Latest / Topeka Bible Church Audio Archive / January 10, 2016 | Route 66 - Micah

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January 10, 2016 | Route 66 - Micah · Topeka Bible Church Audio Archive

0:01
SPEAKER_00: Love that.
0:02
SPEAKER_00: Love that video.
0:03
SPEAKER_00: Played the whole video, bumper video this morning.
0:06
SPEAKER_00: It's awesome.
0:07
SPEAKER_00: Grab a Bible, open it to the book, the minor prophet book of Micah.
0:12
SPEAKER_00: Micah, so open your Bible halfway.
0:15
SPEAKER_00: You'll hit Psalms or Proverbs.
0:17
SPEAKER_00: Go to the right.
0:19
SPEAKER_00: About exactly one-third of the rest of the way through the Bible.
0:29
SPEAKER_00: And you'll actually be in Micah.
0:31
SPEAKER_00: So here goes the Song of Solomon, Isaiah.
0:35
SPEAKER_00: You have the major prophets, Isaiah, Jeremiah, Lamentations, Ezekiel, Daniel, and then you have the 12 minor prophets.
0:41
SPEAKER_00: You could put them all on one scroll.
0:43
SPEAKER_00: They're minor just because of their size, not because they're unimportant.
0:47
SPEAKER_00: Hosea, Joel, Amos, Obadiah, Jonah.
0:51
SPEAKER_00: Mike is the 33rd book of the Bible.
0:54
SPEAKER_00: We're playing that Route 66 song because, if you're visiting, we're on a Route 66 trip through the 66 books of the Bible, a journey.
1:03
SPEAKER_00: By the way, who uh who here is driven on Route 66?
1:07
SPEAKER_00: Have you?
1:08
SPEAKER_00: Isn't that a cool road?
1:09
SPEAKER_00: Wouldn't probably be a very safe road today, but it is a great, great road.
1:16
SPEAKER_00: And the road through the Bible is wonderful as well.
1:20
SPEAKER_00: And we've come to the book of Micah.
1:22
SPEAKER_00: The word Micah in Hebrew is actually a question.
1:26
SPEAKER_00: It's actually a combination of three Hebrew words, that little word Micah or Micaiah.
1:33
SPEAKER_00: Micah is the shortened version.
1:35
SPEAKER_00: In Israel, they shortened the length of the name Micaiah in about the seventh century.
1:41
SPEAKER_00: And the name means who is like Ka the Lord?
1:49
SPEAKER_00: Yah, Micah, Yahweh.
1:51
SPEAKER_00: Who is like the Lord?
1:52
SPEAKER_00: So Micah's a question.
1:54
SPEAKER_00: By the way, what's the answer that is expected?
1:58
SPEAKER_00: It's a rhetorical question.
1:59
SPEAKER_00: Who's like the Lord?
2:00
SPEAKER_00: The answer would be no one.
2:04
SPEAKER_00: No one.
2:04
SPEAKER_00: So I'm going to ask you a question, okay?
2:06
SPEAKER_00: And I want you to answer the question.
2:08
SPEAKER_00: Here's the question.
2:09
SPEAKER_00: Micah.
2:10
unknown: No one.
2:11
SPEAKER_00: Wow.
2:12
SPEAKER_00: All of heaven, looking over, wondering what you think, you know, and you answer that anemically.
2:18
SPEAKER_00: I'm going to ask you that question one more time, Micah, and you're going to answer no one, all right?
2:22
SPEAKER_00: And I want to hear it.
2:23
SPEAKER_00: Micah.
2:25
SPEAKER_00: No one is like the Lord.
2:26
SPEAKER_00: Who's like the Lord?
2:27
SPEAKER_00: No one is like the Lord.
2:28
SPEAKER_00: Micah, chapter out of the seven chapters, we're going to go to chapter six today, six, one through eight, and I'm going to read it out of the NIV right here.
2:38
SPEAKER_00: Listen to what Yahweh says.
2:41
SPEAKER_00: The Lord says, Stand up.
2:42
SPEAKER_00: He's speaking to Micah the prophet.
2:44
SPEAKER_00: Stand up, plead your case before the mountains.
2:48
SPEAKER_00: Let the hills hear what you have to say.
2:51
SPEAKER_00: Hear, O mountains, the Lord's accusation.
2:54
SPEAKER_00: Listen, you everlasting foundations of the earth, for the Lord has a case against his people.
3:02
SPEAKER_00: He's lodging a charge against Israel.
3:06
SPEAKER_00: My people, what have I done to you?
3:08
SPEAKER_00: How have and here's what God says How have I burdened you?
3:11
SPEAKER_00: Answer me.
3:12
SPEAKER_00: I brought you up out of Egypt and redeemed you from the land of slavery.
3:15
SPEAKER_00: I sent Moses to lead you, also Aaron and Miriam.
3:18
SPEAKER_00: My people, remember what Balak, king of Moab, counseled, and what Balaam, son of Beor, answered?
3:23
SPEAKER_00: Remember your journey from Shitim to Gilgal, that you may know the righteous acts of the Lord.
3:29
SPEAKER_00: With what shall I come before the Lord and bow down before the exalted God?
3:33
SPEAKER_00: Shall I come before him with burnt offerings, with calves a year old?
3:37
SPEAKER_00: Will the Lord be pleased with thousands of rams, with ten thousand rivers of oil?
3:41
SPEAKER_00: Shall I offer my firstborn for my transgression, the fruit of my body, for the sin of my soul?
3:47
SPEAKER_00: The answer, He has showed you, O man, what is good.
3:50
SPEAKER_00: And what does the Lord require of you?
3:52
SPEAKER_00: To act justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly with your God.
3:56
SPEAKER_00: Let's pray.
3:57
SPEAKER_00: Father, we just read some of your word, eight great verses that were written, wow, 2,700 years ago, which I pray that they would drop down inside us and sort of erupt or explode inside us and change our lives this morning.
4:15
SPEAKER_00: In Jesus' name.
4:17
SPEAKER_00: Amen.
4:18
SPEAKER_00: The book is Micah.
4:20
SPEAKER_00: The book is Micah.
