Micah 2:3-5
Therefore, the Lord says:
‘I am planning disaster against this people,
from which you cannot save yourselves.
You will no longer walk proudly,
for it will be a time of calamity.
4 In that day people will ridicule you;
they will taunt you with this mournful song:
“We are utterly ruined;
my people’s possession is divided up.
He takes it from me!
He assigns our fields to traitors.”’
5 Therefore you will have no one in the assembly of the Lord
to divide the land by lot.
Yesterday we discovered the details of the Israelites’ sin - they have defrauded their own people, taking away not only their homes and livelihoods but their inheritance in the promised land. This sin is shocking, but it is only the visible outworking of something even worse - they have rejected their identity as God’s people and worshipped idols.
Today we find out how God will punish them. As is always the case with God’s judgement, it is both completely inescapable (humanly speaking) and utterly just. God is not offering a few gentle suggestions for ways in which Israel might want to clean up their act. He is sending a disaster from which they cannot save themselves. That’s an accurate description of the ultimate Day of Judgement that will come when Jesus returns - it will be totally inescapable. There will be nothing we can do to avoid it, postpone it or outrun it. And it will be completely just. Notice how fitting verse 5 is - those who stole their fellow-Israelites’ inheritance will lose their inheritance in the land. The assembly that is referred to here is the gathering of the people to cast lots for the land which God has given them. If you’re not present when the land is divided up, you can’t receive a share in it. What they have done to others will be done to them. God’s punishment for sin is always proportionate and just. If it appears to us to be unnecessarily harsh, that just shows how much we underestimate the seriousness of not giving God the honour and worship which he rightly deserves.
That same justice awaits everyone who rejects God. His grand plan is the creation of a people who will worship him for eternity. When we choose to rebel, and worship other things in his place, of course it’s right that we end up outside that worshipping community, denied a place in God’s eternal kingdom. Nothing less than death and destruction can be appropriate for people who have opted out of relationship with the God who is the source of all life. This is the ultimate disaster from which we cannot save ourselves. So let’s ask God to teach us to see our sin as it really is, so that we recognise the justice of his judgement. And let’s praise him afresh that he has sent Jesus to rescue us from it.
