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Would you pray with me tonight? Father God, you are our living hope. God, hallelujah that Christ rose from the grave. God, would you open our hearts, open our eyes, open our minds to hear from you this morning? God, with the meditations of our hearts, with the words of my mouth, would they be sweet in your sight? And that we be for our good and for your glory. God, we love you. We thank you. And it's in Jesus' name we pray. Amen. Alright, well, good morning. As Pastor Derek said earlier, my name is Zach, and I have the privilege of serving as one of our kids' pastors. Just that I have the best job at Family Church. Because if I'm having fun, I'm supposed to be having fun. If my office is a mess, it's because it's supposed to be a mess. Because it's kids camp season. So I got all sorts of random stuff. But I'm excited to be with you guys this morning as we go through. Pastor Jimmy is up in New York for his son's graduation from the Marine Merchant Academy. So we're super proud of Steven and glad that Pastor Jimmy can be up there this weekend. And I love what we've already got to do this morning. We got to sing songs to God and about God. We've got to celebrate a baptism of life change of parents who have spent the last 10 years pointing their son to God and him making his own decision to follow and put his faith and trust in Jesus. It's awesome. But you also got to see a video this morning about some of my interesting rules. Alright, all those rules are true. I do make my kids go to the bathroom room if they just went. I do walk around turning the lights off all the time. If we're being honest, I didn't get those rules off from myself. I got a lot of them from my dad. And my dad had a lot of quirky rules for us growing up. I'm the oldest of four boys. And one of the rules was we were not allowed to watch Curious George. That disrespectful, rude little monkey. We're not allowed to watch, which I didn't care too much about that one because I thought it was kind of annoying anyway. But there's another show we weren't supposed to watch called the WWE. Okay? Those are my two favorite Rey Mysterio, Undertaker. I mean, I was convinced I was gonna be the WWE. I already had a stage name picked out. I was gonna be the twig. I don't know why you guys are laughing. It doesn't, okay, it fits. It fits. But I wasn't gonna be tiging, but I wasn't allowed to watch it, but I would sneak down and watch it. He had some other rules. We'd always pray in the car before a long trip. He told me not to ride my bike down the stairs. I also didn't obey that rule. Pretty sure I saw the scar on my back to prove it. He told us we had to respect our mom. One time I didn't, and in the campground that I grew up on, there were radios. All the staff had it. My mom radioed, Dwayne. Your eldest is being disrespectful to me. And I knew at that moment everyone on camp heard my mom say that. And then I also didn't, everyone heard my dad's response. Tell him I'll be home soon. I still think I have some scars from that one, too. But he had these rules, and some of them would have been quirky or kind of inconsequential, but a lot of them were for my good. They were to help me to become a good husband, a good father one day, to become a good man of God. And all of us, any other dads in the room have some quirky rules? We all have some quirky rules. Okay? But there's a heavenly father who also has some rules, who has a design. And his rules aren't quirky or inconsequential. They are life or death, eternal. And the truth is none of us live up to God's design perfectly. None of us follow his rules exactly. And we've been in this series of this summer called Summer in the Minors. And today we're gonna zoom in on this sin of idolatry. And so we've been going through all this and we've been getting to all these prophets. Pretty interesting, but today we're at Micah. And most likely most of us in the room have heard the name Micah before. Some of us might have known that he was a prophet in the Bible, but most of us, if we were to take a quiz on the book of Micah, we would probably turn it in blank. Or we would just choose C right down the line and just hope for the best. But I hope today, when we're all done, we're gonna understand a little bit better kind of Michael, Micah's overall big idea, his overall theme, that redemption requires real repentance. Redemption requires real repentance. And one of the things I love that I get to do is every single week, I'm usually over in the treehouse teaching the same message that Pastor Jimmy or Pastor Dick or Pastor Christian gets 30 minutes to preach. I do it in 10. And we've been going through these minor prophets, and every week we have some review questions that we go through so that hopefully by the end of the summer, all of our kids, and even myself included, we have some concrete things that we can remember about the minor prophets. So I want to go over them with you. Let's see how good you are compared to some of our K through fifth grade. For review question number one: What is a prophet in the Bible? And the answer that we've been teaching the kids is it's a man sent or chosen by God to speak for God to point people to God. And so every week we come up with these guys that we're talking through in the minor prophets say, this is a guy that was sent by God, because he was chosen by God to speak for God, to point the people to God. But we've been saying