4:21
SPEAKER_00: And I want to address one of the great questions of history and of mankind this morning.
4:28
SPEAKER_00: I want to address a question that has been asked, in fact, probably asked millions of times.
4:34
SPEAKER_00: If you Google this question, and it's like 200 million hits on Google, and that question is, what does God want from me?
4:42
SPEAKER_00: What does God want from me?
4:43
SPEAKER_00: Or more often ask, what does God want me to do?
4:46
SPEAKER_00: This is a question that young people ask.
4:48
SPEAKER_00: Young believers grow up in the church, and as they're certainly they're going, you know, I want to make a contribution in life.
4:54
SPEAKER_00: What is it that God wants from me?
4:55
SPEAKER_00: What does God want me to do in life?
4:59
SPEAKER_00: New Christians always ask this question.
5:02
SPEAKER_00: They go, okay, now I'm in the family, now I'm a son, now I'm a daughter, now I'm, you know, what does God want from me?
5:09
SPEAKER_00: What does God want me to do?
5:13
SPEAKER_00: People in crisis ask this question, Christians, especially in crisis, counseling.
5:17
SPEAKER_00: They look at you after a while, they go, Well, what does God want for me?
5:20
SPEAKER_00: What does God want me to do in this situation?
5:25
SPEAKER_00: People who are going through sort of a life change, they all they ask the same question, you know, when they're leaving home to go to college or getting married or, you know, taking a new job, moving across the country, retiring.
5:35
SPEAKER_00: They go, Wow, what do you want from me at this point?
5:40
SPEAKER_00: What do you want me to do?
5:43
SPEAKER_00: And the reason I'm able to address that question this morning is that that's the question, it seems to me, that's addressed by the book that we're going to look at this morning, the seven chapters of the book of Micah.
5:53
SPEAKER_00: Micah's a prophet.
5:54
SPEAKER_00: The first verse of the book tells us most of what we know about him.
5:58
SPEAKER_00: And that is that he was a prophet in about 720 B.C.
6:02
SPEAKER_00: The word of the Lord that came to Micah, this is Micah 1-1, Micah the Morishite, that's the location southwest of Jerusalem, what he saw regarding Samaria, that's the northern ten tribes, and Jerusalem, that represents the southern two tribes, Judah, in the days of three kings, Jotham, Ahaz, and Hezekiah, kings of Judah.
6:23
SPEAKER_00: So that dates it 750 to 700 BC, 2700 years ago.
6:28
SPEAKER_00: It was an important time in Israel's life.
6:32
SPEAKER_00: Israel was not poor at this time.
6:35
SPEAKER_00: They were prosperous, not as much as in David and Solomon's day, 250 years before, but they were prosperous, but they had sinned so much that God was about to fulfill his threat, his warning to bring judgment on them.
6:50
SPEAKER_00: So as Micah is prophesying, everyone's noticing this mighty nation of Assyria, you know, which is which is taking these countries, which is defeating all these other countries.
7:02
SPEAKER_00: And while Micah is prophesying in the 720s, their general Sennacherib comes down, Teglath Peleaser and then Sennacherib and defeats, wipes out the northern ten tribes, takes them captive, never to be heard from again, and then keeps coming and and and defeats, destroys a couple dozen cities in Judah, and marches right up to the gates of Jerusalem.
7:32
SPEAKER_00: Later on, uh, you know, the king of Assyria would brag.
7:36
SPEAKER_00: We find it, we find it even today, you know, in his uh in his uh uh diary, I shut up Hezekiah like a bird in a cage.
7:46
SPEAKER_00: But it's very noticeable, he doesn't say I defeated him, because Hezekiah fell on his knees, King Hezekiah, at the pleading of Micah and his friend Isaiah, Hezekiah fell on his knees and he prayed, Oh God, we have sinned, will you please deliver us?
7:59
SPEAKER_00: And God did.
8:00
SPEAKER_00: He struck down 180 some thousand Assyrians in one night.
8:04
SPEAKER_00: The angel of the Lord killed them.
8:05
SPEAKER_00: They raced back home with their tail between their legs, and God gave the southern kingdom Jerusalem, Judah.
8:11
SPEAKER_00: He gave them another hundred, almost 150 years.
8:14
SPEAKER_00: Okay?
8:15
SPEAKER_00: So, but Micah is prophesying to the northern southern kingdoms of Israel during this really critical time.
8:24
SPEAKER_00: All right?
8:25
SPEAKER_00: And the answer that Micah comes up with to the great question, I'm gonna hang the key right at the front door.
8:31
SPEAKER_00: I'm gonna answer the question for you to the question, what does God want from us?
8:37
SPEAKER_00: What does God want us to do is act justly, love mercy, walk humbly.
8:43
SPEAKER_00: Say those three phrases with me.
8:45
SPEAKER_00: Act justly, love mercy, walk humbly.
8:49
SPEAKER_00: Now, more famously, this verse is in the King James, he hath showed thee, O man, what is good, and what doth the Lord require of thee, but to do justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly with thy God.
9:02
SPEAKER_00: And if you're a parent or a grandparent or a Sunday school teacher and you have anything to do with encouraging young people to memorize verses, this is a verse which young Christians and all Christians should know.
9:15
SPEAKER_00: It's a famous verse, not just in the church, but around the world.
9:18
SPEAKER_00: About 20 years ago, Newsweek magazine had an issue entitled, And the Child Shall Lead Them, subtitled Young Americans Return to God.
9:27
SPEAKER_00: They were giving the statistics that 60% of baby boomers were now in church and so forth.
9:33
SPEAKER_00: But the article actually was distinguishing between some of those who are coming back to God and others, and saying there are megachurches all over the place today that don't talk about what the Bible talks about.
9:48
SPEAKER_00: They're really self-help organizations.
9:50
SPEAKER_00: And the article shockingly ends with these words.
9:54
SPEAKER_00: In their efforts to accommodate, many churches have simply airbrushed sin out of their language.
10:02
SPEAKER_00: Can you believe that?
10:04
SPEAKER_00: That's Newsweek magazine.
10:06
SPEAKER_00: Like politicians, they speak only of mistakes and substitute the word therapy for spiritual development.
