Who are God's people?
Notes
Transcript
Who are God’s people?
Ask a politician who is pandering for votes amongst religious people and they will claim that all people are God’s people. We hear politicians all the time use Bible verses to justify their position on something. When they do that they pull the bible passage way out of context.
Ask some religious leaders and they will say that we are all God’s people. It doesn’t matter how you live your life, you are loved by God and are His people. That is partially true, all people are loved by God.
Ask some church people and they will say that as long as you show up for church from time to time and do the actions required that you are God’s people.
Ask the Apostle Peter who are God’s people and this is what he will say:
9 But you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people who are God’s own possession. You have become this people so that you may speak of the wonderful acts of the one who called you out of darkness into his amazing light. 10 Once you weren’t a people, but now you are God’s people. Once you hadn’t received mercy, but now you have received mercy.
1 Peter
There is an amazing difference between what Peter had to say and what ordinary people say. In my Bible this section of scripture has a title of God’s dispute with Israel. As you read through it you see the word lawsuit used twice. This is God’s lawsuit against his people Israel.
9 But you are a chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, God’s special possession, that you may declare the praises of him who called you out of darkness into his wonderful light. 10 Once you were not a people, but now you are the people of God; once you had not received mercy, but now you have received mercy.
Can you imagine God bringing a lawsuit against you, against our church? How would we respond?
One author described God’s lawsuit against Israel as “outraged love”. I had to pause and really ponder that phrase. To be outraged is to be angry, shocked or upset. God had every right to be outraged at Israel. The prophet Hosea wrote:
1 When Israel was a child, I loved him, and out of Egypt I called my son. 2 The more I called them, the further they went from me; they kept sacrificing to the Baals, and they burned incense to idols. 3 Yet it was I who taught Ephraim to walk; I took them up in my arms, but they did not know that I healed them. 4 I led them with bands of human kindness, with cords of love. I treated them like those who lift infants to their cheeks; I bent down to them and fed them.
I loved them, the more I called them, the further they went from me. What a sad indictment against Israel.
What is it that God wants from us? Micah asks the question in verse 6.
6 With what should I approach the Lord and bow down before God on high? Should I come before him with entirely burned offerings, with year-old calves?
Who are God’s people? The Jews thought God wanted some thing. This was a false assumption. God does not want things. God wants me, he wants you. It is you, not something, not some act of worship, it is you that God wants.
I want to point out three indicators of who God’s people are.
The first is this:
Those who act with justice and compassion
Those who act with justice and compassion
Those who act with justice and compassion
Those who act with justice and compassion
Micah writes in verse 8: “He has told you, human one, what is good and what the LORD requires from you: to do justice, embrace faithful love”
what is good and
what the LORD requires from you:
to do justice, embrace faithful love
Lawrence Richards wrote:
The Teacher’s Commentary 73: Micah—God’s Offer of Pardon
In a New Mexico church a young ministerial intern found his marriage hurting. His wife left and returned to her parents’ home. The pastor called the young man in, and rather than offering support and help to repair the broken relationship, demanded his resignation. Unsatisfied by the letter of resignation that was submitted, the pastor rewrote the letter and sent his version out to the congregation over the young man’s signature. He then insisted the intern simply disappear. There would be no farewells or good-bye gatherings.
When the people began to probe and to ask why they had not had a chance to express appreciation for the young man’s ministry, the pastor held an exorcism in the church, banning the devil who was manifesting himself in the “critical spirit” of the people!
Common English Bible. (2011). (). Nashville, TN: Common English Bible.
Where was the justice and love and compassion in that situation? The pastor thought he was right, he justified his actions that the young pastor was unfit for ministry because of the problems in his marriage. He was biblically right wasn’t he?
The pharisees operated the same way. The constantly criticized Jesus not because of his acts of compassion and healings. They criticized him because he didn’t do things the way that they thought was right. He didn’t wash his hands they way that they did. He allowed his disciples to pick some grain as the walked through a field on the Sabbath.
