Micah 2
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Woe to the Oppressors
Woe to the Oppressors
Good evening my friends, we welcome you to our Wednesday night services...
Hope you are having a good week. Tonight, this is our time to recharge, to refresh and hear from the Lord as we walk through the Scriptures.
Tonight, we come back to the OT book of Micah, and with that we will open chapter 2.
The theme of this chapter is A Woe to the Oppressors. A woe oracle is a message of judgement, and as we know, it is because of sin.
There is a strange idea in our world today that people think they can live like they want to, and God is ok with it and them. it couldnt be farther from the truth. God hates sin and will judge it.
God loves us, he loves the world but as a good faithful parent he will punish wrong doing. when I was disobedient growing up, i got a whipping.....
Lets begin with verses 1
1 Woe to those who devise wickedness
and work evil on their beds!
When the morning dawns, they perform it,
because it is in the power of their hand.
What you see here is the Word of God pointing out the greed of the wealthy and powerful, they work to hurt others and do evil in front of God.
There are three verbs that point out their work. devise, work and perform… They plan, devise evil each day, from their rising up to even while laying in their beds they plot ways to hurt others in the hopes of benefiting themselves.
And they do this because they can....it is in their power to do so.. The are so filled with greed, they are planning their next moves to oppress others before they can even get out of bed…
God hates it when people act like this… Proverbs 6:18
18 a heart that devises wicked plans,
feet that make haste to run to evil,
They could do better, they could consider the ways of the Lord. Ps 63:6
6 when I remember you upon my bed,
and meditate on you in the watches of the night;
But sadly they do not act like this....
IN the book of Amos, God condemned these things....
5 saying, “When will the new moon be over,
that we may sell grain?
And the Sabbath,
that we may offer wheat for sale,
that we may make the ephah small and the shekel great
and deal deceitfully with false balances,
6 that we may buy the poor for silver
and the needy for a pair of sandals
and sell the chaff of the wheat?”
No wonder God is denouncing sin through so many prophets during this time, Amos, Micah and Isaiah all speak to these sins… God hates it.
It makes you think of the crooked of our society, those who have great minds and used properly could do something good, productive.
Verse 2
2 They covet fields and seize them,
and houses, and take them away;
they oppress a man and his house,
a man and his inheritance.
What is the second word? Covet? The supposed needs of the wicked stem from that very thing, greed.
Greed and covetousness … these are the things that are idolatry. Col 3:5
5 Put to death therefore what is earthly in you: sexual immorality, impurity, passion, evil desire, and covetousness, which is idolatry.
The sin of these people begins within their hearts, they covet and they want...
19 For out of the heart come evil thoughts, murder, adultery, sexual immorality, theft, false witness, slander.
And in this verse, look at the verbs that express their actions, seize, take and oppress…
They keep people from keeping their inheritance is one of the ways the Jews sinned against God. family lands where always supposed to remain in the family, but they devised ways to take them. You could sell you land or rent it out to another for money, but at the year of jubille, all lands were to return to those families, yet they refused to do this… why? Greed.
Land barons were cheating others out of their homes and property. God will hold them accountable.
Verse 3.
3 Therefore thus says the Lord:
behold, against this family I am devising disaster,
from which you cannot remove your necks,
and you shall not walk haughtily,
for it will be a time of disaster.
So because of the sins we have just mentioned, namely these wealthy and influential classes of people that have taken advantage of others, judgement is being pronounced on them, disaster is coming, the Lord is sentencing them.
21 Many are the plans in the mind of a man,
but it is the purpose of the Lord that will stand.
Those who do harm will experience harm. What the Lord is going to bring upon them is of the nature that they cannot escape, they cannot remove their necks from....
They (rich and wealthy) used to walk in a haughty manner, as if they were above the rest of humanity. But this day they will experience such tragedy, they will be humbled.
The disaster that is being refereed to is the up and coming threat of Assyria and then later Babylon.
Verse 4
4 In that day they shall take up a taunt song against you
and moan bitterly,
and say, “We are utterly ruined;
he changes the portion of my people;
how he removes it from me!
To an apostate he allots our fields.”
When the disaster comes the rich land owners, the wealthy will me mocked. The Scripture says in that day they will take up a taunt song against you...
In verse 1 the oppressing classes ruined others, now the tables are turned if you will. Their enemies will divide up their land and their wealth, they will lose all on that day. The Lord will allow the Assyrians to take their land
All of this happens in fulfillment to the curses the covenant pronounces against those who live in disobedience.
33 And I will scatter you among the nations, and I will unsheathe the sword after you, and your land shall be a desolation, and your cities shall be a waste.
And you can find a larger section of this in Deut 28, verses 49 to 68.
Make no mistake about it, God will hold mankind accountable for their sin, personal and corporate.
Now lets look at verse 5
5 Therefore you will have none to cast the line by lot
in the assembly of the Lord.
There is that word we pay attention too… Therefore.... Because the guilty parties have dealt with their neighbors fields unjustly, they will not have anyone left. The idea there is there is no one in their families who are just. Thus they are cut off from God’s promises, their inheritance is taken from them.
And so if their inheritance is lost, it is given to another.
It was by lot that the people or tribes if you will acquired the land.
2 Their inheritance was by lot, just as the Lord had commanded by the hand of Moses for the nine and one-half tribes.
8 So the men arose and went, and Joshua charged those who went to write the description of the land, saying, “Go up and down in the land and write a description and return to me. And I will cast lots for you here before the Lord in Shiloh.” 9 So the men went and passed up and down in the land and wrote in a book a description of it by towns in seven divisions. Then they came to Joshua to the camp at Shiloh, 10 and Joshua cast lots for them in Shiloh before the Lord. And there Joshua apportioned the land to the people of Israel, to each his portion.
