Messages from Heaven Part 2, Tuesday

Hey kids, welcome to Junior's for Jesus.

Go grab your Bibles, we're gonna be digging in

and learning some really exciting stories.

Let's get started.

We're studying this week the life of the minor prophets

in a section entitled Messages from Heaven, part two.

These prophets are only called minor

because their books are small.

Yesterday, we wrapped up a study

on perhaps the most famous of these prophets,

the prophet Jonah.

It's an incredible story of the consequences of disobedience

and the nature of true repentance,

both for the people of Nineveh and for the prophet.

Our memory verse for this week is from Micah chapter 7, verse 18.

It reads,

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.

Tuesday, about 50 years after Jonah preached

to the Assyrian people in Nineveh, Micah,

the next of the minor prophets started preaching

in the kingdoms of both Israel and Judah.

He preached God's messages at the same time that Isaiah did,

although he probably didn't preach as many years.

The kingdom of Assyria was still ruling the world,

but by Micah's time its people probably had turned away

from the true God,

whom they had started worshiping after Jonah's preaching

in Nineveh.

And before Micah's death,

they would take the people of Israel away as captives

and threaten to do the same with the people of Judah.

Second Kings, chapter 18, verse 11,

31, and 32.

Then the king of Assyria carried Israel away,

captive to Assyria and put them in Hala

and by the haybore, the river of Gozan,

and in the cities of the Meeds.

Do not listen to Hezekiah,

for thus says the king of Assyria,

make peace with me by a present and come out to me

and every one of you eat from his own vine

and every one from his own fig tree

and every one of you drink the waters of his own sister.

Until I come and take you away to a land like your own,

a land of grain and new wine, a land of bread and vineyards,

a land of olive grobes and honey,

that you may live and not die,

but do not listen to Hezekiah,

lest he persuade you,

saying the Lord will deliver us.

Micah tried to warn both Judah and Israel

of what would happen if they didn't change.

In both Samaria, the capital of Israel,

and Jerusalem, the capital of Judah,

the people were living in open sin,

especially in Samaria.

So what did God say He would do to that city?

Micah chapter 1, verse 6.

Therefore, I will make Samaria a heap of ruins in the fields.

Places for planting a vineyard,

I will pour down her stones into the valley

and I will uncover her foundations.

After Samaria was destroyed

and its people taken away as captives,

Micah continued warning the people of Judah,

counting His work in both places,

His ministry lasted about 40 years,

but the people were rude to Him.

They said that they didn't want to hear Him

telling them to change.

Don't prattle to us, they said.

Micah chapter 3, verse 6.

But He kept warning them.

Their judges were taking bribes

and their priests and false prophets

were only doing their work for the money that they could get.

And yet, they thought that God was with them

and that no harm would come to them.

But because of them, what did Micah say

would happen to Jerusalem?

Micah chapter 3, verse 11 and 12.

Her heads judge for a bribe.

Her priests teach for pay.

And her prophets divine for money.

Yet they lean on the Lord and say,

is not the Lord among us.

No harm can come upon us.

Therefore, because of you,

Zion shall be plowed like a field.

Jerusalem shall become heaps of ruin

and the mountain of the temple

like the bare hills of the forest.

Micah spoke that prophecy when Hezekiah was king of Judah,

Jeremiah 2618.

It was fulfilled about 130 years later

when Nebuchadnezzar's army destroyed Jerusalem and the temple.

Now, let's apply it.

Like Jonah's prophecy about Nineveh,

Micah's prophecy about Jerusalem

would not have been fulfilled

if the people of Jerusalem had repented

at his preaching like the people of Nineveh

repented at Jonah's preaching.

What does that say to us?

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