Daily Devotional for Monday, August 10

Judgment on Samaria and Jerusalem

“For the transgression of Jacob is all this, and for the sins of the house of Israel. What is the transgression of Jacob? is it not Samaria? and what are the high places of Judah? are they not Jerusalem,” Micah 1:5.
When I was five years old, my family started going to church. I was the youngest of six children and my two oldest brothers already had quite a reputation at school for different reasons. When we started going to church, one of the teenage girls knew my brother from school and was not happy that our family was coming to church. My brother’s reputation from school was affecting how others saw our family.
Samaria had become a stain on all of Israel and their sin had reached all the way to Jerusalem (Micah 1:5). The Lord was announcing his judgment on them and how Samaria was full of idol worship. He told them, “And all the graven images thereof shall be beaten to pieces, and all the hires thereof shall be burned with the fire, and all the idols thereof will I lay desolate: for she gathered it of the hire of an harlot, and they shall return to the hire of an harlot” (verse 7). God has always been very clear with Israel concerning idol worship; “Thou shalt have no other gods before me. Thou shalt not bow down thyself to them, nor serve them: for I the Lord thy God am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children unto the third and fourth generation of them that hate me” (Exodus 20:3, 5). Their reputation for idol worship had caught up to them and it was affecting the whole of Israel.

REFLECTION
Do you have a reputation of ungodly acts and is it affecting your witness for Jesus Christ? Ask the Lord to help you make the needed change; “Create in me a clean heart, O God; and renew a right spirit within me” (Psalm 51:10).

Tim Chambers