Micah 6:9-15 - Homiletics

Divine chastisement.

I. A SOLEMN DECLARATION OF COMING CHASTISEMENT . ( Micah 6:13-15 .) The form this chastisement would assume is suggestive of the thought of utter disappointment. Their gain should be turned into loss; their expectations should be completely frustrated; all that they hoped to realize as the result of their deceptions and extortions should fail them, even as the brook fails the parched traveller when coming to it to slake his burning thirst, lo! he finds it dried up. They should be made desolate because of their sins ( Micah 6:13 ). Surrounded for a time, and through their ill-gotten gains, with all material comforts, they should no more be satisfied by these than he can be upon whom disease has fastened its deadly grasp ( Micah 6:13 ). Nor should these material comforts abide. Internal conflicts and foreign invasion should result in their impoverishment. The toil of the sowing had been theirs, but they should not experience "the joy of harvest;" they had trodden the olives and had pressed the grapes, but they should not rejoice in the oil that makes the face to shine, or the wine that makes glad the heart of man ( Micah 6:14 , Micah 6:15 ). They had broken God's Law, and the judgment threatened in that Law they must now inevitably experience (Le 26:16; Deuteronomy 28:30 , Deuteronomy 28:38 ).

II. THIS CHASTISEMENT APPOINTED BY GOD . ( Micah 6:9 .) "The Lord's voice crieth unto the city," bidding men hear him who had "appointed" the judgment ( Micah 6:9 ). " I will make thee sick," etc. ( Micah 6:13 ). Their sin was allowed to work out its evil consequences upon them, that they might be led to see how evil a thing it was. God turns events into teachers, and sorrows into discipline. He allows the reeds upon which men were leaning to break, and the earthly pleasures upon which their hearts were set to yield only the bitterness of gall and wormwood, that thus they may be led to look to him, the unfailing Spring. It is not by chance that trials meet the children of men in the pathway of life. It is the Divine arrangement that men should be thus met, if perchance they may be impelled to turn away from an unsatisfying world, and be led to seek in him their chief good. Sometimes we are so wayward that we will not pause in our wandering until God reveals the peril that is in our path. The prodigal had to feel shame and hunger before "he came to himself." So we need at times to be startled and chastened into obedience. Even God's chastisements are love. "Whom the Lord loveth he chasteneth," etc. ( Hebrews 12:6-8 ); "As many as I love I rebuke and chasten" ( Revelation 3:19 ).

III. THE WISDOM OF RECOGNIZING GOD IN THESE ADVERSE EXPERIENCES OF LIFE . "And the men of wisdom," etc. ( Micah 6:9 ). We show the possession by us of this wisdom when we