Fourth Sunday after the Epiphany – January 30, 2011

Micah 6:6-8 - Listen to what the Lord says: “Stand up, plead your case before the mountains; let the hills hear what you have to say. ²     Hear, O mountains, the Lord’s accusation; listen, you everlasting foundations of the earth. For the Lord has a case against his people; he is lodging a charge against Israel. ³     “My people, what have I done to you? How have I burdened you? Answer me. ⁴     I brought you up out of Egypt and redeemed you from the land of slavery. I sent Moses to lead you, also Aaron and Miriam. ⁵     My people, remember what Balak king of Moab counseled and what Balaam son of Beor answered. Remember your journey from Shittim to Gilgal, that you may know the righteous acts of the Lord.” ⁶     With what shall I come before the Lord and bow down before the exalted God? Shall I come before him with burnt offerings, with calves a year old? ⁷     Will the Lord be pleased with thousands of rams, with ten thousand rivers of oil? Shall I offer my firstborn for my transgression, the fruit of my body for the sin of my soul? ⁸ He has showed you, O man, what is good. And what does the Lord require of you? To act justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly with your God.

Who Can Survive The Courtroom of our God?

Who can survive the courtroom of our God? Have you ever considered such a question? Or better yet, when was the last time you contemplated the fact that you will have to stand before your holy and almighty Judge? It is a scenario such as this that Micah places before his hearers in our lesson. He directs God’s people to look at their continual wickedness which was a result of their repeated forsaking of the Lord. He creates a courtroom scene to build God’s case against Israel. God’s people must stand silent in the face of all God’s accusations. They are guilty as charged.

“Listen to what the Lord says: “Stand up, plead your case before the mountains; let the hills hear what you have to say. ²Hear, O mountains, the Lord’s accusation; listen, you everlasting foundations of the earth. For the Lord has a case against his people; he is lodging a charge against Israel.” Micah begins by calling the people of Israel to plead their case. He pictures the Lord as prosecutor. The mountains and the hills serve as witnesses. As the people of Israel take the stand the Lord reminds them of the report the mountains and hills will tell. They will tell of the Lord’s goodness to Israel and of Israel’s unfaithfulness to the Lord! After all, what hill had not witnessed Israel’s shameful and abominable idolatry! What mountain hadn’t seen them bow down and worship the false gods of Baal! What part of the earth hadn’t heard them complain about having to serve the Lord; and how they considered such service to be too restricting and too confining!

Indeed the Lord had a valid case against his people. So airtight, in fact, that he could ask them: “My people, what have I done to you? How have I burdened you? Answer me.” But they could not answer. They could not utter a word. They could not find an excuse. They had no alibi. How true! The Lord had done nothing to cause them to turn against him! He had not been unfair to them! He had not broken his covenant with them! He had not made impossible demands on them! If the people of Israel were looking for a reason to justify their unfaithfulness, they would not find it in anything the Lord had done. Quite the contrary, consider the record of the Lord’s faithful and loving care of Israel. “I brought you up out of Egypt and redeemed you from the land of slavery. I sent Moses to lead you, also Aaron and Miriam. ⁵My people, remember what Balak king of Moab counseled and what Balaam son of Beor answered. Remember your journey from Shittim to Gilgal, that you may know the righteous acts of the Lord.”

The Lord had done nothing but shower them with grace and mercy. He had delivered them from Egypt; and in that Passover feast foreshadowed their spiritual deliverance from the slavery of sin. He did not leave them to wander without a leader in the wilderness. He delivered them from evil men like Balak, king of the Moabites. Even though they grumbled and complained against him again and again, even when Israel committed sexual sins, he did not reject them. All the evidence was there. What more could be said. The Lord rests his case.

Now the Israelite’s make their defense. “With what shall I come before the Lord and bow down before the exalted God? Shall I come before him with burnt offerings, with calves a year old? ⁷     Will the Lord be pleased with thousands of rams, with ten thousand rivers of oil? Shall I offer my firstborn for my transgression, the fruit of my body for the sin of my soul?”   What a sorry defense it is! They act as if the problem is with God - what more does he want? They sarcastically suggest that their relationship with the Lord wasn’t that bad. They mock God by suggesting that he could be bought off with a little bit more here and a little more there.

But none of these things could appease God’s wrath on the nation. They were all external things. They could not answer the demands of divine justice, nor satisfy the wrong done to God. Micah asked these rhetorical questions to tell Israel that nothing – not even the most extreme sacrifice – could atone for what they had done. They stood convicted, they had been unfaithful, and they were self-righteous in thinking that God could be bought off. God had shown them what he was looking for! He was looking for knees bent in repentance, pleading for mercy and forgiveness!

