LIFE LESSONS
THE PROPHETS: MICAH
DR. JIM DIXON
MICAH 6:6-8
MARCH 28, 2004
The name Allahabad means “city of God.” Allahabad is the name of a city in North Central India. For the Hindus, Allahabad is the most sacred place in the world because it is there that their two holy rivers come together—the River Ganges and the River Yamuna. They both come together at Allahabad. For this reason, at the city of Allahabad there is, every 12 years, a great religious festival called the Behah Kumbha Mela, the Great Kumbha Mela, sometimes called the Mehamela. This great festival is the largest religious gathering in the world.
In the year 1989, more than 12 million Hindus made the pilgrimage to the Great Meha Kumbha Mela. In the year 2001, 20 million Hindus made that pilgrimage and were gathered there in Allahabad. They projected that in the year 2013 when the next festival is held, 30 million Hindus will be there. And why? Why do they come? Why do they make the pilgrimage? Why do they receive ritualistic cleansing in the Ganges and in the Yamuna Rivers?
It’s really all about their desire to stop the seemingly endless process of death and rebirth because Hindus believe in reincarnation and they believe the soul experiences many lifetimes, almost countless lifetimes, and that the soul over these lifetimes is either progressing and regressing and if, in this life you live well, then in the next life your soul might be born into a higher caste and into a better life. If in this life you live poorly, then in the next life your soul might be born into a lower caste or even a lower life form. In the course of five lifetimes, you may literally take two steps forward and three steps backwards. It’s just a nearly endless journey, this process of reincarnation.
I don’t know about you but I don’t believe in reincarnation. The Bible doesn’t teach reincarnation. Christianity does not teach reincarnation. In fact, the Bible says, “It’s appointed unto man once to die and after that the judgement. One life. One judgement.” So, you see, from a biblical perspective, if we’re going to get it right, we need to do it in this life. We don’t have other lives. We’ve got to figure it out now. If we’re going to figure out this thing called life, now is the time we’ve got to do it. One life. One judgement.
We come to the prophet Micah. Micah was a prophet of God. He was an 8th century prophet of Judah. He was a contemporary of Isaiah. He served God during the reigns of Ahaz and Hezekiah. He was from the village of Moresheth. Micah knew that the people of God had one life, one lifetime, and he was concerned because they were not living by the moral law. The people of God were honoring the ceremonial law so they were undergoing the rite of circumcision; they were honoring the feasts and the festivals. They were bringing their sacrifices in accordance with the Levitical sacrificial system. They were eating kosher food in accordance with the Levitical dietary laws. They were honoring all of the ceremonial laws, but Micah knew the ceremonial law was nothing compared to the moral law. There was nothing more important than the moral law as given in the Decalogue or the Ten Commandments and throughout the Torah.
And so, Micah wrote to the people of God. He said, “With what shall I come before the Lord, my God, and bow myself before God on high? Shall I come before Him with burnt offerings, with calves a year old? Would the Lord be pleased with thousands of rams or ten thousands of rivers of oil? Shall I offer my firstborn for my transgression, the fruit of my body for the sin of my soul? No, God has shown you, oh human, what is right, for what does the Lord require of you but to do justice, to love kindness and to walk humbly with your God.” And so, Micah sums up the moral law with these three attributes. Do justice. Love kindness. Walk humbly with your God. This has been called the “summum bonum” of the moral law. It’s sums up the moral law.
In Matthew 23, Jesus quotes this verse; Micah 6:8. Jesus tells us that this expresses the weightiest matters of the law. It sums it up. So, we’re going to take a look at what it means to do justice, love kindness and walk humbly with your God. If we are the people of God, this is what He requires of us. First of all, do justice. What does the Lord require of you but that you do justice.
In August of 1944, a couple of months after D-Day, the U.S. Third Army under the leadership of General George Patton was marching towards Paris. Along the way they encountered resistance in German towns and villages. Some German soldiers fought and some German soldiers surrendered. Those who were taken captives were put in American POW camps, Prisoner of War Camps. Now, all of those prisoners of war were interrogated by American officers. They were questioned and there’s an amazing but true story that took place in Europe in August of 1944. Two German soldiers in an American POW camp were interrogated and it was discovered that they did not speak German, these two German soldiers. Of course, they did not speak English and so the U.S. interrogators did not know what to do. These two men looked kind of Asian so they brought in some interrogators who could speak various Asian languages. Ultimately they discovered that these two German soldiers were from Tibet. They were from Tibet and three years earlier they had decided to take a hike from their village in Tibet into the nearby mountains.
