A DIFFERENT KIND OF FAITH

As the prophets so often did when talking about the relationship between God and His people, Micah begins in chapter 6 by retelling how God had led and cared for His people in the past (see Micah 6:1–5), concluding with the declaration that “I, the LORD, did everything I could to teach you about my faithfulness” (Micah 6:5, NLT).

The prophet’s reflections then turn to asking what the appropriate response from God’s people should be to such faithfulness. “With what shall I come before the LORD and bow down before the exalted God?” he asks rhetorically (Micah 6:6).

Echoing the calls of other Hebrew prophets, Micah’s suggestions came in the context of worship (compare Isaiah 58 and Amos 5:21–24, for example), but also hinted toward the fearsome demands of the surrounding nations’ gods, who often seemed to need appeasement. Micah began modestly, talking about a sacrifice of calves, but this seemed inadequate, and his suggestions quickly inflated. The next step was offering “thousands of rams and ten thousand rivers of olive oil” (verse 7) before going to the horrific extreme of suggesting the sacrificing of his firstborn child, an all-too-common practice in pagan worship of the time.

But the answer was more simple, more profound, and more worshipful: “To act justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly with your God.” Rejecting the religions of fear with all their excesses, superstitions, and sacrifices, the faith and worship of God’s people were about living in a way that responded to, reflected, and enacted the faithfulness and goodness of God. If their God was a God of justice, mercy, and humility, as He had insisted and demonstrated repeatedly in their history, this was the kind of people they were called to be.