How easy is it for us to require the right actions and forget about love and compassion.
Many people think that if they come to church a few times a year and do what is needed, put a little money in the offering, receive communion, volunteer for church cleanup day then they have met the requirements to be a child of God.
The issue with Israel is that they had replaced true worship of God with nothing more than lip service. It was all an external worship that was not really worship of God.
The phrase to love mercy comes from the Hebrew word hesed.
The Preacher’s Commentary Series, Volume 23: Micah / Nahum / Habakkuk / Zephaniah / Haggai / Zechariah / Malachi Have I Required Too Much from You? (6:4–8)
The Hebrew word hesed occurs 250 times in the Old Testament and is at once one of the most beautiful and the most difficult words to render by a single English term. It is the faithful, loyal love, mercy, and grace that binds a man to his Lord and to his neighbor or friend.
We do not become a child of God by checking off a list of things that we do. We become a child of God by putting our faith in Christ and living a life of obedience to him.
We do not become a child of God by checking off a list of things that we do. We become a child of God by putting our faith in Christ and living a life of obedience to him.
The second indicator of who God’s people are:
Those who who walk humbly with their God
Those who who walk humbly with their God
That word humbly means “fellowship with Him in modesty, without arrogance” (Martin). It weans to walk carefully.
The key word here is not humbly but rather the key word is walk. This is about our daily living. Look at these two verses earlier in Micah.
2 Many nations will go and say: “Come, let’s go up to the mountain of the Lord, to the house of Jacob’s God, so that he may teach us his ways and we may walk in God’s paths!” Instruction will come from Zion and the Lord’s word from Jerusalem.
5 Each of the peoples walks in the name of their own god; but as for us, we will walk in the name of the Lord our God forever and always.
The passage that was read to us earlier from Matthew, the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus talks about this daily walking with God. In the beatitudes there Jesus describes what it is like to walk with God daily. There is blessings or happiness when we walk with God.
Walking with God is not about doing things, it about a transformed life. A transformed life that is not longer like the world. It is a life of fellowship where we walk carefully with God. It is a life that we live not because we have to, but because we want to.
The law that Israel lived under became a have to rather than a want to.
Kids are funny. If you ask or tell them to do something they sometimes say “if I have to.” That means they will do it not because they have to but because they want to. That is living under the law. That is not grace.
Law says that you have to slow down to 25 mph in school zones. The person under law either says, "No way!" or "Well, if I have to. I don't want to get fined." But there's a reason for the law. It's nothing to do with the police or speed traps or legislation. It's for the protection of children. If a child runs onto the road and you're doing 55 mph, you'll run him down. But if you're only doing 25 mph, you have a much better chance of stopping. So the law acts as a means of grace for the children. (https://hotsermons.com/sermon-illustrations/sermon-illustrations-grace.html)
The law as it was given was meant to be a means of grace for Israel. It was a covenant between God and them. It was because of love and grace that God gave the law to them. Unfortunately the law of love and grace was exchanged for legalism where their worship became idolatrous. The worshipped not because they wanted to, but because they had to.
Look there are verses 6-7
6 With what should I approach the Lord and bow down before God on high? Should I come before him with entirely burned offerings, with year-old calves? 7 Will the Lord be pleased with thousands of rams, with many torrents of oil? Should I give my oldest child for my crime; the fruit of my body for the sin of my spirit?
6 With what should I approach the Lord and bow down before God on high? Should I come before him with entirely burned offerings, with year-old calves? 7 Will the Lord be pleased with thousands of rams, with many torrents of oil? Should I give my oldest child for my crime; the fruit of my body for the sin of my spirit? 8 He has told you, human one, what is good and what the Lord requires from you: to do justice, embrace faithful love, and walk humbly with your God.
That is legalism and not grace. That is going through the motions and not walking with him. In verse 8 we see the response to grace that God is looking for.
8 He has told you, human one, what is good and what the Lord requires from you: to do justice, embrace faithful love, and walk humbly with your God.
