Micah 3:8
But as for me, I am filled with power,
with the Spirit of the Lord,
and with justice and might,
to declare to Jacob his transgression,
to Israel his sin.
The first 7 verses of chapter 3 have all been pretty bad news. The leaders and prophets have abused their position, misleading and destroying the people, and so they will be silenced. We’re left thinking, “What now? How can these people possibly return to God if they have no way to hear him speak?” But all is not lost. In verse 8 we discover that there is at least one true prophet left in the land. Micah has been appointed and equipped by God to speak with power and justice and might. Here is the prophet that they need - one who will call a spade a spade and confront them with the reality of their sin. We’ll need to wait and see how the people respond to this message, but they definitely can’t blame God for leaving them in the dark. He has silenced the false prophets and sent them a better one, who comes with divine power and authority to declare that they are sinners deserving judgement.
Micah himself may not have known it, but he was just a shadow of the even better prophet that God would one day send. Jesus stepped into our world of false messages, filled with the Spirit of the Lord, to tell us the truth about ourselves - that we are sinners who need to be reconciled to the holy God who made us. Why would the most loving man who ever lived speak so much about sin and judgement? Not to crush us under the weight of our wrong-doing. But to wake us up to our need of a saviour, so that we would come to him, who bore the weight of our sin for us at the cross. Let’s praise him for that today.
