Micah chapter seven. And I just want to have a short
reading. We're going to read from verse 18. Micah chapter seven and verse
18. Who is a God like unto thee that
pardoneth iniquity and passeth by the transgression of the remnant
of his heritage? He retaineth not his anger for
ever, because he delighteth in mercy. He will turn again. He will have compassion upon
us. He will subdue our iniquities. and thou wilt cast all their
sins into the depths of the sea. Thou wilt perform the truth to
Jacob and the mercy to Abraham, which thou hast sworn unto our
fathers from the days of old. Amen. May God bless to us this
reading also from his precious word. Many years ago, In the Old Testament,
right at the beginning of the scriptures in the book of Exodus,
we are given an account of the children of Israel, the children
of Jacob, in bondage to the Egyptians. And we discover that after hundreds
of years in bondage and servitude to the Egyptians, the people
of Israel sought the Lord that they might be delivered. And
God determined to set his people free, to bring them out of slavery
in Egypt and into the liberty of a land that he promised to
them. We still sometimes call that
land the Promised Land. And of course, it has greater
connotations even than just a particular little piece of geography or
real estate. But it was a land that was promised
to Israel. And the Lord God met Moses in
the desert. You'll perhaps remember something
about the story where God met Moses in the burning bush. and he instructed him of his
plans and he instructed him of what he was to say when he went
to Egypt, back to Egypt, he was to speak to the children of Israel
and tell them what God was going to do and he was to speak to
Pharaoh and tell Pharaoh that God wanted his people to be released,
that they might go into the desert to worship him. And in Exodus
chapter 5 and verse 1, We read these words because Moses had
spoken to the children of Israel and then he and his brother Aaron
went in to speak to Pharaoh. And this is what Exodus chapter
five, verse one says. And afterward, Moses and Aaron
went in and told Pharaoh, thus saith the Lord God of Israel,
let my people go, that they may hold a feast unto me in the wilderness. And Pharaoh said, Who is the
Lord that I should obey his voice to let Israel go? I know not
the Lord, neither will I let Israel go. And so Pharaoh said,
Who is the Lord that I should obey his voice? I know not the
Lord, neither will I let Israel go. There was no sincerity in
Pharaoh's question, who is the Lord? It wasn't an inquiry. In fact, Far from being a sincere
inquiry, this phrase that he used, who is the Lord, was a
put-down, it was a brush-off, it was a snub, it was Pharaoh
rejecting both God and Moses and Aaron. Now, no doubt, Pharaoh
was religious. Indeed, Egypt was full of gods. Egypt had a river god for the
Nile. It had a land god. It had the
sun god. It had a moon god. It had a frog
god. It had a fly god. It had a whole
pantheon of gods that the people of Egypt worshipped. A whole
book of gods. And Pharaoh is saying to Moses,
Who is the God of the Hebrews? Who is the God of the children
of Israel? Who is the God of the Bible?
Who is this God that you say says, I am that I am, which is
how God had revealed himself in the burning bush. I don't
know this God. I've not seen his name in the
book of the gods of Egypt. So I've no reason to fear him.
and I've no reason to obey him. So Moses and Aaron, get out of
here. Get out of my presence. Get out
of my sight with this nonsense about the Lord God. And there are many today who
are just like Pharaoh. They are religious people. But
they say, we have a God of our own. And we don't know your God. We have a church or a chapel
of our own. We don't need your church. We
have a priest or a preacher of our own. We don't need your preacher. We have a faith and a fellowship
of our own. We're doing okay, thank you very
much. And true it is, there are any
number of churches. You just have to look around
and there are any number of churches. There are any number of preachers. And there is every kind of faith
and there is every kind of belief. And people say, I'm fine, thank
you very much. I don't need anything else. And you know, that is fine, because
I couldn't change your mind even if I wanted to. But I have a
question for you this morning, and I have a question for people
who would take such a view as Pharaoh took on that day. Your
faith, your ideas, and your beliefs. Are you ready and willing to
stake your life upon your God? Are you ready and willing to
stake your soul's eternal destiny upon your knowledge of God? Are you willing to go to heaven
or hell based on your understanding of your God. Do you know you're
going to heaven or do you just hope you are? And could you be
wrong? Micah asked the question and
we had it before us here in this little passage that we read out
of his prophecy. Just a few chapters long and
yet it concludes with this beautiful statement. about the Lord God,
the living God, the God of Abraham and Isaac and Jacob, the God
who sent the Lord Jesus Christ into this world. And Micah asked
a question too. He said, who is a God like unto
thee? So this morning what I'm going
to do, and I'm not going to take too long to do it, I'm going
to take five features of this God and I want simply to ask
you some questions about it. I want you to consider the qualities
of this God, the characteristics of this God that Micah presents
for us here. And I want you to ask this question,
is this my God? Is this the God that I know?
