Micah 1:8-9
8 Because of this I will weep and wail; I will go about barefoot and naked.
I will howl like a jackal and moan like an owl.
9 For Samaria’s plague is incurable; it has spread to Judah.
It has reached the very gate of my people, even to Jerusalem itself.
As we saw yesterday, Samaria – in the North – had a long history of idolatory. But we see from verse 9 that this isn’t just a private matter. Idolatory, like all sin, spreads like a plague. We can imagine a map of Israel, with a dark ink blot over Samaria growing and spreading across the whole land, until it reaches the gate of Jerusalem. Isn’t that our experience of sin, too? What starts small – just a temptation indulged in our minds – turns into an action, which becomes a habit, which starts to reshape our character. And our desire to hide our sin starts to impact our relationships as we hide our true selves from one another, becoming distant or defensive instead of honest and vulnerable. Perhaps others are watching the effects of sin in our lives, and concluding that nothing terrible has happened to us yet, so what we’re doing can’t be that bad. And so they, too, ease up on the fight against temptation. And the stain spreads. Left unchecked, sin is never going to get rid of itself. It’s only going to grow. When did we ever see an ink blot spontaneously shrink?
What are we to do, then? We begin as Micah does in v8. We weep and wail. We see our sin for what it is – not a harmless self-indulgence, or a beautiful route to freedom, but a deadly and destructive evil. We cry out to God, honestly admitting that he is pure and holy but we are not. We admit that we are infected with a plague that we cannot cure and we come to the only one who can heal us. Perhaps the intensity of v8 surprises us – I can’t think of the last time that I howled like a jackal or moaned like an owl! If so, perhaps we’ve forgotten the seriousness of sin and need to look back to the cross. Our rebellion against God required the death of Jesus to restore our relationship with him. Since there is nothing in the universe more valuable than the one and only son of God, any problem that can only be fixed by his death MUST be serious. We need to ask God to help us see our sin as it really is, so that we will come to him for forgiveness and for the help that we need to resist its spread in our lives. Let’s do that today, and every day.