10:14
SPEAKER_00: To them, heaven is never having to say no to yourself, and God is never having to say you're sorry.
10:22
SPEAKER_00: But, and this is the last paragraph, spiritual development does not end with overcoming addiction, loneliness, or stress.
10:29
SPEAKER_00: What the Lord, yes, this is in the article, what the Lord requires of you, wrote the prophet Micah, is to do justice, love mercy, and to walk humbly with your God.
10:40
SPEAKER_00: I'm saying to you that if the whole world admires this verse, then it's certainly a verse that you and I should know.
10:48
SPEAKER_00: And I'm suggesting to you this morning that the seven chapters of Micah can be vacuum-packed into Micah 6.8, into these three categories.
10:57
SPEAKER_00: So what I'd like to do is I would like it to take you again to this passage that we read together, Micah 6.1 through 8.
11:04
SPEAKER_00: Walk through the context of this verse, and then try to apply these three phrases to our life, okay?
11:10
SPEAKER_00: Micah 6.1 tells us that this is a court case.
11:14
SPEAKER_00: God likes to do this.
11:15
SPEAKER_00: The word is Reve.
11:16
SPEAKER_00: R-I-B means uh uh a lawsuit, and you find this theme often.
11:22
SPEAKER_00: Psalms, Isaiah, Micah, Amos, and so forth.
11:26
SPEAKER_00: And so that's what we find here.
11:28
SPEAKER_00: God saying, Listen, I've got a lawsuit.
11:30
SPEAKER_00: I'm calling everybody to court.
11:32
SPEAKER_00: Micah, you're my representative.
11:34
SPEAKER_00: I'm the plaintiff.
11:35
SPEAKER_00: And he goes, now listen to what the Lord is saying.
11:38
SPEAKER_00: Rise, plead your case before the mountains, and let the hills hear your voice.
11:43
SPEAKER_00: So oftentimes in the Bible, you have God saying, okay, I want the whole universe, or I want the earth, or I want the mountains, or whatever.
11:51
SPEAKER_00: You're gonna be my witnesses.
11:53
SPEAKER_00: So get in, you know, get in the courtroom.
11:55
SPEAKER_00: I want you to watch what's going on.
11:57
SPEAKER_00: Okay?
11:58
SPEAKER_00: And I'm gonna be the plaintiff, and he's gonna name his defendant here in a moment.
12:02
SPEAKER_00: Micah 6, 2.
12:03
SPEAKER_00: Listen to the Lord's lawsuit, you mountains and enduring foundations of the earth, because the Lord has a case, and now he it reads revealed.
12:13
SPEAKER_00: Amazingly, the Lord's case is against his own people.
12:16
SPEAKER_00: It's not against the Philistines here, it's not against the Moabites, the Edomites, not against Isis, it's against his own people.
12:23
SPEAKER_00: The Lord has a case against his people, and he will argue it against Israel.
12:28
SPEAKER_00: Wow.
12:28
SPEAKER_00: What is it that the Lord has a case against, with Israel, and maybe with you and me?
12:33
SPEAKER_00: Well, he tells us, Micah 6, 3.
12:36
SPEAKER_00: My people, what have I done to you or how have I wearied you?
12:39
SPEAKER_00: A double question here.
12:41
SPEAKER_00: Umber one, you're acting as though I've done something against you.
12:46
SPEAKER_00: Number two, you're acting as though I'm burdening you.
12:50
SPEAKER_00: And the setting is that Israel is unhappy that they don't have everything that they've asked for or prayed for.
12:56
SPEAKER_00: They're unhappy that you have the Assyrians coming down and and and and disciplining them.
13:03
SPEAKER_00: And you know, the fact of the matter is you often do find God's people whose expectations of God exceed reality.
13:10
SPEAKER_00: And so they're unhappy.
13:11
SPEAKER_00: They're unhappy because God hasn't given them the spouse that they wished he had given them, or the children, or the job, or the income, or the health.
13:22
SPEAKER_00: And so they have a case against God and they complain, and God would say to those people, listen, my people, what have I done against you, or how have I burdened you?
13:30
SPEAKER_00: Testify against me.
13:32
SPEAKER_00: And then God lists one, two, three things that he's done for all of us and them.
13:37
SPEAKER_00: He says, Indeed, I brought you up from the land of Egypt.
13:40
SPEAKER_00: That's salvation.
13:42
SPEAKER_00: I redeemed you from that place of slavery.
13:44
SPEAKER_00: That's one thing I've done for all of you.
13:46
SPEAKER_00: I saved you.
13:47
SPEAKER_00: Secondly, I gave you direction.
13:49
SPEAKER_00: I sent Moses, Aaron, and Miriam ahead of you.
13:53
SPEAKER_00: You know, good leadership is hard to find.
13:55
SPEAKER_00: And he says, you know, when you were just a little baby in the wilderness, I gave you great leadership.
14:00
SPEAKER_00: Moses, Aaron, and Miriam.
14:01
SPEAKER_00: And by the way, you don't have to turn into a Christian feminist to observe here that God, unlike other ancient Near Eastern documents, has no problem naming, including a woman as a leader.
14:13
SPEAKER_00: That's the way Jesus was, the way God was.
14:15
SPEAKER_00: And I hope you agree that women make excellent leaders because it's clear that God includes them.
14:21
SPEAKER_00: Can you say amen?
14:23
SPEAKER_00: Okay.
14:24
SPEAKER_00: All 14 of you women agreed with me.
14:27
SPEAKER_00: So, but anyway, so they're good salvation and good direction.
14:30
SPEAKER_00: All right, Micah then, Micah 6-5.
14:33
SPEAKER_00: Then he says, Not only have I given you salvation and direction, but I gave you protection.
14:37
SPEAKER_00: And he mentions the really interesting story of King Balak, this powerful king from the east, who wanted a genocide, who wanted to wipe out Israel, and so he hired this incredibly powerful soothsayer named Balaam, and then God got involved, and the donkey talked.
14:52
SPEAKER_00: And it's a really interesting story if you want to read about it in the 23rd chapter of Numbers.
14:58
SPEAKER_00: But anyway, he says, remember that story?
