Gutsy Guilt and the fight for joy

Exerpt from John Piper's "When I don't desire God"

Rejoice not over me, O my enemy; when I fall, I shall rise; when I sit in darkness, the Lord will be a light to me. 9 I will bear the indignation of the Lord because I have sinned against him, until he pleads my cause and executes judgment for me. He will bring me out to the light; I shall look upon his vindication. (Micah 7:8-9) 

I like to call Micah's attitude gutsy guilt. On the one hand he is guilty of real sin. In verse 9 he says, simply, "I have sinned against him." Micah knows it and is not trying to hide it. He is sorry and broken and is not trying to sweep anything under the rug. "I will bear the indignation of the Lord." So not only is there real guilt, there is real divine indignation. God does not like what Micah did. He is angry. Micah does not protest that this can't be-that God doesn't get angry at his children. He does not short-circuit the discipline of his God by sentimental talk about God's mercy. The mercy will have its place soon enough. 

Micah is ashamed and accepts God's anger. "I sit in darkness." He puts his hand on his mouth and accepts the sorrow and gloom that hang over him. No quick fix here. There are many times in the Christian life like this. It is foolish of us to make light of them, or trivialize them, or try to deny that they exist. God is holy, and he disciplines the children whom he loves. There is a fatherly his contrition and gloom under God's anger, 

But I said that this text describes gutsy guilt. Astonishingly, in all his contrition and gloom under God's anger, Micah gets in the face of his enemy and says, "Rejoice not over me, O my enemy; when I fall, I shall rise." The enemy is rubbing it in. The enemy is saying that the sin of Micah cuts him off from his God. The enemy is lying and trying to make Micah hopeless. This is a major battle against Micah's joy in God. And Micah fights well-he preaches the gospel of justification by faith.  He gives us an example of how to fight for joy with the weapon of the gospel. 

He says, "When I sit in darkness, the LORD will be a light to me." Remember, this darkness is the Lord's discipline. God's indignation burns. And in the midst of the darkness imposed by God, Micah says, "God will be my light." He counts on God's light in the darkness that God himself has sent. That is gutsy. That is what we must learn to do in our darkness-even the darkness we have brought on ourselves because of our sin. Yes, I am under the gloom of failure. Yes, God has put me here in his displeasure. But no, I am not abandoned, and God is not against me. He is for me. Even in the darkness that he imposes, he will sustain me. He will not let me go. Though he slay me, he will save me. We must learn to preach to ourselves like this in our fight for joy. 

Then, even more astonishingly, Micah says, "I will bear the indignation of the Lord because I have sinned against him, until he pleads my cause and executes judgment for me." In the midst of his guilt, and in the gloom of its consequences, he knows that a limit has been set to the darkness. God will come. "And when he comes, he will come pleading my cause." He will be my advocate, not the prosecuting attorney. The one who has thrown him in the jail of darkness will pay his bail and plead his case in court and make sure that he goes free to live in joy again. 

He goes even further and says that when God comes to him in the darkness, he will "execute judgment" for him. Micah's enemies are saying that he has fallen and that this means God is against him. "Isn't it clear, Micah? You yourself admit that you sinned. You yourself say that God is angry. You yourself say that the darkness and gloom are from the Lord. There is only one reasonable explanation: God is executing judgment against you. You may have once called him Father, but no longer. Now he is Judge. You are guilty, and the judgment is falling-against you." That's what the enemy says. 

Against all this "reasonable" accusation (from self, Satan, or others) Micah preaches the doctrine of justification by faith. If he had lived on this side of the cross of Christ, he would be making the ground of God's mercy explicit, namely, the righteousness of Jesus Christ. He says, "Watch out all you who speak thus. My God-my covenant God who declares me righteous by faith and not by works-is about to execute judgment for me. That means you, my enemies, will be the ones judged. Take heed, and learn from my rising hope and gutsy guilt the doctrine of justification by faith alone." If you do not learn this, your joys in this life will all be based on an illusion-that your ship is unsinkable.