Dennis Tuuri

# Sermon Transcript – Micah 2:8-11
## Reformation Covenant Church | Pastor Dennis Tuuri

This morning we continue our series of talks going through the book of Micah. This section we’ve come to this morning kind of brings to an end the first section of Micah’s prophecy here. That section begins in chapter 1, verse 2, after the introductory verse in verse 1 of chapter 1. It starts at 1:12 and then goes through to verse 11 of chapter 2. Next week we’ll be considering verses 12 and 13, which is a very abrupt and radical shift from what he’s been saying up to that point in time.

He’ll prophesy the saving of the remnant, indeed a reversal of fortunes, which we’ll talk about next week. So this first section, going from 1:2 to 2:11, has been Micah’s description of the judgment to come upon the southern kingdom—also the northern kingdom, but primarily upon the southern kingdom. And so what we have seen here is kind of a cycling down and a description of their coming cursed estate, which will happen as a result of God’s covenantal judgment upon them.

We said that Micah chapter 1, at the beginning of this section, began with covenantal judgment—a heavenly indictment from God and a sentencing of both the northern and the southern kingdoms because of idolatry. Micah then moved to describe the judgments on Samaria, specifically in the north. The judgment on Samaria was a warning to Jerusalem. We also said that it should be a warning to us as well and to us personally if we understand the basis for that judgment being idolatry, religious syncretism, and a reliance upon self.

Micah then went into a description of what we believe to be Assyria’s march to Jerusalem, describing the judgment of now the southern kingdom and how the judgment will come into the land and they will triumph, going through city after city on their route to Jerusalem itself. And then Micah’s prophecies move to a specific cataloging of the cities and the people. He started with the pronouncement of judgment that was for the high places of Samaria and Jerusalem.

And he moved on then to the second tablet violations of covetousness, murder, and theft in chapter 2, and the result in judgment of disinheritance and excommunication of those who would disinherit others. Micah was interrupted at this point in time, so to speak, in his cataloging of the sins of the nations by some false prophets who told him not to prophesy against the people. And he said in reply that his prophesying was indeed a prophesying of judgment to those who walk not in the way prescribed by God. By that unholy walk, they have given demonstration and evidence of their not truly being of the covenant people of Israel. But for those people, it was indeed a prophesying of God’s judgment—a prophesying akin to, as it were, the rain of hail, fire, stone, fire, and brimstone from heaven, and also the reign of Deuteronomy 28 in judgment upon an ungodly people, that rain being consisting of dust.

But to those that do good, who are the righteous, whose walk is conformable to God’s law, Micah said that those people who do good, as defined by God’s law, to those—these were prophesyings of blessing, cleansing, and salvation from God. Like the mountains that drip down sweet wine, like the land that the scriptures say dripped honey, like the hills that drip fatness, the sky that dripped rains of blessing on an earth that required rain for increase in productivity.

And so the prophesying from Micah had both a judgment and was a judgment. That judgment included both cursings and blessings. Micah continues then the passage we’re going to deal with this morning with his indictment of the supposed covenant nation and continues the cataloging of their many and manifold sins. He describes in the passage we’re going to look at this morning the nature of the wickedness for which they are to be indicted, judged, and sentenced by God.

He talks about the just sentence from God for such actions, and then gives a strong indicator as to the pervasiveness of the sin and rebellion against God. And so we’ll follow that in our outline this morning. We’ll begin with the description of the wickedness here of God’s enemies as it were.

**Micah 2:8** — “Even of late, my people has risen up as an enemy. You pull up the robe with the garment from them that pass by securely as men averse from war.”

This begins then the description of the nature of the wickedness. These men have now turned. Instead of being God’s covenant people, they’re now enemies to God’s covenant people. Even of late, my people have risen up as an enemy. And it doesn’t specifically say an enemy of who, but it then goes on to catalog how they oppress the oppressed, the poor and the debtor, the widow, and the orphan. And so now they’re not—they’re no longer acting as the covenant people. They’re now acting as enemies of the covenant people. And to be enemies of the covenant people is also to be enemies of God himself.

Now, it’s important to recognize too that the beginning of verse 8, “even of late,” that particular phrase indicates that this recently occurred—these things he was describing. But it also—the specific term he uses here has the indication that this is a continual sort of action—that this isn’t just a one-time occurrence. This now characterizes their life in the midst of the southern kingdom. This oppression of the vulnerable is the wickedness that they were engaged in, being enemies of the vulnerable members of society.

This oppression is first cataloged in verse 8 as an oppression of the poor or defenseless, of the one who walks peaceably by, averse to war. And I’m not sure what your translation may have there in terms of “averse to war,” but it can either mean people that were peaceably disposed, who weren’t warlike in nature. And so you have this picture of people who were trying to live at peace in the land, and yet most of the people in the land then come and rob and take their cloaks off. Or it could mean men returning from war, and so either one of those things is possible in the text.

