Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit · Sermon No. 3239
“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 forth to the light and I shall behold His righteousness.” Micah 7:9.
Those who expect to find the road to Heaven smooth and unobstructed will discover little in the experience of the ancient saints to support the expectation. The Lord’s people have, in all ages, been tried people. Cowper well says—
“Thepath of sorrow, and that path alone, Leads to the land where sorrow is unknown.”
Though, perhaps, to the youthful mind this may sound rather harsh, yet there is a large amount of comfort in it to the more advanced saint, for he says to himself, “Then my difficulties, my distresses, my tribulations, are no new thing. I am in the footsteps of the flock. I can see that I am travelling in the good old way that leads to God—
‘The way the holy Prophets went, The road that leads from banishment.’ Did I meet with no chastisement, I might fear that I was not a child of God, but inasmuch as I am made to smart under the rod, I may hopefully infer from it, if I feel the Spirit of Adoption within, that my Father has not forgotten me.”
All sorts of trials have beset the saints of God. Rough winds have blown upon them from all points of the compass and they have had bad weather in all seasons of the year. They have been plagued from within and assailed from without. The arrows of temptation have come upwards from the Pit and often the blows of the rod have came downward from the Throne. There is no form of sorrow, I suppose, which has not been experienced by the chosen of the Lord, though, blessed be His name, the Lord has delivered them out of it all!
Micah appears to have been troubled by a combination of difficulties and afflictions. He was grieved at the low estate of the Church—a combination which ought to affect some of us a great deal more than it does. Alas, there are some who will always be contented enough if their own house shall flourish, though God’s House should be utterly ruined! Micah loved the Church of God—and the low estate of it cut him to the quick. Moreover, the generation among whom he lived added to his grief. “The best of them,” he said, “is as a briar: the most upright is sharper than a thorn hedge.”Doubtless he sympathized with the cry of David when he said, “Woe is me, that I sojourn Mesech, that I dwell in the tents of Ke-dar!” Ill company vexed his soul as the Sodomites vexed the soul of the righteous Lot. And it appears, from reading the Chapter though, that he also had a personal difficulty—probably in the matter of slander. He speaks of “her that is my enemy.” You may notice how he dwells upon it—upon himself being persecuted and maligned—but he implies his belief that God would arise and plead his righteous cause. Slander is no uncommon injury for the children of God to bear. That which false tongues glibly utter, ungenerous minds easily credit—and a pure conscience is exquisitely sensitive. The birds will pluck at the ripe fruits, whatever they may do with the sour ones. The longest trees cast the longest shadows and those who stand the highest are often said by men of the world to be the most base. God was slandered in Paradise—why should we expect to escape being slandered in the midst of this world of sinners?
It seems that in the midst of all this affliction which had befallen Micah—affliction far heavier than any words of mine can describe—the Prophet was led into meditation! And in this meditation he penned the words of our text, in which we may discern, first, what the Prophet felt. He Says, “I will bear the indignation of the Lord, because I have sinned against Him.” Secondly, what he believed—“until He pleads my cause, and executes judgment for me.” And, thirdly, what he expected—“He will bring me forth to the light and I shall behold His righteousness.”
I. While tracing out WHAT THE PROPHET FELT, if we happen to be feeling the same, it may comfort us to hear the voice of a fellow pilgrim passing through the Valley of Death-Shade.
Doubtless he felt the smart of the rod. The tone of his utterance shows this. He speaks like a man who could not be callous, for his had been touched in his inmost soul. I think God intends that His people should feel the rod. If we had manifold temptations, but were never depressed in spirit by them, I question whether they would answer any good design. The “necessity” is not only for the trial, but for the “heaviness” which results from the trial, for you remember that the Apostle says, “If necessary, you are in heaviness through manifold temptations.” There is a “necessity” that the rod should make the child smart. To play the Stoic under trouble is a very different thing from playing the Christian. In fact, it is the very opposite of it! Our great Savior did not stand at the grave of Lazarus and say coldly, “It is well,” without any show of emotion—but “Jesus wept.” So we are permitted, no, expected, to weep when God chastens us. Do not ask, dear Friends, that your nerves may became steel and you have sinews of iron. This would be no excellence—it is rather an excellence to be sensitive under the hand of God! I see not how, excepting by the blueness of the wound, the hurt can be made better. It is when the trouble really stings that it blesses—when the flail falls heavily upon the wheat that it separates the chaff from the pure grain! Expect not to play the bravado with God! Expect, rather, to have to humble yourself before Him and out of the depths to cry out, as others have done, unto the Most High! It is clear, from the language he uses, that the Prophet felt the smart of the rod.