“How Can I Please God?” (Sermon on Micah 6:1-7:20), Part 2

In the previous post, we saw from Micah 6:1-8 that the Lord has made His requirements very clear.  When He says to do justice, to love kindness (faithfulness, mercy), and to walk humbly with our God, recognizing who He is and who we are, and so responding by a life that loves God and neighbor, He is commanding us to be like Himself.  But if there is no problem of clarity, there is still a greater problem: we haven’t done it.

The Problem: We aren’t like God (6:9-7:6).

The problem is, all of us know better than we do.  Micah warns his hearers and us: Don’t ask God to agree with sin!  Does the fact that so far the wicked have survived and prospered mean the Lord doesn’t mind sin, after all?  Can God pretend fraud is okay?  Because fraud and lies are everywhere.  But no; judgment is falling, and none will escape!  Why?  Because they’ve been walking with the wicked kings Omri and Ahab, rather than “walking humbly with your God” (6:9-16).

In the meantime, looking for a godly person is like being a farmer with no crop (7:1-2).  As Titus 3:3 puts it, they are hateful and hating one another.  “Concerning evil, both hands do it well” (v. 3a)—when it comes to sin, they’re ambidextrous!  Everyone’s a crook, out for his or her own gain (v. 3b).  The most trustworthy are still sharp and vicious—trust no one (v. 4)!  You can’t even trust your closest friends and relatives (v. 5-6; cf. Matt. 10:34-39, which quotes Micah).  Have you ever been betrayed by someone so close?

Have you ever been the betrayer?

We tend to read this and identify with the oppressed and mistreated, remembering the times we’ve been hurt.  But remember Romans 3, where Paul takes a selection of the psalms talking about the worst enemies of God and His people—and says they’re about all of us (see especially Rom. 3:9-18).  If we’re honest, we’re no strangers to looking out for Number One, to talking about others behind their backs, to running over others to get what we want most.  Left to ourselves, Micah 7 is talking about us.

But what about those who haven’t heard the gospel?  What about those who haven’t read Micah 6:8, and don’t know to do justice, to love mercy, and to walk humbly with their God?  There isn’t enough space here to answer in detail, but take some time to read and consider Romans 1 and 2.  To summarize those chapters, none of us has obeyed to the extent that we know to do.  All of us have an inborn sense at some level that we owe our Maker our love and obedience—but we run from that knowledge, and instead worship other things, whether official gods or just our own appetites (Rom. 1:18-32).  Those who have received God’s written word know this—but they’ve still disobeyed and are guilty (Rom. 2:1-13).  But those who haven’t heard that written word still have a conscience—but have gone against it are and guilty (Rom. 2:14-16).  How old were we the first time we said, “I know I shouldn’t do this, but…I’m going to do it anyway”?

The standard is clear: be like God.  But we aren’t, and we haven’t really tried to be.  So what do we do?  Where do we turn?

The Solution: Look to the incomparable LORD who judges and forgives (7:7-20).

Instead of looking to family and friends (v. 5-6), we look to the God who saves and hears and raises and brings us into light.  That doesn’t mean we don’t care what those we love do to us; it does mean our hope is in Christ in such a way that when people fail—or even betray—our world isn’t shattered.  Rather than hiding and protecting our sin, when we look to Christ we will confess our sin, and it will be forgiven (v. 9).  If we’re in Christ, when we sin, we will be disciplined—but not forever, because “the LORD pleads [our] case and executes justice for [us],” rather than against us (remember 6:1-2?).

And as He rescues His people, the Lord will bring shame on those who have mocked, desolation on those who once brought desolation (v. 10, 13).  “Where is your God” (v. 10; cf. Ps 42)?  With His people—forever.

But it is not only a day of judgment as the Lord acts, but also a day of building and gathering—all kinds of people (v. 11-12).  People will swarm from Assyria to Egypt, from Egypt to the Euphrates—from one fullest extreme of the Land to the other and back again.  They come from sea to sea, from mountain to mountain—everywhere.  That could just mean that He is gathering Israel from places of captivity; Micah’s first readers probably took it that way.  But the New Testament shows a bigger picture (and so does 4:2)!  We see Assyrians and Egyptians and Greeks and Romans and Nazis and us being brought into the kingdom of Christ.  Oppressors become the remnant, wolves become sheep.

