Who is a God like You,
Pardoning iniquity
And passing over the transgression of the remnant of His heritage?
He does not retain His anger forever,
Because He delights in mercy.[j]
19 He will again have compassion on us,
And will subdue our iniquities.
You will cast all [k]our sins
Into the depths of the sea.
20 You will give truth to Jacob
And [l]mercy to Abraham,
Which You have sworn to our fathers
From days of old.
Micah 7:18f
Before we delve into this passage we must first give some context of the book of Micah to help these verses make sense.
We must understand that Micah is largely a book wherein God brings a covenant lawsuit against His people. They have violated covenant and God in Micah promises judgment. We know this from the outset,
1:3 For behold the Lord is coming out of His place;
He will come down
And tread on the high places of the earth
The Mountains will melt under Him,
And the valleys will split
Like wax before fire,
Like waters pouring down a steep place
All this is for the transgression of Jacob
And for the sins of Israel
Throughout the book the sins of Israel over which God is wroth are mentioned,
Sorcery – 5:12-14
Fraud in commerce – 6:10-11
Rich oppressing the poor – 2:1-5
Wicked Leadership – 3
God makes His case against Judah. This perhaps most expressly seen in Ch. 6. As you listen remember Micah is a book where God is bringing a covenant lawsuit against Judah.
6 Hear ye now what the Lord saith; Arise, contend thou before the mountains, and let the hills hear thy voice. 2 Hear ye, O mountains, the Lord‘s controversy, and ye strong foundations of the earth: for the Lord hath a controversy with his people, and he will plead with Israel. 3 O my people, what have I done unto thee? and wherein have I wearied thee? testify against me. 4 For I brought thee up out of the land of Egypt, and redeemed thee out of the house of servants; and I sent before thee Moses, Aaron, and Miriam.
And as a result of their wickedness God says He is going to visit them with covenant curses,
13 “Therefore I will also make you sick by striking you,
By making you desolate because of your sins.
14 You shall eat, but not be satisfied;
[e]Hunger shall be in your midst.
You may carry some away,[f] but shall not save them;
And what you do rescue I will give over to the sword.
15 “You shall sow, but not reap;
You shall tread the olives, but not anoint yourselves with oil;
And make sweet wine, but not drink wine.
16 For the statutes of Omri are kept;
All the works of Ahab’s house are done;
And you walk in their counsels,
That I may make you a [g]desolation,
And your inhabitants a hissing.
Therefore you shall bear the reproach of [h]My people.”
A good deal more could be said about the context but this sets us up to appreciate the passage we are considering today.
In Chapter 7 starting w/ vs. 8 we see a new note struck.
In vs. 8-10 Judah confesses and repents
In vs. 11-13 Micah promises a coming day when Israel again will be salvation to a world under judgment
In vs. 14-15 Micah prays that God would have mercy on Judah, God replies
In vs. 16-17 God promises to judge His enemy nations
And then we hit this crescendo touching the character of God in vs. 18-20
Throughout the book we see that judgment begins in the household of God. The book is a covenant lawsuit bring charges against faithless Judah. This demonstrates, as Sam taught last week, that God is a God of justice. God will not be mocked. As a man soweth, that shall he also reap.
In vs. 18-20 though we learn that the God’s last word to His repentant people is mercy. Tears may last through the night but joy cometh in the morning as the Psalmist says.
Micah has spoken of a coming day when God’s righteousness will be seen. He has predicted the birthplace of the coming Messiah (5:2). Sprinkled throughout the book are reminders that God will not completely abandon His people and will retain a remnant. (2:12, 4:7, 5:3,).
Now here God’s covenant hesed (Faithfulness) is brought front and center.
I.) First We Find God’s Character Stated
“Who is a God like You.”
This may be a play on Micah’s name which literally means, “Who is like Jehovah.”
This is a rhetorical question that is requiring an answer that says “no one.”
Micah is making the point that God is incomparable. This is a point that the Scriptures return to over and over again.
