George J. Saylor
May 18, 2008
My poor wife grew up in very a very unjust circumstance- she was a Pastor’s Kid. There are actually support groups for pastors kids because to the issues they have. If you are a PK and have issues, talk to my wife, not me. My dear wife was subjected to what was called “The Calvinettes.” She tells me it was like a Girl Guides troop with a biblical twist. They would get their troop together, put on their little vests and kerchiefs, do crafts, work on earning badges, sing songs and study the bible. The Calvinettes always began with the same ritual- they would all line up and the leader would ask, “Calvinettes of Victoria, what does the Lord require of you?” And in unison the girls would shout back,
“To do justice, love mercy, and walk humbly with our God, Micah 6:8.”To this day my wife still points to this as one of her life verses- one of those verse that provides for her a handle to grasp the Christian life, a ruler to gauge her lifestyle, and a goal for her to try to attain. Those are the hallmarks of a great and worthwhile mission- this verse gives us the direction to set our lives and the tools to get there. It calls us to something greater than just ourselves and our own wants and desires. It gives us something to live for, and something worth dying for. It really is a mission worthy of our entire life.
1 Listen to what the LORD says:
"Stand up, plead your case before the mountains;
let the hills hear what you have to say.
2 Hear, O mountains, the LORD's accusation;
listen, you everlasting foundations of the earth.
For the LORD has a case against his people;
he is lodging a charge against Israel.
3 "My people, what have I done to you?
How have I burdened you? Answer me.
4 I brought you up out of Egypt
and redeemed you from the land of slavery.
I sent Moses to lead you,
also Aaron and Miriam.
5 My people, remember
what Balak king of Moab counseled
and what Balaam son of Beor answered.
Remember your journey from Shittim to Gilgal,
that you may know the righteous acts of the LORD."
6 With what shall I come before the LORD
and bow down before the exalted God?
Shall I come before him with burnt offerings,
with calves a year old?
7 Will the LORD be pleased with thousands of rams,
with ten thousand rivers of oil?
Shall I offer my firstborn for my transgression,
the fruit of my body for the sin of my soul?
8 He has showed you, O man, 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.
Our passage starts as a courtroom scene- God is the plaintiff, Micah the lawyer, Israel the defendant. God is about to make his case, through a man named Micah, against the people of Israel, his chosen people. Which is interesting in itself. Israel is God’s chosen nation, but they seemed to have irreconcilable differences on many occasions. So God decided to take them to court, so to speak. It’s a great scene. When I first studied this passage this really struck me, for my father was a trial lawyer. I thought about this passage, my work as a minister, and my father’s as a trial lawyer, so I called him up I told him, “You know Dad, we have a lot more in common than one might think. We both serve a client rather than ourselves; we both spend days, weeks, or months reviewing our cases, going over the facts, interviewing witnesses, taking statements and preparing our arguments. Then, when the hour comes, we go before a gathering of our peers, we present our case, and try to persuade them to decide in favor of our client. At the end of the day we let the facts speak for themselves, trusting that the truth will become plain and clear to all.” As my father reflected on that he said, “You know George, if that’s the case, then you would have made a lousy lawyer!”
Well like any good lawyer (No, that’s not an oxymoron) Micah presents the facts, plain and simple. He says God has a case against His people. They haven’t stopped to be God’s, God’s plans have not been thwarted by the failures of people. But he definitely has a case against them. He reminded the people that it was he who brought them out of Egypt, out of slavery. Then he says remember what I did for you and remember your journey from the desert to the promised land- I saved you from curses and I delivered you to the land flowing with milk and honey. He reminds them of specific instances, places and people. He goes on to remind them how it was God himself who showed them how to worship. He asks will I be pleased with burnt offerings, dead rams, rivers of oil, even the offering of a child sacrifice. Remember, in the time and context of God’s dealing with the people of Israel this was the ultimate expression of worship, the ultimate offering to many of the so-called gods- offering a human, a child sacrifice.
