Micah Chapter Seven
Read Micah 7:1-6 – The Iniquity of God’s
People
v.1 “Woe is me! for I am as when they have gathered
the summer fruits, as the grapegleanings of the vintage: there is no cluster to eat:
my soul desired the firstripe fruit.”
Micah begins the final chapter of
his prophesy with a cry of pain and disappointment. His heart and soul is like someone who visits
the field or the vineyard looking for something to sustain himself, the harvest
is complete and nothing is left. Micah
is not looking for physical fruit to sustain his body but rather spiritual
fruit among a wicked and perverse nation.
He wants “FIRSTRIPE” fruit, the first fruit of the season, long awaited
with much anticipation. It isn’t to be
found.
Hosea
All of
Psalms 14:1-3 “THE FOOL SAID IN HIS HEART, there
is NO GOD. THEY ARE CORRUPT,
THEY HAVE DONE ABOMINABLE WORKS, there is NONE THAT DOETH GOOD. THE LORD
LOOKED DOWN FROM HEAVEN UPON THE CHILDREN OF MEN, TO SEE IF THERE WERE ANY THAT
DID UNDERSTAND, and SEEK GOD. THEY ARE
ALL GONE ASIDE, THEY ARE all TOGETHER BECOME FILTHY: there
is NONE THAT DOETH GOOD, NO, NOT ONE.”
God doesn’t find
conditions changed much when he looks down upon the earth today and it seems
that men grow worse as each day goes by.
v.2 “The good man is perished out of the earth: and there
is none upright among men: they all lie in wait
for blood; they hunt every man his brother with a net.”
“THE GOOD IS PERISHED OUT OF THE
EARTH”, it would almost seem so today in some professions; wouldn’t it? The prophet Isaiah wrote:
“The righteous perisheth, and no man layeth it to heart: and
merciful men are taken away, none
considering that the righteous is taken away from the evil to come.” Isaiah
57:1
Habakkuk, a prophecy that we will
study later, mourns that the everlasting God would tolerate a situation where
men act like the fish of the sea, or creeping things that have “NO RULER OVER
THEM”:
“They take up all of them with the angle, they catch them in their
net, and gather them in their drag: therefore they rejoice and are glad.” Habakkuk 1:15
And then they
sacrifice to their net, worshiping the things that they have that allow them to
prosper rather than the God that has given them all that they have. As it has been proven over and over in the
history of mankind; when man turns from God to evil he just gets worse and
worse continually until eventually stopped.
v.3 “That they may do evil with both hands earnestly,
the prince asketh, and the judge asketh for a reward; and the great man, he uttereth his mischievous desire: so they wrap it up.”
They work at doing evil with both
hands; not just taking advantage of passing circumstances but rather as their
normal course of business. Isaiah
describes them:
Isaiah
Their rulers and
their judges openly sought bribes and pay offs, what the world calls “quid pro
quo” today, a term that we have heard often in our news media recently. Their great men enriched and promoted
themselves for the purpose of what the prophet calls “MISCHEVIOUS DESIRE”,
seeking only to fulfill their own covetousness, greed and fleshly desires.
v.4 “The best of them is as a brier: the most upright is
sharper than a thorn hedge: the day of thy watchmen and thy visitation
cometh; now shall be their perplexity.”
Even the best of these men were a
vexation and trial to the people around them.
Living and trying to work with them was like living and working in
briers or a thorny hedge. An experience
that comes to mind is walking in an Ozark ridge land hay field barefoot and
tripping over a
v.5 “Trust ye not in a friend, put ye not confidence
in a guide: keep the doors of thy mouth from her that lieth in thy bosom.”
The prophet; and God through the inspiration
of his words, records that no one could be trusted. A friend, a guide or mentor in whom you have
placed your trust, even the one that is nearest and dearest to you, your
spouse. As bad as our current situation
in this country is today, I don’t think we have sunk this far yet. While much of the world can indeed be
described in these same terms there are also those who still hold to the precepts
and commandments of God. There are still
those, even those who hold to false doctrines, who still have not degraded to
this level of immorality. But they are
becoming more and more in the minority and far too many fit what Micah writes
next.
v.6 “For the son
dishonoureth the father, the daughter riseth up against her mother, the daughter in law against her mother in law; a man’s
enemies are the men of his own house.”
One of the basic commandments of God
to
“Honour thy father and thy
mother, as the LORD thy God hath
commanded thee; that thy days may be prolonged, and that it may go well with
thee, in the land which the LORD thy God giveth thee.” Deuteronomy
5:16
This is the same
commandment that the Apostle Paul calls “THE FIRST COMMANDMENT WITH PROMISE” in
Ephesians 6:2. But the spiritual condition of
Matthew
We have this description from the Apostle Paul of “PERILOUS TIMES”
II Timothy 3:2-3 “2For men shall be lovers of their own selves, covetous, boasters,
proud, blasphemers, disobedient to parents, unthankful, unholy, 3Without
natural affection, trucebreakers, false accusers, incontinent, fierce, despisers
of those that are good,”
And perilous times have come to
Read Micah 7:7-15 – There is
Still Hope
v.7 “7Therefore I will look unto the LORD;
I will wait for the God of my salvation: my God will hear me.”