These two friends had taken this hike in 1941 into the mountains. They went over the top of the mountains and came down the other side near the Soviet border and they were taken captive by Soviet soldiers. Incredibly they were given Soviet Army uniforms. They were given Soviet rifles and they were sent to the Russian front. They were Buddhist pacifists, these two guys, and they were confused. They didn’t know what was going on and yet they were uniform with rifles. They didn’t want to kill anybody and they didn’t want to be killed. They were just kind of scrambling around and trying to hide. Ultimately, in a battle between the Russians and the Germans, these two guys were taken captive by the Germans. More incredibly they were given German uniforms, German rifles and sent to the German front. Again, they didn’t know what was going on. They just tried to get out of the way and ultimately they were taken captive by the U.S. Third Army led by General George Patton and brought to a POW camp. They said they had one question. “Why is everybody trying to kill each other?”
A lot of people died in World War II. A lot of soldiers died in World War II, some from the allied powers, some from the axis nations, but the number of soldiers who died pales with compared with the number of civilians who died. Thirty million civilians in the Soviet Union and China alone died. Of course, 6 million Jewish men, women and children were gassed and incinerated in Nazi concentration camps.
If you were to ask any American soldier who fought in that war, they would tell you that they were fighting for justice. They would tell you that from their perspective it was a just war. From our perspective as a nation, it was a just war. They would say that we were seeking to make the world a fairer place. We were seeking to make the world a place with more justice. We were seeking to stop the Nazi atrocities and the madman that Adolph Hitler was. We were seeking to stop the insatiable appetite for conquest that characterized Imperial Japan. We were seeking a fairer world, a most just world.
Of course, today this is the question in the lingering aftermath of the Iraq war. Is it a just war? Americans ask the question, “Are we seeking to make the world a fairer place? Are we seeking to make the world a place of greater justice? Are we doing justice?” The answers will vary but if you’re a Christian you can’t deny this. We’re called to fight for justice. You are called to fight for justice. You might live and die and never fight in a physical war. I hope and pray you never have to do that but all of us are called to fight for justice. We’re all called to seek a better world, a world that is more just, a world that is fairer. The Hebrew word for justice in this passage from Micah is “rnispot.” This word has a root meaning of judgement but it means, “justice” or “fairness” because judgement is for the purpose of implementing fairness and justice and we’re called to seek a fairer world.
The world is not fair. Life is not fair. Some people are born into great wealth. Other people are born into great poverty. Some are born into wonderful families with loving parents. Some are born into broken homes and real tragic situations. Some are given good looks and others don’t look so good. Some are highly intelligent. Some are not so smart. Some have great opportunity. Other people are born with little opportunity. Life’s not fair. Of course, there are some who would question whether God is fair because God has allowed this unfair world, but the Bible tell us that this world is fallen. This world is riddled by sin, not as it was meant to be. God promises that one day He will judge the world and He will bring justice. The Bible promises that one day Jesus will come again and He will bring justice. Jesus says, “Behold, I am corning soon, bringing my recompense to repay everyone for what he has done. I am the Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the end, the first and the last, the Lord God Almighty.”
Of course, the corning of Christ, the second corning of Christ, is prophesied in Isaiah 11. “Behold, a shoot shall come forth from the stump of Jesse. A branch shall grow out of his roots. The Spirit of the Lord shall be upon Him. The spirit of wisdom and understanding, the spirit of counsel and might, the spirit of knowledge and the fear of the Lord. He shall not judge by what his eyes see nor decide what his ears hear but with righteousness He shall judge the poor and He shall decide with equity for the meek of the earth. He shall smite the earth with the rod of His mouth and with the breath of his lips he will slay the wicked.” He will bring justice. But in the meantime, the people of God are called to DO justice, to seek to make the world fair.
We’re always inviting you to do justice. We’re always inviting you to do this and this is why we have Manna Ministries and we feed hundreds of people every week who are poor—thousands of people every year. We invite you to volunteer and help with Manna Ministries and a hundred of you work regularly with Manna Ministries doing justice. This is why we invite you to go into the inner city with one of our 19 inner city ministries. This is why we invite you to be inner city tutors and mentors of inner city children who have less than us, that we might do some justice. Over a thousand of you HAVE gone into the inner city and you’ve been a mentor or a tutor doing justice.
This is why we invite you to join us in going down to Juarez and working with impoverished people down there, building houses, doing justice. Many of you have gone. What does the Lord require of us but that we do justice? This is why we support Project CURE which takes medical supplies to Third World nations. This is why we work with World Vision which brings food and clothing as well as the gospel to impoverished people all over the world. We want to do justice and we want to help you do justice. What does the Lord require of you but that you do justice?
I hear all the time how churches should not get involved in politics. If ever I say anything that is remotely political, I always get a few letters or maybe a lot. It’s always like, “separation of church and state,” “never mention politics,” but WOW! Do you realize that if you’re a Christian, you HAVE to get involved in politics because you have to do justice and politics simply has to do with public social policies that should be enacted to make our nation and our world a fairer place. That’s what politics is all about, fairness, justice.
