We continue once again in the book of Micah. Today we are in the next to last chapter. And had we not missed a Sunday, we would be doing the last chapter in the last Sunday of 2020, but we have one more next week. So we're in chapter 6, and we want to cover that chapter today. And so, as always, I'll ask you to stand as we read that chapter, Micah chapter 6. And as always, I will remind you. because this is not merely the Word of men. This isn't just clever sayings of even very important or very wise men, but it is the very Word of God that means listen. Listen carefully and attend to this reading of God's Word. Hear what the Lord says. Arise, plead your case before the mountains, and let the hills hear your voice. Hear you mountains, the indictment of the Lord, and you enduring foundations of the earth, for the Lord has an indictment against his people, and he will contend with Israel. O my people, what have I done to you? How have I wearied you? Answer me, for I brought you up from the land of Egypt, And I redeemed you from the house of slavery, and I sent before you Moses, Aaron, and Miriam. O my people, remember what Balak, king of Moab, devised, and what Balaam, the son of Beor, answered him, and what happened from Shittim to Gilgal, that you may know the righteous acts of the Lord. With what shall I come before the Lord and bow myself before God on high? Shall I come before him with burnt offerings, with calves a year old? Will the Lord be pleased with thousands of rams, with ten thousands of rivers of oil? Shall I give my firstborn for my transgression, the fruit of my body for the sin of my soul? He has told you, oh man, what is good. And what does the Lord require of you but to do justice and to love kindness and to walk humbly with your God? The voice of the Lord cries to the city. It is sound wisdom to fear your name. Hear of the rod and of him who appointed it. Can I forget any longer the treasures of wickedness in the house of the wicked and the scant measure that is accursed? Shall I acquit the man with wicked scales and with a bag of deceitful weights? Your rich men are full of violence. Your inhabitants speak lies and their tongue is deceitful in their mouth. Therefore, I strike you with a grievous blow, making you desolate because of your sins. You shall eat, but not be satisfied. And there shall be hunger within you. You shall put away, but not preserve. And what you preserve, I will give to the sword. You shall sow, but not reap. You shall tread olives, but not anoint yourselves with oil. You shall tread grapes, but not drink wine. For you have kept the statutes of Omri and all the works of the house of Ahab, and you have walked in their councils, that I may make you a desolation and your inhabitants a hissing, so you shall bear the scorn of my people. This is the word of the Lord. Thank you, God. The grass withers, the flower fades, but the word of our God stands forever. Please be seated. Sometimes grace and being gracious takes unusual forms, so unusual that sometimes we don't recognize grace when we see it. I remember such times as I look back on my life. I remember times when I would ask my father and then sometimes when my children later would ask me if they could help me. I asked him if I could help him. And my dad, as he was working, he would always say, sure, come help me. And sometimes my help was not really help. Sometimes the job that he was doing took much longer because of the fact that I was really more of a hindrance than a help and he had to come back and make up some of what I had messed up. He was being gracious to me. I didn't realize it. I thought I was helping Him, but it was only later that I realized that this was a form of mercy and love and grace to me. I didn't recognize it, but nevertheless, that's what it was. Well, in this chapter, we see really God's grace to His people, and this grace comes in the form of some harshness. It comes in the form of things that we might not always recognize as grace, but nevertheless they are grace. And so the way that I would like us to focus as we look at this chapter is in terms of this question, how does the way God deals with His people in their sin display the wonder of His grace. How's God's grace revealed in this chapter? That's the rubric in terms of which I'd like us to discuss what we see here today. As usual, I'd like for us to see three things. So in the first place, I'd like us to see this, that God's grace is displayed in His reminding of His deeds. And these three things, we do have an alliteration this week. I don't always do that, but it just kind of worked out that way. So we want to think in terms of reminding and revealing and reproving. God's grace is shown in these three ways. So first, He reminds us of His deeds. Now look at what God does, and this is really amazing. Here in verses 1 through 5, and really here in verses 1 and 2, He tells us first, and there are really two commands that we need to focus on here. The first is hear, and the second is remember. God tells us hear, hear what the Lord says, and that's a lesson for us. God's grace comes to us through His Word. And so, in order for us to receive that grace, we need to attend to hearing it. Not just being present, not just hearing the Word, but really hearing what God says. And that's what God exhorts first. He says, I want you to hear. Hear My Word. And then, notice what he says, he says, Arise, plead your case before the mountains. Now, right after he says to us, hear the word of the Lord, Micah, through Micah he's saying this, then it's if he turns to the side, he turns aside and he speaks to the prophet. And he's instructing the prophet about pleading his case, pleading God's case. And so he says, plead your case before