Jerusalem Baptist Church, Emmerton
Micah 6:6-8
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?
The pictures have always been striking, if not disturbing: hundreds, if not thousands of men, chanting in unison, jumping up and down as they parade down a crowded street while beating themselves on the back or head with small whips. They apparently don’t cause any lasting damage, but they do break the skin, but the men don’t seem to notice if there is any pain.
Another sight: men all dressed in black, bearded, ritualistically praying at the wailing wall in Jerusalem, swaying back and forth as they rhythmically recite the prayers that are prescribed for the given occasion.
Another: incense, burning in a temple, before a huge gilded statue.
There is, within every human being, a yearning for communion with God. It can be found across cultures, across races, and across all of human history. From the moment we first turned our eyes to the heavens and wondered how the stars got there, we have sought after that divine spark, the one who created all that is.
Friday and yesterday, I was on retreat with the other Masters students from the Leland Center. It was held at Shenandoah Springs retreat and camp center, north of Charlottesville. Last year, we met at the same place, and our main meeting hall was in a cramped basement under the men’s dorm, called ‘The Well’. There were small windows high up on one wall, but the rest of the room was cinderblock all the way around.
Friday, when we pulled in and registered, we noticed a new roof down the hill from the cabins and dining hall. We were told that our main meetings would be held there.
We walked down, and in a small clearing, surrounded by trees, the owners of the center had put a roof over their basketball court, but left the walls open. It was in many ways like Kirkland Grove, but the roof began much higher up – probably at 20 feet, so the walls were made of the trees that surrounded the clearing.
As the sun fell, the moon rose behind the speakers, David and Mary Carpenter, former missionaries to Albania, as they shared the theme “Matters of the Heart” – and there was very little structure to what they shared. They were intentionally sharing from their hearts what they have been learning over the last several years, from their time in Albania from 1992 through 1996, to their move to London to coordinate north African and middle eastern missionaries, to their resignation from the IMB, to their living in downtown Beirut for the first 6 months of this year, to their enduring and growing love for Muslims and Arabs.
Watching someone speak about something they feel passionately about is energizing. It needed to be. Though the accommodations were adequate, they were also simple. Trying to sleep in a roomful of 12 men, half of whom were champion snorers, made sleep a little more difficult than it might have been had I been across the way here in my own bed. But that is part of retreating. You not only retreat from the cares of the world, you also retreat from the everyday comforts of life. That becomes a part of the experience as well.
In our text this morning, we come in in the middle of what almost sounds like a lover’s quarrel:
Hear what the LORD says: Rise, plead your case before the mountains, and let the hills hear your voice.2 Hear, you mountains, the controversy of the LORD, and you enduring foundations of the earth; for the LORD has a controversy with 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."
The phrase that stands out is In what have I wearied you?
There are hundreds of religions in the world, maybe thousands. All of them are expressions of humanity’s yearning for a relationship with God.
I know of no other faith where we are confronted with a God who desires communion with humanity even more than humanity desires communion with God.
Here we have God listing his miraculous intervention in the history of Israel, and Israel growing weary of him.
The New International Version translates that word as ‘burdened’. The word "burden" signifies to wear down, to cause someone to become impatient, or to become physically tired. The Lord asks how he has caused them to become so weary of him that they have ceased to obey him. Their impatience cannot be due to inactivity on his part, for he has done much for them.
The deliverance from Egypt represents one of the first acts of redemption in which God demonstrated his saving love for the people. Moses was God's great prophet, the prototype of the line of prophets yet to come (Dt 18:15-22). Miriam was a prophetess (Ex 15:20); and Aaron, the progenitor of the Aaronic priesthood, was the representative of the people before God.
Micah cites the failure of Balaam to curse the people (Nu 22-24) as evidence of God's activity among them. Besides the failure of Balak to frustrate the progress of the people, the journey from Shittim to Gilgal witnessed the defeat of Midian, the crossing of the Jordan, and the conquest of Jericho. The recital of events stops abruptly as though the intent is to depict in one great sweep the progress of the nation from slavery in a foreign land to settlement in their own country.