We don’t have a lot of specifics in terms of the description of the specific activity here. All we know is that the people that Micah was prophesying against here and preaching against were somehow removing the robe or the cloak from other people that were passing peaceably by.

Now, in Job 22, we read a description of other men of this sort. It’s important to say here that what we’re going to be reading was an incorrect analysis of Job’s problem. But nonetheless, what was said by Eliphaz here is accurate in terms of a description of God’s judgment upon people who do these sorts of things.

**Job 22:6** — “For thou hast taken a pledge from thy brother for naught, and stripped the naked of their clothing. Thou hast not given water to the weary to drink, and thou hast withhelden bread from the hungry.”

So that I think is an indicator of the sort of stripping action that’s going on here. We have people that for whatever reason are somewhat defenseless to protect themselves. So I don’t think here we have people that are of substance or have enough money to take care of themselves. We don’t have people that are strong people. We have people who are too weak to defend themselves. And so in Job, there’s a correlation between the people being naked, being stripped of their clothing, and the debtor who has to give up his cloak as a pledge as well.

In Exodus 22, let’s look at Exodus 22:21-27 for a couple of minutes.

**Exodus 22:21** — “Thou shalt neither vex a stranger nor oppress him, for you were strangers in the land of Egypt.”

Some commentators, not many, but a few of them have indicated that perhaps these people returning from war, as it were, also included foreigners or strangers. And there’s an impression here of strangers.

**Exodus 22:21 (continued)** — “You shall not afflict any widow, nor fatherless child.” And those are the next two groups we’ll be talking about in Micah. And then it goes on to say, “If thou afflict them in any way, they’ll cry unto me. I will surely hear their cry. My wrath shall wax hot, and I’ll kill you with the sword, and your wives shall be chosen your children fatherless.”

**Exodus 22:25-27** — “If you lend money to any of my people that is poor by thee, thou shalt not be to him as a usurer, neither shalt thou lay upon him usury. If thou at all take thy neighbor’s raiment to pledge, thou shalt deliver it upon him by that the sun goeth down. For that is his covering only. It is his raiment for his skin, wherein shall he sleep. And it shall come to pass when he crieth unto me that I will hear, for I am gracious.”

So we have here a set of verses, verses 21 through 27, that describe an oppression of people that are unable to defend themselves from the oppressors of the land. And I think there’s evidence then on the basis of these other texts that talk about the raiment and the covering and the importance of that. And what we have in this first section, the oppression of the poor or defenseless could include those who are requiring loans and so giving up their cloaks and pledge. But these people aren’t just taking their cloaks and pledge—they’re taking it off them and keeping it forever. The point is they’re keeping the cloak instead of returning it at night like they were supposed to do.

Or it could just be that these were strangers or other men who had no legal opportunity to defend themselves. But in any event, really, since the poor of the land are in the same category according to Exodus 22—the verses we just read—as the stranger, widow, and orphan, all of these groups go together to describe those members of the covenant community who require a special gracious provision from God.

And in Exodus 22, he tells them: don’t treat them like normal people. A normal person asks you for a loan, you can exact interest at least to cover the cost of your money or the cost of the opportunity of the money. But from a poor person, you’re not to take any interest. You’re not to charge him any interest at all when he comes to you for a loan. And so that’s what happens then—you lose the opportunity to use that money for up to, well, it could be forever. The seventh year the debt was remitted. The point is you are given specific instructions by God to go out of your way and suffer financial loss through the use of that money to help the person that was poor by you, who is indeed a poor person according to God’s requirement.

And the same with the widow and the orphan. You were supposed to actually go out of your way to help widows and the fatherless. You’re supposed to go to trouble to make sure that they had protection and the sustenance of life that was required by them to exist in the community. And so here there’s a denial of that entire concept going on. There’s an oppression of the people that are unable to keep somebody else from ripping the cloak off them.

And then it goes on in Micah 2:9.

**Micah 2:9** — “The women of my people have ye cast out from their pleasant houses.”

So secondly, the oppression of the vulnerable includes the oppression of the widow. And again in Exodus 22:21, we read that you’re not to oppress a widow or your wife will become a widow. Remember, we just read that from Exodus 22. The cursings of Deuteronomy 27, which we have repeated in this church on occasion and services of malediction, the curses of Deuteronomy 27 include verse 19:

**Deuteronomy 27:19** — “Cursed is he who distorts the justice due to an alien, fatherless or widow.”

The same group that we’ve talked about before, that are also of course to be recipients of a portion of our tithe. They were apparently evicting women, and he says women here apart from any male headship in the home. And so these are women without a husband to protect them—they’re widows in that sense. Then they were evicting these widows from their cozy homes, as the term may be translated there, from their pleasant houses. There’s almost an indication here that Micah wants to really drive the point home that these men are really terrible men.

