Micah stands firm for God

God’s Provision’s Lost

In this chapter we have, I. The sins with which the people of Israel are charged—covetousness and oppression, fraudulent and violent practices (v. 1, 2), dealing barbarously, even with women and children, and other harmless people (v. 8, 9). Opposition of God’s prophets and silencing them (v. 6, 7), and delighting in false prophets (v. 11). II. The judgments with which they are threatened for those sins, that they should be humbled, and impoverished (v. 3–5), and banished (v. 10).

Micah 2:1–11 (NKJV)

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.

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.

“Do not prattle,” you say to those who prophesy.

So they shall not prophesy to you;

They shall not return insult for insult.

You who are named the house of Jacob:

“Is the Spirit of the Lord restricted?

Are these His doings?

Do not My words do good

To him who walks uprightly?

“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.

“Arise and depart,

For this is not your rest;

Because it is defiled, it shall destroy,

Yes, with utter destruction.

If a man should walk in a false spirit

And speak a lie, saying,

‘I will prophesy to you of wine and drink,’

Even he would be the prattler of this people.

(The word prattler means to prophesy ecstatically).

Micah wastes no time getting into his message. God has spoken to him and warned him that the sins of the people are so great that He must send judgment. He names the capital cities in v. 1—Jerusalem (capital of Judah, the Southern Kingdom) and Samaria (capital of Israel, the Northern Kingdom). In fact, in this first message, Micah names twelve cities and points out their sins some of those cities were.

Shaphir= Pleasant

Zaanan= Come out

Beth-ezel= house of dust

Maroth= bitter

Lachish= team of horses

Moresheth-Gath= gift or dowry, Micah’s hometown

Aczib= deception

Mareshah= conqueror.

No one can remove their necks.

(GOLDEN TEXT- Ps 37:18 The Lord knoweth the days of the upright: and their inheritance shall be forever.)

Today’s Aim:

Facts: to see how standing firm for God can sometimes be challenging in an immoral culture.

Principal: to understand some of the consequences of not following the Lord.

Application: to listen to those who lift up the word of God and urge us to obey it despite our fleshly desires.

Introducing the Lesson: Contrary to popular belief, we only have two choices when it comes to sin: we can serve God, or we can serve ourselves.

Studying the text:

Nothing to cling to- Mic. 2:4-7

No portion (Mic. 2:4) {In this chapter, Micah identified many of the sins of Judah, specifying violations of the mosaic law. He did this to warn the people that God’s divine punishment was on its way unless they changed direction immediately.} Q1

They were so bad that they devised evil plans even while they were falling asleep at night and then carried out those ideas the next morning as soon as they had opportunity (vs. 1). Among the things that they did was to covet and take fields and homes violently (vs. 2). In carrying out such injustices, they were oppressing their fellow men and taking away their promised heritage.

God said, “in that day shall one take up a parable against you, and lament with a doleful lamentation” (vs. 4). {Those outside of the land would make up a song to mock the people of Judah. At the same time, God’s people would mourn with these words: We are utterly spoiled: he hath changed the portion of his people: how hath he removed it from me! turning away he hath divided our fields. The time was coming when God would remove his blessing from his own people and would himself take away their property and give it to others. They would therefore, no longer have any portion, or allotment, left to themselves in their land. Enemies would take it all and force them into captivity. Their prideful self-confidence would be utterly destroyed.

Malachi 2:2 says, If you will not hear, And if you will not take it to heart, To give glory to My name,” Says the Lord of hosts, I will send a curse upon you, and curse your blessings. Yes, I have cursed them already, Because you do not take it to heart.

God must receive the credit for and the glory of everything, there is no place for pride when obeying God’s commission; if we are going to undertake this then we must be humble, not self glorifying; Micah understood his calling, being bold and confidently proclaiming in this case the bad news from the Lord God of host.

Micah 3:8 (NKJV) But truly I am full of power by the Spirit of the Lord, And of justice and might, To declare to Jacob his transgression And to Israel his sin.

his calling was to confront his fellow Brothers and try to appeal to their since of obedience to God and their sense of fair play to others, But, in all honesty they had already moved well pass that, their longing of the riches that they gained was far greater than their desire to listen to the man of God, they were being willfully contrary; hiding behind their own excuses and love of their own status; John D. Rockefeller said, ‘The poorest man I know is the man who has nothing but money.’ Money can’t buy you a relationship with God and will not enter you into heaven.

There was a need for the man of God to speak up against the injustices of his day, so in chapter 6 Micah eludes to the charges against them.

