One of the great Old Testament prophets in relationship to what he reveals about the first and second coming of Messiah is Micah.

In Micah 5:2, he foretells Jesus Christ’s birth in the little city of Bethlehem: “But thou, Bethlehem Ephratah, though thou be little among the thousands of Judah, yet out of thee shall he come forth unto me that is to be ruler in Israel; whose goings forth have been from of old, from everlasting.”

From Matthew 2:5, we know that when the wise men went to Herod and he then gathered “all the chief priests and scribes of the people together,” demanding to know where the king of the Jews was to be born, the religious leaders responded, “In Bethlehem of Judaea: for thus it is written by the prophet, And thou Bethlehem, in the land of Juda, art not the least among the princes of Juda: for out of thee shall come a Governor, that shall rule my people Israel.”

“It’s always fascinated me how the religious leaders quoted that verse from Micah,” says Jordan. “When they say, ‘Bethlehem is not an insignificant place,’ they’re just lying through their teeth, which is just like human nature. Micah had said, ‘Bethlehem, you’re a little hole in the wall over there and yet something great’s gonna come from you.’

“We all look at ourselves much more important than what we are, and the religious leaders are obviously trying to puff Israel up—puff themselves up and make themselves something big in front of the Roman ruler Herod.

“They weren’t going to consider what God’s Word said. They weren’t going to say, ‘Our Messiah’s coming from a little po-dunk town over the hill just on the back of the holler.’ Why that’s no place for the King to come from.

“Now, don’t you reckon Herod knew it was an insignificant town? I mean, you think they were fooling Herod? Who did they make look foolish? Micah! They made the prophet look like he didn’t know what Bethlehem was going to be like!

“That’s one of those Christmas chuckles to me. A lot of these passages used at Christmastime I’ve always thought were funny. Take the text of Handel’s Messiah with the verse quoted from Haggai 2—‘the desire of all nations shall come.’

“We sing that song, ‘Come desire of nations, come fix in us thy humble home,’ but you know what the desire of all nations is in Haggai 2? It’s not the Messiah! Why, have you ever thought that the world is really desiring for Jesus Christ to come and dwell in its midst?! When He did, what’d they do to Him? They nailed Him!

“The desire of all nations in Haggai 2 isn’t the Messiah; it’s gold, money, riches. But, boy, try and tell that to somebody who gets their doctrine and theology out of the hymn book and especially out of Christmas carols.”

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Micah lived in a small country town just outside of Jerusalem about 700 years before the time of Christ. He lived in the same time period as Isaiah and Hosea and was actually a good friend of Isaiah’s.

Jordan says, “Micah lived close to the big city but he’s an old country boy. His nature—just his mannerism as you read his book—he’s blunt. He’s direct. He’s terse. He’s a plain-speaking kind of a guy. He’s a no-nonsense, straight-arrow kind of a person and when you read his book, you read that. There’s not a lot of flowery prose, not a lot of diversion. It’s, ‘Let’s get right to the point; here’s the issue,’ and bang, bang, bang, there it is.

“Micah had one great passion as you read his book; he was a lover of the common man. As I said, I think about him as a country boy. He didn’t like high falutin kind of elitism. He loved the common people of Israel.

“He hated religious corruption. He hated the political corruption that engulfed his nation. He hated people taking advantage of other people and, as you read through his book, there’s a scathing denunciation of the political, economic and religious corruption that gripped the nation Israel at the time.

“Micah lived in a world of tremendous danger, filled with huge international problems. Sometimes we think of ourselves as the only people who ever lived on the stage of international history. It wasn’t true. Israel at that time lived in a world of tremendous international tension. They actually lived in the midst of three warring nations—Assyria to the east of them, Egypt to the south of them and the Philistines to the west of them.

“And Israel had entered into an unholy alliance, as it were, with the Assyrians. Israel had become really a facile state paying tribute to Assyria in order to be protected from the Philistines and the Egyptians, and there’s tremendous political tension between the nations in that territory.

