Micah 7:18-20 Praise The God Who Loves & Forgives Sinners!

Translation & Sermon by Nate Wilson for Christ The Redeemer Church of Manhattan, KS, 19 Jan. 2025
Underlined words in scripture passages are based on the same Hebrew or Greek root word used in the relevant passage of Micah. Greyed-out text can be omitted to bring delivery time down around 40 minutes.

Introduction

• Let’s start by listening Micah chapter 7:14-20 -
  Shepherd Your people – the flock of Your inheritance – using Your staff. They are residing in a unique way – rich growth in the midst of fruitful-land. Let them pasture in Bashan and Gilead like the old days – like the days of Your going forth from the land of Egypt [saying,] “I will show him wonders.” The nations will see and be ashamed of all their might. They will put a hand over the mouth. Their ears will go deaf. They will lick up the dirt like serpents. Like crawling things from the earth, they will shake out of their confines. It is toward Yahweh our God that they will be in dread, and they will be afraid of you.
  Who is God like You? Carrying away iniquity and passing over transgression on behalf of the remnant of His inheritance, He does not keep a strong grip forever on His anger because, as for Him, He delights in lovingkindness. He will return; He will have compassion on us; He will subdue our iniquities, and He will cast all our sins into the depths of the sea. You will extend faithfulness to Jacob – the lovingkindness to Abraham – which You swore to our forefathers from days of old.

v. 18 Praise God for Loving Us Enough To Bear Our Sin & Forgive Us

• Micah’s name in Hebrew means “who is like,” so at the end of his book, Micah makes a word-play on his own name. He is also quoting from Exodus 15:11 "Who is like You, O LORD, among the gods? Who is like You, glorious in holiness, Fearful in praises, doing wonders?” (NKJV)¹

• How is Yahweh unique among the gods? He “carries/pardons/forgives/passes over iniquity/ transgression for/on behalf of the remnant of His inheritance.”²

  • “[The LORD’s] incomparability pertains to his unique character to forgive sinners in his intervention in salvation history, not to his surpassing military power, as we might expect… Israel’s sin, not the power of pagans, is the real enemy… No other ‘god’ ever died in the place of his sinful people to save them from his wrath against sin…” ~B. Waltke³, 2007 AD

  • “That God then in His goodness surmounted all the wickedness of the people, and stood firm in His covenant, which had been so often violated by vices of the people — this fact may be brought as an evidence, that He is the true God: for what can be found of this kind among idols?” ~J. Calvin, 1559

  • So, after all the lists of the sins of Israel God published through Micah, suddenly at the end there is talk of forgiving it all. How can this be?

  • Keeping in mind all the the Bible says about God’s merciful kindness, we know that Micah cannot be saying that God winks at the sins of His people, letting bygones be bygones. That is not in keeping with His character of justice. The whole counsel of Scripture explains that, in order to forgive us of our sins, a substitute had to suffer (or “carry”) the punishment for our sins:

    • The Hebrew word Micah uses (נשא) is translated “pardon” here in most English versions, but it is usually translated “bear/carry/take away,” as it is in verses like:

    • Leviticus 5:17 “And if a person in any case sins and does one thing from any of the prohibitions of Yahweh (which should not be done) – even if he did not know, he is still guilty, and he will bear/carry his iniquity.” (NAW)

    • Leviticus 10:17 But “...the sin-offering... is what He [the LORD] gave to y'all to carry the iniquity of the congregation in order to make atonement over them before the face of Yahweh… 16:21 Aaron… shall confess over it [the goat] all the iniquities of the children of Israel and all their transgressions for all their sin, so he shall put them upon the head of the goat... Then the goat will carry upon it all their iniquities…” (NAW)

    • Psalm 32:5 “My sin I acknowledge to You, and my iniquity I do not cover over; I talk; I hand against myself my transgressions to You, Yahweh, and You will carry away the iniquity of my sin.” (NAW)

