Micah’s prophecy resounds with the hope of redemption and restoration. Both Isaiah and Jeremiah quote Micah to reiterate his prophetic promise that even though “Zion shall be plowed as a field” and “Jerusalem shall become a heap of ruins,” nevertheless “in the latter days” the “mountain of the house of the Lord shall be established” and “all nations shall flow to it” (Isa. 2:2–4; Jer. 26:17–19; Mic. 3:12–4:3). 

The prophecy of Micah is the sixth of the twelve Minor Prophets. His three oracles (Mic. 1:2–2:13; 3:1–5:15; 6:1–7:20) predicted the judgment of the Lord on the rebellious Northern Kingdom of Israel, rebuked the prevailing injustices of the prosperous Southern Kingdom of Judah, and proclaimed the hope of the promised coming Messiah.
1. Micah was a contemporary of Isaiah and Hosea and shared in their message of calling Israel to repentance.
Micah ministered during the second half of the eighth century BC during the reigns of Jotham, Ahaz, and Hezekiah, a generation after the prophets Amos and Jonah. These were tumultuous days. The Assyrian king Shalmaneser sacked Samaria, conquered Israel, and threatened Judah. The rich oppressed the poor. Political corruption, cultural decline, and spiritual declension ran rampant. Like all the other prophets, Micah, Isaiah, and Hosea shared a common message calling God’s chosen people to repentance. Like Zechariah, the message was to declare the words, statutes, and commandments of the Lord that the people might be overtaken and repent (Zech. 1:6). Like Joel, the message was that they might put on sackcloth and lament (Joel 1:13). Like Ezekiel, the message was that they might repent and turn from all their transgressions lest iniquity be their stumbling block (Ezek. 18:30). This is the constant refrain of hope in the prophets:
Zion shall be redeemed by justice,and those in her who repent, by righteousness.” (Isa. 1:27)
Of course, Micah’s message of repentance was not exactly a welcome one—even if it was a refrain of hope. It wasn’t in the days of the prophets, and it still isn’t today.
2. Because of this native resistance to the message of repentance, the prophets were often cast in the role of God’s “prosecuting attorneys.”
Sometimes, the prosecutorial role of the prophets is very explicit, as it is in Micah’s prophecy (Mic. 6:1–8). You will notice all the elements of a dramatic courtroom scene, with charges brought by the Lord against His chosen people. The case is called from the very throne room of heaven (Mic. 6:1). All of the teeming creation—from the mountains and hills to the very foundations of the earth—is summoned to hear the evidence and bear witness to the proceedings (Mic. 6:2).
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In 1674, Ken published A Manual of Prayers for the Use of the Scholars of Winchester College. In it, he gave instructions for the devotional use of a series of his new compositions of Morning and Evening Hymns, including “Awake, My Soul, and with the Sun” and “Glory to Thee, My God, this Night.” What we now commonly sing as the “Doxology,” was actually the closing stanza of each of these long hymn sequences. Interestingly, according to a long-held tradition, Ken may have first learned the text and the old Genevan tune setting from his adoptive father, Izaak Walton.

A doxology is a short chorus of praise to the Lord, often sung as a standalone piece or as a coda at the conclusion of psalms, hymns, or canticles. The word comes from the Greek doxa, meaning, “appearance” or “glory,” and logia, meaning, “study” or “declaration.” A doxology is thus a declaration of the glory of the Most High God; it is a joyous sung pronouncement of His praise.
Common doxologies include the Gloria in Excelsis Deo and the Gloria Patri. But of course, the most common of all is taken from Psalm 100 and sung to the tune of the Genevan Psalter’s “Old Hundredth.”
Praise God from whom all blessings flow;Praise Him, all creatures here below;Praise Him above, ye heavenly host:Praise Father, Son, and Holy Ghost.
This treasured doxology is sung every Sunday all around the globe in untold dozens of languages. It was composed by Thomas Ken, a fellow of Winchester College, a prebend of Winchester Cathedral, and later, the Bishop of Bath and Wells during the reigns of Charles II and James II.
Ken was tragically orphaned in childhood. So, his older sister, Ann, and her husband, Izaak Walton, brought him into their home raised him as their own. Walton was himself orphaned as a boy — his father died when he was just three, and he lost his mother when he was nine. Thanks to the beneficence of some distant relatives, he was able to train as a linen draper in the iron-mongers guild. Eventually, he set up a small shop in the busy neighborhood of Fleet Street near Chancery Lane in the London parish of St. Dunstan’s. It was there that he volunteered as a churchwarden and developed an enduring friendship with the pastor, John Donne — who of course would later gain renown as the dean of St. Paul’s Cathedral.
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As the men gathered around the dinner table recalled their happy bygone student days, they particularly recollected the lofty phrasings of their mentor’s prayers. They rehearsed his most striking and memorable catchphrases — many of which now shaped cadences of their own prayer vocabulary. Realizing the riches that their conversation had uncovered, Walter Chalmers Smith began to scribble down their remembrances on a scrap of paper he retrieved from his frock coat. A few days later he transcribed the notes into his commonplace journal, realizing he had the puzzle-piece makings for lyrics that would beautifully balance in adoration of the Lord both the intimate and ineffable.

