It's Simple. Right? January 4, 2017

What Does the Lord Require?

⁸ He has told you, O man, 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 6:8 ESV 

In a time long, long ago I used to golf.  I picked up the nasty habit when I was in junior high and continued through my 40's.  But after a particularly embarrassing round with my father-in-law at a posh country club, I was able to go cold turkey.  Since that fateful day, I have never played one hole of that most frustrating of games.

In theory, the game is simple.  A stationary ball is struck by a club with a large head down a wide, neatly mowed swath of grass.  Eventually you get to gently strike the ball on a carpet like piece of lawn into a hole twice the size of the ball.  To make the game even easier, no one is allowed to bother you or even speak when you are in the act of hitting the white, dimpled sphere.  Nothing to it.  Oh, how wrong you are.

One's head must remain steady.  The back swing must be just so.  Weight shift.  Club head speed.  Torso rotation.  Elbow straight.  Wrists cocked.  Follow through.  It is for all this and more that golf should be classified as a four-letter word up there with the worst of them.

To read today's verse from Micah, one could think that Christianity is also a simple affair.  Just love kindness, do justice and walk humbly.  Nothing to it.  But just because we accept Christ as Lord and Savior doesn't mean our sin nature is banished from our lives.  

Too often Christians judge themselves harshly when they sin.  Questions of salvation and sincerity of commitment arise because of a hateful word, an unkind deed, or angry thought.  Verses like today's taken out of context can paint too simplistic a picture of Christianity.

The preceding verses reveal Micah's real message:

⁶ “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?”

Micah was not painting a picture of a simple, easy walk with God.  He was telling his readers that it is not great sacrifices or public displays of faith that God values, but a heart committed to good.  A kind, humble spirit is what God desires above grand gestures.

God is a god of the heart, not a god of the extravagant.