Last Thursday was the last day of school for my two older girls.

To celebrate, we went with two other families to the zoo. It was a lot of fun, a really good family outing day.

But I found myself thinking a really strange thing as we stood watching the sea lions swim. We were at the underwater window as these two huge sea lions swam laps, coming right up close to the glass with all these kids and parents staring at them.

I thought: “I wonder what it would be like if I were stuck swimming naked in front of a bunch of people?”

I mean, that would be bad enough for you if you were stuck watching, but I was completely self-centered, thinking about how horribly embarrassing and demeaning it would be, out in the open with nowhere to hide in front of a bunch of people. Putting myself in the sea lion’s place pretty much scared me to death.

Then I remembered I know exactly what it feels like to be that exposed in front of a bunch of people…after all, I preach most every Sunday!

The reason we have someone share a message every Sunday is because we believe it is important to have the bible read and talked about every time we gather for worship. More than that, we believe that in the act of having someone study, listen to Christ, and then share some thoughts, the rest of us then have the opportunity to be open to what God wants to speak directly to us.

It can be a good and helpful thing…but being the one to do it can lead to feeling vulnerable and exposed. It’s impossible to say everything; it’s impossible to address the needs of every person; and most scary of all is coming across as boring or irrelevant. God and God’s word as expressed through the bible is incredibly life giving and powerful!

Today, we’re looking at Micah chapter 2.

In the process of preparing and praying and discerning what God wanted me to share, the things I feel are important to say are not very easy things to talk about. They are things that can easily be mis-interpreted or raise questions.

But I want to do my best to be faithful to share what God’s brought to mind about Micah 2.

Would you pray with me, that God would be honored and would speak through our time together? [PRAY]

Why was Micah bringing harsh words to the people of Israel and Judah?

What were the reasons that led him to speak out God’s judgment of destruction to Samaria and Jerusalem?

This is the question that the book of Micah begins to answer in chapter 2. The answer is pretty simple: the people of Israel and Judah have disobeyed God and have acted in evil ways. They are so in rebellion to God that they don’t want to hear any word of correction or challenge to their behavior. They want the prophets, the people who are mouthpieces of God, to speak only words of encouragement.

This chapter says that the kind of prophet that Israel and Judah wants is the kind who promises that life will be like a beer commercial: plenty to drink and full of “the good life”.

We talked last week about our fears of an angry God.

At the most basic level, I’m like the people God is condemning through Micah: I WOULD like a God who only spoke grace. I WOULD like God to only do good to people.

Look at verses 6 and 7 in Micah chapter 2. These are the words that the other false prophets of Micah’s time are saying to Micah, as they try to get him to stop speaking such doom and gloom. [READ]

It would be nice if God never said anything challenging to us. But as we talked about last week, justice then becomes impossible. If God truly is good and just, then when we as his people do things that are NOT good and UNjust, God must correct us. God doesn’t just speak what itching ears want to hear.

At the most fundamental level of life with God, there is a basic decision we have to make.

Will we let God be “God”? Will we accept the fact that something exists which is greater than ourselves, something by which we must shape our lives?

The voices of the prophets in the bible remind us this is a basic characteristic of the God we serve. God is good and holy and just, and if we act differently than God’s way of living, we can expect to hear words of correction and even rebuke.

It’s easy for us to accept this in some areas. When we have been hurt or wronged by someone else, when we see someone cutting in line or taking a promotion we should have received, when someone does something that hurts us or cheats us, we want this kind of God. We want a just God who will hold the person who has wronged us accountable.

We don’t want God or anyone else saying to the person who has hurt us, “It’s ok! Don’t worry about it.” We want justice.

But, when we are the ones who have done the wrong, it often becomes a different story. Sometimes we try to live in denial that we’ve even done anything wrong. Sometimes we want to excuse our wrong by pointing to all the other good things we’ve done. Sometimes we just want people to be quiet and not point out our wrong actions.

Our lives are not that far removed from the time of Micah.

How, as followers of God, ought we to respond to God’s correction?

If we are going to follow the God and Father of Jesus Christ, the God who revealed himself to Abraham and Moses and Elijah and Micah and on down to us today, there are certain responses to God that just won’t cut it.

If we do something out of keeping with God’s character, we cannot celebrate it and be proud of it. We can’t assume that God doesn’t care about our actions. We can’t tell those who confront us to just be quiet and go away.

