The Minor Prophets: Micah

Introduction: Some years ago when we were operating retail sales of meat, produce and bird seed by the pound, our scales were inspected at least once a year. We had purchased used equipment of course to save money and the inspector made every adjustment possible to keep the small scales working. However, we were finally convinced that we needed to purchase more modern electronic scales. In spite of the heavy expense, the more exact precision of the scales allowed us to make up the cost within a couple of months. You see, the old scales weighed ever so slightly in favor of the customer and we were faced with a similar problem to the Jell-O Company.

As mandated by federal regulations, the Jell-O Company had always weighed its three and six ounce packages to make certain the customer received the promised weight at least. Then someone had the bright idea to weigh them again to make certain that too much was not being given away. I forget the exact six figure costs that the equipment mandated, but it was noted that the profit margin would go up very significantly within a few weeks – once the processing scales were paid for.

In addition, we discovered that one of our suppliers, who dealt in tonnage weights, used exceptionally large scales that tolerated a 3% error ratio – and in fact the company gave a 3% discount for every cash purchase that came across that huge drive over scales. However, as we reweighed and broke down the raw commodities – we were faced with a huge amount of waste dirt and other related agricultural contents that could not be sold. The shrink, as we noted it – could go as high as 11% if the grain was particularly dirty. The farmers were of course docked for the waste – but we were not always so fortunate to break even.

I start in this manner because the eleventh verse so quickly caught my eye: “Shall I,” the Lord asks, “Shall I acquit the man with wicked scales and with a bag of deceitful weights?” I can remember to occasions when a stock yard and a meat packer picked my pockets with bad scales – both went out of business once the word got around, yet none of the customers were ever able to get any money back!

Welcome to life in Jerusalem in the time of Micah, this factor was only one in a myriad of troubles, dishonesty, corruption and downright sin against the common man. It was a time rather like our own, even as I was writing this sermon Friday morning I received a phone call offering a web site for the business listing we use at home for privacy. I stated emphatically that I did not want any web site and that they were not at liberty to provide one since it could draw off visitation to any real sites. I am very sensitive to this issue, because the Church phone itself was crammed by this means for several months on end. We were able in this regard to attain a refund and have since agreed to pay a small monthly fee to protect ourselves from this latest scam so common in an all too sinful world!

Development: Sin, any sin is serious stuff – the prophet would warn both us and his contemporaries. As we look over the eight verses before us, we can outline the content and purpose in this manner, which is arranged by Professor Waltke of the Westminster Theological Seminary in Philadelphia. “Micah now shuts the door that left open the possibility of restoration” in verses one through eight “and publicly proclaims the sentence condemning the city to destruction. They have eaten to the full the deadly fruit of unethical practices picked from the branch of ingratitude and so must die.”

Verse 9:                 address to the city
Verses 10-11:       accusation of using false measures
Verse 12:                false speech
Verse 13:                sentence to disease and ruin in general
Verse 14:               afflictions of the body
Verse 15:                 pillaging of crops
Verse 16:                 recapitulation: accusation and sentence

Now, the worldly would look at this list and wonder how God could condemn these sins when the works and attitude of the Assyrians were ever so much worse? We have only to consider the developing scandal of the United Nations program related to Oil for food in Iraq over the last decade. We have to remember that the world at large simply does not get the fact that sin, any sin is viewed by the Creator God as just cause for eternity in hell.

We have only to note the strident contents of verse nine: “The voice of the Lord cries to the city – and it is sound wisdom to fear your name: Hear of the rod and of him who appointed it!” The Lord God of heaven and earth does indeed have an agenda, and it doesn’t matter if the worldly are grieved by having to recognize the authority, power and might of creation’s Creator. In the context of the Judge Roy Moore speech at Ashland College earlier this week: the worldly secular humanists are more offended with any divine prescriptions on mankind’s behavior than they are offended with any principle of establishing their own agenda which must inform and conform all of society according to their own principles. This is why we have the “sacred” threesome of the leftist agenda: “no smoking – personal choice and free rein to any passionate relationships” instead of the more reasonable laws of nature and nature’s God.

But God will not be mocked, Israel will be held to a higher standard of behavior because it is God’s will to call people to live in harmony with His revealed will and purpose. We have only to look around this once fair land to realize the heavy burden that sinful men have imposed upon all of those who have assumed and presumed the liberalization policies for “a better life through chemicals” or even “gracious living” at the expense of the general population.

The ongoing implications of verses ten and eleven we have already considered in some detail, and so we move on to verse twelve: “Your rich men are full of violence; your inhabitants speak lies, and their tongue is deceitful in their mouth.” Waltke here observes that “the rich of Jerusalem include the royal family, the military elite and the land barons,” all of whom, “abuse the poor and powerless by bending the law to their advantage.” Sort of like some National Forest regulations that apply to every area of the west, except the districts of a most powerful politician in Congress. This could also apply to energy regulations that closed down American mining of the very best coal, supplying a little used Navy yard for import and mandating a special foreign coal to be burned in place of that which can no longer be mined. And of course – there is much, much more in this regard that could be said since professional lying reach a fine art in our day and age. The “violence” here – is it worse to be robbed at gunpoint or my legal manipulation? I will leave any social content to the jury who found Martha Stewart guilty of lying to the courts and authorities in order to save a mere $50,000 in potential losses.

