The Calling of God’s People: a word from Micah 6

In recent days, I have been thinking quite a bit about what it means to be God’s people in God’s world. My thinking has brought me back to certain key Scripture texts that speak clearly and profoundly to this point.

I have returned often to Micah 6:8, one of the most succinct summaries of the calling of God both personally and corporately for God’s people. Micah prophesies at a time of division with the people of God, including divided kingdoms (north and south), but also divided internally, with allegiances given sometimes to God and sometimes to other lords. It is into this confusion and division that Micah brings a strong word from God about the calling of God’s people. Chapter 6 begins with God reiterating concerns from the pervious chapters for His people. This time God’s concerns come as a formal case against God’s people with the mountains around Jerusalem standing as witnesses to the case. Listen to the first few verses of Micah, chapter 6: 

Listen to what the Lord says: “Stand up, plead my case before the mountains;
    let the hills hear what you have to say.
Hear, you mountains, the Lord’s accusation;
    listen, you everlasting foundations of the earth.
For the Lord has a case against his people;
    he is lodging a charge against Israel. (Micah 6:1-2)

The charge against the people—that they are not living in God’s ways—is backed up with the covenant action of God. God has done so many amazing things for His people and they need to remember God’s merciful deliverance on their behalf across the generations.

“My people, what have I done to you?
    How have I burdened you? Answer me.
I brought you up out of Egypt
    and redeemed you from the land of slavery.
I sent Moses to lead you,
    also Aaron and Miriam.
My people, remember
    what Balak king of Moab plotted
    and what Balaam son of Beor answered.
Remember your journey from Shittim to Gilgal,
    that you may know the righteous acts of the Lord.” (Micah 6:3-5)

Each one of these references point back to God’s work ing bringing His people out of slavery in Egypt and into the promised land. God has not burdened the people but has actually relieved the burden from His people. God has not done bad things to the people, but has brought good things to His people.

This background on God’s good activity leads us toward the calling of God’s people. However, first, an unknown speaker offers a counter-argument in verses 6 and 7, addressing a wide ranger of potential responses to what God may ask of His people, all of them linked with sacrifices and ritual offerings. But these, things, it will be seen, are not what God really most truly wants.

With what shall I come before the Lord
    and bow down before the exalted God?
Shall I come before him with burnt offerings,
    with calves a year old?
Will the Lord be pleased with thousands of rams,
    with ten thousand rivers of olive oil?
Shall I offer my firstborn for my transgression,
    the fruit of my body for the sin of my soul? (Micah 6:6-7)

It is almost as if the speaker lifts up exasperated suggestions about what God wants of them in response to all He has done. Is it burnt offerings that God wants? Does God want the most valuable calves, just a year old, or thousands of rams? 

And then the images begin to be outlandish. Does God want thousands of rams? Would even rivers of olive oil be enough?  These are all valuable sacrifices, even outlandishly exorbitant. But the next suggestion is even more outlandish, not merely sarcastic, but essentially blasphemous.

Would God like it if His people were to offer their firstborn children to God? Such offerings would undoubtedly be costly, but were strictly prohibited in God’s law (Leviticus 20:2). Unfortunately, shortly after Micah’s day, human sacrifice actually became part of the practice of distorted worship in Israel (Jeremiah 32:35). We’re told that King Manasseh, the son of Hezekiah, even offered his own son in worship to idols (2 Kings 21:6). 

The speaker seems to question whether it’s clear what God really wants.

But Micah responds that what God requires has been clear within God’s instructions—God’s guidelines—since the deliverance of the Exodus. And here we arrive at one of the most well-known statements from all the Bible:

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. (Micah 6:8)

In light of the sarcastic quips from the previous verses about not knowing what God requires, Micah brings profound clarity to God’s calling for His people.

Three strands of what God desires are brought together with force and clarity for all who hear or read these words: to act justly, to love mercy, and to walk humbly with God.

This is the life that God desires and it is also the definition of what the good life truly is. It is defined by God, not by us or by any other human authority. The good life is found in the God who has created all that exists. 

The First Strand: to act justly

The first strand of God’s calling for His people is “to act justly.” The verb “to act” is translated in other versions as “to do,” both renderings of the Hebrew making it clear that this is not an abstraction but something to be put into practice and brought toward completion.