“As to the tremendous religious corruption inside of the nation, Micah chides the priests taking bribes. In chapter 3:11 is a classic verse: ‘The heads thereof judge for reward, and the priests thereof teach for hire, and the prophets thereof divine for money: yet will they lean upon the LORD, and say, Is not the LORD among us? none evil can come upon us.’

“He’s saying, ‘The political leaders, why they’ve just got their hands out for graft. The priests, the prophets are willing to say anything anybody wants them to say if they give them the money for it.’

“Money had corrupted them, but they were all the time saying, ‘God’s with us; we’re God’s people.” And, oh, how Micah went after that and denounced those things. But that’s the world he lived in.

“It was a world of moral chaos, which always follows the kind of things we just described—people ripping off the poor, the leaders taking the bribes, cheating. The merchants, the leaders and the priests; even people’s own family members couldn’t be trusted to tell the truth and do what’s right.

“Micah warns them about the judgment of God that’s going to come upon the nation and he doesn’t pull any punches. Right in the middle of all this, though, because the book is really sort of negative, is a delightful passage that is, when you study Old Testament theology and doctrine, Micah 6, especially in verse 8, is held up as the height of scriptural ethic; it’s sort of the heart of the divine ethic of the scripture.”

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Verse 8 reads, “He hath shewed thee, O man, what is good; and what doth the LORD require of thee, but to do justly, and to love mercy, and to walk humbly with thy God?”

Jordan says, “It’s a fascinating study in the will and the desire of God expressed in human terms in the nation Israel; the heart of what God was looking for when He created man to be His image, His representative.

At the beginning of chapter 6, Micah pleads with Israel, “Hear ye now what the LORD saith; Arise, contend thou before the mountains, and let the hills hear thy voice.
[2] Hear ye, O mountains, the LORD's controversy, and ye strong foundations of the earth: for the LORD hath a controversy with his people, and he will plead with Israel.
[3] O my people, what have I done unto thee? and wherein have I wearied thee? testify against me.”

Jordan explains, “The Lord talks about the earth, and the mountains, and you know there’s that sonic resonance in creation where everything has the ability to have a sound to it. But when He talks about that, He’s talking more in metaphorical terms . . . it’s like my dad used to say about talking to himself: ‘I like to have an intelligent conversation every now and then.’

“When God talks to mountains and the earth what He’s doing is—‘I have a purpose for the earth. I have a purpose for creation and that purpose finds its channel of expression in the nation Israel.’

“God’s purpose for creation—God’s purpose for man in creation was to rule over creation; subdue it and have dominion over it. His purpose for man . . . the seed of the woman became the seed of Abraham which became the nation Israel and God’s purpose for man is vested in the nation Israel as His representative of mankind in the earth.

“And so the controversy he’s having is, ‘Here’s my controversy about everything in creation and it all focuses on Israel.’ So he gathers all of creation. I mean, the rocks would know what they were created for if they had brains or a mind or a will . . . He’s putting a personification to them in the sense He knows the purpose, and Israel knows the purpose for them; in fact, the heathen were told about it.

“You won’t remember all those events, but Israel would. And what God’s saying is rather than being grateful for all He’d done for them, they’d taken advantage of Him. They turned their back on Him and walked in their own way; walked in their own wisdom.

“They turned away from His Word which He gave them and chose their own words and the words of other gods.

“And God’s saying to them, ‘Did I insult you?! What did I do to make you hate me?! What did I do to make you turn away from me?! All I’ve ever done for you is good things. I redeemed you, I brought you out of Egypt, delivered you from satanic captivity, got you across the Red Sea. I blessed you, gave you my Word, gave you leaders . . .

‘My grace is abundantly provided for you. You’ve seen my righteousness in action. You’ve seen how that when the enemy came in—when Balak hired Balaam to curse you, what did I do? I said, no you can’t curse them, you can only bless them. You’ve literally seen my righteousness working for you in every case. So what’s the problem? Why’ve you turned your back on me?’

(Editor’s Note: To be continued . . .)