"The hour of departure has arrived, and we go our ways--I to die, and you to live. Which to the better fate is known only to God." Those are the last recorded words of Socrates after his famous trial in Athens in the year 399 B.C. He was accused of impiety which is a lack of respect for religious institutions or customs. And he was found guilty and sentenced to death by drinking poison hemlock. His jury was 500 men of Athens. His judge was ultimately the city of Athens itself.
Contrast that with the media circus that surrounded the OJ Simpson trial in 1995 where the ex-football player was charged with murdering 2 people in Los Angeles. Twelve jurors took 100 days to bring a not-guilty verdict back to Judge Ito and the world in a trial that brought us the famous quote, “If it doesn’t fit, you must acquit.”
Now, compare that to the great trial that God has brought to the people of Israel in Micah chapter 6. The Israelites are being charged. The mountains and the hills are the jury (as only God can arrange) and God Himself is the great Judge. They are accused of ignoring, neglecting and rebelling against God and when God brings all the evidence forward the Israelites are found guilty as charged. But the great Judge is also merciful and full of grace and His great quote is, “to act justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly before your God.”
He could have sentenced them to death. He could have given them what they deserved. His wrath could have thundered over the witnessing mountains and come crashing down like a hurricane over the deserving Hebrews and not one person could have blamed Him. In fact, God would still have been seen as good and just had He done that but that was not His plan or His will. His will was for them to have a relationship with Him. His will was for them to obey Him as a good Father would expect His children to obey Him because it was for their benefit as well.
God has instilled all of us with the desire to know Him. Everyone who has ever lived has at some time in some way felt that there must be more to this life than just living. Since we can see things that are created, there has to be a Creator. Romans 1: 20 says, “For since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities—his eternal power and divine nature—have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that people are without excuse.” How can you see a tree or a flower, not to mention a sunset, and not believe that there has to be a Creator and a Higher Power of some sort?
The problem is that desire that has been instilled in us by God to know God has manifested itself in religion. Religionists see God as a Higher-Power that will revolve around them and solve their problems if they do and say enough of the right things. Christians believe that our lives should revolve around God and that it is by His grace and mercy that we live and breathe and that it is to our benefit that we do that but ultimately our lives are lived for His benefit and the benefit of His Kingdom.
And this problem that religion has is not just realized lately. It was a problem for Socrates; a problem for OJ; a problem for us all the way back to Adam and Eve, including the Old Testament Israelites in Micah’s day. The Book of Micah is considered a Minor Prophet, not because of its quality but for its quantity. We can all appreciate the power of brevity (amen?) and the Minor Prophets were all short and to the point and all managed to congregate at the back of the Old Testament.
Micah is found between Jonah and Nahum, if that helps and so while you are trying to find it without actually looking in the table of contents because you are too proud to have someone see you do that, I will tell you real quick that Micah lived in a time and place when justice could be bought for the right price and government was corrupt and it seemed that only the rich people had any real rights. Money and power trumped everything including justice, mercy and humility. And, no, he is not living in the 21st century United States. He lived in Judah 800 years before Jesus was born.
I wouldn’t envy any of the Old Testament prophets. Not only were they assigned to be God’s mouthpiece, but rarely did God ever give them anything positive to say. They often spoke out against the leaders of the country and often had to tell the people that how they were living was making God angry. I doubt if they got very many Valentine’s Day cards, if you know what I mean.
In our text this morning, Micah starts off speaking as God, then his speech is that of the Israelites and then he speaks as Micah. We are going to focus on verse 8 but I want you to see the courtroom drama unfold as we read Micah 6:1-8. Listen to what the Lord says: “Stand up, plead my case before the mountains; let the hills hear what you have to say. 2 “Hear, you mountains, the Lord’s accusation; listen, you everlasting foundations of the earth. For the Lord has a case against his people; he is lodging a charge against Israel. 3 “My people, what have I done to you? How have I burdened you? Answer me. 4 I brought you up out of Egypt and redeemed you from the land of slavery. I sent Moses to lead you, also Aaron and Miriam. 5 My people,remember what Balak king of Moab plotted and what Balaam son of Beor answered. Remember your journey from Shittim to Gilgal, that you may know the righteous acts of the Lord.” 6 With what shall I come before the Lord and bow down before the exalted God? Shall I come before him with burnt offerings, with calves a year old? 7 Will the Lord be pleased with thousands of rams, with ten thousand rivers of olive oil? Shall I offer my firstborn for my transgression, the fruit of my body for the sin of my soul? 8 He has shown you, O man, what is good. And what does the Lord require of you? To act justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly with your God.
