The Gospel According to Micah: A Christocentric Commentary

By Dr. Micah L. Caswell

Most people do not understand elements of the gospel that are emphasized in the minor prophets.

For example, without the minor prophets, we are at risk of not cherishing or fearing the “day of the Lord” (Joel 2). Likewise, we’d fail to understand and appreciate themes like the wrath of God (Micah 2:3) and social justice (Micah 6:8) in light of the Christ event.

Micah is often overlooked, but this commentary presents a compelling case for why he matters. The author argues that while Micah is often lumped in with minor prophets, he deserves to be taught on his own.

He also suggests that while many have read and preached Micah, they have missed the gospel. For instance, a minor prophetic book like Micah is sometimes used by advocates for social justice to advance a progressive, social gospel agenda, which runs the risk of applying the text in a way that urges people toward progressive political positions disconnected from Jesus.

Take Micah back and marvel at the glory of the Lord with the insights and commentary in The Gospel According to Micah.

• Language: English
• Publisher: WestBow Press
• Release date: Nov 8, 2022
• ISBN: 9781664272491

Dr. Micah L. Caswell

Dr. Micah L. Caswell holds degrees from Dallas Seminary, Southwestern Baptist Seminary, Toronto Baptist Seminary, and Midwestern Baptist Seminary. He earned his doctorate from The Southern Baptist Seminary. He has pastored at churches in Austin and Houston and is currently the pastor of Redeemer Church in Denton, Texas, which he planted in 2013. Micah is married to Kristen and they have two children named Mason and Kenlee. Dr. Caswell is also the author of Thomas Patient: The Father of the Irish Baptist Church.

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ISBN: 978-1-6642-7247-7 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-6642-7248-4 (hc)

ISBN: 978-1-6642-7249-1 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2022913088

WestBow Press rev. date: 11/07/2022

32368.png ENDORSEMENTS

The Christian Scriptures constitute both the Old and New Testaments. For too long too many Christians have possessed only a fleeting or superficial acquaintance with the Old Testament. Micah Caswell’s latest book attempts to rectify this. It will serve the church well by furnishing those who labour in preaching and teaching with a stimulating conversation partner. The introductory chapters, in particular, will benefit those committed to introducing others to the Old Testament as Christian Scripture.

S. D. Ellison, director of training, Irish Baptist College, Northern Ireland; author of The Holy One of Israel: Exploring Isaiah and Five: The Solas of the Reformation

Micah has done the evangelical world a favor in writing this commentary on Micah. The introductory chapter on the need and process of Christ-centered expository preaching is worth the price of the book, but you get the additional advantage of having a down to earth commentary of Micah that demonstrates how to take a Minor Prophet and use it to shine a hermeneutically correct light upon Christ.

Dr. Clif Johnson, pastor of Garrett Memorial Baptist Church in Hope, Arkansas; Cohost of The Preaching Lab podcast

Over the years, I’ve been privileged as a Bible study teacher to read many commentaries both in my studies in seminary and outside of it in ministering the Word to others. The commentaries I appreciate most are committed to and focused on the biblical text. The very best of the best commentaries focus readers on the biblical text and show them Christ, in the biblical text. In Micah Caswell’s The Gospel According to Micah: A Homiletical Commentary, he excels at not only showing what the biblical text means and how it points to Christ, but he takes it one additional step, he teaches Bible readers how to know and see Christ in the book of Micah. Whether you are a new or seasoned Bible reader, this Micah commentary by Micah contains serious scholarship firmly rooted in the biblical text and points readers to Christ so the people of God will grow in the Word and serve one another in love in the local church.

Dave Jenkins, Executive Director, Servants of Grace Ministries; Executive Editor, Theology for Life Magazine; Host, Equipping You in Grace, Servants of Grace, and Warriors of Grace Podcasts, and Author, The Word Explored: The Problem of Biblical Illiteracy and What To Do About It

With clarity and conviction, Caswell demonstrates that the book of Micah is essential for faithful gospel preaching. This commentary illuminates the bountiful opportunities available to every pastor and Christian to speak the good news of Jesus Christ. Replete with illustrations and applications, Caswell has provided a resource which is as accessible as it is helpful.

Chase Davis, pastor of The Well Church in Boulder, Colorado; Host of the Full Proof Theology podcast

Every Pastor, teacher, and Bible student needs reliable, accessible, and Christ-centered commentaries at the ready for their study. Conservative and helpful commentaries on the book of Micah are few. So, this new and insightful commentary by Micah Caswell is a welcome and needed addition for every student of God’s Word. Pursuing historical context with rich gospel-centered insights, this commentary on Micah will both inspire and help any Bible student prepare Christ exalting, advantageous messages for contemporary audiences. Make this your first pick when diving into the Book of Micah.

