Contrite Courage

But as for me, I will look to the Lord;
     I will wait for the God of my salvation;
     my God will hear me.
Rejoice not over me, O my enemy;
     when I fall, I shall rise;
when I sit in darkness,
     the Lord will be a light to me.
I will bear the indignation of the Lord
     because I have sinned against him,
until he pleads my cause
     and executes judgment for me.
He will bring me out to the light;
     I shall look upon his vindication. (Micah 7:7–9)

The message today is about brokenhearted boldness. The main point of the message is this: Since we sin against God every day, we should be brokenhearted; and since the throne of God is a throne of grace, we should be bold. You don’t need to be brash to be bold. You don’t need to be coarse to be courageous.

In one sense, I might say that this message is an attempt to put a biblical foundation under one of my favorite quotes from Jonathan Edwards:

All gracious affections . . . are brokenhearted affections. A truly Christian love, . . . to God or men, is a humble brokenhearted love. . . . And their joy, even when it is unspeakable, and full of glory, is a humble brokenhearted joy, and leaves the Christian more poor in spirit, and more like a little child, and more disposed to a universal lowliness of behavior. (Religious Affections, WJE 2:348–49)

So, our theme is brokenhearted boldness because the reality is that Christians sin. God’s people, Old Testament and New Testament, sin. “If we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us” (1 John 1:8).

Do you see this in Micah 7:9? What an amazing verse from God’s word this morning!

I will bear the indignation of the Lord
     because I have sinned against him.

This is a godly confession. This is the way a justified New Testament saint talks. The blood of Jesus covered the sins of the Old Testament saints as much as it covered the sins of the New Testament saints. That’s the point of Romans 3:25: Christ died to show God’s righteousness in passing over the sins of Old Testament believers. So, I take the testimony of Micah 7:7–9 as the testimony of a godly person whose sins are covered by the blood of Jesus and who stands under no condemnation before God because of Christ. Therefore, I take these verses as model verses for how New Testament Christians talk.

“I have sinned against God! And I will not try to defend myself or in any way lessen my guilt. I will bear the indignation of the Lord. He has every right to be angry with me. I put my hand upon my mouth and my back to the rod of his discipline. For I have sinned against the Lord of glory, and I am ashamed. I have sinned against my Savior. I have failed my Father.” Brokenhearted.

Indignation and Grace

But then look at the next two lines of verse 9:

Until he pleads my cause
     and executes judgment for me.

That’s boldness and confidence and ruggedness — “God will plead my cause. God will execute judgment for me.” Not against me — for me!

I have sinned against him, and so I am brokenhearted beneath his holy indignation. But this very God — this very same indignant God — will soon plead my cause; he will take my side and vindicate me; and so, I will be bold in his grace. I am broken under his indignation but bold in his grace. (You could call it “gutsy guilt.” This message is an effort to help you experience gutsy guilt, brokenhearted boldness.)

What is so remarkable and helpful about verse 9 is that it keeps these two things so close together: “I bear the indignation of the Lord,” and “he will plead my cause.”

Many of us feel that we can’t live this way, keeping these two things so close together. If we think of God as angry with us, we collapse in despair. If we think of God as gracious to us, then we feel there is no place for brokenheartedness. And so many people in our day tend to separate what this text keeps together — maybe they even deny that one of them exists.

It is precious beyond measure to be counted righteous in Christ Jesus by faith alone. But it does not mean that God does not have fatherly indignation, displeasure, or anger toward us when we sin. He disciplines every child that he loves (Hebrews 12:6). Justified saints can please their Father (Colossians 1:10), and justified saints can displease their Father. There is holy, loving, fatherly anger that never rejects us, is never contemptuous toward us, will never condemn us, and will only do good to us.

The message today, then, is this: Let’s keep these things together! God’s indignation and God’s grace are not opposites. When we sin, let’s accept the indignation of God and not deny it or hide ourselves from it. But not only that: When we sin, let’s be bold and believe that this very God will soon plead our cause and vindicate us in justice. That’s today’s message: In your experience of God, keep together what God has joined — brokenheartedness and boldness.

Micah’s Evil Day

Now, let’s step back for a moment and make sure that we see the wider picture in the book of Micah.

Here is a prophet who is living and preaching in Judea during the reign of three kings: Jotham, Ahaz, and Hezekiah (Micah 1:1). That was about 700 years before Christ and 2700 years before us. The great political enemy of God’s people in those days was Assyria, and Micah saw the Assyrians destroy the capital of the northern kingdom of Israel in 722 BC. But the most destructive enemy of God’s people was the same then as it is now: namely, sin.

My wife and I have prayed countless times, as we close the evening, “Protect us, O God, from sin and Satan and sickness and sabotage and storm” — in that order, because our own sin is the greatest enemy.

“In your experience of God, keep together what God has joined — brokenheartedness and boldness.”

The hordes of Assyria are a piece of cake to God Almighty. In fact, during Hezekiah’s reign, God slew 185,000 Assyrian soldiers in one night to save his people. External threats are not the most dangerous enemies in our lives. What would bring Judea and Jerusalem to ruin was not Assyria or Babylon. It was sin. And so, God sent Micah to call the people to repent and to warn them of coming judgment.