Psa 86:8 O Lord, there is none like You among the gods,…
Exo 15:11 Who among the gods is like You, O LORD? Who is like You…
Psalm 71:19 Your righteousness reaches to the heavens, O God, You who have done great things. Who, O God, is like You?
Isaiah 40:18 To whom then will you liken God?
Or what likeness will you compare to Him?
Constantly we are reminded in Micah and elsewhere that our God is distinct and unique from all of His creation. This truth, that no one is like God would have struck home in the ancient world where polytheism was the norm. Constant were the attempts to define God in terms of the false gods all around them.
We also live in a increasingly polytheistic climate. The gods are increasingly as thick as flies in our culture. This is because multi-culturalism necessitates multi-faithism. We need to be reminded,
“Who is God like you.”
This attribute of God being incomparable reminds us also of the creator creature distinct. In many religions there is this idea that man and god share in the same being with the only difference obtaining that God has more being than man has. This is called “chain of being” thinking. But this passage and passages like it teach that God is one of a kind. His uniqueness applies to all His attributes. We could ask “Who is like God when it comes to Justice?” or “Who is like God when it comes to patience,” or “Who is like God when it comes to His jealousy for His people?”
In this little statement, “Who is God like you,” lies an ocean of depth in terms of the character of God.
We spend so little time thinking about how superior God is to us and that lack of considering God’s superiority leads to our own demise.
One more thing here… because we think God is without comparison we have no respect for the false gods that we come across. It is not that we intend to be rude by having no respect for the false gods. It is just that we know their pretensions to be spoken of as gods. Because God is without comparison we take umbrage at the religions that would suggest their puny god has anything to do with God. God’s character is w/o parallel and we rightly resent any gods trying to draw a parallel with the God of the Bible.
II.) Second this Incomparable Quality of God is Spoken of in a Precise Category.
Micah says “Who is a God like You,” and applies it directly to the fact that God pardon’s iniquity and passes over the transgression of His heritage.”
God has brought covenant lawsuit against His people and yet here we find, though Judah is guilty, God’s promises to pardon iniquity.
Clearly we have in Micah God’s promise to requite for sin with the promise here to pardon iniquity and pass over transgression. How do we reconcile these two seeming opposing ideas in a OT context.
The answer to that begins by looking at the word here for “pardon.” This comes from the Hebrew word “nasa.” It has a broad range of meaning but its primary thrust is “to lift,” “to carry,” or “to bear.” The literal meaning is seen in Gen. 7:17 where the word is used to talk about Noah’s ark being lifted up by the waters.
However when this word is combined with contexts of sin the Hebrew word “nasa” takes on the sense of “lifting up,” “bearing” or “pardoning” the penalty or price for one’s sins. We see this power of the word coming to us in the Day of Atonement ceremonies where we read of the scapegoat nasa (carrying) on itself all Israel’s sins (Lev. 16:22).In Isaiah 53:4 the servant of the Lord nasa (carries or bears) our infirmities. When John the Baptist said, “Behold the Lamb of God who nasa (takes away) the sins of the world one can’t help but wonder if this Hebrew word used in Micah for “pardon our iniquities” was on the mind of John the Baptist.
The point we are making here is that even in the OT we understand that this God who is incomparable in pardoning sins does not pardon them apart from an atonement and the word “nasa” here in Micah 7, we are suggesting, when read in the context of the whole of Scripture, is more than a hint that God’s pardoning comes in the context of the penalty being paid. Christ does bear or carry our sins. Christ is lifted up that our sins might be pardoned.
God pardons Israel of her great sins and passes over her transgressions not by forgetting His justice. Behind the idea of pardoning lies the whole infrastructure of the OT idea of atonement which itself is luminary of the final pardoning as anchored in Jesus Christ, the Lamb of God who nasa (took on) our infirmities (Is. 53:4) and who nasa (carried) away on Himself all His people’s sins (Lev. 16:22).
God’s pardoning of the OT saints was upon the same basis as God’s pardoning of the NT saints.
Another point we want to bring out here concerning that great mercy and grace of God in pardoning sins by bearing (nasa) the penalty Himself in the 2nd person of the Trinity is the idea how in the ancient world this idea for needing pardon was unique to the Hebrew people.
