There was a ferment of ideas: John Wycliffe made the first translation of the Bible into English and the rebel priest John Ball spread egalitarian views. In the popular ditty of the day: “When Adam delved and Eve span, who was then the gentleman?” This caught the spirit of the time. Following Wycliffe’s lead, the Lollards,[24] objected to prayers for the dead, priestly celibacy and other church ordinances. They attacked the wealth and intolerance of the clergy, proclaimed the right of every man to examine the Bible for himself and held that all authority was founded on God’s grace. This was revolutionary indeed, for it led all too easily to the conclusion that wicked kings, popes and priests should have no power. The authorities could not let this pass. Wycliffe was silenced and those who espoused his teaching were persecuted to extinction. Their thoughts, however, were not so easily expunged and budded afresh in the Protestant Reformation some hundred and fifty years later.[25]
Pilgrims.
We, too, live in a world of ferment. The demise of deference, the end of old certainties and the undermining of formerly respected institutions all mark the passing of an era. With the way ahead uncertain, now more than ever we need to “walk in [the Lord’s] paths” (Micah 4:2), to be a pilgrim people. This means that we need to:
• Honour and worship God: to treat “the mountain of the LORDs temple … as chief among the mountains” and to raise it “above the hills” (Micah 4:1).
• Move in God’s direction, not away from him: “let us go up to the mountain of the LORD, to the house of the God of Jacob.” (Micah 4:2)
• Learn from God: “He will teach us his ways, so that we may walk in his paths.” (Micah 4:2).
• Accept God’s laws and judgments: “The law will go out from Zion, the word of the LORD from Jerusalem. He will judge between many peoples and will settle disputes for strong nations far and wide.” (Micah 4:2-3)
In effect, this comes down to giving proper weight to the first four of the Ten Commandments, those which deal with the relationship between God and man. First and foremost: “You shall have no other gods before me.” (Exodus 20:3). We should put God first, regardless of what others say or think: “All the nations may walk in the name of their gods; we will walk in the name of the LORD our God for ever and ever.” (Micah 4:5).
Like Chaucer, we should have no time for corruption, greed or hypocrisy, wherever these may appear.
Ploughmen.
As well as being pilgrims, we need to be ploughmen, to prepare ground for planting. In painting a picture of the coming of the kingdom of God, Micah uses farming images: of ploughshares (Micah 4:3), of the gathering of “sheaves to the threshing-floor” (Micah 4:12) and of threshing (Micah 4:13). We are called to husbandry of the land, in both literal and metaphorical senses. Above all, we are called to husbandry of its people, so that a great crop may be harvested for God.
Micah shows how to go about this process of husbandry. We need so to order our affairs that the pursuit of peace, justice and goodwill will characterise our dealings amongst ourselves and with others, so that all obtain a decent stake in society. Then: “They will beat their swords into ploughshares and their spears into pruning hooks. Nation will not take up sword against nation, nor will they train for war any more. Every man will sit under his own vine and under his own fig tree, and no-one will make them afraid, for the LORD Almighty has spoken.” (Micah 4:3-4).
So important is this message that the Lord sent two separate men to preach it. The words of Micah 4:1-3 repeat almost exactly those spoken by his near contemporary, the prophet Isaiah: see Isaiah 2:2-4. They also echo the last six of the Ten Commandments, those which deal with the relationships between men, which tell us to honour our parents and forbid us to murder, commit adultery, steal, lie and covet (Exodus 20:12-17). Or, as Jesus put it: “Love your neighbour as yourself” (Matthew 22:39) and “Do to others as you would have them do to you.” (Luke 6:31).
Like the protagonists of Piers Ploughman, we must open ourselves to the workings of conscience, repentance and truth. When this genuinely happens in our lives, there will be an overflow to our fellow men and a transformation of society.
Ransomed, healed.
