In this, the first Sunday of the new year, this message is about putting first things first. Too often we get wrapped up in non-essentials and we put the cart before the house, we major on the minors, rather than major on the majors.
Read Micah 6:1–8
Naples, Italy, is a city on the verge of bankruptcy. There are problems with organized crime and an underfunded police department. So what are they spending money on? They have begun to DNA test dog feces so that they can prosecute residents who do not pick up after their dogs. In a city with so many problems, especially financial ones, it is strange to spend money on dog droppings. Tommaso Sodano, the vice mayor, says, “I know some people find it funny that with all the problems the city has, we would focus on dog poop.”
Many times in our quest to be disciples of the Lord Jesus, we, too, find ourselves majoring on minors. A goal for spiritual growth is to discipline ourselves to major on majors. (1)
Ancient Israel had the same problem. Micah was a prophet in Judah around 740-687 BC. He prophesied around the same time as the prophet Isaiah. Where Isaiah prophesied to the royal court in Jerusalem, Micah prophesied to the common people of Judah, to the rural, farming communities. But the many of their messages were the same.Even though the people were experiencing relative peace and prosperity, their sin before God was mounting up to grievous heights. Most of their sins were hidden behind a veil of religious activities. Oh they were a religious people to be sure, they were filling all the squares. They worshipped at the temple; they made all the required sacrifices; they knew and did all the rituals. They were very religious, but their hearts were far from God. They were sick and didn’t know it. It was like a patient telling their doctor to fix up their x-rays and test results so they appear to be healthy, and with the self-deceit, their condition only gets worst. Jesus spoke of them, quoting from Isaiah 29:
Matthew 15:7–9 (NKJV) 7 Hypocrites! Well did Isaiah prophesy about you, saying: 8 ‘These people draw near to Me with their mouth, And honor Me with their lips, But their heart is far from Me. 9 And in vain they worship Me, Teaching as doctrines the commandments of men.’ ”
So God, through the prophet Micah, speaks to the people like in in courtroom setting, to plead their case against the charges God has brought against them:
Micah 6:1–2 (NKJV) Hear now what the LORD says: “Arise, plead your case before the mountains, And let the hills hear your voice. 2 Hear, O you mountains, the LORD’s complaint, And you strong foundations of the earth; For the LORD has a complaint against His people, And He will contend with Israel.
God was calling for outside witnesses to confirm that He had been just and righteous with His people and that Israel had been wrong in its attitudes and actions before God. The witnesses He appealed to were people everywhere, represented by “the mountains” and the hills. (2)
Micah 6:3–4 (NKJV) 3 “O My people, what have I done to you? And how have I wearied you? Testify against Me. 4 For I brought you up from the land of Egypt, I redeemed you from the house of bondage; And I sent before you Moses, Aaron, and Miriam.
God had every right to ask this question: “what have I done to you?” God is innocent. God is also righteous. He is asking the people to remember all the great things He has done for them. Through-out the Old Testament, there are many commands for the people to teach their children all the things God has done. The Word “remember” is mentioned 14 times in the book of Deuteronomy. That mighty book of Moses, part of those first five books of the Bible called the Law or the Tora, sums up the previous 3 books. Remember what God has done. Teach them to your children. Now God is asking them to remember. Remember the Exodus. Remember how God provided leaders for them and how God brought them out from slavery.
Micah 6:5 (NKJV) O My people, remember now What Balak king of Moab counseled, And what Balaam the son of Beor answered him, From Acacia Grove to Gilgal, That you may know the righteousness of the LORD.”
Remember the events in the desert. The case with the Moab King Balak and their prophet Balaam is an interesting story. Read it in Numbers 22-24. Balaam was the guy who rode the taking donkey. King Balak told Balaam 3 time to prophesied and place a curse on Israel, and three times The Lord cause the curse to be a blessing. God is asking, “Do you not remember these things? How have I grieved you? Why have you sinned? We remember like the Israelites, We foreget, or rather we chose not to remember. Rather our question is often, not “Do I remember what God has done” but instead we ask, “What has God done for me lately?”
Now the scene in the courtroom shifts. The people answer. Notice as we read these next few verses, they are not disputing the charges:
Micah 6:6–7 (NKJV) 6 With what shall I come before the LORD, And bow myself before the High God? Shall I come before Him with burnt offerings, With calves a year old? 7 Will the LORD be pleased with thousands of rams, Ten thousand rivers of oil? Shall I give my firstborn for my transgression, The fruit of my body for the sin of my soul?
Let’s look at these things that are being offered to the Lord: Just what would appease God? Bowing, the ritual of worship? Burnt offerings, whether of rams or cows? Perhaps some 1year old calves, that’s a real special offering in that day.
Verse 7 -Let’s up the ante, We’ll haul in thousands of rams, whole herds of them. Ten thousand rivers of oil. Olive oil was hard to come by, perhaps an endless supply would make God happy.
Perhaps I would give my fist born as a sacrifice? This is not implying that God would except a human sacrifice, but that gift would represent all of what a person had.
Can you almost hear the arrogance? What would it take to buy off God? Can God be bribed? Could we ever offer God any material thing He wants or needs? After all, He created it all. Doing penance without true repentance is a sham; it only multiplies the sin and deadens the conscience. And we enter the death spiral of sin and decay.