Because the Lord will shepherd His people (yes, really).  Micah prays: Lord, shepherd Your flock, like You did before (and like You promised in chapters 2, 4, and 5).  Back when You gave Your people peace and made them lie down in green pastures.  Back when Bashan and Gilead were beautiful, hilltop farmlands, rather than Assyrian-occupied war zones.  Back in “days of old” (same Hebrew as 5:2, here pointing clear back to Exodus and Joshua).

And the Lord replies: Oh, yes, I will shepherd you again, just like I did in Egypt, with signs and wonders that will awe the nations (v. 15-17).  I will again deliver you by a dying Lamb’s blood smeared on wood.  I will again deliver you from slavery, feed and guide you step by step.  I will again bring you into a Promised Land that you’re not strong enough to claim.  The nations will be silenced—and so will the serpent (cf. v. 17) that inspires their rage against Israel and Israel’s King.

So look at this Lord (v. 18-20)!  Other, fake gods were said to be incomparable because of their supposed strength or valor.  But this God not only calls everything out of nothingness, not only defeats all enemies, but He forgives like no other God!  He “passes over the rebellious act of the remnant of His possession”—just as He passed over the Israelites in Egypt.  How can He do that?

Because, as 6:7 put it, this Lord really has given His firstborn for our rebellious acts, His only Son for the sin of our souls!  And this Son is the only one who has truly and perfectly done justice, and perfectly loved faithful lovingkindness, and perfectly walked in humble wisdom with His Father—and at the cost of His broken body and poured-out blood we are forgiven!

And so “He delights in unchanging love” (v. 18)—the hesed kindness of 6:8—and will again have compassion.  “He will tread our iniquities under foot”—like Israel threshing enemies (4:13), like a Son of woman crushing a serpent under His heel (Gen 3:15), He will crush our sins into nothingness.  He “will cast all [our] sins into the depths of the sea”—just as He did with Pharaoh’s enslaving army.  Sin won’t be allowed to hold onto us—it is no longer our master.  He has kept every promise, and will keep every promise.  So look to this justice-doing, faithfully loving, all-wise Lord, who kills sin and saves sinners!

The audio of this sermon, which was preached at Grace Chapel Baptist Church, Kingwood, on Sunday, February 7, 2016, may be listened to below, or it may be downloaded by right-clicking and “Save Link As” here.  The rest of Micah may be found via the links below:

Micah 1-2
Micah 3:1-4:8
Micah 4:9-5:15

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“How Can I Please God?” (Sermon on Micah 6:1-7:20), Part 1

How often do we get frustrated in life because we aren’t sure what we’re supposed to be doing?  If you get to play board games with a child (and some adults), isn’t amazing how often the rules change?  How do you feel if your boss keeps changing his mind about what your priorities ought to be?  “Why are you working on the project I gave you yesterday?  I want you to do this one instead!”  It’s hard to please anyone if you have to guess what they want, and especially if they play hard to get.

Is God like that?  Has God left us to figure out what He wants, with a high penalty if we fail to read His mind?  Some have accused Him of this: “You mean that someone who’s never heard of Jesus would be sent to hell for not believing in Jesus?  How is that fair?”  For others, and especially for some Christians, it’s more a fear of missing God’s will in the moment: “What if God wanted me to go to that school instead of this one?  What if I marry the wrong person?”

So the question is, “How can I please God?”  And thankfully, He hasn’t left us to guess.

Remember, Micah’s prophecy is written in three cycles, presenting the same themes from three different angles.  Each cycle begins with promised judgment against those who fight against God, and then moves to hope of redemption for the believing remnant.  In the first cycle, the Lord promised that He is coming to judge evil and to gather His people (Micah 1-2).  In the second, we were pointed to Jesus, the perfect King and Teacher (3:1-4:8), and called to trust this perfect King in every circumstance (4:9-5:15).  And in this last cycle, we begin with a summons to the courtroom, where we learn God’s requirement (6:1-8), our problem (6:9-7:6), and God’s solution (7:7-20).

The Requirement: Be like God (Micah 6:1-8).