Every land, nation and city is under indictment by the Lord God of heaven and earth in these and sadly even worse crimes, murders and perversions. There follows a detailed curse upon their houses, families and person in verses thirteen through fifteen. Verse thirteen indicates that the Lord is involved personally and intimately in the prosecution of this case. “Therefore I strike you with a grievous blow, making you desolate because of your sins.” Waltke notes that “the Judge, whom they had ignored, now hands down the sentence to fit the crime. He will destroy them with sickness and afflictions of various sorts.”

While there is always a certain economic context to the rise and fall of nations, the statement here is indicative not only of the Assyrian rampage throughout the rural precincts, but also the coming judgment of the Babylonian captivity to which the descendants of Micah’s contemporaries must ultimately suffer as well. In the economic sphere it has always been a truism that if you destroy a city and leave the countryside intact, the city will be rebuilt. However, if the rural areas are rendered incapable of survival – thereby the city will be ruined. While the Assyrians destroyed a huge amount of rural infrastructure – and removed thousands of inhabitants – still it would be possible to hang on in a less enviable estate. However the mass forced exodus of the Babylonians pretty much finished off the Judeans and were it not for the Covenantal love and redemption of their Sovereign God – that would have been the end of things.

Verses fourteen and fifteen are more specific in implication: “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. You shall sow, but not reap; you shall tread olives, but not anoint yourselves with oil; you shall tread grapes, but not drink wine.”

Michael Bentley summarizes these curses: “They would have food to eat, but it would do them no good. They would fill up their storehouses, but they would find that they had saved nothing, because God would send the invading army to destroy it with their swords. They would not eat of the harvest which they had worked so hard to produce. They would pick and press the olives, … they would crush the grapes” all to no avail. Remember it is the same liars and cheats who have robbed the poor who keep the accounts on how much grain is in storage! So obviously there will be a shortage in that context, but also any of the grain, oil and wine that has been stored outside of the city will be lost to the invading armies of Assyrians. During the Napoleonic wars the military calculated that and invading army could live for two weeks on the food stored locally before they must move on to loot and liberate another neighborhood. All of these natural factors things work together to accomplish the Lord’s will here. In addition – any grain stored could be contaminated by vermin and instead of full grain, only the shucks of the former kernel might remain. In short times – even those useless commodities would be ground up for flour which could not sustain. In addition, oil and wine do not store half so well as dry grains and their processing is much more labor intense since storage vessels must also be manufactured – thus because these related industries have been burnt – any oil and wine must be lost as well.

Application: Finally in verse sixteen we get to the recapitulation of God’s charge and sentence. Here, just as in a courtroom setting – after the case has been heard and guilt established: the sentence is read. The first half of the verse addresses the accusation and the second half contains the sentence. First, we hear the well ordered accusation gleaned from the heavenly records and stored up for this day and moment: “For you have kept the statutes of Omri, and all the works of the house of Ahab; and you have walked in their counsels.”

Waltke tells us: “The text assumes that the sins of the infamous Omri and Ahab, who lived more than a century before Micah, have become legendary and serve as a paradigm of apostacy, turpitude, cupidity and injustice.” While those are unusual words, the courtroom significance of each is of great importance. According to the Oxford American Dictionary these are the meanings:

In addition to those all too significant crimes and sins, the commentator informs us in his use of the word “Paradigm”, that all of these have “served as an example or model of how things should be done.” Some years ago when the professional educrats were marshalling their forces to dumb down the curriculum one more time, they began focusing on their own self-styled paradigm of progressive education. When someone asked me what the word meant, I simply stated that a “pair of dimes” (twenty cents) was simply an upgraded version of the proverbial “two cents” worth of opinion that could and should be completely ignored! How sadly was this whole country affected negatively when the ongoing paradigm of the nineties became the all too natural model of how things should be done in our own fair land. Micah, here takes the case of Israel’s worst kings and accuses the people of Judah that they have followed absolutely the wrong model of government and economic ordering. They have imitated the worst of Israel’s kings and just as the House of Omri died a well deserved death – so must every imitator of that perverted example of maladministration and sin, also come to no good end.

The last phrase here in verse sixteen should begin with the word “Therefore!” Therefore, I “make you a desolation, and your inhabitants a hissing; so you shall bear the scorn of my people.” “The Lord has no alternative but to judge the sins of His people: the wages of sin is death, regardless of the sinner. The curses of the covenant also threatened international disgrace,” Waltke announces to us. Of course, just as the first eight verses in this chapter allow – restoration immediate and future are both anticipated. But – God will not be mocked, whenever and wherever a nation long ignores the public aptitude for sin, there is a measured response ready made within the courses of history already provided for. In addition, God tells us pointedly, He will also intervene in the natural ordering to make His displeasure well known. May we realize from the preaching of Isaiah and Micah of the desperate need for revival and reformation in our day and age. And may we also pray fervently that just as happened because of the words of Micah – may a like minded change be brought about in our own fallen culture.
Amen.

PREACHING RESOURCES

Bentley, Michael. Balancing the Books: Micah & Nahum.
Boice, James Montgomery. The Minor Prophets: An Expositional Commentary 2.
Waltke, Bruce. Tyndale Old Testament Commentaries: Micah
The Holy Bible: English Standard Version.
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