In 1857, shortly after he was installed as the new pastor of the Roxburgh Free Church on Hill Square adjacent to the Royal College of Surgeons in Edinburgh, Walter Chalmers Smith (1824-1908), began to compose congregational hymns to complement his sermons. He was inspired by the example of the unrivaled father of English hymnody, Isaac Watts, who wrote more than a thousand hymns and psalm settings, often to accompany his sermons at the Mark Lane Chapel across from Tower Hill in London. Ten years later Smith would publish what he would call “the choicest of my labors” in Hymns of Christ and the Christian Life.
The collection included the hymns, “Earth Was Waiting, Spent and Restless,” “Lord, God, Omnipotent,” “Our Portion Is Not Here,” “There Is No Wrath to Be Appeased,” “Faint and Weary, Jesus Stood,” and the classic for which he is best known today, “Immortal, Invisible, God Only Wise.”
Smith was born in Aberdeen, the son of Walter and Barbara Smith, and named for both his father and the great Scottish Reformer Thomas Chalmers. His father was a master cabinetmaker and a Reform-minded deacon in the Church of Scotland, so his son was faithfully raised in the lively days of evangelical resurgence during the Ten Years Conflict and the Disruption.
He was educated at the Aberdeen grammar school and at the University of Aberdeen’s Marischal College. After graduation in1841 he began to study for a legal profession but two years later – during the tumult of the Disruption – his faith was stirred to ardency by the example of Dr. Chalmers. He sensed a call to gospel ministry and determined to enter the newly established Free Church’s theological seminary, New College, Edinburgh.
On Christmas morning 1850 he was ordained as the pastor of the Chadwell Street Scottish Free Church in Islington, London, a neighborhood then undergoing dramatic renewal with the construction of the nearby King’s Cross railway station. In 1853 he was called back to Scotland to serve at Milnathort in the parish of Orwell, Kinross-shire. In 1862 he was chosen to succeed Robert Buchanan, who with Dr. Chalmers had been one of the leaders of the Disruption, as pastor at the Free Tron Church, Glasgow. In 1876 he was called to the Free High Kirk, which worshipped in the beautiful New College building designed by William Playfair on the Edinburgh Castle Mound site of the old palace of Princess Regent Mary of Guise. The capstone of his ministry came in 1893 when he was chosen to serve as Moderator of the General Assembly for the Free Church of Scotland.
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Grief gripped the entire Nashville community. In shock, as pundits and politicians attempted to make sense of the senseless, across our presbytery men and women gathered in their homes, schools, and churches to pray. We did not need to ask, “Why did this have to happen? Why did this have to happen to us?” We know why. It was for precisely this sort of calamity that Jesus came in the first place. He came to deliver us from our sin and the corruption of this valley of tears.