15:00
SPEAKER_00: See, so not only have I saved you, not only have I directed you in life, but I've protected you.
15:05
SPEAKER_00: So why am I the bad guy now?
15:07
SPEAKER_00: And here's what's interesting: is the reply from Israel, actually, sort of like a representative, representative child of God, representative worshiper.
15:17
SPEAKER_00: The reply is insulting.
15:19
SPEAKER_00: Listen to the reply, Israel's reply.
15:22
SPEAKER_00: Listen, God, what are you looking for?
15:24
SPEAKER_00: What is it that you want?
15:26
SPEAKER_00: You know?
15:27
SPEAKER_00: What should I bring before the Lord when I come to bow before God?
15:30
SPEAKER_00: What does it take for me to get an answer to my prayers?
15:33
SPEAKER_00: Should I come before him with burnt offerings or with year-old calves?
15:36
SPEAKER_00: Most of the offerings, you know, were cheap, little turtle doves, pigeons, whatever.
15:40
SPEAKER_00: But you know the most expensive ones were year-old calves.
15:43
SPEAKER_00: Do I need to bring an extra hundred bucks on Sunday morning, Lord, to make you happy?
15:47
SPEAKER_00: You know?
15:48
SPEAKER_00: The insulting question here assumes that God, like man, can be bought off.
15:54
SPEAKER_00: And it continues, would the Lord be pleased with thousands of rams?
15:57
SPEAKER_00: Well, wait, you want everything I've got?
15:59
SPEAKER_00: Or 10,000 streams of oil?
16:02
SPEAKER_00: Should I give my firstborn for my transgression?
16:04
SPEAKER_00: Okay, God, I have sinned.
16:06
SPEAKER_00: Okay, I understand.
16:06
SPEAKER_00: That's why you've sent Assyria down.
16:08
SPEAKER_00: That's why we're going through some discipline here.
16:10
SPEAKER_00: Things are not the way I'd like them to be, because you know, part of it's my fault.
16:14
SPEAKER_00: But what are you looking for?
16:15
SPEAKER_00: What do you want?
16:16
SPEAKER_00: You want me to kill my firstborn child for my transgression?
16:19
SPEAKER_00: The child of my body for the sin of my soul, as the NIV puts it.
16:24
SPEAKER_00: Just turning this the warm covenant father-son relationship, father-daughter relationship with God into sort of a contract.
16:33
SPEAKER_00: You know, God, you know, you gotta you gotta price like everyone else.
16:36
SPEAKER_00: What do I have to do for you?
16:37
SPEAKER_00: Come to church both more on Sunday morning and Sunday night and Wednesday night and serve in Iwanas and give you extra money every year, give you a double tithe.
16:44
SPEAKER_00: I mean, what does it take?
16:47
SPEAKER_00: Wow.
16:47
SPEAKER_00: Can you imagine?
16:48
SPEAKER_00: And so God's God replies mankind, actually more like uh, you know, it's not addressing all of mankind, but his own people primarily.
16:58
SPEAKER_00: Man, he's told you what is good.
17:01
SPEAKER_00: Don't pretend like you have no idea what God wants from you.
17:05
SPEAKER_00: He's told you what the Lord requires of you, and then he lists our three phrases to act justly, to love mercy or love faithfulness, as the Holman says here, and to walk humbly with your God.
17:20
SPEAKER_00: There it is.
17:21
SPEAKER_00: You see, in the context, it's an answer to the question, what does God want from me?
17:26
SPEAKER_00: What does God want me to do?
17:28
SPEAKER_00: And I confess to you that at first I don't, the word I don't like in this verse is the word require.
17:34
SPEAKER_00: I'm like you, I'm a typical American, I'm independent, I don't like authority figures requiring stuff.
17:41
SPEAKER_00: Until I realize that life consists of people requiring things, right?
17:48
SPEAKER_00: They require that you get a visa and a passport if you go to Brazil.
17:52
SPEAKER_00: Passwords are required to, you know, get inside, helmets are required, shirts and shoes are required, parking permits are required.
18:01
SPEAKER_00: Almost the worst, in my opinion, is that to fish some places or the fishing licenses are required.
18:09
SPEAKER_00: And for some of us, adult supervision is required.
18:13
SPEAKER_00: And so we should not quell when we hear that the Lord Himself requires of those who want to call themselves fully devoted followers of His, that He requires certain things, and what is certain things, and what does it require?
18:26
SPEAKER_00: Well, the first thing He requires is to act justly.
18:30
SPEAKER_00: And if you've been following this Route 66, been traveling with us faithfully, you'll you may remember that three months ago we tackled the other book in the Bible that was all about social injustice.
18:41
SPEAKER_00: That was the book of Amos.
18:44
SPEAKER_00: We entitled that Prepare to Meet Your God, Big Shot, because Amos 4.12 is Prepare to Meet Your God.
18:49
SPEAKER_00: And that was all about big shots who took advantage of weaker people simply because they had the power and the status and the ability to do so.
18:58
SPEAKER_00: And we said when we were in that book that God hates social injustice.
19:02
SPEAKER_00: We abbreviated social injustice as S period, I in period, sin, and he hates it especially in his own people.
19:10
SPEAKER_00: We went around the world and we talked about social injustice.
19:14
SPEAKER_00: The Islamic State slaughtering Christians, governments, and businesses around the world taking advantage of the weak.
19:21
SPEAKER_00: Abuse of wives and children.
19:24
SPEAKER_00: Amos says how people treat people matters to God, because people matter to God.
19:30
SPEAKER_00: Every person, you see, bears his image.
19:33
SPEAKER_00: And that was the book of Amos.
19:35
SPEAKER_00: And just to rehearse the background of that, by the way, Micah does not exactly repeat Amos.
19:42
SPEAKER_00: I'll tell you the difference in a minute.
19:44
SPEAKER_00: But these two books are based upon that word justice, which is the word in Hebrew, one of the great words in Hebrew called Mishpait.
19:52
SPEAKER_00: Say that word with me, Mishpait.
19:54
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, long A.
19:55
SPEAKER_00: Mishpait, which is simply giving people their rights, giving them what they are due.
20:00
SPEAKER_00: Do not mix that, as I'll confuse that, as so many people do today, with equality.
