grace of God when the Lord teaches them the gospel. They will not be robbed of the hope of their salvation by anything that would add to or take away from the finished work of the Lord Jesus Christ, the glorious person of the Lord Jesus Christ.

Micah calls all the men Samaria was the capital of Israel, the northern 10 tribes. Jerusalem was the capital of Judah, the southern two tribes. And by identifying these two capital cities, and then in verse two of our text, where we were, Micah 1, we're gonna finish a couple more verses in 2 Chronicles. He says, let all the people hear. Samaria has set up her idols, Jerusalem has set up her pride.

Let them hear what God says, because he's going to discover the foundations of their false gospel. And many will believe, like Hezekiah. Verse six, for our fathers have trespassed and done that which was evil in the eyes of the Lord our God and have forsaken him and turned away their faces from the habitation of the Lord and turned their backs. Also they have shut up the doors of the porch and put out the lamps and have not burned incense nor offered burnt offerings in the holy place unto the God of Israel. Wherefore, the wrath of the Lord was upon Judah and Jerusalem, and he hath delivered them to trouble, to astonishment, to hissing.

And you see with your eyes. For lo, our fathers have fallen by the sword. Go back with me. I just wanted you to see. Hezekiah is identified with three kings here in, in, Micah, chapter one, Hezekiah heard. He heard what Micah was saying, that there is none like God, that our God must be worshiped and that he must reign sovereign in salvation. He must get all the glory. Nothing can go before him.

This is what saving faith is. People of God putting away their idols. Micah's name implies being poor and humble. Who's like our God? We think about the Beatitudes. Blessed are they who are poor in spirit. Blessed are they who have nothing, know nothing, can do nothing, are completely dependent upon the Lord for all of their salvation. Blessed are they. Theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Blessed are they that mourn.

We just sang that hymn about mourning over sin. And you know, this isn't a, It isn't a matter of trying to earn favor with God by proving the sincerity of our mourning. I believe the Puritans were in great error when they had mourning benches and you had to show evidence of being truly broken before you could have any hope or comfort of your salvation. The Lord Jesus is the only one that ever mourned sufficiently.

We can make a work out of anything, can't we? We'll make a work out of faith. We'll make a work out of repentance. And those are all things that go before Christ. All that went before me are thieves and robbers. We don't send our faith before Christ. Our faith is in Christ. We don't send our repentance before Christ. Well, if I can just, if I can just sorrow deep enough, then perhaps, you know, when, well, let's look, let's look.

Hear all ye people, verse two, hearken O earth and all Therein is, let the Lord God be witness against you. And he does. The Lord from his holy temple. I mentioned Job. We could, just so many examples in the Bible, isn't there? Of believers who encountered the Lord.

And their posture is always the same. Their posture is a posture of worship. It's a posture of poverty. It's a posture of humility. It's a posture of faith. It's a posture of dependence. It's what Micah is doing. That's what he's warning against. He's warning against the idolatry and the pride of the worship of a false god. an imaginary God that men put together, a God that can be manipulated, a God that can be obligated, a God that can be controlled. That is not our God. Who is like God? There is none like Him. None like Him. Verse 3, For behold, the Lord cometh forth out of his place and will come down and tread upon the high places of the earth. It's how we come into this world. We come into this world high and mighty.

We have a nine month old baby in our family. And I promise you, she hasn't given the least bit of thought about anyone's needs in her whole life but herself. She hadn't thought about anybody else being hungry, anybody else being tired, or anybody else having, no, she's completely consumed with herself. Precious thing she is.

But that's what we are. We come from the womb speaking lies, drinking water, drinking iniquity like water. We're just consumed with ourselves. We wake up in the morning, we open our eyes and we find ourselves in the smack dab very center of our own little universe, don't we?

What's the Lord say? I'm going to come down from heaven. And when I do, I'm going to tread upon the high places of the earth. I'm going to knock you off your high horse. I'm going to put you where you belong because only then, only then can you be saved. and the mountains shall be molten under him, and the valleys shall be cleft as wax before the fire, and as the waters that are poured down a steep place.

