'What doth the Lord require of thee, but to do justly, and to love
mercy, and to walk humbly with thy God?'--MICAH vi. 8.
This is the Prophet's answer to a question which he puts into the mouth
of his hearers. They had the superstitious estimate of the worth of
sacrifice, which conceives that the external offering is pleasing to
God, and can satisfy for sin. Micah, like his great contemporary Isaiah,
and the most of the prophets, wages war against that misconception of
sacrifice, but does not thereby protest against its use. To suppose that
he does so is to misunderstand his whole argument. Another misuse of the
words of my text is by no means uncommon to-day. One has heard people
say, 'We are plain men; we do not understand your theological
subtleties; we do not quite see what you mean by "Repentance toward God,
and faith in Jesus Christ." "To do justly, and to love mercy, and to
walk humbly with my God," that is my religion, and I leave all the rest
to you.' That is our religion too, but notice that word 'require.' It is
a harsh word, and if it is the last word to be said about God's relation
to men, then a great shadow has fallen upon life.
But there is another word which Micah but dimly caught uttered amidst
the thunders of Sinai, and which you and I have heard far more clearly.
The Prophet read off rightly God's _requirements_, but he had not
anything to say about God's _gifts_. So his word is a half-truth, and
the more clearly it is seen, and the more earnestly a man tries to live
up to the standard of the requirements laid down here, the more will he
feel that there is something else needed, and the more will he see that
the great central peculiarity and glory of Christianity is not that it
reiterates or alters God's requirements, but that it brings into view
God's gifts. 'To do justly, to love mercy, to walk humbly with our God,'
is possible only through repentance towards God, and faith in our Lord
Jesus Christ. And if you suppose that these words of my text disclose
the whole truth about God's relation to men, and men's to God, you have
failed to apprehend the flaming centre of the Light that shines from
heaven.
I. So, then, the first thing that I wish to suggest is God's
requirements.
Now, I do not need to say more than just a word or two about the
summing-up in my text of the plain, elementary duties of morality and
religion. It covers substantially the same ground, in a condensed form,
as does the Decalogue, only that Moses began with the deepest thing and
worked outwards, as it were; laying the foundation in a true relation to
God, which is the most important, and from which will follow the true
relation to men. Micah begins at the other end, and starting with the
lesser, the more external, the purely human, works his way inwards to
that which is the centre and the source of all.
'To do justly,' that is elementary morality in two words. Whatever a man
has a right to claim from you, give him; that is the sum of duty. And
yet not altogether so, for we all know the difference between a
righteous man and a good man, and how, if there is only rigidly
righteous action, there is something wanting to the very righteousness
of the action and to the completeness of the character. 'To do' is not
enough; we must get to the heart, and so '_love_ mercy.' Justice is not
all. If each man gets his deserts, as Shakespeare says, 'who of us shall
scape whipping?' There must be the mercy as well as the justice. In a
very deep sense no man renders to his fellows all that his fellows have
a right to expect of him, who does not render to them mercy. And so in a
very deep sense, mercy is part of justice, and you have not given any
poor creature all that that poor creature has a right to look for from
you, unless you have given him all the gracious and gentle charities of
heart and hand. Justice and mercy do, in the deepest view, run into one.
Then Micah goes deeper. 'And to walk humbly with thy God.' Some people
would say that this summary of the divine requirements is defective,
because there is nothing in it about a man's duty to himself, which is
as much a duty as his duty to his fellows, or his duty to God. But there
is a good deal of my duty to myself crowded into that one word,
'humbly.' For I suppose we might almost say that the basis of all our
obligations to our own selves lies in this, that we shall take the right
view--that is, the lowly view--of ourselves. But I pass that.
'To walk humbly with thy God.' 'Can two walk together unless they be
agreed?' For walking with God there must be communion, based in love,
and resulting in imitation. And that communion must be constant, and run
through all the life, like a golden thread through some web. So, then,
here is the minimum of the divine requirements, to give everybody what
he has a right to, including the mercy to which he has a right, to have
a lowly estimate of myself, and to live continually grasping the hand of
God, and conscious of His overshadowing wing at all moments, and of
conformity to His will at every step of the road. That is the minimum;
and the people who so glibly say, 'That is my religion,' have little
consciousness of how far-reaching and how deep-down-going the
requirements of this text are. The requirements result from the very
nature of God, and our relation to Him, and they are endorsed by our own
consciences, for we all know that these, and nothing less than these are
the duties that we owe to God. So much for God's requirements.