Micah 3:10 - Homiletics

National stability.

I. THE ENDEAVOUR TO SECURE NATIONAL STABILITY IS LAUDABLE AND TO BE COMMENDED . Princes, nobles, leaders of the people of all classes, ought to seek to build up Zion and Jerusalem; and earnest, enthusiastic effort directed to this end is honourable and worthy of all praise.

II. THIS RESULT CAN ALONE BE GAINED BY RIGHTEOUS MEANS . National strength and stability has its very foundations in truth, rectitude, justice, and goodness.

III. THE ADOPTION OF ANY OTHER METHODS MUST INEVITABLY RESULT IN DISGRACE AND DECAY . These rulers built up Zion with "blood," i.e. oppression, wrong, cruelty; and Jerusalem with "iniquity," perverting all that was true and right; and hence, despite the semblance of outward prosperity, the process of decay and dissolution was going on, and became at length completed in the ruin of the nation ( Micah 3:12 ).

IV. THEY ARE THE TRUE PATRIOTS WHO LIFT UP THE VOICE OF WARNING , AND WHO EXPOUND AND ENFORCE THE PRINCIPLES OF RIGHTEOUSNESS . To adopt this course specially in a worldly, self-indulgent age is sure