Dr. Matthew Harding, Lead Pastor of The WELL Community Church, Argyle, Texas; PhD, Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary

Micah offers in these pages a great book written by a weekly practioner of the art of preaching. He directs our attention to preaching the Old Testament Minor prophets in light of their ultimate relationship with the gospel. Through his defense of this strategy he provides his own sermons on the book of Micah. His sermons are well thought out and very applicable for the 21st century pastor. Read his book to be challenged and encouraged.

Morgan Malone, Executive Director of the Denton Baptist Association and Send Church Planting

For my wife, Kristen, who encourages me as a preacher. For my children, who I pray are transformed by my preaching. For Redeemer Church, which I pray continues to bear gospel fruit. For the church planters and pastors of the Southern Baptist Convention and the Acts 29 Network, who faithfully preach the Word week in and week out.

32368.png CONTENTS

Foreword

Introduction

Chapter 1 Micah Matters

Chapter 2 The Case

Chapter 3 The Tools

Chapter 4 Micah 1, What Is God Going to Do About It?

Chapter 5 Micah 2, Hope in the Heavenly City

Chapter 6 Micah 3, Live Justly Or Face His Justice

Chapter 7 Micah 4:1–8, Joy That Follows Judgment

Chapter 8 Micah 4:9–13, Tools For Troubled Times

Chapter 9 Micah 5:1–6, God Uses Small Things To Do Big Things

Chapter 10 Micah 5:7–15, Feel the Heat

Chapter 11 Micah 6:1–8, Our Case Against God’s Heat

Chapter 12 Micah 6:9–16, Sound Wisdom For Tremblers

Chapter 13 Micah 7:1–7, Don’t Stop Singing

Chapter 14 Micah 7:8–20, Who Is Like God?

Bibliography

About the Author

32368.png FOREWORD

DR. MATTHEW SHACKELFORD

I will never forget those formative days of joining Micah Caswell for our first doctoral cohort. Albert Mohler, president of The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, entered the classroom with a powerful declaration. He looked at each of us with a sense of weight and responsibility, which I still feel over a decade later. He said, This is one of the only classes I teach. If we did one thing at this school, we would teach and train men to preach the Word of God. His words hung in the air, resounding with a power of conviction. We all sensed in Mohler something of the passion that the Apostle Paul must have had as he sought a legacy of preachers. In 2 Timothy, Paul’s swan’s song, he gave his final legacy words for gospel preaching. Second Timothy 2:2 says, . . . and what you have heard from me in the presence of many witnesses entrust to faithful men, who will be able to teach others also. We see that the Apostle Paul wasn’t ready to pass into heaven without knowing that he was leaving a legacy of gospel preaching through Timothy and others. That’s the sense we all felt from Mohler as he detailed his love of preaching. With his Bible and fountain pen in hand, he guided us through Nehemiah 8, 2 Timothy 4:2, and many other passages on biblical preaching. By the end of that first class, Mohler had created a burning desire for biblical preaching in us all. However, despite this desire to honor the Lord in preaching, feelings of confusion still existed within me—along with the others, I’m sure.

To be honest, my confusion went all the way back to my time at Dallas Theological Seminary in 2006. It was there I had my first exposure to any homiletical method, reading Walter Kaiser’s book Toward an Exegetical Theology.¹ Kaiser produced in me a passion for finding the author’s intended meaning. I was additionally changed by Haddon Robinson’s Biblical Preaching.² His design of expository preaching was nearly flawless. Every sermon I crafted from that point forward followed his steps of sermon development.³ However, Robinson’s model lacked an explicit instruction for which type of theology the homiletician should use. Canonical? Biblical? Or systematic? Over time, it became evident that my preaching was incomplete, missing something Robinson’s work had not provided. I continued using his model for years yet struggled to preach narrative passages and Old Testament sermons. When I was brave enough to venture into preaching these types of passages, my sermons quickly led to preaching the gospel truths in every sermon: Jesus is God’s son, He’s worthy of worship, the Messiah would be Jesus, etc. I naturally hungered to preach Christ, but I didn’t have a clear understanding of Christ’s place in the Scriptures, especially in the Old Testament. I began to notice that many preachers struggled with preaching the Old Testament. Their sermons quickly became riddled with moralisms.