In present-day England relationships with both God and our fellow men have gone awry. We put man before God and ourselves before anyone else. We have become enslaved by the very things that promised to set us free and bring us fulfilment: by the mindless pursuit of material wellbeing, by treating things of no account as though they had moral and spiritual worth, by our own sin. Land that should be put to the plough has been lying fallow so long that it is choked with weeds. Too few pilgrims now tread the Lord’s paths and they, too, are in danger of becoming overgrown.
The southern Israelite kingdom of Judah in Micah’s day was in a similar state of moral and spiritual decline. Things had gone so far that God’s judgment was about to be played out: “Writhe in agony, O Daughter of Zion, like a woman in labour, for now you must leave the city to camp in the open field. You will go to Babylon” (Micah 4:10). The coming Babylonian attack and the resulting exile were just around the corner.
Such is God’s love for his people, however, that he is not prepared to let matters rest there. Micah describes a folk redeemed from slavery, bought back by the God who loves them: “you will be rescued ... the LORD will redeem you out of the hand of your enemies.” (Micah 4:10). Where previously things were scattered, broken apart and estranged, there is gathering, mending and putting back together: “I will gather the lame, I will assemble the exiles and those I have brought to grief.” (Micah 4:6).
The image of paying a ransom to redeem a captive or a slave appears again and again throughout the Bible.[26] The price of our freedom, of course, was beyond reckoning. It was paid by Jesus on the cross.
Restored, forgiven.
The people bought at such a cost have been redeemed for a purpose. They are to be the kernel of new growth. For this, God chooses the small, weak, crippled and outcast: “I will make the lame a remnant, those driven away a strong nation” (Micah 4:7). This ragtag group, so unpromising to human eyes, is to be the recipient of God’s favour to an extraordinary degree. They are the ones who will become what God had always intended his people to be. For this coming “royal priesthood” (1 Peter 2:9), the spearhead and vanguard of God’s kingdom come to earth, the language of sovereignty is used: “the former dominion will be restored to you; kingship will come to the Daughter of Jerusalem” (Micah 4:8).
As the remnant is restored, so will be the practice of true religion, alongside the kingdom of peace. Energy and resources will be turned from destruction to construction, as “swords [are beaten] into ploughshares and ... spears into pruning hooks.” (Micah 4:3). The result is that there will be ease and plenty: “Every man will sit under his own vine and his own fig tree.” (Micah 4:4).
With all this in view, God reminds his people that they have no need to fear and no need to be downcast, for he is their guide and ruler and he is sovereign over all the earth: “Why do you now cry aloud – have you no king? Has your counsellor perished, that pain seizes you like a woman in labour?” (Micah 4:9).
Conclusion.
Spiritually, the current state of England is dire. We might be tempted to agree that overwhelming forces “are gathered against [us, saying] ‘Let her be defiled, let our eyes gloat over [them]’” (Micah 4:11).
The Lord has a part for us to play in helping to change this state of affairs and to assist in bringing about his kingdom. We are to act as the “watchtower of the flock [and the]... stronghold of the Daughter of Zion” (Micah 4:8). In the recent past, we have signally failed in these roles. Our failure should cause us shame and repentance, but should not lead to our becoming downhearted or inactive. We should remind ourselves that we have indeed a King and that our Counsellor has not perished. If we turn again to our Lord, there is the certainty that we and our land will be ransomed, healed, restored and forgiven.
Instead of leading us to give way to gloom, Micah’s prop
hecy should inspire hope. For those who plot evil: “do not know the thoughts of the LORD; they do not understand his plan, he who gathers them like sheaves to the threshing floor.” (Micah 4:12) Amidst all that is wrong in our society, amidst all that is broken and corrupted, there is the promise of redemption and renewal. To ensure that we make these promises our own, we need to be pilgrims and ploughmen. If we are faithful, God will say to us: “Rise and thresh, O Daughter of Zion, for I will give you horns of iron; I will give you hooves of bronze and you will break to pieces many nations.” (Micah 4:13). A nation can be defined as a people under the same government and inhabiting the same country, and here the nations of which the prophet speaks are spiritual as much as physical – groups which stand in opposition to God and instead are denizens of the powers of darkness. These take many forms. Being evil, they do not form a homogeneous whole but are often characterised by hatred, division, strife, enmity and jealousy amongst themselves. Thus the nations whose power we must break are not so much external as internal. Our ability to confront and defeat them will come about not for our aggrandisement, but so that we may “devote their ill-gotten gains to the Lord, their wealth to the Lord of all the earth.” (Micah 4:13).