Again, verse 8 says, “And what does the Lord require of you? To act justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly with your God.” Now, let me just tell you that if I were God, this is not what I would say. If I were the Lord I would require instant obedience or I will punt you off this planet and if you talk that way to me one more time I will make up new diseases to strike you with you little flea! So, I guess that’s just one more reason it is a good thing I’m not God, huh?
But that illustrates the common problem man has; we always want to assume we know what God would want. And here it is in black and white. Do you understand how important this is? Can you imagine the magnitude of this discovery? Billions of lives have been lived without this knowledge. Wars have been fought over this. Kings have been crowned or assassinated over this very thing and yet Micah lays it out for us like a beautiful Thanksgiving dinner. What is it that God wants? It is the question of the ages.
Everything is summed up in those 3 phrases. The Mosaic Law is all in here. The 10 Commandments are here. Even the laws we have today are summed up here. Do you realize that if we all did what God says to do in this little verse that we would no longer need policemen? We wouldn’t need lawyers, governors or even locks on our doors if we all just knew and obeyed what God wanted for us in this great question: what does the Lord require of you?
And since it is such a big question, I thought I could at least take 3 weeks on the answer God gives since the answer is in 3 parts. He tells us to act justly, to love mercy and to walk humbly. So, this week we will look closer at what it means to act justly. The word justly means simply to do the right thing and that’s easy to say but I want us to see how we are to do the right thing in relation to God; we are to do the right thing in relation to others. And we are to do the right thing in relation to ourselves.
If we are going to act justly and do the right thing in relation to God then we obviously have to know what that means and most people want to start by asking themselves what they think God thinks is right. But we have already discovered that is not the right way. In the first five verses of Micah chapter 6, Micah speaks for God, accusing them and reminding them of His protection and His provision. But in verses 6 and 7, Micah speaks for the Israelites.
He says that to their minds maybe God wants them to bring sacrifices. Maybe if they brought God some calves or rams. And then the bargaining goes even higher. Maybe God would be pleased if we brought Him thousands of rams or rivers of oil. And then the ultimate bargaining chip: maybe God would be pleased if they sacrificed their own children. He says, “Shall I offer the fruit of my body for the sin of my soul?”
That is the thinking of natural man. That is the thinking of someone who has a religion but not a relationship. And we think how crazy it is to think that way but just this week in India there have been at least two fathers who have sacrificed their children to some god in the hopes of appeasing that god and assuaging their own guilt for the sins they have committed. They hacked up their babies and offered them to some man-made totem pole of an idol because they thought that god would accept the sacrifice.
And while we all know that to be a horrible, horrible thing, I want to say something to this group, not just to people who sacrifice babies. I want to say something that may, at first, startle you and it is something not said from pulpits very often. And that is that not only does God does not want your sacrifice but that sacrifice may include your money. If you are going to act justly in relation to God then your money is not the way to do it. Just putting in your tithe and even an offering doesn’t make you justified before God.
I met a man in Runaway Bay a few years ago who evidently thought that. I knocked on his door to invite him to church and introduced myself. He told me not to expect to ever see him but he handed me a $100 bill and told me to put it in our benevolence fund. One hundred dollars is what he wanted to give to make himself right with God. One hundred dollars to assuage his guilt is what it really was. I hope it worked for him for a little while because I assure you it did not work for God.
How do I know? I know because King David told me as much in his powerful psalm of shame and guilt after his affair with Bathsheba. Psalm 51 says, “You do not delight in sacrifice, or I would bring it; you do not take pleasure in burnt offerings. 17 My sacrifice, O God, is a broken spirit; a broken and contrite heart you, God, will not despise.” He knew that God doesn’t want what you own. God wants you. He wants all of you. And, yes, that includes your money but that comes when you have a clean heart before God in your relationship.