“Time after time mankind is driven against the rocks of the horrid reality of a fallen creation.  And time after time mankind must learn the hard lessons of history—the lessons that for some dangerous and awful reason we can’t seem to keep in our collective memory.” Hilaire Belloc
Day dawned on March 27th in Middle Tennessee with the redbuds blooming, the songbirds trilling, and the gentle breeze blowing under crystalline springtime skies. There was little portent of what the unfolding of the day might bring. Several committees had gathered and were diligently working on preparations for the upcoming stated meeting of the Nashville Presbytery. The senior pastor of Covenant Presbyterian Church, Chad Scruggs, was in one room, and several of his elders were in the next room over.
Suddenly, unexpectedly, our deliberations were interrupted by a flurry of calls and texts: there was an active shooter at Covenant’s school facility. We emptied into the hallway, stricken, eyes clouded with unbelief, horror, and grief. Spontaneous cries of supplication and intercession went up. The Covenant men hurried on their way back to the church. The rest of us began frenzied monitoring of the news while contacting our own flocks and families to mobilize prayer.
Our worst fears were realized. A disturbed young woman armed with assault weapons and seething hate shot her way into the well-secured building and proceeded to take the lives of three 9-year-old students and three adults before the Nashville Metro Police were forced to stop the assailant with lethal force. One of the victims was the daughter of Pastor Scruggs.
Grief gripped the entire Nashville community. In shock, as pundits and politicians attempted to make sense of the senseless, across our presbytery men and women gathered in their homes, schools, and churches to pray. We did not need to ask, “Why did this have to happen? Why did this have to happen to us?” We know why. It was for precisely this sort of calamity that Jesus came in the first place. He came to deliver us from our sin and the corruption of this valley of tears. Moreover, He comforts us in our pain and sorrow.
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Circumstances change. Laws, courts, and administrations come and go. Elections raise up and cast down the mighty. Popular opinion waxes and wanes. But through it all, the callings and responsibilities of Christians in this poor, fallen world remain the same.
Taking our stand for life wasn’t first thrust upon us by the U.S. Supreme Court’s 1973 Roe v. Wade decision, and we are not relieved of that duty by its now likely overturning this year. The pro-life movement is not a recent phenomenon or innovation. Rather, it is two thousand years old. It was inaugurated on an old rugged cross, on a hill called Calvary. It is best known as Christianity. Caring for the helpless, the deprived, and the unwanted is not simply what we do; it is who we are. It always has been. It always will be.
Life is God’s gift. It is His gracious endowment upon the created order. It flows forth in generative fruitfulness. The earth is literally teeming with life (Gen. 1:20; Lev. 11:10; 22:5; Deut. 14:9, NASB). And the crowning glory of this sacred teeming is humankind, made in the image of God (Gen. 1:26–30; Ps. 8:1–9). To violate the sanctity of this magnificent endowment is to fly in the face of all that is holy, just, and true (Jer. 8:1–17; Rom. 8:6).
Sadly, at the fall, mankind was suddenly destined for death (Jer. 15:2). We were all at that moment bound into a covenant with death (Isa. 28:15). “There is a way that seems right to a man, but its end is the way to death” (Prov. 14:12; 16:25).
“None is righteous, no, not one; no one understands; no one seeks for God. All have turned aside; together they have become worthless; no one does good, not even one.” “Their throat is an open grave; they use their tongues to deceive.” “The venom of asps is under their lips.” “Their mouth is full of curses and bitterness.” “Their feet are swift to shed blood; in their paths are ruin and misery, and the way of peace they have not known.” “There is no fear of God before their eyes.” (Rom. 3:10–18)
It is no wonder then that abortion, infanticide, exposure, and abandonment have always been a common part of fallen human relations. Since the fall, men have contrived ingenious diversions to satisfy their depraved passions. And child-killing has always been chief among them.

My own hope and prayer is that pastors and elders across the wide range of the PCA will use these short sessions to train their men and supply their churches with the necessary resolve to “do justice, love mercy, and walk humbly” with the Lord our God in the midst of this poor, fallen world (Micah 6:8).

Quick on the heels of the historic 48th General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church in America (PCA), former moderator Dominic Aquila and current chair of the Standing Judicial Commission Fred Greco came to Franklin, Tennessee to record a series of sixteen videos on our denomination’s polity. Designed specifically to engage, inform, and equip the average Ruling Elder, the videos are a practical, accessible, and edifying introduction to our Book of Church Order.
Anyone who has ever heard Dr. Aquila or Rev. Greco speak, preach, or teach know that they are both incredibly articulate, theologically sound, and encyclopedically informed churchmen. They are also very down-to-earth, plain-spoken, witty, and incisive. All this and more is on display in these videos, made freely available to anyone and everyone thanks to the generosity of a handful of donors and a sponsoring congregation in the Nashville Presbytery.
My own hope and prayer is that pastors and elders across the wide range of the PCA will use these short sessions to train their men and supply their churches with the necessary resolve to “do justice, love mercy, and walk humbly” with the Lord our God in the midst of this poor, fallen world (Micah 6:8).
To watch these videos, visit the MORE in the PCA YouTube Channel or navigate to this site’s Videos page under Resources.
George Grant is a PCA Teaching Elder serving as Pastor of Parish Presbyterian Church in Franklin, TN.