We can only do justice, embrace faithful love, and walk humbly with God when we have a relationship with Him. If we don’t truly have a relationship with God then we don’t really know him and we cannot really walk with him. It would be like a friend asking you if you know president Trump. You might say yes and by that you mean that you know about him. You have never met him, you have never talked to him, you just know about him. Now if you ask Malania if she knows him, she is will say “of course, I’m married to him.”
That is the difference of knowing about God and knowing God.
It is about relationship and in this relationship. It is about bringing our lives into conformity to God’s will for us.
The third indicator of who are God’s people is this
Those whom the world might call foolish because they choose to live kingdom values rather than worldly values
Those whom the world might call foolish because they choose to live kingdom values rather than worldly values
Listen again to what Paul said to the Corinthians.
18 The message of the cross is foolishness to those who are being destroyed. But it is the power of God for those of us who are being saved.
Those who are being destroyed are those who have not put their faith in Christ. When they look at Christianity they think that we are wasting our time. It is foolish to say you believe in a God who you cannot see. It is foolish to believe in a man who died on a cross. It is all foolishness.
The problem is that as Christians we live with different values. We live by kingdom values rather than the values of the world. Paul as we know writes a lot about living lives that are different from the world. In Romans he wrote:
1 So here’s what I want you to do, God helping you: Take your everyday, ordinary life—your sleeping, eating, going-to-work, and walking-around life—and place it before God as an offering. Embracing what God does for you is the best thing you can do for him. 2 Don’t become so well-adjusted to your culture that you fit into it without even thinking. Instead, fix your attention on God. You’ll be changed from the inside out. Readily recognize what he wants from you, and quickly respond to it. Unlike the culture around you, always dragging you down to its level of immaturity, God brings the best out of you, develops well-formed maturity in you.
1 So, brothers and sisters, because of God’s mercies, I encourage you to present your bodies as a living sacrifice that is holy and pleasing to God. This is your appropriate priestly service.
That is what God wants to do in our lives, transform us by the power of the Holy Spirit. If you look around and notice that you do not live much differently than the average person around you then there is something wrong with you. You are conforming rather than being transformed.
Conforming is being changed from the outside in. Transformation happens from the inside out. That seems foolish to those who do not yet know Christ. Paul wrote in 2 Corinthians
9 He said to me, “My grace is enough for you, because power is made perfect in weakness.” So I’ll gladly spend my time bragging about my weaknesses so that Christ’s power can rest on me. 10 Therefore, I’m all right with weaknesses, insults, disasters, harassments, and stressful situations for the sake of Christ, because when I’m weak, then I’m strong.
That type of living does not make sense to the average person on the street. But that is the life we are called to because it is a life of power through Christ.
23 but we preach Christ crucified, which is a scandal to Jews and foolishness to Gentiles. 24 But to those who are called—both Jews and Greeks—Christ is God’s power and God’s wisdom. 25 This is because the foolishness of God is wiser than human wisdom, and the weakness of God is stronger than human strength.
Paul describes this crucified life with Christ as scandalous and foolishness. For the Jews it was a scandal because they were looking for a king to rid them of their enemies. It was foolishness to the Gentiles because they trusted in worldly wisdom.
For those of us of have experienced the transformational grace of God we recognize the power of Christ at work within our lives.
Who are God’s people?
Who are God’s people?
God’s people are those who go against the status quo and work to bring about God’s beloved community on earth, here and now.
Those who go against the status quo and work to bring about God’s beloved community on earth, here and now.
It is those who act with justice and compassion.
It is those who walk humbly with God
It is those whom the world might call foolish because they choose to live kingdom values rather than worldly values.
Do those describe you life? Are you one of God’s people? Do you know about or do you really know God? Do not leave today without knowing for sure.
Martin, J. A. (1985). Micah. In J. F. Walvoord & R. B. Zuck (Eds.), The Bible Knowledge Commentary: An Exposition of the Scriptures (Vol. 1, p. 1489). Wheaton, IL: Victor Books.