Sermon Tone Analysis
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Title: Our Plans and God’s Plans.
Text: Micah 2:1-13.
CIT: Men make evil plans without considering God’s ultimate plan.
Theme: Men make plans but God is in control
and has a plan of His own.
Purpose: Discipleship~/Didactic~/Admonition.
*Introduction*
In their efforts to suppress William Tyndale’s first edition of an English New Testament, the English Catholic Church wasted several thousand dollars trying to buy up and burn all the copies he had printed.
They did this twice.
Their funds were secretly funneled back to Tyndale.
This made it possible for him to print up even more copies of his Bible.
Tyndale later died at the hands of these same people.
Less than a year after Tyndale’s martyrdom though, King Henry gave his official approval to an English Bible that, unknown to him, was nearly 70 percent composed of Tyndale’s work.
The king proclaimed, “If there be no heresies in it, let it be spread abroad among all the people!”
This later became known as the King James Version of the Bible.
All the plans of the English Catholic Church were of no avail, God wanted His word in printed in the English language.
The plans of man and God.
Perhaps the 18th - century poet, Robert Burns, had it right when he wrote: “The best laid plans o' mice an' men~/Gang aft a-gley.”
Or as we would say today: “gone astray.”
This is what we find tonight in Micah 2, men making plans, only to have God trump their plans with His own.
As we look at these verses, I want us to recognize three things.
First,
I.
Man’s Ambitious Plans (Micah 2:1-2; 6-11).
/Woe to those who devise iniquity,/
/And work out evil on their beds!/
/At morning light they practice it,/
/Because it is in the power of their hand./
/They covet fields and take them by violence,/
/Also houses, and seize them.
/
/So they oppress a man and his house, /
/A man and his inheritance.
/
/“Lately My people have risen up as an enemy—/
/You pull off the robe with the garment/
/From those who trust you, as they pass by,/
/Like men returned from war./
/The women of My people you cast out/
/From their pleasant houses;/
/From their children/
/You have taken away My glory forever./
The courtroom motif of Micah continues as he summons the rich and affluent people of Israel to court.
He reads the charges God makes against them.
The crime begins with coveting and culminates in forcefully taking.
The criminals are described in colorful terms.
At night, when decent folk are sleeping, they lie in their beds working out schemes by which they can increase their land-holdings.
Then they are up at the crack of dawn, and they have the power and influence to convert their schemes into practice.
Only one thing seemingly stands in the way: the owner of the land!
But owners can be bullied, cheated, and oppressed, until at last they are willing to turn over their land for a song.
But they had forgotten someone else that could stop them.
Micah called their schemes /“evil.”/
Their idea was to increase their wealth by illegitimate and illegal means.
If you read further in this chapter Micah tells us,
/“Lately My people have risen up as an enemy—/
/You pull off the robe with the garment/
/From those who trust you, as they pass by,/
/Like men returned from war./
/The women of My people you cast out/
/From their pleasant houses;/
/From their children/
/You have taken away My glory forever./
It had gotten so bad that these land grabbers had become enemies of the people not neighbors and they had become enemies of God.
They were acting like men with no compassion, ripping protective coats off of people for debts owed, acting like animals without a conscious.
They cast out women and children from their homes, into the cold.
In today’s dog eat dog world the same thing is happening.
People are so busy making money they don’t care who they run over.
We don’t trust or even talk to people.
Walk down the streets with a smile on your face and greet people and you are met with blank stares.
What happened to Israel has happened to America.
We have become a self-centered, money grubbing people who are so concerned with ourselves that we are not concerned with others or their needs.
Listen to what Paul says in Corinthians:
/All things are lawful for me, but not all things are helpful; all things are lawful for me, but not all things edify.
Let no one seek his own, but each one the other’s well being./
We make all these complex and intricate plans, often without consulting God or even thinking of the consequences, only to have God trump them with His own plan.
This is that second thing that stands in these land grabber’s way, God.
That is what I want to see next:
II.
God’s All-inclusive Plan (Micah 2:3-5).
/Therefore thus says the Lord:/
/“Behold, against this family I am devising disaster, From which you cannot remove your necks; Nor shall you walk haughtily,/
/For this is an evil time./
/In that day one shall take up a proverb against you, And lament with a bitter lamentation, saying: ‘We are utterly destroyed!/
/He has changed the heritage of my people;/
/How He has removed it from me!/
/To a turncoat He has divided our fields.’
”/
/Therefore you will have no one to determine boundaries by lot/
/In the assembly of the Lord./
God’s plan is judgment for not including Him and His ways in our plans.
The punishment usually matches the crime.
Just as the land grabbers dreamed their dreams at night, the Lord was devising an appropriate response for them.
The nature of the judgment appears in the words of a - song incorporated in verse 4. Those who had acquired wealth and power by taking land from others would lose it just as quickly when their land was taken from them.
Listen to them,
/Look at what’s happening!
These foreigners are taking our lands and dividing them up among themselves!
How can God let them do that?”
/
The wealthy landowners would not only lose their immediate holdings in land, but would also forfeit any future rights to land in Israel.
Today some Christians condemn God for permitting certain things to take place.
They are saying that God is doing evil.
Well, God tells us that He would do evil from /their/ viewpoint.
If they continued sinning, He would stop them with judgment.
In fact, He said to Israel, /“I devise an evil, from which ye shall not remove your necks.”
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