This week Michael writes that there is much confusion, pandemonium, and crisis in the world around us today. Jesus said to his followers in the sermon on the mount: “let your light so shine before man that they may see your good works and glorify your Father which is in heaven.” When the crisis comes and courage is required, God expects his people to have such confidence in Him that they will be the reliable and faithful ones.
The prophet Micah was called by God to warn the children of Israel that because they had forsaken God’s laws and turned their hearts from the Lord, they had been taken into captivity in Babylon. However, God offers a way of reconciliation. If the children of Israel returned their hearts back to God in repentance, then God would spare His righteous judgement. The choice is truth or consequences. In our own culture and society today, our nation has turned its back on the righteous biblical standards on which our country was founded as “one nation under God”. When a nation has fallen, there are four requirements for God’s people to repent, turn around and return their hearts back to the Lord. According to 2 Chronicles 7:14, “If my people, which are called by my name, shall humble themselves, and pray, and seek my face, and turn from their wicked ways; then will I hear from heaven, and will forgive their sin, and will heal their land.”
When Jesus confronted the Pharisees in John 8, he said “you are of your father the devil. The devil was a liar and a murderer from the beginning and you are just like your father.” In Matthew 7:13-14 Jesus is really saying, I am the narrow gate and the narrow way. In John 14:6, the Lord declares: “I am the way the truth and the life, no man cometh unto the Father but by me.” Without redemption through Christ, the wages of sin is death. When societies, cultures, and nations forsake God and the truth of His Word, the nation is bound to fall. Ephesians 6:12 adds, “For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against spiritual wickedness from on high.” The devil’s objectives are to steal, to kill, and to destroy. The devil is the accuser and the deceiver. His tactics are to subvert the truth with lies and deception. Yet, Jesus the Savior came not into the world to condemn the world, but that the world through him might be saved.
God declares the way to bring individuals and nations back into fellowship with Him. According to Psalm 1, “Blessed is the man who walks not in the counsel of the ungodly, nor stands in the way of sinners, nor sits in the seat of the scornful. But his delight is in the law of the Lord and in his law does he meditate day and night.” The prophet Micah called Israel with God’s warning about their exile in Babylon. Then after seventy years of exile, God through his prophet told the children of Israel that there is a hope for restoration, reconciliation, and redemption. What does God require from Israel and from once-godly nations in these times of upheaval? Micah 6:8a begins, “He hath shown thee O Man what is good; and what doth the Lord require of thee?” God, our Maker, has the right to require His purposes from His creation. He created us for good and not for evil. The word “good” means fit for the purpose for which the Creator designed His creation.
Among the choices of this life, what is the rational choice? Upon what standard should we base our decisions? Jesus always did his Father’s will. He was tuned into God’s power to will and to do of His Father’s good pleasure. Jesus’ first recorded words were, “Know ye not that I must be about my Father’s business?” The devil works in darkness, chaos, and confusion. His ploy is to divide and conquer by pitting competing factions against each other. Then where there is strife and contention, there is confusion and every evil work.
God has told us through his prophet Micah what is good. Micah 6:8b continues, “But what does the Lord require of thee, but to do justly, to love mercy, and to walk humbly with thy God.” The first requirements are to do justly and to love mercy. To do justly is to do that which is righteous; it denotes consonant to the divine will. Only those who have been born of God’s Spirit are righteous in God’s eyes. For Jesus Christ who was without sin was made the perfect sacrifice for sin on our behalf that we may be made the righteousness of God in Him. Love and mercy are the nature of God himself. The most frequent descriptors for God in the Old Testament are “Steadfast love,“ along with loving kindness and tender mercies. The final requirement is that we walk humbly with our God.
In a world run amok, where they call evil good and good evil, the culture and the nation has forsaken the righteous standard of the truth of God’s holy Word. The “politically correct” say that the greatest right is their right “not to be offended.” However, God gave us the Holy Spirit to comfort the afflicted and to afflict the comfortable. Influence starts with the man in the mirror. For we all with open face beholding as in a glass the glory of the Lord are changed from glory (of the flesh) to glory (of the spirit) even by the spirit of the Lord. James 1:22-26 says, “But be doers of the word, and not hearers only, deceiving your own selves. For if any be a hearer of the word, and not a doer, he is like unto a man beholding his natural face in a glass: For he beholds himself, and goes his way, and straightway forgets what manner of man he was. But whoso looks into the perfect law of liberty, and continues therein, he being not a forgetful hearer, but a doer of the word, this man shall be blessed in his deed.”
The blessing is in obedience to God according to His Word from a heart of love and gratitude. For what does the Lord require of thee, but to do justly, to love mercy, and to walk humbly with thy God that we may ever live to the praise of the glory of His grace!
Your brother in Christ, Michael
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