Missions Promises – Micah 4

Missions Promises: Micah 4

Our missionary from Brazil spoke to the church that morning, and I will share the message the way he gave it. He and his wife train pastors and raise up leaders, in a growing local church, in a pastoral internship program in its fourth year, and in training sites in other cities and villages. Missions is hard work, he told us. “It’s easy for us to be all buttoned up and look like we got everything together and tell you the success stories but there are times when we are not able to sleep and crying and we are desperate for the Lord to work.” In those moments, it is you who are praying for us.

He chose Micah 4 and encouraged us, since we are all on mission, whether sharing the gospel in prisons, with friends, or with family. The work can be discouraging, and we can feel like we have no fruit. He started with David Livingstone, who was attacked by a lion that crushed his arm. How do you keep going? Tribesmen once lined up with spears and bows and said he could not cross a river. That night he wrote in his journal, “on thy word alone I lean,” quoted Jesus’ promise in Matthew 28, I am with you always, wrote “this is a sure promise,” and wrote, “I feel quite calm now thank God.” The next morning they crossed and the tribesmen did nothing. He saw very little fruit. After one sermon he wrote, “it was a quiet audience today but the seed was sown.” He persevered because of the promises of God. Micah 4 is full of promises, for his kingdom and for his people.

Promises for His Kingdom

It will be exalted. Verse 1 says the mountain of the house of the Lord will be established as the highest of the mountains. But Micah 3:12 says Zion would be plowed as a field and the temple mount a wooded height, since they were about to be attacked and exiled. So the promise is that the temple will be rebuilt. I see three layers. The temple was rebuilt after exile, though the old men cried because it was smaller than Solomon’s. One day Jesus will come back and crush all his enemies. And now the church is the temple of God, and he is making it the center of the world through the church.

It will be international. Verse 2: many nations shall come and say, let us go up to the mountain of the Lord, that he may teach us his ways. A kingdom has imports and exports. The imports are people, from North Africa, Brazil, Thailand, Spring Hill, and Nashville. The export is God’s word, which goes out from Zion. “We send out the word and we bring in people.” That is missions, and your church does it every Sunday. When I take my pastoral interns on a commercial flight, a four-seater plane, a canoe, and a hike to a little tribe on the Amazon with a church and untrained leaders, we train them to be a gospel outpost.

It will be peaceful. Verse 3: they shall beat their swords into plowshares. This verse is written on the wall in front of the United Nations. I am skeptical that the UN will fulfill it. To fulfill it you have to come to Mount Zion, submit to King Jesus, and “you have to know the Prince of Peace.” It will be fulfilled as Jesus reigns in his church and as you share the gospel so friends can have peace with God. If you are here and not yet a Christian, you may not realize you are at war with God. “Naturally we are sinners and we are at war with God.” But Jesus turned a cross, an instrument of warfare, into a means of salvation. Verse 5 divides all people into two kinds: those who walk each in the name of their god, and us, who walk in the name of the Lord our God forever. A friend in our Brazilian church was saved out of a cult that did not let people read the Bible. Now he brings notebooks to church full of notes about what he is learning.

Promises for His People

We often feel the world is winning and the church is small. Verse 6 describes us: the lame, those driven away, those afflicted. Promise not to be offended. God chose the weak of this world to shame the strong, and he will make the lame a remnant and the cast out a strong nation. You may think you cannot talk well about the gospel, or fear hard questions, or are nervous to ask someone if you can disciple them. “God will make you strong and he will work through your weakness.”

He redeems the hurting. Verses 9 and 10: why do you cry aloud? Pain seizes you like a woman in labor. You will go to Babylon, but there you shall be rescued. There is real pain, physical, family, financial, and spiritual, and probably some in this room you have not shared. But “your pain is temporary like a woman in childbirth.” God has a purpose for you in it. “When God pushes on us and puts cracks in our life what pushes out through the cracks is life for others.” It is 2 Corinthians 4: death in us, life in you. He has not forgotten you.

And we will win. Verse 11 says many nations are assembled against you, saying let her be defiled. Satan is attacking your family and churches. But verse 12 says “they do not know the thoughts of the Lord.” They are gathered like sheaves to the threshing floor. Verse 13: arise and thresh, for I will make your horn iron. It is Genesis 3:15 again. But we are tempted to use force, manipulation, personality, or politics, and those are the ways of the world. The church exports the word. We win by being faithful to what God told us to do, declaring the word confidently and calmly.