these minor prophets, so then we go, okay, well, what is a minor prophet in the Bible? Is their message less important? Were they just not as good or as good looking or as cool as the major ones? No. Our answer to that one is they just wrote a short message. And so every week we'd be going through a whole minor prophet in one Sunday morning. And then we would say, okay, well, what is the main message of every prophet? Major and minor. And the answer to that one would be stop sinning, turn back to God. The same thing every single week. Stop sinning, turn back to God. And then we say, okay, well, what can we learn about God from all of these minor prophets? And our answer for that one is that God is patient and forgives quickly, but there are still consequences to sin and disobedience. And so today we're going to be in Micah, and Micah chapter 1, verse 1 starts off like this. So Micah of Morsheth, okay, it's about 20 to 25 miles southwest of Jerusalem. I think we have a map up there of kind of this area. And so you got Jerusalem. So Micah's a little bit south of there, and he's prophesying around the year 750 to 740. We believe he prophesied for a couple decades, and he was prophesying to both the northern kingdom of Israel and the southern kingdom of Judah. Now we have this timeline here to kind of help us out. So this is about 20 to 30 years before Assyria comes and conquers the northern kingdom of Israel and they're wiped out. And it's also before Babylon comes and takes over Judah and sends them into exile. And so Micah's prophesying to both of these about their sin and about the coming judgment of God. And his whole theme is stop sinning, turn back to God. Let's continue reading verse two. Micah says, Hear you peoples, all of you, pay attention, O earth, and all that is in it, and let the Lord God be a witness against you, the Lord from his holy temple. For behold, the Lord is coming out of his place, and will come down and tread upon the high places of the earth, and the mountains will melt under him, and the valleys will split open like wax before the fire, like waters poured down a steep place. All this is for the transgression of Jacob, and for the sins of the house of Israel. What is the transgression of Jacob? Is it not Samaria? And what is the high place of Judah? Is it not Jerusalem? Therefore, I will make Samaria a heap in the open country, a place for planting vineyards, and I will pour down her stones into the valley and uncover her foundations. All her carved images shall be beaten to pieces, all her wages shall be burned with fire, and all her idols I will lay waste. For from the fee of a prostitute she gather them, and to the fee of a prostitute they shall return. I would not be able to read that last half of verse 7 in Trios, I'll tell you that much. But Micah is setting the stage here. He says it's a courtroom. God is the witness, God is the prosecutor, and God is the judge. And he's coming down from on high, and he's finding his people guilty. It's this imagery talks about him coming down and treading on the high place. It's almost like a giant just stepping from one high place to the next. And as he steps, it just melts like wax, like water just flowing down. Even the valley splits open and it's all just destroyed. But what is up with these high places that he's stepping across? These high places are these places where they would go to worship, but their worship had become distorted and tainted. They were building carved images, they were erecting idols, and they were pointing their worship away from the one true living God and to these made-up fake, false gods. He's telling them the time has come for it to stop. You're gonna be punished for your sin of idolatry. You have sold yourselves out, and now you're gonna get your just reward. You've made idols for yourselves, and you've made idols out of yourselves, and it's done. Of what have the people done? Chapters two and three, he starts to list off some of the things that they've done that have led them down this path. Micah 2, 1, he says, Woe to those who devise wickedness and work evil on their beds. When the morning dawns, they perform it, because it is the power of their hand. He goes, You're wicked and you're performing works of evil straight as soon as you get up in the morning, before you even get out of bed, you're already devising ways that you're gonna do the opposite of what God says. Michael lists several things. He lists, you're taking advantage of the poor. You're not treating people fairly, you're preaching prosperity in spite of this blatant sin. You're lying, you're cheating, you're stealing, your leaders are prideful and arrogant and corrupt. The prophets are saying whatever the people want to hear as long as there was cash flow coming in. And God had enough. They're calling themselves God's people, but they're doing exactly the opposite of what God had commanded them to do. Even their worship, they were sacrificing their children, they were bowing down to idols, and they were only caring for themselves. I don't know about you, but I'm really thankful that none of those things happen today. Political corruptness, prosperity preachers, the poor pushed down, babies being sacrificed. But sadly, we know it's all still happening. Political corruptness is rampant across our world. The poor are pushed down across our world. According to the World Health Organization, 60% of all unintended pregnancies across the world end