The
Perpetual Hissing
Micah 6:13 “Therefore also will I make
thee sick in smiting thee, in making thee desolate
because of thy sins.
14 Thou
shalt eat, but not be satisfied; and thy casting
down shall be in the midst of thee; and thou shalt
take hold, but shalt not deliver; and that which
thou deliverest will I give up to the sword.
15 Thou shalt sow, but thou shalt
not reap; thou shalt tread the olives, but thou
shalt not anoint thee with oil; and sweet wine, but
shalt not drink wine.
16 For the
statutes of Omri are kept, and all the works of the
house of Ahab, and ye walk in their counsels; that I
should make thee a desolation, and the inhabitants
thereof an hissing: therefore ye shall bear the
reproach of my people.”
1. Sick Because Of Sin
2. Running On
Empty
3. Working Without Getting Anywhere
4.
All For The Devil
Sin unchecked will bring down any people of any land or of any nation.
Jeremiah the prophet by the Holy Ghost tells us in Jeremiah chapter eighteen, verse sixteen, what is in store for that land or for that nation.
“To make their land desolate, and a perpetual hissing; every one that passeth thereby shall be astonished, and wag his head.” [Jeremiah 18:16]
Now, what is hissing?
HISSING is a noun. The hissing sound is an expression of great scorn or total contempt. It is an occasion of contempt; the object of scorn, and derision … as the Scripture shows us … in Psalm forty-four, verse thirteen: “Thou makest us a reproach to our neighbours, a scorn and a derision to them that are round about us.” [Psalm 44:13]
God made them [Israel] a hissing … a laughing stock of the world. And do you want to know something? God will do the same to any nation in the world that rejects HIM or rejects HIS Scripture, which is the King James Bible.
1. Sick Because Of Sin
Verse thirteen: “Therefore also will I make thee sick in smiting thee, in making thee desolate because of thy sins.”
What a thing to endure! What a dire place to be! Imagine, God making us “sick”, and God hitting us [“smiting” us], and making us desolate.
Now, when we take a hit from God because of our sins, we are going to get hurt. We cannot sin, and at the same time not get hurt. Sin destroys! Sin bites us! It is like the wine that bites and stings. Sin is … as it says it is … in Proverbs twenty-three, verse thirty-two concerning wine: “At the last it biteth like a serpent, and stingeth like an adder.” [Proverbs 23:32]
Now, how many times are we going to sin that same old sin and do despite to God? Open your eyes, and see what is happening to us! We are going down the tubes to our ruination. Everything we have put our hand to … has failed us. We are “sick” because of our sin. Have you got that? We are bankrupt, and we running on empty.
2. Running On Empty
Verse fourteen: “Thou shalt eat, but not be satisfied; and thy casting down shall be in the midst of thee; and thou shalt take hold, but shalt not deliver; and that which thou deliverest will I give up to the sword.”
Do you see what God is saying here through His prophet?
• There people who always are working but they never have anything.
• There are people who are always accumulating but yet they have nothing.
Proverbs chapter twenty-three, therefore, stands true: “Wilt thou set thine eyes upon that which is not? for riches certainly make themselves wings; they fly away as an eagle toward heaven.” [Proverbs 23:5]
The man who hates God and sets his eye on riches is going to lose it all. All their riches will fly away! This is the story of many people, and the Bible has them aptly pegged in the Bible [in Proverbs thirteen, verse seven]: “There is that maketh himself rich, yet hath nothing: there is that maketh himself poor, yet hath great riches.” [Proverbs 13:7]
What is more, satisfaction is never known by them. They simply have never found in life what really matters in life. What can I say more? They are running on empty!
But what of you and I, have we learned the secret of life? It is this. Are you ready?
What really matters in your life, and what really matters in my life, is to learn to cease from our own wisdom and seek the wisdom, which comes from above … which is God’s wisdom! “Labour not to be rich: cease from thine own wisdom.” [Proverbs 23:4]
3. Working Without Getting Anywhere
Now, look at verse fifteen: “Thou shalt sow, but thou shalt not reap; thou shalt tread the olives, but thou shalt not anoint thee with oil; and sweet wine, but shalt not drink wine.”