Micah 6:10–12 says (NKJV) Are there yet the treasures of wickedness In the house of the wicked, And the short measure that is an abomination? Shall I count pure those with the wicked scales, And with the bag of deceitful weights? For her rich men are full of violence, Her inhabitants have spoken lies, And their tongue is deceitful in their mouth.

They were cheating in business: the use of a light weight when weighing out a commodity, or a heavy weight when weighing gold, or a small measure when selling something by volume. All of the charges that God brought against his people are spoken of here in these verses, as well as the main text. The land grabbers took land that was God given, there own land wasn't enough so they broke the laws of God and by force stole from others.

There was a covenant that was established called the Sinai covenant also called the jubilee in the book of Leviticus. The assignment of land to each tribe, clan and family was in the regulations within with the Sinai covenant; To announce the coming of the Year of Jubilee, trumpets were blown throughout the land on the tenth day of the seventh month of the forty-ninth year. This was done to prepare for the fiftieth year, when families will return to their inheritance. Warning was given well in advance. The occasion would usher in some sweeping changes in the lives of many Israelites, since it involved the returning to and reclaiming the home of one’s origins. The intention of Jubilee was to prevent a small number of owners from permanently controlling vast tracts of land, the potential for another form of slavery. There was a caveat to this too. When the poor person tried to prevent the taking of their inheritance they were stopped by the judge accepting a bribe from the rich person; as mentioned in Micah 3

Leviticus 25:23-34 (NKJV) Redemption of Property:

The land shall not be sold permanently, for the land is Mine; for you are strangers and sojourners with Me. 24 And in all the land of your possession you shall grant redemption of the land.

25 ‘If one of your brethren becomes poor, and has sold some of his possession, and if his redeeming relative comes to redeem it, then he may redeem what his brother sold. 26 Or if the man has no one to redeem it, but he himself becomes able to redeem it, 27 then let him count the years since its sale, and restore the remainder to the man to whom he sold it, that he may return to his possession. 28 But if he is not able to have it restored to himself, then what was sold shall remain in the hand of him who bought it until the Year of Jubilee; and in the Jubilee it shall be released, and he shall return to his possession.

Micah 3:9–11 (NKJV) Now hear this, You heads of the house of Jacob And rulers of the house of Israel, Who abhor justice And pervert all equity, Who build up Zion with bloodshed And Jerusalem with iniquity: Her heads judge for a bribe, Her priests teach for pay, And her prophets divine for money. Yet they lean on the Lord, and say, “Is not the Lord among us? No harm can come upon us.”

So this is what we find as we look at the second chapter of Micah. I wanted to try and set a back round for understanding the lesson. The rich of his day were working dishonestly to increase their wealth; now in itself, there is nothing wrong with prosperity; in fact, it is a blessing of God. But these people were increasing their wealth through force and fraud and not through providence of God. They were not even able to wait until daybreak to form their evil stratagems. They lay awake plotting. Then, when daylight came, they immediately rushed out to put their plans into effect.

Micah says they had forgotten that God had plans too and that his plans rather than theirs would prevail. They “plan iniquity” (v. 1), he writes, but God says, “I am planning disaster against this people In calling them ‘this people’, not ‘my people’ (see also 2:11), God showed he was disowning them on account of their disobedience to his commandments, and because they had broken the covenant that he had made with them (see Deut. 26:17–18).

Micah declared Gods word against the whole kingdom, there are eight other cities all included; the whole nation sinned in some form or another all went into captivity, the house of Israel, and particularly those families in it that were taking from others. They unjustly devise evil against their brethren, and God will justly devise evil against them. God says in verse 3 that they will not be able to remove their necks. There is no escape form the punishment that Micah prophesied was coming.

God says he is devising disaster, they go maybe into some level of rebellion, not believing that God would do this to them showing a resistance to Micah’s prophesy; also the people in the surrounding areas are making them a laughing stock, God is saying that they will take up a proverb against you, In this context it is best seen as a derogatory proverbial chant against them one of scorn and ridicule. In other words

they wrote song about their despair, now imagine, that they watched all that they had schemed and cheated for go to those that don’t care for it, and misuse it; it is now no longer theirs, but it is in the possession and occupation of their enemies. v (5) says; Thou shalt have none to cast a cord by lot in the congregation of the Lord, none to divide inheritances, because there shall be no inheritances to divide, no courts, no judges to pay off; to try titles to lands to determine possession or cast lots, So absolute would be the destruction, that estates would no longer descend from father to son, or be measured by lot. it all will be in the enemies’ hand. so they were cut short in the enjoyment of and privileges of the land.