in abortion, and 30% of every pregnancy ends in abortion. In the United States, over 1.1 million babies were aborted in 2025, and the numbers are increasing this year. And almost all of those are babies being sacrificed to the idol of self-comfort, of self-convenience. But amongst all of that, there's still hope because of Jesus. There's hope for those moms and those dads. There's hope for these political establishments, there's hope for the people listening because of Jesus. But Micah is telling them something, and it's the same thing for us. If you're gonna identify yourself as a Christian, you can't do the opposite of what God commands. If you're gonna stand up and say, I'm a Christian, I'm a person of faith, I'm a follower of Jesus, you can't turn around and just choose to sin right in God's face. If you're living together and you're not married, the Bible says you should get married, you should not live together. If you're going out after a long work week and getting drunk, that's not right. The Bible says, do not get drunk. If you go home and you're provoking your children and you're you're causing problems, the Bible says do not provoke your children. Create peace and harmony within your own home first and then let it spread out. If you call yourself a Christian, don't do the opposite of what God's word says. If you don't think that God is serious about his ways and his law, Micah is helping them understand the exact opposite that God takes sin seriously. And so if you're taking notes today, the first point is this number one, pay attention to God's warning. That's how he started off. All you people, pay attention. God takes sin seriously. We don't have time to read it all this morning, but later on this afternoon or this week, I'd encourage you to flip back to 2 Kings chapter 16, verses 7 through 23, and you're gonna see this long list of the things that the people were doing and what becomes of them. Assyria comes, conquers Israel, Babylon comes, exiles everyone from Judah because of their sin. Some of us might be sitting here going, well, thank God, that's not me. I don't have any carbon idols that I'm bowing down to. I'm not sacrificing my children on the altar of whatever it might be. And so I'm good. But that's not true. We all have idols in our life. John Calvin said that our hearts are idol-producing factories. They, our heart just, as soon as you conquer one idol in your heart, another one is trying to erect itself. We have to constantly fight back. We might be like, well, yeah, okay, I get that, but my sins are not as bad as those sins. I want to tell you something I tell the kids all the time. There's no such things as big sins and little sins. There might be bigger earthly consequences or smaller earthly consequences, but there's no such thing as big sin and little sin. Romans 6.23, for the wages of sin is death. Not the wages of big sin is death. No, just the wages of sin. The Bible talks about sin as sin. And then I'd be like, well, okay. I I kind of understand that, but if we're being honest, I've kind of been doing this sin for a while now. God hasn't really done anything about it. So I think he's kind of okay with this. It must not be that bad. I want to encourage you with something. Don't mistake God's patience with you for the passivity of your sin. Don't mistake God's patience with you for his passivity towards your sin. We serve a patient God, not a passive God. And at the same time, don't sit here and listen and think, man, this person in my head needs to hear this message. No, you need to pay attention to the warning of God. I need to pay attention to the warnings of God in my life. Where is God warning you in your life? Who is God using to warn you in your life? What are the areas that you know I need to tear down some idols? Pay attention to the warning of God. And so the people they hear this warning from God and they want to listen. They want to respond to what Micah is saying. And so in chapter 6, verse 6, they say this with what shall I come before the Lord and bow myself before God on high? Shall I come before him with burnt offering? With calves a year old? Will the Lord be pleased with thousands of rams? With ten thousands of rivers of oil? Shall I give my firstborn for my transgression? The fruit of my body for the sin of my soul? And Micah responds, verse 8, He has told you, O man, what is good. And what does the Lord require of you but to do justice and to love kindness and to walk humbly with your God? You know, there's another show I wasn't supposed to watch growing up, but when you were sick in the 90s and early 2000s, there was only so many things to watch on TV. And so I would watch the show called Judge Judy. Anybody out there, Judge Judy watchers, right? They'd have the weirdest people on this show. And she'd be trying to get to the bottom of it, and then eventually she'd make some of these faces, right? She just couldn't believe the responses she was hearing from these people. I kind of imagine that's kind of what Micah was feeling like, what God is feeling like. They're saying, like, what do you want from us, God? Do you want more sacrifices? Do you want rivers of oil? Do you want our firstborn sons? Like, what do we have to do to get back on your good side? They're arguing with God, and Micah and God are just like, oh my goodness. Just do justice. Just love kindness and just walk humbly with your God. That's all you gotta do. Just do justice. Treat everyone