Micah 2:1-5: The Exactness of God's Punishment

Micah 2:4.. "In that day they shall take up a taunt song against you and moan bitterly, and say, “We are utterly ruined; he changes the portion of my people; how he removes it from me! To an apostate he allots our fields.”

Last week we took a look at Micah 1 to learn more about the Lord's feelings on idolatry. This week, we are going to look at Micah 2 to understand what I'm calling the "exactness" of God's punishments. We found from Micah 1 that it is surely a great sin to idolize anything over God. In Micah 2, Micah gets more specific. He tells us of what the Israelites were idolizing (or at least one of the things) and follows up with explaining how the Lord is going to punish them. Let us look at Micah 2:1-5 this morning to see how the "exactness" of the Lord's punishment can influence us to better live our lives for the Lord and the Lord alone.

In verse two of Micah 2, Micah tells us that the Israelites struggled with idolizing property. They would "covet fields and seize them" and even steal houses, thereby oppressing men and their inheritance (Micah 2:2). In Jewish law (meaning the law of God given to the Israelites in the Pentateuch [that is, Genesis through Deuteronomy]), land ownership was supposed to be permanent, only to be passed on from generation to generation by inheritance. The Israelites were greatly violating this law, as well as the law of the Lord to not covet (one of the ten commandments, Exodus 20:17). The Isrealites were deep in the trenches of sin all because of their idolatry, so the Lord had to punish them for their wrongdoing.

However, as we see from these verses, the Lord's punishment was exact. See Micah 2:4, the verse quoted above. In responding to the Israelites' idolization of their land, he merely took away their land and gave it to apostates (that is, pagans who did not believe in God). He righteously allowed evil to take place in allowing Israel's enemies to take away their land and "change the portion" of the people (v. 2:4). Therefore, the Israelites could not cast lots for land (v. 2:5), because they did not have any land! The Lord punished them exactly where they needed it--he took away the very thing they were idolizing, and he will do the same thing for us.

The moral of the story is that if we idolize anything above God, God is a righteous God who will take away that very thing, either now or later. God is a jealous God who will not share his glory with anyone, and furthermore he is a loving God who hates to see us cherish anything besides himself. He knows what is best for you, and therefore will not tolerate your idolization of anything else. He will either take that thing away now in order that he might point you to himself (as he did for the Israelites), or it will be taken away in eternity when you pass away from this world and are not able to take anything with you (see Ecclesiastes 3:20). Praise the Lord, that all we have is Christ, yet Christ is all we need!!

Psalm 37:4 says that if we delight ourselves in the Lord, he will give us the desires of our heart. The only way to truly get what you want is to want the right thing: God. Everything else in this life will be taken away, even the things we idolize above God that promise greatness (For they will never deliver.). So, what are you idolizing? And, do you realize that that very thing that you idolize will be taken away? God will either take it away in punishment now that you may be pointed to himself, or he will take it away in eternity (meaning that it will be too late to repent). Stop idolizing the temporal, but cling to the eternal. "Heaven and earth will pass away, but my words will not pass away" (Luke 21:33). Amen.