Introduction:
3 Reasons to Stop Hitting the Snooze Button (Micah 3:1-12):
- Your Sin is worse than you think. (Micah 3:1-4)
- False teachers are trying to Manipulate you. (Micah 3:5-8)
1 Timothy 3:1-7 - The saying is trustworthy: If anyone aspires to the office of overseer, he desires a noble task. Therefore an overseer must be above reproach, the husband of one wife, sober-minded, self-controlled, respectable, hospitable, able to teach, not a drunkard, not violent but gentle, not quarrelsome, not a lover of money. He must manage his own household well, with all dignity keeping his children submissive, for if someone does not know how to manage his own household, how will he care for God’s church? He must not be a recent convert, or he may become puffed up with conceit and fall into the condemnation of the devil. Moreover, he must be well thought of by outsiders, so that he may not fall into disgrace, into a snare of the devil.
- Being a little Religious won't help you. (Micah 3:9-12)
Jeremiah 26:17-19 - And certain of the elders of the land arose and spoke to all the assembled people, saying, “Micah of Moresheth prophesied in the days of Hezekiah king of Judah, and said to all the people of Judah: ‘Thus says the LORD of hosts, “‘Zion shall be plowed as a field; Jerusalem shall become a heap of ruins, and the mountain of the house a wooded height.’ Did Hezekiah king of Judah and all Judah put him to death? Did he not fear the LORD and entreat the favor of the LORD, and did not the LORD relent of the disaster that he had pronounced against them? But we are about to bring great disaster upon ourselves.”
Sermon Notes (PDF): BLANK
Hint: Highlight blanks above for answers!
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00:43-00:52
Open up your Bibles to the book of Micah, and we'll be looking, excuse me, at chapter three this week.
00:54-01:08
If I seemed a little out of it last week, maybe it was because a few days prior to last Sunday, I was mowing and I hit a yellowjackets nest.
01:09-01:10
Have you ever done that, ladies and gentlemen?
01:11-01:14
A show of hands, how many people, okay.
01:15-01:19
So you know, I got stung somewhere around 30 times.
01:21-01:33
And, you know, after the initial Yellow Jacket attack, I had one thing on my mind.
01:35-01:48
I said, "They're all gonna die." And I went in the garage and I got the can, you know, the deadly shaving cream, you know what I'm talking about?
01:49-01:50
(mimics shaving cream spraying)
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And it foams up.
01:52-01:58
So I went and I got it and I'm like ready to unleash my wrath.
01:58-02:03
And Erin goes, "No, no, no, you have to wait "till it gets dark when they're all in a nest." And she was right.
02:04-02:07
She goes, "You have to wait." She was right.
02:08-02:14
So until then, I just stood and gave the nest dirty looks.
02:14-02:18
I'm like, it's coming, it's coming.
02:20-02:23
Well, then it started to get dark.
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I could wait no longer.
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And I filled that nest up with that deadly foam.
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But somehow it just wasn't enough.
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So I went and I got a book of matches.
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And I lit that foam on fire.
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This is a true story.
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I lit that foam on fire.
02:47-02:55
And I thought for a second, you know, we're right in the middle of this series on Micah and we're talking about God's judgment.
02:56-02:59
And for a second there, I felt like God.
03:01-03:10
Like, they obviously hated me despite allowing them to live in my yard.
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And I poured out my judgment.
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I'm like, wow, I'm really like God, but then it hit me.
03:19-03:21
Do you know what I didn't think at the time?
03:24-03:40
What I didn't think was, before I come and exterminate them, if only there was a way that I could become a Yellow Jacket and go and tell them about the judgment that's coming.
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And maybe even lay down my yellow jacket life so that they could be spared from the wrath that was coming.
03:51-03:52
I didn't think that.
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And I realized maybe I'm not as much thinking like God in that moment as I thought.
03:59-04:01
Because that's what the gospel of Jesus Christ is all about.
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as God came to save us from His own wrath.
04:13-04:14
We're talking about judgment here.
04:16-04:28
Yes, it's coming, but we saw in Romans one, when God, or when a culture, when a nation rejects God, God abandons them.