Micah says, who is a God like unto thee? This is the God of
the Bible. And the first thing that Micah
says about this God is that he is a God who pardons the sins
of his people. He pardons the sins of his people. You know, the language of the
Bible, the language of Scripture is very important. Last week,
we spoke a little bit about the words of life. Peter could say,
you have the words of eternal life. And the language of the
Bible, the vocabulary, the words of Scripture are important. And
this word that is used here, pardon, is an important word. Pardon. It speaks of mercy. It speaks of grace. And it conveys
the meaning of grace and mercy shown by a king. So it's not
just a word that speaks of forgiveness or of remission of sins, but
it speaks of that forgiveness being made by a king. There is someone in authority
that gives a pardon. Someone who is in a position
of judgment. Someone who is a sovereign. And
so it is that the word pardon speaks of the sovereignty and
the kingship of our God, a God who is in control, a God who
is in charge, who is able to pardon his people. And there's
also another sense of the meaning pardon. It also means to lift
off, not in the sense of a rocket lifting off, but to pick up and
to take away. the sin and the guilt from off
of the shoulders of the sinner. And so the idea of pardon is
to pick up and to take away the sin that had been on the shoulders
of the sinner. And that reminds us that the
sin of the sinner who trusts in the Lord Jesus Christ has
been taken away by the Lord Jesus Christ. And Micah says that this
pardoning God passes by the transgression of his people. It's like he walks
right past it. Our sins, our iniquity, our transgression,
our breaches of the law, our disobedience and rebellion against
God, he walks right past it. like he didn't see it. That's
what he says. He pardons iniquity and passeth
by the transgressions of his people. And this passing by,
or this, as it were, taking of the sins of these people and
laying them upon Christ and Christ taking them away, it's prefigured
in the Old Testament in the sense of a scapegoat, which was taken
by the priest and the sins of the people of Israel were put
upon the goat and the goat was chased away into the wilderness.
The sins of the people were taken away, not to be seen again. And this is the picture that
we're here given of the pardoning God who passeth by the transgression
of his people. And there's a lovely little name
given here for the people of God. They're called the remnant
of his heritage. And that word heritage, it speaks
about the inheritance. It speaks about an aged thing,
something that is original, something that is pure, something that
is prized. I guess some of us might have
heard of heritage roses. They're supposed to be the prime
of the species. And this is the heritage of God. God's people are his inheritance. loved them from eternity. He has loved them from a long
time ago. He has loved them with a love
which sets them apart. And that's what the word remnant
means. So here is a people loved by
God and yet they are not everyone, they are a remnant people. God's
people are remnant according to the election of grace. A chosen
people, chosen by God as his inheritance. chosen by God as
the remnant of his heritage. And that's just speaking about
the Lord's people, those who trust him, those who believe
in him, those who are chosen by him unto salvation. And these
people that he has chosen, this remnant of his heritage, these
people whose sins are pardoned and passed by by God, have been
taken into covenant with God. and in covenant they have had
their sins dealt with by the Lord Jesus Christ. They are called
to experience the grace and the mercy of God. and they are brought
to repent and believe in the Lord Jesus Christ through the
preaching of the gospel, which is what we're doing this morning,
and by the work of the Holy Spirit. Do you remember what we said
about Cornelius and his friends, how that they believed the words
that Peter spoke, and without saying anything at all, the Holy
Spirit came upon them, and they believed. It was a testimony
to the fact that they were the true people of God. They were
part of that remnant of his heritage. Their sins had been taken away.
