God’s Requirements
This morning I want to invite you to look with me at what the prophet Micah understood to be “God’s requirements.” And I want to help you memorize this verse so that God’s might write those requirements in each of our hearts. So when I ask “What does the Lord require of you?” your response will be “To do justice, to love kindness and to walk humbly with your God.” Let’s try it. “What does the Lord require of you?” “To do justice, to love kindness and to walk humbly with your God.”
It really sounds pretty simple doesn’t it. “Do justice, love kindness and walk humbly with your God.” Almost like the scouting oath. Be fair. Be nice. Be humble. But when you study the prophet who spoke those words, when you understand the context in which he spoke them and their impact on those who heard them, you realize that it is much more than a glib motto. Much deeper than a memorized verse of scripture.
If most of us were honest, I would guess that we had not even heard of the prophet Micah. We remember other prophets: Isaiah, Jeremiah, Jean Dixon. But Micah?
To understand Micah we must first place him in the context of the history of the Hebrew people. Though Abraham is thought of as the father of the Hebrew people, the one to whom God promised so much, the story really began with Charlton Heston and Yul Brenner. That is with Moses and the Pharaoh. The Hebrew people were enslaved in Egypt, making bricks and starving, when God called Moses to the top of a mountain and spoke to him from a burning bush. God sent Moses to the pharaoh with one message: “Let my people go!” And you know the rest of the story. God, through Moses leadership, led the people out of bondage to the promised land.
And God established a covenant with the Hebrew people: “I will be your God and you will be my people.” God’s loving actions of freeing the Hebrew people from slavery and giving them the promised land were only the first ways God held up God’s end of the deal. God promised to continue to provide for them.
But a covenant relationship is a two way street. Both parties to a covenant have responsibilities, required behaviors that sustain and maintain the relationship. It is just like a marriage covenant, where two people promise to love each other, to care for each other. Most of you remember those promises: To have and to hold, from this day forward, for better for worse, for richer for poorer, in sickness and in health, to love and to cherish, til death us do part.” We agree to the requirements of a marriage covenant because we love somebody and want to commit our lives to them.
God made such a covenant with the Hebrew people. “I will be your God and you will be my people.” And what were God’s requirements of the Hebrew people? I would summarize them this way: “Love me and yourself and others like I have loved you.” Deuteronomy 6: 5 says “Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and all your strength.” And Leviticus 19: 18 says, “love your neighbor as yourself.” And God added a few specifics: Don’t murder, don’t lie, don’t steal, be faithful to your husband or wife, don’t be jealous of your neighbors and want what they have. All pretty obvious requirements for good relationships.
And God added a little reminder to this covenant. Leviticus 6: 12 says it this way: “Be careful that you do not forget the Lord, who brought you out of Egypt, out of the land of slavery.” God said once you get to the promised land and begin to enjoy a life of freedom and the abundance of that land, don’t forget me and our relationship and the things you need to do to maintain our relationship. When you are free and safe and fat and happy, remember me. God knew that the Hebrew people would again and again forget their covenant.
Micah preached during one of those periods in the history of the Hebrew people when things were going well. When they had forgotten their covenant with the one who delivered them from slavery. Things were going well for the nation of Israel economically and politically. Here’s the way one scholar described it: “The situation of ordinary citizens was of great concern to Micah. He felt compassion for the poor and dispossessed, and held the leaders responsible for their suffering. We can learn something about the people’s social and economic situation from Micah’s condemnation of their rulers, merchants, and prophets. It was a society where the rich and powerful used their influence to exploit the vulnerable and to create even greater inequalities of wealth and influence. The economic situation of the poor was further aggravated by programs of armament and fortification in efforts to hold off the threat from foreign empires. The wealth needed for such a military build up had to come from someone, and the poor surely paid more than their share.”
Micah condemns the leaders of his people for injustices perpetuated against the poor and powerless, a complacency that pretends nothing is wrong and the abuse of power by both political and religious leaders.
When Micah confronted the leaders of the nation with these injustices, their response was to change the subject. They say, “Hey we are good Jews. We go to the temple every Sabbath. We offer sacrifices and we generously give to the temples coffers. What does God expect from us anyway?” And that is the question that Micah answers in our text today. “What does the Lord require of you?” “To do justice, to love kindness and to walk humbly with your God.”
What did “justice” mean in that context? The word “justice” means fairness, fair play and equity within the human family. In the thought of the Old Testament to do justice involved the basic needs, requirements, or even rights of people living together in community. Justice, then, is decidedly social in nature. The practice of justice, either by God or the people, would be to rectify the inequities of a society that allowed some people to be oppressed to the point where they were deprived of the basic needs, requirements, and rights that would allow them to function as part of the community. It is this perspective that lies at the heart of the exodus, and defines the nature of God as a God of justice. God’s covenant requires the people whom God delivered from slavery never to treat others as they had been treated in Egypt. To do so would be to violate the very promise that God made to the Hebrew people.