    • Isaiah 53:4-11 “Surely our griefs He Himself carried, and our sorrows, He bore them. Yet we, we considered Him stricken, smitten of God and afflicted. However, He was being pierced as a result of our transgression – beaten as a result our iniquity. Chastisement for our peace was upon Him, and by His stripes there is healing for us. All we like the flock have strayed, each has faced toward his own way. But Yahweh interposed in Him the iniquity of us all... And His beating pleased Yahweh. He caused grief if His soul would place itself for a sin-offering... my righteous Servant will make righteous the many And their iniquities He Himself will bear.” (NAW)

  • The RSV/ESV and Holman/CSB are the only English versions that translated the the Hebrew wording and cantillation of Micah 7:18 correctly with “...bearing and passing over the transgression for/in behalf of the remnant of His inheritance…” That is what is unique about Yahweh: “He Himself ‘carried our sins’ in His body upon the tree, in order that we might live in His righteousness after dying to our sins, of Whom [it was written] ‘by His stripes y'all were healed.’ For y'all were being ‘like wandering sheep,’ but now y'all have been returned to the Shepherd and Overseer of your souls.” (1 Peter. 2:24-25, NAW)

• We encountered the word “heritage/inheritance/possession” back in v.14, where I noted that the Hebrew word nahal carries the connotation that this flock was an “inheritance,” the ownership of which was passed down to him by his Father. The church – the people of God – are the inheritance which God owns and passes on to His Son (John 17:5-12, Heb. 1:2, Eph. 1:14-23).

  • “Remnant” hearkens back to chapter 5:3-8, the last three times the word “remnant” appeared in Micah, referring to those who would keep their faith in God through the 70 years of Babylonian exile and return to the Promised Land to rebuild it: “... the remnant of His brothers will return in addition to the sons of Israel... He will rescue from Assyria when it invades our land, even when it steps into our territory. Then it will happen that the remnant of Jacob will exist in the midst of many peoples like dew from Yahweh, like showers upon vegetation which do not wait-up for anybody or wait around for man-kind. It will also happen that the remnant of Jacob will be among the nations – in the midst of many peoples – like a lion among beasts of the forest…” (NAW)

    • By the way, this limits whose “iniquities” will be “pardoned.” It is not everyone in the world who will be forgiven, only “the remnant of His inheritance” –

      • The Jews like Daniel and Esther who trusted God through the Exile,

      • and like Ezra and Nehemiah who re-established the true worship of God back in the Promised land, and

      • Mary & Joseph, who believed when God told them He was sending the Messiah,

      • and the Apostles who followed Jesus when He called them,

      • all the way down to you and me, who are also “believers” and “children of God” (John 1:12). It is we whose transgressions God will pass over without punishing us.

      • “[T]hough God would execute terrible vengeance on the greater part, there would yet ever remain some seed, on whom His mercy would shine...” ~J. Calvin⁴

• Micah goes on in v.18 with the parallel statement that “...He does not retain a strong grip forever on His anger because, as for Him, He delights in lovingkindness/mercy/unchanging/steadfast love.” This tells us a few important things about God:

  • First, He does get offended and angry. Once again, God does not wink at sin or think it’s cute. When we dishonor Him and do our will instead of His will, there are dire consequences:

    • When the Hebrews, whom God had delivered from slavery in Egypt, disobeyed God’s orders to advance into the Promised Land because the spies had told them it would be impossible, it says in Numbers 32:13 “So the LORD'S anger was aroused against Israel, and He made them wander in the wilderness forty years, until all the generation that had done evil in the sight of the LORD was gone.” (NKJV)

    • Later on, when the Jews turned away from God to worship idols, committing “abominations” (2 Chron. 36:8), and “filling the land with innocent blood” (2 Ki. 24:4), God had the Babylonian king Nebuchadnezzar conquer Jerusalem and remove its people into exile. Jeremiah 52:3 explains “For because of the anger of the LORD this happened in Jerusalem and Judah, till He finally cast them out from His presence...” (NKJV)

  • And yet, despite the reality of God’s anger against sin, anger is not His native state. God doesn’t just live to gleefully smite everybody for doing bad. He doesn’t want to do that “forever.” Although justice is something He “delights” in (Prov. 11:1, Isa. 42:1, Jer. 9:24), He also “delights in love/mercy.”