That is what David wanted because he knew that is what God wanted. David prayed in that same Psalm that God would create in him a pure heart. God doesn’t want you to send your sacrifice to church while you stay home. He doesn’t want you to donate millions to charity if that is how you think you are going to “get on God’s good side”. And just like you can’t act justly and not love mercy and how you can’t love mercy without walking humbly, you also can’t act justly before God and not act justly before others. You just can’t.
To truly act justly and do the right thing in relation to God, you have to act justly and do the right thing in relation to others as well. Wendy Davis wants to be our new governor next year. If you watch the news you probably remember that she is the one who stood for 11 hours to filibuster a bill in the Texas State Senate that would place new restrictions on abortion clinics and ban the practice after 20 weeks of pregnancy. I’m not making a political statement here; I am making a spiritual statement that to act justly means to act justly toward those who cannot repay you and that includes the unborn.
How is it that sacrificing a newborn is a horrible, horrible crime and yet in our country, according to the Centers for Disease Control, there is yearly over 750,000 unborn babies aborted legally? It may be considerably more. Acting justly means believing the Bible that abortion is murder and that doing the right thing to those who cannot repay you means standing against those who are for it. Doing the right thing in relation to others means doing it when nobody else is looking. Do the right thing when it is unpopular. Do the right thing by telling others the Good News about Jesus.
Jesus said in Luke 6:31 “Do to others as you would have them do to you.” The Golden Rule is considered a nursery rhyme any more. It’s what we teach kids but we don’t really expect them to grow up to do it, you know, all the time. A fascinating study on the principle of the Golden Rule was conducted by Bernard Rimland, director of the Institute for Child Behavior Research. Rimland found that “The happiest people are those who help others.” Each person involved in the study was asked to list ten people he knew best and to label them as happy or not happy. Then they were to go through the list again and label each one as selfish or unselfish. In categorizing the results, Rimland found that all of the people labeled happy were also labeled unselfish. He wrote that those “whose activities are devoted to bringing themselves happiness...are far less likely to be happy than those whose efforts are devoted to making others happy”Rimland concluded: “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.” (Bible.org)
See what I mean that you can’t act justly without walking justly in relation to God and others? And this study shows that it also applies to you. How do you act justly to yourself? Well, that Golden Rule thing is part of it. Micah says in verse 8 that “He has shown you, O man, what is good.” When he says “O man” he is still talking to the nation of Israel but he is making it personal to each one of them. He might as well say, “you, o man” or “you, o woman”. What does the Lord require of you personally to act justly to yourself?
It sounds like a strange question but we all know of people who are not acting justly to themselves and are paying the price for it every day. Do you know what it is called when we don’t act justly to ourselves? It is called sin. When we sin we are acting unjustly towards ourselves. Anytime we displease God, we act unjustly toward ourselves. Now, some of you are thinking that is how we act justly toward God, right? Yes. We act justly toward Him by not sinning but it is also the main way we act justly in relation to ourselves.
What better way to do the right thing towards ourselves than to have that clear, pure heart David asked for? My neighbors have a gorgeous black lab named Bo. It’s the same name as my big beautiful dog and that causes some confusion sometimes but not bad. It’s not usually a problem because their Bo is usually sitting in the front yard while my dogs are in the back or in the house. The neighbors don’t have a fence in the front yard but Bo never goes anywhere. He is free to go in the back or in the front but he never wanders off from their yard. Do you know what I call that? I call that freedom through obedience.
It drives my dogs crazy when they see Bo out in the front. I can’t let them out because they are not as obedient as that dog and so they have to stay in. Bo has freedom. For a dog, he has a pure heart. He has freedom because he is obedient and we can have that same thing. Some people see Christianity as just a bunch of rules. That’s not Christianity. That’s religion. A relationship with God through His Son Jesus means that there are rules but they are for our good and when we are obedient, it brings freedom.
What better way to do the right thing towards ourselves than to have freedom that comes from obedience? In doing so, we are acting justly in relation to ourselves, others and God. And that is what the Lord requires.
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