He’s talked in his cataloging of these sins that we talked about two weeks ago about men who steal inheritance from other people. But now he’s saying you even steal it from the widow who has no way to defend herself, and all she’s got is this nice pleasant home that she’s made for herself, and you’re going to evict her out of that home and you’re going to take it for yourself.

It’s interesting too that the term used for eviction of the widows here in Micah 2:9 is the same term used in Numbers 22 in verses 6 and 11. Now, in Numbers 22, you might remember the story—Balak tries to hire Balaam as a false prophet to prophesy ill against Israel so they can be driven out of the land of Moab. Okay? And twice there, Balak uses the term to drive them out of the land. And it’s the same term used here of the wicked who oppress the widow by driving her out of her pleasant home.

And so they’ve now become, and God, by way of the prophecy here and the correlation to the term used in Numbers, shows that these men really are like the enemies of God who want to drive out God’s people. His particularly special people, in terms of his protection, both from the protection that he gives to them and also what he requires of his covenant people—the widows, fatherless, and the aliens—that they’re going to drive those people out of the land just like Balak was going to drive Israel out of Moab. So we have a description here of some really terrible things going on.

The description continues. It doesn’t just stop with widows. It goes on in verse 10:

**Micah 2:10** — “From their children have you taken away my glory forever.”

So not only do they oppress those who are too weak to defend their cloak and those who have no covenant head to defend them from men who’d want to evict widows from their houses, they also oppress the fatherless. Here we have a child who has a mother, but the child has no father. And you know, it’s I’ve pointed this out before, but some of your translations may read “orphan” when it talks about the classes of people that we’ve been talking about.

For instance, from Exodus 22, the alien, the widow, and the fatherless. The specific term used is “fatherless.” And here’s another indication that God has a special curse in mind for those people who would oppress the fatherless. The child isn’t totally orphaned. He still has a mother, but he’s without the father. He’s not that covenant head that God has provided to guard the family and to nourish the family. And so it’s important that we recognize what’s going on here.

That these men are oppressing the poor and defenseless, the widow, and the orphan—the fatherless. That is specifically the term used in the old covenant. Now when it says that “they, that from the children you have taken away my glory forever,” the term “glory” here could refer to a couple of things. Kuyper and Delitzsch think that the glory here refers specifically to the cloak described above—glory in terms of protection or covering, as it were, and that’s possible. Glory could also refer to their inheritance. When they’re evicted from this house along with their mother, they’re denied the glory of God in terms of a place in the land.

And in other scriptures, the land is talked about as a glorious thing that God has given to his people. And so there’s a definite scriptural connection between the land and the glory that he gives to his people. And so either way, the point is that they’re taking these defenseless children who have no father to defend them, and they’re taking away God’s blessings—their cloaks, their raiment, their protection, or their land—and they’re oppressing them in that way.

So we have a consistent theme here in this description or cataloging of the specific sins of these people: to oppress the vulnerable in society.

The fruit of this wickedness is then talked about in verse 10.

**Micah 2:10** — “Arise ye and depart for this is not your rest because it is polluted. It shall destroy you even with a sore destruction.”

The fruit of the wickedness in terms of oppressing the vulnerable, that God has instructed us to specifically look out for their interests, the fruit of that wickedness is expulsion from the rest of God. They are commanded by God to get up and depart from the land. Micah says, “Depart. Get out of this land.” And he goes on to tell them that the land—which is indicative of their rest—they’ll also not rest in the land. God’s land is the point here. They may have thought that they could steal land and hold it as their property. But Micah here is asserting God’s sovereign claim over the land.

And he gives the land to whomever he will choose to put it in the stewardship of. And when these people act in this way, they have rejected proper stewardship, and they now face an eviction notice from God the way that they gave eviction notices to the widows in their land.

Deuteronomy 12:9 and 10 indicates that Canaan, the land that God had promised to them, is synonymous with the rest that God would bring them to. And we talked about this some when we went through the sermons on the Sabbath. But the point is that we must understand that rest is the cumulative effect of all of God’s reign and his blessings upon his people. Rest is in the land at peace, fruitful land, protection from your enemies. That’s a rest in God’s sight. And so the wicked here are expelled from the land.

And they’re not just expelled from a piece of property. They’re expelled from the rest that God promised in terms of a blessing upon the covenant people as they walked in obedience to the law that he had given to them. And so they’re expelled from rest. The scriptures tell us repeatedly that the wicked have no rest. They’re like the waves of the sea churned up at all times, minds having no rest in them.