    • “As God then, by nature, loves mercy, hence it is, that He is so ready to forgive sinners.” ~J. Calvin, 1559 AD

    • Jonah 4:2 said, “… I knew that You are a gracious and compassionate god, slow to anger, and full of kindness, and You are made sorry over the evil.” (NAW, cf. Joel 2:13)

    • And before him, David said in Psalm 103:7-9 “O Israel, hope in the LORD; For with the LORD there is mercy, And with Him is abundant redemption. And He shall redeem Israel From all his iniquities. The LORD is merciful and gracious, Slow to anger, and abounding in mercy. He will not always strive with us, Nor will He keep⁵ His anger forever.” (NKJV, cf. Ps. 86:5, 15)

    • Jeremiah 3:12 "Go and proclaim these words toward the north, and say: `Return, backsliding Israel, says the LORD; `I will not cause My anger to fall on you. For I am merciful, says the LORD; `I will not remain [נטר] angry forever.’ 33:8 `I will cleanse them from all their iniquity by which they have sinned against Me, and I will pardon⁶ all their iniquities by which they have sinned and by which they have transgressed against Me... 9:24 ... I am the LORD, exercising lovingkindness, judgment, and righteousness in the earth. For in these I delight," says the LORD.” (NKJV, cf. Hos. 6:6)

• Of course, all that is Old Testament. Is God still like this in the New Testament? Of course!

  • “If we are confessing our sins, He is faithful⁷ and righteous in order to send away⁸ from us the sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.” (1 John 1:9, NAW)

  • Ephesians 2:1-7 “And you He made alive, who were dead in trespasses⁹ and sins, in which you once walked according to the course of this world, according to the prince of the power of the air, the spirit who now works in the sons of disobedience, among whom also we all once conducted ourselves in the lusts of our flesh, fulfilling the desires of the flesh and of the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, just as the others. But God, who is rich in mercy, because of His great love with which He loved us, even when we were dead in trespasses, made us alive together with Christ (by grace you have been saved), and raised us up together, and made us sit together in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, that in the ages to come He might show the exceeding riches of His grace in His kindness¹⁰ toward us in Christ Jesus.” (NKJV, cf. Heb. 8:12)

• “We are here taught... To give to God the glory of His pardoning mercy... God having promised to bring back the captivity of His people, the prophet, on that occasion, admires pardoning mercy, as that which was at the bottom of it... The pardon of sin is the foundation of all other covenant-mercies (Heb.8:12)… The glory of God in forgiving sin is, as in other things, matchless, and without compare. There is no God like unto Him for this... All those that have experienced pardoning mercy cannot but admire that mercy; it is what we have reason to stand amazed at, if we know what it is... Our holy wonder at pardoning mercy will be a good evidence of our interest in it.” ~Matthew Henry, 1714 AD

• So, after the prayer for the fulfillment of the promised future reign of the Messiah in verses 14-17, Micah signs off with this “climactic hymn of praise” (Waltke) to God for the redemptive work which the Messiah will do.

• But we don’t keep the praises of God to ourselves, just whispering our praises in private so no one else but God can hear, no! we share the praises of God with others! And the pronouns in the original Hebrew (and in the ancient Greek and Latin translations) of vs. 18-19 demonstrate that:

  • Micah switches in v.18 from addressing God in second person (“Who is a God like You?”) to addressing God’s people and referring to God in third person (“He does not stay angry… He delights in mercy. He will have compassion, He will cast our sins...”).