04:30-04:31
Talked about that a few weeks ago.
04:31-04:50
And the question in Micah is, "What do I do when my nation's facing judgment?" On Micah chapter 1, we learned that we should be mourning over the condition of the lost and the coming judgment.
04:51-04:57
And then last week, we saw in the midst of it, there's going to be preachers stand up preaching a false gospel.
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We need to learn how to discern people.
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We need to learn how to discern.
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Today, Micah's message is very simple.
05:08-05:08
We gotta wake up.
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We have got to wake up.
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Let's bow our heads, I'm gonna ask for you to pray for me and I will pray for you.
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As we approach God's Word together, this is very serious and we wanna make sure that, we wanna make sure we get it right.
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Please pray for me.
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Father, we just ask now that you open our hearts up to receive your Word.
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And there are parts of your Word that are easier to hear than others.
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But it's all your Word.
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We can't pick and choose what we want to hear, what we want to preach, what we want to believe.
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And I pray, Father, today that we would approach Micah chapter three the same way we'd approach John chapter three.
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Give us reverence and an eagerness to apply.
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We pray in Jesus' name.
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And all of God's people said, amen.
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Amen.
06:49-06:54
How many people here by show of hands are snoozers?
06:54-07:02
And what I mean is when that alarm goes off, whether you have an old school clock or it's on your phone, you hit the snooze button.
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Show of hands, how many people are snoozers?
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You know what would be really fun is to see who here hits the snooze button the most.
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I don't know if we have time for that.
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Taylor, how many times do you typically hit the snooze button?
07:14-07:14
Just one.
07:15-07:17
Oh, your kids wake you up.
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Yes, yes, you are in that stage of life, aren't you?
07:21-07:28
Well, you know, what I found is sometimes it's a lot easier to hit the snooze button than other times, right?
07:29-07:37
Like if it's a morning when you don't have to go to work, you just keep hitting that snooze.
07:38-07:44
But you know, it's a lot harder to hit the snooze when you know that you have a big event that day, right?
07:45-07:50
Like maybe you have a job interview, maybe you're preaching at the church.
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And you know, like, no, no, I can't hit the snooze.
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I gotta wake up.
07:57-08:04
No, I have to wake up because something too serious is before me today.
08:04-08:07
I just can't snooze through it.
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And really that's the message of Micah chapter three.
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Because you're gonna see as we go through the text, he doesn't really cover new ground.
08:20-08:32
He talks about the same subjects that we talked about in chapter 2, but he's doubling down on the intensity.
08:33-08:34
Why?
08:35-08:42
Well, preachers get this, and I know parents get this.
08:43-08:51
Parents, have you ever said something to your kids, like serious, and you're trying to and have this serious talk and they're just kinda like, meh, has that ever happened, parent?
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I don't want you to raise your hand now, but you're trying to say something serious and they're just kinda like, meh.
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And you're like, no, no, no, you need to listen to me.
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This is serious, pay attention.
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Maybe you aren't recognizing the gravity of this situation here.
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And that's what Micah does in chapter three here.
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He's saying, stop hitting the snooze button.
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This is deadly serious what we're talking about.
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You need to wake up.
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And you're like, right, right.
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They need to wake up.
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No church.
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No, we need to wake up.
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You know, people talk about revival in the land.
09:42-09:43
Where's that gonna start?
09:46-09:47
It's gonna start here.
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So on your outline today, wake up, wake up.
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Three reasons to stop hitting the snooze button.
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The first one is this, write this down.
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Your sin is worse than you think.
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Your sin is worse than you think.
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Look at Micah chapter three.
10:09-10:18
He says, "And I said, 'Here you heads of Jacob "and rulers of the house of Israel.'" Is it not for you to know justice?
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You who hate the good and love the evil.
10:24-10:31
Micah says, you're the leaders of God's covenant nation, Israel, you should know better.
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You should know God's ways.
10:35-10:41
He goes, but the problem is you hate what's good, but you love what's evil.
10:41-10:47
I'm like, wow, if there's a description of our culture in America today, right there it is.