And so God uses a specific symbol of that rest—the land—and kicks them out of the land and tells them that they’re being evicted by him. They’re being commanded to leave the land.

Now, this should remind us, of course, of Adam. When Adam and Eve sinned and violated God’s commandment in the garden, decided to be their own God instead of having the God of the covenant, who had made covenant with them, be their God, he evicted them from the land as well. Entrance into the promised land was, of course, a type or a model, as it were, of restoration to Edenic blessings and even more, because we have a fuller understanding now of what that all means in the new covenant.

But the point is that they were restored back to Adenic blessings and the giving to them by God of the land of Canaan. And yet now, because they walked in disobedience to the covenant, they are kicked out of that land the way that Adam was cast out of the garden. They had polluted the land.

Let’s turn to Leviticus 18:25-28.

**Leviticus 18:25-28** — “The land is defiled. Therefore, I do visit the iniquity thereof upon it, and the land itself vomiteth out her inhabitants. Ye shall therefore keep my statutes and my judgments, and shall not commit any of these abominations, neither any of your own nations, nor any stranger that sojourneth among you. For all these abominations have the men of the land done, which were before you. And the land is defiled, that the land spew not you out also, when you defile it, as it spewed out the nations that were before you. For whosoever shall commit any of these abominations, even the souls that commit them shall be cut off from among their people.”

And so Leviticus told the men in terms of the instruction of God’s law that if they go into that land and they then become godless, and they then become the enemies that Micah has identified them as in this particular portion of scripture, that’s a pollution and a defilement of the land itself. And the land will spew them out the way that the ungodly men were spewed out of the land prior to their coming.

They’re to be cast out of the land. The land had become polluted as a result of their horrendous deeds. And now the land itself would war against these wicked enemies of God’s covenant people and of God himself. The land spewed out the inhabitants who defiled it. And so here we see also in Micah that the land will wage war, as it were, against the godless men who no longer walk in obedience to the covenant requirements in terms of demonstrating grace and compassion toward those members of the community that needed that grace and compassion to survive and to live.

And so verse 10 says, “Arise you and depart, for this is not your rest because it is polluted. It shall destroy you even with a sword of destruction.” The land itself will wage war against those men and women who refuse to walk in obedience to the covenant requirements, who then become enemies—Canaanites, Philistines, as it were, in the land themselves. The Canaanites and the Philistines were driven out by God, and now these men will be driven out as well.

Judges 5:20 and 21 in Deborah’s song tells us that the stars and the brooks themselves—the created order, in other words—wage war against Sisera, and they’ll also wage war against all ungodly covenant people. The stars, the brooks, the land—they’re all part of God’s creation, and they move in obedience to his providence as well. And when God says that they wage war against the ungodly, we best believe it.

The extent of the wickedness is then described in verse 11.

**Micah 2:11** — “And if a man walking in the spirit and falsehood do lie, saying, I will prophesy unto thee of wine and of strong drink, he shall even be the prophet of this people.”

And we talked about verse 11 a little last week, but we’ll just say a couple of things here. I said that there’s a change in the text next week. There’s a shift from this first cataloging of sins to then a description of God’s coming restoration of the true remnant—for two verses is all we get of that positive side of it. And then we’ll go back the following week to another group that Micah is going to prophesy and preach and bring God’s judgments against.

Beginning with chapter 3:1, he’ll talk about bad rulers, and then he’ll talk about bad prophets, and then he’ll kind of wrap them all together in terms of the bad establishment—the prophet, priest, and king—all those special functions that God has given to the covenant people being judged by him and found in disobedience to the covenant requirements.

Now the point is that prior to verses 11 and 12 of chapter 2, this group of cataloging of sins that we’ve talked about in chapter 2 is directed not against a specific subset of the culture primarily. Okay, next two weeks from today we’ll talk about specific people, rulers, and then we’ll talk about prophets, and then we’ll talk about prophets, priests, and kings in another week after that. But now he’s saying that the whole covenant nation essentially has become apostate. This isn’t just a description of a couple of bad rich men here.

He says that if a false prophet comes along and promises blessings from God—then you don’t—you shouldn’t be having blessings. And a prophet prophesies temporal things that you want and desire to enjoy yourself. The people would like this. You see, the whole people have become corrupted, and as a result, essentially most of the nation will be driven into destruction by God. We’ll talk more about that next week.

Eventually, of course, another couple hundred fifty years down the line, the whole of the southern kingdom will be taken into captivity and exile. The point I’m trying to make here is that the extent of the wickedness is not just to a few rich and greedy land barons, as many commentators would have us believe here. It’s more broad than that. It’s broader than that. It’s a failure on the part of the general population to speak out and to affirm the rights and the special privileges that the widows and the fatherless and the strangers and the defenseless are to have in the land.