The word translated “justly” comes from the Hebrew word mishpat. This word refers to justice in a judicial sense, but also encompasses total fairness in our relationships and living. This is a word we encounter many places in the Bible, but definitely in the prophetic literature again and again, such as Amos’ strong words: “But let justice roll on like a river, ighteousness like a never-failing stream!” (Amos 5:24).

In Micah’s day the leaders were misusing the people, and Micah’s main accusation was: “Listen, you leaders of Jacob, you rulers of Israel. Should you not embrace justice, you who hate good and love evil?” (Micah 3:1-2a). Specifically, the leaders were oppressing the people they were called to govern and even, in some cases, stealing peoples’ land.

We can do that, too, when we create pecking orders for certain people to receive good things and others to be left out. We do that when we treat certain kinds of people—whether  based on their skin color, their language, their country of origin, or their social standing—preferentially, whether treating them poorly or treating them with undeserved favoritism.

Micah reminds us that the high calling of God’s people is to “do justice”—not just to think about it but to truly “act justly.”

The Second Strand: to love mercy

The second strand within the braided cord of God’s calling for His people is “to love mercy.”

The word translated “mercy” comes from the Hebrew word hesed. This word is sometimes translated as ‘love’ or ‘steadfast love’ to convey the persevering love, tender affection, and ongoing care one person has for another. It is sometimes translated as ‘mercy’ to convey an undeserved kindness or passing over of deserved judgment. It is sometimes translated as ‘covenant faithfulness’ to convey the loyalty of one partner to another in promises made

In many ways, the prophet Hosea is the prophet of hesed. Through his life and prophecies we see again and again the persevering love and covenant faithfulness of God despite human failure on many counts. As we read early in Hosea’s prophecies: “The Lord said to me, ‘Go, show your love to your wife again, though she is loved by another man and is an adulteress. Love her as the Lord loves the Israelites, though they turn to other gods and love the sacred raisin cakes'” (Hosea 3:1). Although the people of God had strayed, God would continue to love them and show mercy to them because God could not be unfaithful to who He is and what He had promised.

Hesed continues in spite of unfaithfulness—like we see in Hosea—and reaches out toward all people to take them within its embrace. Hesed reflects God’s guiding laws—that is, it doesn’t forsake truth—but it also reflects God’s guiding love—that is, its arms are always open to receive the one who turns around and turns to God.

Here in Micah 6:8, the prophet reminds us that the high calling of God’s people is also to “love mercy”—to pursue the way of God’s faithful love in every way so that we might reflect the faithful love of God in every way.

The Third Strand: to walk humbly with your God

The third strand within the braided cord of God’s calling for His people is “to walk humbly with your God.”

This third strand begins with the call to walk in a certain way. That Hebrew verb—halakah—describes the totality of the way one lives one’s life. It is not an activity, just going for a walk, but an approach to living, the overall walk of life.

Then we encounter the word “humbly” in the NIV, the Hebrew word tsana, which means humility, lowliness, or modesty.

Humility is one of the most unique Judeo-Christian virtues, not finding much place in other worldviews. Humility means that we know who we are and who we’re not, and that we have become content with that. We are not striving to become something or someone else.

The more we understand who God is and what He has done for us, the more we understand what little we have and how everything is a gift from God.

Andrew Murray, in his excellent little book titled Humility, writes: “The great test of whether the holiness we profess to seek or to attain is truth and life will be whether it be manifest in the increasing humility it produces….the holiest will be the humblest.”

The Three-Strand Cord of God’s Calling for His People

Now these three strands—to act justly, to love mercy, and to walk humbly with God—together reflect the character of God. God Himself is all justice. Justice has its foundations in His character. God Himself is all steadfast love and mercy. He defines what love and mercy truly are. And God, believe it or not, is all humility. He knows who He is and is perfectly content in that reality, not striving to be something else.In contrast to the ways of idolatry, which have led people astray in their living toward sin—we become what we worship—and in contrast to the ways of failed leaders, who have upended justice and forsaken covenant love, God makes clear the calling upon His people.

So may we hear the invitation of God in these words of Micah 6:8. May we hear again the calling of our just, mercifully loving, and humble God. And, by His great grace and the power of the Holy Spirit, may we also live that calling in our daily lives.

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. (Micah 6:8)