Who is Like our God? · Week 3
Micah 2:1–5
God exposes devised evil, and will turn it back on the offender.
Evil Planned in Advance
Micah 2:1
“Woe” carries the heavy sorrow felt at a 1. Here it is spoken not over the dead, but the living.
A bed is for rest. These people are so consumed with thoughts of premeditated evil that they cannot stop thinking about them.
While others are sleeping, these people are 2.
When the morning dawns, they perform it. No hesitation, no second thoughts.
The only reason given: because it is in the 3 of their hand. They have it, so they use it, simply because they can.
When God opens the bedroom door, He shines a spotlight on the wicked plans nobody else could see.
A Family’s Stolen Inheritance
Micah 2:2
A man obsessed with fields, houses, and inheritances, committed to taking all he can, from whoever he can, by whatever means he can.
Wrong conclusion #1: any time someone acquires property or collects a debt, that is oppression. It isn’t. Scripture takes ownership seriously.
Wrong conclusion #2: as long as it is legal, it is fine. Legal and 4 are not the same word.
What is condemned: power used to hurt the weak, inside the 5 community. Believers exploiting believers.
Each family’s inheritance was a sacred trust from God, protected even by the Year of Jubilee, so no family could be permanently dispossessed.
These men weren’t just taking a field. They were stealing someone else’s children’s 6.
A Fitting Punishment
Micah 2:3–5
The word for what these men planned in verse 1 is the exact same word God uses in verse 3: against this family I am 7 disaster.
The judgment is a yoke, something an animal cannot shake free. The proud who thought themselves unbreakable are finally broken.
They took fields from families. Now their own fields are taken and handed to an apostate.
The 8 they used gets measured back to them. Only the LORD chooses a judgment that fits the crime so well.
Casting the line by lot was how the land was first divided in Joshua’s day. Verse 5 is permanent exclusion from ever holding a portion among God’s people again.
What was seized will be seized.
The God who exposes evil and executes justice is, in Christ, the God who offers forgiveness.
The pattern is covet, scheme, exploit power, seize, deprive, destroy an inheritance. The problem is not possession, or wealth, or a transaction involving property. The problem is wicked acquisition through abuse of power against one’s neighbor.
God expects His people to live in light of His grace, balancing what we are entitled to with extending the mercy we have received from God to those less powerful or fortunate than us, especially our fellow believers. And if you find yourself guilty, the beauty of God is that His plan of redemption offers forgiveness to all who believe in Him.
“Who is like our God?”