  • Some of the newest English Bibles change those third person “he’s” into second person “you’s” in these verses, but that obscures what Micah is doing;

  • he is using words that we (the church) can use to join with him in corporate worship, and he is giving us words to say to tell the good news to those who have not heard it yet.

  • Let us be sure to share with others the wonderful things that impress us about what God is like and what He has done for us in Christ!

• In v.19, Micah’s praise gives way to...

v. 19 Expressing Confidence in God’s Future Forgiveness & Compassion

• In case you somehow didn’t get it from v.18 (that God “pardons,” “passes over,” ends His “anger” against and instead “loves” His people), Micah says it again in v.19: God “turns” to us, “has compassion” on us, and “subdues” and gets “rid” of all our sins! This is awesome, good news!

• The only other time in the Bible that these words for “cast” and “sin” occur together is in Deuteronomy 9:21, where Moses describes what he did when God got angry with the Hebrews for worshiping the golden calf after their escape from Egypt: “Then I took your sin, the calf which you had made, and burned it with fire and crushed it and ground it very small, until it was as fine as dust; and I threw its dust into the brook that descended from the mountain.” Perhaps the idea of “sin” being “thrown” into the sea stems from that typological action of Moses.

• Ever since the year 1900, English versions have combined the first two verbs “He will turn” and “He will have compassion” into a single idea of “He will again have compassion,” but these two actions of God “returning” and God “having compassion” are kept distinct in the other prophecies of Jeremiah, Ezekiel, and Zachariah – even in the 20^th and 21^st century English versions, and it is also kept distinct in the curses of the Law – the original source of all these prophetic quotes: the first verb describing God “turning” toward His people after disciplining them and “returning” them to their land, and the second verb describing God’s “compassionate blessing” on them in their renewed circumstances¹¹.

  • Deuteronomy 29:26-30:3 [But if] they went and served other gods and worshiped them… Then the anger of the LORD [will be] aroused against this land, to bring on it every curse that is written in this book…. and cast them into another land… Now it shall come to pass, when all these things come upon you… that the LORD your God will bring you back from captivity, and have compassion on you, and gather you again from all the nations where the LORD your God has scattered you.” (NKJV, cf. 13:17, 32:36)

• It is because “God so LOVED the world that He gave His only begotten Son that whoever should believe on Him might not perish but have everlasting life.” (John 3:16, KJV) God has compassion toward you, and because of that “tender affection”¹² He will get rid of your sins so you can be with Him forever!

  • Isaiah 38:17b “...You Yourself loved my soul away from the pit of destruction, for You have cast all my sins behind the back... 43:25 I, I am He who washes away your transgressions for my own sake, and I will not remember your sins.” (NAW, cf. Jer. 31:34, 50:20)

  • Lamentations 3:32 “Though He causes grief, Yet He will show compassion According to the multitude of His mercies.” (NKJV)

  • Hosea 14:4 “I will heal their backsliding, I will love them freely, For My anger has turned away from him.” (NKJV)

  • Romans 6:14 “For sin shall not have dominion over you, for you are not under law but under grace.” (NKJV)

• “We are here taught… To take to ourselves the comfort of that mercy and all the grace and truth that go along with it. God's people here, as they look back with thankfulness upon God's pardoning their sins, so they look forward with assurance upon what He would yet further do for them. ‘His mercy endures for ever,’ and therefore as He has shown mercy so He will... [H]e seemed to be departing from us in anger, but He will turn again and pity us... He will renew us, to prepare and qualify us for His favour: He will subdue our iniquities; when He takes away the guilt of sin, that it may not damn us; He will break the power of sin, that it may not have dominion over us, that we may not fear sin, nor be led captive by it… [W]hen God forgives sin He remembers it no more, and takes care that it shall never be remembered more against the sinner (Ezek. 18:22)... He casts them into the sea, not near the shore-side, where they may appear again next low water, but into the depth of the sea¹³, never to rise again. All their sins shall be cast there without exception, for when God forgives sin He forgives all.” ~Matthew Henry, 1714 AD

• The image of “subduing/treading underfoot our iniquities” is warfare language.

