November 25, 2019 – Meditations on Micah 6:8

"He has shown you, O mortal, what is good. And what does the LORD require of you? To act justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly with your God."

As we leave our time in Micah 6 in our AM service, I have been reflecting on the importance of the message of Micah 6:8 to everyone who calls themselves Christian.

That the Jewish people knew these requirements should be apparent to any reader of the Bible, especially in light of our Lord’s answer to the question about the greatest commandments - to love God with all that you are, and to love your neighbour as yourself - which is obviously a parallel of Micah 6:8. They knew that sacrifices were secondary and that receiving mercy from God and extending mercy to one another was primary, yet they persisted in their folly of going through the motions of observing corporate worship without any sign of worship in their everyday lives.

This behaviour of engaging in corporate worship without holiness in a person’s life is deadly. It not only destroys us, as we can see clearly in Micah it destroys our families, our churches and
our communities.

The Word our Lord used to describe this type of behaviour is hypocrite – for instance in Matthew 23:23 He says; “Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You give a tenth of your spices—mint, dill and cumin. But you have neglected the more important matters of the law—justice, mercy and faithfulness. You should have practiced the latter, without neglecting the former.” Clearly our Lord is telling us to observe corporate worship AND live a life of worship, but hypocrite is a nasty word that can throw Christians into a spiral of self destruction- and some feel like they have to stop involving themselves in corporate worship in order to not be a hypocrite.

Now there is a trap of the devil’s making! The only way that I can ever live the life of worship that I have been called to live is through genuine worship, how in the world am I going to worship God genuinely apart from attending corporate assemblies that gather in His Name?

We forget that it is only people who don’t believe in anything who can confidently claim not be a hypocrite – are we willing to drop our belief in God? I would say that being apostate is worse than being a hypocrite. At least a hypocrite can humble themselves and seek God’s grace to enable them to live the life God has planned for them.

As our Lord said - we should practice the latter without neglecting the former, and praise God –
He will give us the grace to do both!

Let us seek His face and His ways today, and before we know it the tag of hypocrite will slide off us into the dustbin of history.