20:05
SPEAKER_00: Justice and equality are two different things.
20:08
SPEAKER_00: Okay, equal, everybody gets paid the same, everybody and so forth.
20:12
SPEAKER_00: Don't confuse it with fairness.
20:14
SPEAKER_00: Justice is giving people their rights, what they are due.
20:18
SPEAKER_00: That is, whether they are due punishment, you give them the punishment to which they are due.
20:21
SPEAKER_00: If they are due uh due rewards, you give them the rewards.
20:25
SPEAKER_00: And the Bible's very clear about rights.
20:27
SPEAKER_00: In fact, in the Ten Commandments, we have in commandments six, seven, eight, and nine, the four inalienable rights of man.
20:36
SPEAKER_00: And that would be the right to life, you shall not murder, the right to a home, you shall not commit adultery, the right to property, you shall not steal, and the right to a reputation, you shall not bear false witness.
20:49
SPEAKER_00: And there's the rub, because there are people in our world who are able to take away those rights from other people simply because they are more powerful.
20:59
SPEAKER_00: In fact, and I think it's Yale's Professor Walterstorff, but I'm not sure who calls it this.
21:05
SPEAKER_00: He talks about the quartet of the vulnerable in the Old Testament.
21:09
SPEAKER_00: The widow, the orphan, the immigrant, and the poor.
21:12
SPEAKER_00: Those four are listed in several verses in, I think Jeremiah 7, something, and so forth.
21:18
SPEAKER_00: The widow, the orphan, the immigrant, and the poor.
21:22
SPEAKER_00: And those people have rights, but those people rarely are, you know, they're not strong enough sometimes to access their rights, and those people are so weak that people who are more powerful can easily take away their rights.
21:34
SPEAKER_00: They can take away their life, they can take easily take away their reputation, take away their home, take away their property.
21:42
SPEAKER_00: Today, Tim Keller says in his excellent little book, Generous Justice, which, by the way, of the books that I've read this last year in Justice, I his is like the easiest and quickest to read, but maybe the best, or one of the two best, and I would highly recommend it.
21:58
SPEAKER_00: He says, today this court.
22:00
SPEAKER_00: The widow, the orphan, the immigrant, the poor, would be expanded to include the refugee, the migrant worker, the homeless, and many single parents and elderly people.
22:11
SPEAKER_00: The Mishpait, or justice, of a society, according to the Bible, is evaluated by how it treats these groups.
22:19
SPEAKER_00: Now, that is really a shocking.
22:23
SPEAKER_00: In the ancient, this whole idea is shocking.
22:26
SPEAKER_00: He cites a Sri Lankan scholar named Vinoth Ramakandra, who calls it scandalous justice.
22:34
SPEAKER_00: That in the ancient world, this scholar points out, I looked him up.
22:38
SPEAKER_00: He says, this scholar says, this would be revolutionary.
22:41
SPEAKER_00: Let me quote one of his paragraphs.
22:42
SPEAKER_00: He says, in virtually all the ancient cultures of the world, get this, the power of the gods was channeled through and identified with the elites of society, the kings, the priests, the military captains, not the outcasts.
22:58
SPEAKER_00: And to oppose those leaders of society then was to oppose the gods.
23:02
SPEAKER_00: But here, in Israel's rival vision, he calls it, or we would say, you know, in the minor prophets, it is not high-ranking males, but the orphan, the widow, and the stranger with whom Yahweh takes his stand.
23:17
SPEAKER_00: Which is why, by the way, it's so great that we have such an involvement in some of the in that we have many of you are involved across town in that poor settlement over here called Highland Crest.
23:32
SPEAKER_00: Some of you are involved in Haiti Lifeline, with that orphanage down there.
23:36
SPEAKER_00: Some of you are involved, you know, some of us are involved in in Trash Mountain Project around the world to the outcast, to the weakest of the week.
23:45
SPEAKER_00: We had a wonderful presentation last Saturday and Sunday night by Satiria Thompson, who's involved with the with sex trafficking, with the girls who are sex trafficked thing, Cambodia, in her presentation called Shadows, Darkness Shadows, something like that.
24:04
SPEAKER_00: So anyway, this is what God really cares about.
24:08
SPEAKER_00: I'm so glad you're involved in that.
24:09
SPEAKER_00: But now stop for a second.
24:10
SPEAKER_00: I'm going to tell you something that's quite interesting to me because as I've read these books and studies, these two books, Amos and Micah, both of which speak about social injustice, it seems to me that there is a clear sort of distinction between them.
24:25
SPEAKER_00: All of the studies recently, then there are a lot of studies being done lately about this, indicate that in the ancient world, three and a half, maybe four percent of people in Micah's day and even in Jesus' day were part of the wealthy.
24:39
SPEAKER_00: That is the highest elite, the powerful, the very wealthy.
24:43
SPEAKER_00: On the other hand, 55, more than half of people, 55% of people were pretty much destitute, without property, poor lived, hand to mouth, and so forth.
24:55
SPEAKER_00: And in the middle, there was a group of people, certainly we will call the middle class, the lower middle class, perhaps we would call them in America today, but at least they had property, they were in the middle class.
25:07
SPEAKER_00: There were these three distinctions today, as you can, as you can tell, especially in America, the wealthy has grown quite a bit, the middle class is very large, and the poor is smaller than this, but but to some extent this is reflected around the world today.
25:21
SPEAKER_00: Well, Amos is addressing the poorest of the poor, the bottom 55%, the outcast, the widow, the immigrant, the orphan, the poor.
25:30
SPEAKER_00: But Micah, the book we are looking at today, is addressing the group which economists call the single most important group in any society.
25:40
SPEAKER_00: If you want to be a successful society, then the larger the middle class, the more healthy your middle class, the more healthy your country.
25:48
SPEAKER_00: Third world countries are unhealthy because they have a small middle class primarily divided into a sliver of the wealthy and a whole hunk of the poor.
25:57
SPEAKER_00: The reason India is praised so much in the last 10 years is 200 million of their people have moved from the bottom section into the middle class.
26:07
SPEAKER_00: Well, Micah addresses the middle class and says that these wealthy people are taking the property away and abusing the middle class simply because they can.
