Micah 1:1-4:13, Rev 6:1-17, Psalms 134:1-3, Proverbs 30:1-4
Today is the 15th day of December. Welcome to the Daily Audio Bible. I am Brian and it is a joy and an honor to be here with you at the threshold of shiny, sparkly, new week. 10 days from now is Christmas day and we, at least on the Christian calendar, are in the season that we know as Advent and Advent means arrival. So, it’s 40 days before Christmas to put our hearts in the posture of waiting and longing for the arrival of the Savior. And these weeks are kinda marked each Sunday. When you go to church today, maybe your lighting an Advent wreath or maybe that’s something you do at home or maybe that’s not something you do at all and your confused about the whole thing. Advent is like lent or like other seasons on the Christian calendar that are meant to put our hearts and aim our hearts through the rhythm of the year towards important things that…that we need to contemplate. The arrival of the Savior of the world is one of those things. So, this is the third Sunday of four in Advent. And this is the Sunday of joy. And we enter into the joy at contemplating the arrival of the Savior, not only for Christmas, not only just to commemorate Christmas, but also the joy and the longing that we have as we wait the second Advent, the arrival of the Savior back. So, that’s where we are in our…in the season. In our journey through the Scriptures this year, things have been speeding up for a while now as we move through some of the shorter books of the Bible. Today is no different. Yesterday, we read in its entirety the book of Jonah and in the Old Testament today we’ll begin the book of Micah. We won’t begin and end it today, we’re not gonna read the whole thing. It’ll take us a couple of days, but we will begin the book of Micah. So, let’s just kinda consider were going.
Introduction to the book of Micah:
This is the sixth of 12 books known as the minor prophets. And the minor prophets conclude the Old Testament. And as I have said just about every time we’ve come to a new book of the minor prophets, they’re not minor because they’re less significant, they’re just…they’re called minor prophets because they’re shorter. And Micah is one of the minor prophets, although very little about Micah as a person and Micah’s life is known outside of this book, but there is some information. Micah’s name means who is like God. And he was from the town of Moresheth, which many scholars associate with Moresheth, Gath. And that would place him in the lowlands among the villages of southern Judah. And this book, Micah, starts by saying the Lord gave this message to Michael of Moresheth during the years when Jotham, Ahaz and Hezekiah were kings of Judah, and the visions he saw concerned both Samaria and Jerusalem, so the northern kingdom and the southern kingdom. So, we understand who he was speaking about. And from the different references to the Kings we can likely date Micah’s ministry to the early decades of the eighth century B.C. Also, Micah gives a brief mention in the book of Jeremiah, which tells us that Micah’s prophecies were still being referenced over 100 years after the fact. Micah follows a pattern three different times in the book. First, there are predictions and utterances of doom and judgment and then those are followed by words of hope and restoration, which is obviously not unlike other prophetic books in the Bible, but scholars have noted that this appears to be very intentional in Micah’s writing. And contained in Micah’s writings are promises of a coming messianic deliverer. Like Micah 5:2 gets quoted in…in the New Testament book of Matthew. Jesus actually quotes from Micah when He’s explaining the disrupting of His coming and what His ministry and message were bringing to the world system. One thing is sure in Micah, God is absolutely disgusted with corruption and idolatry and rebellion and those who use their power to exploit the less fortunate. But what we’ll see is that God is even more passionate about restoration and hope for those who keep his covenant. So, with that, we will begin the book of Micah. We’re in a new week so we will read from a new translation. We’ll read from the God’s Word Translation this week. And today, Micah chapters 1 through 4.
Prayer:
Father, we thank You for Your word and as we move into this new week, we invite Your Holy Spirit into every aspect of our lives, every thought, every word, every deed, all that we are. And we pray Holy Spirit that we would have the opportunity to see where You are leading them to go where You are leading and to be Your hands and feet in this world as we continue in this season of festivity as we celebrate with great joy today and as we contemplate joy all week long at Your arrival, the representation of the change in the world this time of year. And, so, come Holy Spirit into all that we take part in this coming week, all of the conversations that will take place, all of the actions that we must do. We invite You into all of it and we ask this in the name of Jesus. Amen.
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And that’s it for today. Happy third Sunday of Advent. I am Brian I love you and I’ll be waiting for you here tomorrow.