These people—the whole covenant nation essentially, although there is a remnant in them, of course—the whole covenant nation want lies and not the truth of Micah’s prophecy. They want temporal blessings. They want minimalist requirements by God. In terms of, we don’t want to hear about the things we have to do—but they want maximalist blessings from God. Remember we talked last week about how wine and strong drink were the things that you were specifically commanded to go ahead and buy at the time of the rejoicing tithe to rejoice in the blessings that God has given to you.

They wanted maximalist blessings. They wanted all the wine and drink now. They probably drank a lot of it as opposed to in moderation. But they wanted minimalist requirements from God at the same time. They asked for maximalist blessings from him. And so the whole people was the extent of the wickedness.

I see a parallel passage to this condemnation of the general covenant people is found in Jeremiah 5.

We read this several months ago, but it’s a good passage to look at again now. Jeremiah 5:27-31.

**Jeremiah 5:27-31** — “As a cage is full of birds, so are their houses full of deceit. Therefore they are become great and wax rich. They are wax and fat. They shine. Yea, they overpass the deeds of the wicked. And now listen to this. They judge not the cause, the cause of the fatherless, yet they prosper. And the right of the needy do they not judge. Shall I not visit for these things, sayeth the Lord? in judgment. In other words, shall not my soul be avenged on such a nation as this—a nation, okay? Not individuals.

A wonderful and horrible thing is committed in the land. The prophets prophesy falsely. The priests bear rule by their own means. And my people love to have it so.”

You see, it’s a parallel indictment. Jeremiah followed Micah by about a hundred years or so and preached to the same descendants, I guess you could say, of the people that Micah preached to. And the same thing was happening. They failed to defend the defenseless and the needy in the land. And God says, “My—I will visit these people in terms of judgment for having failed to do that. They are filled with false prophets and false priests.”

But what’s the reason for that? The reason for that is that the people love it. So the congregation—in other words, the people that sit in the pew—don’t want to hear good preaching. And as a result, there’s no good preaching. The congregation doesn’t want to hear the requirements of God’s law. They want that minimalist requirement in terms of God’s law upon them. But they want to hear about maximalist blessings. My people love it.

So Jeremiah 5 ends with a verse that’s so laden with importance for us to understand today in the context of America:

**Jeremiah 5:31 (continued)** — “And what ye will ye do in the end thereof?”

See, these things are part of a progression of events. And that progression of events leads to expulsion from rest and taking into captivity itself. What will this people that love to have it so do when they recognize that God’s hand is not shortened, as it were? His hand will visit them in judgment.

Another parallel passage is found in Isaiah 1:23 and 24.

**Isaiah 1:23-24** — “The princes are rebellious and companions of thieves. Everyone loveth gifts and followeth after rewards. They judge not the fatherless, neither does the cause of the widow come unto them. Therefore saith the Lord, the Lord of hosts, mighty one of Israel. I will ease me of mine adversaries and avenge me of mine enemies.”

See, we said that Micah said they’ve risen up as an enemy. They’re an enemy to God’s people. They’re also enemies of God. And Isaiah identifies them specifically. And God says, “I’ll avenge me of mine enemies.” And in verse 23, what’s the reason for God avenging him of his enemies?

His enemies are identified as those covenant people that fail to plead the cause of the widow and the fatherless and the stranger and the poor in the society, the needy, as it were.

Now, why is this? What this clearly says is that the nation that sinks or falls to the oppression of the vulnerable in their society is near to destruction. Why is this? Well, some have posited the fact that God is always on the side of the poor, the side of the fatherless, the widow, and the strangers. And because he’s always wanting their benefit in society, if you don’t do it, and that’s the big violation that he is going to bring his judgment upon you for. And there’s certainly some truth to that.

But to say that God is always on the side of the poor, the widow, and the fatherless is to miss many other scriptures. Remember we said that in Exodus 22, he says if you don’t plead the cause of the widow, your wife will become a widow. Okay? So God makes widows sometimes in terms of his judgment. God makes fatherless children as well. Remember he does pass on judgment sometimes to second, third, and fourth generations. He’s not particularly enamored of those widows or those fatherless. Their result—they’re what they are as a result of his judgment.

Additionally, the unrighteous poor who steal or who are poor because God is cursing them—God isn’t particularly on their side. So the answer isn’t found there.

Where is the answer to this question? And why is it such a big deal? Why is the final straw, as it were, according to Isaiah 1 and Micah 2, the oppression of the vulnerable in society?