As the chapter opens, we have the prosecutor, Micah, appointed to bring charges and speak for God (6:1).  The mountains—the land itself—will be the judge and jury (v. 2), and the Lord Himself is the plaintiff, bringing His case against His people.  But notice how He opens: He invites—dares—Israel to take the role of accuser instead (v. 3-5).  “I’m so sorry for mistreating you by rescuing you out of slavery and oppression!  Do you remember when I hand-picked leaders to bring you out of Egypt?  Remember when Balak wanted to destroy you, and I wouldn’t let him?  Remember how I took you from Shittim to Gilgal, crossing the flooded Jordan on dry ground?  Now, why was it you decided you needed better gods?  What was it I did to you?”

Obviously, Israel has no charges to press.  Instead, they have a question: What does God want from them?  We might be inclined to ask the same questions: Shall I make sacrifices?  Bring burnt offerings and calves?  Pay my dues (v. 6)?

Shall I make extraordinary sacrifices?  Vast herds of irreplaceable livestock, washed down with raging torrents of valuable olive oil?  Give ‘til it hurts—or even bankrupts—to show how serious I am (v. 7a)?

Shall I make heart-rending, unfathomable sacrifices—even my firstborn child?  Will that make up for my sin?  Will that show how sorry I am?  Will that get God’s attention?  Do I know God is happy with me by counting how many tears I’ve shed (v. 7b)?

The question sounds pious enough, but there are two really big problems with it.  First, it’s insulting.  They look at God’s astonishing kindness and faithfulness and reach for their wallets.  “Okay, that’s one ‘brought us out of Egypt’ special, forty years of manna, a few dozen enemy kings…what’s the total?”  They’ve seen judges, prophets, and priests can be bought (c. 3)—so what’s God’s price?  Sometimes we imagine that we can impress God—or at least pacify Him.  What’s the bare minimum to make God okay with me—and are bonus points available?  The question asks, “How can I repay Him?” and waits for an answer.

But second, the question has already been answered.  “He has told you, O man, what is good; and what does the LORD require of you but to do justice, to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God?” (v. 8).  It isn’t that God had changed His mind about the sacrificial system He had commanded through Moses, but there’s something else He wants more (see 1 Sam. 15:22-23, Ps. 51:16-19, and Amos 5:21-24, among others).  He doesn’t want people who think they can pay their obligations and then do as they wish; he wants people who increasingly look like Him.

Micah 6:8 gives three characteristics that God requires.  First, “To do justice”—to do what lines up with what God says is right.  It is the opposite of the wealthy schemers of chapter 2, and the crooked judges of chapter 3.  To do justice means to oppose evil and love what is good.  It means standing up for the weak and helpless—born or not yet born.  It means opposing systematic mistreatment of groups of people based on economics or where they’re from or what they look like.  It means refusing to turn a blind eye when something’s not right.

And who teaches us what justice looks like?  We look to Jesus, who is angry with the uncaring men who want to use a man’s withered arm to discredit Jesus, and so proceeds to heal him on the Sabbath (Mark 3:5), and who takes the side of widows against those who would rob them under a cover of religious-sounding words (Mark 12:38-40).  Because Jesus’s character is the very definition of what is just and right, we follow His lead.

Second, God demands that we “love kindness.”  Other translations render it “to love mercy,” or “to love faithfulness.”  The Hebrew is hesed—faithful, covenant-keeping love, like Ruth to Naomi, like David and Jonathan, but especially like the Lord to Israel.  To love hesed means to keep our word—we will be faithful to our promises.  It means we won’t just tell others not to harm the weak, but we will actively benefit them.  That doesn’t mean we have to favor any one specific program, government or otherwise; we may disagree about the wisest approach to caring for the weak and poor.  It does mean that we look to do good toward those who can’t pay us back—just as Christ has generously come to our rescue.  It means that we don’t just oppose abortion (though we do), but also look to care for unexpected children and their (often overwhelmed) parents.  We are called to reflect God’s faithful, loving mercy, just as Jesus did at every moment.

And third, the Lord requires us “to walk humbly with your God.”  The word here is not the usual word for humility.  It’s more the idea of walking wisely, thinking through what we do.  If we recognize who we are in relation to God, we will pay attention to how we live.  Knowing that we will give account, “we also have as our ambition, whether at home or absent, to be pleasing to Him” (2 Cor. 5:9).  In other words, Micah says that what God requires is for us to love God (ordering our life in relation to who He has made us to be) and to love neighbor (dealing with others with the same kind of justice and kindness that God has shown to us).  Some of the rabbis of Jesus’s day and before recognized that this summarizes the law given to Moses.  But how much more, when we see Christ Himself perfectly living out this law, fulfilling its every requirement!  Again, Jesus’s example perfectly defines this wise, humble walk.

