Bible Commentaries

Micah 6:6-8

Many and various, in all ages, have been the answers to this question, but in spirit and principle they reduce themselves to the three which in these verses are tacitly rejected, that the fourth may be established for all time.

I. The first answer is, Will Levitical sacrifices suffice? "Shall I come before Him with burnt offerings, with calves of a year old?"—i.e. "Shall I do some outward act or acts to please God?" Men are ever tempted to believe in this virtue of doing something—to ask, as they often asked our Lord, "What shall I do to inherit eternal life?" There have been attempts in all ages to revive such ceremonials as the Levitical institutes, because they are easier than true holiness, and tend to pacify and appease the perverted conscience. But God's own Word about them is plain: they perish in the using, they cannot sanctify to the purifying of the flesh.

II. If, then, we cannot please God by merely doing, can we by giving? "Will the Lord be pleased with thousands of rams, and ten thousands of rivers of oil?" Surely not one of us is so exquisitely foolish as to imagine that he can by gifts win his way one step nearer to the great white throne.

III. What third experiment shall we try? Shall it be by suffering? Shall I, lacerating my heart in its tenderest affection, "give my firstborn for my transgression, the fruit of my body for the sin of my soul?" Has any man ever found these sufferings sufficient? Has any man ever testified that he found forgiveness through voluntary torture? Or is not that true which is said of the prophets of Baal: "They leaped upon the altar, and cried aloud, and cut themselves after their manner, and it came to pass that there was neither voice, nor any to answer, nor any that regarded."

IV. What, then, is the true way of pleasing God? What is the prophet's answer? By being. By being just and merciful, and humble before our God. It is the answer of all the prophets, it is the answer of all the Apostles, it is the answer of Christ Himself. God needs not our services, He needs not our gifts, least of all does He need our suffering; but He needs us,—our hearts, our lives, our love.

F. W. Farrar, Silence and Voices of God, p. 71.

References: Micah 6:6-8.—J. Vaughan, Christian World Pulpit, vol. xix., p. 237; Old Testament Outlines, p. 274; A. Watson, Good Words, 1872, p. 131; C. Kingsley, Sermons for the Times, p. 93.

Micah 6:8

Morality and Religion.

I. Morality is good in itself, but when inspired with religious faith and love it becomes better still; then it unites what is fairest on earth with what is most glorious in heaven. Not only does religion add a new and higher beauty to virtue, it is sometimes the only secure defence against temptation to vice and crime. Human weakness, when unsustained by the fear of God, the love of Christ, and the power of the Holy Ghost, is very likely to be mastered by the world, the flesh, and the devil; and there is not a man amongst us who should dare to say: "Let temptation do its worst, and whether God helps me or not I am strong enough to stand against it." There are hundreds who need the resoluteness of heroic strength, and almost a martyr's constancy, to preserve the commonest human virtues.

II. But while I maintain that religion is the best friend to morality instead of its rival or its foe, I am far from thinking that the Christian Church in our own times is doing all it might for the morals of its own members and for the morals of society at large. I believe that a defective and erroneous theology has enfeebled the religious motives which should sustain and perfect common human virtues; that the discipline and cultivation of the moral character of Christian people is too much neglected, that ah undue emphasis is laid upon the worth of religious emotion, and that the sacredness of the practical duties of life is depreciated. You fall into a ruinous mistake if you suppose that a solitary precept of the moral law was repealed, or its authority weakened, or its sanctions and penalties withdrawn, when you repented of sin and trusted in the mercy of God. Every common duty is a common duty still, whether you are a Christian or not; the neglect of it provokes the displeasure of God, and whether you are a Christian or not that displeasure will be manifested.

III. There is one pernicious principle which is acted upon by some sincere and earnest religious people in the cultivation of moral character which deserves a most serious refutation. They are anxious that all goodness should spring from one solitary motive. They desire that the thought of God should not only be the supreme but the only active power in the soul. He is, indeed, a happy man to whom the remembrance of God is ever present as a living and practical energy in the soul; but wherever that energy works freely, naturally, and vigorously, it will not work alone. It will inspire us with a more fervent loyalty to truth and honesty, and with a deeper disgust for falsehood and injustice; it will reveal itself not only in the intensity of the spiritual affections, but in the strength and resoluteness of the moral principles.

