Micah 2:1-5
Micah is addressing the rich and powerful landowners who had
come up with plan (B). I titled it plan
(B) for it was built on greed, and taking advantage of ones brothers and
neighbors. So Micah is proclaiming a
“Woe” against wealthy men who have come up with wicked schemes to seize land
and houses from the poor and the weak. But what they have taken, the Assyrians will
take from them, for God will use a very wicked people to defeat and take from
them all they have acquired. They, much
like many of our local, state, and federal government agencies are doing at
this time in the USA, for greed and power are very present in our culture. We will look at Micah who is addressing these
wicked men and their thoughts and actions.
Then we will look at God’s plan, it was special for a chosen people, the
people of God’s choosing.
“Woe to the Oppressors, Woe to those who devise wickedness and work evil
on their beds! When the morning dawns,
they perform it, because it is in the power of their hand. They covet fields
and seize them, and houses, and take them away; they oppress a man and his
house, a man and his inheritance. Therefore thus says the LORD: behold, against
this family I am devising disaster, from which you cannot remove your necks,
and you shall not walk haughtily, for it will be a time of disaster. In that
day they shall take up a taunt song against you and moan bitterly, and say, “We
are utterly ruined; he changes the portion of my people; how he removes it from me! To an apostate he
allots our fields.” Therefore you will have none to cast the line by lot in the
assembly of the LORD.” (Micah 2:1-5 ESV)
“If your brother becomes poor and sells part of his property, then his nearest redeemer shall come and redeem what his brother has sold. If a man has no one to redeem it and then himself becomes prosperous and finds sufficient means to redeem it, let him calculate the years since he sold it and pay back the balance to the man to whom he sold it, and then return to his property. But if he does not have sufficient means to recover it, then what he sold shall remain in the hand of the buyer until the year of jubilee. In the jubilee it shall be released, and he shall return to his property.”
What was the year of Jubilee? “The Bible describes a period of time most people have never heard of - the Jubilee year. It occurs after seven sets of seven yearly intervals (49 total) are finished. This proclamation of a fiftieth "liberty" year occurs on one of God's annual feast days known as the Day of Atonement. Because God owns everything, he set up a special, regularly occurring time period where His will is that a man's possessions are returned to him.”
These questions came to mind: Do I act and live as if God is the owner or have I foolishly taken ownership of all that the Master has entrusted me with?
From the Back Porch,
Bob Rice
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