They had been redeemed by the Lord Jesus Christ. They were
God's covenant people. Do you know that God? Do you
know that God that Micah is speaking about when he says, who is a
God like unto thee? Here's the second thing, the
second characteristic that Micah gives to us. He says, who is
a god like unto thee who delights in mercy? Who delights in mercy? That is a characteristic of our
God. He is merciful. More, he delights
to be so. He is pleased to show his mercy. And this helps us to understand
something about the nature of our God. Because our God is holy,
just, pure and righteous. And our God honours his justice. He must do. There is no injustice
in God. There is no impurity in God. There is no sense in which God
doesn't deal a right with people. He deals right with people. Shall not the God of all the
earth, the judge of all the earth do right? He is righteous and
he must deal justly with men and women. So how can a holy
God be merciful? And this is the great question
of the Bible. How can a holy God be merciful? How can God who delights in mercy
be merciful to a sinful people when justice demands that they
pay for their sins? God must judge sin. Such is his
abhorrence at sin. Such is his revulsion against
our iniquity and the hatred of God for sin that it must be judged. You know, people talk about God's
love and I guess that's a little bit like Pharaoh. Pharaoh says,
I've never heard of this God. The God that I've heard about
is a God of love. The God that I've heard about
is the God of forgiveness, the merciful God. The God who doesn't
want to hurt anybody. The God who's longing for everybody
to come to him and worship him and follow him, but doesn't do
anything really to press the issue or push the issue. You
see, we don't hear much about the God of righteous indignation. We don't hear much about the
God who has a legitimate anger towards sin, who has a warranted
anger and hatred towards both sin and the sinner. But you see, the reality is that
the holy God must condemn sin. He must act with a righteous
indignation and he must hold the offence and the offender
guilty and condemned before his holy standard of justice. We have offended God and God
in his holiness must deal righteously with that offence and with the
offender. But here Micah is telling us
that this God delights to be merciful and he does not retain
his anger. God's mercy and God's anger,
these two great principles of the holiness of God and the grace
of God, they meet together. at the cross of the Lord Jesus
Christ. They meet together where the
Lord Jesus Christ took upon him sins, carried the sins of his
people on his own shoulders there to the cross. They come together
where God deals in justice with the sins of his people by laying
them upon the scapegoat, laying them upon the Lamb of God that
takes away sin. and there punishing his son,
the Lord Jesus Christ, as the surety and substitute in place
of his people. And thereby is justice satisfied
and mercy dignified. Thereby we see the justice of
God upheld and the mercy of God revealed. Thereby God is both
just and the justifier of sinners and them that believe. Is this
your God? Is this the God that you believe
in? Micah says, who is a God like unto thee? And the third
thing that we notice here about this God that Micah speaks of
is that he is a God who loves his people. And here we see again
this lovely characteristic of our God. This is a wonderful,
blessed characteristic of God, His love. But again, we have
to see that the God of this world, who is often spoken of in terms
of being a loving God, displays a love that is weak and wishy-washy. Whereas the love of this God,
who is a God like unto thee says Micah, the love of this God is
a love which acts to the salvation and the deliverance of his people. He will turn again, says Micah,
in verse 19. He says, he will turn again,
he will have compassion upon us. This is not a weak love. This is a strong love. This is
a love that does things. This is a love in action. This is a love that accomplishes
its purpose. It's not weak. It's not insipid.
