Thoughts on Micah 6

Today’s reading: Micah 5-6; Mark 16

Could God have made it any more clear to Israel back then, or to us today for that matter, what He is looking for from His people, than He does in Micah 6?

With what shall I come before the Lord,

and bow myself before God on high?

Shall I come before him with burnt offerings,

and calves a year old?

Will the Lord be pleased with thousands of rams,

with ten thousands of rivers of oil?

Shall I give my firstborn for my transgression,

the fruit of my body for the sin of my soul?

He has told you, O man, what is good;

and what does the Lord require of you

but to do justice, and to love kindness,

and to walk humbly with your God?

I said a couple days ago that I feel like a broken record talking about this so much, but the fact that God makes such a constant point of it through every prophet and writer in Israel's history tells me it's worth our constant attention.

It is so easy to think and talk so much about the do's and the don't's. What does God want us to do? What does God want us to avoid? If I do this is God going to be angry with me? How far am I allowed to go here and still be on God's good side? Will this just put me a little bit on God's bad side, or a lot a bit on His bad side? What decision does He want me to make here? What if I make the wrong decision? Will God ever want to use me again if I mess this up? And on and on and on.

We have this picture of God like He is sitting up in heaven with a little notebook, watching us, just waiting eagerly to mark down every mistake, failure, or missed opportunity so that He can stand aloof, look down on us, or judge us for everything He has written down. That leaves us feeling like we have to work to ingratiate ourselves to Him to make up for all the slip-ups and blatant rebellions, so we look to what we are "supposed to be doing" in order to make Him happy with us again. But then when we fail in that, He's back up there with His little notebook, marking down our failures, and we have to get right back into trying to make up for it again. Over and over and over.

But this is not our God...

What does God require of us? To do justice, to love kindness, and to walk humbly with Him. That doesn't sound all that complicated, does it? That doesn't sound like a God who is sitting up there with a little notebook tracking our mistakes, or who has a "right answer" to very decision we could ever need to make, but then is withholding that answer from us, waiting to see if we mess up by choosing the wrong one. This sounds like a God who cares about people, so He wants us to treat one another with justice and kindness, and to live humbly before Him. I just can't honestly get over how different of a picture that is.

The thing is, when it comes to the burnt offerings, calves, rams, and oil, those were things God instructed His people to offer Him. It's not that these were bad things to offer (though the child sacrifice certainly was), but that they were not what God was primarily looking for. He was most looking for His people to do justice, to love kindness, and to walk humbly with Him, and then the sacrifices and offerings should have been flowing forth in expression of that relationship. So too when people today are looking for the "good works" from the bible that they "should be doing," those things are legitimately good, and they should be the outworking of a relationship with the Lord, but they are not a substitute for that relationship. 

First and foremost, God wants your heart. If He doesn't have your heart, nothing else you offer Him has any value. That says a lot to me about the character of our God, and it honestly makes me want, much more than anything else, to give myself and my life to Him more and more.