They will have no one tho cast a lot for them, thus they have no land.
Now with verses 6 to 11, a new section starts...
6 “Do not preach”—thus they preach—
“one should not preach of such things;
disgrace will not overtake us.”
There are false prophets on the scene. These false prophets, are the ones who take up with these rich ones and tell them what they want to hear.
All the judgement that Micah and other true prophets are delivering, these charlatans are rejecting and telling Micah to not prophesy. They told Amos the same things, they accused Amos of prophecy for money, even though he was not communicating a popular outlook.
Many of the greedy oppressors attempted to silence Amos and Isaiah. And here, these detractors order him to cease negative preaching.
They insist that what Micah has said will not happen......
We see things today when false preachers tell church members sin is ok, live like you want too....
Judgment!
Verse 7
7 Should this be said, O house of Jacob?
Has the Lord grown impatient?
Are these his deeds?
Do not my words do good
to him who walks uprightly?
Here we see that Micah continues to quote the wealthy and corrupt oppressors and or their false prophets.
When Micah says Has the Lord grown impatient and are these His deeds.... He is reminding them not to doubt God’s righteous hatred of sin.
God’s grace will never be ok with sin. yes, God can and does forgive sin, but in His holiness He requires that man once convicted of sin to abandon sin, to never repeat it again.
Think of it like this, you may have use dot practice something.... but when you come to faith in Christ, the Holy Spirit speaks to you and says this is not ok.. so you stop it, you cannot be saved and persist in habitual sin.
The false prophets here were teaching that God’s patience has no limits.
Now verses 8-9 are treated as a whole....
8 But lately my people have risen up as an enemy;
you strip the rich robe from those who pass by trustingly
with no thought of war.
9 The women of my people you drive out
from their delightful houses;
from their young children you take away
my splendor forever.
Listen to the Lord here… He begins to list some of the specific sins. He says they rise up and attack those who pass by treating them as if they were the enemy. The powerless are the prey of the powerful.
The Lord says there goal in the second part of verse 8 was to take the robes from those they attacked. Robes, depending on the color like “blue or purple dyes” were very har dot obtain and thus make the robes expensive.
The idea of no thought of war phrase is reminding the people, those who do wrong that they are the true enemies, there was no war happening yet.
And as we come into verse 9, the Lord charges these people with taking the meager homes of women who were most likely widows since the Lord speaks of women and then children later on in the verse.
These meager homes are the ones widows have inherited from their husbands who have passed...
And also in taking those homes, the Lord says they have stolen the inheritance of the children.
The use of the word “forever” at the end refers to these things are still happening in our world today, people are caught in greed and covetousness, and their sin has a negative effect on others, sadly for generations to come since they have lost their homes and lands and would not return them at the year of Jubilee.
Verse 10....
10 Arise and go,
for this is no place to rest,
because of uncleanness that destroys
with a grievous destruction.
These oppressors, even though they are Jewish themselves rose up like an enemy among the people.
We see the same thing today in our churches. We see people in churches, ( I will not call them Christian, those who do this.... The Jewish were Jewish by nationality) cheat and lie to others, they take from others and at times. It is sad, we are to be different. The were to be different.
Now the Lord tells them to get up and prepare to go, to leave their ill gotten gain and possessions behind. They are to go away into exile.
Their wrongfully acquired land would no longer be their secure resting place.
Verse 11
11 If a man should go about and utter wind and lies,
saying, “I will preach to you of wine and strong drink,”
he would be the preacher for this people!
As we started talking about the false prophets in the beginning of this chapter, here God calls these prophets liars and deceivers.
His message is one of peace and prosperity, ( wine and strong drink). One scholar said these covenant breaking people get what they deserve, a false prophet.
Paul spoke of those “peddlers of God’s word for profit...
17 For we are not, like so many, peddlers of God’s word, but as men of sincerity, as commissioned by God, in the sight of God we speak in Christ.
Anyone who promises wealth, peace, a good life free from any problems will always get a following, at least for a while. People flock to “preachers” who boast they have never preached on hell, they make these claims and it makes people feel better.
Sadly, they will not feel better in hell....
Verses 12 and 13
12 I will surely assemble all of you, O Jacob;
I will gather the remnant of Israel;
I will set them together
like sheep in a fold,
like a flock in its pasture,
a noisy multitude of men.
13 He who opens the breach goes up before them;
they break through and pass the gate,
going out by it.
Their king passes on before them,
the Lord at their head.
Here without any warning, the Lord brings the future promise of restoration after the exile.
Why the quick change? This happens often in prophetic works.
But we know the ultimate fulfillment of this verse will coincide with what Paul speaks in Romans 11:26
26 And in this way all Israel will be saved, as it is written,
“The Deliverer will come from Zion,
he will banish ungodliness from Jacob”;
Even though the nation is split, and Jacob/Israel goes into exile, a remnant will return in the future. Here is just one of the verses that Isaiah speaks about it
16 And there will be a highway from Assyria
for the remnant that remains of his people,
as there was for Israel
when they came up from the land of Egypt.
God has a royal shepherd will gather his children as a shepherd gathers sheep. They (Israel) may be reduced to a remnant in the future, they will be restored and come again into the land of promise.
Now with verse 13 Micah identifies one who will accomplish Israel’s restoration, as the one who breaks open the breach or breaks open the gate is the one both King and Lord.
We know who that future person is.... Jesus.
Jesus will restore the nation and save his Church, amen
