So just a couple of weeks ago, we commemorated Martin Luther King, Jr. Day. And the vast majority of us think of Martin Luther King, Jr. We can't help but think of the work that he did with the Civil Rights Movement.
So we think of Dr. King, we think about the work that he did with the March on Washington, where he delivered his famous, I Have a Dream speech. Or we think about the leadership that he provided to the Montgomery Bus Boycott, which kickstarted the Civil Rights Movement in the United States. Or we think about the way that he led other marches through the streets of the South, or the way that he organized sit-ins that segregated lunch counters in the South.
But one thing that we sometimes forget when it comes to Dr. King is that before he became a leader in the Civil Rights Movement, he was a pastor. And that's not just a footnote in Dr. King's biography.
It's also an important part of who he was. And in 1954, more than a year before the Montgomery Bus Boycott began, when he was 25 years old, Dr. King became the pastor of Dexter Avenue Baptist Church in Montgomery, Alabama. And when Dr.
King became the pastor at Dexter Avenue, it's not like Dexter Avenue was some small, struggling church. Now when Dr. King became their pastor, the Dexter Avenue was already one of the most prominent African American churches, not only in Montgomery, but in all of Alabama. And if Dexter Avenue and the congregation, there was anything like most churches, when their new pastor was getting ready to start his job, they had some pretty high expectations for him.
They were like most churches. They would have expected that Dr. King was going to preach good sermons on Sunday morning, and that he was going to lead either prayer meetings or Bible studies during the course of the week. They would have expected that their new pastor was going to make hospital visits, and that he was going to sit with families while they were grieving.
They would have expected that he was going to officiate over funerals and weddings. They would have expected that their new pastor was going to make time to offer counseling to anyone in their church or in their community who might be struggling. And if Dr. King had done those things, and just those things, the folks at Dexter Avenue Baptist Church probably would have thought that he was doing everything that he had called him to do as the pastor.
And Dr. King would have been remembered by the folks at Dexter Avenue Baptist Church as being a good minister. But in December of 1955, after Rosa Parks had been arrested for refusing to give up her seat, on a Montgomery City bus to a white passenger. After she was arrested for it, the African American community in Montgomery decided it was time for them to take a stand.
So the community started talking about a bus boycott, and they realized that they needed a leader for this new movement. And they wanted Dr. King to be that leader. And almost overnight, everything changed for Dr.
King. He went from being the pastor of a local church to being the face of this new movement. And you also have to realize that the Montgomery bus boycott lasted for 381 days, lasted for more than a year. And during that time, Dr.
King's life was crazy. He was organizing meetings. He was speaking at rallies. He was negotiating with city officials in Montgomery.
He was traveling around the country, speaking and rising to raise awareness and funds for this cause. And his phone was ringing off the hook. He had reporters that always wanted to talk with them. He had his followers, people who were part of the movement who needed to know what they were supposed to do next.
He had opponents who were calling him to make threats against him. He even had a bomb thrown at his house one night while he was speaking at an assembly. And all of this was happening while Dr. King was still the pastor at Dexter Avenue Baptist Church.
And while all of this was happening, Dr. King still wanted to be able to do everything that his church expected from him. From preaching to teaching to making visits to offering counseling and just overseeing the administrative details that every pastor has to oversee. But there weren't enough hours in the day for everything that Dr.
King wanted and needed to get done. So as Lewis Baldwin, who is a retired professor of religious studies at Vanderbilt University, explains, it says Dr. King often did not have sufficient time to engage in counseling, to do funerals and weddings, to do the kind of administrative work that comes naturally with pastoral roles. And that weighed heavily on Dr.
King because he knew that his church needed their pastor. And he lays these feelings out to the entire congregation and different letters that he wrote to them. And Michael Thurman, who would also be a pastor at Dexter Avenue Baptist Church, shares that in these letters Dr. King really apologizes to the congregation because of all of the overwhelming other activities and duties that he had to the larger Montgomery Bus Boycott.