For the transgression of Jacob is all this, and for the sins of the house of Israel. What is the transgression of Jacob? Is it not Samaria, the center of idolatry? Is this not the transgression? And what are the high places of Judah? Are they not Jerusalem, the proud and the self-righteous?

Oh, what a blessing it is when the Lord makes us hate our own righteousness. Therefore, I will make Samaria as a heap of the field and as a planting of a vineyard, and I will pour down the stones thereof into the valley, and I will discover the foundation thereof. The foundation thereof. We live in a generation of Therapy and therapist, everybody trying to figure out why they are the way they are and why they do what they do. God says, I'm going to discover the foundation. And so much of self-help stuff that goes on among men is only treating a symptom. It never gets to the cause.

The world says, you know, yeah, you've got problems, but it's not your fault. It's your environment, or it's your, you know, every bad behavior, every addiction known to man has now got a medical term put to it. It's not your fault. You're just sick. And then the religious world comes along and says, well, yeah, you know, it is your fault.

But you can fix it. You can fix it. There's a remedy to your problem. If you'll just work a little bit harder and make some decisions and pray this prayer and get involved in these discipleship programs, you can remedy this sin problem that you have. You can make it better. And the gospel says, look at verse nine. The gospel says, Your wound is incurable. You can't fix it. From the top of your head to the bottom of your feet, you're sores, a leper, no clean flesh on your body.

But I'm going to discover the foundation of it. I'm going to reveal to you the real cause. What is it? What is the real cause of our sin? I mean the root cause of it. It's expedient for you that I go away. For if I go not away, the Comforter will not come. But when He comes, He will reproof, and that word means convince, he will uncover the foundation of your sin. He will reprove the world of sin, of righteousness and of judgment.

Of sin? Because they believe not. There it is. There's the easily beset, there's a sin that does so easily beset us. And it's the same sin for every one of us. Oh, I'm certain that in our flesh and in our experiences and everything else, each man has a little different temptation and different weakness in some one area or the other, but there's one foundational cause that God discovers in our hearts of all sin.

It's unbelief. What is it that the Lord Jesus Christ is the fullness of the Godhead bodily. He's God incarnate. There's no question about that. But in his humanity, what was the thing that distinguished him from all others? He believed his father. with all of his heart and all of his mind and all of his soul all of the time. It's our unbelief. Whatever is not of faith is sin. Lord, amen. Truth, Lord.

1 John 1.9, if we confess, and you know what that word confess means. It's a conjunction of two words in the original language, One is to speak, and the other means same. Homo logo. Logos is word, homo is same. That's the word. It means agree with God. It means to say the same thing that God says about your sin. What does God say?

All have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God. Lord, everything about me is sinful. That's what confession of sin is. It's not wallowing in shame until we make for ourselves a righteousness that convinces us and others that we've truly repented sufficiently. It's agreeing with God. If we confess our sin, it's the only sin we can confess. The only sin that we can agree with God is mine. If we confess our sin, he is faithful and just to forgive our sin. And to cleanse us of all unrighteousness, every bit of it.

Left to myself, Lord, Micah's talking to me. Micah's talking to me. All the people, God comes down from heaven and God speaks and God reveals himself in his glory. I'm brought to the end, I'm shut up. I can't speak. My comeliness in me is turned now into corruption. Isaiah saw the Lord high and lifted up. First words out of his mouth, woe is me.

And if you read Isaiah chapter five, you know that happened in Isaiah chapter six, verse one, in the year the king Uzziah died, I also saw the Lord. In Isaiah chapter five, six times, now remember Isaiah is a contemporary of Micah. So Hezekiah would have heard Isaiah also. But six times the number of man, In Isaiah chapter 5, Isaiah says, woe unto you.

Woe unto you. Woe unto you. And then he sees the Lord, and he says, woe is me. Woe is me. I will discover the foundations thereof. I will convince them that they are sinners and that their sin is all rooted in one thing, their unbelief. Their unbelief. So that every one of them will say, Lord, I do believe. Help thou mine unbelief. Lord, I'm so full of it. Lord, restrain my unbelief. Give me faith, Lord. Restrain my sin.

