The Prophet Spoke to the People (Micah 6:8)

SPIRITUAL DIARY FOR 1/6/2016 10:02 PM

My Worship Time                                                            Focus:  The Prophet Spoke to the People

Bible Reading & Meditation                                                            Reference:  Micah 6:8

Message of the verse:  “8 He has told you, O man, what is good; And what does the LORD require of you But to do justice, to love kindness, And to walk humbly with your God?”

I have written in an earlier SD that in my opinion this verse is the most famous and may be the most important verse in the book of Micah.  In this verse we see the prophet tell the children of Israel what it is that they are suppose to do in order to please God, something that they had not been doing.  We see that Micah tells them “what does the LORD require of You” and then he tells them what He requires of them, and for that matter us too.

Dr. Wiersbe writes the following in an end note:  “However, Micah 6:8 must not be mistaken as a condemnation of the Mosaic sacrificial system.  It was right for the Jews to bring their sacrifices to God if their hearts had been broken in repentance and confession of sin.  God wants obedience, not sacrifices (1 Sam. 15:22), and the most important sacrifice is that of a broken and contrite heart (Ps. 51:16).  See also Isaiah 1:11-15 and Hosea 6:6.  Worship that doesn’t produce a godly life is not true worship at all.”

Now the answer that the prophet gives to Israel is that he emphasized moral and ethical conduct, not religious ceremonies, which is something that they were proud of as we see even during the time when Jesus was on earth when the Pharisees mostly did their religious ceremonies without having a right heart before the Lord, as it was some kind of a ritual to them.  False religion is like that doing rituals without having a right heart before the Lord.

Dr. Wiersbe adds to this thought:  “Our Lord’s parable about the Pharisee and the publican in the Temple (Luke 18:9-14) illustrates all three points.  The publican was justified by faith, not by doing the kind of good works that the Pharisee boasted about.  Since the publican depended on God’s mercy to save him, he humbled himself before the Lord.  The Pharisee, on  the other hand, informed God (and whoever was listening in the temple)how good he was and therefore how much he deserved eternal life.”

He goes on to write “To make Micah 6:8 a salvation text is to misunderstand what the prophet was saying to God’s disobedient covenant people.  None of us can do what God requires until first we come to God as broken sinners who need to be saved.  Unsaved people who think they are doing justly, loving mercy, and walking humbly with God are only fooling themselves, no matter how moral their lives may be.  ‘Not by works of righteousness which we have done, but according to His mercy He saved us’ (Titus 3:5).”

We know from history that the people that Micah was ministering to did not get what his message was all about as their hearts were hardened and eventually Babylon would come in an destroy Jerusalem and then their temple which they were offering false worship to the Lord.  Dr. Wiersbe concludes his message on this section by writing “If we see ourselves as God sees us, then we can by faith become what He wants us to become.”

We can see that this verse has been misunderstood by some and the other day I was listening to a sermon by John MacArthur who spoke of another section of Scripture that is also misunderstood that some may even thing it too was not a salvation message, but it actually is.  The parable of the good Samaritan is a message of salvation and there are similar things in it that are in Micah 6:8 which is why I bring this up.  Jesus was talking about a man who was injured and then says that both a Priest and a Pharisee walked by the man not helping him while a dreaded Samaritan did all that he could do to help him and just like in Micah 6:8 no one can do what is required of them only God can do that for them.  In the story of the good Samaritan Jesus was talking to a lawyer who told Him that he did what was required of Him to be saved, but the lawyer misunderstood who his neighbor was and this is why Jesus told him this parable.  In the end the lawyer did not come to Jesus and tell Him that there was no way that he could love his neighbor like the Samaritan loved the man who was beaten up and robbed so what he was showing by his attitude that he did not want to hear anymore about how he could be saved and neither did the people that Micah was talking too.

1/6/2016 10:34 PM