What was the prophet
going to do in the face of this terrible situation? The prophet was going to “LOOK UNTO THE
LORD”, the same thing that Paul encouraged Timothy to do:
II Timothy 3:14-15 “But continue thou in the things which thou
hast learned and hast been assured of, knowing of whom thou hast learned them; 15And that from a child thou hast known the holy
scriptures, which are able to make thee wise unto salvation through faith which
is in Christ Jesus.”
The same thing we must do today as Paul tells us through his writing to
II Corinthians
15:58 “Therefore, my beloved brethren,
be ye stedfast, unmoveable, always abounding in the work of the Lord, forasmuch
as ye know that your labour is not in vain in the Lord.”
As God will hear the prophet Micah, God will hear us as well.
v.8 “Rejoice not against me, O mine enemy: when I
fall, I shall arise; when I sit in darkness, the LORD shall be a light unto me.”
The prophet tells his
enemies, I may fall but God will raise me up again. When I am in darkness I still have the Lord. As a declaration of his faith David wrote:
Psalms 27:1 “THE LORD is MY LIGHT AND MY
SALVATION; WHOM SHALL I FEAR? THE LORD is THE STRENGTH OF MY
LIFE; OF WHOM SHALL I BE AFRAID?”
The Lord will be his light and the Lord will be our light today as well
but there is one condition that we must meet in order for that to be the case;
we cannot walk in darkness, we must walk in that Light.
I John 1:7 “7But if we walk in the light, as he is in the
light, we have fellowship one with another, and the blood of Jesus Christ his
Son cleanseth us from all sin.”
v.9 “9I will bear the indignation of the LORD, because I have sinned against him, until he plead my cause,
and execute judgment for me: he will bring me forth to the light, and I shall behold his righteousness.”
What does the prophet
mean when he says he will “BEAR THE INDIGNATION OF THE
LORD”? The Apostle Paul tells us:
Romans
And all will bear some consequence of their sin. So Micah is saying that he will indeed bear
whatever consequence that his sin brings against him. The time will come when God will execute
judgment against him but the Lord will also plead the prophet’s case at that
seat of judgment. Just as God will plead
for the soul of Micah, He will plead for ours as well:
I John 2:1-2 “My
little children, these things write I unto you, that
ye sin not. And if any man sin, we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus
Christ the righteous: 2And he is the propitiation for our sins: and
not for ours only, but also for the
sins of the whole world.
v.10 “Then she that is mine
enemy shall see it, and shame shall cover her which said unto
me, Where is the LORD thy God? mine
eyes shall behold her: now shall she be trodden down as the mire of the streets.”
In that day, the day of
ultimate judgment, the prophets enemies, our enemies
will see the righteous of God and be ashamed, crying, weeping, and gnashing
their teeth in the despair of their condition.
But a judgment day for Micah’s enemies in
Psalms 35:26 “LET THEM BE
ASHAMED AND BROUGHT TO CONFUSION TOGETHER THAT REJOICE AT MINE HURT: LET THEM
BE CLOTHED WITH SHAME AND DISHONOUR THAT MAGNIFY themselves AGAINST ME.”
When that judgment comes to
Joel 2:17 “Let
the priests, the ministers of the LORD,
weep between the porch and the altar, and let them say, Spare thy people, O LORD, and give not thine heritage to
reproach, that the heathen should rule over them: wherefore should they say
among the people, Where is their God?”
v.11-12 “In the day that thy walls are to be built, in that day shall the
decree be far removed. 12In that day also he shall come
even to thee from
After declaring God’s
judgment against them, Micah also declares that
Nehemiah 6:15-16 “So the wall was finished in the twenty and
fifth day of the month Elul, in
fifty and two days. 16And it came to pass, that when all our enemies
heard thereof, and all the heathen that were about us saw these
things, they were much cast down
in their own eyes: for they perceived that this work was wrought of our God.”
Then through both the providence and the direct intervention of God; His
plan was carried to completion and within those restored walls men came from
all of the different parts of the earth and heard the word of God, the gospel,
God’s greatest blessing for mankind. But
first
v.13 “Notwithstanding the land shall be desolate because of them that
dwell therein, for the fruit of their doings.”
Jeremiah
II Kings 25:8-9 “And in the fifth month, on the seventh day of the month, which is the nineteenth year of king Nebuchadnezzar
king of Babylon, came Nebuzaradan, captain of the guard, a servant of the king
of Babylon, unto Jerusalem: 9And he burnt the house of the LORD, and
the king’s house, and all the houses of Jerusalem, and every great man’s house burnt he with fire.”