Micah’s prophecy reminds us that we should be full of praise for God, for his mercy and goodness. He is waiting to pour these out on us. Our nation needs only to turn to him with heartfelt sorrow for its wrongdoing, to ask in faith and trust for his blessing and the treasures of God’s kingdom will be opened to us. The ball is in our court.
11. Side of the angels?
Proverbs 2:1-15.
Key word: vision.
For those who bemoan the moral decline of modern Englishmen, history can be a good antidote. Such was the profanity of the English soldiery during the Hundred Years’ War that the French named them “les goddams.” We are accustomed to look with pride and some degree of astonishment at the roll call of victory after victory against seemingly impossible odds during this conflict: on sea at Sluys (1340), on land at Crécy (1346), Poitiers (1356), Agincourt (1415), Rouvrai (1429) and a dozen more besides. We choose to avert our eyes from the widespread practice of the chevauchée, an armed raid through French-held territory characterised more often by pillage, rape and murder than any real military objective. We prefer not to consider the activities of the so-called Free Companies, mercenaries who treated France as their playground, where fortunes could be made on the back of plunder. In truth, beneath the gloss of victory lay little glory.
By 1429 France was in a pitiable state. Large swathes of the country were under the control of England or her ally, Burgundy. French armies had been defeated time and again by a foe whose weaponry, tactics and soldiering ability seemed in every way superior. Her capital was in the hands of the enemy and the royal court had been driven to a provincial backwater at Chinon. She had indeed no king, the dauphin being as yet uncrowned, his paternity in question and the legitimacy of his claim to the crown challenged by the English. Dissolution and dithering marked his conduct.
Worse yet, a new English offensive was under way. The fearsome warrior king Henry V had died in 1422 leaving an infant son, but the prosecution of the war scarce faltered. The Duke of Bedford, regent for the young Henry VI, urged his commanders forward. Orleans, key to control of the Loire valley and the French-held lands beyond, was invested. Its capture would almost certainly mark the final phase of the war and lead to all France coming under English rule.
Far from the fighting lay a little village called Domrémy. In its fields a peasant girl had since the age of thirteen heard voices and seen visions. She was known to her family and neighbours for her piety and prayerfulness, for her purity, compassion and gentleness. She is known to us as Joan of Arc (Jeanne d’Arc), the Maid of Orleans. Around eighteen years old in 1429, at this time of great peril her voices told her that now was the moment for her to save France. What she saw and heard changed the course of history. Within three years she was dead, yet in that short space the siege of Orleans was broken, the dauphin crowned king at Rheims and the English embarked on the long retreat that at length saw them expelled from France: by 1453, only the enclave of Calais remained in English hands.
Visions of victory.
By every human measure, France was without hope in the early months of 1429. By every human measure, it was ridiculous to suppose that an untutored shepherdess could win an audience with the future king of France, let alone persuade him to allow her a leading role in his armies. By every human measure, an innocent girl should have been the prey of mocking soldiers, not their revered heroine. That something more than human was at work in Joan’s story is hard to deny: even her enemies conceded that, though they claimed her power was demonic. Accustomed to defeat and anticipating annihilation, the dauphin himself at first was sceptical. When Joan arrived at Chinon, he dressed as one of his courtiers and mingled with them – this in an age when few of the peasantry would have seen their ruler, or even a picture of his likeness. Yet unerringly she sought him out and fell on bended knee before him. “Most noble dauphin,” she said, “the King of Heaven announces to you by me that you shall be anointed and crowned king in the city of Rheims, and that you shall be his vice-regent in France.”