The people were spiritually shallow. They forget how enormous their sin was and the high cost of forgiveness. “for the wages of sin is death.” (Romans 6:23)
Now fast forward 2,700 years. After a week of riotous living, will showing up at church, and putting a wad of cash in the offering satisfy God for another week? Can I throw God a bone so now He will owe me? If this is the thought process, conscience or un-consciously, we have missed what God wants from us. Throughout the Bible, over and over again, the word of God makes clear it is not the sacrifice. The sacrifice, the offering, the bowing and worship only means something if the heart is right.
The whole sacrificial system and worship of the temple had been debased into a kind of national insurance policy: we can sin as we wish, the leaders thought, so long as we are up to date with our insurance premiums at the temple. With extraordinary nerve, the nation suggested to the court that the sins of hypocrisy could be atoned for by further hypocrisy on an even grander scale! (3)
The Bible calls this “false worship” and even indicated that such false worship is an abomination to Him. King Saul thought he could buy off God will a large sacrifice and offering when he did things his way and not God’s way:
1 Samuel 15:22 (NKJV) So Samuel said: “Has the LORD as great delight in burnt offerings and sacrifices, As in obeying the voice of the LORD? Behold, to obey is better than sacrifice, And to heed than the fat of rams.
Jesus slammed the Pharisees with the same things. They were more interested in meeting the letter of the law than having their hearts right before God:
Matthew 23:23 (NKJV) “Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you pay tithe of mint and anise and cummin, and have neglected the weightier matters of the law: justice and mercy and faith. These you ought to have done, without leaving the others undone.
We think by taking care of minor things in God’s eyes, these will cover the major things we left undone. It’s like filling a jar with various sizes of rocks
If you fill the jar first with all the small rocks, there will be no room for the large rocks, but put the large ones in first and there will be plenty of room for the small stuff around the larger. God does not want rituals that are meaningless.
False worshipers offer the Lord everything but what he asks for: their loving and obedient hearts. Only those who comprehend his grace can and will offer him that. (4)
Only those who come before Him humbled and in true repentance can truly worship Him. Remember the parable of the Pharisee and the tax collector praying. The Pharisee said look at what I do and how good I am, and the tax collector said be merciful to me a sinner. (Luke 18:10-14) If your heart and your life is not right before God, and you have no intentions of changing that, then you would have been better off to stay home in bed this morning and get a few more hours of sleep than coming here to church. Listen closely to what I’m saying, God is not discounting the worship and the offerings, but if the heart is not right, Sunday morning worship is worthless before God.
Micah 6:8 (NKJV) He has shown you, O man, what is good; And what does the LORD require of you But to do justly, To love mercy, And to walk humbly with your God?
These daily activities of life are what make worship worship. This is the life of a true born again believer. To do Justly. I saw a new commercial that really irritated me on TV. A lady was buying some items and the cashier gave her the receipt. She looked at it thinking that she was grossly undercharged and she rushed to leave the store and be off in her car before they discovered the error, giving the illustration of the price cuts they had made. This implies the average person does not do justly. They are basically dishonest if given an unfair advantage. This is the picture of the world. Not of a Christian.
We are to love mercy, because of the mercy God has shown us. we can only truly show the mercy of God if we have experience His mercy ourselves.
And lastly: And to walk humbly with your God. A walk with Jesus, humble reliance on Him for our every need. A walk that is daily, hourly, and minute by minute, not just when we are in the mood. This is a life we cannot live by ourselves. An unsaved person, one without the Holy Spirit indwelling within them, cannot live such a life. Only then does our worship become acceptable. Only then is our offering of any value in the eyes of God.
It is the daily walk in relationship with God that lies at the heart of religion; the ritual of the temple could give expression to the vitality of that walk, but it could never replace it as the center of Israel’s faith. And the humble walk with God went hand in hand with the practice of justice and the love of kindness. This triad of virtue forms the foundations of the religious life; this was what God required of Israel.(5) And is required of us today. False worshipers offer the Lord everything but what he asks for: their loving and obedient hearts. Only those who comprehend his grace can and will offer him that.(6)
This morning, the question is whether you and I are false worshippers. Do we know the Lord?
Are we missing the weightier things of God like justice, mercy and walking humbly with Jesus which gives meaning to our worship and our giving an offering? Showing up at church on Sunday morning does not make us a Christian. However if we truly are saved and we are living for Him, these things will come naturally.
Are we walking humbly with Him?
(1) Jim L. Wilson and Rodger Russell, “In the Face of Huge Problems, Naples Focuses on Dog Droppings,” in 300 Illustrations for Preachers, ed. Elliot Ritzema (Bellingham, WA: Lexham Press, 2015). Jim Yardley, “A Forensic Approach to a Sidewalk Nuisance,” http://www.nytimes.com/2014/02/23/world/europe/a-forensic-approach-to-a-sidewalk-nuisance.html.
(2) John A. Martin, “Micah,” in The Bible Knowledge Commentary: An Exposition of the Scriptures, ed. J. F. Walvoord and R. B. Zuck, vol. 1 (Wheaton, IL: Victor Books, 1985), 1488.
(3) Peter C. Craigie, Twelve Prophets, vol. 2, The Daily Study Bible Series (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 1984), 46.
(4) Bruce K. Waltke, “Micah, Theology Of,” Evangelical Dictionary of Biblical Theology, Baker Reference Library (Grand Rapids: Baker Book House, 1996), 527.
(5) Peter C. Craigie, Twelve Prophets, vol. 2, The Daily Study Bible Series (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 1984), 47.
(6) Bruce K. Waltke, “Micah, Theology Of,” Evangelical Dictionary of Biblical Theology, Baker Reference Library (Grand Rapids: Baker Book House, 1996), 527.
