First Mennonite Church
September 22, 2024
What God Requires of Us
Text: Micha 6:1-8
Hear what the Lord says:
Rise, plead your case before the mountains,
and let the hills hear your voice.
2 Hear, you mountains, the case of the Lord,
and you enduring foundations of the earth,
for the Lord has a case against his people,
and he will contend with Israel.
3 “O my people, what have I done to you?
In what have I wearied you? Answer me!
4 For I brought you up from the land of Egypt
and redeemed you from the house of slavery,
and I sent before you Moses,
Aaron, and Miriam.
5 O my people, remember now what King Balak of Moab devised,
what Balaam son of Beor answered him,
and what happened from Shittim to Gilgal,
that you may know the saving acts of the Lord.”
What God Requires
6 “With what shall I come before the Lord
and bow myself before God on high?
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 thousands of rivers of oil?
Shall I give my firstborn for my transgression,
the fruit of my body for the sin of my soul?”
8 He has told you, O mortal, what is good,
and what does the Lord require of you
but to do justice and to love kindness
and to walk humbly with your God?
Here is a word about Micha. The name Micha means “Who is like [Yahweh]?” According to chapter one, the prophet served during the reign of three kings of Judah in the eighth century BCE. His ministry came during the period of decline in Judah after one of peace and prosperity. Micha was not a city prophet. He was from the small village of Moresheth, southwest of Jerusalem. Because his message was about God’s impending judgment coming to Jerusalem, Micha was considered a nuisance and enemy of the people. However, he declared to his detractors, “But as for me, I am filled with power,
with the spirit of the Lord,
and with justice and might,
to declare to Jacob his transgression
and to Israel his sin.
The passage this morning resembles that of a court hearing. However, the plaintiff, the one bringing the charge, is Yahweh and the accused is Judah. God calls on the natural world, the mountains and hills to be witnesses of this trial because Yahweh is bringing his charge against his people. Yes, Yahweh calls on the mountains and hills to be the jury because, metaphorically, these have been in existence for a long time and were witnesses when Yahweh made the covenant with his people.
However, when Yahweh addresses the defendant—the people of Judah, he does not rage against them. God does not show disdain towards them for rejecting him. God does not express frustration over their repeated complaints. Instead, Yahweh makes a heart-wrenching plea. He pleads in agony and tenderness. “Oh, my people! Oh, my people!” It is like the grieving voice of Jesus as he wept for Jerusalem’s indifference and antagonism towards him: “If you, even you, had only recognized on this day the things that make for peace! But now they are hidden from your eyes (Luke 19:41, 42). Yahweh pleads with his people twice, “Oh my people, what I have done to you? Oh my people, please remember what I did for you!”
The Judean people had been complaining that every time God would speak to them through his prophets it was only to show them their errors and to announce his judgment over them. The people were saying that the other nations, not only committed evil acts but that God seemed unbothered by them. Therefore, they complained that God seemed always ready to punish them for things they could not understand. Judah complained that God had wearied them with his demands. From the priests to the common worshipper, everyone was saying that God’s commands were a heavy burden to carry.
In response, Yahweh appears and asks them, “Oh my people, in what have I wearied you? Answer me!” It’s not hard to hear the note of hurt in God’s voice. The rescuer who delivered Israel has somehow become burdensome to the rescued people. Therefore, God reminds them of what he has done for his people. Yahweh reminds them of those pivotal liberating events he performed on their behalf: the exodus from Egypt through his servants Moses and Miriam. God reminds them of how he rescued them from everyone who posed a threat on their journey through the wilderness, including King Balak who wanted to curse Israel, but instead blessed them. Yahweh reminds them of Israel’s entry into the Promised Land. Remember Shittim to Gilgal, a reference to the farthest eastern region of the Promised Land to the westernmost Gilgal. God pleads with his people to only remember and they would not complain, but be thankful.