10:49-11:11
He goes on, he says, "You who tear the skin from off my people and their flesh from off their bones, who eat the flesh of my people, and flay their skin from off them, and break their bones in pieces, and chop them up like meat in a pot, like flesh in a cauldron." That's a callback to the covetousness we talked about in chapter two.
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He's describing how they consumed the victims and the possessions of the victims.
11:17-11:19
We're gonna get back to this in just a second.
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But look at verse four.
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"Then they will cry to the Lord, "but he will not answer them.
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"He will hide his face from them at that time "because they have made their deeds evil." Beginning in verse four, they will cry to the Lord.
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That word for cry in Hebrew is not the cry of repentance.
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Like, God, God, I'm sorry.
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I'm so sorry for what I've done.
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God, please forgive me.
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It's not that kind of cry.
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This Hebrew word is actually a distress cry.
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It's a cry of God, God, help us, God, please do something.
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And Micah says, no, no.
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God's not gonna do anything on that day.
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You're gonna cry for help and he's going to ignore you.
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Why?
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Because God rejects those who reject him.
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That was the sermon a few weeks ago.
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So, Mike, you hear his saying in these first four verses, "Listen up, listen up.
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You want to violently consume God's people?
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Well, when judgment comes and you beg God for help, He's going to have nothing to do with you." But I want you to, here's what I want you to do.
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I don't want you to look back at these verses.
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Here's what I want you to do.
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I want you to close your eyes for a second.
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I'm going to read, I'm going to read part of verse two and then verse three again.
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Close your eyes and I just want you to hear this.
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Sometimes we kind of fly through the text and ignore the heaviness of it.
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Close your eyes, just listen to this.
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He says, "Who tear the skin from off my people "and their flesh from off their bones.
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"Who eat the flesh of my people and flay their skin from off them, and break their bones in pieces, and chop them up like meat in a pot, like flesh in a cauldron.
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You can open your eyes now, but you might be like, Micah, whoa, dude, dude, why are you being so graphic?
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"Why are you talking like this, Micah?" He's saying, "Wake up." He's saying, "Your sin is worse than you think it is." You see, we talked about this last week.
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They were taking land from people.
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People in authority were abusing their authority and they were taking land and fields and houses from innocent people.
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And here's the thing with sin.
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We are all, when it comes to our favorite sin, we're self-justified.
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We excuse it.
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And that's what these people did.
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They're like, hey, hey.
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Yeah, okay, so we're taking land from people.
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Look, it's just business.
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It's all being done legally.
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I mean, look, everybody does business like this.
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And you know what these people, if they were in our position, they would do it exactly the same.
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I'm sure it was justified in their minds.
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And Mike is coming along here and he goes, "Hey, do you know how God sees what you're doing?" From God's perspective, people, he says, "God sees you like wild animals ripping a carcass apart.
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"That's how God sees it.
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"God sees it like butchers hacking up flesh throwing it in a pot, it's a really grotesque picture.
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This is the wake up call because church, we're just like these leaders.
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We refuse to see sin for what it is.
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And we are the masters of justifying our favorite sin.
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And in our culture, We're the masters of making evil sound good.
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We make it sound good.
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Like what do you mean?
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Let's talk about abortion.
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Self justified, right?
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How do we make that sound good in our culture?
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We say, hey, abortion, you know what the real issue is?
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It's about a woman's choice.
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That's the issue.
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We're simply removing unwanted tissue from a woman.
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You know what the reality is?
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We're taking the most innocent and vulnerable people in our country, about to be born babies, and we're stabbing and hacking them, and we're murdering them in the womb.
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We're violently taking their life away.
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Can't we see it for what it is?
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Can't we see it how God sees it?
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We've talked before about perversion in our land.
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Again, we make evil sound good because we're so self-justified in it.
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What do we say regarding perversion?
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We say things like, "Love is love." No one can tell somebody who they can love.
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The reality is this.
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We've taken the beautiful gift of intimacy that God has given to married people, and we've twisted it into sick and unnatural things.
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They're like, "Yeah, we sure have.
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What about our sins?
