Wednesday, January 13, 2016

The Voice of the Prophet (Micah 7:11-14)



SPIRITUAL DIARY FOR 1/13/2016 9:59 PM
My Worship Time                                                                        Focus:  The Voice of the Prophet
Bible Reading & Meditation                                                 Reference:  Micah 7:11-14
Message of the verses:  “11 It will be a day for building your walls. On that day will your boundary be extended. 12 It will be a day when they will come to you From Assyria and the cities of Egypt, From Egypt even to the Euphrates, Even from sea to sea and mountain to mountain. 13 And the earth will become desolate because of her inhabitants, On account of the fruit of their deeds.  14 Shepherd Your people with Your scepter, The flock of Your possession Which dwells by itself in the woodland, In the midst of a fruitful field. Let them feed in Bashan and Gilead As in the days of old.”
You know that as we read the OT prophets we have to admire the great courage that they had, and also the things that they saw in visions and what seems to be other ways that the Lord spoke to them they must have been troubled over what they heard and saw.  However this time when we look at verse fourteen we see Micah asking the Lord to “Shepherd Your people with Your scepter.”  Micah is being thankful to the Lord for the promises that he is receiving from the Lord, that one day Jerusalem would be a city that prospers and that will happen during the Millennial Kingdom headed up by our Lord Jesus Christ as seen in the OT prophets and also in the book of Revelation. 
In the first three verses of this section Micah is speaking to the city of Jerusalem and he is assuring them that even though she is destroyed that she would one day be rebuilt.  Now this certainly did not happen in Micah’s day as we learned he was a contemporary of Isaiah, so this would all be future to him, but none the less he knew it would happen.  Another thing and that is that after being in captivity for 70 years the Jews would return to Jerusalem and build up the walls and build a new temple on the same sight that Solomon’s temple was built.  I actually believe that Micah’s prophecy here speaks of the time of the Millennial Kingdom, but these kind of things happened in the OT prophets as we have seen when they spoke about the “Day of the Lord.”  That will happen during the last half of the tribulation period as God takes His wrath out on the sinful nations of the world, however when the prophets wrote of this there were times when they had something nearer that would happen to Israel do to sin and so there was a near time and a far away time when the real “Day of the Lord” will happen.
Let us look at a couple of verses that speak of a new city and temple:  Isaiah 2:1-5 “1 The word which Isaiah the son of Amoz saw concerning Judah and Jerusalem. 2 Now it will come about that In the last days The mountain of the house of the LORD Will be established as the chief of the mountains, And will be raised above the hills; And all the nations will stream to it. 3 And many peoples will come and say, "Come, let us go up to the mountain of the LORD, To the house of the God of Jacob; That He may teach us concerning His ways And that we may walk in His paths." For the law will go forth from Zion And the word of the LORD from Jerusalem. 4 And He will judge between the nations, And will render decisions for many peoples; And they will hammer their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning hooks. Nation will not lift up sword against nation, And never again will they learn war. 5 Come, house of Jacob, and let us walk in the light of the LORD.”  Next I will mention this one as there are eight chapters that speak of the rebuilding of the Millennial temple and we studied this when we looked at Ezekiel chapters 40-48.
Dr. Wiersbe writes “In the light of this great promise, the prophet lifted his heart to the Lord in prayer (Micah 7:14) and asked Him to be the faithful Shepherd of Israel and care for His people (see 5:4; Isaiah 40:11; Ps. 80:1).  Micah longed for ‘the good old days’ when the land was fruitful and peaceful and the people were like obedient sheep who followed their Shepherd.”
1/13/2016 10:21 PM

No comments:

Post a Comment