Recently, I had a story about a certain man who was very poor. He really struggled to make ends meet in life. Putting food on the table and taking his children to school was a problem. It so happened that this man becomes sick for a long time and eventually he died. What actually made his health deteriorate rapidly was because he could not afford the special treatment, medicine and food that he so required.
What was surprising at his funeral was that the kind of casket that was bought for him, it was too beautiful and expensive too. At his funeral the kind of food that was served; he never had it when he was alive. His friends and relatives come to sing, pray and preach at his funeral. It became clear that they were not only Christians, but they were rich too. Sadly, when this man was still alive they were never there for him, he struggled throughout all his life alone; but when he died they all come in their big cars to bury him.
After listing to the story, I began asking myself serious questions. One of the questions I asked myself is, what does the Lord require from us as Christians? As I was reading the book of Micah I came across three things that God require from us. Hence, today we are going to reflect on this topic; Three things God requires from us.
In the passage we have read, God brings up a charge against his own people in some kind of heavenly court of law. To start with, the Israelites thought God was happy with them, when in fact, he was not. The problem was that in those days people were very corrupt and they had wandered away from God. So, God confronts them in order to restore them back to himself.
He started by calling them to plead their case before the mountains and the hills. Why before the mountains and the hills? According to the Book of Deuteronomy (4:26), the creation stood there as witnesses when God made a covenant with his people. He personifies the mountains and the hills, speaking about them as if they were people who watched all the historic activities of men.
So people must defend themselves before the creator and his creation. Instead of immediately accusing them, God begins by asking two questions which basically aimed at examining not the Israelites but God himself. 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.
But since God is holy and perfect in all his ways, it means they had nothing to testify against him. To prove his faithfulness, God reminded his people of the great things he did for them. In the Book of Exodus (1-15) we see that the Israelites were slaves in Egypt for over four hundred years and their lives were made bitter with hard labour, working in the fields, making bricks and mortar and building cities for Pharaoh. In their bitter situation, God sends Moses and Aaron to lead them out of Egypt. When they had miraculously crossed the Red Sea on their way to the Promised Land, Miriam the prophetess took a tambourine and she led all the women into signing and dancing, praising the Lord. Indeed, God gave them good leaders.
As they were still on the way (Numbers 22-24), Balak King of Moab called on Balaam to curse the Israelites and whenever Balaam opened his mouth to curse Israel a blessing would come out of his mouth instead. It happened three times, then he realised that one cannot curse who God has blessed. On the journey to Shittim (Joshua 3 and 4), they had to go through the river Jordan and God opened the river for them and they crossed on dry ground. They even took stones and placed them in the middle of the river as a memorial of what God had done. That is not all, in the Promised Land, many nations fought against them, but God won them every battle.
As God did wonders for Israel and continued to sustain his people, he does the same for us; and sustains us by his grace. Sisters and brothers, we can all think of something good that the Lord graciously did for us. We are who we are today because God has been faithful to us. Our faith calls us to remember what God has done. I love the song which says Count your blessings, name them one by one, it will surprise you to see what the Lord has done.
Back to the court case, verses 6 and 7 contain what may be the actual response of the people. Here, they tried to defend themselves, they talked about how they bowed and sacrificed before God in worship. They were doing this because God himself had commanded them to. But then, why was God not happy? What did he require of them? Does he want high quality, expensive gifts? Is it quantity he is looking for? A thousand rams or ten thousand rivers of oil, maybe he wants a precious child, a first-born son like what other nations were doing, sacrificing their children (Leviticus 18:21).
From their response, we can see that Israel approached God with a wrong attitude. They think that they can satisfy him by their gifts. This attitude shows that they did not understand what God required of them. God had made a covenant with his people; it was not about business or profits. It was about their relationship to God and to one another.
So what were they required to do? God was not impressed with their ceremonies, worship service and big gifts. According to verse eight, here is a list of what God required of Israel.
1. God require them to act justly: Doing to others what is right and fair.
2. God required them to love mercy: Action kindly towards others by showing the deep loving covenant loyalty that God shows towards his people.
3 God required them to humbly walk with their God: A call to constant awareness of where they stand in relation to their God.
Considering these three things, we can conclude that the Israelites are guilty. In the New Testament (Matthew 23:23), Jesus calls these three things the important matter of the law.
What I want us to take home from this passage is that God does not only require our gifts and our worship. By this, I am not suggesting that giving our gifts and our worship to God is wrong, NO! But it is not all that the Lord requires from us? Sisters and brothers, the Lord requires us to act justly, love mercy and walk humbly before him. Putting all these together we learn that God requires something very specific from you and me, the very person who brings the sacrifice and the worship. It is about our lives, our character and our behaviour. I am reminded of Romans (12:2) that says " . . . offer your body as a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God - this is your true and proper worship."