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You can see the church, we are the masters of pointing it to things, the sins that other people do that we don't do, and shame on them.
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What about our sins?
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Are we willing to see our sins the way God sees them?
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What about the sins that happen in the church?
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Sins like pornography, making evil sound good, right?
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What do we say?
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All men have needs, boys will be boys.
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It doesn't really hurt anybody.
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Except the young girls that are trafficked and abused, whose bodies are used as tools for lustful gratification.
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And for the people that view it, it turns women into objects.
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It damages marriage relationships.
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And it turns otherwise strong, confident men into weak addicts.
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That's what it does.
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That's the reality.
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What about our sins?
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What about the sin of slander?
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We make evil sound good, don't we?
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Oh, you know, girls talk.
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Just sharing the news, you know what I, it's just, let me, it's just stuff that I heard, you know, it's just chit-chat.
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The reality of slander is you're making someone think negatively about somebody else.
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Slander's a cancer that spreads.
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or destroying somebody's reputation.
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I could go on and on and on of the sins that, like in Micah's day, we need to take a fresh look at and see how grotesque they really are.
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I can talk about the horrors of addiction, the bitterness of unforgiveness.
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Those of you who own a business, engaging in dishonest business practices, knowingly ripping people off.
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But church, you know what?
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We can, all day long in the church, we can bemoan drag queen story hour, and we can bemoan government corruption, but when are we gonna take our sin seriously?
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And you're like, yeah, you know what?
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You're right about the government and the drag queens.
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They need to wake up.
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No, you need to wake up.
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and I need to wake up.
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Because your sin's worse than you think it is.
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Can you see it how God sees it?
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Second reason to stop hitting the snooze button is because false teachers are trying to manipulate you.
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Look at verse five.
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He says, "Thus says the Lord concerning the prophets." We talked about this last week.
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Here it is again.
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Who lead my people astray?
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Who cry peace when they have something to eat, but declare war against him who puts nothing into their mouths?
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This fires God up.
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People are out looking for spiritual direction and they are misled and manipulated.
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Wake up.
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Wake up.
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are preachers that are driven by greed.
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And that's what he says here.
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Did you see that in verse five?
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That there's peace, there's peace for you if you pay, but if you don't pay, there's war.
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Like, what does that mean?
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It means something like this.
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It means somebody getting up and saying, "Hey, you need to, look, you need to support your giving "to this church to support me because I am the man of God.
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"I am bringing unto you the word of the Lord, "so you need to make sure that as the man of God, "you are supporting me.
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"And if you do make sure that I have everything that I want, "God's gonna bless you.
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"And if you don't give to me, "then God's hand is gonna be against you." Do you think there's manipulation from the pulpits?
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Do you think there's manipulation from your TV preachers or your favorite preacher you listen to on the internet?
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Better wake up.
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Look at verse six.
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He says, "Therefore it shall be night to you.
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"Therefore it shall be night to you without vision "and darkness to you without divination.
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"The sun shall go down on the prophets "and the day shall be black over them.
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"The seers shall be disgraced, "and the diviners shall be put to shame.
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"They shall all cover their lips, "for there is no answer from God." He says judgment's gonna descend like night darkness.
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He goes, there's not gonna be a word from God for that.
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Now listen, he's talking about seers and diviners and all of that.
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I understand that Micah, in this passage, he wasn't trying to make some kind of a distinction over what is a legitimate form of revelation and what is not.
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He's just saying, look, regardless of the method, they're not gonna get anything from God.
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And ultimately, they're gonna be put to shame.
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Verse eight, he goes, 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 transgressions, and to Israel his sins.
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Mike, it does a little contrast here.
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Say, look, you know what, Israel, I'm swimming against the stream here.
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He says, I have spirit power.
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He says, and I have the power to declare sin because that's the issue.
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And you gotta watch out for the preacher that never talks about sin.
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All right?
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Discernment, we talked about that last week.
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Let's take it up another level.
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Discernment's important that not only you know the truth, but discernment's also important so that you're not being taken advantage of.
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Listen, you have to evaluate the message of the preacher.
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100%.
