Rebellion in the Kingdom—Part One

“Teacher, which command in the law is the greatest?”

He said to him, “Love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind. This is the greatest and most important command. The second is like it: Love your neighbor as yourself. All the Law and the Prophets depend on these two commands.”

In this brief dialogue, Jesus identified the two key requirements for honoring the covenant. The requirement for covenant loyalty is to love God. Here, Jesus affirmed the central teaching of Deuteronomy 6:4-5. This classic Old Testament text teaches that Yahweh is one God, unlike the pantheons of gods embraced by pagan religions. The people of Israel were to have a singular focus on their God, loving Him with their whole heart, soul, and mind. The second ingredient is love for one’s neighbor. Here Jesus selected Leviticus 19:18 and provided the requirement for covenant obedience: Love your neighbor as yourself. Jesus then made an astounding claim: “All the Law and the Prophets depend on these two commands.” In other words, these two commands are the foundation on which the entire covenant is based. As we noted above, the Ten Commandments follow this concept as well, the first four emphasizing love for God and the final six emphasizing love for neighbor. Ultimately, then, the failure of Israel and Judah to uphold their part of the covenant was a result of failing to love God and neighbor with selfless abandon.

As we examine this concept in more detail, I want you to consider the following chart. It will be expanded in the next chapter.

This chart demonstrates the way that God intended His people to relate to Him and to one another. As you can see, “Love” has been listed as the source for covenant loyalty because Jesus said that love is the motive behind every act of loyalty and obedience to God (for now, focus on the right side of this chart). Loyalty requires two distinct things: obedience to God’s law and surrender to His purpose. In response to their loyalty, God would bless them, providing freedom from their enemies and provision for their lives.

As Micah continued to teach in chapter 1, however, we see that Israel violated the covenant repeatedly by disobeying God in two areas. First, they embraced idolatry, which violated the first four laws in the Ten Commandments. In verses 5-7 Micah provided a severe indictment of the rampant idolatry in both Israel and Judah.

Micah identified a second problem of evil in this chapter as well. Israel and Judah had abandoned their loyalty to God through idolatry, so it was easy for them to take the next step and look to pagan nations for protection and provision. He provided a cryptic explanation of this in verses 13-14. Micah referenced two historic cities that had great significance for Israel and Judah. The cities of Lachish and Moresheth-gath were located on the main road between Jerusalem and the Mediterranean coastal town of Gaza. Strategically located about half way between the two prominent cities, Lachish and Moresheth-gath were Amorite cities that Israel had defeated and captured under Joshua (Josh 10). The land was given to the tribe of Judah and continued to be part of the southern kingdom during the time of Micah. Rehoboam, whose pride led to the division of Israel into two distinct nations, rebuilt and fortified a number of cities, including Lachish and Moresheth-gath (2 Chr 11:5-12). Rehoboam continued in the idolatry of his father Solomon, and his sinful influence spread throughout Judah. Micah claims here that Lachish was the first city to adopt his idolatrous practice, and it became systemic throughout the southern kingdom.

These cities became strategic to Judah because enemies often approached from the sea. As a result, Lachish and Moresheth-gath were critical for the defense of Jerusalem, the capital city of Judah. They were located in a mountain pass—to attack Jerusalem you had to defeat Lachish. This is exactly what Sennacherib accomplished during the reign of Hezekiah while Micah was a prophet in Judah (2 Chr 32). And it was in Lachish that Hezekiah made one of his most critical mistakes. Rather than remain loyal to God and place his trust in Him, Hezekiah sent emissaries to Lachish and sued for peace (2 Kgs 18:13-15). Hezekiah failed in this effort, and Sennacherib promised to lay siege to Jerusalem and destroy Judah. God used Micah’s contemporary, Isaiah, to deliver the message of hope to Hezekiah (2 Kgs 19:20-34), and God destroyed Sennacherib’s army for him (2 Kgs 19:35-37).