Their sins are very up-to-date. In 2:1–2, he says,

Woe to those who devise wickedness
     and work evil on their beds!
When the morning dawns, they perform it,
     because it is in the power of their hand.
They covet fields and seize them,
     and houses, and take them away;
they oppress a man and his house,
     a man and his inheritance.

Covetousness, greed, love of money, fraud, abuse of power, oppression of those without power — it’s all about finding happiness in having, possessing, and the power to get.

Then, in 6:11–12, the Lord cries out against the dishonesty in business:

Shall I acquit the man with wicked scales
     and with a bag of deceitful weights?
Your rich men are full of violence;
     your inhabitants speak lies,
     and their tongue is deceitful in their mouth.

The businessmen, the entrepreneurs, are deceitful and violent. Their business dealings are fraudulent. They trick people. Their weights are hollow. They put a five-ounce weight on the scale, it balances with three ounces of corn, and the widow pays for five — so they devour her house. And if someone threatens to expose the injustice, they just happen to get beat up in an alley with a warning note: Keep your mouth shut.

But it’s not just the businesspeople who are corrupt. The clergy are phony and driven by the love of money, not God. Look at 3:5:

Thus says the Lord concerning the prophets
     who lead my people astray,
who cry “Peace”
     when they have something to eat,
but declare war against him
     who puts nothing into their mouths.

In other words, they preach for hire — they say what the rich people in the congregation want to hear so the building gets built faster, the budget gets met, and the pastor eats fine.

It was an evil day. Micah, God’s prophet, had the unpopular job of warning people that the corruption in business and commerce and religion and politics was going to bring terrible judgment from God if there was no repentance.

Writhe and groan, O daughter of Zion,
     like a woman in labor,
for now you shall go out from the city
     and dwell in the open country;
     you shall go to Babylon. (4:10)

For Them and Us

How should the people of God respond to this kind of preaching — full of indictment, full of warning about the judgment of God? Before I show Micah’s answer, let’s be sure we realize that it’s a question for us too, not just them. The church today needs to hear the warnings of Micah.

I don’t want to overstate the case: There are churches that are well-taught, humble, growing in grace, faithful in many ways — a city on a hill. But there are churches where the level of holiness is such that the worship leader is sleeping with his girlfriend; where the elders have a hidden life of lust and lewdness; where the pastors have lost all sense of urgency for the perishing, and all passion for the Savior, and spend more time carving ducks in their basement than praying for their people; where dear missionaries plead for recruits because they serve in a region where there are thirty unreached peoples who want missionaries, but when teams come to explore the possibility, they conclude the climate is too harsh and the medical facilities too far away — churches where saints are not reading their Bibles, but watching the same sin-soaked shows that all the unbelievers are watching; and churches where they pride themselves on personal holiness but have no compassion for the poor.

So, when we ask how a person should respond to Micah’s preaching, the question is not just how they should have, but how we should respond. There is no one who does not need to deal with ongoing repentance.

Micah shows two kinds of response to his preaching. Both are based on grace, but one is right and the other is wrong.

False Security

First, let’s look at the wrong one — the wrong way to depend on grace in the face of Micah’s exposure of our sin. Look at 3:11. Micah speaks to the judges and the priests and the prophets of Jerusalem. He calls them Jerusalem’s “heads.”

Its heads give judgment for a bribe;
     its priests teach for a price;
     its prophets practice divination for money;
yet they lean on the Lord and say,
     “Is not the Lord in the midst of us?
     No disaster shall come upon us.”

What is this response to Micah’s preaching? They respond by saying, “We are secure!” Why do they think that they are secure? “We are secure because the Lord is in the midst of us! There is his temple! There is the ark of the covenant — the covenant! We are the covenant people! We have Abraham as our father (Matthew 3:9). We are leaning on the Lord, leaning on the everlasting arms of grace! We have a God of grace! It’s a covenant of grace. Turn your preaching of judgment to the nations, Micah, not to us.”

Look at Micah 2:6. What do they say to Micah?

“Do not preach” — thus they preach —
     “one should not preach of such things;
     disgrace will not overtake us.”

This is one way to lean on grace, Capitol Hill. And if you do, it will pierce your hand and kill you. There is a wrong way to depend on grace. There is a false security.

Do you remember Dietrich Bonhoeffer, the young German theologian? He was hanged on April 9, 1945, by a special order of Himmler, at the concentration camp in Flossenbürg. He wrote a little book that was read by many in the radical days of the late sixties when I was in college, called The Cost of Discipleship. I bought it when I was a senior, in 1967, and it cost me $1.45. I thank God when I look at my underlining in this book as a 21-year-old student in search of a cause worth living for.

What Bonhoeffer attacks in his first essay in this book is that response to Micah’s preaching. He calls it “cheap grace.” Listen and see if this doesn’t ring true to Scripture and nail the problem of these people. He was writing in 1937.