You will labor but you will not get the benefit of what you worked for.
Now, if the spirit of a man within us sees what the Spirit of God is showing us here in the book of Micah, then we will understand [we will believe] what the Bible says [in Ecclesiastes chapter two, verse eleven]: “Then I looked on all the works that my hands had wrought, and on the labour that I had laboured to do: and, behold, all was vanity and vexation of spirit, and there was no profit under the sun.” [Ecclesiastes 2:11]
We will see that there is no profit from our labor … apart from God.
This thing is a given, according to the Spirit of God, to teach us something which is this: “What profit hath a man of all his labour which he taketh under the sun?” [Ecclesiastes 1:3]
Now, if sin has you, “lock and stock and barrel”, then it has bitten you, and therefore, sin rules within you, so that what you have sown with all your sweat and all your labor, you will not get to reap or enjoy.
If one is to ever enjoy the fruit of his labor, then that person needs to be declared “righteous” … according to Proverbs ten, verse sixteen: “The labour of the righteous tendeth to life: the fruit of the wicked to sin.” [Proverbs 10:16]
What then, is this “fruit” that “tendeth to life”?
Is it not what Jesus Christ [when He was on this earth during His First Advent] told us to labor for … in the book of John chapter six, verse twenty-seven? “Labour not for the meat which perisheth, but for that meat which endureth unto everlasting life, which the Son of man shall give unto you: for him hath God the Father sealed.” [John 6:27]
The “righteous” do not primarily labor for the temporal “fruit” of this world, but they primarily labor for the fruit that is everlasting, then God takes care of temporal things we need.
4. All For The Devil
Lastly, verse sixteen: “For the statutes of Omri are kept, and all the works of the house of Ahab, and ye walk in their counsels; that I should make thee a desolation, and the inhabitants thereof an hissing: therefore ye shall bear the reproach of my people.”
Look at this! The Devil’s crowd gives honor to the Devil [in the keeping the statutes of Omri], but where is the honor to the LORD God, and the keeping of the Lord’s commandments? No wonder that God had determined to make Israel “a desolation” and “an hissing”.
This matches with what it says in Second Chronicles chapter twenty-nine, in verse eight: “Wherefore the wrath of the Lord was upon Judah and Jerusalem, and he hath delivered them to trouble, to astonishment, and to hissing, as ye see with your eyes.” [2 Chronicles 29:8]
They get “trouble”, and come “to astonishment”. Judah and Jerusalem both see “perpetual hissing”!
Now get this. Whenever a people give honor to the Devil, and to the Devil’s people, trouble, astonishment, and hissing will come to that same people. You can be your boots on it.
Furthermore, all the labor of that very same people will come to absolute nothing.
Now, here is some added light that can be afforded for the reader, by the reading [and believing] of Psalm seventy-eight, verse forty-six: “He gave also their increase unto the caterpiller, and their labour unto the locust.” [Psalm 78:46]
Here is the lesson to be learned!
We will all labor from the morning to the evening yet we will have nothing to show for it.
We will labor, and in the end, we will fall down and be broken and discouraged. Psalm 107, verse twelve tells us that it is God that will cause us to fall down. “Therefore he brought down their heart with labour; they fell down, and there was none to help.” [Psalm 107:12]
It gets worse than this. It is God who sends “the extortioner” to us. Do not believe me, believe The BOOK! Look at Psalm 109, verse eleven: “Let the extortioner catch all that he hath; and let the strangers spoil his labour.” [Psalm 109:11]
Now, what can learn from all of this?
We can learn this, if we are willing to learn.
Sin unchecked [which is doing despite to God] will bring down any people of any land or of any nation.
Unless God and the people work together, unless God is in it, it will be all for nothing. It will end up in a “perpetual hissing”.
It is … as God says it is … in Psalm 127, verse one: “Except the Lord build the house, they labour in vain that build it: except the Lord keep the city, the watchman waketh but in vain.” [Psalm 127:1]