The breakthrough came in reading John Stott’s Between Two Worlds: The Challenge of Preaching Today. Stott declared that the essential nature of preaching is that of bridge-building.⁴ This understanding was a formative moment for me. Stott explained that the preacher must build a bridge that would cross the chasm of scripture and ancient text to the modern audience. He said, We should be praying that God will raise a new generation of Christian communicators who are determined to bridge the chasm; . . . who refuse to sacrifice truth to relevance or relevance to truth; but who resolve instead in equal measure to be faithful to Scripture and pertinent to today.⁵ While Stott helped in my understanding of the expositor’s job to bridge the chasm between ancient and modern audiences, he fell short of describing how the two worlds were linked together. Further, if the preacher is the one who connects these two worlds, there seems to be a high degree of dependence and authority placed upon the preacher to bridge the gap. Something was still missing.

Walter Kaiser’s view concerning the necessity of following the text to its theological claim continued to drive my preaching. I also utilized Haddon Robinson’s ladder of abstraction, in which you keep climbing upward until you reach a preaching principle that connects to a modern audience.⁶ Yet, there was still an inability to understand the place of preaching Christ and the gospel, especially in the Old Testament.

I wasn’t the only one struggling. In 2014, I taught my dissertation project in Anaheim, CA, training men in expositional preaching in my local church. A portion of this research was instructing students to practice a preaching hermeneutic. More than twenty students struggled to understand the various homiletical approaches swirling around them through multiple schools and pastoral influences. Some taught Christ in every text. Others had a pericopal hermeneutic, looking for the Christ-icon in every pericope. Still, others held a human author-centered hermeneutic, following a historical-grammatical hermeneutic. That experience was both fascinating and frustrating as I considered the common need. Each student was experiencing the same conflict I had been experiencing for years. I needed answers.

Finally, my breakthrough came in seeing the whole of Christian Scripture as a gospel metanarrative. Indeed, every preacher desires to preach Christ because the Bible is about Jesus and the gospel. Therefore, every book, writing, and pericope exists to progress the argument of God’s salvation through Jesus Christ. This revelation of an overarching metanarrative brought conviction that the gospel was everywhere in the pages of Scripture. Rather than preaching trite, moralistic sermons, God calls His preachers to preach the gospel and connect to the gospel message in every pericope in the biblical text.

Dr. Caswell’s work is important because he shows that Micah is not merely a book about moralism or human justice. Nor is it a tool to be leveraged for political purposes, to offer an enlightened society that cares for the poor. It is a book about Jesus and, ultimately, the gospel.

Gospel truth and exhortation should be woven into every pastor’s sermon. We see such gospel patterns and appeals from the Apostle Paul, whose writings are often sermonic. His letters generally begin with Christ and various gospel indicatives, proceed in those Christ-based realities, and then culminate with gospel imperatives. These transitions are often signaled by a therefore (Romans 12:1; Galatians 5:1; Ephesians 4:1; Philippians 2:1). The whole of Scripture is all about the story of Jesus and the gospel realities, which undoubtedly impact the living of our days.

I am thankful for Dr. Caswell’s careful work to model and maintain a gospel focus in Micah. His work is overflowing with good examples of gospel preaching in the Old Testament, and it is a wonderful resource to all who love the gospel. My prayer is that it will enlighten, edify, and inspire many who read it to further gospel ministry.

—Dr. Matthew Shackelford

32368.png INTRODUCTION

U2 opened their 1988 live album Rattle and Hum with the Beatles’ Helter Skelter. Bono began the song by declaring, This is a song Charles Manson stole from the Beatles. We’re stealing it back. This commentary is an attempt to steal back Micah for the gospel preachers of our day. You see, Jesus and his gospel are thick in the prophet’s message. This homiletical commentary is designed to be a tool for preachers and church leaders. Micah is often overlooked; therefore, a case will be made for why Micah matters. As a result of being overlooked there are fewer commentaries on Micah than other books. Also, many times Micah is lumped in with the other minor prophets. However, Micah is a great book to teach and preach on its own. But the problem for those wanting to teach Micah is that many of the commentaries are written from a theologically liberal perspective. Moralism is one of the errors of our liberal friends. They have used Micah to tell people to be better and do more rather than believe the gospel. As a result, they have left their congregations trying to do it in their own strength. Many have read and preached Micah, yet missed the gospel! This commentary is intentionally designed for the reader to see Micah’s gospel. Micah’s parents did not give him this name in order for him to be like God in his own strength. Rather, his parents worshipped God by saying no one can be like God! Micah is filled with those types of paradoxes. In the end, I pray you see the glorious paradoxical gospel in these pages. Let’s steal Micah back so we can marvel at the God of the gospel.

