Eternity Daily Bible Study No. 208 Treasures From The Prophets - 6 To subscribe just send a blank email to: eternity-dbs-subscribe@strategicnetwork.org [Apologies for the irregularity of Eternity Daily Bible Study lately. I have been very busy with other ministry (and would appreciate your prayers). God willing Eternity-DBS should get back to normal soon.] Micah 6:6-8 MKJV With what shall I come before Jehovah, to bow myself before God the Most High? Shall I come before Him with burnt offerings, with calves of a year old? (7) Will Jehovah be pleased with thousands of rams, with ten thousands of rivers of oil? Shall I give my first-born for my transgression, the fruit of my body for the sin of my soul? (8) He has shown you, O man, what is good. And what does Jehovah require of you but to do justice and to love mercy and to walk humbly with your God? One of the themes of the prophets is that we misunderstand worship if we locate it in the Church or the Temple, and in sacrifices, offerings or ceremonies. To be sure the Hebrews were told not to neglect meeting together and sit in dejected isolation, giving up on God. But that is a far cry from making the meeting the "be all and end all" of the Christian faith. The locus of Christian faith is the home and the marketplace and the daily relationships that are part of our existence. Right living is right worship. Justice, mercy and humility are more important than money in the offering plate! I am concerned about churches where worship is everything and the songs on Sunday are more important than the rest of the week combined. If more thought goes into six songs than six days then something is wrong. If having an LCD projector and great PowerPoint slides and cool worship is more important than being kind to the poor and accepting the outcasts and the unfashionable - then what are the true values of such a church? Great worship may impress the neighbors but it does not impress God unless it is also grounded in well-lived lives. The question of many churches seems to be "How can we get worship right and relevant so we can attract people and grow?". Instead the question should be "How can we live right and treat others well so they know the love of Christ in us, through us and because of us." Biblical worship is not about branding or marketing or attracting or impressing. It is about giving honor to God in both word and deed, in church and out of church. Micah posed a good question: "With what shall I come before Jehovah, to bow myself before God the Most High?". In other words - how can I please God? The answer - that the grandest ceremony and the most extreme sacrifices do not move God at all was surprising. Why was God so unimpressed? Because even the most wicked person can come up with a thousand gallons of oil and a hundred bulls. It is just quantity not quality. It is also being a spectator, with sacrifices and offerings you give, then you stand back, no action required, the priests do the rest. But on the other hand living justly, mercifully and humbly is full life involvement - day to day living at its toughest. Most of us would rather opt out of the living and just pay a hundred dollars to the priest. Worship is good but worship is not enough. Singing beautifully on Sunday does not make up for sexual immorality on Saturday night. Grace is for the penitent not the arrogant, forgiveness gives us a chance to be holy, not a free ticket to go out and sin once more. We cannot dance our way to holiness! Charm, charisma and a good singing voice do not make a saint - holy living, justice in business, a merciful heart and kind and humble actions do. Lets put Micah 6:6-8 in modern terms. I can imagine a pastor saying to God "Hey Lord we had such fantastic worship, a hundred voice choir, Powerpoints, audio, video, Internet broadcasts, a guitarist we converted from the Rolling Stones and a top-rating TV broadcast. Wow Lord we were COOL! Aren't You impressed Lord!" And God will simply say "Did you teach them to obey my commandments, did you do justice for the poor, did you show mercy to the broken and did you walk humbly with your God?" Now I am not against worship, but I am against obsession with worship to the exclusion of almost all else in the Christian life. The six days are far more important than the six songs and the sixty minutes. Worship is good but worship is more than singing and dancing and raising hands and listening to a sermon. Worship is glorifying God in a holy life. The Church will grow because it is holy and humble, not because it is merely attractive. The church is relevant when it is merciful and just - not when it is merely fashionable. The church will have power when it has a good testimony - not just a good performance. Can you imagine Paul or the prophets telling a pastor to employ a good church marketing consultant? Maybe I am just being an old and grumpy missionary - or maybe I have a point. Where the church is growing - China, South America, Africa - there are few church marketing consultants. What there are pastors who live holy lives and meet pressing human needs with the power of the gospel. This to me is far more important, more relevant and more Christian than all the image-making in the world. After all sometimes the graven images we bow down to can be the images of ourselves or our religious institution. Back to Micah: "He has shown you, O man, what is good. And what does Jehovah require of you but to do justice and to love mercy and to walk humbly with your God?" Justice is "mishpat" - the studious application of God's will to every aspect of life, bringing all things into the beautiful and holy order known as the Kingdom of God. Loving mercy is to delight in going beyond the rules, to go the extra mile in kindness and love and to be gracious and forgiving to others, and to walk humbly with your God is put aside all worldly pomp and pride and to see others as images of God and one's own self as a miracle of grace. Micah wants us to live a life of lawful gentleness. He says the "good life" (at least the life God regards as good) is righteous, gracious, humble and unpretentious. Ostentatious displays of piety should be replaced by saintly acts of mercy and grand sacrifices replaced by a kind and gentle spirit. People praise a good performance, God praises a good life. God approves the quiet saints, who may never make 'the stage' but who live life in obedience to God's commandments in reverent humble simplicity and all truth. Your ethics are more important than your looks and your mercy is more important than your brand of jeans. To be humble is more important than having great abs and righteousness outweighs a million sopranos. The gospel lifestyle is more excellent than a Bose sound system and gentleness than microphone skills. The most desperate need is not relevance to the market but goodness in the sight of God. And God has told us what is good - it is to do justice and to love mercy and to walk humbly with your God. Blessings, John Edmiston Were you blessed by Eternity Daily Bible Study? 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