the mountains, let the hills hear your voice. Why the mountains? Well, if we read the law, if you remember, if you've read the first five books of the Old Testament, you know that when God establishes His covenant with Israel, He says that the very mountains are going to be witnesses. Witnesses as to whether Israel keeps its covenant and whether God keeps His promises to His people. The mountains will witness. Why the mountains? Because the mountains endure. The mountains were around at the beginning of the creation of the earth, and they've been around ever since, and they will be around for ages to come. And so they're around, and they're there, and they've seen everything, figuratively speaking. And so the mountains are called as witnesses here. Let the hills hear your voice. the Lord says to Micah. And then Micah takes up his case for God and he says, here are your mountains, the indictment of the Lord, your enduring foundations of the earth. Why are mountains the foundations of the earth? We might think in terms of, for instance, the way mountains are described by Job as going down into the depths of the sea. So these mountains, as they come up and as they rise, you might even say that the foundation of the earth itself is the mountains. I guess that's the best we can do in understanding what he's saying here. But he says here, for the Lord has an indictment against his people. And this is a common form in the prophets. The prophet brings the court case of the Lord before his people, and the prophet is serving as the prosecuting attorney. The Hebrew is Riv. It's a Riv pattern, and Riv means a charge or an indictment. And so Micah is taking up this form, and God is bringing his people into court, and Micah is pleading the case. He says, He will contend with Israel. And the Hebrew there is more in the sense of He will contend for Himself. It's a reflexive. And so the sense is God is going to show for Himself. He's going to prove Himself right by doing this. Now why is it important to see that? It's important because notice the wonder of what God is doing here. And notice the grace in it. What's God doing? God is not under obligation to explain anything to people who have rebelled against Him and sinned against Him. He could just send justice, and He could send punishment, He could send disaster. It would be perfectly just, it would be perfectly righteous for God to do that. But notice what God does. He sends His prophet to make the case with His people, and He explains what He's doing. He pleads a case as if He's pleading before a judge. There's no judge that's higher than God to whom He must submit. So with whom is He pleading? He's pleading His case with His people. He's making a case. He's explaining to them, look, I want you to understand something. Hear what I'm saying. I want you to understand. I don't just want to judge you. I want you to understand, and so I'm explaining, I'm pleading with you, I'm appealing to you. More than accusing, God is appealing. Do you see? And He's not under any obligation to do that. You know, we might think of, if you're a parent, you think of children. And one of the things that I've been convicted of as I've raised children is how important it is, and you parents, you need to take this to heart, how important it is not simply to say, as sometimes we have to for the sake of time, just don't ask me why, just do what I say. Why? Because I said so, and I'm your parent. I have the authority. Well, that may be true. But at least later, even if obeying right now is urgent and there's not time for an explanation, we need to make time to come back and explain things to our children, to talk to them about the why in terms that they can understand. Because that's an expression of love, and that helps them to obey. To understand, not simply because someone's in authority, but understand the why is important. And God does that here. He comes to His people and He appeals to them. He says, look, I'm going to prove myself right. I'm going to prove that I'm guiltless in my relationship to you. I'm going to prove to you that what you have done is not appropriate. It's not right. And so He makes His case. That's grace, you see. That's God's grace to His people. There's another command here, though, in these verses. And it is the word expressed in remember. And in the ESV, it's not here. Oh, yeah, it is. In verse 5. Remember. To remember. And this is our challenge. And throughout the law, God comes back to this again and again as a theme. Remember. Remember what I've done. Remember. Take heart. Remember these things. Don't forget. Don't forget. The danger is that you'll forget. See, this is the danger for us. And so what God does is He reminds them. He reminds them of what He's done. He gives them a historical lesson beginning in verse 3. So what does he say? Oh my people, he asks, what have I done to you? How have I wearied you? And that word wearied has the sense of bringing to exasperation. It's like a burden or a task that makes you so weary you can't continue. And he says, how have I wearied you in this way? This same verb is used in Malachi, if you're familiar with the prophet Malachi, where God indicts the priests in chapter 3 because they look at worship as this wearisome task. This is a burden. What a burden to do this. And we can look at worship that way. But Yahweh is saying to his people, how have I wearied you in this way? And He demands an answer. And then he rehearses his relationship. He rehearses the history of his deeds with Israel. And so he first points out his redemption. I brought you up from the land of Egypt and redeemed you from the house of slavery. Now, it's as if God is saying to them, remember everything associated with that. Remember