All right, it's great to be worshiping with you on Juneteenth celebration weekend, St. Marcus. I'm grateful that you are here, and one of my favorite passages in Scripture on the topic of human justice is what we have here from the prophet Micah, Micah chapter 6:6-8. Here's how it goes. Micah writes:



"With what shall I come before the Lord and bow down before the exalted God? Shall I come before the Lord with burnt offerings, with calves a year old? Will the Lord be pleased with thousands of rams, with 10,000 rivers of olive oil? Or shall I offer my firstborn for my transgression, the fruit of my body for the sin of my soul?" He has shown you, oh mortal, what is good. And what does the Lord require of you? To act justly, to love mercy, and to walk humbly with your God.



This is God's word.



I don't typically do show of hands, but I'm going to do a show of hands, I think. Raise your hand if you think humanity is getting better. Think humans are getting better? So either you don't like my exercise or none of you actually believe—you know, are convinced that it's—it's an interesting question because it depends a little bit on how you interpret it, right? So the quality of life for humanity has unquestionably improved, and we better not take those things for granted. If you look at human life like a millennium ago or even just a hundred years ago, look at some issues like health care, opportunities for education, electricity and mechanization and technological innovation, economic prosperity, and protection of individual human rights—those things are astronomically better in the world today than they were about a century ago, okay? So subduing of God's planet for the benefit of humanity is undoubtedly, unquestionably better today than it was a century or centuries ago.



That's not quite the same question, though, as are humans better today, right? We can say human conditions are better, that's not the same thing as saying, is human character better today than it was years ago? And for that, I think the biblical answer would probably be, like, well, no, not at all. There's an interesting spot in Genesis where God, twice, both before and after people get on and off the ark, says, "Every inclination of the human heart is sinful from childhood." So Christians really had better not be naive. Christians cannot be naive about Satan, about society, or about self. Gullibility is the hapless stage before rude awakenings in life, and God's people historically have been a little bit gullible about their own wickedness.



If you go back to Micah the prophet's day and age, Israel sometimes was deluded about how good they actually were. And the context of what's going on, particularly in Micah's day—Micah prophesied from about 750 to about 700 BC in the southern kingdom. The kingdom of God's people was divided into two kingdoms. So there's the northern kingdom of Israel, which was nearing collapse at the hands of the Assyrians, and there's the southern kingdom of Judah where Micah prophesied along with his contemporary, Isaiah. And we know from piecing together all of their writings, we know what the general conditions of the people in that day were.



So, for one, we know that in the southern kingdom of Judah, social injustice was absolutely rampant. We know that greedy elites were exploiting the poor. We know that there was corruption infecting leaders and priests and prophets. We know that idolatry was a recurring issue, that Israel would absorb the practices and the false value systems of their neighboring countries. Micah calls all of that to repentance, but specifically what he calls to repentance is the fact that they think they're better off spiritually than what they are. In other words, if I'm paraphrasing, he says something like, "You think that you are right with God because you observe all these external religious regulations and practices, but at the end of the day the real indication of what is in your heart is how you treat the most marginalized people of society." You understand God is saying, "I'm not evaluating who you are simply on the basis of what you confess; I'm looking at you by how you treat the most vulnerable people in our society, and that is indicative of what truly is going on in your hearts."



Israel, God's people, were delusional about the wrong that they were guilty of before God. And what Micah does in this text—he's kind of creatively—he asks a question, and what he's doing is he's paraphrasing the people of his day. So they might not have actually said these questions; he's paraphrasing what their attitude was. And he asks the question and provides two wrong answers and one right answer, okay? So the question of their day: two wrong answers and one right answer. And here's what he says.



So, after putting in their mouths the question, "With what shall I come before the Lord and bow down before the exalted God?" he's saying the Jewish people are asking this question. After that, he gives one wrong answer: "Well, shall I come before him with burnt offerings?" And specifically what he's suggesting here, do you know what a burnt offering is? It doesn't atone for sins. There is a sin offering; a burnt offering is an evidence of commitment. And so what they're doing is they keep upping the ante, and they say, like, "Well, what if we bring this? What if we bring calves a year old? What if we bring a thousand rams? What if we bring 10,000 rivers of oil? What if we bring you a gift of a billion dollars? Will that make us right with you, our God? If we live good enough lives, will you accept us as your people?"



Now, that doesn't work because God actually owns all that stuff anyway. An infinite God is the owner of everything in the entire cosmos, and therefore it's absolutely delusional to think that you can bribe him with anything. Any—all your time, all your money, all your body, all your life—belong to God. If you give him any of those things, you're just giving him what he already owns. You can't bribe him. But humans try to do this all the time. Modern humans think this way all the time, too. I can't tell you how many different people I've talked to throughout the course of my ministry who—look, it especially comes up when they're angry with God, and they're angry with God in part because they think that they have done the right things in their life and God is indebted to them. And they think, "Well, I go to church and I pray and I give an offering and I'm not doing any—like I'm not cheating on my spouse." And on top of it, you can add all the other simple things, which people know enough not to say, "this is what makes me a good person," but they think they're better than most people. So, like, "I hold doors for the elderly, I round up in the checkout line for charity, I put the cart back in the corral when I get groceries—not like the pagans, you know, who just let it ding in the car sides, right? Whatever it is for you, I don't—I repost—here's one of my favorite ones—I repost quotes about kindness online frequently. I'm very clearly a nice person, right?"



The Bible says all your time, money, body, life are God's. He lets you use it, he lets you manage it, but it all belongs to him. So if you give it to him, that's not a bribe—that's just what he’s owed, right? Okay.



