Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit · Sermon No. 1557
Delivered on Lord’s-Day Morning, September 12, 1880
“He has shown you, O man, what is good; and what does the Lord require of you, but to do justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly with your God?” Micah 6:8.
WE shall chiefly dwell upon the last line—“To walk humbly with your God.” Man asks, “Why should I come before the Lord and bow myself before the high God?” and, as if he must set himself to answer his own question, he farther enquires, “Shall I come before Him with burnt offerings, with calves of a year old? Will the Lord be pleased with thousands of rams, or with ten thousands of rivers of oil?” Sacrifice of some sort is his idea—he supposes that he must supply the sacrifice himself and would gladly know what it should be. The answer which is given him chides him for the supposition that he is to answer his own question, for it begins thus—“He has shown you, O man, what is good; and what does the Lord require of you.”
If we had been attentive to God’s voice we should not now be asking, “why should I come?” for He has already shown us the way. The worship of God is the subject of Revelation, not of invention. True religion is not a new design displaying each man’s taste, but a copy from a plan, framed and fixed by the Lord Himself. We are to follow a path well defined and not map out a course for ourselves. We are not like children crying in the dark after an unknown Father whom we seek by ways of our own, but we are as babes who follow where the warm hand of Love gently draws them. To us it is not night, for the true light has risen and is shining round about us—the Father has revealed Himself and we have an unction from the Holy One so that all things necessary for this life and godliness are lifted out of the region of the unknown and placed among the matters concerning which the Prophet says, “He has shown you, O man.”
The true worship of God is not left to be a matter of conjecture, to be worked out by a man’s thoughts from within, but it is a matter of distinct Revelation to be received by faith from above. Do we all know this? Are there not some among us, or at least around us, who desire a religion of their own? Is not this one of the special follies of the period? Let us escape from this snare! “He has shown you, O man, what is good.” Abstain, therefore, from further invention. When once we know from God, Himself, what His requirements are, it becomes treason to debate the question any further! The statement inspired by Infinite Wisdom satisfies every loyal heart. What God says is to be accepted as final fact—to raise further question is a shuffling method of calling God a liar.
He who still asks the road, virtually denies that God has shown it to Him. It is not altogether their humility which keeps certain minds in what they call a receptive condition, never dogmatic, never confident—or, as Paul more plainly puts it—“ever learning and never able to come to the knowledge of the truth.” To me it would be high presumption not to be sure and confident when God is the Teacher. To push further enquiries where Revelation speaks is either to deny the Revelation or to question its sufficiency. It cannot be that the declarations of God need to be supplemented by opinions and views of our own. “He has shown you, O man, what is good”—let this suffice us and, ceasing to theorize, let us practically obey!
Let us become disciples and in this frame of mind we shall gain one of the first essentials of true worship. True worship cannot, therefore, be will-worship and will-worship cannot be true worship. We are to bring to God that which God requires of us. We are to act towards God as He commands us and to accept from God that which He presents to us. Our approaches to the Most High are no longer to be a matter of our own taste and cleverness, but to be obedient movements of reverent faith, bowing before the solemn Word of the great King. “He has shown you, O man, what is good.” It is clear from the text before us that God has once and forever settled the way by which He is to be honored among men—
and He has declared that it is not by outward rites and ceremonies. He pours contempt upon these in many Scriptures when He regards them by themselves.
In our text He says not a single word as to burnt offerings and calves of a year old. The question has been asked, but in His answer He makes no allusion to the rams and to the rivers of oil of which the questioner thought so much. No, but He says “What does the Lord require of you, but to do justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly with your God?” It seems, then, that it is far more important to do right than to perform the most imposing religious rites—better to act mercifully than to offer the most costly sacrifices. Much more value is attached to a man’s moral character than to all his outward religiousness, however far he may carry it. The upright and generous actions of daily life are better signs of a gracious heart than lavish gifts to the temple and its priests. God judges a man rather by what he does ordinarily among his fellows than by what he does sumptuously when he is gorgeously arrayed in his profession and stands in a chief place of the synagogue and is admired as a chief speaker, or a generous giver to the holy cause.