At the same time they were listening to prophets that was telling them exactly what they wanted to hear Mic 3:5-8 says Judah’s false prophets were criticizing Micah for bringing a message of judgment (cf. Isa 30:9-10). there were two things that counted against the false prophets. (1) They rejected Micah’s prophecy, they insisted that God’s people would never suffer shame and disgrace because God was a God of love and forgiveness, and not anger. (2) Their optimistic message gave the people a false sense of security and allowed them to continue neglecting God’s laws and standards.

Micah was mocking the people also by saying anyone could gain a following if they promised prosperity and plenty of intoxicating drink for everyone who wanted it. His words were meant to cut through their foolish thinking. The people would become hard and callous to the prophet’s voice;

They were eagerly accepting false prophets who only predicted “positive” things. So the people were conniving, and tricking people or taking from them all that they could.

The same thing is happening today we are always hearing about some kind of scheme bilking people out of their life’s saving, because they trusted someone, maybe they were family which is even sadder, the far reaches of depravity is limitless in intent and implementation, just when you think you have seen and heard it all, there comes another one even more evil. Micah was similar to his contemporary Amos, the prophet who went to the northern kingdom of Israel some years before its fall. They were similar in that, Micah’s words against those who were plotting evil in Jerusalem were similar to Amos’s words against the wicked of Samaria. In Samaria people had grown rich at the expense of those less fortunate than themselves. They had built winter houses and summer houses (Amos 3:15). Their furniture was of the finest quality (Amos 6:4). They had lush vineyards (Amos 5:11). They ate the best food and drank the most abundant wine (Amos 6:4–6). But it was all acquired by fraud, oppression, and corruption. (Pr 16:25) There is a way that seems right to a man, But its end is the way of death. The Assyrians held Samaria for three years under seige, causing starvation and death. 150 years later Babylonians destroyed and burned Jerusalem both prophesied by the men of God.

Micah here finds the same thing going on in Jerusalem, they didn’t care that they were breaking the 10th commandment.

Exodus 20:17 NKJV

“You shall not covet your neighbor’s house; you shall not covet your neighbor’s wife, nor his male servant, nor his female servant, nor his ox, nor his donkey, nor anything that is your neighbor’s.”

So covetousness means basically not to be satisfied with what God has already given you. It means to be materialistic. being greedy, self-centered, egotistical, and uncaring of others goes along with coveting riches. The tenth commandment reveals that sin is essentially a matter of the heart, for coveting is something that exists internally long before it expresses itself in action. We are a generation of people never at peace with what we have, some of us are always seeking more. We are as guilty of coveting our neighbor’s fields or houses or inheritance as were the citizens of Jerusalem. When we were unsaved there may have been times when we coveted something that someone had and we wanted for ourselves; even now we have to be careful to not fall into that very trap; it’s a trick of the enemy to try and tempt us into covetousness. There are subtle forms of this in advertising as well, like buying a particular kind of car will make you be on top of your game, or give you a higher standing in society; now granted you have to make something look good to sell it appeal to the masses collectively, the sad part is it will change your status; someone will in turn be lured into covetousness as well by simply coveting what you have, so they in turn sell more cars, and thereby keeping the trap set for the next person. that’s the kind of perpetual snare that satan sets up for us, we end up falling like domino’s; If we are not careful.

Galatians 5:26 (NKJV)

Let us not become conceited, provoking one another, envying one another. What does he mean by provoking one another? Do not flaunt your stuff to others making them envious of what we have; because its a blessing we should treat it as such. Amen

2 Peter 2:14 (NKJV)

They have a heart trained in covetous practices, and are accursed children. until they see the error of their ways; this is the same attitude that those in Jerusalem had; it may have been some of us at some point, because their heart is trained on those practices they are hard to sway into anything that threatens their status.

Luke 12:15 NKJV

And He said to them, “Take heed and beware of covetousness, for one’s life does not consist in the abundance of the things he possesses.”

Psalm 119:36 (NKJV)

Incline my heart to Your testimonies,

And not to covetousness.

Proverbs 28:16 (NKJV)

A ruler who lacks understanding is a great oppressor, But he who hates covetousness will prolong his days. It would have been well for the landlords of Micah’s day to heed this proverb.

1 Timothy 6:17 NKJV

Command those who are rich in this present age not to be haughty, nor to trust in uncertain riches but in the living God, who gives us richly all things to enjoy.

Acts 20:33 NKJV

I have coveted no one’s silver or gold or apparel.