like you actually believe that everyone is created in the image of God. Love kindness. Just actually treat others how you want them to treat you. Show them patience. Show them mercy. And just walk humbly with your God. Actually submit and trust God's design. Follow it. Obey it. It's for your good. Walk with your God in humility. He's your creator. Think less of yourself and think of God more. What Mike is trying to say here is point number two. Align your life with God's design. You want to show a repentant heart toward God? Good. Then actually do what you should do and don't do what you know you shouldn't do. You're living together and you're not married? Why don't you type up an email to marriage or gofamily church.org and start the conversation about getting married. Aligning your life and your relationship up with God's design. Do you need to put the bottle down at the end of a hard work week? Do you need to rethink your business structure, your business dealings, and how you're treating people and the ways that you're willing to make money? Does your family life and rhythms prioritize time spent with God and His word and in prayer? What is it that you need to do to align your life with God's design? We're about to take over 300 kids. The kids camp this week and got all these prayer bracelets on the tables. Why don't you start there? Align your prayer life this week with God's design and pray for the next generation. Pray that God would get a hold of their hearts at a young age, that they would live all the days of their life to serve God. Do you need to have a conversation with your spouse about some of the ways you guys have been interacting that you know you need to work on? What is it that you need to do to align your life the best that you can to the best of your abilities to God's design? We have to stop making excuses and put in the work to align our life. But how can we even begin to do that? How can we begin to actually align our life to God's design? It's not going to be on our own power. Look at verse 6 and 7 again. They say, What shall we do? Bow myself before God on high, burn offerings, my firstborn. Is that what I need to do? They're crying out together, they're asking, what do we have to do? We'll do anything. We'll even give you our firstborn. Basically, they're saying, we'll keep doing what we're doing, we'll do what everybody else around us is doing. We'll just point it towards you. Is that good enough? And God's reply is no. I don't want your firstborn. I'm going to give you mine. I don't want your firstborn. I'm going to give you mine. God is a good God of steadfast love and faithfulness to his promise all the way back in Genesis 3.15, where he said, I'm going to send a snake crusher. Micah 5.2, one of my favorite prophecies in the Bible. But you, O Bethlehem Ephrathah, who are too little among the clans of Judah, from you shall come forth for me. One is who is who to be ruler in Israel, whose coming forth is from old, from ancient days. Therefore he shall give them up until the time when she who is in labor has given birth. Then the rest of the brothers shall return to the people of Israel, and he shall stand and shepherd his flock in the strength of the Lord, in the majesty of the name of the Lord his God, and they shall dwell secure, for now he shall be great to the ends of the earth, and he shall be their peace. When every other religion, false God, false idol, relationship says, What can you do for me? What can I take from you? What do you have to do to earn it? God has love and mercy, and he says, Here is my son. I give to you, I offer to you. I will do for you what you can't do for yourself. It's my favorite time of the year. I listen to Christmas music all year long. I was listening to this week in my truck. It's great. I love it. But why can we do it? It's because it's the answer to the promise of Micah 5:2 that in Bethlehem we'll be born a little baby. We sing this song, we read these verses every December. Luke 2. And the angel said to them, Fear not, for behold, I bring you good news of great joy that will be for all the people. For unto you is born this day in the city of David a Savior, who is Christ the Lord. And this will be a sign for you. You will find the baby wrapped in swaddling cloths and lying in a manger, and suddenly there was with the angel a multitude of heavenly hosts praising God and saying, Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace among those whom He is pleased. You can have peace. The Savior came. Mercy is available. Listen to what Micah said in chapter 7, verse 7. He says, But as for me, I will look to the Lord. I will wait for the God of my salvation. My God will hear me. Rejoice not over me, O my enemy, when I fall, I shall rise. When I sit in the darkness, the Lord will be a light to me. I will bear the indignation of the Lord because I have sinned against him until he pleads my cause and executes judgment for me. The judgment of God is real. And our redemption is evidenced by real repentance, a true change of mind and direction of behavior and worship. But did you see what Micah said? He says, As for me, I'm going to look to the Lord. I'm going to wait on the Lord, the God of my salvation. He knows and he trusts God is going to do for me what I can't do for myself. And at the end of verse 9, I love the phrase he uses. He goes, I'm going to feel some of the indignation of this because I have sinned. I have done wrong. But it's