God has reminded the people that it is he who is good and who has done good to them. He freed them and fed them, he lead them and loved them. So when he asks the question, “What is good and what does the Lord require of you?” All he has to do is point them back to what he has already done. For the Lord has already shown them. The Lord has acted with justice, and so he asks in response for his people to act justly. He has loved and shown mercy, so the people of God are to love mercy. He has walked humbly with his children, and so they are to walk humbly with him.
If want to please God, if we want to do what he would require of us today, then we are called to act justly, love mercy, and walk humbly with God. So lets’ look at what living this out could look like.
First, God requires that we act justly. That is, God cares about we do, and he has shown us, by his own doing, what justice looks like. For Israel this meant that God brought them out of slavery, out of an unjust system of oppression and government. God fleshed that out for Israel through the commands, decrees and laws. What is a great starting place to know how to do justice? We should know the 10 commandments- Worship God alone, do not worship any idols, honor His name, honor the Sabbath and keep it holy, honor your parents, do not murder, commit adultery, steal, lie, or covet. I believe we should actually have the commandments memorized. We should also memorize an even simpler form, a way that Jesus summarized justice for us.
“Do to other as you would have them do to you,” the Golden Rule in Mathew 7:12.We are all born with this kind of internal justice sensor. It’s a bit skewed, but it’s there- this internal longing that we be treated justly. And whenever we are treated, or believe we’ve been treated without justice, our hearts and voices scream out. Think it’s not true- I invite you to come to my house, off my kids a cookie, then when you break it in half, and give each half. If one of those halves has one microscope speck of more cookie, the other going to scream- it’s not fair! We’ve about got the point in my house where we’re going to buy one of those super sensitive scales to help us dish out bowls of ice cream. We are wired to want justice for ourselves. That’s the given. But we must learn to offer to others as well.
Therefore, if we are going to do justice in and through our lives, we are going to have to be saturated with God’s Word- we are going to have to know the law, and more importantly, the spirit of the law. We have to become biblical ethicists. Otherwise, we will become situational ethicists.
These are the only two ways to approach justice- we have our ethics and they guide and direct our lives. Or we let our lives guide and direct our ethics. Clearly we see, from God’s actions, from God’s laws, from the example of Jesus Christ that we must live by the Bible’s standard.
Now I’ll be the first to say that this is difficult. It’s not always clear cut. Which is exactly why we have to think about and pray about our ethics in advance. The biblical ethicist looks deeply at the situation and determines the ethics that are appropriately exercised. The situational ethicist simple reverse the order. They say that what is ethical or true in one situation might not be the same in another. But here’s the thing- both positions look at the situation, one determines strictly from the situation how it is to be handled. The other seeks to apply what is timely and eternal- and that is God’s justice. We have to know the bible and allow it to guide us so that when we come into difficult ethical and justice situations we will have a reference point to begin working with.
We must study the justice issues of our day in light of God’s Word. As Abram Kuyper once said, the pages of our Bible must be smudged with the ink of our newspaper. What are the justice issues of our day? What are the issues we are trying to navigate through? What does the Bible speak to them? Euthanasia, abortion, divorce, war in Afghanistan and Iraq, genocide in the Sudan, the arms race, cyclones in Burma, earthquakes in China, Olympics in China, land claims in Canada, and the list goes on. And if you think that these issues are not addressed in the bible, you haven’t read the bible. The bible tells it like it is. The major justice issues of humanity, all of them, are address in the stories of scripture. Because our God is a God of justice who longs for justice to be done.
All people, and all the world, longs for justice. But if we are going to do God’s justice we must know His Word, look at the situations, and apply justice with love and mercy. Which leads us to our next requirement: love mercy. Which will lead us into the final step in following God’s requirements- to walk humbly with him. But that will have to wait until next Sunday. Because this issue of justice can’t be tackled in one service. Not in two services, and not in our lifetime I suspect. In fact, we know that justice will not finally roll down like a river, as the prophet Isaiah described, until Jesus comes again in a victory of justice. But it is precisely because of the promised victory over injustice in our world that we can become agents of justice today. We can become people of justice and a church of justice, and we can worship a God of justice today.
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