So now we know—what God demands from us is that we be like Him.  And He hasn’t changed His mind (see 1 Pet. 1:13-19, for example).  There’s just one problem, to which we’ll turn in the next post.

In the meantime, the audio of this sermon, which was preached at Grace Chapel Baptist Church, Kingwood, on Sunday, February 7, 2016, may be listened to below, or it may be downloaded by right-clicking and “Save Link As” here.

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“Trust the King” (Sermon on Micah 4:9-5:15), Part 3

What about when things we count on don’t last?  How do we understand the disappointments and hurts that are virtually guaranteed this side of the Garden?  In the first post of this series, we saw that we trust the faithful King and His wise plan, knowing that He will use every circumstance to accomplish His ends.  In the second, we saw that this King does not rely on human wisdom and power, but is God Himself, gathering His people from the ends of the earth, guarding them through the faithful undershepherds He gives to His church, and scattering them through the entire world to bring blessings and judgment through the spread of the gospel.  And now, the Holy Spirit commands us by the prophet Micah,

In the midst of hurting, trust the King to purify His people (5:10-15).

As you look at the verses leading up to this section, you might be thinking, Wait a minute—I thought we were talking about redemption and safety?  What about Jesus gathering and shepherding and keeping?  What about enemies being stopped?  Did the Lord change His mind?

But what had Israel relied on that led to God’s judgment?  Exactly what God promises to destroy in these verses: military power, unholy alliances, and fake gods.  Moses had warned Israel before they entered Canaan, almost four centuries before Israel crowned her first king, that the king “shall not multiply horses for himself, nor shall he cause the people to return to Egypt to multiply horses” (Deut. 17:16).  David remembered, saying, “Some boast in chariots and some in horses, But we will boast in the name of the LORD, our God” (Psalm 20:7).  But just a generation later, “Solomon had 40,000 stalls of horses for his chariots, and 12,000 horsemen” (1 Kings 4:26).  It’s a sign of Solomon’s material prosperity, but it’s also an early sign of trouble.

What about the cities and fortifications in v. 11?  Again, there’s a sense of self-reliance—we’ve got walls, we’ve got our supplies, bring it on!  In the end, we will either trust in the Lord to rescue and protect, or we will look to our own resources (see Prov. 18:10-11).

But if we are in Christ, God will not let us sit comfortably while we place our trust in something else.  “You shall have no other gods” will happen (v. 12-14).  Or put in the other direction, “I am confident of this very thing, that He who began a good work in you will perfect it until the day of Christ Jesus” (Phil. 1:6).  The Father who made up His mind to give a people as a love gift to His Son, who at the cost of Jesus’s blood has bought a people, and by the Holy Spirit is bringing the spiritually dead to life and making them sons and daughters forever, will not then step back and let us fumble and falter and be content in our sins over the long haul.  He will make us like His Son, just as He planned, using every circumstance to make it so (Rom. 8:28-30).  That process may take us through some very dark places—remember, the context of Romans 8:28-30 is a groaning world subject to futility, and even we as heirs groan, waiting for the final stages of our adoption, hurting so badly that all we can do is groan, counting on the Spirit to groan alongside us and make our prayers align perfectly with the Father’s perfect wisdom (8:17-27).  But He will not stop short of that perfect good, making us increasingly clear reflections of Jesus’s glory and character.

And notice that there are two separate promises in Micah 5:10-15, and there is a vast difference between them.  In v. 10-14, God promises to destroy the things that distract His people and lure them into trusting something else instead.  In v. 15, God promises to destroy the people who refuse to obey Him.  There are finally only two categories of people—sons and rebels, sheep and enemies.

But that, too, raises a question.  If we know ourselves at all, we have to ask: Why would we be among those receiving blessing and sanctification, rather than those receiving vengeance and wrath?  If what we receive is determined by what we have earned, we are doomed!  How is it that we are part of His people?  Mere mercy—mercy that we are shown as we hear the Shepherd, come to Him, believe His promises—and find that He does even better than He has promised.

The audio version of this sermon, which was preached at Grace Chapel Baptist Church, Kingwood, on Sunday, January 31, 2016, may be listened to below, or it may be downloaded by right-clicking and “Save Link As” here.

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