And that they had all of these other responsibilities that just overwhelmed the schedule. Now what you think about that for just a second. Dr. King was leading the Montgomery Bus Boycott.
He was becoming a leader in the burgeoning civil rights movement. He was working on a cause that was going to change the course of American history. He was fighting for justice. He was standing up for the oppressed.
He was risking his life to preserve other people's human dignity. And while all of that was happening, he felt like he needed to apologize to the church he was serving because he wasn't able to do all the things that the church expected him to do. So there was a time when Dr. King really wrestled with the questions.
He really wondered if he was doing what God had called him to do. And I think that's a question that all of us, as people of faith, as followers of Jesus, as Christians wrestle with sometimes. Now sure, we're never going to be in a situation that Dr. King was in and we may never express it in these words exactly.
But I think that there are all times when we wonder, am I doing what God wants me to do? Am I doing what God wants me to do? Am I doing what God wants me to do as a parent? Am I doing what God wants me to do as a partner?
Am I doing what God wants me to do as a boss or as an employee? Am I doing what God wants me to do as a citizen of this world and a citizen of the United States? Am I doing what God wants me to do as one of his followers? Of course, you can't answer any of those questions until you ask another question first.
We can't answer if we're doing what God wants us to do until we know what God wants us to do. So we have to ask what it is that God wants us to do. We have to ask what does God require from us? So let me ask you, what does God require from us?
As a followers, what does God require from us? It's Christian. Well, to be completely honest with you here, I'm not a mind reader, so I don't know the way that you would try to answer that question. And I can also tell you that all the gears that I've been a part of the church, I don't think I've ever heard anyone directly and explicitly ask that question before.
What does God require from us? But even though I've never heard anyone directly ask that question, let alone attend to answer that question, I will tell you that the church does a pretty good job of alluding to some things that we think that God requires from us. We do a good job of alluding to some things that God wants us to do if we're going to follow Him. And the things that we do a good job of alluding to that God wants us to do if we're going to follow Him can really fit into four categories.
We think that if we're following God the things that we need to do are attend church services. We are Bible, say our prayers, and give to the church or another nonprofit organization. And when you stop and think about it, you'll realize that I'm right, because think about how many servants you've heard preached over the years where the pastor has tried to help you become a better prayer. Or think about all of the different programs that churches have tried over the years to try to help you become better at inviting your friends, your neighbors, or even complete strangers to come to church.
Think about the Sunday school classes or Bible studies that you've been in where you've been encouraged to dig deeper into the Word of God. Think about the business meetings that you've attended where someone will always seem to talk about how important every financial gift is to the work that the church does. So we do a good job alluding to the fact that these are the things that God requires from us. We think that these are the things that God requires from us.
A lot of us think that God requires us to go to church, to read the Bible, to say our prayers, and to give. It's what a lot of us think. We think that God requires from us is to go to church, read our Bible, say our prayers, and to give. And we're not the first ones who have ever felt this way.
As a matter of fact, people have thought that all that God requires from us are these religious practices for a very, very long time. And we're even going to see that in the scripture passage I want us to take a closer look at today. So if you've got a Bible close by, you got a Bible app on your phone, I'd encourage you to open it to Micah chapter 6. And as you're finally, let me tell you a little bit more about Micah.
We sometimes say that Micah is a minor prophet, but that doesn't mean that Micah wasn't doing major work. We call some people minor prophets in the Bible simply because the books that are written about them are shorter than the books that are written about other prophets. But all of these prophets have the same job. They all speak on behalf of God.
And I got to tell you, that sounds like a really cool job description, right? Who doesn't want to speak on behalf of God? But it's also the kind of job that none of us would ever actually want to apply for. And that's because a prophet's main job was to be the warning alarm for the people of Israel.
When the people of Israel weren't doing what God wanted them to do, when they weren't living their lives the way that God wanted them to live their lives, it was the prophet's responsibility to sound the alarm and warn them to make a change before it was too late. And that's what we're going to see Micah do in Micah chapter 6. So let's take a look at what Micah has to say. We're sorry reading in Micah chapter 6 verse 1.