Sometimes the Democratic Party is on the side of justice. Sometimes the Republican Party is on the side of justice. Sometimes neither party is on the side of justice. Sometimes both parties are on the side of justice. Sometimes both parties are seeking justice but in different ways but you’ve got to get involved. Do you realize what a privilege it is to live in a nation where we have the right to vote? If you do not vote, how are you doing justice? How are you participating in what God requires of us? So, we have this first ingredient of the moral law. What does the Lord require of us but that we do justice?
Secondly, that we love kindness. In Micah’s threefold summation of the moral law, this is the one most often misunderstood. What does the Lord require of you but that you love kindness? A lot of people think, “Well, that just means you’re supposed to be nice to everybody.” That’s not really the force of the Hebrew here. You see, the word for kindness in the Hebrew is the Hebrew word, “hesed.” This word hesed is transliterated into English in a variety of ways. This word is really misrendered when you think of it simply as kindness. The word hesed is perhaps the most beautiful word in the Bible but it can’t be rendered into English or it could not even be rendered into Greek. In the Septuagint, in the Greek translation of the Hebrew Old Testament, there are three different Greek words used to render this one Hebrew word hesed.
One of them is the Greek word, “eleos” which means, “mercy.” Another is the Greek word “charis” which means, “grace.” Another is the Greek word, “agape” which means, “love,” so all three of these words—mercy, grace and love—eleos, charis, agape are all used to render hesed because hesed has to do with love and with mercy and grace but it is stronger than that because it has to do with steadfastness and patience and endurance. It has to do with enduring love, enduring mercy, enduring grace. This is the meaning of hesed and we never fully understand hesed until we understand that it is a covenant word. This is a covenant word always used within the context of covenant. So, this isn’t “just be nice to everybody.” We can’t reduce this to mere sentimentality. This is a strong word. In the context of covenant, endure in your mercy, endure in your love, endure in your grace.
Two weeks ago, Barb and I were in San Diego at a pastors’ conference, the National Pastors Conference. There were three thousand pastors there. One of them was a man named Gordon McDonald who pastors a church in New England. Some of you have heard of Gordon. He was there with his wife. She spoke to the conference and said she thought the greatest problem with the Christian church was Christians who put their jobs over their families and their jobs over their marriages. She had the right to speak to us about marriage because she had enduring love, enduring mercy and enduring grace in her marriage. You see, her husband Gordon McDonald, some years ago committed adultery. He had to leave the pastorate. He had to leave his church, but she didn’t leave him. She had hesed, enduring mercy, enduring grace, enduring love, supernatural. Their marriage is held together and they’re back ministering again largely because of her and hesed.
This word is generally used in the Bible in the context of the Divine Covenant. If you’re a Christian, you’ve entered into a divine covenant. As you entered into that divine covenant through a commitment to Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior… As you entered into that divine covenant you experienced something of hesed. You experienced something of God’s love and mercy and grace and His relentless love, mercy and love. You experienced that.
I know many of you have heard of Brendan Manning. Brendan Manning is older now but decades ago when he was a young man, Brendan Manning became a Franciscan priest. He took his vows and he pledged that he would live a life in subservience and submission to Jesus Christ and he would seek to model the ways and teachings of St. Francis of Assisi. Brendan Manning was truly committed. He did what few of us would do, I know what I would not do. He went and lived in a cave for 6 months, lived in monastic seclusion, participated in radical self-denial, but his life began to break down in the priesthood. He had begun to drink and he became an alcoholic. Incomprehensibly, his life just unraveled and he found himself living as a street person for year and a half in a major U.S. city, destitute, despondent, begging, living in rags. Incredible. For a year and a half.
He remembered, “One day a mom came up to him with her little son. They were just walking down the street and her son ran up to him. The mom said, ‘No! No! Don’t go to him! Stay away from him! He’s despicable trash! He’s trash! He’s just trash!” Brendan Manning remembered thinking, “I AM trash,” but somehow through a series of events, he became aware of hesed, the relentless love, mercy and grace of God. He realized that God still loved him, and God’s mercy and grace were still there and that in the sight of God he was not trash but precious. It was that love of God that covenant love that brought him back. Today he is the author of many books and he speaks in many places and he is touching the lives of millions of people because of hesed. But we need to understand as Christians when we come into this covenant relationship, that we now are called to hesed. We’re called to this covenant love. That means that I am to love the covenant community. This is not mere sentimentality. I need to love the covenant community, the community of Christ, and I need to love it with an enduring love, with an enduring mercy and grace.