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But you also have to evaluate the character of the preacher.
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And if you read your Bible, the Bible really seems to place the premium on the preacher's character.
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Here's what I mean.
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Let's just look at this real quick.
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1 Timothy chapter three.
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I'm gonna fly through this.
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We could spend a whole series on this, but I just want you to see something here.
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This saying is trustworthy.
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If anyone aspires to the office of overseer, that's elder, pastor, shepherd, says he desires a noble task.
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Therefore an overseer must be above reproach, the husband of one wife, sober-minded, self-controlled, hospitable, I'm sorry, respectable, hospitable, able to teach, not a drunkard, not violent, but gentle, not quarrelsome, not a lover of money.
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He must manage his own household well with all dignity, keeping his children submissive.
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For if someone does not know how to manage his own household how will he care for God's church?
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He must not be a recent convert or he may become puffed up with conceit and fall into the condemnation of the devil.
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Moreover, he must be well thought of by outsiders so that he may not fall into disgrace, into a snare of the devil.
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Keep those verses up there, please, AV team.
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What I want you to see here is this.
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In this description of the pastor, of the overseer, of the shepherd of the church, do you notice there's one statement about teaching there?
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It's important, but there's one statement.
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And I counted, and look, my wife's the math person in our family, so I didn't ask her to check this, but you can count.
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I counted 13 other descriptions that had to do with his character.
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Do you see that?
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Why?
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Because character shapes motives.
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That's why.
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And someone who knows and loves Jesus Christ wants you to know and love Jesus Christ.
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But someone lacking character is going to use the word of God to try to get something from you.
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Wake up.
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Who are you getting your messages from?
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Because there's a lot of preachers out there who are going to try to manipulate you.
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Three reasons to stop hitting the snooze button.
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Well, your sin's worse than you think it is. There's false preachers out there trying to manipulate you.
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The third reason is this.
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You need to wake up because being a little religious won't help you.
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Being a little religious won't help you.
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Go back to verse 9, he says, "Hear this, you heads of the house of Jacob and rulers of the house of Israel." Back to them.
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"Who detest justice and make crooked all that is straight, who build Zion with blood and Jerusalem with iniquity." You know what occurred to me this week as I was studying this, there's a lot of people that are like, you know, preachers should never talk about politics, right?
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Should never talk about politics in the church.
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That's a separate thing.
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We should be dealing with the spiritual things here.
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And preachers should never address politics.
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And I was reading this this week, I thought, you know, Micah didn't seem to think that way.
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Micah wasn't shy about saying, corruption in the leadership.
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And listen, I'm not saying church needs to turn to CNN or like the Hannity Hour or Wolf Blitzen or whatever his name is. I'm not saying that.
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What I am saying is this, if the church isn't helping you process what's going on in our country's leadership through the word of God, then who's going to?
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Look at verse 11. He says, "Its heads give judgment for a bribe. Its priests teach for for a price, it's profits, practice divination for money.
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And Mike is like, "You're all corrupt.
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You're all corrupt.
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The only thing that motivates you is money.
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Every single one of you is walking around with your hand out, trying to squeeze a nickel from people." How could they do that?
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Here it is, here it is, look, look at verse 11 again.
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Says, "Yet they lean on the Lord and say, 'There's not the Lord in the midst of us.
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No disaster shall come upon us.'" Didn't we hear this before?
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Oh yeah, back in chapter two, verse six.
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Disgrace will not overtake us.
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They just keep preaching the same trash message.
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They think that God is on their side.
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Do you see that?
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He says, if they lean on the Lord, they're like, yeah, everything's fine.
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God's on our side.
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Nothing's gonna happen to us, come on.
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Nothing's gonna happen to us.
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We're the people of God.
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And Micah here says, wrong.
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God's gonna deal with you.
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Look at verse 12.
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Therefore, because of you, Zion shall be plowed as a field, Jerusalem shall become a heap of ruins, in the mountain of the house, wooded height.
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Micah says, "You guys think you're okay because you got a little religion in you, right?" And I echo that to say, what about you, church?
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Do you think your sin is okay just because you come to church?
