Thoughts on Micah 1-2 & Mark 14

Today’s reading: Micah 1-2; Mark 14

I have short thoughts on both of our chapters this morning.

Thoughts on Micah 1-2

I feel a bit like a broken record calling this out over and over again, but I want us to recognize just how consistent this message is across the entire Old Testament, that when God judges His people it is not for forgetting a sacrifice or for a minor violation of the law, but is for the systematic injustice and exploitation of the poor and vulnerable among the people.

As God, through Micah, lays out His case against Israel in Micah 1-2, He calls out the evil of the powerful among the people:

Woe to those who devise evil

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.

To the people of Israel, it is not a question of what is good or right, but of what they have the power to do. If they have the ability to exploit the poor and take from them their houses and fields, then they will. This is the issue God takes with His people, and why He is ultimately declaring His judgement against them.

So as we get further in Micah and see the actual judgements declared against both the northern and southern kingdoms of Israel, this is the context for why God is bringing that judgement. 

Thoughts on Mark 14

This line from Mark 14 about the chief priests and elders stood out to me this morning, and I think it really exemplifies the approach so many people take to Jesus today too:

“Now the chief priests and the whole council were seeking testimony against Jesus to put him to death, but they found none.”

How perfectly backwards is this?? In what world do you decide to put someone to death before you have any testimony against them? But here, without any legal basis for the sentence, they have condemned Jesus to death, and are now seeking a “legitimate” basis for the sentence.

For the Jewish leaders, it was not that Jesus had done something wrong, but that they didn’t like the implications of Jesus being who/what He claimed to be. If Jesus truly was the Messiah, then his indictments against them are not the words of a man, but of God Himself. If Jesus truly was the Messiah and took over the nation politically, as they expected, His attitude toward the Jewish leaders made it clear they would not be part of the elite they wanted and expected to be. If Jesus truly was the Messiah, that would be problematic to how they wanted to live and operate, so clearly He could not be the Messiah and He had to go!

Isn’t this how people tend to approach Jesus today too? Rather than considering His claims and the evidence for His identity and divinity in order to decide if they should get in line with Him or continue on their own way, people see that Jesus does not approve of how they live, and so decide He is clearly not who He claims to be. Too often the attitude people have is, “You’re telling me about this savior, but will He slot perfectly into my life without any expectation of change? If not, he must not be a legitimate savior. How could God possibly disapprove of something about my lifestyle?” Like the Jewish leaders, people reject Jesus, not because of a lack of evidence to support His claims, but because they don’t like the implication of His claims being true, so they decide in their hearts, completely apart from the evidence, that His claims are false.

Let’s look at the evidence first, and then decide what to do with Jesus, rather than deciding beforehand and simply looking for a reason to accept or reject Him.