For Micah, Lachish and Moresheth-gath represented all that was wrong with Israel and Judah. They were cities that represented the failure of the people to honor their covenant obligation to God. As a result, the following chart reveals the conditions that actually existed in Israel and Judah during the ministry of Micah:

Notice again the right side of this chart. As you can see, Israel and Judah had replaced a love for Yahweh, Israel’s one true God, with a love for idols. The people of Israel discovered that they became loyal to the things they worshiped. Perhaps they found obedience to God’s laws too oppressive, and so they looked for the promise of freedom that pagan idolatry offered—freedom to live however they pleased and to find pleasure in the rites of idol worship. But they were simply buying into the myth of the serpent in Eden. Bondage, not freedom, is always the result of sinful lifestyle choices. So it was with Israel and Judah. Their love of idols led them to be loyal to their idols rather than to God, and the result was bondage. They were trapped in their sin, and they would experience literal bondage when both Israel and Judah were defeated by foreign powers.

Micah continued chapter 1 by emphasizing this coming judgment from God. God was planning to come down from His high place to supervise this judgment (vv. 2-7), and Micah could only weep at the inevitable consequences (vv. 8-9). Though the people, rulers, and priests “anxiously wait for something good, disaster has come from the Lord to the gate of Jerusalem” (v. 12). Ultimately, young and old alike would be taken into exile (v. 16).

When we read the Prophets, we are often struck by their tone. They seem harsh and abrupt in their teaching and prophesying. There is a simple reason for this—they were attempting to capture the attention of distracted people. The people who lived in Israel and Judah had heard prophets proclaiming this truth for years, and nothing had ever happened. So why couldn’t the prophets just leave them alone? Oh, sure, there was the occasional war or recession, but they were still standing. After all, the kings’ ingratiating prophets were telling them that they would be fine. They were God’s people, and He would never let anything bad happen to them. They had a covenant with Him!

Honestly, this was the root of their problem. The nations of Israel and Judah were confident in their position as children of Abraham. True, they had different national identities, all the way down to their style of worship, but they had the same idea of the meaning of covenant. Despite the fact that they had totally abandoned their role of loyalty and obedience to the covenant, they had absolute confidence that God would never break His promise to protect and provide for them, regardless of how they lived.

Over time they began to trust more in their national identity than in God. They believed God would provide for them and protect them because they were children of Abraham, not because they were obedient and loyal to the covenant. They believed that they could live any way they wanted, even as idolaters, and God would bless them. We should not be surprised that Israel and Judah drifted into this mentality. This is the bondage that came to them through idolatry: Once we place our hope in someone or something besides God, we make ourselves vulnerable to falsehood. Ultimately, the people believed the lie that their nationality was enough.

Let’s pause here to allow ourselves to explore how this temptation grows in our own lives. God wants us, like Israel, to love Him with our whole heart, soul, and mind. When we do, we will choose to be loyal to God by obeying His word. God will bless us in freedom as a result of these choices. However, like Israel, we are prone to erect idols too. Generally, we do not have shrines in our homes containing stone or wooden figurines, so we don’t think that we’re capable of idolatry. In the Western world, however, we erect different types of idols. Our idols are just as real, though they look different. Some come in the shape of dollar bills, while others take the form of houses, cars, clothes, sports, media, hobbies, drugs, alcohol, sex, fame, or career. We worship God on Sunday, and then we quickly retreat to the temples of our “other” gods. Soon we become more loyal to them than to God Himself, and before long our idols have trapped us in bondage. All the while we convince ourselves that God is okay with the existence of these idols in our lives, and that He will continue to bless us regardless. After all, isn’t He a God of love and grace? Hasn’t He promised to bless us?

Israel and Judah were in trouble during the ministry of Micah for precisely these reasons. Their hope was in their national identity as children of Abraham, not in their obedience and loyalty to God through covenant. They hoped in their kings and their armies to protect them, and they trusted in their own labors for their personal provision. Time revealed that none of these things was sufficient to hold back God’s discipline on their nations or their lives. Even today, Christians, regardless of their national identity, may be guilty of this same misplaced hope. Our hope as Christ-followers must never reside in our nations, our military, or our political leaders. There is only one Person who offers hope for the world, and His name is Jesus! Jesus is the promised Messiah of Israel (Mic 5:2), and He is the Savior of the church. He alone provides the hope of salvation and significance for every person on earth, and He alone is worthy of our obedience and loyalty. When we follow after Him with our whole hearts, we are recipients of His favor, and in Jesus Christ alone we find hope.