R. W. Dale, Discourses on Special Occasions, p. 27.

I. The Lord requires thee to "do justly." The whole question of the ground of moral obligation is raised by this sentence. It seems to tell me that some one is commanding a certain course of action, which I am bound to follow because He commands it. And this course of action is described by the phrase "doing justly." Is justice, then, nothing in itself? Are actions made right because a certain power insists that they shall be performed? Did Micah believe that the Lord was a mere power, who commanded certain things to be left undone? If He did, He set at nought the law and history, which He confessed to be divine. That law and history declared that the I AM, the Righteous Being, had revealed Himself to the creatures whom He had formed in His image; and had said to them "Be ye holy, for I am holy." If you would have the command "do justly" in place of a weight of rules and observances and ceremonies, you must have justice set before you—not in words, formulas, decrees; but lovingly, personally, historically.

II. But the prophet says that the Lord requires of men to "love mercy." This is a higher obligation, still harder to fulfil. Mercy is no doubt a beautiful quality; all religions confess it to be so. When it comes forth in life, men generally are disposed to pay it a frank, unquestioning homage. But there is a limit to this admiration. If mercy meets an unmerciful habit of mind in us, its works will be explained away. Neither priest nor philosopher can teach us how we may both do justly and love mercy. Believe that the Spirit of mercy and forgiveness does, indeed, proceed from the Father and the Son, and you see how that very forgiveness which is shown to man becomes a principle in him able to overcome his unforgiving nature, able to go out in acts of forbearance and gentleness.

III. The Lord requires man to "walk humbly with Him." We are humble in ourselves only when we are walking with God, when we are remembering that we are in His presence, that He is going with us where we go, and staying with us where we stay. It is this thought which lays a man in the dust, for then His eyes are upon him in whose sight the angels are not clean. It is this which raises him to a height he had never dreamt of, for the Lord God has been mindful of him, and come near to him, and fitted him for converse with Himself.

F. D. Maurice, Sermons, vol. v., p. 279.

I. A great deal is required of man, when it is required, amongst other things, that he "walk humbly with his God." We conclude from the singular favour shown to Enoch, that though every converted man is "at peace with God," it may be only of those who love Him with a more than common affection, and serve Him with a special consecration of every power that we can really declare that they "walk with God." (1) Walking humbly with God indicates an habitual sense of His presence a nearness to God, a communion with God; not merely a consequence on the fact that "God is about our path and about our bed, and spieth out all our ways;" but consequent on the practical belief of this fact, on its being realised as a great truth—a truth gifted with an influence over the whole range of our conduct. (2) Walking with God denotes a complete fixing of the affections on things above. It is the description of a man, who, while yet in the flesh, might be said to have both his head and his heart in heaven. He lives in the very atmosphere of the invisible world, holding communion with its mysterious and glorious inhabitants, and finding his great delight in anticipating its enjoyments.

II. Consider the strangeness of the expression of the text: What doth the Lord require of thee but—this or that? This must excite some surprise if it be not shown that more could have been asked; but it quite removes the appearance of strangeness from the expression to consider that man gives little in giving all; and that what is now demanded of him is as nothing when compared with what God might have asked from His creatures. (1) We may safely affirm of the Divine commandments that man is sure to procure himself happiness or unhappiness, according as he does or does not readily conform to them. And if man's own interests are deeply involved in his yielding himself up to the service of God we may readily understand why, when giving all, we should only be reckoned as giving little. (2) God requires of us literally nothing in comparison with what He might have required. He might have left us to struggle in the dark; He might have hidden from us all the shining of His favour; He might have left us wounded, and given no balsam for the wound; He might have inclosed us in a prison, and left no lattice for the sunbeams. It is only needful that we remember that the fear and love which God demands from us make our pilgrimage pleasant, whereas He might have excited horror and dread which would have made that pilgrimage appalling. It is only needful to compare what God actually requires with what He might have required, and the heart must be cold which does not thankfully confess that He requires but little.

H. Melvill, Penny Pulpit, No. 2,125.

References: Micah 6:8.—Plain Sermons by Contributors to "Tracts for the Times" vol. x., p. 1; Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. xxvi., No. 1557; R. Balgarnie, Christian World Pulpit, vol. xxiii., p. 322; A. Rowland, Ibid., vol. xxxi., p. 266; S. Cox, Expositions, 3rd series, p. 70. Micah 6:9.—Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. iii., No. 155; G. D. Macgregor, Christian World Pulpit, vol. xii., p. 392. Micah 7:1.—Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. xvi., No. 945; Preacher's Monthly, vol. i., p. 189.