Although there are plenty deep-seated problems in society it can sometimes seem that the ruling classes are operating on a different plane. There is a top-down imposition of progressive policies which are not only out of tune with the electorate’s concerns but also from a moral and ethical point of view not in the nation’s interests. Multiple scandals in the UK in recent years have contributed to a deep disillusionment with both elected and unelected authorities and a feeling that successive governments can work with striking efficiency in their own interests but are aimless and incompetent when it comes to the citizens they ostensibly serve. Church leadership is not much different and many people who retain some respect for Christian values and ideals write off the institutional church as rotten and venal. The prophet Micah had the courage and perseverance to challenge both state and church authorities for their sins. In the following updated extract, George Hutcheson explores Micah’s critique and the culpability of those who hold office in church and state.

Leaders in church and state are culpable

In chapter 3, verses 9 to 11, Micah speaks faithfully to all sorts of rulers, both civil and ecclesiastical, conjointly. He sets before them their sin, and how they had procured the ruin of Zion. He accuses the state authorities because although they ought to have been patrons of justice, they abhorred and perverted it. Instead of adorning the holy city with justice and judgment, all they cared about was stately buildings, and they raised funds for that by cruel oppression. Micah accuses them all generally of perverting justice through bribery and covetousness. The churchmen were mercenary, and made their calling subservient to their gain. Yet all of them were carnally confident, and presumptuous about having God’s favour and presence among them, assuming that they would be exempt from judgment.

When people in eminent places have become accustomed to sin, they are usually deaf to what the Lord says. They must be called often to “hear” (v.1, v.2, v.9). The messengers of the Lord must not give up when their message is not received. They must announce it until either they are listened to, or they have delivered their own souls. “Hear, I pray you,” Micah repeats. Yet, when faithful ministers reprove the faults of rulers, they must give evidence that they do not despise their authority when they do so. They must not be lacking in giving any signs of respect which are due to them.

God particularly hates perversity

The Lord’s quarrel against people is not so much for sins of ignorance or infirmity, as for sins that flow from a perverse disposition. They go wrong, because they love to do so, and they hate what is right. Micah accuses them of “abhorring judgment, and perverting all equity” (v.9).

Then the Lord tolerates no pretences to palliate any sinful deed. It is no excuse to claim they are building Zion, if they are doing so “with blood and iniquity,” or with goods taken by bloody oppression from the poor. On the contrary, this kind of excuse only makes things worse, defiling all the more what they are endeavouring to cleanse.

The Lord allows those who are employed in public office in church or state to have their maintenance. But to receive payment or gifts so as to judge partially, because of the gifts received, is gross iniquity. “The heads judge for reward” is the Lord’s quarrel with them. “Judging for reward, teaching for hire, and divining for money” comes to the same thing as false judgment, erroneous teaching and erroneous divination, for it is a true saying, “a gift blindeth the wise,” etc (Exodus 23:8).

Presumption makes things much worse

Presumption will feed people with delusion under very gross sins, and even when judgment is near. “Yet will they lean upon the Lord” (v.11). The external privileges of the church, and external reformation of worship, are ordinarily turned by complacent sinners into a snare or plague to themselves. These things make them dream of being in God’s favour, and of peace, when wrath is upon them, and trouble at hand.

But external privileges will not exempt profane sinners from deserved judgment, nor will external reformation. Rather it will make them ripen for judgment the faster. God will approve of no “faith” but the kind that is fruitful, and stirs people up to purify and cleanse their hearts and ways. Micah challenges them because, when they are continuing in all their iniquities, they claim to “lean on the Lord,” and say, “Is not the Lord among us?” (v.11).

But the Lord threatens that, for their sins, the stately buildings of the holy city would be made desolate heaps. The ground it was situated on, especially the kingly palace, would become arable land, and be ploughed as a common field, and Mount Moriah, the mountain on which the temple stood, would become wild and uninhabited, like a forest (v.12).

No place or visible church has any privilege, but sin will make it desolate. No place had the promises that Zion, Jerusalem, and Mount Moriah had, yet these judgments were coming their way.

We are all implicated in the sins of our context

The servants of God must be bold and faithful like Micah, not only in speaking against the sins of the rulers, but even against a church with great privileges when she is found in transgression. Jeremiah quotes this passage as an evidence of Micah’s faithfulness (Jeremiah 26:18).

It is our duty to look at sin and be affected with it, not only because it brings down judgments on ourselves, but especially as it plays a part in drawing down calamities on the church and kingdom where we live. This is what Micah tells them. “For your sake,” all of these things will come (v.12).

Universal defection in a land, especially in rulers and teachers in their offices and judicatories, will bring on speedy desolation, unless repentance prevents it (as happened in Hezekiah’s days; Jeremiah 26:18–19). Leaders in church and state, through their corruption, were chiefly responsible for procuring this ruin, and could not but involve the people in their defection, in a way that hastened the judgment.

The inevitable connection between sin and judgment

Judgments are most severe and sharp on a backsliding church, even if they are moderated towards the elect. Treating with contempt the mercy offered to the church is such a great sin that nothing less is threatened here than being “ploughed as a field, made into heaps, and made like the forest.” When this warning was first made, in Hezekiah’s time, the threatened judgment was lifted when they repented. Then, it does not seem to have been accomplished at the first destruction of the temple. Yet secular history informs us that when the temple was destroyed the second time, the Romans did, according to their custom, plough up the very ground where the temple had stood, as a sign of perpetual desolation.

This is how infallibly certain the word of God is. The threatening was delayed after repentance, and then after many troubles they had been delivered, and so might think they had done with it. Yet when they sinned anew, and renewed their provocations, they find that the sentence against them still stands, and eventually it takes effect.

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