365 Reflections

Micah 3 contains the prophet’s rebuke of Israel’s leaders. The case is made in all the prophetic books that a people’s leaders are responsible for the increased wickedness of a culture and they will be held responsible.  Micah 3:1–2 (NLT) I said, “Listen, you leaders of Israel!  You are supposed to know right from wrong, 2 but you are the very ones who hate good and love evil. You skin my people alive and tear the flesh from their bones. Notice the first line. Leaders are supposed to know right from wrong. They are leaders for that very reason. America is a democracy. Unfortunately, that means the leaders have to follow the cultural trends if they want to get elected. Today’s leaders show very little moral courage to buck popular opinion and do what’s right.  Micah 3:3–4 (ESV) who eat the flesh of my people, and flay their skin from off them, and break their bones in pieces and chop them up like meat in a pot, like flesh in a cauldron. Then they will cry to the Lord, but...

How grave a sin is greed. And yet the most damaging reality about greed is that no one actually sees the greed in themselves. It's always the other person who has that problem. With greed, it can be an inward desire for something that is not necessary or belongs to another. The object of our greed doesn't even have to be touched or in our possession. It's just a longing inside. Adultery requires some sort of action with another, murder as well, but greed can hide in the heart far more successfully than almost any other sin. Greed can be renamed. It can be ambition, we call him a go-getter (more appropriate), or she could even be very shrewd as a connoisseur. Greed is hard to see in me. Thus Jesus warned in Luke 12 to a man who did NOT have the money his brother was keeping: Luke 12:15 (ESV) “Take care, and be on your guard against all covetousness, for one’s life does not consist in the abundance of his possessions.” Micah pulls no punches in his condemnation of greed in h...

The prophets at the end of our Old Testament are not necessarily in the order of their ministries. Micah follows both the books of Amos and Hosea, yet his ministry falls in a generation between Amos and Hosea. He prophesied during the same time as Isaiah, whose visions are long before the book of Micah in the order of the canon. Whatever the case for the ordering of his book, we do well to recognize the time in which Micah prophesied. It was a time of extreme income inequality. The rich were exploiting the poor and seizing up lands to pad their own pockets. Like Isaiah and Amos, Micah did not cater to the wealthy elite by speaking well of their lot in life. He called them to account and considered the soon-coming judgment on the land, as written in Deuteronomy 28.  Micah’s name means, “Who is like Yahweh?” An appropriate name for a man raised up to challenge the rampant love for increase and spiritual adultery so prevalent in the nation at the time of his ministry. He took the Lord...

One of the most damaging things to our souls is to forget God's sovereignty. That He is ultimately over all things and that from His hand come all that we could have, every breath, every moment.  To this end, we come to the final chapter of the book of Jonah. As far as prophetic books go, Jonah is a true outlier. There are no judgments, no descriptions of torment in harsh conditions as God unloads on sinners among the nations. Jonah is unlike the rest of them, for the book of Jonah is a referendum NOT on nations but on Jonah. You would think a prophet whose message was heard and abided by would be thrilled at the success! Not Jonah. He sees Nineveh repent and the Lord spare them, and wants to die. Jonah 4:1-3 (ESV) But it displeased Jonah exceedingly, and he was angry. 2 And he prayed to the Lord and said, “O Lord, is not this what I said when I was yet in my country? That is why I made haste to flee to Tarshish; for I knew that you are a gracious God and merciful, slow to anger a...

Why didn’t Jonah want to go to Nineveh? He knew God would be merciful to them, as we find out in chapter four. With that framing in mind, we should consider why Jonah assumed they would be repentant in the first place to receive that mercy. By this time, the people of Nineveh had experienced a famine, two plagues within 7 years, and an earthquake (according to history and as mentioned by Amos). They were primed for a message that destruction was imminent.  Yet these were hardened sinners of the most sordid type. We have written testimony of Ashurnasirpal II, king of Nineveh (at the time of Jonah), in 883–859 BC. This king's inscriptions describe in detail how he had enemies flayed alive, impaled, and decapitated. He boasted of burning cities and piling up human heads into pyramids as monuments of his victories. Moreover, they lacked the Law of God. Why would they have fear of their actions?   Remember that Romans 2 tells us the non-believers have a natural law written on their...

Jonah 2:8–9 (ESV) Those who pay regard to vain idols forsake their hope of steadfast love. 9 But I with the voice of thanksgiving will sacrifice to you; what I have vowed I will pay. Salvation belongs to the LORD!” Before we leave Jonah's ordeal in the belly of the great fish, we should look at these last lines to understand the power of God's salvation. He first confesses, "those who pay regard to vain idols forsake their hope." An idol is anything that takes our hearts away from God. They can be things, people, places, or even our own emotional needs. What idol may Jonah be renouncing in his own life at this point? Perhaps it was the idol of ethnocentrism. The sense that those evil Ninevites did not deserve the grace of God when his own nation was playing the fool with the preface to those same sins! Maybe it was the idol that God was wrong, and he was right. Perhaps it was the idol of self-love, the source of almost every other sin. Whatever the case, Jonah acknow...