the plagues, these miraculous plagues that I sent. to deliver you powerfully with mighty hand and outstretched arm. Remember the Red Sea party. Remember when you were up against the Red Sea and Pharaoh and his chariots were on one side and you were boxed in by the Red Sea. And I opened the Red Sea and I opened the way for you to go to freedom and escape disaster. Did that bore you, Israel? How have I bored you? How have I wearied you? Were you unimpressed by that? Do you remain unimpressed by that great deed? That's what he's saying. Answer me. Was that boring to you? And then he points out his provision of leadership for them. I sent before you Moses, Aaron, and Miriam, Moses being a uniquely endowed vessel of God's revelation, God speaking to him face to face as He did no one else and providing revelation for them, truth through Moses, and Aaron leading God's people in worship, and Miriam who had prophetic and liturgical gifts. God provided these leaders for them. It's as if God is saying, do you appreciate the fact that I didn't leave you like a child alone in a huge supermarket, not knowing where his father and mother were to wander around? That I didn't leave you in the wilderness to wander around, but I provided guidance for you and leadership? Do you appreciate that? Was that boring to you? Have I wearied you in doing that? Is that unimpressive? And then he says, oh my people, remember what Balak, king of Moab, devised. He gave them protection. Balak wanting to curse, hire Balaam to curse his people. And you remember what Balaam said, I can't speak anything but what the Lord says. And I can't curse those whom God has told me to bless. And so he blesses them, ironically enough. And God provided protection. So God's asking, have you forgotten? Have you forgotten that I wouldn't allow this prophet, true prophet, to put the hokey pokey on you? I wouldn't let him do it? Have you forgotten that? Is that unimpressive to you? And then that verb, remember, does double duty. It's as if it should be repeated. It's meant, it's understood here in the last part of verse 5. And remember what happened from Shittim to Gilgal. What's he talking about there? Well, Shittim was the place where Israel camped before they crossed the Jordan. And Gilgal was the place they camped after they had crossed the Jordan. And so what God is reminding them of, through Micah here, is everything that happened in Joshua 3-4 when they crossed the Jordan that entered the Promised Land. And if you read that account, it's an edge-of-your-seat account. God says, okay, the Jordan could have been at low tide, but it's at its full flood stage. And God brings them to the Jordan when it's at full flood stage for a reason, on purpose. There's no way they can cross the Jordan. It's flooding. They can't get across. What are they going to do? God said, go across, and He said, alright, I'm going to part the waters. I've done this before. I'm going to do it again. I'm going to part the waters. But I'm not going to do it. until you step out. And the priests have to step out first, because the priests are going to lead the way. And when the priest's feet touch the water, that's when the waters are going to part. So there's this great drama, you know. The priests line up there in front, and can you imagine what they're thinking? Okay, what happens if we start to walk out and nothing happens? Boy, we're going to have egg on our faces, right? Is God really going to do this? and they step out and the waters part and stand up in a heap and all of Israel goes across the Jordan. And as soon as they step out of the water, they just flood back with a rush, very dramatic. Have you forgotten all that, Israel, Micah is saying? Have you forgotten how you were reaching for the antacid? Have you forgotten Have you forgotten what I did? Have you forgotten my mighty acts? Now, we could say, wow, you know, how could they forget these things? But God's added to them since then, hasn't He? In fact, what do we celebrate at this time of the year? We celebrate the greatest act of God. We celebrate the fact that He sent His Son And in addition to all of these mighty acts of the Lord, we have the Lord's incarnation, and His death, and His resurrection, and His ascension to the throne, His intercession for us, constantly for us now, and the fact that one day He's going to come again and consummate His kingdom. Have we forgotten those things? lest we become presumptuous, he says to us, he says, notice the you, I've done this to you, but the you, notice, includes us, because we're part of God's covenant people. He's saying this to people who are living long after these events have occurred, and so they're also part of the covenant people. That's why he says, I did this with you, but that includes us. We're part of that. And our response could be, well, you know, God, that's things that happened a long time ago. What have you done for me lately? Why are you always bringing up history? Why are you always bringing up tradition? It's because the message is that God is saying, if I did these things then, I'm able to deliver you. I'm able to give you everything you need right now. And you have to take that to heart. because we can forget. And in fact, we do forget, don't we? Think about those people. Think about those events. We think, well, you know, if we had seen these things, we wouldn't forget. That would be too sensational. These people forgot within a few weeks, within a few days of God doing this. They're complaining and saying, what are we going to do? We don't have any water. We don't have any food. What are we going to do? And God is saying, look, look what I did. Don't you trust me? Don't you understand that I'm able to do whatever you need now? Their