Well, I think that to answer this, we have to remember what this whole progression has been. Remember it started in Micah 1 in the first couple of verses with talking about the idolatry of the people, and then he moved on to a description of second tablet violations. If we stay fixed on second tablet violations and that’s what, of course, the oppression of the widow and fatherless specifically is, we will fail to recognize that their greater sin is back here in terms of idolatry. Okay.

To bring up this point a little bit better, we’ll talk a little bit about what’s been called by some the royal virtue. It was interesting to note that these Old Testament requirements—and New Testament requirements as well, which we’ll talk about in a couple of minutes—of special care and protection for the widow and the fatherless and the poor was not restricted to Israel.

Many Near East cultures of that same period of time also had provisions for special care for these people. But the thing that was unique about Israel was that this was required of all the people. Normally, it would just be the king who had obligations. That’s why it’s called the royal virtue. And in societies, the king would have obligations to help those poor people. But here under God’s law order, we see everybody called to exercise that royal virtue toward other people.

And of course, one of the indications of this, one of the reasons for this, is that we are all now royalty in God’s sight—prophets, priests, and kings under God, under King Jesus. And so we have to see the correlation there. The reason why they were to pass on this virtue, as it were, this royal virtue, and demonstrate grace to those lesser members of society was an acknowledgment of their own insufficiency on the part of the king or on the part of the covenant people.

You see, when you start oppressing the wicked and the vulnerable—not the wicked, you oppress wickedly the vulnerable in society—you assert your own self-sufficiency. The oppression of the vulnerable asserts his own self-sufficiency, that his hand has gotten him wealth and this person doesn’t have wealth. They don’t have a strong enough hand. So my hand’s stronger. It’s kind of like survival of the fittest. And saying, “We’re the fittest ones here, and so we’re going to take whatever we want to take because we’re the fittest ones in this society.”

They’re asserting their own self-sufficiency instead of relying upon God’s sufficiency for them.

Now, this is very interesting and ironic because in Deuteronomy 29:5, we won’t turn to it now, but God specifically says that he supernaturally prevented their garments from wearing out. And that’s the first thing they do is start ripping garments off these people. God supernaturally prevented the covenant people’s garments from wearing out in the forty-year wilderness experience.

Indeed, in Exodus 12:35, the garments that they had, most of them, the garments, the clothing, as well as other things of gold and silver and other things were actually plundered from the Egyptians. God told the Israelites to ask for goods, including raiments, clothing, and gold and silver from the Egyptians as they were going to be delivered out of Egypt. And then the Egyptians did that.

Well, you know, among other things, of course, the Egyptians had these people enslaved, and the Egyptians had to be brought into obedience to God’s law regarding released slaves. And so they turned out the slaves—that Israel had been their slaves. So they turned them out with an abundance of goods and services.

But, of course, behind all this, God is demonstrating that it’s the godly people, instead of the godless nation, that owns the wealth. The wealth is like the land. It’s God’s land. If he does—if you don’t do right, he kicks you out of the land. And if you don’t use your wealth properly, he takes it from you and he gives it to the righteous or the godly.

But the point of that is that in both what we have then is a covenant people who came into the promised land. They begin by receiving their garments not of their own hand but of God’s gracious provision—plundered from the Egyptians. And God then preserves their garments for forty years as they go through the wilderness. He supernaturally prevents them from wearing out. And so you see their garments should have anything to them an understanding of God’s grace and God’s righteousness and his provision instead of our own self-sufficiency.

And of course, that points us to the fact that our garments of righteousness are provided by Jesus Christ, supernaturally by God. So to take somebody else’s garment or covering is a real denial of God’s grace. It is extreme wickedness and a denial of the God of provision.

Remember that they were brought into this land itself. Of course, God said, “I’m going to give you a land with wells that you didn’t dig and houses that you didn’t build and fields and crops that you didn’t plant. Blessings that your hand didn’t get for you. And he said, ‘I’m going to give you these things. You’re going to be blessed by me, but beware, because when you start seeing all these blessings, you’re going to start thinking it was our own hand that did it. You’re going to start acting in terms of your own self-sufficiency instead of a reliance upon me and my grace, God tells them.’”

And that is exactly what happened. You know, there’s a good picture of this you might want to read with your children this afternoon in the story of Elisha. When Ben Hadad of Aram came up and besieged Samaria at the time of Elisha, and the king gets real upset because people are doing—have really fallen into starvation in the context of this siege brought against them by King Ben Hadad of Aram.

And he gets mad and he calls Elisha. He says, “What’s going on here?” And Elisha says, “Well, don’t worry about it, because tomorrow food will be dirt cheap, as it were—going to have plenty of food tomorrow. And the king says, ‘Well, even if God pours down rain and lots of blessings, how can we possibly have that much food that it would be cheap by tomorrow afternoon?’”

