A few days ago I read through my assigned Bible Journal Post for today, Micah chapter 3. To say I had no idea what I would write about is an understatement. Just look at how the chapter begins:
You hate good and love evil. You tear off people’s skin and strip their flesh from their bones. You eat the flesh of my people after you strip their skin from them and break their bones. You chop them up like flesh for the cooking pot, like meat in a cauldron.”
Micah 3:2-3
In these first verses Micah (a prophet of the Lord) uses very graphic language to describe the destruction that Israel’s leaders have caused on God’s people. Micah uses terms that describe cannibalism, although he is not saying these people were cannibals. They treated the people so unfairly that they destroyed them in a similar way. These leaders practiced injustice in their leadership, and betrayed the trust put into them to lead the people. Micah states that these leaders, “hate good and love evil.”
God gave Micah the job of telling the prophets of the day what God really thought of them.
This is what the Lord says concerning the prophets who lead my people astray, who proclaim peace when they have food to sink their teeth into but declare war against the one who puts nothing in their mouths.
Micah 3:5
Micah goes on to speak to the nation’s leaders.
Listen to this, leaders of the house of Jacob, you rulers of the house of Israel, who abhor justice and pervert everything that is right, who build Zion with bloodshed and Jerusalem with injustice. Her leaders issue rulings for a bribe, her priests teach for payment, and her prophets practice divination for silver. Yet they lean on the Lord, saying, “Isn’t the Lord among us? No disaster will overtake us.”
Micah 3:9-11
These leaders were disobeying God with their actions, but they still say that “no disaster will overtake us.” Sin had become so common among them that they assumed God would be ok with it too. They believed that at the end of the day they would be ok.
But Micah is bold in his statement in verse 12. His message would have sounded outrageous to all who heard him speak.
Therefore, because of you, Zion will be plowed like a field, Jerusalem will become ruins, and the temple’s mountain will be a high thicket.
Micah 3:12
What does it mean that “Zion would be plowed like a field?” Zion would be cut up and broken apart. Micah proclaims to them that because of their sin, destruction wiould come.
The Holy Spirit empowered Micah to speak the truth.
As for me, however, I am filled with power by the Spirit of the Lord, with justice and courage, to proclaim to Jacob his rebellion and to Israel his sin.
Micah 3:8
Micah was bold enough to follow through and speak up. We have to remember that we have the gift of the same Holy Spirit that Micah had. We need to speak the truth in love and be bold like Micah was. God wants us to proclaim His truth to the people we encounter.
Will we be as bold as Micah?