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You think, "I'm not gonna face any consequences for my sin.
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Nobody's perfect, and I have this sin that I've been hanging onto for a long time.
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I'm not gonna face any consequences.
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Micah says, "Wake up." Because when you say that you lean on the Lord, that makes you more accountable, not less.
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Micah says, "Being a little religious "is not going to help you." So we see in verse 12, Micah's message to Israel, he is, it's coming, total ruin.
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Sometimes that's not even enough to wake people up.
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But will we wake up?
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Did you know that Micah's message right here in verse 12 saved the prophet Jeremiah a hundred years later?
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A hundred years after Micah preached this, this very message saved Jeremiah.
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Did you know that?
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Jeremiah chapter 26, I'm gonna give you the paraphrase.
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You can go ahead and read this later if you want, But Jeremiah 26, God had Jeremiah preaching in the temple courts, repent or face the consequences.
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That sounds familiar.
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Well, Jeremiah 26 says the priests and the prophets and the people all grabbed them and they're like, you're going to die.
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And Jeremiah is like, again, this is paraphrasing, Jeremiah is like, God sent me, so not a great idea what you're doing right now.
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But I want you to see these verses, Jeremiah 26.
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Look at this, it says, "And certain of the elders of the land arose "and spoke to all the assembled people saying," okay, they got Jeremiah there, they're gonna kill him.
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"Elders step up," look what they say.
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"Micah of Moresheth prophesied in the days of Hezekiah, "king of Judah," 100 years ago, "and said to all the people of Judah, "Thus says the Lord of hosts, "Zion shall be plowed as a field, "Jerusalem shall become a heap of ruins "in the mountain of the house, a wooded height." Did Hezekiah, king of Judah and all Judah, put him to death?
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Did he not fear the Lord and entreat the favor of the Lord and did not the Lord relent of the disaster that he had pronounced against them?
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But we are about to bring great disaster upon ourselves.
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See what the elders said?
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They're like, wait a second.
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You realize Hezekiah didn't kill Micah for preaching the way that Jeremiah is preaching.
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Hezekiah actually listened to Micah, and God relented.
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And they're like, so you know what guys, maybe killing Jeremiah, that might be bad for us.
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And Jeremiah was ultimately spared from this execution attempt, and God postponed disaster.
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And the reason I share that is this.
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I wanna give you a word of encouragement.
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Because sometimes you have to say hard things from the Lord to people who don't wanna hear it.
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Like Micah.
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Maybe you have to say hard things.
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You know, sharing the word of the Lord with someone who doesn't want to hear it, maybe for you, maybe it's an adult wayward child.
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Maybe it's an unsaved coworker.
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Maybe it's a stubborn elderly parent.
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But you know, I doubt Micah had any idea When he preached this, I doubt he had any idea that his words a century later would save one of the greatest prophets of all time.
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And for you, even if it doesn't look like you're sharing God's word has any effect in that moment, you just never know how God's gonna use that down the road.
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or worship team would make their way back forward.
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We're gonna pray.
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Father in heaven, not a comfortable passage.
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It kind of smacks us all right between the eyes.
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Father, I pray that that smack wakes us up.
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Because Father, even as your church, we've become so complacent.
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And we think that just because we're the church and just because we believe and just because we carry a Bible that we're exempt from any consequences for sin.
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When your word tells us that you discipline your children.
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And it's real easy for us to point at the gross sins of our culture that we're not doing while we justify the gross sins that we are doing.
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So Father, I pray today that your word would be our wake-up call to get serious in pursuing you, to get serious in our walks with Christ, to get serious in the way that we view our sin.
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We pray in Jesus' name, amen.
Small Group Discussion
Read Micah 3:1-12
What was your big take-away from this passage / message?
Why are each of us so good at justifying our favorite sin? How can we see our sin as God sees it?
How have you seen preachers manipulate people (Micah 3:5)?
Why do you think people think they won’t face discipline / consequences for their sin?
Which of these “4 clues” catches your attention the easiest when you detect a bad sermon?
Breakout
Pray for one another, and HBC, to WAKE UP!