Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit · Sermon No. 1954
“I will surely assemble, O Jacob, all of you; I will surely gather the remnant of Israel, I will put them together as the sheep of Bozrah, as the flock in the midst of their fold: they shall make great noise by reason of the multitude of men. The Breaker is come up before them: they ha ve broken up, and have passed through the gate, and are gone out by it: and their King shall pass before them, and the Lord at the head of them.” Micah 2:12,13.
YOU will remember, dear Friends, from our reading last Sabbath morning, [Sermon #1952, The Holy Spirit—The need of the Age] in the second chapter of the Book of Micah, that the Prophet was delivering reproofs and rebukes against a sinful people, a people who tried to straiten the Spirit and silence the voice of prophecy and refused to listen to the messengers of God. He threatened them with deserved punishment from the Most High. To our surprise, in the very midst of the threat, he delivers a prediction brimming with mercy! Not only is not the Spirit of the Lord straitened, but even the people of the Lord are not to be straitened, for One has come forth who will be to them both Liberator and Leader. Judgment is God’s strange work and He rejoices, even in the midst of threats, to turn aside and utter gracious words to obedient souls! Surely the brightest and most silvery drops of love that have ever distilled upon men have fallen in close connection with storms of Divine Justice. The acceptable year of the Lord is hard by the day of vengeance of our God. The blackness of the tempest of His wrath acts as a foil to set forth more brightly the Glory of His Grace. In this case the thunderbolts stay their course in mid-volley—when the Prophet is hurling destruction upon sin and sinners, he pauses to interpose a passage of promise most rich and gracious—a passage which I wish to open up to you at this time, as the Spirit of God shall enable me.
Certain willful persons were proudly confident that no enemy could reach them behind the walls of their cities, though the Lord declared that He would make Samaria a heap and would strip Jerusalem. They coveted fields and took them by violence and went on with their oppressions as if there had been no Judge of all the earth. The Lord warned them again and again—and assured them that they must not expect to be preserved from chastisement because they were the Lord’s people. They boasted that God would protect them, yes, they leaned upon the Lord and said. “Is not the Lord among us? No evil can come upon us.” He told them that Zion would be plowed as a field and Jerusalem would become heaps. They were by no means to escape the rod! Rather might they look for Grace after they had been severely chastened. They would be carried away into captivity, but yet there would come a day in which they would be gathered out of the places wherein they had been scattered and brought back to their own land. The Prophet cried to the daughter of Zion, “You shall go even to Babylon; there shall you be delivered; there the Lord shall redeem you from the hands of your enemies.”
Truly, the Lord forgets not to devise means to bring, again, His banished ones. The words of Micah in the passage before us agree with many others which fell from the lips of Prophets, for it is the way of the Lord to restore His chosen in the day of their repentance. Did He not say, by His servant Amos, “Lo, I will command, and I will sift the house of Israel among all nations, like as corn is sifted in a sieve; yet shall not the least grain fall upon the earth”? He will preserve the chosen race even in their scattering and then, in His own appointed time, He will seek them out according to His own Words—“He that scattered Israel will gather him and keep him, as a shepherd does his flock.” These gathered ones were to be led back to their land under the guidance of a great Shepherd whose business it would be to break down all obstacles and clear the road for them, so that they might safely reach their resting place.
I have no doubt that the first fulfillment of this prophecy was given when Cyrus conquered Babylon and gave permission for Israel to return to their own land. Cyrus may be regarded as “the Breaker,” for the Prophet Isaiah wrote concerning him, “Thus says the Lord to His anointed, to Cyrus, whose right hand I have held, to subdue nations before him; and I will loose the loins of kings, to open before him the two leaved gates; and the gates shall not be shut; I will go before you, and make the crooked places straight: I will break in pieces the gates of brass, and cut in sunder the bars of iron.” Then the willing-hearted of Israel gathered together to rebuild the House of the Lord, and to this center, multitudes hastened, the Lord being with them and sending them prosperity. It was of these favored ones that we find a striking fulfillment of our text as to the noise made by the concourse of men. Ezra tells us that, “the people shouted with a loud shout, and the noise was heard afar off.” Then was this promise, in a measure, fulfilled.