Micah Week 3-Premeditating Punishment

Woe to those who devise iniquity, and work out evil on their beds! At morning light they practice it, because it is in the power of their hand. They covet fields and take them by violence, also houses, and seize them. So they oppress a man and his house, a man and his inheritance. (Micah 2:1–2)

When God's people lay awake plotting evil, God lays out a plan of His own—a judgment designed to purify.

A Tough Passage About a Tough Sin

Micah chapter two, like chapter one, is a difficult passage of Scripture. As I read through it this week, I found myself reaching for multiple translations—the New Living Translation, the New International Version—just to gain insight. As we've gone through this book, we've been asking the text certain questions: Who is speaking, and who is being spoken to? What is revealed about God's character? Is there a key theme?

Last week in chapter one, the key theme was God's judgment upon His own people, about 2,800 years ago, because of their idolatry. They were breaking the first commandment: "You shall have no other God before Me." If you look at the Ten Commandments, the first four deal with our relationship with God—no other gods, no graven images, not taking His name in vain, and keeping the Sabbath holy. The remaining six deal with our relationship with one another.

Covetousness, the Root of All the Rest

The very last of the Ten Commandments is "You shall not covet." That is the focus of the sin God addresses here in chapter two. His people were not only committing idolatry, breaking the first four commandments, but were also guilty of covetousness, which led them to break the other six—stealing, lying, murder, adultery.

Coveting is where all of these begin. To kill, to commit adultery, to steal, to lie—each one starts in the heart. That's a principle we find in the New Testament: all sin begins in the heart. Out of the wicked, fallen heart proceed evil thoughts and evil actions. These were people God had called, blessed, and given a promised land, yet they were not living out His will in any way.

Discipline as an Expression of Love

Because God loves His people, He will punish them. We've all experienced the punishment of our parents growing up. Hebrews chapter 12 says the Lord disciplines the one He loves; His discipline is an expression of His love, even though that's hard to comprehend.

I remember as a kid hearing my parents say, "This hurts me more than it hurts you," and thinking, "Yeah, right—I don't see how that's possible." As a parent now, I understand it far better. God is dealing here with the sin of the northern kingdom, Israel—the ten tribes—who had been divided from the southern kingdom of Judah. He says, "I'm going to judge you, I'm going to punish you," and all of it flows from His love. He wants to chastise them so they will return to Him.

One of the most important truths that becomes clear in Micah, in Isaiah, and throughout the prophetic books is this: God's punishment is for the purpose of purification. When I teach through Isaiah at the Bible college, I think I say that ten times a week.

Woe: Premeditating Iniquity

Chapter two opens with a single word: "Woe." Other translations render it "destruction is certain" or "judgment is determined." With one small word, God pronounces that punishment is coming. But He doesn't punish arbitrarily. Some people imagine God in the Old Testament as an angry deity pushing a "smite button," picking someone out each day to torment. Here, though, He gives a clear reason.

"Woe to those who devise iniquity, and work out evil on their beds." The picture is of a person lying awake at night, unable to sleep because their mind is racing—not over godly things, but over new ways to do wicked things. What if I could do this? What if I could accomplish that? And "at morning light they practice it, because it is in the power of their hand." They've strategized sin all night, and when the sun rises, they put the plan into action. The opportunity was there.

David's Bed and Theirs

This struck me, because about three hundred years before Micah, David wrote in Psalm 63 about lying awake on his bed meditating upon God. In Psalm 1 he says, "In Your word I meditate day and night." David's mind was fixated on the Lord—His glory, His splendor. He'd look at the stars and say, "What is man that You are mindful of him?" That's what kept David awake.

These people, a few hundred years later, were staying up all night figuring out how to do wicked things—and at morning light they practiced it. They weren't even trying to cover their deeds in darkness. They did it openly, for all to see.

What Exactly They Coveted

Verse two names the sin: they covet. They "covet fields and take them by violence, also houses, and seize them. So they oppress a man and his house, a man and his inheritance." They see a piece of land or a house a brother, a family member, a fellow Israelite owns, and they want it. "I'll loan them money, then defraud them. I'll raise the interest rate until they can't pay, foreclose, and take the land." They were devising wicked ways to steal from their own brothers and sisters.