failure was they didn't remember. You see, remembering isn't just knowing the facts of what happened. Remembering in this sense is taking it to heart so that it directs how I live now. I remember in my relationship to God, this is who He is, this is how He functions, and it causes me to trust Him now, and to have confidence in Him now, and to have peace in the midst of a life of turmoil, in the midst of an uncertain reality all around me. The one certain thing on which I can count is the fact that God comes through. And I can take that to the bank. But we forget. And it's easy for us to forget. It's easy for us, actually, as people who would never deny Christ outwardly, to live as unbelievers. To live in unbelief. One of the most striking scenes in one of my favorite movies, and a lot of y'all know that The Sound of Music is a favorite movie of mine. One of the striking scenes is when the captain, Captain Von Trapp, whose wife has died, and as part of his grieving about his wife, who loved music as he did, as part of his grieving, really, he's banned music from the house. She's no longer there, and this has been true for years, and his children have suffered because of his harshness. And really, it's because he's grieving because he's lost his wife. And so a governess comes who brings music back into the house and begins to train the children to sing. And the captain has been away and he comes in and he hears them singing in the drawing room. And he gets angry because he said, didn't I tell them there's not to be any music in this house? And he comes in and he hears the song. As he hears it, he begins to remember. He remembers what it was like to have music. He remembers the beauty of that time. And he begins to sing along. And he comes in, and as they finish, he embraces them, and they embrace him. And he says, I'd forgotten. I'd forgotten. But now everything changes, because now he remembers. He's been reminded. This is what God is doing in His grace with Israel. He's saying, remember. Remember who I am. Remember what I've done. And don't just remember the facts. Take it to heart so that it changes what you do and it changes who you are by my grace. God's grace is displayed in His reminding of His deeds. But then secondly, God's grace is displayed in His revealing of His will. We pick it up in verse 6 and there is a sort of a satirical presentation of a worshiper who's asking, how shall I worship God then? How do I respond? How do I respond to God's deeds? He says, so with what shall I come before the Lord? And we see this satirical in verses 6 and 7 presentation of a mistaken notion of what we're to do. a presentation of worship in increasingly costly things that we offer to the Lord. And so he starts out and he says, with what shall I come before the Lord and bow myself before him? Shall I come before him with burnt offerings, with calves a year old? Well, the burnt offering was not like the other offerings. You didn't eat part of that. The worshiper didn't eat it. The priest didn't eat it. You got none of it. The whole thing was burned up. And so it symbolized a complete dedication of one's whole self to the Lord. It was the only offering that was completely burned up. That's why sometimes it's called the whole burnt offering. And then a year old calf, shall I bring up calves a year old. A year old calf had shekels, dollars written all over it because although you could present a calf to the Lord any time after it was seven days old, If you kept it a year, you'd invested a lot of money in feeding that calf and raising that calf and providing for that calf. This is a costly offering. And notice they're plural. We're in offerings. Calves a year old. So this is costly worship. Shall I offer costly worship to God? And then in verse 70 says, will the Lord be pleased with thousands of rams, ten thousands of rivers of oil, recalling David's offering of thousands of rams in Chronicles, and Solomon's offering of ten thousands of rams at the dedication of the temple. Shall I do that? Not only costly worship, but extravagant worship. Is this what the Lord expects? And then he goes to the ultimate and he says, shall I give my firstborn for my transgression? The human sacrifice. The fruit of my body for the sin of my soul. The Hebrew is very stark here because it doesn't have any preposition intervening. It just says, it's as if God holds these things before us. He wants us to compare them. Firstborn transgression, fruit of my body, sin of my soul. Is this what God's demanding? And this wasn't hypothetical for Micah or the people to whom he's speaking. Because we read in Kings that Ahaz, who was one of the kings during the ministry of Micah, did that. He mimicked the Canaanite people. He offered his firstborn to Molech on the offer. He made his firstborn pass through the fire. And then Manasseh and others would follow. And they would do the same. So this wasn't some hypothetical thing that Michael was talking about. This was something that real people really thought they would do in worship. They should do. But all that's mistaken. It's mistaken. That's not what God requires. So He reveals in His grace, He says, no, is that... and it's satire. He's making fun of this. Is this what God requires? It reminds me of the first chapter of Isaiah. All of these offerings that you keep offering before me, is this what I really desire? Is this what I want? In verse 8, He tells us, He reveals to them, He's told you, oh man, what is good. He's told you. He's given you His revelation. God has made it clear already. You should know from Moses and the prophets what I really desire. Because I've told you, but you haven't listened. I've told you what's good. What does the Lord require of you? And then He gives