The antidote to complacency, apathy, or complaining is remembering what the Lord has done for us. It is easy to complain when we lose perspective of the larger picture of God’s goodness. People complain because they have forgotten that it has not always been as difficult as their present circumstances are. People complain because they lose hope. People complain when they are disillusioned about themselves or the world around them. When everything in their past lives has been struggles and disappointments, people complain. But when we remember and see the ways God intervened on our behalf—giving true joy through his forgiveness, healing when we were sick, hope in the face of despair, comfort and strength when we were down in our spirit, and bearing us patiently amidst our failures and mistake, we become thankful to the Lord.
Micha thus asked Judah to remember those events where God’s love was most visible in their history. “O my people, remember . . . that you may know the saving acts of the Lord.”
But a dialogue ensues on behalf of the people. Someone begins to ask: “With what shall I come before the Lord and bow myself before God on high?” How shall we worship God that he be pleased with it, someone asked. “Shall I come before him with burnt offerings, with calves a year old?”
As we see, the people wanted to worship God. They were aware that in response to what God had done for them, they owed to God reverence and worship. And they knew exactly what the outward rituals of worship included. The initial suggestions of what to offer God in sacrifice were normal. Israel’s sacrificial offerings consisted of a ram or one-year-old calf per family. But then the suggestion for sacrifices moves to an outlandish exaggeration. “Will the Lord be pleased with thousands of rams, with ten thousands of rivers of oil? Shall I give my firstborn for my transgression, the fruit of my body for the sin of my soul?”
The exaggeration not only pointed out its impossibility, including something abominable to God—human sacrifice but also that neither the normal nor the exaggerated amount was enough to please God if daily life was not right with God. Micha was showing that God was more interested in how his people lived their daily lives than in the quantity of their sacrifices offered to God. External religious practices and rituals if not accompanied by love for God and neighbor become mere religiosity.
Thus the prophet answers in the form of a question:
He has told you, O mortal, what is good,
and what does the Lord require of you
but to do justice and to love kindness
and to walk humbly with your God?
Yes, God had told his people what his expectations were. When God established his covenant with Israel, God spelled out very clearly what he expected from them. “Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one. Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength (Deuteronomy 6:4, 5).
God is only asking for three things: to do justice, to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God.
At its basic meaning, to do justice is to fully acknowledge the humanity in others and to respect them for who they are. Doing justice is grounded on the conviction that every person bears the image and likeness of God. Therefore, they deserve respect, and honor, to be treated fairly, and to be defended from injustice. However, when someone believes he or she is better than the other and adopts an attitude of superiority over the other, they violate the three commandments of doing justice, loving kindness, and walking humbly with our God.
The second expectation of God is for his people “to love kindness.” This word (Hesed) is used to describe the nature of God as a “God of loving-kindness and faithfulness.” In other words, love as God loves us, without condition, preference, or limitations. It is something we need to do, both to God and our neighbor.
The third demand is “to walk humbly with your God.” The Hebrew word for humbly (tsana) can also mean “carefully” or “constantly.” So what God is asking is that we never depart from God. That means our commitment to walk with God is not seasonal or periodic, or only when it is convenient, but constantly. God calls us to walk in his company always. And we do so humbly before him and others.
In short, God does not want a specific type of offering. God wants a specific type of person. The basic issue at stake, here, is the kind of relationship God expects to accompany our worship.
So, what worried you about coming to this place this morning? Was it what we would wear? If my shirt match my tie? If the check I was going to give enough or too much? If I could handle the songs for today? Or, nothing at all. You said to yourself, “Just go and do whatever you need to do! It is only for one hour and then come back home!”
God has saved us through his Son Jesus Christ. There is nothing we can do or give God in exchange for his love and grace. God does not have us jump through a set of loops to be loved by him. He has done everything to set us free from the power of sin. He has set us for salvation. Our worship is the expression of our gratitude towards God for what he has done. And the Christian life—doing justice, loving kindness, and walking carefully, faithfully, and humbly with the Lord is the outflow of the love and gratitude we have for the Lord.
He has told you, O mortal, what is good,
and what does the Lord require of you
but to do justice and to love kindness
and to walk humbly with your God?
Amen!
Pastor Romero