32368.png CHAPTER 1

MICAH MATTERS

Micah matters because Micah preached the gospel. God has raised up a generation of evangelical leaders who are returning to the gospel. These faithful preachers have abandoned the failed projects of Protestant liberalism as well as fundamentalism. They understand the gospel is not a box to be checked but rather a life to live. However, commentaries on Micah and the other minor prophets have remained in the old categories. Many preachers have been intimidated by a book like Micah because so many of the commentaries abandon the gospel and advocate moralistic, political, and liberal applications. Further, the book is just wild and weird! However, Micah was a faithful gospel preacher. The prayer of this commentary is for leaders to see the gospel in Micah’s ancient message. Again, Micah matters because Micah preached the gospel.

Most do not understand elements of the gospel that are emphasized in the minor prophets. For example, without the minor prophets, we are at risk of not cherishing or fearing the day of the Lord (Joel 2). If we never preach the minor prophets, Christians are also in jeopardy of not understanding and appreciating themes like the wrath of God (Micah 2:3) and social justice (Micah 6:8) in light of the Christ event. Finally, Christians could tend toward moralistic tendencies in their teaching if they do not interpret the minor prophets through a gospel grid. Trying to earn eternal salvation is the worst outcome of moralism, but Christians also risk attempting godliness solely through human effort. The principles and methods explained and illustrated in this commentary protect preachers from moralistic preaching. Therefore, this commentary is useful to church leaders because it helps them deepen their congregations’ affections for Christ and protect them from moralism.

To those ends, the approach in this commentary is to help leaders learn not only the original author’s intended meaning for the text, but also know God’s present meaning for the church. However, the Old Testament (henceforth, OT) can be difficult to understand for both lay leaders and even seasoned preachers. It is difficult for anyone to understand stories from thousands of years ago because of the cultural differences. For example, in the minor prophetic books, preachers directly refute kings (Amos 7:11). However, Christians living in the United States of America do not live under the authority of kings. The prophets also engaged an agricultural society, while most contemporary people do not understand ancient farming techniques and thus agricultural illustrations (Joel 3:13). These cultural differences can make it difficult for preachers to apply an OT passage to contemporary audiences. When preaching Hosea 1, for example, applying the passage to the lives of elementary school children can be a challenge. Therefore, even though it can be difficult to teach from the OT, this commentary seeks to equip pastors on how to explain and apply the OT to the contemporary church.

Further, even though Christians are the product of God’s grace through Jesus’s death on the cross, many still struggle with moralism. Moralism is the attempt to accomplish righteousness or gain favor with God through moral behavior. Like the older brother in the Parable of the Prodigal Son (Luke 15:11–32), many in the church try to accomplish godliness through their own strength. These self-righteous Christians struggle with pride when comparing themselves to other Christians who struggle with different sins. As a result, these Christians are more likely to interpret the minor prophets in a way that could lead to moralism.

For example, the story of David and Goliath is a popular story in children’s Sunday school classes. However, many times teachers unintentionally make moralistic applications. They can make David—instead of God—the hero of the story. Therefore, Christians can identify with how author Graeme Goldsworthy opens Gospel and Kingdom. He tells an account of a Sunday school teacher teaching from 1 Samuel 17 in a creative and engaging manner, but yet ends up applying the story moralistically. The teacher’s application was for the children to slay their Goliaths with a sling labeled ‘faith’ and five stones listed as ‘obedience,’ ‘service,’ ‘Bible reading,’ ‘prayer,’ and ‘fellowship.’⁷ The problem with this particular series of applications is that it makes David the primary example to follow. These applications become a charge to have great David-like faith. People can hear applications of this nature as a call to muster more faith through their own moral strength. Goldsworthy explains that the danger of making 1 Samuel 17 a character study of David is that it can miss the reality that, when it comes to his slaying of Goliath it is as the unique anointed one of God that he wins the battle.⁸ David is the not hero; God is the hero of 1 Samuel 17. Clearly, moralism is a danger when preaching from the OT. Preachers can apply a passage in a way that causes congregants to rely more on their own moral strength and less on God unless they intentionally bridge the OT story to Christ’s gospel.

Further, a minor prophetic book like Micah is also used by advocates for social justice to advance a progressive, social gospel agenda.⁹ Advocating social justice using a book like Micah runs the danger of applying the text in a way that urges people toward progressive political positions yet disconnects the application from Jesus and the gospel. For example, when Julia O’Brien argues for feminist theory using Micah, she does not ground her arguments in a heart changed by conversion to the gospel. She also does not apply the text by teaching how the Holy Spirit continues to conform believers to the image of God. Daniel