Micah 1-2 -- Judgment, With Consolation & Hope

God gave Micah a message for both kingdoms.  They’d conveniently listened to false prophets who were only encouraging them to sin.  They’d kept worshiping idols and sinned their way right into defeat.

These were God’s chosen people.  He gave them privilege.  “Privilege brings responsibility, and responsibility brings accountability,” my commentary reminded us.  They’d been infected with materialism, caused by covetousness – something God had forbidden – and now “they would see everything they lived for and sinned to acquire be taken over by the enemy and wasted.”

They’d altered their religion as well.  They thought they could simply go through the motions and it would count as worship.  Their hearts weren’t in it, except to further their own interests.  Micah’s message revealed this, but they rejected it, and my commentary said, “The way we respond to God’s Word indicates our relationship to the Lord … The nation didn’t learn from its history; the people repeated the same sins as their ancestors but thought they would avoid the same consequences.”

Micah was to expose sin and announce judgment.  But he also was to provide consolation and hope.  If he only consoled the, and didn’t preach repentance, he was only giving false hope.  If his message included no hope, it only created hopelessness because of their sin.  God gave him a message of hope, but that hope wasn’t going to come quickly.

My commentary says that the message for us today is “to deal with our sins of covetousness, selfishness, and willingness to believe religious lies.  We must abandon soft religion that pampers our pride and makes it easy for us to sin.”

Father, help me to take to heart Your Word today, for my own life and for the lives of those I love.  I read that I should expect sinners to sin and that I should not be offended when someone sins against me, but instead I should open caring arms to them.  Help me to do that, Father.

Your Brother In Christ,

Gary Ford