How can we have an impact in the world? (Mic 5:7-9)

The secular West has largely rejected Christianity and the public narrative is that the Church is irrelevant and has nothing to offer, that her God is vindictive and wrathful and Christian contexts are a hotbed of hate speech and homophobia. While not everyone buys into this hostile narrative, the response of many non-Christians is simply a complete lack of interest. More importantly, we Christians have lost our confidence in the good news and struggle to articulate it in a meaningful way that connects with the profound longings of our culture and speaks God’s truth into a worldview that leaves its followers drifting with a fragile identity and a lack of stability. What can we do to have an impact as God’s people?

Our passage explains God’s purpose for us in the world. Micah applies to the Lord’s people the illustrations of dew and being a lion (Mic 5:7-8). In Prov 19:12, the same two metaphors describe the king;[1] the dew speaks of his favour and the lion of his wrath. Since Israel lacks any rain from about June to September, the heavy dew that falls is an important means of watering vegetation, and the imagery is symbolic of blessing. The wrath of the king, as the highest judge in the land, is about righteous judgments against wickedness. The picture that emerges then is a two-fold task for God’s people of being refreshing and life-giving water in a spiritually arid land and judging the rebellion and aggression of wicked nations against God. To this pattern of grace and justice is added God’s own judgment lifting up His hand against those who resist and rise up against Him (Mic 5:9 cf. Isa 26:11).[2] The full realisation of the prophecy is still in the future (note especially 1 Cor 6:2 that God’s people will judge the world), but this Scripture has relevance for our present.

How can God’s people become ‘dew’? Micah describes earlier the eagerness of the nations for God’s Word and teaching (Mic 4:2), which elsewhere is likened to dew (Deut 32:2). Thus, we become refreshment for a weary world when we speak and live out the truth of God’s message. Our presence is also meant to be a reality check against the deception of the worldview that promises fulfilment apart from God and makes the self into god. The slogans ‘be true to yourself’, ‘follow your dreams’, are the secular equivalents of God’s purpose that He created us for. Our cultures’ obsession with purging the body through right eating reflects the desire for purity that has its counterpoint in God’s gift of purity through the forgiveness of sins and holy living. Moreover, the world’s pursuit of mindfulness and meditation are its secular desire for peace that, in reality, only God can give.[3] The challenge is whether our lives evoke a response: a seeking after God leading to life or a rejection of Him leading to judgment and death (2 Cor 2:14-17; John 3:16-21).

Further, we need to regain confidence that the gospel of Jesus Christ is good news for the world. So often, we buy into the secular narrative too and accept that the Christian message may be subjectively good news to us, but not to our neighbours. So we keep it to ourselves, afraid to offend, ashamed of the message and seeing it as others do: meaningless and irrelevant for them. We should take heart from Micah’s prophecy. God has designed us for the purpose of being dew, to bring the refreshing and life-giving message to the world without apology and without being dependent on human reactions to appear or delay (Mic 5:7). To be sure, we need to re-think how we tell God’s message that is both faithful to the truth but meaningful in the context we live in and that takes some work. Nevertheless, despite the superficial confidence of the secular narrative, no other age produced as much neurosis, existential angst, identity crises and loneliness as ours. That should alert us that all is not how it seems and that we have a message from God that can and does transform lives.

[1] L.C. Allen, The Books of Joel, Obadiah, Jonah, and Micah, NICOT (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1976), 354 n.66.

[2] When people raise a hand against someone, as in the Hebrew of 1 Kings 11:26, it generally denotes rebellion and expresses arrogance, which does not fit the context here, so commentators generally agree that the agent is God.

[3] I am grateful to Jeremy Treat who draws attention to the parallels between purging the body and Christian purity, as well as mindfulness and the peace God offers. https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/video/secular-longing/ accessed 14/07/2021.

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