Ordinary Life: Do Justly
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“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?
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?”
He has told you, O man, 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?
OPENING: “With what shall I come before the Lord.”
For the purpose of this series I would like us to pay attention to the verbs in Micah 6:8:
Do, Love and Walk.
Love, affections,
The Henry and Richard Blackaby ask the question, “Are you satisfied with merely knowing the acts of God or do you also want to know His ways?
Finding God’s will for your life is really pretty simple.
It starts, and ends, with your heart.
Would you take some time to ask yourself some hard questions? Work through the things that God has “already showed you.”
The question of an awakened soul.“With what shall I come before the Lord.”, In verse 3 he asks, "My people, what have I done to you? (Maybe it is me who is in the wrong here). How have I burdened you? Answer me." Israel was asked to testify against the Creator.
Phil. 2:13 for it is God who works in you both to will and to do for His good pleasure.
Man's Mistaken Ideas of What God Really Wants.
This passage is an indictment by God to a people who keep losing the primary focus of faith.
Do justly, don’t justify, personal sacrifice satisfies divine justice.
There is a tendency to justify our life before God with all of the things we believe that we are doing for God.
What is not seen plainly here is the context for each of these things, listed as things people were bringing before God. If you notice, there are specific things, like burnt offerings of calves “a year old.”
In one verse, Shall I offer my firstborn for my transgression, the fruit of my body for the sin of my soul? Which to me sounds a lot like Paul’s charge in
1 Corinthians 13 “And though I bestow all my goods to feed the poor, and though I give my body to be burned, but have not love, it profits me nothing.”
In Micah, God is saying don’t just do stuff and rub my nose in the law in it, with the attitude that in doing so we have somehow satisfied God.
Jesus had a similar moment when in Mark 10:17, a Rich Young ruler runs up to Jesus and the story in Mark makes note that he “ran up to Jesus and knelt before Him,” just like it reads in Micah 6:6 With what shall I come before the Lord and bow down before the exalted God.
Well we can see here the approach matters: where in Jesus told him, “you have read the Law,” to which the young man replied “all these things I have done since my youth”(It didn’t work with Jesus, nor by the way does it work with Reno PD when getting pulled over for speeding).
He was implying that he had done it, he had held the standard, checked off the boxes. Jesus Loved him, and he loves you, but reveals the young man’s heart by pointing loosely to Micah, “sell your possessions, give the money to the poor and come and follow me;” because the young man was lacking the servitude that the Gospel demands.
Sometimes we justify our selves before God in this same way and in reality, by looking at the Law as though it is some list to follow, we can miss the entire point of the Law.
The Law, as important as it is, we need to see past it, into the heart of the Law. Jesus implied that we can miss it, when he speaks to divorce, God didn’t want it, and it is legal, but it is there primarily because of the hardness of the heart demands it.
Judgment and justice are not the same thing, at least biblically.
I find it impossible to divorce the Christian Life from character.
nothing is good in the sight of God unless it carries with it the good will, the will to do justice and mercy
For today I do not propose to consider with you the abstract question as to what justice is But if justice means giving to every one his due,
And then the man who would be just or merciful must have the power of putting himself in the place of another, and seeing the matter in all its circumstances from another's point of view; and that means that he must have a real interest in other people for their own sakes, and be able to understand them, and be able to see why they did what they did. H. C. Beeching.
Whatever He requires, He gives grace to perform. Christ is not only good as our way to the Father, but He is our fountain of living waters. Be strong in the grace that is in Christ Jesus. Look as much to Him for sanctification as for justification. (R. M. M'Cheyne.)
Having a right heart, renew a right spirit within me
The people are not to sit idly by waiting for the leader and his kingdom to appear. Instead, Micah instructs the people to demonstrate the characteristics of the kingdom in their everyday lives and thus prepare for its coming.
A heart of Truth, forgiveness and service...Billy Ricks
Hearing The Heartbeat Of God
What the Lord really wants from you dear friends, is not your gifts and offerings but the fervent desire to be right with Him and to walk with Him.
In order to be right with God your attitude toward sin must change. You cannot love God and love sin at the same time. You must hate your sins the same way that God hates them. The biblical word that is used to describe this change is repentance. Repentance is a change of attitude toward sin which leads to a change of conduct.
Dearly beloved, you must be convinced that the very best offerings and service that you can render to God are useless as long as you are not right with Him
They are merely an empty form of godliness, but denying the power thereof.
Man is always trying to get back to the good graces of God with some outward religious service or some material gifts. But the Word of God tells us that
The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit: a broken and a contrite heart, O God, thou wilt not despise.' (Psalm 51:17).
This is what God really wants from us.
coming before the lord, pleasing the lord and living like the lord
Perhaps you sense you’re in a spiritual rut. Stay at your assigned task! Obedience to God—and only obedience—offers the way out of our futility.— by Philip Yancey
Ignatius: ” Spiritual battles must be fought with the very weapons hardest to wield at the time: prayer, meditation, self-examination, and repentance.