temporary because I know there's coming a day when God is going to plead my case and he is going to execute the justice, the judgment that's deserved, but he's going to do it for me, not on me. He's going to do it for me, not on me. It was poured out on Jesus on the cross. You know, dad, you're doing a great job just by being here today. You're setting a good example on a beautiful day. You could be a lot of other places. I don't golf, but I hear golf is fun. I don't own a boat, but I hear boats are fun. I do own a bed and sleeping in is awesome. And I love to do it. But you're here because you want to set a good example to your family of what it looks like to follow God, to prioritize your relationship with God. You know, I know you're not perfect. I'm not perfect. We're just trying to do our best to point our children to the one who is. The best thing that we can do as dads is point them to a better dad. A heavenly father. The best thing I can do as a dad is point them to their heavenly father. You know, I remember a little over ten years ago, I was sitting on the floor in a room painting a nursery for the first time. And I had pink paint all over me. I grew up in a house of three little brothers surrounded by boy cousins, and we found out we were having a little girl, and I could not, I wanted a little sister all three times. And God said, You just have to wait until you have your own, your own little girl. And I'm sitting there painting, and I heard this song, and I said, That's it? That's gonna be me and Ruthie's song. And it's called The One You Need by Shane and Shane. And so we've danced to this song. I can't, I've lost count how many times we've danced to it together, listened to it in the hospital. I'll play it and hold my phone up to Amber's belly when we were she was pregnant. And at least there's a part of it that goes like this. This is the dad talking to his little girl. He goes, I wish that I could be your everything. Be the one who will give you all the things you need. But sometimes I'm gonna let you down. But there is a way, if you just believe, he'll be your hero like he's always been for me. Darling, Jesus is the one that you need. That's what my little girl needs. That's what all of us need. We need a heavenly father who already has done for us everything that we need. I love this morning. We got to see Holly and Jeremy up here with Ryan and his brothers. And 10 years they kept pointing him, there's someone you need, there's someone who loves you, there's someone who's done for you more than anyone could do for you. And after 10 years of pointing and pointing and pointing, they get to stand here and celebrate he's accepted Jesus for himself. And that's exactly what all of us need to do. Point three, accept Jesus and receive mercy. Don't let another day go by where you don't cry out to your heavenly father and receive his mercy by accepting Jesus and his work on the cross. Do you want God's judgment or do you want God's mercy? Every one of us has sinned, and all of us need a savior. Jesus may have come as a baby in Bethlehem, but he grew to be a man who never sinned, who went to the cross for you and for me. He was perfectly obedient. And on the third day, he rose from the dead and he offers you new life. But for those of us who have repented and believe in the gospel of Jesus, we can agree with Micah. And what he says is he closes out his message, Micah 7, verses 18 to 20. Micah cries out, Who is a God like you, pardoning iniquity and passing over transgression for the remnant of his inheritance? He does not retain his anger forever, because he delights in steadfast love. He will again have compassion on us. He will tread our iniquities underfoot, and you will cast off all our sins into the depths of the sea. You will show faithfulness to Jacob and steadfast love to Abraham as you have sworn to our fathers from days of old. Amen. We can read those verses in light of the cross. Our iniquity has been tread. The wrath of God has been poured out. Our sins have been cast into a sea of forgiveness, never to be brought up again because of what Jesus did on the cross. We have one more review question that we do with the kids every Sunday morning. It's our final one. And we ask them, what is the hope that we have as followers of Jesus? Because you can read these minor prophets to get real down. A lot of judgment and conquering and all this, but there's hope throughout God's constant. I'm gonna send my son, I'm gonna send my son, and we know he has. But for us today, what is the hope that we have? It's this, it's our foundational truth. Jesus is coming back to make all things right, and to help us remember what Jesus has done for us, to help us look towards the day when He will come back. We get to partake in the Lord's Supper together. And at Family Church, we like to teach and preach. We believe that if you're not a believer in Jesus, then you shouldn't take the Lord's Supper because it's a symbol of what we believe as Christians. We also believe and teach that it should be taken by those who have been baptized and are a member of a neighborhood church. So if you normally take the Lord's Supper at the church where you normally attend, if you're visiting today, we we invite you to take it as our guest. But as you get ready to partake of the bread and drink the juice together, let's prepare our hearts and thank him. Let's realign our hearts towards his design. Let's thank him for his mercy.