  • Have you ever been plunged into frustration and depression because of a sin you committed? Rejoice in the fact that Christ has beaten sin – has put His foot on the neck of that foe that has so often defeated you, and He will render sin powerless in your life!

  • “Without subjugation of our bad propensities, even pardon could not give us peace. When God takes away the guilt of sin that it may not condemn us, He takes away also the power of sin that it may not rule us.” ~A.R. Fausset, 1871 AD

• The point from last week’s sermon on “Costly Grace,” however, still holds true: God’s free forgiveness of all our sins is not a license for us to sin more; rather, it is grounds for awe and unreserved offering of ourselves to Him.

• “God cannot be worshipped sincerely and from the heart until this conviction be fixed and deeply rooted in our hearts, that God is merciful, not in general, but toward us, because we have been once adopted by Him and are His heritage... And we cannot be fully convinced respecting God’s favor, except He anticipates us by His word, and testifies that He will be propitious to us whenever we flee to him. Hence... the Prophet here [gives us God’s word on it] respecting the remission of sins… of His chosen people…. And when He declares that He will be merciful to us, then every doubt is removed.” ~J. Calvin, 1559 AD Do you believe God’s word? Do you believe that when you asked God to cleanse you from your sin in Jesus’ name that He actually did it? (If you have never done so, do you believe He will?)

• Corrie Ten Boom (who became famous as an itinerant Christian speaker after surviving Nazi death camps in World War II) liked to say, “God takes our sins – past, present, and future – and dumps them in the sea, and puts up a sign that says ‘No Fishing Allowed.’”

v. 20 God’s Covenant Rocks On!

• The Hebrew words emet, khesed, and shaba’ in verse 20 are covenantal words:

  • Emet is translated “truth” or “faithfulness,” and it has to do with fidelity¹⁴ – being true to the terms of the covenant.

  • Khesed is translated “mercy/lovingkindness/unfailing/steadfast love,” and it has to do with God’s condescension to make a covenant of grace with us and never unbind Himself from it.

  • And shaba’ is the word for “swearing an oath” to ratify a covenant; it has to do with God’s personal commitment to carrying out what He promised.

    • This refers to Genesis 22:15-18, the first time in the Bible where God is recorded as “swearing an oath”: “Then the Angel of the LORD called to Abraham a second time out of heaven, and said: ‘By Myself I have sworn, says the LORD, because you have done this thing, and have not withheld your son, your only son – blessing I will bless you, and multiplying I will multiply your descendants as the stars of the heaven and as the sand which is on the seashore; and your descendants shall possess the gate of their enemies. In your seed all the nations of the earth shall be blessed, because you have obeyed My voice.’” (NKJV)

• Although it is valid to speak of a “covenant of works” (implied at Creation in Genesis) and of the brief “Noaic covenant” after the flood in Genesis 9, the first formally-recorded covenant was the one God made with Abraham in Genesis 12 “...I will bless you… and through you all the families of the earth will be blessed¹⁵.” This was God’s “merciful lovingkindness to Abraham.”

  • And God repeated that covenant to Abraham’s son Isaac (Gen. 26:1-4) and grandson Jacob (Gen. 28:14), demonstrating that God would be “faithful/true” to the covenant He had made with Abraham throughout the generations to come.

  • That blessing on Abraham included a promise of descendants and a promise of land for those descendants (Gen. 12:1-2, 28:13, Deut. 7:8-12, etc.), and through the nation of Israel and the Promised Land, God made good on both of those promises to Abraham in the Old Testament, but the blessing to the nations had to do with forgiveness of sins and eternal life through the Messiah in the New Testament.

  • Here Micah says that God will still be faithful to that covenant He had made with Jacob a thousand years previous.

