The connection of these two scriptures is very interesting. The prophet Micah, in depicting the moral corruption that prevailed in his day (vss. 2-4), declares that all confidence between friends, and even between husband and wife, had utterly vanished, and that in this state of things the most sacred ties of relationship were openly violated, so that a man’s enemies were the men of his own house. It is a dark though true picture of the dominance of the power of evil in the prophet’s day. In the gospel of Matthew, the same state of things is seen, but as a consequence of the presentation of Christ. “Think not,” says our blessed Lord, “that I am come to lend peace on earth: I came not to send peace, but a sword. For I am come to set a man at variance against his father, and the daughter against her mother, and the daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law. And a man’s foes shall be they of his own household.” When Christ is presented to men, He is either received or rejected, and He thus brings, not peace, but a sword; for it draws forth from those who refuse Him all the enmity, all the latent corruption, of the human heart, both against Christ and against His followers. He thus warned His disciples that the time would come when those who killed them would think they were doing God service. In such circumstances sons have betrayed their fathers, daughters their mothers, and parents their children, and in this way the Lord’s words have often been fulfilled in the history of the Church—that “a man’s foes shall be they of his own household.” The solemn thing is, that Satan triumphs just as much in the animosity of the heart against Christ and against His people as in the godlessness of moral licentiousness. Truly the heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked, and none can know it.