Micah6:9-16

Intro:

The second half of chapter 6 that we will be covering today is not an overly complicated passage. At the root is it yet another denunciation of Judah for her sins and a declaration of judgment against her. These are themes that are well known to us now both in Micah and also in the wider course of the prophets of Israel and Judah.

However there is a theme here in this text this morning that I think we would do well to spend some time on. It is a theme that I firmly believe most Christians in our modern western church context have a very difficult time relating to. However, if you were to count noses as it were and tally up the number of times that this theme can be found throughout scripture you would find that this is unquestionably one of the most important Biblical themes of all!

Can you guess what that theme might be?

The second line of verse 9 reads:

English Standard Version Chapter 6

it is sound wisdom to fear your name:

The fear of the Lord. It doesn't take much time reading through the Bible to know that you will come across this theme over and over and over again! To say that it is central to our rightly coming to know God is just the beginning of what could be said about the fear of the lord. Yet, if you were to ask many Christians about this theme the would likely hem and haw and try and sputter out some explanation about why fear doesn't really mean fer or even worse yet they will run straight to 1 John 4:18 and brazenly tell you:

1 John 4:18 ESV

There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear. For fear has to do with punishment, and whoever fears has not been perfected in love.

There is defenatlly a sense of tension created in God’s Word with this theme of fear and we certainly ought to take this verse into consideration, however we run into problems when, as with many of the harder themes in scripture, we simply try and aswage our unease by blunting the force of certain hard points by trying to smooth them out with other scriptures. God’s word is often sharp, it cuts, and we would do well to sit under the knife for a while and not just straight to trying to avoid the cut.

S then, no burrying the lead this morning, this is where we are going to go but we do need to also first spend some time with this text and see what God is doing before we pick up this theme more widly throughout scripture.

So lets take a moment to pray and then read our passage and get going with it.

PRAY & READ

Unjust Business Practices

This passage reads like another abbreviated covenant lawsuit. God proclaims His inability to overlook Judash sin, then declares what it is that He has against them, proclaims a punishment for it, and finally conects that punishmnt direcly to the curses for unfaithfulness that had been given in Deutronomy 28 in the origional covenant with Israel.

First we see that this is God who is calling out to the people. Again, though we are sometimes quick to pass over these things we ought to remember that Micah is using this to grab the people’s attention. They were often under the impression that they were on totally fine footing with God and Micah says “No, God actually has somethign to say to you!”

Micah then brings the theme of the fear of the Lord and wisdom to bear on the people. We will look at this more in just a bit but this is a theme that, especially through Proverbs, would have been well known to the people and the overall line of reasoning here will be that these people in Judah are not acting wisely precisly because they lack this fear of the Lord.

The last line of 9 is notriously hard to translate but it seems to pick up the language of Micah’s contemporary Isaiah who used the imagery of a rod or a club in Isaiah 10:5 to descrine Assyria as God’s chosen instrument that He is picking up to wield against His people. The thought seems to be the same here. God says, I have chosen my intrument for your punishment, you have heard of it from my prophet Isaiah, you have head of the rod but, and this ties into the last line, “Hear of Him who appointed it.” The rod becomes an avenew through wich the greatness of their God ought to be considered!

God then in verse 10 begins to take aim at what will be His focus in this judgement, the unjust business practices of the people. They have, this verse tells us, ammassed illgotten treasure by cheating the people using as the ESV says here a “cant measure” or as some translations say “the short ephah.” Their weights and measures were unjustly skewed so that they got more money from the people than what they shoudl have been owed they said they were selling an entire ephah of grain but in reality it was not that much and so they lined their pockets at their neighbirs expense.

God delcares:

English Standard Version Chapter 6

Shall I acquit the man with wicked scales

and with a bag of deceitful weights?

12  Your rich men are full of violence;

your inhabitants speak lies,

and their tongue is deceitful in their mouth.

God is therefore goign to bring judgement!

These judgements seem to arise from the devistation that takes place when God’s rod of Assyria is wielded againts the people.

English Standard Version Chapter 6

Therefore I strike you with a grievous blow,

making you desolate because of your sins.

14  You shall eat, but not be satisfied,

and there shall be hunger within you;

you shall put away, but not preserve,

and what you preserve I will give to the sword.

15  You shall sow, but not reap;

you shall tread olives, but not anoint yourselves with oil;

you shall tread grapes, but not drink wine.

Their il gotten wealth had allowed them to feast in luxury but now they wil not have enough. They will eat but not be satisfied, they wont have enough any lnger to fill their bellies. Anythign that they try to store will be taken away from them and what thye sow int he ground is either goign to be destroyed or is going to be taken away befoe they can taste of the fruit of their labor. They will produce oil and ine but that will be sent away as tribute to their conquerors.

God then summarizes His indictment again and connects it to the covenant curses in verse 16:

English Standard Version Chapter 6

For you have kept the statutes of Omri,

and all the works of the house of Ahab;

and you have walked in their counsels,

that I may make you a desolation, and your inhabitants a hissing;

so you shall bear the scorn of my people.”

Omri and Ahab were two of the most wicked kings of the northern 10 tribes and we find here that Judah is guilty of walking in the ways of these wicked kings. This is significant because at this time it was well known that Israel had allready been defeated and deported by Assyria precisely for these sins and so God is saying that Judah has now so alked in the paths of these wicked kings that they are likewise going to suffer the same fate.

That fate?

They are to become a desolation, a hissing, and a scorn of the people.

Listen to Deuteronomy 28:37

Deuteronomy 28:37 ESV

And you shall become a horror, a proverb, and a byword among all the peoples where the Lord will lead you away.

God is saying that He is going to now bring upon Juda these judements as a result of their unfaithfulness to Hi covenant. They are not goign to experience the curse of God’s wrath!