And Elisha says, “Well, you know, if you’re not going to trust God, you’re going to be judged by him, and you won’t experience it.” And one of the king’s messengers said, “That can’t happen.” And Elisha said, “Well, you’re not going to eat of that food then tomorrow.”

But what happened was the next day, four lepers go out to Ben Hadad’s army because they figure: we’re lepers; we’re going to stay here inside Samaria; we’re going to be starved to death. Might as well go out there. If they kill us, they kill us. If they don’t, we will get a scrap of food to eat. So they go out to the camp of the Arameans, and lo and behold, there’s not a single enemy of God left there. What is left there is gold, silver, raiment, food, drink, and manifold blessings left there.

Why? Because God had caused the Arameans to believe—to hear whispers, as it were, in the night—to hear things in the night that they thought were supporters of Israel coming to defend them against the Arameans, and they got scared. They took off and started running and left the battlefield there and abandoned the siege, and they were so frightened by God’s judgment upon them there, as it were, that they actually left behind all these goods.

And that’s another picture, as it were, in the old covenant of God mercifully and graciously providing for his people garments that they didn’t sew, gold and silver that they didn’t mine or refine, and food that they didn’t make. And so there’s a great heyday, and they bring all the food in and they enjoy the food. And indeed, the very next day, of course, food is dirt cheap because there’s tons of it outside the walls itself.

Well, the point of all that is this: that the oppression of the vulnerable denies a gracious God. It denies God’s grace as the basis for our blessings before him.

Now, it’s important to recognize that Micah, as all of the prophets do, points to Jesus Christ and to his coming. Christ came as the covenant mediator. He would be despised of man. He would be seen as somebody who had no defender to take care of him. His garment would be stripped off of him. His glory would be taken from him in a sense of his garment being stripped off, and it would then be gambled for and divided amongst the soldiers.

You see, we have a picture of Jesus Christ. At his death on the cross, he provides then all the blessings that all these Old Testament things point us toward. Salvation is by grace. That’s the point of all this.

The covenant people who were strangers in Egypt—we read in the first commandment this morning. You know that God had brought us out of Egypt with a mighty hand, delivered us from the hand of the house of bondage. The very deliverance into Canaan was a type of the blessings that Jesus would bring us into with his final coming to effect covenant peace two thousand years ago.

They were transported out of Egypt, delivered by God out of the house of bondage where they had been strangers. God had prospered them there where they were strangers, eventually led them into their own land, the land which the pagans had forfeited ownership of through their abominations. We were strangers. But God now has brought us nigh under the covenants of promise in Jesus Christ.

Shall one who has been a stranger and prospered by God at the hand of the Egyptians, even while they were strangers there, who has been delivered by God’s grace, who has been clothed by God’s grace, given food by God’s grace, given a great land flowing with milk and honey by God’s grace—for those people then to turn around and oppress the strangers, the widows and the orphans in their land is a complete denial of the grace of God.

Now, it’s important to recognize that the scriptures say that we were widows, okay? Elijah, when he went to the widow with the son, he went to—it was a type again of Jesus Christ. I’m pointing us toward the coming of Jesus Christ, the greater Elijah, as it were. And he goes to the widow of Israel. He says that himself. He says, “Elijah, there are many widows. Elijah went to one. Says, ‘And so I come to you, the house of Israel.’” Okay.

Jesus comes to the covenant people who are described by him as widows. Now, if you remember the covenantal head models—we talked about that—there’s two covenant heads: Adam, and that covenant line brings death; and Christ, whose covenant line brings life. We recognize that our first husband, as it were, Adam, has died because of his sin. And so we’re widowed prior to the coming of Jesus Christ. We were widows.

And God makes special provision for us and graciously brings us to be the bride of Jesus Christ.

We were fatherless. And God says in the new covenant, the primary model of his salvation offered is adoption. Where he takes us into his household. He adopts the fatherless into his household and we’re made sons of his. In the same way, Elijah the prophet also raised up the son of the woman—the fatherless child there—again, as a type of Jesus raising us up, moving us from death to life.

We were strangers. We were widows. We were fatherless, as it were. God in his grace has brought us into the covenants of promise. He’s married us to Jesus Christ and given us a covenant headship of Christ and life. And he’s brought us into the blessings of his family through his adoption.

So we are recipients of that grace. This is why it was such a horrendous and terrible thing for the people, the covenant nation in Micah, to be characterized as those who would deny the transmission of grace and benefits to those people around them—when they denied the royal virtue, when they denied their obligation to extend grace and compassion to those less fortunate in their land.