26:18
SPEAKER_00: And I want you to think for a second, when you think of this, of like John Wayne.
26:22
SPEAKER_00: Remember some of those movies of John Wayne where he would defend the sort of lower middle class landowners, the wealthy land barons would come in.
26:30
SPEAKER_00: Do you remember any of that?
26:31
SPEAKER_00: He wasn't helping out the orphans generally or the total outcasts, it was the middle class.
26:36
SPEAKER_00: Anyone else a lover of John Wayne?
26:39
SPEAKER_00: Okay.
26:39
SPEAKER_00: So he'd go out there and he would fight against the wealthiest of the land barons who would be stealing the property.
26:46
SPEAKER_00: Or you can think of, if you know your Bible well in kings, you can think of the story of Ahab stealing Naboth's vineyard.
26:52
SPEAKER_00: Naboth was middle class.
26:54
SPEAKER_00: He had a nice vineyard, but the king killed it, or killed him and stole the vineyard.
27:01
SPEAKER_00: Now the question is, is this still happening today?
27:04
SPEAKER_00: Yes, this is happening around the world as well.
27:07
SPEAKER_00: I watched a video that someone sent me last week, a YouTube video of my home state is Oregon, in which a congressman from Oregon is just lamenting, just begging the Congress, the United States Congress, telling a story about a couple of ranchers, one family in the county, the eighth largest county in America, where they're not very many people.
27:29
SPEAKER_00: And these ranchers have been, the old man and his son have been put in jail for five years.
27:34
SPEAKER_00: The old man's in his 80s, may die there because of this, because they they started a backfire to protect their property, and the backfire moved into some federal the federal government has taken just mega millions of acres.
27:48
SPEAKER_00: And the since the backfire burned a few acres of that land, they've been thrown in jail.
27:53
SPEAKER_00: And he says, listen, this happens all the time.
27:55
SPEAKER_00: The federal government builds backfires that burn its own land.
27:59
SPEAKER_00: So and and then he gives other illustrations.
28:02
SPEAKER_00: All I'm saying is, as I listened to that, I thought, wow, it's really true that even in America and around the world, the government and the state can take advantage not just of the poorest of the poor, they can take advantage of the middle class as well.
28:17
SPEAKER_00: They can steal jobs, they can steal property, they can break contracts.
28:22
SPEAKER_00: And of course, you know, some of you, someone after service number one, came up and said, I got an illustration right here in Kansas.
28:29
SPEAKER_00: You know, I'm not gonna share those, but you know, it's just it's just very, very sad to me.
28:36
SPEAKER_00: It's the greatest ethical problem around the world, this case of injustice, not only against the lowest of the low, but against the middle class.
28:44
SPEAKER_00: So let's apply this.
28:46
SPEAKER_00: Act justly, love mercy, walk humbly.
28:48
SPEAKER_00: And the first application is that you and I need to act justly.
28:52
SPEAKER_00: If we're going to do what God wants us to do, that means we need to act with integrity, because God will nail us for doing anything less.
29:04
SPEAKER_00: And I put some verses on your study sheet about that.
29:08
SPEAKER_00: Let me just read chapter 2, 1 and 2, where God says, woe, which means I'm gonna nail you, woe, to those who dream up wickedness and prepare evil plans on their beds at morning light, they accomplish it because the power is in their hands.
29:24
SPEAKER_00: They covet fields and seize them, Ahab Naboth.
29:27
SPEAKER_00: They take houses, they deprive a man of his home, a person of his inheritance.
29:33
SPEAKER_00: So the argument here is even if you have the ability to take advantage of someone, don't do it.
29:42
SPEAKER_00: I love the story of the CEO whose employees, you know, were complaining, looking for a fairer, more equitable wage.
29:50
SPEAKER_00: And he was telling them that they were nothing.
29:53
SPEAKER_00: And he said, if I were to kick the bucket tonight, where would you end up?
29:57
SPEAKER_00: And one of them said, I had the same question for you.
30:00
SPEAKER_00: If you were to kick the bucket tonight, where would you end up?
30:03
SPEAKER_00: So you'll you get that if you think about it.
30:06
SPEAKER_00: But the Bible, by the way, applies this not just to money, but also to tongue, to your tongue.
30:14
SPEAKER_00: This book even talks about cannibalizing people with your tongue.
30:18
SPEAKER_00: Let me give you an example that's very personal.
30:21
SPEAKER_00: My older sister calls it one of the great turning points in her life.
30:24
SPEAKER_00: She and I were in high school together.
30:26
SPEAKER_00: We were in the same class, in high school, though she was older, and there was this girl in our class that no one liked.
30:33
SPEAKER_00: She was always dirty, she was always smelly, she was unfriendly, she wore really shabby clothes.
30:37
SPEAKER_00: She came from right around the corner from our house, about a quarter mile up the hill, you know, from this uh uh, you know, place that was never mowed and a little shack and so forth.
30:46
SPEAKER_00: And so she had no friends.
30:49
SPEAKER_00: But my older sister, you know, was she was a Christian girl and she was sweet, and so she would sometimes smile at and sort of be friendly toward this girl.
30:58
SPEAKER_00: But this girl made the mistake one day, and I was there, of coming up while Rachel was with her friends who were a little cooler, and she approached and said something to Rachel.
31:08
SPEAKER_00: Well, Rachel, and you know, since nobody else liked this girl, put her down in a severe way, just assassinated her, chopped her down, and and and she turned around and she walked away with her head down, and I saw it.
31:23
SPEAKER_00: And I wasn't spiritual either.
31:24
SPEAKER_00: And when I went home that afternoon, I was telling my little brother and how Rachel had just nailed her, and you know, she'll never do that again, and we were laughing, and my mother heard.
31:35
SPEAKER_00: And my mother called Rachel into the kitchen.
31:39
SPEAKER_00: You see, parents can have a, you know, even grandparents can have a great influence at teaching act justly to their children and grandchildren.
31:48
SPEAKER_00: And my mother said, I want you to tell me about that.
31:50
SPEAKER_00: And Rachel, to her credit, told her the honest truth.