    • The Targum paraphrase of v.20 makes that explicit: “You will give (your) faithful­ness to Jacob [to his sons, as you swore to him in Bethel, your] kindness to Abraham [to his seed after him], as you swore to [him between the pieces; you will remember for us the binding of Isaac who was bound upon the altar before you. You will perform kind deeds with us as you swore to] our fathers in days of old.”¹⁶

  • And God’s faithfulness did not end there. Jump forward almost another thousand years into the New Testament, and we see the Son of God still focused on fulfilling the terms of that covenant: Jesus said, “...repentance and remission of sins should be preached in His name unto all the nations.” (Luke 24:47, NAW) “Go therefore, and make disciples of all the nations…” (Matthew 28:19a , NAW)

  • So the Apostle Peter preached in Acts 3:25 “You are sons ... of the covenant which God made with your fathers, saying unto Abraham, ‘And in your seed shall all the families of the earth be blessed.’” (NAW)

  • And the Apostle Paul preached in Galatians 3:8 “And the scripture, foreseeing that God would justify the Gentiles by faith, preached the gospel beforehand unto Abraham, saying, ‘In you shall all the nations be blessed.’” (NAW)

  • And do you think God will still be faithful to His covenant for thousands more years? Absolutely! That’s what He revealed in a vision to the Apostle John when the heavenly cherubim said to Jesus: “… You were slain, and purchased unto God with Your blood some of every tribe, and tongue, and people, and nation…” (Revelation 5:9, NAW) and when John saw in Revelation 7:9 “...a great multitude, which no man could number, out of every nation and of all tribes and peoples and tongues, standing before the throne and before the Lamb, arrayed in white robes…” (NAW)

• God will ever be true¹⁷ to His covenant in which He promised to send the Anointed One to atone for the sins of those He loves, from every ethnicity, and bring them to be blessed by Him forever in heaven.

  • This is what John the Baptizer’s father Zachariah testified in the Gospel of Luke 1:68-74 “Blessed is the Lord God of Israel, For He has visited and redeemed His people, And has raised up a horn of salvation for us In the house of His servant David, As He spoke by the mouth of His holy prophets [like Micah!]... To perform the mercy promised to our fathers And to remember His holy covenant, The oath which He swore to our father Abraham: To grant us that we, Being delivered from the hand of our enemies, Might serve Him without fear…” (NKJV)

• The verb Micah uses at the beginning of verse 20 is not the verb usually used in Hebrew for “showing” or “doing,” rather, it is the verb usually translated “give,¹⁸” but it has a basic literal meaning of “extending,” and that is how I translated it, because it pictures God’s arm continuing to stretch out over the timeline of history to give the blessings of His covenant mercy and forgiveness of sin to the people He loves, year after year.

  • “It is in pursuance of the covenant that our sins are pardoned and our lusts mortified; from that spring all these streams flow, and with these He shall freely give us all things... See here, With what solemnity the covenant of grace is ratified to us…” ~M. Henry

  • Hebrews 10:23 So “Let's hold onto the unrelenting confession of our hope, because the One who promised is faithful¹⁹.” (NAW)

  • This is how Calvin’s commentary ends: “Grant, Almighty God, that as we abound in so many vices, by which we daily provoke Your wrath, and as by the testimony of our consciences, we are justly exposed to everlasting death, yea, and deserve a hundred and even a thousand deaths, — O grant, that we may strive against the unbelief of our flesh, and so embrace Your infinite mercy, that we may not doubt but that You wilt be propitious to us, and yet not abuse this privilege by taking liberty to sin, but with fear, and true humility, and care, so walk according to Your word, that we may not hesitate daily to flee to Your mercy, that we may thereby be sustained and kept in safety, until having at length put off all vices, and being freed from all sin, we come to thy celestial kingdom, to enjoy the fruit of our faith, even that eternal inheritance which has been obtained for us by the blood of Your only-begotten Son. Amen.”