us the summary. What is it? What's the correct notion? What does God want? How does He want us to respond to His covenant, to His grace, to all of His mighty deeds on our behalf? How does He want us to respond? It has three parts. He says, to do justice. And when He says to do justice, He's reminding them of everything He said so far in the prophet. You people who have... you rich who have oppressed the poor and dragged them into court and stolen what they have. You people who have... you rulers who have abused people and treated them inhumanely. All the sins that He's already rehearsed that compromise justice in Israel. He says to respond to God is to love justice. It's to despise these things. It is to oppose these things. It is actively to be against them. Actively to be against them. To do justice. And then he says, to love mercy. What does that, or to love kindness, what does that add to it? Well we could say, one way to look at this is, I have a responsibility, God expects me to do justice, but with respect to what I do to other, how I relate to other people, maybe to cut them some slack. To love mercy. To deal with them in mercy. Yes, to try and promote justice in them, because that's what's best for them, but when they fail to remember with the measure it is measured, the measure you use to measure, it will be measured to you, to love mercy. But really behind that, this word, it goes beyond that, because this word is, that Hebrew word, chesed. And it's kind of hard to say chesed, you know, we don't use that ch very much in English. But it sort of makes you feel it, chesed, God's overcoming, sustaining, steadfast love and commitment, covenant commitment to his people. There's really no one word that really sums it up, but he says, that what God requires is to love this, to love steadfast, committed love, and particularly to Him, that results in love to other people, as what motivates your justice. And you see, justice without love is not really justice. Trying to keep the law without love doesn't keep the law. This is what Jesus was trying to get the Pharisees to see. It defeats the whole point. If there's not love motivating what you're doing, particularly love for God, like His steadfast love for you, if that's not motivating your desire for justice, then you're not really going to pursue justice. And then He sums it up with, to walk humbly with your God. We could say the word there, humbly, could be translated carefully, and it could be either one. I like to think of it as kind of embracing both. But humbly, that is not arrogantly. It's the opposite of being arrogantly full of yourself. Look at me, I'm righteous. No, walking humbly with your God. Walking with Him. And so what is that picture? It's that the way we respond to God's grace is that God doesn't become some divine emergency room that we enter every now and then. He's not someone that we appeal to when we need Him. But He's someone with whom we have a vital, living, ongoing relationship. We're walking with Him. We're listening to Him. He's listening to us. There's an interaction. We're praying without ceasing. What does that mean? It doesn't mean that we're always on our knees 24 hours a day. I don't think my knees could take that. It's that we realize we live in the presence of God, so as we go through the day, I'm talking to Him. I'm bringing the things that concern me to Him. I'm speaking to Him about this. I'm recognizing, oh, as God's Spirit speaks to me, that wasn't a proper attitude. Lord, forgive me for that. Help me not to feel that way. We're sensitive to what He's saying. We're remembering His Word. We're speaking to Him. We're making progress. And we're dealing with Him as we're walking through life. It's a relationship. That's what God requires. And you notice what's absent from that? What's absent from that is frantic religious activity. You know, I think about Mary and Martha as the perfect example of this. Martha's busy with the preparation. She's busy with the meal that has to be prepared. She's busy with everything that needs to be done, and it has to be done. And Mary's just wasting time sitting there at the feet of Jesus, listening to Him and spending time with Him. And Martha comes to Jesus and says, Jesus, tell her to come help me because that's what she ought to be doing. Because I know that's really what you want. You want us to be frantically doing all this activity because it's serving people, right? And Jesus says, Martha, Martha, you're concerned about many things, but only one thing is needful. And Mary has chosen what is better. and it will not be taken from her. It's important that we understand that Jesus is not saying, Martha, Martha, none of that's important. No, it was important. And we see Mary later on serving Jesus by anointing Him for His burial. It's not that Mary doesn't believe in serving. It's not that none of these things need doing. It's that there's a frenzy into which we can enter, that we can be tempted to think. You see, we can't be smug about the satire of what they might have thought they should be doing in service to God, because we have our own answers. We have our own frenzied activity. We have our own notions of what God requires that really isn't what He wants most of us, that isn't motivated by what He really requires. I can't say it any better than Ralph Davis, so I'm just going to quote what he says in his commentary on Mike at this point. We must also not feel smug when we read verses six and seven, for Christians have their own equivalent response. The thinking behind Israel's defective response was, God wants to see evidence of my commitment, and the way I show that is by intensifying my religious devotion and activity. We're not into calves or rams, but