This is what we read. We read, here what the Lord is saying, arise, lay out the lawsuit before the mountains, let the hills hear your voice, hear mountains the lawsuit of the Lord, hear eternal foundations of the earth. The Lord has a lawsuit against his people with Israel, he will argue, my people, what have I ever do to you? How have I wearied you?
Answer me. I brought you up out of the land of Egypt. I redeemed you from the house of slavery. I sent Moses, Aaron, and Miriam before you, my people.
Remember what Moab's King Balak had planned and how Baelim be your son answered him. Remember everything from Chatem to Gilgal that you might learn to recognize the righteous acts. Lord. So in these verses, God reminds the people of Israel of everything that God has done for them.
He starts out by reminding them that he is the God who delivered them from slavery. He freed them from the slavery in Egypt, goes on to tell them that he is also the God that protected them and delivered them from an unjust, unrighteous, unholy king who wanted to destroy them. And then he tells the people of Israel to remember Chatem, which is the last place of the people of Israel camped before they returned to the Promised Land. And he tells them to remember Gilgal, which is the first place that people of Israel camped once they returned to the Promised Land.
So God tells them to remember everything that God has done for them. And then as we keep reading, we're going to see that after God reminds the people of Israel of everything that he has done for them, he's going to ask them. After everything that I've done for you, what is it that you're doing for me? So let's pick back up in Micah chapter 6 verse 6 and see what happens next.
Micah 6 we're told of this. With what should I approach the Lord and bow down before God on high? Should I come before him with entirely burned offerings, with year old calves? Will the Lord be pleased with thousands of rams, with many torrents of oil?
Should I give my oldest child for my crime, the fruit of my body, for the sin of my spirit? That's on the first five verses that we read. God reminds people of Israel of everything that God has done for them. And then he basically asked them, with everything I've done for you, what are you doing for me?
And what do we hear in these verses that we just read? We're talking about sacrifices, burned offerings of year old calves, how many thousands of rams, how many torrents of oil need to be offered to God. So what have the people of Israel been doing for God after everything that God has done for them? They've been offering sacrifices.
And where do the people of Israel offer sacrifices? In the temple. So what have they been doing? They've been engaging in religious practices.
They've been doing the ancient equivalent of going to church and reading their Bibles and saying their prayers and giving. That's what they've been doing. And how does God feel about these religious practices that the people of Israel are doing? Well, the book of Amos, and Amos is another prophet who lived about the same time that Micah did, does a really good job of telling us exactly how God feels about what the people of Israel have been doing.
And Amos chapter 5, verses 21 through 23, this is what God tells us. He says, I hate. I reject your festivals. I don't enjoy your joyous assemblies.
If you bring me your entirely burned offerings and gifts of food, I won't be pleased. I won't even look at your sacrifices of well fed animals. Take away the noise of your songs. I won't listen to the melody of your hearts.
This passage makes it pretty clear that God wants more from us than just our religious practices. I mean, if we were writing this today, it might say something along the lines of, I hate. I reject your Easter in Christmas celebrations. I don't enjoy your worship services.
If you bring me your tithe checks or give online, I won't be pleased. I won't even look at how much money you give me. Take away the noise of those songs that you love to sing in church. Because I don't want to listen to them anymore.
Amos makes it clear how God feels about all of these religious practices. God's not pleased. And what this means is that following God is about so much more than just going to church, reading your Bible, saying your prayers and giving. Following God requires more than that.
So what does following God require? Well, that brings us back to the book of Micah. Because Micah is going to tell us exactly what it is that God requires from us. So let's pick back up in Micah chapter 6 verse 8 and see what Micah tells us next.
That's what Micah writes. He says, Hey, that's God. God has told you, O Bortle, what is good and what the Lord requires from you? To do justice.