Cheap grace is the deadly enemy of our Church. We are fighting today for costly grace. (43)

Cheap grace is the preaching of forgiveness without requiring repentance, baptism without church discipline, Communion without confession. . . . Cheap grace is grace without discipleship, grace without the cross, grace without Jesus Christ, living and incarnate. (44–45)

The only man who has the right to say that he is justified by grace alone is the man who has left all to follow Christ. (51)

Cheap grace was rampant in Micah’s day.

They lean on the Lord and say,
     “Is not the Lord in the midst of us?
     No disaster shall come upon us.” (Micah 3:11)

It was rampant in Bonhoeffer’s day in Germany.

We Lutherans have gathered like eagles round the carcass of cheap grace, and there we have drunk of the poison which has killed the life of following Christ. (53)

And today it is rampant among evangelicals in America. And it is the wrong way to respond to the preaching of the prophet Micah. It is the wrong way to lean on grace. And if churches do not change, there will be judgment. What the future holds for us depends, under God, on whether we learn the other way to respond to Micah’s preaching — the other way to lean on grace.

Right Response

That other way is what we were talking about at the beginning. It is the way of brokenhearted boldness. In Micah 7:7–9, the faithful remnant of Israel has learned to respond the right way to the preaching of sin and judgment.

Let me sum up the way of brokenhearted boldness in four steps, all taken from these verses.

1. My God

The way of brokenhearted boldness begins with an unshakable solidarity with God. I get this from the last phrase in verse 7: “I will wait for the God of my salvation; my God will hear me.” The words “my God” show that the right way to lean on grace is based on a deep, unshakable union with God. This is what happens when a person turns from depending on self and begins to depend on God as we meet him today in Jesus Christ.

“The right way to lean on grace is based on a deep, unshakable union with God.”

It’s what a traitor does when he makes up his mind to surrender to his rightful sovereign. He lays down the weapons of his opposition, he accepts the pardon of the king, and then he takes an oath of allegiance. From that day on, he is the king’s subject, and the king is his king — “my king.” So, the way of brokenhearted boldness begins with this unshakable solidarity with God: “He is my God!”

2. My Sin

The way of brokenhearted boldness accepts the indignation of God when we sin against our Sovereign, our God. We don’t minimize its ugliness. We don’t play down the terrible offense it is to God. We don’t say that God can’t get angry at us. Instead, we tremble at his displeasure. We are broken by our sin, and contrite, and remorseful.

I get this from the first two lines of verse 9: “I will bear the indignation of the Lord because I have sinned against him.” I think this is one of the great needs of the hour in the church today — the hour when we sit quietly and humbly in the ashes of our guilt, under the cloud of God’s disfavor, and bear the indignation of the Lord in patience. (See Hebrews 12:5–11, 28–29; 2 Corinthians 7:1; Revelation 3:19; 1 Peter 1:17; Romans 11:20; Ephesians 6:5; Colossians 3:22; Philippians 2:12.)

3. My Cause

The way of brokenhearted boldness never loses confidence in the grace of God, but boldly believes that this very God of indignation will plead our cause and bring us from the darkness of his indignation into the light of life.

You can see this powerfully and boldly expressed in the next lines of verse 9.

I will bear the indignation of the Lord . . .
until he pleads my cause
     and executes judgment for me.
He will bring me out to the light;
     I shall look upon his vindication.

My darkness is the darkness of my sin and his indignation. But he himself will bring me forth to the light. He will be my deliverance.

Look at the boldness of verse 8:

Rejoice not over me, O my enemy;
     when I fall, I shall rise;
when I sit in darkness,
     the Lord will be a light to me.

The difference between this and “cheap grace” is that sin is taken so seriously. There has been a reprehensible fall (“When I fall . . .” in verse 8). There is real and terrible indignation from God (“I will bear the indignation of the Lord” in verse 9). There is a time in awful darkness (“When I sit in darkness . . .” in verse 8). There is brokenness and contrition and remorse as we patiently bear the chastisement of our God. If this is missing from the Christian life, it becomes shallow and inauthentic.

But in the ashes of our regret, the flame of boldness never goes out. It may flicker. But when Satan taunts us that we are finished — that we are not true Christians, that we can’t persevere — we lay hold on Micah’s sword and say, “Rejoice not over me, O my enemy! When I fall, I shall rise; when I sit in darkness, the Lord will be a light to me. . . . He will bring me out to the light; I shall look upon his vindication.”

4. My Hope

Which brings us to the last step in the way of brokenhearted boldness. Since we believe that our God is our only hope — even the God who is angry at our sin — we look to him for deliverance. We scan the horizon constantly for his coming to help us, in his time.

I get this from verse 7.

But as for me, I will look to the Lord;
     I will wait for the God of my salvation;
     my God will hear me.

Unshakable in Him

My closing exhortation this morning is that when you sin you bear the indignation of the Lord in brokenheartedness, and that in this brokenheartedness you boldly believe that this very God will plead your cause, and that you look to him and wait for him with this confidence: “My God will hear me. He is ‘my God’!”

Can you call God your God this morning? Is there an unshakable solidarity between you and him? This is not inherited. It is a gift, embraced by turning to Christ. Let him break you. Let him bless you. Let him make you bold. Amen.