And
again later by
Micah
And as occurred in AD 70 as we have studied earlier, even from the
writings of the Jewish historian Josephus who was with the Roman army at Jersualem.
Read Micah
v.14-15 “Feed thy people with thy rod, the flock of
thine heritage, which dwell solitarily in the wood, in the
midst of Carmel: let them feed in Bashan and Gilead, as in the days of old. 15According to the days of thy coming out of the land of
God is going to bring
his judgment upon all
Psalms 78:12-13 “MARVELLOUS THINGS
DID HE IN THE SIGHT OF THEIR FATHERS, IN THE
And the psalmist goes on to praise God for these wonderful feats and
many others that he accomplished in the presence of his people.
Read Micah 7:16-17 – God’s
Marvelous Works
v.16 “The nations shall see and be confounded at all
their might: they shall lay their hand upon their mouth, their
ears shall be deaf.”
The nations and peoples
surrounding
Job 21:5 “5Mark me, and be astonished, and lay your hand upon your mouth. 6Even when I remember I am afraid, and trembling taketh hold on my flesh.”
v.17 “They shall lick the dust like a serpent, they
shall move out of their holes like worms of the earth: they shall be afraid of
the LORD our God, and shall fear because of thee.”
These marvelous works
of Almighty God will strike fear in the hearts of men. The prophet says they will come out of their
holes like worms coming out of the earth and they shall be afraid. Isaiah records:
Isaiah 49:23 “And
kings shall be thy nursing fathers, and their
Jeremiah, speaking of some of the great things that the Lord showed him
includes in his writing that God will “PARDON ALL THEIR INIQUITES” and:
“And it shall be to me a name of joy, a praise and an honour before all the nations of the earth,
which shall hear all the good that I do unto them: and they shall fear and
tremble for all the goodness and for all the prosperity that I procure unto it.”
Jeremiah 33:9
Some would apply this language to the restoration of
Read Micah 7:18-20 – God’s
Mercy
v.18 “Who is a God like unto
thee, that pardoneth iniquity, and passeth by the
transgression of the remnant of his heritage? he retaineth not his anger for
ever, because he delighteth in mercy.”
The
prophet continues to extol God’s goodness and power in much the same way as Moses
did in his song recorded in:
Exodus
As was proclaimed by God himself to the children of
Exodus 34:6-7 “And the LORD
passed by before him, and proclaimed, The LORD,
The LORD God, merciful and gracious,
longsuffering, and abundant in goodness and truth, 7Keeping mercy
for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin, and that will by
no means clear the guilty; visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon
the children, and upon the children’s children, unto the third and to the
fourth generation.”
And in his outpouring of mercy and goodness God will indeed pardon the
sins of mankind. Jeremiah tells us this
will come:
“In those days, and in that time, saith the
LORD, the iniquity of
v.19 “He will turn again, he will have compassion
upon us; he will subdue our iniquities; and thou wilt cast all their sins into
the depths of the sea.”
God in his compassion
for mankind, which has never diminished from the beginning of his existence;
will bring to the world a time when:
“…And they shall teach no more every man his
neighbour, and every man his brother, saying, Know the LORD: for they shall all
know me, from the least of them unto the greatest of them, saith the LORD: for
I will forgive their iniquity, and I will remember their sin no more.” Jeremiah 31:34 “
And indeed that day did come when God did cast the sins of man away,
like casting a burden into the depths of the sea:
Acts
For this was the fulfillment of the promise that God had made to Abraham
as Micah helps us understand in his last words:
v.20 “Thou wilt perform the truth to Jacob, and the mercy to Abraham, which thou hast sworn unto our fathers from
the days of old.”
The promise that we
find first recorded:
Genesis 12:3 “And
I will bless them that bless thee, and curse him that curseth thee: and in thee
shall all families of the earth be blessed.”
That he repeated to Jacob, who was renamed
Genesis 28:14 “And thy seed shall be as the dust of the
earth, and thou shalt spread abroad to the west, and to the east, and to the
north, and to the south: and in thee and in thy seed shall all the families of
the earth be blessed.”
The reason that God rescued
Deuteronomy 7:8 “But because the LORD loved you, and because he
would keep the oath which he had sworn unto your fathers, hath the LORD brought
you out with a mighty hand, and redeemed you out of the house of bondmen, from
the hand of Pharaoh king of Egypt.”
Fulfillment of this promise was confirmed by the words of Zacharias the
father of John the Baptizer who heralded the coming of Jesus the Messiah:
Luke 1:72-73 “To perform the mercy promised to our fathers, and to remember his holy covenant; 73The
oath which he sware to our father Abraham,”
And so this completes our study of the prophecy of Micah.
William L. Schwegler, Sunset