rd chapter where you are supposed to
beat your sword into a plowshare,
a.
a futuristic vision of
God’s peaceable kingdom.
2.
And we may be familiar
with this passage that asks two important questions:
a.
With what shall I come
before the Lord...?
b.
God has done so many
wonderful things for you and told you what is good.
c.
So the second question is:
What then does God require or expect in return?
d.
Carol Wilkins being raised
in a Baptist church knew what was expected in that church: good
attendance. If you did not
maintain good attendance, you would be dropped from the
Register. Carol and her little friends were not too sure
what
that meant.
But there was a large, noisy, octopus-like furnace in the church
basement, and they conjured up visions of
anyone with
bad church attendance being held above the basement steps and
being dropped into that hot furnace.
3.
Both questions are really
the same: what can we do to please God? The first
question focuses on my perspective, the
second
comes at it from God’s perspective.
a.
Just how far do you want
to carry this question.
b.
This passage carries it to
the extreme:
c.
what is the most I could
do that would really grab God’s attention,
(1)
bring thousands of rams,
(2)
or 10,000 rivers of
oil
(3)
or sacrifice my
first born child?
4.
“Does anything suffice to
move God to accept me...”
a.
especially when I have
broken trust with God?
5.
One commentator looks at
it as a dialogue when preparing for worship,
a.
an entrance liturgy.
b.
a preparation for our
confession of sin as we come before the Table of the Lord this
morning.
6.
But it might also be seen
as a lawsuit,
a.
The Lord’s case is before
his people.
b.
God has done everything
possible for the people, brought them out of Egypt, given them a
wonderful land, and look how
they
have responded to God’s goodness!
c.
All of creation is
summoned to hear the case.
B.If we
put this short book of Micah in historical perspective, it will
help us see the whole picture.
1.Micah is
a prophet from a village outside of Jerusalem in the early 8
th
century. His career began during the reign of the
popular
king Hezekiah.
2.
But in less than 20 years,
the southern kingdom tumbled from the high point of her
prosperity. (page 1)
a.
There were violent
changes, society fell apart in both the south and the north.
b.
In 722 the northern capitol of
Samaria fell to the Assyrians.
3.
This prophet’s message was one
of doom and punishment, except for three very short passages.
4.
Now, I often like to do a word
study, and in Micah, the word “love” is mentioned in three strategic
places.
a.
Once in these 3 verses of
chapter 6;
b.
again in the last 3 verses of
the book.
c.
I believe it is intentional;
it puts an asterisk on the whole mesage.
II.
Hans Walter Wolff in his
commentary poses the question this way, Do you know
“What is
really good for you?”
A.We think
about more exercise, a healthy diet for the heart, a 35 hour work
week, end the war in Iraq, solve the problem of
our
escalating foreign debt, an, of course, good church attendance.
1.
Jimmy Carter, when he took the
oath of office, had his family Bible open to Micah 6.
a.
Why did he do that?
2.
At the end of his inaugural
address, he said that he wanted to be judged, and he wanted the
American people to be
judged, by whether we had been faithful to what God requires of us.
B.“What God
requires of you...”
1.
Is this a disturbing concept?
2.
From the outset, writes Wolf,
it is clear that we have not created ourselves, we are not our own.
a.
Therefore, we do not know what
is good for ourselves.
b.
I learned in my college child
psychology that if you allow children to choose what food they want
to eat, in the long run
they
will choose what is good and healthy. I have trouble believing that
since I had one grandson who would not eat
anything on his plate that was green!
3.
Does our congregation know how
to choose what is good for us, what God expects, or REQUIRES in
return for all he
has
given us?
a.
Will we eat the greens that
are on our plates?
C.All
through Micah, the LORD carries on a continuing conversation with
the people of the south, Judah.
1.
There is a problem, however:
the Jews have stopped listening, they have broken off the
communication.
2.
But God continues talking to
his people. These verses are the heart of that continuing unheard
monologue:
3. If I do not know the
answer to what is good, what God expects, then should I keep silent
and allow God to have
someone else tell me?
a.
In a Charlie Brown cartoon,
Charlie the evangelist tells his sister Lucy, “Did you know the
Bible tells you to love your
brother? That means you have to forgive me.”
To
which Lucy the amateur psychologist replies, “But my Bible does not
say that I have to forgive you, Charlie Brown. I do not see the name
Charlie Brown in MY Bible.”
4. So what is good for
humans to do in God’s presence? (page 2)
a. God says, I
have already told you. I will tell you again and again until you get
it.
5. Martin Luther’s insight
is that what is good for humankind is that we “should keep clearly
in view
the saving acts of God".