It is not only about coming to church every Sunday, about giving money to the church, about singing in the church choir or praise team. We can do all of these things and still God will not be happy with us. It is about the kind of life we live; justice, kindness and humility.
Now let's carefully look at each of these three things.
Firstly, God requires us to act justly. When we talk about justice, we are talking about ordering and maintaining proper and honest relationships with others. Doing justice is on two levels; personal and social level. On a personal level, we must never act in a way that might produce injustice where we are. This means in our business we must always do a thorough job for our customers and supervisors even if they won't know the difference. To act justly means we are honest in all our affairs. For others, honesty is the best policy, but for us Christians, honesty is the only policy.
A butcher was asked how his life changed after he accepted Christ. His reply was, "I stopped weighing my thumb." He used to leave his thumb on the scale every time he weighed a piece of meat which would always short the customer an ounce. "Since I became a Christian," he said, "I quit weighing my thumb, in fact, I now give them a little more that what they pay for to make up for all the years I have overcharged them." This is what happened to Zacchaeus when he met Jesus. The Tax Collector stood up and said to him, "Lord! here and now I give half of my possessions to the poor, and if I have cheated anybody out of anything, I will pay back four times the amount." Do you know what Jesus said to him, "Today, salvation has come to this house."
At the social level, we need to arise and address the social causes of injustices in our communities. Almost everything seems to be unfair. The rich are getting richer and the poor are getting poorer. You may wonder how this may be happening in a world where Christians live. With the lack of justice, it is possible. If we see injustices and we remain quiet it means we are also oppressors. The South African activist and retired Anglican Bishop Desmond Tutu once said, "If you are neutral in situations of injustices, you have chosen the side of the oppressor. If an elephant has its foot on the tail of a mouse and you say that you are neutral, the mouse will not appreciate your neutrality." As Christians, we must be concerned about the widows, the fatherless, the poor, the hungry, the strangers, the needy, the weak and the oppressed in our community.
Secondly, God requires us to love mercy. This means our hearts should be filled with compassion and kindness towards one another. The Hebrew word that Micah used translated as "Mercy" has the idea of love and fidelity to a covenant. In other words, the faithful love we are talking about is covenant love. This is the kind of love that God showed towards his people; unconditional love. In our covenant with God, my commitment to God is also a commitment to you. Your commitment to God is also a commitment to me. This is why Paul says (2 Corinthians 1:3 and 4) "Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of compassion and the God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our troubles, so that we can comfort those in any trouble with the comfort we ourselves have received from God."
The scriptural concept of loving mercy always involves helping those who are in need or distress. Like the man in the story I earlier shared, some people are weaker than we are; some are poorer than we are. We must be kind to them; we must help whenever we can. We need to carry one another's burdens and problems. You may be asking, there are too many people who need help out there, how can I help all of them? Mother Teresa once said regarding helping others, "Never worry about numbers. Help one person at a time, and always start with the person nearest to you."
And the last requirement is walking humbly with God. 1 Peter 5:5 says, God opposes the proud but gives grace to the humble. We understand the word "walk" to mean the pursuit of a way of life. It is not that we are literally accompanying God on foot but it does mean that in our day to day walk through life . . . .it is with God. When we walk humbly with our God, it requires us, first of all, to understand what man is before God; a sinner who desperately needs the grace of God offered in Christ.
We walk humbly with God when we come to him in prayer. I love the prayer that goes, "Dear Lord, so far today I am doing all right. I have not gossiped, not cursed, lost my temper, and been greedy, nasty, selfish or self-indulgent. However, I am about to get out of bed in a few minutes, and I will need a lot more help after that." The word "humble" means "lowering yourself."To walk humbly with God is to "live carefully," to acknowledge that we do not have it all, neither before God nor before others, hence, we turn to God for help. 1 Peter 5:6, "Humble yourselves, therefore under God's mighty hand, that he may lift you up in due time."
To sum it all up, if the man in the story had people in his life who lived according to these three things; maybe he would have been alive today. They would have done their best to care for him in his hour of need. They would have done it because God requires them to. Sisters and brothers, it is not all about giving things to God. More than this, God requires us to act justly, love mercy and walk humbly before him. We can give all kinds of gifts to the church, but God is interested in the quality of our lives. We need to reconsider the way we are living our lives. There are poor people in our neighbourhoods, injustices where we live. Let's go out there and help them. God requires us to act justly, love mercy and to walk humbly with him. May the Lord enable us through Christ who is our strength to live according to his Word. AMEN
