Project 119: Micah 1
| Project 119 | Dr. Wayne Splawn
Two important themes that dominate Micah’s prophetic message are the importance of right worship and right living. Micah’s prophecy opens with an indictment of the false worship the people were offering to the Lord. The first thing that seems to have characterized the people’s worship in Micah’s day was a false understanding of Lord’s character. It seems their view of God was rather small and inconsequential. If that was indeed the case, the picture of God we find in the opening verses of Micah is quite different. The Lord reveals Himself as high and lifted up and the mountains melt and the valleys split open at His coming. The Lord is holy and not someone with whom God’s people should trifle. The other thing that marred the people’s worship was idolatry. The language of verse 7 is jarring. Through their idolatrous worship, the people had been unfaithful to the Lord and Micah likens their unfaithfulness to someone joining themselves with a prostitute. Micah’s opening words were meant to correct the people’s inadequate view of the holiness of God and to reveal the serious nature of their idolatry.
We are prone to both of the things that characterized the people of Micah’s day. Rather than allowing our understanding of God to be shaped by the picture of God we see on display in the Bible, we are sometimes guilty of fashioning God in our own image. We are also prone to worship people and things other than the Lord. We may not possess metal images to which we bow down, but if we look to other people or to created things rather than to God to fulfill the desires our heart, we are guilty of idolatry. Ask God to help you see Him as He really is and to offer Him the exclusive worship He deserves.
Micah 1 (ESV):
1 The word of the LORD that came to Micah of Moresheth in the days of Jotham, Ahaz, and Hezekiah, kings of Judah, which he saw concerning Samaria and Jerusalem.
The Coming Destruction
2 Hear, you peoples, all of you;
pay attention, O earth, and all that is in it,
and let the Lord GOD be a witness against you,
the Lord from his holy temple.
3 For behold, the LORD is coming out of his place,
and will come down and tread upon the high places of the earth.
4 And the mountains will melt under him,
and the valleys will split open,
like wax before the fire,
like waters poured down a steep place.
5 All this is for the transgression of Jacob
and for the sins of the house of Israel.
What is the transgression of Jacob?
Is it not Samaria?
And what is the high place of Judah?
Is it not Jerusalem?
6 Therefore I will make Samaria a heap in the open country,
a place for planting vineyards,
and I will pour down her stones into the valley
and uncover her foundations.
7 All her carved images shall be beaten to pieces,
all her wages shall be burned with fire,
and all her idols I will lay waste,
for from the fee of a prostitute she gathered them,
and to the fee of a prostitute they shall return.
8 For this I will lament and wail;
I will go stripped and naked;
I will make lamentation like the jackals,
and mourning like the ostriches.
9 For her wound is incurable,
and it has come to Judah;
it has reached to the gate of my people,
to Jerusalem.
10 Tell it not in Gath;
weep not at all;
in Beth-le-aphrah
roll yourselves in the dust.
11 Pass on your way,
inhabitants of Shaphir,
in nakedness and shame;
the inhabitants of Zaanan
do not come out;
the lamentation of Beth-ezel
shall take away from you its standing place.
12 For the inhabitants of Maroth
wait anxiously for good,
because disaster has come down from the LORD
to the gate of Jerusalem.
13 Harness the steeds to the chariots,
inhabitants of Lachish;
it was the beginning of sin
to the daughter of Zion,
for in you were found
the transgressions of Israel.
14 Therefore you shall give parting gifts
to Moresheth-gath;
the houses of Achzib shall be a deceitful thing
to the kings of Israel.
15 I will again bring a conqueror to you,
inhabitants of Mareshah;
the glory of Israel
shall come to Adullam.
16 Make yourselves bald and cut off your hair,
for the children of your delight;
make yourselves as bald as the eagle,
for they shall go from you into exile.