Sermon Tone Analysis

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

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

They could do better, they could consider the ways of the Lord.

Ps 63:6

But sadly they do not act like this....

IN the book of Amos, God condemned these things....

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

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

The sin of these people begins within their hearts, they covet and they want...

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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...

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

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....

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....

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.