Doing justice would involve both personal and social responsibilities. It would compel one never to act in ways that might produce injustice. And it would also compel one to address the social causes of injustice or conditions that fostered it . God demands that the Hebrew people take responsibility for their personal behavior and the behavior of their leaders. There are nine words that are most often associated with the word, “justice,” in the Bible. "Widow," "fatherless," "orphans," "poor," "hungry," "stranger," "needy," "weak" and "oppressed." In this list of words, you did not find the word, “rich.” Indeed, rich is often associated with injustice. You don’t have to worry about the rich, because the rich will be able to afford justice. Worry about the widows, the fatherless, the orphans, the poor, the hungry, the strangers, the needy, the weak and the oppressed. God requires that we work for fairness for the little people of our world. God requires a commitment to the poor, oppressed, and powerless in a society, people who have no voice of their own by which to redress the injustices that marginalize them as human beings. And, as is so often evident in Scripture as well as human experience, such a practice of justice most often brings one into conflict with oppressors who are perpetrating the injustice, and that makes doing justice an act of courage as well as an act of devotion to God.
“What does the Lord require of you?” “To do justice, to love kindness and to walk humbly with your God.”
What does “loving kindness” mean in the context of Micah’s message? This is the Hebrew term “hesed” which has a depth of meaning hard to capture in a single English word. It has been translated “kindness,” and “mercy” but no one English word can express its meaning. "Covenant faithfulness," "compassion," "loyal love," "loving devotion," and "steadfast love" are all attempts to translate this term. It is often used to describe God’s faithful actions throughout history on behalf of God’s people. But the term can also be used of people, often in the same covenantal contexts in which the people were expected to respond to God with a steadfast loyalty and love that reflected the compassion and grace that God had demonstrated to them.
"Hesed," then, is a relationship term. It is not a warm-fuzzy-feeling kind of love, but the commitment and steadfast dependability that arises from mutual relationship. To love "hesed" was to be committed not only to God who had demonstrated "hesed" to the people. It was also to live in community in such a way that "hesed" marked life together as God’s people. To love "hesed" was to be committed to a quality of life that was governed by the principles of mutual respect, helpfulness, and loving concern.
“What does the Lord require of you?” “To do justice, to love kindness and to walk humbly with your God.”
What did Micah mean when he said “walk humbly with your God?” "Walking a path" is a common biblical metaphor for living a certain kind of life. "Walking humbly with God" is a call to do more than to come to God with offerings thinking to buy God’s favor. It is a call to live our lives with God in ways that would work out in every aspect of life. It implies a sensitivity to the things of God. To allow our hearts to be broken by the things that break the heart of God. It is a deep desire to see the world through the eyes of God, to act in the world as God would act.
When this final requirement is placed alongside the first two, "walking with God" becomes synonymous with having a heart for justice and compassion. In this sequence, "walking with God" is actually the overarching category for doing justice and loving hesed. They cannot be separated, for walking humbly with God, living all of life under God and in relationship to God, will result in both.
“What does the Lord require of you?” “To do justice, to love kindness and to walk humbly with your God.”
The God who led the Hebrews out of slavery in Egypt and into the promise land requires the people who have been so blessed to be a blessing to others. To walk with that God means to live a life of steadfast love for others, especially those whom Jesus called “the least of these.” When we understand these message of the prophet Micah, we realize that Jesus didn’t make all this stuff up. He stood in the long line of Hebrew prophets who called their people to "walk humbly" with their God.
“What does the Lord require of you?” “To do justice, to love kindness and to walk humbly with your God.” The God whom Jesus called “Abba,” “Papa,” has the same expectations of us as God had of the Hebrew people in Micah’s day. As Christians who have received the gracious gift of God’s love, we too have been delivered from slavery, from bondage to all that could kept us from living as Jesus lived and loving as Jesus loved.
And if Micah was hear today, I think he would ask us if we have forgotten our covenant with God. I think Micah might say to us: You have been delivered from slavery and arrived in the promised land. You enjoy a life of freedom and the abundance of that land, but you have forgotten God and your relationship with God and the things you need to do to maintain that relationship. God says, “When you are free and safe and fat and happy, remember me.”
Like the Hebrew people, we would protest. We would say, “God, I go to church every Sunday. I support my church’s ministry. What more do you want from me?” And Micah would ask, “What does the Lord require of you?” And you would answer: “To do justice, to love kindness and to walk humbly with your God.” He would say, “It doesn’t matter where you are on Sundays, if you are not walking humbly with your God on Monday and Tuesday and Wednesday and Thursday and Friday and Saturday.
And we would say, “But God, we live in a Christian nation. Our leader is a compassionate conservative. We boldly proclaim our Christianity to all the world.” And Micah would say, “It doesn’t matter if you post the Ten Commandments on all your public buildings if only the rich can afford justice in your courts. It doesn’t matter that you stand up for prayer in schools, if you deny poor children the health care that your children all have access to. It doesn’t matter if you are pro-life and demand that no fetus ever be aborted, if you refuse to provide the resources, the tax dollars, to keep them fed, and healthy and educated once they are here. It doesn’t matter that you shout loudly when somebody wants to take “In God We Trust” off your currency, if your whole life is consumed with consuming, with acquiring, with buying the things that those dollars can buy.
“What does the Lord require of you?” “To do justice, to love kindness and to walk humbly with your God.” What must we do to walk humbly with our God? We must be vigilant in our personal and political lives to make sure that every child of God is treated equally and fairly. We must be certain that no child of God is left behind in slavery to the forces of greed. We must live as Jesus lived and love as Jesus loved.
“What does the Lord require of you?” “To do justice, to love kindness and to walk humbly with your God.”
Jesus said it this way: John 13:34-35 (New International Version)
34"A new command I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another. 35By this all will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another."
And how do we love one another? We do justice, we love kindness and we walk humbly with our God.
