David Bahn – Reflections

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These devotions are part of the Follow the Word Bible reading program at St. John Lutheran Church in Cypress, Texas. This year we are reading through the Scriptures together, listening for how God speaks through his Word day by day. I hope you will join me on this journey.

Today’s readings are Micah 2-4, Psalm 25.

Micah 4:1-7

It shall come to pass in the latter days
    that the mountain of the house of the LORD
shall be established as the highest of the mountains,
    and it shall be lifted up above the hills;
and peoples shall flow to it,
²     and many nations shall come, and say:
“Come, let us go up to the mountain of the LORD,
    to the house of the God of Jacob,
that he may teach us his ways
    and that we may walk in his paths.”
For out of Zion shall go forth the law,
    and the word of the LORD from Jerusalem.
³ He shall judge between many peoples,
    and shall decide disputes for strong nations far away;
and they shall beat their swords into plowshares,
    and their spears into pruning hooks;
nation shall not lift up sword against nation,
    neither shall they learn war anymore;
⁴ but they shall sit every man under his vine and under his fig tree,
    and no one shall make them afraid,
    for the mouth of the LORD of hosts has spoken.
⁵ For all the peoples walk
    each in the name of its god,
but we will walk in the name of the LORD our God
    forever and ever.

⁶ In that day, declares the LORD,
    I will assemble the lame
and gather those who have been driven away
    and those whom I have afflicted;
⁷ and the lame I will make the remnant,
    and those who were cast off, a strong nation;
and the LORD will reign over them in Mount Zion
    from this time forth and forevermore.

If you’ve been reading through the Bible with us these past few days, these verses will sound familiar. Isaiah and Micah were contemporaries whose prophecies often echo one another. Together Isaiah 11 and Micah 4 paint a breathtaking picture of the peace and justice that will characterize the reign of the promised Messiah – a kingdom Christ inaugurated at his first coming and will bring to completion when he returns.

I especially love the imagery of verses 4 and 5:

“…they shall sit every man under his vine and under his fig tree, and no one shall make them afraid, for the mouth of the LORD of hosts has spoken. For all the peoples walk each in the name of its god, but we will walk in the name of the LORD our God forever and ever.”

Whether or not you have a fig tree – or even wish to sit under one – doesn’t that sound delightful? The vine and fig tree became one of Israel’s favorite pictures of God’s blessing: a place of settled peace, abundant provision, and fearless rest in his presence.

Paul reminds us that we are already seated with Christ in the heavenly places (Ephesians 2:6). Likewise, we stand in God’s grace (Romans 5:2) and will walk in the name of the LORD our God forever. What wonderful images of security, belonging, and peace!

These words of comfort and promise come after some scathing words of condemnation against the ungodly. They read like the words of a father whose child has been brutally abused. Such is the case here. God inspired Micah to express his righteous anger over the way his people had been treated. He will not remain silent. He will call to account those who believed they would never answer for their cruelty and those who ruthlessly abused the weak and needy.

Those words may be comforting to those who have suffered such evil. Yet they should also make us deeply sad – not only for those who have been mistreated, but for the broken world in which we live that allows such things to happen. I think of semi-trailers abandoned in the blistering South Texas heat, filled with desperate immigrants and left to die. I think of those trapped in human trafficking, treated not as people made in God’s image but as commodities to be bought and sold. Vengeance rightly belongs to God, and Micah announces that the day of reckoning will come.

How delightful, then, will be the peace of those clothed in the righteousness of Christ! We look forward with joyful anticipation to that day. Yet we must never become smug, even as we long for evil to be brought low. We, too, have been rescued solely by God’s grace. The Holy Spirit has called us to faith in Christ, set our feet on the paths of righteousness, and made us citizens of the kingdom Micah describes.

I’m ready for that fig tree! Are you?