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""With what shall I come before the LORD, and bow myself before God on high? 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 thousands of rivers of oil? Shall I give my firstborn for my transgression, the fruit of my body for the sin of my soul?" {8} He has told you, O mortal, 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?"
Micah 6:6-8
As a philosophy student at Purdue University I often came across some very interesting patterns of thought. One that seemed to surface on a regular basis involved the issue of motives. It seemed that the current thought would suggest that the morality of an action depended solely on the motives behind the action. So even if my actions resulted in the demise of another individual, as long as they were based on good motives they were themselves good. While it is obvious to any logical thinking person that this philosophy fails at its very core, it cannot be denied that motives play a large part in determining whether an action is good or bad, if that action has no moral value of it's own.
Consider the student who told about a famous lecture who came to the college he attended. The lecturer spoke about feeding the people of India. He listed several good reasons for doing so, such as more men would be employed, friendly relations with other countries would be established; in addition, he would continue to be in the good graces of the Indian people and of the government. During the informal discussion the oldest and most revered professor at the college asked, "But, Doctor, don't you think maybe we ought to feed them just because they're hungry
It is important to understand as Christians that there are certain things that we do which are approved of by scripture, which can be listed as sins if the are done for ungodly reasons or if they lead us to do ungodly things.
This is very true in the realm of personal sacrifice. Most of us if not all of us have had the idea presented to us by our intellect that if we would make some sacrifice for God then God would do something good for us. Keep in mind that this is not a false doctrine. It is not untrue that God rewards with goodness those who are good. Take for example this passage from (2 Sam 22:21-27 NRSV)
The LORD rewarded me according to my righteousness; according to the cleanness of my hands he recompensed me. {22} For I have kept the ways of the LORD, and have not wickedly departed from my God. {23} For all his ordinances were before me, and from his statutes I did not turn aside. {24} I was blameless before him, and I kept myself from guilt. {25} Therefore the LORD has recompensed me according to my righteousness, according to my cleanness in his sight. {26} With the loyal you show yourself loyal; with the blameless you show yourself blameless; {27} with the pure you show yourself pure, and with the crooked you show yourself perverse.
It has to be understood by all that God is in the business of recognizing our goodness and our good deeds by being faithful and good to us. This is not to say that God's grace is dependent on our goodness, that is proved incorrect during a very short time spent reading the book of Romans. This only shows us that God will bless those who seek to glorify His name through selfless actions.
The problem occurs when our actions are precipitated by our own motives and sense of morality instead of by God's morality. This is clearly illustrated in the context of the passage I have chosen to discuss this morning.
At the beginning of chapter six in the book of Micah the scene is much like that of a court room. The mountains and the hills are the judge advocate to whom God is bringing His charge against the people. They have wronged Him and He is presenting His case to the silent hills and mountains surrounding Him. But notice that He is not only acting the part of plaintive in a court hearing. He is also portraying His own compassion for His people by pleading with them for an explanation for their recent rebellion against Him.
I find it a joy to realize that God's love for His children is so great that even when they are clearly in the wrong He is willing to say "O my people, what have I done to you? In what have I wearied you? Answer me!" How often have you been at the end of your rebelling and wondered what God was thinking. I assure you this, His first thought is to find some way to place the blame for your sin on someone else, even if that person must be Himself.
And so God recounts His history with His children. He relates to them His faithfulness, He recounts the multitude of times that He has brought them to river of life when death seemed immanent. And now is the time for His children to respond. And I think in their response you will see your own past frustration concerning your relationship with God and also the danger in relying on your own morality as a means to secure God's favor.
With one clear voice the people cried out:
"With what shall I come before the LORD, and bow myself before God on high? Shall I come before him with burnt offerings, with 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?"
Now if God was simply pleased by actions which portrayed a selfless attitude, I'm sure His answer to this question would be yes. However; there are three things here which prevent God from allowing these actions to bring about peace between Himself and His rebellious children.
Before we find out what those three things are let me assure you that God is not a faithless being who does not understand the value of rewarding His children for good behavior. Just as the passage from 2 Samuel that we read earlier suggest the Psalmist confirms with this thought: Love the LORD, all you his saints. The LORD preserves the faithful, but abundantly repays the one who acts haughtily.
Now that fits with all my presuppositions concerning fairness and justice. If I am good then I should be treated good, and if I am bad then I should be treated badly. My mother used to say "If you're going act like a baby then I'll treat you like a baby, if you want to be treated like an adult then you'd best start acting like one." And there is not a person in this room who cannot relate to this way of thinking. And so when read the litany of sacrifices that the people are willing to make in order to appease God, we naturally assume that God would forgive them. Yet that is not the case.
The reason God is not satisfied with their offer can be found in the three problems I alluded to a moment ago.
