He has shown you, O mortal, what is good. And what does the Lord require of you? To act justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly with your God. Micah 6:8 (NIV)
PART 1 – Do Justly
Israel had allowed their hearts to wander from God (again), and their connection with Him was merely ceremony and tradition. They offered sacrifices but left their hearts at home. It seemed the people were prepared to offer God anything but their love and devotion.
Micah 6:6-7 (MSG) says, “Should I bring an armload of offerings topped off with yearling calves? Would God be impressed with thousands of rams, with buckets and barrels of olive oil? Would he be moved if I sacrificed my firstborn child, my precious baby, to cancel my sin?”
They just didn’t get it… God wanted THEM, not their stuff… God is first and foremost about RELATIONSHIP. In Vs 3-5, He lists things He’d done for them, not in anger, but in order to remind them of His devotion to them.
These are the things I (God) want from you, I long to share with you… “to act justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly with your God.”
Right here in the Old Testament, we see God leak the themes we find in the New Testament…
Justly here means “judgment, a legal decision rendered, justice as a state or condition of fairness in disputes.” It describes one deciding a question of legal right or wrong, determining innocence or, and assigning appropriate punishment. It also includes the sense that each person has ‘rights’.
We are God’s masterpiece. He has given us the right to access his love and to pass it on to others. We have the ability to learn to make good decisions and wise judgments. And through the lens of redemption (which was present in the OT… it's an ongoing narrative that climaxed with Jesus), the dispute over whether or not people could be accepted by God never fell on their performance or behaved perfectly. This was the issue present in Micah 6… The people thought they could please God by DOING all the right things, that He wouldn’t notice their lack of devotion if the practical requirements of sacrifice were met.
But the whole idea around sacrifice itself was redemption through love… even though we sin and even though our actions find us guilty, through sacrifice He declares us innocent and redeemed. This was God's justice…
“But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.” – Romans 5:8
Every person has the right to experience God's grace, and our just cause must be to show them.
Go to PART 2 “Love Mercy”
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