Who is a God like you?

I preached the last two chapters of Micah at Cowley Church Community yesterday.  A lot of the material was familiar to us from the last couple of weeks - Judah's sin, God's judgement.  But there were two main new things.  One is in Micah 6:6-8:

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?
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?
He has shown you, O mortal, 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.

This passage follows on from a plea from God, who recounts his history with Israel, and asks plaintively how he has burdened them that they should turn against him?  Judah's response should not be read as a genuine groping after some way to atone for sin and restore relationship with God.  It is rather an attempt to buy God off.  What can I give you so that you will leave me alone?  But God will not leave Judah alone; not for anything.  There is no offering they could give that would divert his attention from them, precisely because they are loved.  God will have their hearts and lives, entire and complete.  He will have them walk with him.  His determination to bestow his love on his people is what leads to his judgement on their sin!

Question: how do I try to buy God off?  What activities or things do I offer him, whilst still really desiring to maintain some little sphere of my own, independent of his love?

 The second really new thing is in Micah 7:8-9.  The previous chapters have shown that after judgement Judah will be restored.  But here is the dramatic revelation that God himself will turn from being their judge to being their advocate:

Do not gloat over me, my enemy!
Though I have fallen, I will rise.
Though I sit in darkness,
the Lord will be my light.
Because I have sinned against him,
I will bear the Lord’s wrath,
until he pleads my case
and upholds my cause.

Micah does not minimise either the horror of the judgement on Judah, or the extent to which it is well deserved.  But he looks beyond it, to the mercy of God which is sure to come.  And that leads to praise!

Who is a God like you,
who pardons sin and forgives the transgression
of the remnant of his inheritance?
You do not stay angry for ever
but delight to show mercy.
You will again have compassion on us;
you will tread our sins underfoot
and hurl all our iniquities into the depths of the sea.

Who is a God like this?  Who turns in mercy to his sinful, rebellious people?  A God who delights, not in judgement, but in mercy?

And then from the perspective of the New Testament: who is a God like this, who not only lifts us when we have fallen, not only gives us light when we sit in darkness, not only pleads for us after we have borne the wrath of the Lord - but actually comes down to us in our fallen state, actually sits in the darkness of the fallen world and finally the darkness of the tomb, actually bears the weight of his own wrath against sin in our place?  Who is a God like this?  Is there any but Jesus?

Question: does the God I worship and live for and preach look like this?  If so, why don't I worship him more joyfully, live for him more wholeheartedly, preach him more passionately?

Less shopping

I've been preparing to preach the first couple of chapters of Micah at CCC, to kick off our advent series.  One of the things that is unavoidable in the chapters is that amongst the sins for which Samaria and Jerusalem are condemned - which include idolatry and a rejection of God's word - is the sin of greed, and oppression through greed.

They covet fields and seize them,
and houses, and take them away;
they oppress a man and his house,
a man and his inheritance.

Of course this goes together with the rejection of the true God and his word.  Either you trust him, or you seek to establish your own security.  One way to go about that is to ensure that you have more of everything than anyone else.  Then again, if your delight is not in him, you will find it in your stuff, and because stuff is not actually that satisfying you will need to be constantly topping up your stuff.

It's really easy to condemn our society along these lines.  We have built an economic system which relies on persuading us that we need more things, and even that we ought to be prepared to go into debt to get them.  In the US, there is the bizarre phenomenon of a day dedicated to giving thanks for what people have and enjoy being followed directly by a day dedicated to getting more stuff; in the UK, we are cursed by having retailers try to persuade us that 'Black Friday' is an important shopping day, even though we don't even mark Thanksgiving!

But one of the striking things about Micah is that complaints which one might expect to find directed at 'the world' are in fact directed at God's people.  I think that's how verses 2 through 5 of chapter 1 work.  Verses 2 to 4 use characteristic imagery to describe God coming in judgement from his temple - no doubt this would get a cheer for Micah's audience in Judah.  But then in verse 5 it emerges that it is Israel and Judah's sin which has drawn forth the judgement.  They are the targets of God's wrath.

So we in the church have to ask ourselves: how have we been different?  How, in particular, have we resisted consumerism?  It strikes me that this needs to be more than just standing against the particular excesses of acquisitiveness.  We are not, on the whole, ostentatious.  Just comfortable.  But is 'just comfortable' sufficiently different to really witness to the world that our delight and trust are in God and not in stuff?  If we were in the presence of alcoholics, we might restrict ourselves from an otherwise totally legitimate drink, as a witness and as a help.  I wonder if, given our society of shop-aholics, if we ought not to restrict even legitimate purchases.

This is a rebuke for me.  I am not by nature a thrifty person.  But I am going to try to do less shopping - especially on Friday...