The tenth commandment, Exodus 20:17, says, "You shall not covet your neighbor's house." They were explicitly breaking it. The New Living Translation says they "covet fields to take them away by violence." They were looking for any way to seize it, and when morning came, they moved.

God Devises a Disaster

God's response in verse three is striking: "Therefore thus says the Lord: 'Behold, against this family I am devising a disaster.'" They were devising wickedness; He says, "I am devising your destruction." There is a challenging word here: if you devise and plan sinful things, be careful—God may be devising and planning your punishment even as you plot.

A couple of years ago at a pastors' conference, a Bible teacher described three things that, joined together, lead us to sin: temptation, desire, and opportunity. A temptation comes; when it meets our desire for that thing, we move closer to sin; and when the opportunity is there, the three converge and we fall. These people had it all—they saw better land and bigger houses (temptation), their wicked hearts wanted it (desire), and they found it in the power of their hand to take it (opportunity). So they seized it.

"In That Day"

Verse four says, "In that day." Those three words are what I call a prophetic landmark. The phrase "in that day" appears 106 times in the Bible, and 91 of those are in the prophets—about 90 percent of the time it points to a prophetic day.

In that day, people will ridicule them with a mournful song: "We are utterly ruined! He has changed the heritage of my people... He has divided our fields." God prophesies through Micah that an enemy nation will come and take the land from them—the very thing they had been scheming to do to their brothers. As they ripped people off to gain land, God planned a judgment to expel them from theirs by means of another nation.

"That Could Never Happen to Us"

Of course, the people didn't like the message. Imagine someone today prophesying that the people of Canada would come down from the north and expel us from our land and strip everything away. You'd say, "That's insane—it'll never happen." When Micah said this, everything in the nation seemed to be going well, so the prophecy sounded absurd.

There were other prophets—soothsayers—who spoke nice, fluffy, soothing things. They said, "Don't listen to Micah; he's so harsh, nobody likes what that man has to say. That'll never happen to us—we're God's people, children of Abraham. God would never let a wicked nation destroy us." Throughout Israel's history, that was their repeated response to the prophets: "God will never do that to us."

The Land That Is No Longer Theirs

Verse ten, in the New Living Translation, says, "Up! Be gone! This is no longer your land and home, for you have filled it with sin and ruined it completely." Because they brought sin into the land and refused to repent, God would remove them. Then verse eleven: "Suppose a prophet full of lies would say to you, 'I'll preach to you the joys of wine and alcohol!' That's just the kind of prophet you would like!"

This is exactly what Paul tells Timothy in the New Testament—that in the last days people will heap up for themselves teachers who tickle their ears, telling them what they want to hear because they don't want truth, sound doctrine, reproof, or rebuke. It's not new. It happened 2,800 years ago, it will happen in the future, and it happens today.

The Promise of a Remnant

The last verses, 12 and 13, hit a theme often repeated in the prophets: the remnant. The word "remnant" is actually used in verse twelve. The northern ten tribes will be judged for their sin, but God promises a day of restoration when a remnant is brought back to the land. A remnant is a very small portion of the whole. Isaiah carries this theme throughout: the nation will be judged, but a remnant shall return.

This is the idea of refining. A refiner takes silver dug from the ground, full of impurities and alloys, and puts it in the fire so the impurities rise to the top and can be removed, purifying the metal. That is what God is doing through judgment—turning up the fire of affliction to remove the dross. In Isaiah, God says, "I will refine you, but not as silver is refined; I have refined you in the furnace of affliction." The hardship the ten tribes would endure was so God could purify them, wipe away their sin, and bring forth a purified people. So even amid heavy judgment there is a promise: a remnant shall return.

Lessons for Us

There are practical principles here for the 21st century. God will judge His people, and His punishment is for purification. The people presumed that, as God's chosen, they would never face such a difficult thing, and so they took advantage of His patience—"He'll never do that; He's a loving God." That presumption is a danger we must heed as well.

Closing Prayer

Father, thank You for Your good word. Thank You for the way You reveal Yourself to us, and how, as a loving Father, You want to refine us and make us a people that are holy to You. I pray that we would learn the principles in this passage, and that, God, we would see our lives changed so that we would glorify You—reflecting Your glory in a world that's dark and in need. We thank and praise You for all the blessings You pour upon us, Lord. Bless us tonight with wisdom, insight, and understanding by Your Spirit as we talk with one another. In Jesus' name, amen.