To love mercy. And to walk humbly with the Lord. It doesn't get much more clear than that. God has told us what is good and what the Lord requires from us.
So what does God require from us? What does God want us to do? What does following God require out of us? It requires us to do justice.
To love mercy. And to walk humbly with God. What does that look like? Well, let's take it one thing at a time and talk about what it looks like.
First thing that Micah tells us that God requires from us is to do justice. But what does it look like for us to do justice? Because when a lot of us here at the word, justice, we can't help but think of the criminal justice system in the United States. When we hear the word justice, we think about judges and juries and lawyers and courtrooms.
But that's not what Micah is talking about when Micah talks about justice. Now, what Micah is talking about is making things right. That's what justice means for Micah. Making things right.
So doing justice means that we stand up for people who are being pushed down. Doing justice means that we speak out for people whose voices are being silenced. Doing justice means that we include people who are being left out. That's what justice looks like.
Micah tells us the next thing that God requires from us is that we love mercy. What does that look like? Well, a lot of times when we hear the word mercy, we just think about feeling sorry for somebody. But that's not what mercy is about.
Mercy is about active compassion. It's about active empathy. So mercy is about seeing someone who is hurting and actually doing something to help them. Mercy is about extending grace to people even when they mess up.
Mercy is about refusing to write people off even when they come from a place that you're not real sure of or even when they've done things in their life that you don't agree with. And the last thing that Micah tells us that God requires from us is to walk humbly with the Lord. And this is where a lot of people think, well, that's about your Christian walk. That's where God's telling you that you're supposed to go to church and read the Bible and say your prayers and give.
But that's not what Micah's talking about here either. When Micah tells us that we're to walk humbly with the Lord, actually, I think it's the hardest thing that Micah tells us to do. Because to walk humbly with the Lord, to walk humbly with God means that we realize we're supposed to follow God, not control God. We struggle with that.
So walking humbly with God means that we realize we're not the ones that are in charge. We don't have God completely figured out and we never will have God completely figured out. Walking humbly with God means that we realize that God is working through people that we wouldn't choose to call. God is working in places that we wouldn't go to because God is always bigger and greater than we could begin to understand.
This is what it means to follow God, to do justice, to love mercy, to walk humbly with God. This is what God requires of us. God wants us to do justice, to love mercy, and to walk humbly with Him. That's what God wants.
That's what God requires from you if you want to follow Him, to do justice, to love mercy, and to walk humbly with Him. And if you think about it for a moment, you'll realize that these three things have one big thing in common. They're about how we treat other people, especially people that we usually treat as outsiders, people that we usually push to the margins. And I know some people will start saying, well, that's just something that Micah says.
That's just in the Old Testament. But this isn't just something that Micah says. This is something that Jesus does. And we've seen this time and time and time again over the last few weeks as we have been working our way through this season and the life of the church, the season we call epiphany.
And the season of epiphany is a season where Jesus reveals to us the very nature of God, showing us who God is and what God values. And we have seen who God is throughout the series. We started the series by talking about the story of the wise book of Matthew to the first ones who visit Jesus. They're the first ones who bow down and worship Jesus, even though the wise men were foreign priests who practice a different religion.
We continue the series by talking about Jesus' baptism. We saw that when Jesus waded down into the waters of the Jordan River to be baptized with sinners, even though he was without sin, that it revealed to us that God is a God who moves toward things that we and people that we consider to be unclean. We continue on from there talking about the first people that Jesus called to be his disciples. And who were the first people that Jesus called to follow him?
It wasn't the religious leaders. It wasn't the priests. It wasn't the Levites. It wasn't the scribes.
It was fishermen and tax collectors. And last week, we talked about where Jesus began his ministry. Where did Jesus begin his ministry? Not in the mainstream, not in the middle of Jerusalem, but in the margins of Galilean.
Why does Jesus do all of these things? It's because that's who God is. It's because this is what God values. God is a God who does justice.
