Micah 6:6-8 / Doing Justice to Doing Justice (Talbot Preaching Class, Chicago 2025, 12 mins)

I’d like to thank and honor my preaching professor, the Rev. Dr. Charlie Dates, for the opportunity to preach today.

The Scripture this morning will be Micah 6:6-8, and the title of my message is “Doing Justice to Doing Justice.”

While you find the book of Micah and chapter 6, I’d like to begin with a story from my family.

A few months ago I was watching the college football SEC championship game with my kids (aged 9, 7, 5). At halftime, the cameras pan down to field level for the Dr. Pepper Scholarship Giveaway competition, where two college students race to throw as many footballs as they can into a hole in the middle of a giant, inflatable Dr. Pepper can. My kids were enthralled—this was more exciting than the football game! After the time was up, the camera followed the winning student, name Christian, as he was escorted toward the soda industry businessman holding a giant check for 100 grand. And as soon as they see this businessman, my kids start asking, “Is that him? Is that him?” And I said, “Who?” And they pointed to the man holding the check: “Is that Dr. Pepper?”

First, my kids don’t drink a lot of soda.

Second, it was pretty obvious they had no idea who Dr. Pepper was…

I tell this story because it helps me understand the situation of the children of Israel back in the days of Micah the prophet. But rather than being innocently confused about some cola’s namesake, the children of Israel were guilty of a much more severe kind of confusion—it is clear that in the days of Micah, God’s people have no idea who God is or what God wants

And so God sent his prophet to prophesy to the people in poetic verse. Now prophecy is—according to the great Jewish scholar Abraham Heschel—the “exegesis of existence from a divine perspective.” In other words, the prophet’s job to help the people recognize reality from God’s point of view.

And here is reality according to Micah: there is rampant injustice among God’s people.

In chapter 2, Micah cries “Woe” (not Woke!) to those who lay in their bed at night plotting how to steal land from the weak and then, when they wake up in the morning, they take it.

In chapter 3, it gets even worse: Micah says the leaders are eating the people alive while the priests and the prophets affirm their exploitation in order to grow rich off the graft.

I wonder if any part of Israel’s reality sounds familiar to you today… I wonder if, when you exegete our existence from God’s point of view, do you find any parallels?

Where have you seen injustice in our land?

Can you think of people who claim to know God but whose actions reveal they have no idea who he is?

And maybe a little closer to home… We are all pastors and preachers here, the priests and prophets of our day. Can you think of any Christian leaders who seem to be more interested in making a profit than speaking like one? (I know I’m playing with homonymns and spelling, but it’s in honor of Micah’s Hebrew, which is full of similar wordplay)

Hopefully, by now, you’ve found the book of Micah, chapter 6.

And we pick up the prophecy just as Micah has evoked the imagery of the courtroom—the arraignment of Israel—God himself asking the people with heartfelt pathos how they could have fallen so far away from him after he has been nothing but good to them. And he says he has delivered them and blessed them… v. 5 “So that you might know the righteous acts of the Lord.”

But their reply in verse 6 shows they really do not know him…

Micah 6:6–8 “With what shall I come to the Lord And bow myself before the God on high? Shall I come to Him with burnt offerings, With yearling calves? Does the Lord take delight in thousands of rams, In ten thousand rivers of oil? Shall I present my firstborn for my rebellious acts, The fruit of my body for the sin of my soul?”

They basically say, “It’s impossible to please you God, you ask for more than we can give…”

But what they do volunteer to offer with increasing incredulity—sacrifices of greater and greater value up to and including their own firstborn sons, which was of course forbidden by God—shows they have no idea about who God is or what he wants.

They do what we so often do—they assume God is like them, they conform their idea of God to their obsession with themselves… they live in a world where they think everything is for sale, including God’s favor. It reveals their endless appetites—all we want is to take, take, take… and so God must be the same: taking, taking, taking

Oh, but that is not our God… in answer to their prideful and mocking questions about “What can please you?” we find one of the great passages of the Hebrew Scripture, a simple summary of what God really wants…

v8: He has told you, O man, what is good; And what does the Lord require of you… But to do justice, to love kindness, And to walk humbly with your God?”

Now if I had time, I would talk to you about what it means to walk humbly with your God — that God would love for us to take off our masks of success and competency and just walk with him in simple honesty.

And if I had time, I would talk to you about what it means to “love kindness” and how kindness (or mercy) is in fact the Hebrew word “chesed,” which refers, specifically, to God’s covenant kindness, God’s faithful mercy, to his people.

“Loving / kindness” is about much more than just “being nice.”

It means to live as if your identity in God’s family is so secure that you don’t have to “man up” or “compete” or “prove yourself” at the expense of another. Instead, to “love kindness” is especially to treat the family of faith as just that—family.