So, how strong of a case does God have against you? That’s almost a ridiculous question, isn’t it? And the only reason it isn’t ridiculous is because of how true it is. God could call the trees in your front yard and grass behind it to serve as witnesses. He could summon the wood that makes up our homes and the metal that makes up our car to give testimony. He could call the classroom desks and the whiteboards to offer up their accusations. And what would they all say: “Guilty!” Guilty of speaking hurtful and nasty things about your classmates; guilty of passing on gossip about your co-worker; guilty of losing your patience with your children; guilty of unloving speech to your spouse; guilty of breaking the Fourth Commandment by disregarding the posted speed limits; guilty of idolatry as your life revolves around your television, computer or money but never have time for God; guilty of complaining about how living according to God’s standards is such a drag; guilty of unfaithfulness to the Lord; guilty of worshiping ourselves. Should we keep going? We don’t have the time.

So, do you think that you could survive the courtroom of our God? Do you think you could survive that place where we must stand before the all seeing God; a place where we will not be able to shift the blame, where our guilt is too plain to be denied, and where there will be no excuses? It’s time for us to do some serious soul-searching! It’s time to stop looking at everyone else, pointing out their faults, and start looking at ourselves, and seeing our disgusting transgressions. It’s time to get rid of the attitude that tries to buy off God by pointing to the so-called pious things we’ve done. It’s time to quit justifying our actions on Friday and Saturday night because Sunday through Monday we offer to him better service. It’s time to stop acting like God is the problem, and open our eyes to the hideous, damning, corrupting, destroying, devastating nature of our sin. It’s time to stop mocking God by thinking our relationship with him is just fine because we haven’t been struck down with any calamity or disaster. It’s time to come before the Lord and bow down before the exalted God. It’s time for us to bend our knee in repentance before the Lord and plead for his mercy and forgiveness.

The guilty Israelites of Micah’s day were willing to do anything to please God and get back into his good graces – everything, that is, except what he wanted. Sometimes I’m afraid that we think the same way. But there is no sacrifice that we ourselves can offer that will appease God. He is not satisfied with the greatest of sacrifices on our part. What God desires is mercy, not sacrifice. He desires a broken and contrite heart. In other words, he desires a heart that realizes that one stream of the blood of Christ is worth more than ten thousand rivers of oil or ten thousand year old rams or hundreds of millions of so-called good works. A broken and contrite heart is a heart of faith that confesses our sins and pleads for God’s mercy and compassion on the basis of God’s grace. The broken and contrite heart is the heart of faith that realizes that the only way we can survive in God’s courtroom is if the Judge of heaven and earth declares us innocent. But how can this happen when we are clearly in the wrong?

If I am caught cheating on my taxes, and the judge fines me more than I can pay, I’m in big trouble. If someone comes with me to court and says, “I will pay for his fine,” and the judge says, “Ok, the court will accept that payment,” I will be released. The only way that we sinners can be found not guilty of wrongdoing is if someone pays the fine for you and me. That’s what has happened. In Isaiah we hear that Jesus, the promised Messiah “was pierced for our transgressions, he was crushed for our iniquities; the punishment that brought us peace was upon him, and by his wounds we are healed. We all, like sheep, have gone astray, each of us has turned to his own way; and the LORD has laid on him the iniquity of us all” (Isaiah 53:5,6). Christ was punished, not us. Christ suffered Gods’ wrath, no you and me. For all our offenses, Christ was the substitute who paid your fine in full, on the cross, by his suffering and dying. By the faith worked in us to believe these truths, we can survive in the courtroom of our God!

Understanding this, we can then understand the words that Micah wrote to close out this courtroom scene, “He has showed you, O man, what is good. And what does the Lord require of you? To act justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly with your God.” The good which God requires of us is not the paying of a price for the pardon of sin. That which God desires is a heart that is in tune with him and his Word. One that is faithful to the Lord. One that is participating in daily confession and repentance. One that upholds what is right according to the will of the Lord and sacrifices personal aims for following him, all motivated by the righteousness that is ours through the Messiah.

So, can we survive in the courtroom of our God? The answer is a resounding yes, all because of the sacrifice of Jesus Christ. As a result, may we be motivated with the response of faith that seeks to conduct our lives according to the righteous standards of our God, delighting in the opportunity to do good, always deferring to the way and will of God as revealed in the Word, and repeatedly running to the cross to lay our sins at our Savior’s feet in repentance. God give us the spiritual wisdom and the spiritual strength to do just this until finally we stand in his courtroom to hear him say, “You are not guilty because the blood of Jesus my Son has paid your guilt.” Amen.