Micah 3:1-12 - Homiletics

Avarice.

There is nothing wrong in a man's seeking to acquire fiches. Money is good. Its possession is to be desired, since it carries with it the means of surrounding its possessor with the comforts of life, and at the same time gives him the ability to impart good to those who are less favoured and in circumstances of need. The very endeavour also to secure this calls into exercise such qualities as industry and thrift, which are truly commendable. It is rather the love of money, and the inordinate desire for it for its own sake, that merits condemnation. Worldly treasure becomes the greatest possible curse when it is accounted by men the chief good. It will buy up everything else. Time, intellect, justice, truth, conscience, the most sacred rights of humanity, will be bartered for this; and every true well wisher of the race will endeavour to stem the ever-swelling torrent, and to present motives to turn the energies and enterprises of the world into another and higher direction. This chapter may be viewed as illustrative of the deplorable evils and the fatal results of this spirit of avarice.

I. THE DEPLORABLE EVILS CONNECTED WITH AVARICE .

1 . It saps the foundations of equity. ( Micah 3:1 .) These rulers understood the Law, but being so thoroughly possessed by the mercenary spirit, they failed to administer it righteously—were partial in their decisions, favouring those who offered the most tempting bribe, and thus caused the legal administration in the land to become rotten and corrupt.

2 . It leads to oppression and cruelty. ( Micah 3:2 , Micah 3:3 , Micah 3:10 .) The one concern of the princes was to enrich themselves and to find themselves surrounded with all luxuries and splendours; and hence they cared not to what lengths of extortion and fraud and oppression they went, or what suffering might be involved, if only they could compass this end.

3 . It renders its subject unfaithful in the discharge of the most sacred trusts. No trust can be more sacred than that committed to the man who is constituted a teacher of spiritual truth, and upon whom it devolves to direct men in the ways of righteousness and God; but here ( Micah 3:5 ) we have such catching the spirit of covetousness, and, as the result, proving altogether faithless to God and to the consciences of men, prophesying, "peace" to those who bribed them, and "war" to those who withheld the mercenary gift.

4 . It excites the spirit of self-confidence and self-sufficiency. These leaders of the people, whilst acting thus at variance with the true and the right, yet finding their ill-gotten gains increasing in their hands, boasted that evil could not reach them ( Micah 3:11 ).

II. THE FATAL RESULTS OF AVARICE .

1 . Loss of the Divine favour. For "covetousness is idolatry," and God will not give his glory to another ( Micah 3:4 ).

2 . Non-apprehension of spiritual realities. ( Micah 3:7 .)

3 . Complete frustration of their designs. The palaces they had built up with blood, and the city they had defiled by their iniquity, should come to nought, and in its overthrow all that they had unrighteously sought to secure for themselves should perish ( Micah 3:12 ). They who boast that they are "full and increased in riches, and have need of nothing," are in reality the most needy and desolate. Spenser, in 'The Faery Queene,' has described their true condition -

"Most wretched wight whom nothing might suffice,

Whose greedy lust did lack in greatest store,

Whose need had end, but no end covetize,

Whose wealth was want, whose plenty made him poor,

Who had enough, yet wished evermore."