They were saying we don’t need that provision from God. And God says if you don’t need that provision from me, here’s where you can go. Get out of this land, because I gave this land to you graciously and of my grace and love and compassion. And if you’re not going to extend compassion, here’s where you are without me. You’re out there in the howling wilderness again. You’re going to be hungry. You’re going to be stripped naked by the people that come in and take you out of here.

And so God’s eviction order is based upon their denial of God himself, their idolatry—the worshiping a God who was not a God of grace, but a God strictly of blessings to them no matter what they did. You see, they denied God’s grace. And as a result of that, they then manifested that denial of God’s grace. And they’re falling away from the worship of the true God by their violation of the second tablet requirements relative to widows, fatherless, and the poor in the society around them.

Well, what does all this mean for us today? Well, I think that there are applications for our society today. Today, we do have a tremendous number of widows in our land—households, single households, as it were, where there are no fathers. As a result, primarily divorce and other things. But still, there are widows out there. There are many fatherless children out there as well.

It was interesting to me this last week I heard a radio program, a call-in program—you know, the Beck show, somebody else was hosting it—and they had a couple of people on there talking about the recommendations for Governor Goldsmith’s children’s agenda, one part of it. And they were talking about how they want to get legislation introduced and passed, but they’re quite confident they can, to regulate all daycare providers. You know, you’re only regulated now if you have, I think, six kids or something like that. But this means that if you only take care of one child—I’m not sure what the requirements be, maybe four hours a day or something—but if you only take care of one child, you’ll have to meet these regulations.

It’ll be fire and health inspections as well as training, mandatory training for the providers of daycare. And they were talking also, of course, about the daycare bills and the federal legislation. What’s that got to do with Micah, you say? Well, it has a lot to do with it. You see, we do have widows and fatherless today. And there’s lots of different ways of solving the dilemma of what to do with these families that need help.

The woman on this show said that most women today work not because they want to work, but because they have to work. And she quoted some figures that I don’t know are accurate or not, but there is indeed a lot of women who have households to take care of without men being in the household to make provision for those children. And they have to work to support them. Well, there’s a lot of ways to deal with that situation.

And what the government is doing to today, both at the federal level and at the state level, is they’re providing credits to be used specifically at daycare centers. You see, you can either try to give women the incentive to stay home and take care of those children, or you can give the incentive to leave those children and to go into the workplace and have the children turned over to a state-licensed daycare center.

And there’s been a couple of pieces of legislation in Washington DC that would do one of these two things. One would give money directly to women to pay them to stay home with their children, as it were. And the other would use money to provide instead daycare agencies so those women would go out and work. What our government has consistently done over the last ten or twenty years is give incentives and push women away from staying at home and getting them into the workplace.

Okay. What’s the result of that? The result of that is that they steal, as it were, the children away from these women to put them in state-licensed daycare centers. They remove the glory of those children, as it were. They oppress that widow. They take away her home and her child, which is the essence of her home, and they put it in a state-licensed facility.

We coerce today widows—that is, women who are single heads of households—through government programs.

I saw we were playing a WC Fields movie the other day, The Bank Dick. And it’s interesting to look at a movie like that because it’s made quite a long time ago, and you can see some things about the society in which it was made. And one of these statements by WC Fields’s mother-in-law is there in the house, and she doesn’t like him, of course. And she says, “If that man doesn’t quit smoking those cigarettes, I’m going to go on the county.” And she keeps—she threatens that a couple of times in the movie: “I’m going to go to the county.” And the point was that then it was, you know, a thing of, I guess, shame to the family to have the mother of the household, the grandmother, as it were, instead of staying with them, go out and put them in a county facility.

But the reason I bring it up is that was the exception then. Today it’s the rule. Today, to have the in-laws come and live with the mother-in-law, for instance, come and live with the family is the real exception to the rule. Today it’s the state that provides, as it were, cradle-to-grave security, and the state then provides these facilities that break up the family unit, create more fatherless children, as it were, and then create also a whole system of slaves who receive all their goods and services from the state.

And then, of course, become real supporters of that monolithic state system.

We read Psalm 146 earlier responsively, and it’s important to see the correlations what I’m saying here.

**Psalm 146:3** — “Put not your trust in princes nor in the son of man in whom there is no help.”

Then he goes on in verse 7 to say that God executes judgment for the oppressed. He gives food to the hungry, the Lord looses the prisoners.

Okay, so the oppressed of society. Psalm 146 says God takes care of, and you should rely on God’s provision for those needs instead of turning to princes or the son of man. The relevance of that is that we have a society today that is marked by reliance not upon God and God’s grace as administered through the covenant people, but rather relies upon the princes and the sons of man, as it were—the state, the deification of the state—to provide all those needs instead of the household unit.