No, God wants us to acknowledge our wrongdoing, ask forgiveness for it, and have the desire not to do it again.

God’s message through Micah to the people of Israel and Judah is clear.

Your actions don’t match what you say you believe about me or what I’ve told you to do. My true prophets have reminded you of this over and over, but you keep on your own stubborn path, pridefully following your own way.

You want to have people tell you that I accept you and I’m never angry. You yell at my prophets: “If you can’t say anything nice, then don’t say anything at all.”

It must stop.

It’s challenging to let God be the standard for our behavior.

What gets even more challenging is to recognize the specifics of the accusations God is bringing through Micah, and how those might affect us. [READ v. 1-3]

Micah doesn’t begin with their religious life, as horrible as the worship of other idols was at the time. Micah doesn’t begin with personal morality or sexual behavior. The accusations God brings through Micah strike at the very heart of how Israel and Judah lived their lives, the very basics of their economic system.

When God gave the ten commandments to Moses, hundreds of years before the time of Micah, God made it clear that greed and desiring more things was wrong and dangerous. “You shall not covet your neighbor’s house, or wife, or servant, or anything that belongs to your neighbor.”

God’s law went even further than that. As the Israelites entered the promised land, it was divided up by tribes. Built into God’s plan was a system that would keep people from taking advantage of each other. Land was only supposed to be sold to others from the same family or clan or tribe, so that no one family could become wealthy at the expense of others.

And just in case things did get a little out of wack, God declared every fiftieth year to be a year of Jubilee, when all land ownership reverted to its original tribe.

Glimpses of this system appear all through the Old Testament.

Ruth and Naomi need Boaz to help them because he is one of the few who is a close enough relative to have the right and the courage to combine his land with theirs. Ahab, one of the most notorious kings in Israel’s history, wanted his neighbor Naboth’s vineyard. He sulked because he couldn’t have it… until his wife Jezebel ignored God’s law and seized it for Ahab.

When we get to Micah’s time, it seems that it was common for many people to act like Ahab. Greed and desire overcame concern for God’s law or for taking care of the poor, and those with wealth would take whatever land they wanted and buy it for themselves.

It was this very common practice that now led to Micah’s pronouncement of judgment. God sees their actions as selfishness, an accumulation of wealth at the expense of the poor; but many listening to Micah would have said, “This is just business as usual!”

It’s not uncommon to hear Christian voices in our culture predicting God’s judgment because of sexual sin or other wrongdoing.

But the voices that cry out against materialism, against a system that assumes every person is for themselves, against an economy where we live as we do at the expense of the poor in our country and especially around the world…those voices are fewer and far between.

My point in speaking in this way is not to lessen the importance of our personal and interpersonal morality. My point is to let Micah’s words of judgment to Israel and Judah’s greed speak to the overwhelming wealth in our culture and in your life and in mine.

In Israel and Judah, the effects of the wealthy land grabbers on the poor were easy to see. It’s much harder in our nation to see the connections between our wealth and the poverty in the rest of the world. In fact, many voices, even Christian voices, try to downplay the effects our economy based on consumption has on the rest of the world.

The reality is that Micah reminds us that social justice and equality are part of God’s holiness.

The reality is that greed and coveting and gaining wealth are named by our God as sin, as dangers to a society.

Will we let God speak to our lifestyle? Will we choose to change our behavior and let God change us?

It would seem that if Micah were alive today, he would speak to us about our retail therapy and about our conspicuous consumption. Our whole lives are affected by our choice to follow God.

I wonder what practical ideas we could come up with if we put our mind to letting God challenge our greed? What purchases might we decide not to make?

I know some people who agree not to spend more than $100 without sleeping on the decision over night. I know others who received a large lump sum of money, and gathered friends to pray with them about what God wanted them to do with it.

What practical steps might we take to help the poor around the world? Some of us change our buying habits, looking for free trade coffee and avoiding clothing made in sweatshops.

I recently discovered Kiva, the brainchild of a young couple that makes it possible to loan as little as $25 to a person in the two-thirds world who is starting a business to sustain themselves, a loan that can share our resources with those who need it most to make a difference in their lives. It’s one of many great, practical ideas that make it possible to make a difference in global poverty. K-I-V-A dot org.

God’s prophetic voice seems to be speaking in many new ways.

Bono and the One campaign and Rick and Kay Warren and a host of others are reminding Christians of God’s call for social justice.

Micah’s voice is still ringing…do we hear it?