It's not wishy-washy. It's not the love of man that
promises much and delivers little. It's not the love of people to
one another that speaks big things and is so full of emptiness. God's love is old love. It's enduring love. It's everlasting
love. It is love in action to the salvation
of those that it rests upon. It is particular love. It is
distinguishing love. It distinguishes between one
and another. It falls upon one man and it
does not come to another. It is effectual love because
it puts into effect those things which are the will of God for
his people, which are the will of the merciful God, the gracious
God, the liberating God, the God who says, you will have mercy,
you will have grace, you will be free, you will believe. And God brings his people to
a knowledge of himself through the preaching of the gospel because
he loves them. and because he's always loved
them, and because he always will love them, and he will never
have one of his beloved people lost. Universal love, God loving
everybody just the same, is a nonsense. Hear me. Universal love is nonsense. God doesn't love everybody. The Bible nowhere says that God
loves everyone and if we are to hold this foolish notion This
pharaoh idea of who is this God? He's not one of my gods. He's
not the God that I believe in. He's not the God that I've imagined. He's not the God that I've constructed. Then that's just an idolatrous
God made up out of the vain imaginations of man. It's a nonsense to speak
of the universal love of God. It destroys all meaning. all
value, all power of the love of God. If one man goes to heaven
and another man goes to hell and God loves them both, what
was the point of the love of God? What did it achieve? What
did it do? If one upon whom it is is in
hell and one upon whom it is is in heaven. God loves his people
and he saves his people from their sins. What do I mean by
love in action? Well, Micah tells us what love
in action means. He says, he will turn again. That's not talking about God
turning. God doesn't change. God is the
same yesterday. The Lord Jesus Christ is the
same yesterday, today, and forever. He is the unchangeable God. We
have a word, we call it immutable. He doesn't change. but he turns
his people. He will turn again his people. He will convert his people. We sometimes use the word conversion,
and this is what we mean by God turning his people. We who are
believers come to the point of believing. We weren't always
believers. We who are worshippers of God
are changed to be worshippers of God. We were not always so,
but when the Lord is pleased to show us himself, when the
Lord is pleased to bring to his people that knowledge of the
truth, He turns them. He makes us willing. He converts
His people. he converts the remnant of his
heritage. Everyone that he has chosen,
everyone that he has loved from old time, from eternity with
an everlasting love, everyone that he has said, you're not
of the large mass, you're a little remnant, you're a little part
of that whom I am calling mine inheritance. And God saves whom
he loves. He saves that people that were
the object of his election, his choice, whom he sent the Lord
Jesus Christ into the world to redeem and who the Holy Spirit
comes to in regenerating power in the preaching of the gospel.
And here's something that I can tell you. Not one of those will
be lost. for whom the Lord Jesus Christ
died. Not one will be lost of whom
the Lord God chose out of his love. That's what God's love
does. It saves his people from their
sins and takes them to eternity through the blood of the Lord
Jesus Christ. Who is a God like unto thee? Micah asks the question, who
is this God? Who is a God like unto this God? He goes on, and the fourth point
is this, who subdues our iniquity? That's what he says. He says,
he will subdue our iniquities in verse 19. Now that means that he will remove
our sin, he will take away our guilt, he will take away that
conscience. But here I think Micah is shifting
up a gear. Here Micah is saying something
new about this iniquity, this guilt and this sin. Because he's
not repeating what he just said in verse 17. In verse 17 he speaks
about a pardoning of sin. and a passing over. That God
pardoned sin as the King, as the Judge. He pardoned sin and
passed it over onto the Lord Jesus Christ, laid it upon Christ
so that he didn't even see it in the lives of his people. There,
in verse 17, he's speaking about it being removed and unseen by
God because it was laid in the Lord Jesus Christ. But this is
different. Here in verse 19, where the prophet
speaks about the subduing of our iniquities, he
is speaking about that subduing in the context of the conversion,
the turning around that he has just expressed, the fact that
we're changed. And in that change, the Lord's
people still have to live in this world. They still have to
go about their daily business. They still have to live in this
world and go to work and live next door to the men and women
of this world. They still have to do the things
in this world. But the subduing and the removal
of the iniquities here is speaking about our awareness and our conscience
and our understanding. It's speaking about our experience. You see, there is a war goes
on in the breast of every child of God. It's a war between the
old man and the new man, the old person that we once were
and the new person that we have become. It speaks about the fact
that there is this conflict, even in a believer's heart, that
can be bitter and grievous and at times overwhelming. But here is the promise of this
God. Here is the promise of the God
whom Micah speaks of. He says, the old man will not
prevail. The old man will not win the
battle. And he says, this God promises. that the old man will not prevail. He promises that the old man
will not win. He promises that he will subdue
our iniquities. Is that important that we know
that? Absolutely it's important. Because the Lord's people struggle
in this life. They struggle day by day. They
struggle with that battle in their own souls. They struggle
with that battle in their mind, with the temptations that come
from without and within. from the devil and the world
and all of the things in the world, and even from the rising
up of that old man in our own hearts. Yes, it's important to
know that God promises that he will subdue our iniquities. This is like having a big brother
who helps us against the school bully. This is like having someone
who comes and stands beside us on a day-to-day basis and says,
Yes, I will help you. Keep on. Press on. Hold on. Don't give up. No surrender. No surrender. We feel our heart
to be deceitful. The Lord says, don't give up.