31:52
SPEAKER_00: And my mother said it this today.
31:55
SPEAKER_00: Right now, you'll put on your coat, you'll get out of the house, you will walk that quarter mile up to her house, and you'll apologize.
32:04
SPEAKER_00: We're peering around the corner, Steve and I.
32:07
SPEAKER_00: I will not.
32:10
SPEAKER_00: I'm scared of that house.
32:11
SPEAKER_00: The grass is high, there might be snakes, you know.
32:13
SPEAKER_00: I don't care.
32:15
SPEAKER_00: You're going.
32:15
SPEAKER_00: Tantrum.
32:17
SPEAKER_00: Tears.
32:18
SPEAKER_00: And finally, and I'm out by the mailbox as she walks by with her coat on, going up the hill, and going, oh God, bring her back alive, you know.
32:27
SPEAKER_00: So she goes up the hill, and I'm waiting there, and I get bored.
32:30
SPEAKER_00: It's an hour.
32:31
SPEAKER_00: It's two hours.
32:32
SPEAKER_00: Finally, she comes back.
32:33
SPEAKER_00: I run out, run down the driveway.
32:35
SPEAKER_00: How was it?
32:35
SPEAKER_00: She says, It was okay, it was really nice.
32:39
SPEAKER_00: She's a nice girl.
32:43
SPEAKER_00: There was a turning point in her life, and after that, that girl knew that she had a friend at high school.
32:50
SPEAKER_00: You know, it's easy when you have power, it's easy to chop up people who are at a lower level.
32:55
SPEAKER_00: The next level down, or maybe the bottom level, either way, but God said, I hate that.
32:59
SPEAKER_00: I'm gonna nail you if you do that.
33:01
SPEAKER_00: Not only does he say you should act justly, but you should love mercy.
33:05
SPEAKER_00: And of course, uh maybe you heard when I was, you know, reading the uh the Holman that the word mercy there is that great word hezid, which really is not so much pity or mercy as much as it is faithfulness.
33:19
SPEAKER_00: Faithful love, loyal love.
33:20
SPEAKER_00: You need to love true love.
33:22
SPEAKER_00: You need to love loyal love.
33:23
SPEAKER_00: You need to love it when you see promise keeping love.
33:26
SPEAKER_00: And the reason you need to love that, this should be uh love mercy here, is because we're objects of mercy.
33:35
SPEAKER_00: And we're objects of love.
33:37
SPEAKER_00: I brought you up from the land of Egypt, God says.
33:39
SPEAKER_00: I redeemed you from the place of slavery.
33:42
SPEAKER_00: And then he says in 718, Marmica says, who is using his own name?
33:46
SPEAKER_00: Who's a god like you?
33:48
SPEAKER_00: This is a pun.
33:49
SPEAKER_00: Micah, who's a god like you who removes iniquity and passes over rebellion for the remnant of his inheritance.
33:56
SPEAKER_00: He doesn't hold on to his anger forever because he delights in what?
34:00
SPEAKER_00: Faithful love.
34:00
SPEAKER_00: That's what the word is.
34:01
SPEAKER_00: Hesid, faithful love.
34:03
SPEAKER_00: And this is a word, one of the great words of the Old Testament, which requires two things.
34:08
SPEAKER_00: It requires that either in your immediate biological family or in what we call the church family, that you have someone who betrays you, someone who hurts you, someone who cheats on you, someone who does something that threatens that relationship that you have with them, all right?
34:23
SPEAKER_00: That makes it hard for you to maintain loyal love.
34:26
SPEAKER_00: You need that part of it.
34:27
SPEAKER_00: And then the other part is your response.
34:30
SPEAKER_00: For loyal love to kick in, you must then decide, deliberately decide, to be faithful and loyal to them, despite the fact that accept the hurt upon yourself, because somebody has to pay for it.
34:41
SPEAKER_00: You accept the hurt, you accept the pain, you accept the betrayal, and you decide to stay true.
34:46
SPEAKER_00: And why do you do that?
34:48
SPEAKER_00: You certainly don't do that because society suggested or culture suggests it.
34:54
SPEAKER_00: Hollywood last year and Hollywood, both movies and and and TV, when you put together list all of the sexual relationships that occurred on screen or on uh on the silver screen or on television, over 90%, 93% of those took place outside of marriage.
35:14
SPEAKER_00: 93%, and yet the statistics, Kinsey was wrong, the actual statistics are that 95% of husbands and wives stayed true to each other last year in America.
35:25
SPEAKER_00: But you've got the elite of culture working against that, working against loyal, promise-keeping, faithful love.
35:32
SPEAKER_00: Am I right?
35:33
SPEAKER_00: And so God says, I'm calling on you since I am this kind of a God, since I delight in faithful love, since when you sin, I go ahead and remove your iniquity.
35:43
SPEAKER_00: I stay true to you even though you backtrack on me, betray me, turn against me.
35:49
SPEAKER_00: I stay true to you.
35:50
SPEAKER_00: So if you want to call yourself a fully devoted follower of mine, you need to do the same thing.
35:55
SPEAKER_00: I know it's hard to forgive those family members who talked about you that way, who treated you that way.
36:03
SPEAKER_00: I know it's even harder to forgive those church people, those brothers and sisters in the community who did that.
36:10
SPEAKER_00: But I'm telling you that if you ask me what you want from me, you ask me what I want you to do, I'm telling you, I want you to act justly with integrity, but also to love true love, love faithful, loyal love, love promise, keeping love.
36:27
SPEAKER_00: I I was reading a funny book by a Christian comedian recently called To Be Perfectly Honest, and I so identified with what he said when he said, When it comes to loving others, I'm a baby Christian.
36:40
SPEAKER_00: I'm in the nursery hoping to graduate to the Pablum stage.
36:44
SPEAKER_00: But when it comes to judging others, I'm an authority.
36:47
SPEAKER_00: I have my doctorate.
36:48
SPEAKER_00: I'm buff, robust, mature, in the prime of life.
36:51
SPEAKER_00: I can spot phonies and Pharisees and pick them off at 500 yards.
36:56
SPEAKER_00: But I'm not so good at looking in the mirror.
