The Prophet Speaks of His Sorrow (Micah 7:1-6)

SPIRITUAL DIARY FOR 1/10/2016 9:33 PM

My Worship Time                                                         Focus:  The Prophet Speaks of His Sorrow

Bible Reading & Meditation                                     Reference:  Micah 7:1-6

Message of the verses:  “  1 Woe is me! For I am Like the fruit pickers, like the grape gatherers. There is not a cluster of grapes to eat, Or a first-ripe fig which I crave. 2 The godly person has perished from the land, And there is no upright person among men. All of them lie in wait for bloodshed; Each of them hunts the other with a net. 3 Concerning evil, both hands do it well. The prince asks, also the judge, for a bribe, And a great man speaks the desire of his soul; So they weave it together. 4 The best of them is like a briar, The most upright like a thorn hedge. The day when you post your watchmen, Your punishment will come. Then their confusion will occur. 5 Do not trust in a neighbor; Do not have confidence in a friend. From her who lies in your bosom Guard your lips. 6 For son treats father contemptuously, Daughter rises up against her mother, Daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law; A man’s enemies are the men of his own household.

I want to begin with what John MacArthur writes from his study Bible on Micah 7:1-6 “Micah lamented the circumstances of his day.  In his vain search for an upright person (cf. v. 2), he compared himself to the vinedresser who enters his vineyard late in the season and finds no fruit.  The leaders conspired together to get what they wanted (v. 3).  No one could be trusted (vv. 5-6).  Christ used v. 6 as an illustration when He commissioned the twelve (Mat. 10:1, 35-36).

As we have studied many of the OT prophets we can see that they not only declare God’s messages with their lips, but they also feel the burden of the people on their hearts.  Jeremiah and Ezekiel are wonderful examples of this, and now we see that Micah also expresses the very same words found in the book of Isaiah when he writes “Woe to me!”  “Looking for a godly person was as futile as looking for summer fruit after the harvest was over” writes Warren Wiersbe and then he adds the following endnote:  “We must be careful not to develop and ‘Elijah complex’ and think we’re the only godly people left (1 Kings 19:10).  David felt that way (ps. 12:1), and so did Isaiah (57:1).  But In Micah’s case, the godly remnant was so small that it seemed insignificant.”

Micah writes about how skillful the officials were as they were weaving clever nets and throwing them over the helpless and trapping them. It is too bad they not as skillful in keeping the Law of God and setting a good example for the people to follow. 

Now as we read in the last part of verse four we see Micah speaks about the watchman, and this is not the first time we have read about this in the OT prophets for Ezekiel also wrote about the watchmen in Ezekiel 3:18-21.  Micah is telling the people that judgment is coming as the enemy is approaching.  Now the passage mentioned in Ezekiel speaks of God’s prophets being His watchman and this certainly makes sense, but the problem is that the people did not listen to God’s prophets and thus were destroyed by their enemies.  The people would rather believe the lies than the truth that the prophets were telling them.

Verses five and six speak of how far the confusion had reached as even the common people did not believe the truth.  We see from these verses that you could not trust anyone.  Dr. Wiersbe writes “When truth is no longer the standard for society, then everything starts to fall apart; for faithfulness to our word is the cement that holds society together.  It had come to the place where neighbor couldn’t trust neighbor, friends couldn’t trust each other.  The basic unit of Jewish society, the family, was quickly falling apart.  (In fact, Jesus quoted Micah 7:6 in Matthew 10:36).”

1/10/2016 10:12 PM