First of all, these people, like so many of us today, lived with a fatal misconception about the demands of justice and the severity of their sins. They realized, true enough that justice was an eye for eye type of thing. What they didn't realize was that they were trying to give an eye when a life had been taken. In the scales of justice if I kill some one, then I should lose my life. But even when we are willing to give everything we have to satisfy the demands of justice the scales still tip against us. We cannot pay enough to God in order to satisfy justice and subdue His wrath. This is confirmed in Ephesians 2:12 which describes the Christian as previously without hope because the Christian was previously without Christ. Without Christ making the payment which justice demands we would always be in justices debt.
The second problem with this attempt at pleasing God involves the motives behind the actions. It is my firm belief that God is insulted by the "sin and then pay penance for forgiveness" attitude. It is true enough that God does not have a limit to the number of sins He will forgive. He has already forgiven them all to infinity. Yet as Paul said; "What then are we to say? Should we continue in sin in order that grace may abound? By no means! How can we who died to sin go on living in it?"
However; there is a definite display of poor motives in the words of God's people in Micah 6:6,7. It was their belief that if they just sacrificed enough God would forgive them. And while we have seen that God will bless us for being a blessing to others, we must also realize that when He is determining whether we were truly attempting to be a blessing or just attempting to position ourselves for further praise and blessing from Him and others, He will judge our motives. We know that Christ is the Word and Hebrews tells us that the Word "is able to judge the thoughts and intentions of the heart." Our actions when done in the right frame of mind can bring about the blessings of God. However it is a fact that those same actions, when done out of a desire to bring myself comfort and praise, or out in an attitude of self preservation, amount to nothing but sinfulness, deceitfulness, and one hideous insult toward God's grace.
And that brings us to the final issue, that of the problem of relying on our own idea of justification rather than on God's own plan. This is a minor point and I'll deal with it quickly but please don't miss it because of it's brevity. You will note that in the list of possible sacrifices the people resorted to the possibility that God might go so far as to expect the sacrifice of our firstborn children. If you'll remember from Old Testament History, God condemns the human sacrifice. He would never accept it from us let alone require it of us. Yet you see how warped we can become when we ignore God's plan for redemption and try to create our own, and when we attempt to find ways to please God for the wrong reasons. We ultimately, if we go unchecked, cross the line from being involved the gray area of sin into the definite rebellious actions. In our attempts to appease God, we become more and more desperate until we finally succumb to outright sinful actions, all in the hope that God will be appeased.
But, ultimately even that course of action will reveal itself, as it did to the Israelites, as vain pursuit of an unattainable goal and we will cry out "What then does God require of me?"
That question is not left hanging. God, through Micah answers it quickly and so shall I. Micah writes: "He has told you, O mortal, 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?" Ultimately what this means is that we are to be imitators of Christ. For in Christ all of these things can be seen in purity. Christ's actions were always based on pure motives, namely to glorify the name of God. And this pleased God greatly. You will remember the baptism of Jesus when "just as he came up from the water, suddenly the heavens were opened to him and he saw the Spirit of God descending like a dove and alighting on him. And a voice from heaven said, "This is my Son, the Beloved, with whom I am well pleased." God was well pleased with His son because His son had acted according to God's plan not his own. We too must act according to God's plan instead of our own and we must do so with the motive of glorifying the name of God.
God is not interested in your sacrifices, however dear they might be. He is only interested in your devotion to Him and His ways. When Micah says that we are to act justly and love mercy he is telling us that we are to imitate God, we are to be like God in his very nature.
And when he tells us to walk humbly with God he means that we are to submit to His authority in our lives and to live obediently under his command. He is calling us to submission to God's sovereignty. We must think highly of God, and we must uphold His decrees and His will. Never should we grumble against His actions or against His movements in our lives. Whatever God does is for the good of those who love Him. It is always important to remember as a believer that we are unworthy of the right to serve God. We are bought out of the pit of our own demise at a price of the highest proportion and we have no right of our own. As God's possession it is our duty to do His will and to obey His decrees.
When C.H. Spurgeon was under the conviction of the Holy Spirit, he had a clear sense of the justice of God, and sin became an intolerable burden. He didn't fear hell as much as he despised the reality of his own wrong-doing. He said, "All the while I had upon my mind a deep concern for the honor of God's name and the integrity of His moral government. I felt that it would not quiet my conscience if I could be forgiven without justice being satisfied. But then came the question: `How can God be just and yet justify me with all my guilt?'" Spurgeon finally came to see that substitutionary atonement was the answer. He said, "I believe that the doctrine of Jesus paying for my sins is one of the surest proofs of the inspiration of Scripture, for who would or could have thought of the just Ruler dying for the unjust rebel?"
And that is what happened, and that is how we will peace with God. Not through our actions, and not through our own motives. Only if you rely on God's grace and the substitutionary death of Christ will you find joy in your life and peace with your God. And so I encourage you today, lean on God, trust in His ways, acknowledge His sovereignty, and live life according to His plan, and you please Him more than you ever could through costly sacrifices.
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