we may lose ourselves in a ceaseless round of Bible conferences, missions conferences, marriage seminars, singles retreats, youth ski trips, college or prison ministries, and church prayer vigils. We can rigidly follow our Christian guru of choice in raising our children, plug our church into holding service in the local nursing home, and organize a Christian soccer league in our community. On and on it goes. The thought of a night without church activity causes acid indigestion. Not that all these are bad things. But why do we think we have to be so frantic? Why do we have this hypertensive view of the Christian life? Why do we think God wants us to organize more Christian things to do? It's a good question. And it's not that any of these things are bad. It's just that we need from time to time to come back to what God has in His grace revealed to us. of what is really important to Him. And the heart of what's important to Him is not our activity for Him. It's our relationship with Him. That's what God requires. We need to major on the majors. And we need to make sure that that's true of us. Then lastly, we need to see this, that God's grace is displayed in His reproving of His people. Now we're going to have to go quickly through these last verses, 9 through 16. And there are really three things we need to see here as this breaks down. First, he gives us a perspective on discipline. Look at what he says here. The voice of the Lord cries to the city. God's crying out. He's appealing, like we've already seen. And it is sound wisdom to fear your name. What is God's name? It's everything that He is and everything that He has said. that's included in His name. And it is sound wisdom to fear His name, to listen to His name, to pay attention to His name, to acknowledge His name. The verb there in Hebrew could be either fear or acknowledge. hear. And I think, again, it really has an element of both. To hear God's name, to acknowledge who He is. Remember, we might think fear fits better, but remember in Proverbs when it talks about the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom? And God says, He also says, trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not into your own understanding. In all your ways, what? Acknowledge Him. and He will direct your paths." That's the hearing Him, that's acknowledging Him. It's sound wisdom to do that in all your ways. And He says, hear of the ride and of Him who appointed it. Isaiah in chapter 10 points out that Assyria is the rod of God's anger. And if this is happening, we don't know for sure what the setting of this prophecy is, but it could be when Assyria under Sennacherib invades and comes up to the very neck of Judah and Jerusalem under Hezekiah. It could be earlier than that or it could be later when things are really turning bad under Manasseh. We know that Micah ministered during all of that time. So we're not sure exactly, but he's saying this, look, here's the perspective on discipline. It is my ride. God is saying, when I bring reproof, when I bring discipline, when I bring the ride, it's the ride of correction. Why? Because I love you. That's why I'm doing this. And he does it so that they might turn from it and avoid the ride. Because He says, if you'll repent, then you can spare yourself this pain. It's in His grace that He does this. But then He gives us a justification for the discipline. God's not doing this because He's a sadist. God's not doing this because, I just can't wait to see them suffer. No, He can't avoid it. He asked them the question, Can I forget any longer the treasures of wickedness in the house of the wicked? Can I forget what you're doing? Can I forget your ill-gotten gain? The fact that you're getting rich and fat by abusing each other? Can I ignore that? Shall I acquit a man with wicked scales? What he's talking about there is scales like you might have two rocks. And the law forbade this. the wall of Moses. But you might have, you know, you're doing an economic transaction and you've got two rocks and they're labeled as weighing the same, but one is significantly heavier than the other. And when you're doing the transaction, he puts the heavy rock on and the man's put some silver on there and you say, well, you haven't put quite enough silver on there, so give me some more. It's a dishonest scale. And God's saying, can I forget that? Shall I acquit the man with wicked scales or a bag of deceitful weights? Your rich men are full of violence, your inhabitants speak lies, and their tongue is deceitful in their mouth. So the rich are violently oppressing the poor, but it's not just the rich. He says this goes down to the rank and file members, the inhabitants of the city. And you, the you are there is Jerusalem. Your inhabitants speak lies. Their tongue is deceitful in their mouth. From the rich to the poor, from the great to the small, there's just wickedness. And God's asking, is it just? Would you worship me? Would I be worthy of your worship if I could ignore this? I'm not ignoring it. I can't ignore it. And in His grace, He's giving them a perspective. He's giving them a justification for His discipline. He's explaining to them why He's doing this. And so He says, therefore, I strike you with a grievous blow, making you desolate or sick because of your sins. And how is He going to make them sick? As He describes the discipline, How's he going to make them sick? How's he going to make them desolate? In a word, it's going to be by condemning them to futility. Futility. Notice what he says, you'll eat but not be satisfied. There'll be hunger within you. You shall put away, that is, you want to put things away to preserve them, to protect them, but Someone's going to break in and steal them anyway. And