What does the Lord require of you? That you do justice, you seek a fairer world and that you love the community of God’s people. Covenant love. Hesed. This is what He requires of you. That means that you. That means you’ve got to come to church. How are you going to love the covenant community if you don’t come to church? That means that you need to serve the people of God with undying love, with undying mercy, with undying grace and we give you that opportunity. Every time you volunteer to teach Sunday School, that’s hesed. That’s covenant love for the covenant community and it’s enduring. When you teach Sunday School, when you lead a small group, when you sing in the choir, when you work in the parking lot. That’s all hesed, covenant love with steadfastness. That’s what the Lord requires of us. That’s what the Lord requires of His people.
Of course, when we give our dollars and we tithe, this too is hesed. It’s covenant love. It’s what the Lord requires of us, that we give to His covenant people and to the needs of the people, to the needs of the covenant community of the church. It’s all part of hesed. Then finally, that we walk humbly with our God so that we do justice and we love the covenant community and finally we walk humbly with our God. Of course, this word for humble is a very unusual word in the Hebrew. The word, “to walk” is kind of a Hebraic idiom and it means, “lifestyle,” that you are to have a lifestyle as a Christian, as a follower of God. As a member of the people of God, you are to have a lifestyle of humility before God, but the word for humility is an unusual Hebrew word. It’s “tsana.” This word tsana is only used in two places in the entire Bible. The normal Hebrew word for humility is “anavah” or “ani” and it means. Anavah is used hundreds of times in the Old Testament for humility, but is not used here because anavah can be associated with poverty as well as humility. Anavah can be associated with suffering as well as humility, affliction as well as humility. Oftentimes in the minds of ancient peoples, humility was associated with poverty, with affliction, with suffering, and so God doesn’t choose the word anavah here. He doesn’t want you to be confused, so this word tsana means that you are to be humble whether you are rich or poor, whether you are afflicted or whether you are living in comfort. Whatever, you are to be humble before God.
To understand the meaning of tsana, we need to see how this word was used in the world of animals because this word was used in the world of animals. From the earliest days, lions and tigers have been captured and held in captivity, these ferocious beasts. Of course, Ramses II, Pharaoh of all Egypt, always went into battle with a lion as a mascot. It was kept in a cage. According to many traditions, Julius Caesar, whenever he returned to Rome and made his triumphful entry down the Via Sacra with trumpeters before him and his vast army behind him and the spoils of war… According to tradition he came in a chariot pulled by a team of lions but most historians today doubt that because it was impossible to control a team of lions.
We know that the Roman Emperor Elagabalus who ruled Rome from 218 to 222 DID, on occasion, ride in a chariot pulled by a chained team of lions but he was given a wide birth because the team of lions killed people. That’s what historians tell us. Though they were chained, they would kill people along the roadside. Unbelievable. Of course, throughout history lions and tigers have been exhibited in circuses and menageries and zoos, but those who work with lions and tigers will tell you they’re never tamed. Siegfried and Waah, better known as Siegfried and Roy, could tell you that too. They’re never tamed. Of course, Roy was injured by a tiger this past year. He is slowly recovering. Lions and tigers are never really tame.
In Israel in the time of Christ and in biblical times, there were many lions. Not tigers but lions and they lived in the Jordan Valley that was lush and they lived in the hills of Judea and Samaria. They were feared and of course David and Samson were renowned because they had confronted lions. There were many varieties of animals in Israel in biblical times. Some of them were called tsana. Some of those animals were called tsana, which doesn’t really mean humble. That’s not an adequate rendering. Tsana means, “tame.” Lions were never called tsana because lions could not be truly tamed. They did not obey. There were not domesticated.
Horses were called tsana and King Solomon had tens of thousands of horses and he kept them in his chariot city of Megiddo. They were all called tsana because they obeyed. To walk humbly with God means to become tame before him. You’re not called to be tame before men. I’m not called to be tame before men. I’m called to be tamed before God, to allow Him to domesticate me in His House. I relinquished all rights to wildness when I accepted Christ as my Lord and Savior. I said, “Tame me.” This is the call of the church of Christ, that we would be obedient.
This word tsana in the Hebrew in Micah 6:8 is a hiphil infinitive absolute which means that it connotes not only humility but wisdom. You need to understand that if you don’t become tame before God, you’re not wise. If you’re wild in the face of God, that’s dumb. If you don’t seek to obey God, that’s not wise. Jesus said, “Why do you call me Lord, Lord and not do what I tell you to do?” Jesus said, “Not all who call me Lord, Lord will enter the kingdom of heaven, but those who do the will of My Father who is in heaven.” Jesus said, “He who hears My words and does them, I’ll tell you what he is like. He is like a wise man that built his house upon the Rock. The rains fell and the floods came and the wind blew and the house stood firm for it was founded on the Rock, My Word. He who hears My words and does not do them is like a fool who built his house upon the sand. The rains came and the floods came and the wind blew and the house fell down and great was the destruction of it.”
What does the Lord require of His people? That we do justice, we love the covenant community and we walk meekly before God. Let’s close with a word of prayer.