In verse 5 (the saving acts of the Lord), “saving” has the basic sense of "rightness" and can apply to the secular as well as religious spheres of life. Here the word underlines God's faithfulness to his standard, i.e., the covenant obligations. His great acts on behalf of Israel are more than simply coming to the aid of his people. They are manifestations of his righteousness as he maintains his faithfulness to the covenant promise.
The recital of Israel's history suddenly ends, and Micah speaks on behalf of the people, asking God what their responsibility is in the light of his faithfulness to the covenant. There is irony here as the prophet asks how one may come before “God on high." The words "on high" connote just that: "height" and speak of God in his dwelling place in heaven. What is the proper way to worship him? With burnt offerings and calves a year old? Yearling calves were regarded as the choicest sacrifices. "Thousands of rams" suggests the large quantity of animals that one might offer to curry God's favor. But God is interested neither in the choicest animals nor in the number offered. Even great quantities of oil will not bring the worshiper into fellowship with God. The list reaches a shocking climax in the mention of the firstborn. Child sacrifice was carried out by certain Israelites on occasion (2Ki 3:27-16:3; Isa 57:5). The firstborn represents the most precious thing one could give to God. Again, this was not what God wants.
What God wants is a heart response to God demonstrated in the basic elements of true religion. God has told the people what is good. The Mosaic law differentiated between good and bad and reflected God's will in their religious and social lives. They were to act "justly" here in the sense of "true religion," i.e., the ethical response to God that has a manifestation in social concerns as well. "To love mercy" is freely and willingly to show kindness to others. "To walk humbly with your God" means to live in conscious fellowship with him, exercising a spirit of humility before him. The prophet was not indicating that sacrifice was completely ineffectual and that simply a proper heart attitude to God would suffice. Rather, God has no interest in the multiplication of empty religious acts.
These ethical requirements do not comprise the way of salvation. Forgiveness of sin was received through the sacrifices. The standards of this verse are for those who are members of the covenantal community and delineate the areas of ethical response that God wants to see in those who share the covenantal obligations. These standards have not been abrogated for Christians, for the NT affirms their continuing validity. We are still called to the exercise of true religion:
1Co 13:4; Love is patient; love is kind; love is not envious or boastful or arrogant 5 or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; 6 it does not rejoice in wrongdoing, but rejoices in the truth. 7 It bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.
2Co 6:4-6; 4 but as servants of God we have commended ourselves in every way: through great endurance, in afflictions, hardships, calamities, 5 beatings, imprisonments, riots, labors, sleepless nights, hunger; 6 by purity, knowledge, patience, kindness, holiness of spirit, genuine love
Col 3:12; As God's chosen ones, holy and beloved, clothe yourselves with compassion, kindness, humility, meekness, and patience.
Jas 1:27; Religion that is pure and undefiled before God, the Father, is this: to care for orphans and widows in their distress, and to keep oneself unstained by the world.
1Pe 5:5; And all of you must clothe yourselves with humility in your dealings with one another, for "God opposes the proud, but gives grace to the humble."
Jer 31:33; 33 But this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, says the LORD: I will put my law within them, and I will write it on their hearts; and I will be their God, and they shall be my people.
Heb 10:14-18 includes the same passage:
14For by a single offering he has perfected for all time those who are sanctified. 15 And the Holy Spirit also testifies to us, for after saying, 16 "This is the covenant that I will make with them after those days, says the Lord: I will put my laws in their hearts, and I will write them on their minds," 17 he also adds, "I will remember their sins and their lawless deeds no more." 18 Where there is forgiveness of these, there is no longer any offering for sin.
Christians are in a covenant relationship with God in which the law has been placed within their hearts, not done away with. The indwelling Holy Spirit inspires our obedience, not the letter of the law.
Freely offered obedience is qualitatively different from obedience out of obligation, or worse, out of fear of retribution.
God is saying ‘I have been faithful to you, won’t you be faithful to me?’ It is a plea for a response in kind. God has made each of us capable of carrying on a relationship with God, freely, not by coercion or out of fear. And he spells it out here: to live justly, to love mercy, and to walk humbly with God.
Will we answer his call today?
Let’s pray.
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