We feel our heart to be desperately wicked. The Lord says, don't
give up. Keep on keeping on. There is no surrender to the
old man once we have become a new man. The battle must be fought,
the ground must be held, the trench must be kept and we must
not give up. No surrender. There is passion
in that old nature and the devil accuses us and our own conscience
confirms what the devil says, but God declares, I will cast
all your sins into the depths of the sea. I am pleased that
the Lord said this. I am pleased that God didn't
simply say, I'll cast your sins into the sea. Because if he said,
I'll cast your sins into the sea, they would bob around on
the surface for everybody to see. But he says he'll cast them
into the depths of the sea. He will sink those sins. And the blood of the Lord Jesus
Christ purges our conscience from dead works, he says in Hebrews
9. So there is practical comfort
for the Lord's people to return often to the blood of Christ,
knowing that that blood cleanses and purges our conscience. from
those old sins that the devil keeps trying to dig up and show
to us and hold up in order to hurt us and to grieve us. Who
is a God like unto thee who casts all our sins into the depths
of the sea? And here's the last point. Who
is a God like unto thee, Micah says, who performs his covenant
promises? I like that word performs because
it tells me that it's not simply remembers. Yeah, we speak often
about the Lord remembering his covenant promises and he does
remember them. They are constantly before his
face, constantly in his mind. but he doesn't just remember
his covenant promises, he performs his covenant promises. Verse
20 says, thou will perform the truth to Jacob and the mercy
to Abraham. When we speak about the covenant
promises, we are speaking about those promises that God made
to his people and Jacob and Abraham are here recipients of those
promises, but it's more than just individuals in history. These are promises which transcended
the time and the place and the individual, and they have an
everlasting dimension. And that's why we call it the
everlasting covenant. This is the covenant purpose
of God. This is our God being faithful
to his word, our God being faithful to his people. This is God making
promises and performing those promises. And that performance
of the promises of God is the history of salvation. It's the
history of his purpose and his promise to save a people for
himself. And God doesn't lie. God doesn't tell fibs. He doesn't
lie. He's promised these things are
so, and he has effected those promises. He has performed those
promises in the death of the Lord Jesus Christ and in the
sending forth of the gospel in power to his people. There's nothing random or uncertain
or conditional or changeable or haphazard about salvation. It is the eternal plan of the
everlasting covenant fixed before time for his people whom he has
loved from before time and whom he is calling to himself through
the preaching of this word. Fixed before time. Fixed from
the foundation of the world. That's what scripture says. It uses the phrase four or five,
half a dozen times perhaps, that we are gods, that these covenant
promises have been made to us in Christ, in that covenant purpose,
that covenant promise from the foundation of the world. Do you
know it even says from before the foundation of the world? Our God is not surprised by anything
that happens in this world. He is not overtaken by events.
He is not frustrated by the circumstances of this life. He is not disappointed
or thwarted in anything that happens or in any of his purposes
because everything is ordered. by God's eternal purpose. Everything
is certain and everything is sure and everything is designed
for His glory and everything is designed for His people's
salvation and His people's good. Oh, to be blessed with a knowledge
of this God. Oh, to come in to be able to
say, this is my God. This is the God who has saved
my soul. This is the God who has loved
me from eternity. This is my God. David could say
that this was his God. He says, God hath made with me
an everlasting covenant, ordered in all things and sure, for this
is all my salvation. Who is a God like unto thee? The truth is, my friends, there
is no God like unto this God. There is no God like unto thee,
our Father, our Redeemer, our Comforter, and our Friend. Pharaoh said, I don't know this
God. And Pharaoh died at the hand
of this God. Do you know this God? Do you
know the pardoning, merciful, loving, sin-subduing, sin-sinking-into-the-depths-of-the-sea, everlastingly faithful Lord and
Saviour Jesus Christ? Do you know Him? Is He your God? Egypt's gods were all overthrown,
all trodden down, and all of the gods of man's corrupt imagination
will follow them into the dust. But the Lord Jesus Christ is
King of kings and Lord of lords. He is the Lord our righteousness. This is our God and we worship
him this morning. May the Lord bless these thoughts
to us and attach his amen to them. Thank you for your attention. Just got another little hymn
to read and then we are finished.