God is a God who loves mercy. And God is a God who wants us to walk humbly with him instead of us expecting God to walk humbly beside us. What this means is that God will always care more about how we treat people, people who are created in God's own image, than he'll care about our religious practices. But we don't like to hear that.
We don't like to hear that. You know why we don't like to hear that? Because religious practices are a whole lot easier. It is a whole lot easier to just show up church for a couple of hours on a Sunday morning than it is to do justice.
It is. It's a whole lot easier to read your Bible than it is to love mercy. And it's a whole lot easier to drop a couple of bucks into our offering box than it is to walk humbly with God. So most of us, we would prefer to pray for the homeless instead of doing the work to make sure that affordable housing is available, not just in our area, not just in our community, but in our own neighborhoods where those who are homeless might be able to live.
These are most of us would much rather sing about how much Jesus loves us all instead of confronting our family, our friends, our neighbors, our coworkers, when I make a comment that is racist, sexist, or bigoted. And it means that most of us would much rather read passages in the Bible that teach us about welcoming the stranger than to welcome immigrants into our communities or even into our country. This means that we act a whole lot like the people who are acting in Microsoft. Because people in Microsoft were convinced that they just did these religious practices.
For them it was going to the temple and offering the sacrifices for us today, it's going to church and reading our Bibles and sending our prayers and giving to the church. We think if we do these things that we are doing enough, but we're not, we're not doing enough because we're not doing what God wants us to do. And this may hurt your feelings a little bit, but you need to hear it anyway. God doesn't care about how many times you go to church if you hate your neighbors.
God doesn't care how well you know the Bible or how many verses you have memorized if you don't do justice. God doesn't care about your prayers and how beautiful and eloquent they may sound or how many times a day you say them if you don't love mercy. And God doesn't care about our worship services if we aren't walking humbly with them. Now this isn't to say that going to church and reading your Bible and saying your prayers and giving to the church are bad things, but they're not what God requires from us.
So this week I want you to ask yourself, are you really doing what God requires from me? Are you doing justice? Are you loving mercy? Are you walking humbly with God?
And if you look at your life and you realize that you're not, I want to challenge you to be willing to do the same thing that Martin Luther King Jr. did. Because when Martin Luther King Jr. realized that his calling was to do more than just pastor at church as great and high calling as that is, he resigned his position as a senior pastor of Dexter Avenue Baptist Church in Montgomery, Alabama.
And he made the decision to actually join his father's church where he would go on staff under Daddy King as Dr. King called him. But he did this because making that switch gave him the freedom to lead in the civil rights movement, to devote his time to organizing and giving leadership to traveling around speaking to raising awareness for what was happening in the United States. Doing that, walking away from what I've got to be my highest calling, walking away from it gave him the freedom to do justice, to love mercy and to walk humbly with God.
So if you look at your life and you realize that you have been more concerned when it comes to your faith of doing things like just going to church and reading your Bible and saying your prayers and giving some money on the offering plate, instead of doing justice and loving mercy and walking humbly with God, be willing to make change. Because the book of Micah clearly shows us what God requires from us, to do justice, to love mercy, to walk humbly with the Lord. This is what God wants from us. This is what God requires from us.
So this is what we need to do. So the challenge for us all is to actually do it. Let's pray together. God, as we come to you in this time of prayer, we thank you for the challenge that we've heard from the prophet Micah today.
Because God, sometimes we do try to reduce our faith through just these religious practices. We tell ourselves that we're doing enough because we go to church on Sunday mornings, because we spend time reading our Bible during the week, because we remember to say our prayers before our meals, because we drop a few dollars into the offering plate when we're at church. God, those are good things, but they're not what you require from us. You require us to do justice and fight for what's right.
You require us to love mercy and extend your grace to people we think don't deserve it. You require us to walk humbly with you, remembering that we are the followers, that we're not the ones in control of you. So God, help us. Help us to do what you actually call us to do.
Help us to do what it is you want us to do. Help us to do what it is that you require from us. And let us not settle for anything less. We pray this all in Jesus name.
Amen.