But I don’t have that time, and so I am going to focus on just two words, to see if we can Do justice to that phrase: “Do Justice”

First, Justice.

The first thing I notice is that it is not plural, but singular

These days, we hear about a lot of different kinds of justice: social justice, economic justice, gender justice, racial justice, sexual justice, justice for the immigrant, the list goes on.

And these differences can be helpful in focusing our attention on particular areas of need. But at the same time, thinking about all these different kinds of justices can become problematic because it implies there may be all sorts of different kinds of justice, different standards of justice, depending on who you are.

Who gets to define justice between poor and rich?

Women and men?

Black and white?

Gay and straight?

Immigrant and indigenous?

But here in Micah, there is only one justice, and that is God’s justice. In the Bible, “justice” is always defined in terms of God’s standard, God’s heart and cannot be confined to any one avenue. Indeed, as one scholar has written, God’s justice is “the proper and just ordering of all society”

—moral, religious, spiritual, political, social, economic, you name it…

Which means on the day of ultimate justice, that blessed day when the kingdoms of men become the kingdom of our God once and for all, everything is going to be set right

In the end, there is only one justice that we are called to do, and that is justice according to God’s standard that he has shown us.

Second: Do

These days, there’s plenty of talk about justice. There is so much talk about justice, in fact, that it has become quite popular to send signals to society that we care. TESLA illustration:

I don’t know about your city, but in Atlanta over the last five years, a LOT of people bought Teslas. They’re quiet, they’re fast, and—importantly for some—they don’t burn gas, which means they don’t contribute to the acceleration of climate change. In short, around Atlanta, driving a Tesla can be very much a way to tell the world that you care about environmental justice.

And then DOGE happened, and Elon Musk, the prominent founder of Tesla, began to advocate for politics and positions that very much do NOT align with the ideology… if a Tesla could backfire, it backfired. And so now you see these bumper stickers on the back of Teslas: “Anti-Elon Tesla Club” and “I Bought This Before We Knew Elon Was Crazy” — in other words, I need to clarify my virtue signal

But Micah doesn’t say, “He has told you, oh man, what is good… Signal Justice!” No, he says, DO justice.

Just a few weeks ago, our church learned about 17 immigrant families nearby who had recently come to the united states as refugees. And as has been the practice with approved refugees, the US government committed to fund them for six months as they adjust to this country. But then an executive order came down from on high—cut the funding… and these 17 families with their 68 children suddenly can’t make rent.

Now listen, I understand we have had a major problem securing the border, but these are people who came here out of crisis, came here legally, and our government made a six-month commitment to help them get settled. And then our government broke its word—that’s not justice. But that is also an opportunity for the people of God to do justice in Jesus’ name.

So we raised the money. Because it doesn’t matter who the president is, we’re going to love refugees and welcome the stranger because that’s what God’s word tells us to do.

You know what to do if you find a conflict between an executive order and the Word of God? You better obey that Word of God or you’re no better than the corrupt leaders in Micah.

Do Justice, Love Kindness, Walk Humbly with your God

So—to sum up—

God doesn’t delight in a thousand rams sacrificed in the sanctuary—if anything, he’d rather you put that meat on the table of the hungry

God isn’t asking us to pour out ten thousand rivers of oil as an offering in church—he’d rather we—like the Prophet Elijah—find the widows and the orphans up in Zarepheth, the foreigners!, who are living in the midst of the famine whose grain has run out and whose jar of oil has run dry… that’s where God wants a river of oil poured out!

God doesn’t ask us to sacrifice our firstborn sons to him, he’d rather we raise them up and send them out to do justice, love kindness, and walk humbly with your God.

But speaking of the sacrifice of a firstborn son…

Into all this mess, Micah knows—he prophesies—judgment followed by restoration under a ruler who would be born in Bethlehem Ephrathah…

My preaching professor Dr. Dates says the best preaching “sings and stings.” Well, Micah’s preaching stings then sings… because he brings a word of judgment (ouch!) followed by a promise of Jesus

God’s one and only son,

the firstborn of all creation, (Col 1.15)

The firstborn among many brethren (Romans 8.28)

Who walked humbly before God, who did justice by dying unjustly, and who loved kindness by creating in his death the way for a new covenant community of grace.

Speaking of the sacrifice of a firstborn son, I think of Jesus… The firstborn from the dead (Rev 1.5)

Resurrected and alive and sending his Spirit to give us power to do justice today even as we wait for that glorious day in the not-so-distant future when he will return and set all things right—at last, “the proper and just ordering of all society”

And on that day, the world will not be like my kids watching the Dr. Pepper halftime show, asking, “Is that him?” or “Is that him?” because when he returns every knee will bow in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue will confess, every eye will know that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.

And so while we wait: let us do justice to doing justice.