even what you have left, the enemy is going to come and take away when they invade you. What you preserve, I will give to the sword. You shall sow but not reap. So your regular harvests, you're not going to have good harvests. You're going to plant, but the harvest is going to fail. And it's not just going to be the regular harvest, it's going to be the late harvest, the August harvest. Olives, You're not going to have your facial treatments, you women. You're not going to anoint yourselves with oil. You'll tread olives, but you're not going to have the oil that would come from it. You'll tread grapes, you're not going to have wine. It's like the judgment is going to be, it doesn't always come in the form of this harsh suffering in the form of some active pain. Very often God's judgment comes in the form of futility. We give ourselves to all kinds of idols and all kinds of striving and it comes to nothing. It's like the man, like Dr. Davis says, it's like the man, his next door neighbor who changed the oil in his car and he forgot to, he drained the oil, he got all the oil, inserted it into the crankcase, but he'd forgotten to put the drain plug back in, and so it all poured out on the ground. And all the labor that he spent changing his oil that afternoon came to nothing, because it all spilled on the ground. That's what God says. He says, I'm going to give you the futility. In your striving, in your idolatry, it's all going to come to nothing. And then he closes By summing it up, he says, for, why am I doing this? For you have kept the statutes of Omri and all the works of the house of Ahab. He brings up Omri and Ahab, two of the most wicked kings, arguably the most wicked kings of the northern kingdom. He's talking to the southern kingdom, but he says, you've followed their example. You're following your religious leaders. Omri and Ahab are your religious leaders. You're walking in their footsteps. And what is that footstep? Oppression. We remember incidents like Naboth and his vineyard, and Ahab just confiscates and kills Naboth and his descendants, and takes their inheritance, takes their land, because he likes his vineyard. And after all, I'm the king, and I like your vineyard, and you've got to give it to me. And if you don't give it to me, I'm going to kill you. And it's Jezebel who inspires Ahab to that attitude. that's what Omri and Ahab's rule were like. It was tyranny. And he says, and you have walked in their councils. And notice what he says, you have walked in their counsels, that I may make you a desolation and your inhabitants a hissing, so you shall bear the scorn of my people. They're doing this, that I may do this for you. In other words, listen to what he's saying. Think about what he's saying. He's saying, you're arrogantly doing this, defying me, even challenging me to judge you in this way. Because no matter what I say, you're arrogantly determined to do this evil. Listen to me, folks. Has there ever been a time in your lifetime, I know there hasn't in my lifetime, where the activity of people in our country is more epitomized by that attitude? We don't care what you say, God, we're going to do this anyway. We don't care who says it's dishonest. We don't care who thinks it's wrong. We're going to do this anyway. Now, what are you going to do about it? There's nothing you can do about it. And we have people in our government, and we have powerful people who are oligarchs in our country saying exactly that today. Unless you think there are people in our country who aren't subject to these types of things. That's not us, though. That was Israel back then. Do you vote to your own self-interest for people who, in one way or another, say they're going to take people's possessions and give it to you, take people's money and give it to you? Then you're guilty. Do you, what do you do when you get too much change and you recognize it, even such a little thing as that? Do you point it out and give it back? Or do you say, hey, you know, this stuff costs too much anyway. I'm kind of entitled to this. Little things like that. Are you that kind of a person? Is that how you live your life? If so, you're guilty. See, we're all subject to this kind of thing. We're all subject to the rebuke of the Lord in this way. And what is, after all, the rebuke of the Lord? It's His grace. He's saying, stop it. Can I ignore these things? No, I can't. I will not ignore them. And in my grace, I'm telling you, repent. and be just and commit yourself to righteousness because I love you. Y'all know I love Andy Griffith. Sorry, it's a great illustration. There's a story about a young man who comes into contact with Andy Griffith as the sheriff and he's speeding and he's run a truck off the road and damaged it and they catch him and it turns out he's the son of a rich publisher. And his attitude is, do you know who I am? Here, you know, we'll settle this. I'll just give you some money. And he says, no, no, you've got to come to court. And he comes to court, and he says, you know, we'll have to settle this, and you'll have to stay in jail. And while he's in jail, he goes home with Andy, because on the weekend, they don't have anybody to stay there at the jails. He goes home, and he's there, and he sees Andy and the way he's relating to his son, Opie. And while they're on the porch one afternoon, on Sunday afternoon, Opie comes and he says, Dad, would you be upset if I told you something? And he says, well, I don't know. Tell me what it is first. He says, well, you know, somebody threw a ball through Widow Anderson's window and broke it the other day. He says, would you by any chance be that person? He says, yeah, Dad. I thought you needed to know. He said, well, I hope you won't be upset, but I