But As For Me, I Will Watch for the Lord

In one paragraph

This was the second Sunday of Advent, and Pastor Ray continued the church's study through the minor prophets by walking through the book of Micah. He traced Micah's movement from sharp judgment to genuine hope, showing how the prophet's words, written around 750 years before Christ, point directly to Jesus. The service closed with communion and a story from Pastor Ray's own office that put the...

Read together

1. Luke 2 Advent reading about the angel appearing to the shepherds with good news
2. 2 Thessalonians 3:16 Advent candle of peace lighting, read by the Hammond family
3. Micah 5:2 prophecy of Messiah's birthplace in Bethlehem
4. Micah 5 messianic prophecy that the coming one will shepherd his flock and be their peace against the Assyrian
5. Micah 6:1 God calls the mountains as witnesses to his indictment against his people
6. Micah 6:6-7 rhetorical questions about what sacrifices could satisfy God
7. Micah 6:8 the Lord requires doing justice, loving kindness, and walking humbly with God
8. Micah 6:9-11 the voice of the Lord calling to the city, questioning dishonest weights and measures
9. Micah 6:12-16 judgment on the city for violence, lies, and following the statutes of Omri and Ahab
10. Micah 7 Micah's lament over the absence of godly people and the dysfunction around him
11. Numbers 22-24 the story of Balak and Balaam, referenced to explain the Micah 6 passage
12. Psalm 14 there is no righteous one, no not one, quoted in connection with Micah's lament
13. Psalm 53 noted as identical in content to Psalm 14, no one seeks after God
14. Romans 3 there is no righteous one, no not one, all have sinned and fall short
15. 1 Peter 5:6 humble yourself under the mighty hand of God and he will lift you up at the proper time
16. Micah 7:18-20 who is a God like you who pardons wrongdoing and casts sins into the depths of the sea
17. John 14:6 Jesus says I am the way the truth and the life, connected to Micah's promise of truth
18. 1 Corinthians 11 words of institution for communion, on the night Jesus was betrayed he took bread

Talk about it

1. The pastor pointed out that Micah 5:2 names Bethlehem as the birthplace of Messiah roughly 750 years before it happened. What does that kind of long-range prophecy do for your confidence in the rest of Scripture?
2. Micah 6:8 says God requires us to do justice, love kindness, and walk humbly with God. The pastor said this is addressed to God's own people, not just outsiders. Where do you find it hardest to live out one of those three things right now?
3. Micah looks around at the corruption and family breakdown of his day and says, 'But as for me, I will watch for the Lord.' What does it look like practically to hold that posture when everything around you seems to be going the wrong direction?
4. The pastor said every sin ever committed will either be justly condemned or mercifully forgiven, and that God delights in mercy. How does sitting with both sides of that statement, the condemnation and the delight in mercy, change the way you think about your own sin?
5. The boy who had grown up in church answered the gospel question with a list of things he had to do, while the boy with no church background said, 'You said Jesus did it. I'll take that.' What habits or assumptions, even good ones, can quietly pull us back toward that first kind of thinking?