You know, we know that when we say that we are nothing but sin before God, we're not saying that that gives us liberty to turn our members over to unrighteousness or to be under the dominion of sin or to act out our sin. No, Lord, keep that from happening. But as we grow in grace and in the knowledge of the Lord Jesus Christ, we see more and more of how deep and far-reaching our sin nature really is. and how much more dependent we are on the Lord for his grace and for his mercy to save us.

You see, all these prophets, these prophets are not just speaking to an ancient rebellious, unbelieving people that God's gonna judge and send into captivity. He will. The Israelites are gonna go into Babylon as a result of what they're doing because they wouldn't believe. And this is not a word against the wretchedness of the world in which we live. This is a word for us. Yes, Lord, you've discovered the foundations of my problem.

And look at verse seven, and all the graven images thereof shall be beaten to pieces, and all the hires thereof shall be burned with fire, and all the idols thereof will I lay desolate, for she gathered it of a hire of a harlot, and they shall return to the hire of a harlot. Paid for these things. Isaiah said this, Isaiah 31 verse 7, in that day, every man shall cast away his idol. Cast it away. That's what happens when the Lord saves us. We come to see that all the things that we trusted in were worthless idols. We couldn't save. And look at verse eight, I love verse eight.

I've listened to some men preach who said a lot of true things, but I never got the impression that I was hearing from a sinner. I've listened to some men preach that I thought You know, if I had it together as well as you do, maybe I wouldn't have the sin problems that I have.

And they want to present themselves that way. These prophets, these Old Testament prophets, well, Isaiah went barefoot and naked throughout Israel. Now, I don't believe when the Bible speaks of these men being naked that they were I believe they had limited clothing on, shameful amount of clothing. But the Bible says they went barefoot and naked preaching this message. They were illustrating in their own behavior the example of what they were preaching. Look at what Micah does.

Therefore, I will wail and howl, I will go stripped and naked, I will make a wailing like the dragons and mourning as the owls. Ezekiel at one point took cords and bound his hands together and went around preaching with his hands bound together, warning the people what their idolatry would lead to.

He shaved his head and his beard, which would have been very shameful for a man in the Old Testament Israel. And then he took the hair and he divided it up into three parts. He burned a third part of it. He took a sword to a third part of it. And another third part of it, he scattered it into the wind.

He's illustrating by his behavior an example of what he's preaching. And I think that anytime we preach, Jeremiah went around preaching with a yoke around his neck, an oxen yoke around his neck, warning the people what was gonna happen when Babylon came in and took them all captive. I love hearing the message of salvation. from a sinner, a man that needs grace just like I need it. Not someone who's preaching at me or over me or setting himself up as an example to be followed, but rather one who's telling me by his own experience. Verse nine, For her wound is incurable, for it has come unto Judah, and he has come unto the gate of my people, even unto Jerusalem. He comes to the gate. He is the door to the sheepfold. We enter in by him, by him. Nothing goes before him. Thieves and the robbers try to get in some other way. We have but one way. One way.

Turn with me back just a few pages to Hosea chapter 14. Hosea chapter 14. Look at verse 8. in Hosea 14, Ephraim. This is the end of Hosea's prophecy. And many will not believe just like with Micah and just like with Amos and just like with all the prophets and all the preachers to this day. Some will believe and some will believe not. Those that believe will be humbled before God and will find Christ to be all in their salvation. And she's illustrated, the believer's illustrated now in Hosea chapter eight, chapter 14, verse eight, as Ephraim, this small little Ephraim out of all of Israel. Ephraim shall say, what have I any more to do with idols? How can I trust anything for my salvation other than Christ?

I have heard him, and I have observed him, and I am like a green fir tree, and from me is thy fruit found. Who is wise? Who is wise? And he shall understand these things, prudent, and he shall know them. For the ways of the Lord are right, and the just walk in them. But the transgressors shall fall therein.

Our Heavenly Father, thank you. Thank you for convincing us of sin. Thank you. For causing us to look to Christ. The only one able to bear our sins. In his body. And put them away. by the sacrifice of himself, the one who knew no sin, who was made sin, that we might be made the righteousness of God in him. Oh, Lord, what a glorious gospel. We ask it in Christ's name. Amen. Number six in the Sproul hymnal. Let's stand together. Number six.