37:00
SPEAKER_00: And God says, What I want from you is faithful, loyal love.
37:06
SPEAKER_00: Love mercy, act justly, love mercy, and walk humbly.
37:10
SPEAKER_00: Interestingly, the word to walk humbly is to walk carefully.
37:14
SPEAKER_00: The kind of humility he's looking for pictures a dark swamp and like Gollum leading Frodo through the dead to the deadlands, or like a guide, follow you follow his footsteps all the way up the mountain, or like a child following his father across the stream, watching that path from rock to rock.
37:34
SPEAKER_00: God says, that's what I want from you.
37:36
SPEAKER_00: When it comes to society, I'm looking for you to act justly.
37:39
SPEAKER_00: When it comes to the family, either the church family or your biological family, I'm looking for you to love faithfully.
37:46
SPEAKER_00: When it comes to me, I'm looking for you to keep in step with me, walk carefully, walk humbly in step with me.
37:54
SPEAKER_00: Why?
37:55
SPEAKER_00: Because you're going to be seeing me before long.
37:57
SPEAKER_00: Chapter 4, verses 1 through 5, in the last days, the mountain of the Lord's house will be established at the top of the mountains and will be raised above the hills.
38:08
SPEAKER_00: Peoples will stream to it, and many nations will come and say, Come, let's go up to the mountain of the Lord.
38:14
SPEAKER_00: And then he says, Though all the peoples, as a result of knowing this is coming, I say, though all the peoples walk in the name of their gods, I'm going to walk in the name of Yahweh our God forever and ever.
38:26
SPEAKER_00: How do you walk carefully?
38:28
SPEAKER_00: How do you walk humbly?
38:30
SPEAKER_00: How do you walk with God?
38:32
SPEAKER_00: How do you walk in his name?
38:35
SPEAKER_00: Paul takes this, you know, and he says, you know, that's the key to the spiritual life.
38:40
SPEAKER_00: Walk with the spirit.
38:42
SPEAKER_00: Or as Packer translates it, keep in step with the Spirit.
38:47
SPEAKER_00: Because there's a golden path he's laid out.
38:49
SPEAKER_00: And I don't know about you, but the only way I know that golden path is this book.
38:54
SPEAKER_00: That's why I think Paul says in Ephesians, walk by the Spirit, and in Colossians, walk by the word.
39:01
SPEAKER_00: Because this is the golden path.
39:03
SPEAKER_00: And so you must read this book daily.
39:05
SPEAKER_00: You must follow this book, study this book, because this is the golden path by which you walk carefully, keeping in step with, walking in the name of, walking in step with your God.
39:19
SPEAKER_00: Does that make any sense to you?
39:23
SPEAKER_00: So when it comes to society, you act justly.
39:27
SPEAKER_00: When it comes to the family and the church and at home, you love faithfully.
39:31
SPEAKER_00: When it comes to God, it all starts here.
39:34
SPEAKER_00: It all starts with bending down humbly and following God, walking with him as you read his word.
39:43
SPEAKER_00: I love the story.
39:44
SPEAKER_00: I grew up feeling cow's udders, let's put it that way, morning, every morning and night.
39:51
SPEAKER_00: At six o'clock in the morning at night.
39:53
SPEAKER_00: So I love this story of how a visitor drove up and stopped at Kansas countryside.
39:57
SPEAKER_00: Farmer was out there with cows and he stops and he yells out the window.
40:01
SPEAKER_00: He says, What time is it?
40:04
SPEAKER_00: The farmer's down by Bessie and he lifts up the cow's udder.
40:08
SPEAKER_00: And he says, It's 10 to 1.
40:11
SPEAKER_00: Guy in the car, whoa, whoa, whoa.
40:13
SPEAKER_00: He gets out of the car.
40:14
SPEAKER_00: He says, Now, I'm just curious, how is it that by feeling a cow's udder you can tell what time it is?
40:20
SPEAKER_00: Farmer says, Come on over here, I'll show you.
40:23
SPEAKER_00: So the fellow comes over, he says, Bend down here.
40:25
SPEAKER_00: And the fellow bends down, and the farmer says, See, if you if you just lift up the udder just a little bit like this, you can see the clock in the church tower across the valley.
40:40
SPEAKER_00: So great story.
40:43
SPEAKER_00: Not a great story, perhaps, but but it illustrates the fact that there's really no shortcut.
40:48
SPEAKER_00: There's really no shortcut to knowing what's right to do, to walking with God, to walking in his name, to keeping in step.
40:55
SPEAKER_00: It still comes with looking, you know, what God says.
41:00
SPEAKER_00: Looking at that authority.
41:02
SPEAKER_00: What does God want from me?
41:04
SPEAKER_00: What does God want me to do?
41:08
SPEAKER_00: Say it with me.
41:09
SPEAKER_00: He wants me to act justly, love mercy, and walk humbly with our God.
41:18
SPEAKER_00: Let's pray.
41:19
SPEAKER_00: Heavenly Father, uh, thank you for the reminder that it's it's really it's really not complicated, that you've shown us what it is that you want from us.
41:29
SPEAKER_00: I pray, dear Lord, for folks here who have their hardest time saying the smallest word in this verse, the you're.
41:37
SPEAKER_00: Walking humbly with your God, because they're not sure that you are their God.
41:41
SPEAKER_00: And I ask at this moment your spirit would drop down upon them.
41:45
SPEAKER_00: Touch them, remind them that you desperately want to be their God.
41:50
SPEAKER_00: You want to be their God.
41:53
SPEAKER_00: If they'll simply look at what you did for them, that they're sinners, that they're lost, but you love mercy, that you love to forgive, you sent your son Jesus Christ down on the cross, and if they'll simply fling themselves with a reckless abandon upon him, then they can call you, my God.
42:13
SPEAKER_00: For the rest of us, Lord, I ask that you would enable us to live the way you want us to live, the way that all true, devoted followers of you live.
42:21
SPEAKER_00: That is, justly, faithfully, and humbly.
42:26
SPEAKER_00: For Jesus' sake, and for the sake of those who have to live with us, we pray.
42:32
SPEAKER_00: Amen.
42:34
SPEAKER_00: You're just not going to be able to do that.