Reflections on a Micah 6:8 Life

BOYS:
This is a paper I wrote for my Worship Leadership Class. I haven't turned it in yet, so let me know if there's something I need to edit. Otherwise, enjoy some gut-check. I'll post some more stuff as my semester ends.

The story of the Old Testament prophet Micah is one of unspeakable strife and untold hope and promise. A contemporary of the prophet Isaiah, God had given Micah a word of utter destruction for the people of Israel and Judah. There was coming a colossal destruction through which the people of Israel would be brought to account by the Lord for their continued idolatry and hard-hearted disobedience. Not only would the coming disaster be fierce and devastating, but it would be unrelenting (1:12). The people of God had been brought out of slavery by their God through his mighty hand and outstretched arm (Psalm 136:12). He had led them through the wilderness and brought them into the Promised Land. The Lord provided victory over all the enemies of the people. He had provided strength even through the disobedient calls for a king. He raised up and brought down Saul. He raised up David and Solomon and worked through their incredibly flawed lives to reign over the lives of his people. As the kingdom divided after the death of Solomon, the kings in Israel and Judah consistently led the people’s hearts away from the Lord.

In the days of Isaiah and Micah, the Lord made his anger and coming wrath absolutely clear. The major sin of the people was not in that they forgot about sacrifices or that they had totally abandoned the Law of God. In fact, in a bit of sarcastic questioning, the Lord takes on the role of worshipper and asks a few questions. “With what shall I come before the Lord, and bow myself before God on high?”[1] The Lord answers with the sarcastic and generic answer that would have satisfied any religious leader of the day: “burnt offerings, with calves a year old?” To this answer, the standard Israelite of Micah’s day would have responded: “Of course!” The form of the offering was what was paramount to the sacrificial system of the day. The answer of the Lord continues into verse seven: “Will the Lord be pleased with thousands of rams, with ten thousand rivers of oil? Shall I give my firstborn for my transgression, the fruit of my body for the sin of my soul?” The Lord, the Maker of all who owns the cattle on a thousand hills and who upholds the universe by the word of his power does not need any sacrifices! There is nothing that mortal man can impress this God with- not cattle, rams, oil (which would pretty well speak to the entire sacrificial system in the Law). What God is looking for is for the fulfillment of the Law- not the keeping of tradition for tradition’s sake. The whole point of every custom, law and ordinance was verse eight- “Do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God”. This is why Jesus, when asked what the greatest commandment was, replied, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind…And a second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself. On these two commandments depend all the Law and the Prophets.”[2]

Micah 6:8 is truly about where the proverbial rubber meets the road. This is not a command that is to be discussed and debated, but to be followed through with by followers of Jesus Christ. The rest of this paper will be an examination of how to practically implement this type of command in the twenty-first century. In these days, the struggles of the Church are many and varied. In a day where outward religiosity is accepted and even encouraged, humility with our God is lost somewhere along the way. How then is this very fundamental command to be enacted? I have to admit that I have never been challenged to think about what this command actually means. When it comes down to it, humility is not only lost along the way, but it is actually discouraged among God’s people. Just last week, I saw a very prominent Christian leader on television criticizing a politician for coming across as a “weak leader”. Leadership in the Church has somehow usurped the whole point of following.

The emphasis of the Church upon leadership today makes this call for humbly walking with our God at minimum a paradoxical struggle. Churches look high and low not for someone who spends time on his knees with his God, but for a leader that can bring them out of their current situation into green pastures. The temptation is so great to enter into ministry and begin leading the sheep into what we see as good things. Whether it is the green pastures of a better Bible study, a more refined missions program, better and more services, or a well-oiled machine of evangelism, the young pastor is often tempted to lead his people to his own pet emphasis. All the while, the Great Shepherd knows exactly where the perfectly green pastures are. He knows where still waters abide because he has gone before and prepared a place. He knows that his sheep will come out of the shadow of death because he himself will lead them through the valley and up onto the table. The pastor is not called to lead these sheep to his own pastures but to the Great Shepherd. Our people need to hear the voice of the Shepherd and that absolutely requires humility on the part of the pastor. True biblical humility in a pastor allows the people to hear from God, not himself alone. Humility in a pastor points out the way to the Leader and beckons the people to follow Him.

The call of the Christian and specifically the pastor to walk humbly with our God is not only a personal challenge; his people depend upon his humility. If our people are going to hear from God, we first need to be humble men. When we think of humility, we often think of a dejected and weak man that has no spine and will bow to any type of pressure at the drop of a hat. For instance, in the classic The Wizard of Oz, before the throne of the granter of wishes, the cowardly lion asks for courage; the stupid scarecrow begs for brains; the rusty tin man longs for oil and the homesick Dorothy only wants to return home. Conspicuously absent from the tale is the prideful man begging for humility. Now, recognizing that quite a few virtues are absent from the story, I laugh to imagine the scene when a man full of pride actually asks for the virtue of humility. Besides the fact that he would be gaining humility by the very fact that he was asking for it, the idea of a self-sufficient, independent man truly desiring to think more highly of others than of himself would scream against every impulse we, as American Christians exhibit and know all to well.