The Hebrew Scripture is filled with the idea that man is a sinner in need of forgiveness. However, this idea of needing forgiveness was itself unique to the Hebrew faith.
Remember, pagan man believed with modern man that man is basically good. The pagan gods were not righteous gods and were often worse in their behavior then their supplicants. Scholars have noted that there are no clear cases of forgiveness in foundational texts like the Homeric epics. The concept of forgiveness as a moral idea was not fully articulated in ancient Greek or Roman thought.
In the ancient world sacrifices were offered to the gods not for forgiveness or for pardon but for insurance. Only the Hebrew mindset and later the Christian mindset knew this need for pardon. The ancients offered up sacrifices as a bribe to the gods for treating you well in whatever venture you might be concerned about. You were buying insurance with your offerings. If the god that you bribed with a sacrifice didn’t come through you moved on to another temple and another god to bribe him. So, the sacrifice was about controlling the gods. It was man centered. Man didn’t see Himself as sinner and so he didn’t need god to pardon Him.
But God has been gracious to us by convincing us first of our need for pardon and then providing a freely given pardon by means of Jesus bearing (nasa) our sins for us.
We might add here that we live again in a time when men see themselves as basically good and do not see their need for pardon. This explains why it is the Gospel cannot exclude the idea of men as sinners. Only when men are convinced they are sinners are they amazed that God is a God who pardons for the sake of Jesus Christ and His atonement.
We would take a moment to consider some application
If God is without comparison and this incomparable God is our God for the sake of Jesus Christ why are we … why am I … so disturbed by all that presents itself in opposition to this God who is without comparison? If God so exceeds all opposition why do we … why do I fear so easily? If this God which none can be compared is for us who can be against us?
III.) Note here the finality of God’s pardoning
“You will cast all our sins, into the depth of the sea.”
This is echoed in Psalm 103:12 with a slightly different metaphor
as far as the east is from the west,
so far does he remove our transgressions from us.
As we get older we reflect on the life lived and we see where we have really sinned and we groan about our sinfulness. We wish that we had never done such and such or said such and such. At such times we have to remind ourselves that God has cast all our sins, into the depths of the sea.
The language used here about casting brings up the memories of the language of how God dealt with the Egyptians (Ex. 15:1-5)
Pharaoh’s chariots and his army He has cast into the sea;
His chosen captains also are drowned in the Red Sea.
Just as the Egyptians were cast into the sea so our sins have been cast into the depths of the sea. God does not remember them. They have been atoned for by the work of Jesus Christ.
It is possible we do not realize what a blessing it is to no longer carry our sins. But keep in mind that people who do not have that blessing become caricatures of what God intended people to be.
The best example of this that I know of in literature is Dostoevsky’s character Raskolnikov in his novel Crime & Punishment.
Dostoevsky masterfully portrays how guilt manifests itself not as a single, overwhelming emotion, but as a slow, gnawing presence that chips away at Raskolnikov’s sanity. He becomes his own worst enemy, constantly trying to justify his crime while simultaneously being crushed by the weight of it.
This is every sinner to one degree or another. They are carrying a guilt that morphs and twists them into something God never intended man to be. The sinner who has not found a way to relieve himself of his guilt will wear that guilt on him or her self like a ancient medieval hair shirt.
But we have been delivered from all that. Our guilt has been cast into the depths of the sea. We are free to be all whom God created us to be.
Whatever thanksgiving you have save the greatest share of your thanksgiving that you no longer bear your guilt and misery.
Excellent post that reminds me of the hymn by Samuel Davies. I love that line:
“We spend so little time thinking about how superior God is to our own demise.”
Hello Ron,
What Davies hymn is that?
Thanks for hanging around here,
https://www.hymnallibrary.org/hymns/the-pardoning-god/
Sometimes called ‘Great God of Wonders’. If you sing it in your church I’m sure it will be well received. I love the sermons of Davies and this hymn is a favorite of my pastor.