The dauphin nevertheless remained alert to the charge of having leagued himself with a sorceress. He thus ensured that every conceivable test was made of Joan’s purity and orthodoxy, until at length he and his advisers were satisfied and she was sent with the army to relieve Orleans.
Joan’s bursting on the national stage was accompanied by religious revival. Clergy travelled the country preaching and calling on the people to repent. Soldiers, mindful of the presence of the Maid in their midst, laid aside swearing and vice. Thus the French marched forth, with a girl at their head, clad in armour and bearing a banner of her own devising. The enemy against whom they turned were “wicked men ... men whose words are perverse, who leave the straight paths to walk in dark ways, who delight in doing wrong and rejoice in the perverseness of evil, whose paths are crooked and who are devious in their ways.” (Proverbs 2:12-15). Generations had passed since last France claimed the field of battle against England, yet now her sons marched with new confidence. “For the LORD ... holds victory in store for the upright, he is a shield to those whose walk is blameless, for he guards the course of the just and protects the way of his faithful ones.” (Proverbs 2:6-7).
Like Joan of Arc, we need to catch God’s vision of the future, a vision of victory over the forces of darkness: to believe in it and work for it. Like the Maid of Orleans, we need to hear God’s voice and act upon it, without quibble or delay.
Victory in store.
Since the Lord “holds victory in store for the upright” (Proverbs 2:7) we need to consider how we can claim this victory today against evil in our lives and in our land. To do so, we need the things that Solomon lists in the second chapter of Proverbs:
• Wisdom: “Wisdom will save you from the ways of wicked men ...” (Proverbs 2:12).
• Discretion: “Discretion will protect you ...” (Proverbs 2:11).
• Understanding: “... understanding will guard you.” (Proverbs 2:11).
• Justice: “[the LORD] guards the course of the just ...” (Proverbs 2:8).
• Faith: “[the LORD] protects the way of his faithful ones.” (Proverbs 2:8).
With these will also come insight (Proverbs 2:3), knowledge (Proverbs 2:5) and the understanding of “what is right and just and fair – every good path.” (Proverbs 2:9).
The source of these things is God: “For the LORD gives wisdom, and from his mouth come knowledge and understanding.” (Proverbs 2:6). Indeed, “The fear of the LORD is the beginning of wisdom.” (Psalm 111:10 and Proverbs 9:10). So also is it “the beginning of knowledge” (Proverbs 1:7). By speaking of “the fear of the LORD”, the Bible does not mean that we are forever to live in terror of a wrathful and vengeful God. It means rather that we should bear a loving reverence for the Almighty that include
s submission to his lordship and to the commands of his Word.
Laying hold of victory.
God will make wisdom, knowledge and understanding available to us in such a way that “wisdom will enter [our] heart, and knowledge will be pleasant to [our] soul.” (Proverbs 2:10). However, in order for this to be so an effort on our part is called for. We need to:
• Accept: “... accept [his] words and store up [his] commands within [us]” (Proverbs 2:1).
• Turn: “... turn [our] ear to wisdom and apply [our] heart to understanding” (Proverbs 2:2).
• Call out: “... call out for insight and cry aloud for understanding” (Proverbs 2:3).
• Look: “... look for it as for silver and search for it as for hidden treasure” (Proverbs 2:4).
If we do these things, “then [we] will understand the fear of the Lord and find the knowledge of God.” (Proverbs 2:5). That is to say, we will comprehend in the fullest way possible for human beings, since we will have a perspective that takes account of the spiritual as well as the earthly. Likewise, we will have the key to every kind of right conduct.
Applied on a national scale, understanding and knowledge of this kind would transform our land. Our recent history shows beyond a shadow of a doubt what wise men have always known: that technical progress avails naught unless there is wisdom in its application, that material advancement is empty unless it is regulated by “what is right and just and fair” (Proverbs 2:9) and that cleverness is of no use unless it is accompanied by insight and understanding. It shows, moreover, that action without discretion leads to excess and a society without faith crumbles from within.
Redeeming a Nation (Timeless Teaching) Page 8