The American pastor is continually assaulted with pressure to build his church. All the responsibilities and duties of the congregation are to be upon him constantly because of his leadership skills. The model of a truly humble man who walks with God and leads his people is a difficult one to find. There is one man that exhibited a truly biblical humility; a humble obedience and dependence upon the Father of lights with whom there is no shadow due to change. The Apostle Paul writes of Jesus Christ as this man in Philippians 2:4-9. He “who though he was in the form of God did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped but made himself nothing. And being found in human form he became obedient to the point of death- even death on a cross.” Jesus Christ has modeled this life of walking humbly with our God. He had actual status and the actual claim to the throne of God Himself and he emptied himself. He stripped himself of all title and was born in a simple feeding trough to a scared little girl. He did not have a home, he did not have a wife and he did not place himself in the position of political dominance- he completely emptied himself.

The Christian would do well to look to the Savior in the area of walking humbly with our God. Personally, the main struggle that I have seen in my own life has been that of outright blatant pride. As I look back on my journals and think back on things that I have done or said throughout my life, I can easily identify so much of what I have done as stemming directly from the root of my own arrogance. This is a difficult command for me to deal with in my own life but as I think about the life of Christ, I am continually brought back to this passage in Philippians. Jesus had every right over everybody that ever lived to be prideful. He is the one through whom the Father created the world[3]. He is the one who upholds the universe by the word of his power[4]. Jesus Christ is the only one who is worthy of all worship on heaven, on earth, and under the earth. It is so compelling to me though, that the way he accomplished his exaltation was to suffer at the hands of sinful men and shed his blood for his persecutors. He walked humbly with God.

The question of practicality in dealing with this question is of the utmost importance. In the course of this essay, we have seen the call of the pastor specifically to be a follower of Christ first and foremost. We have seen the culture’s lack of regard for the virtue of humility and we have seen the example of Jesus Christ to be the best display of a man walking humbly with God throughout the history of the world. The real question is going to be where the rubber meets the road. How is this prideful writer going to look like Jesus in his humble walk with his God? There is no simple way to answer this question. There is no magic formula or special knowledge that I must gain. The process of my life must be a process of walking more and more humbly with my God. So what does this look like?

The humble man, the type of man that the Church needs today is the man who is radically committed to spending time in the throne room of God. It is the times in Scripture after men have been exposed to the greatness and majesty of God that they are walking the most humbly and being used in the hands of God the most effectively. If it is the words of the Lord God himself that our people need to hear, then they need someone who is not only faithful to relate these words accurately to them but also a man who has spent his week on his knees before the throne of God. This means that I need to not only spend set amounts of time in prayer and in reading the Scripture, but that I need to be coming again and again throughout every day to the throne and seeking the face of God. This impacts every part of life and cannot be limited to certain times of morning or evening intercession. The people God will reach through me need to see him. They need a word from him. That means I need a word from him. That means that I need to be in constant prayer and dependence upon my Father.

This effects the not only the amount and the constancy of my life before God but also the way I pray and read Scripture. A humble walk entails a proper understanding of my place before God. The way I was taught to pray was to write all of my requests as well as my thanksgiving, admissions and praises down in a list and to present them all to God. Of course, this is a helpful way to pray and to help formulate thought for the materialistic Westerner who does not grow up assuming the supernatural. The problem is that I have spent such little time listening in prayer. For me to walk humbly before my God means not only that I pray “Your kingdom come, your will be done”, but that I also take the time to be still and hear his voice lead me into exactly what he has for me in the plan. Walking humbly is going to take a concerted effort to listen to my God in prayer.

The idea of walking humbly with my God is one that encompasses all of life. As a person that struggles with pride and thinking of myself higher than I ought, the life of Christ calls out to me- follow. So often I take my own pride and dignity as more important than anything else happening around me. I find that those who walk humbly with their God don’t take themselves as seriously nor stand up for their own rights as often as I am guilty. Practically speaking, I want to live in such a way that, to quote Mark Driscoll, I “make it a habit to take God very seriously and everything else very lightly.”[5] Unbridled devotion to the God of the Universe demands that I have no allegiance to myself or the things that I think hold any importance. A life that is lived walking humbly with my God begins and ends in properly understanding my life as a complete and utter gift from the God who has given me every good thing and ratified it with his resurrection and exaltation, where he receives all praise honor and glory. Walking humbly with my God is not going to happen overnight or in a moment. It requires a life that is committed to dying to myself and my own perceived thoughts and needs and living the true life that is found in the incarnation, death, burial, resurrection and exaltation of Jesus Christ.

[1] Micah 6:6.
[2] Matthew 22:37-40.
[3] Colossians 1:16.
[4] Hebrews 1:3.
[5] Driscoll, Mark. Radical Reformission. Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2004, pg. 187.