just want to tell you, you won't get an allowance until that window's paid for. And Andy says, OK, Dad. And he goes in the house, and the young man's standing there on the porch, and he says, hey, Sheriff, weren't you kind of hard on the kid? He says, how's that? He says, why don't you bail him out? After all, you know, it's only a window. And Andy says, no, I can't do that. See, because it may be only a window now, later it may be something more and something more and something more and when he gets to be old he's not going to know that he needs to stand on his own two feet. Now I got to teach him now he's responsible for this now so that boy learns how to how to stand on his own two feet. I got to keep that boy straight. And it makes him think. It makes the young man think. So the next day when his father's lawyer comes to deal with him in the jail, he's worked it out. He's paid off the man whose truck was run off on the side of the road. He's saying, well, I hoped I wouldn't have to do this. And he brings the man in. He says, isn't it true that you ran him off the road and that you were the one who was in the wrong, not the young man? And he kind of looks down, the man looks down, and he kind of says, yes. And the sheriff says, well? He says, well, what do you think about that, Sheriff? And he says, well, I think old Zeke's going to appreciate having a new truck, because I think he's going to get one. He says, well, OK, I guess we're going to let you go. And he goes to open the cell, and the young man says, no, no, that's not the way it happened. And the lawyer's saying, what do you mean it's not the way it happened? He says, no, it's not the way it happened. He says, what are you trying to do? He says, I don't know. It's just kind of hard to explain. But that's just not the way it happened. And Andy says, why don't you tell your lawyer friend that you broke a window and you just want to stand on your own two feet? See, that's what God does for us. He doesn't let us rot in our sin. He brings discipline so that we learn what it means to live righteously, to stand. Because that's what God's grace looks like. God's grace reminds us. God's grace reveals to us what He wants. And God's grace reproves us. I'll ask those who are serving at the table to come forward now. And all I'll point out here is what we remember. We celebrate the Lord's death until He comes. Why do we celebrate it? Because of what it represents. What does it represent? It represents the uncompromising God's justice who couldn't wink at sin, and refused just to say, I'm going to compromise my righteousness, but demanded a punishment. But at the same time in his love, he exacted that punishment upon his own son, the righteous one, instead of us. And so as we eat and drink, we celebrate all of the grace that we have seen displayed before us in this passage. the God of grace, the gracious and compassionate God, slow to anger, abounding in love and faithfulness, but he says, yet I will not clear the guilty. And so his justice, his righteousness, and his mercy, his steadfast love are both satisfied where? They meet here at this table. They meet at the cross. They meet in the death of Jesus Christ. And as we eat and drink, we revel in that grace and receive all the grace that we receive as a result of that death once again. And it's sealed to us. The reality of that grace is sealed to us in things that we can feel and see and touch and taste and smell. So as you eat and drink today, let that grace and the reminder of that grace wash over you and renew you and refresh you today as you commune with your Lord. Let's pray. Heavenly Father, thank you for this sacrament. Thank you for what it means. Now we pray. Father, do all that you mean to do through these ordinary elements. Use them to convict us of the truth of your word and your promises. the reality of union with Christ and forgiveness through his death, and the power that that gives us unto new obedience. Father, do all this for us, we pray, through this sacrament, for which we thank you, and we ask this in Jesus' name. Amen. The blessing of this covenant sacrament, as all of God's covenant blessings, is only received through faith if you're not a true believer in Jesus Christ. If your trust isn't in Him, if He's not your Lord as well as your Savior, then don't eat and drink, I warn you, or you'll eat and drink judgment. But if He is your Savior... then come and commune with Him. And if He is your Savior through faith, I'll ask you, what do you believe? I believe in God the Father Almighty, Maker of heaven and earth. I believe in Jesus Christ, His only Son, our Lord, who was conceived by the Holy Spirit, born of the Virgin Mary, suffered under Pontius Pilate, was crucified, died, and was buried. He descended into hell. The third day He rose again from the dead. He ascended into heaven and is seated at the right hand of God the Father Almighty. From there He will come to judge the living and the dead. I believe in the Holy Spirit, the Holy Catholic Church, the communion of saints, the forgiveness of sins, the resurrection of the body, and the life everlasting. Amen. On the night which Jesus was betrayed, he took bread. When he had given thanks, as we already have in his name, he broke it and he said, this is my body which is given for you. Do this in remembrance of me. And likewise, after supper he took the cup, and he said, This cup is the new covenant in my blood, which is poured out for many for the remission of sins. Do this in remembrance of me. And he said, All of you drink of it. And so now, in his name, I invite you to the table of the Lord, at which Jesus offers not only grace, but offers himself. come and commune with Him and feed on Him in your hearts by faith.