So they realize, "Okay, we can't earn God's favor through our good deeds. Maybe if we're guilty of sin we should atone for our sins." So specifically, what they say here is, "Shall I offer my firstborn for my transgression, the fruit of my body for the sin of my soul?" It's a little ironic and actually kind of outrageous, but for reasons that are more obvious to Jewish people in that particular day. So, this whole thing—one of the things that separates the God Yahweh, the God of the Israelites, from all the other pagan gods is this God absolutely forbade any child sacrifices, okay? And yet at the same time, the Israelites did have this thing called the Law of the Firstborn. You can read it in Exodus 13, where it says the firstborn of any womb belongs to the Lord. And so there's this continuous tension throughout the Old Testament between the fact that the firstborn of every womb belongs to the Lord, and God forbids child sacrifice.



But the particular point here is, Micah is saying, even if you did offer up your firstborn child to the Lord, that wouldn't atone for your sins, because the firstborn child already belongs to the Lord, right? Like, you can't make payment through the greatest thing in your life. You can't make payment for your sins, because that thing already belongs to God. In other words, what they're trying to say here is, "I've done wrong—if I put myself through enough pain, can I atone for my mistakes?" People feel the same way today. I talk to people in counseling all the time who—there's plenty of you—are walking around sometimes with your head hanging, and you beat yourself up, and you hold yourself down, and you are essentially denying yourselves enough joy and walking around feeling guilty all the time, because you think if you flog yourself enough that will make your penance, like, make you right before God and make you more lovable to God when you pay for your sins. Like, no, that's not how it works.



By the way, this happens both from religion and from the secular world. Shaming, guilting; in secular terms, it's called cancelling, right? There's a difference between calling somebody to repentance and shaming someone. If you're ever going to be a Christian who holds anybody else accountable, you better know the difference between those two. Calling somebody to repentance is making them aware of the sin that exists in their life. Shaming them is making them pay for the sins they've committed in their lives. Do you understand the difference? Okay.



But again, the point is, we just said that God says you cannot pay for your own sins, even through the most valuable thing in your life—the firstborn child in your life. And therefore, to go around shaming people, not only is it inappropriate, it's actually totally ineffective. It won't accomplish anything to make one right with God. There's a famous C.S. Lewis quote in his book "The Problem of Pain," in the third chapter, where he says, "We are not merely imperfect creatures who must improve." We're not people that just need a little self-help to improve; we are rebels that need to repent and lay down our arms as enemies of God.



Now some of you—some of you have maybe already picked up on this, like there's an allusion—not illusion, allusion—going on when he says, "What if the firstborn—what if we sacrifice the firstborn of our children in order to atone for our mistakes?" What does that make you think of? Now, I'll tell you what—absolutely, at this time, 700 BC, knows the coming Messiah is on his way. In fact, literally a chapter right before this, in Micah chapter 5, we get the very prominent prophecy that the Messiah is going to be born in Bethlehem—we read it every Christmas. Micah absolutely knows that the Messiah is coming, and he creates a little allusion in his phrasing here by which he says, "Yes, you cannot atone for all of your sins through the sacrifice of your firstborn." But guess what? God can atone for all of your sins through the sacrifice of his firstborn, you see. And he has, and on this day it is finished, because post-Calvary, the only thing that you need to be saved from your iniquities, the only thing you need to become right with God, is to acknowledge that you cannot make yourself right with God. You can't do it. That's the thing that you need more than anything else is to acknowledge, "I can't do it, and I need God to do it mercifully on my behalf." You must humble yourself to receive forgiveness and salvation as a gift from a gracious God.



And on a weekend like Juneteenth weekend, what that means is any sins that we are guilty of when it comes to the realm of social injustices—and there are many—racism is under this category, scary words, prejudice is in this category. Every single one of us struggles with this because every single one of us struggles with self-righteousness, and racism is a subset of self-righteousness. Whether you have actively committed sins in this regard or passively committed sins in this regard, the first thing that you and I need to do is not work harder to improve ourselves, or it's not to try to make payment for our mistakes. Both of those things are actually really good things, but it's not the first thing that we do. The first thing that we do is repent and turn to Jesus, the firstborn son of God, who alone can cleanse us of all of our mistakes. And then, and only then, will we be able to act justly and love mercy and walk humbly with our God.



Now, I want to pause on this for a second because this is the most important part in this entire section, I think. What does it mean: act justly, love mercy, and walk humbly with God? There's three parts in there, okay? The first thing is act justly. What does it mean to do justice? Whenever we're wronged, we want justice, but what does it mean to act justly? So, the Hebrew word here is "mishpat." It's almost always—I hesitate to say always—but it's almost always used in the Old Testament in reference to the four categories of people groups who are the most vulnerable of society: the widows, the orphans, the immigrants, and the poor. Justice in the Old Testament almost always is about the widows, the orphans, the immigrants, and the poor. And this consistent theme throughout the Bible is that whether or not you are a child of God is not simply dictated by what you say you are or self-identify, but one of the marks of a true child of God is how you treat the most vulnerable people in society that the rest of society doesn't look out for but God is constantly paying attention to. You understand one of the marks of a true believer is how you treat the most marginalized people groups in our society that God calls us repeatedly. And I'm not even just saying, by the way—I'm not saying don't just commit injustice against them—I'm saying go out of your way to actively protect those that this world tends to exploit. Okay, that's justice—acting justly.



Now, the second thing here is loving mercy. The Hebrew word here is "hesed." It's sometimes translated mercy. In the New Testament, it's frequently translated as grace or gracious action—love, grace. Now here's what's super interesting to me. Why doesn't it say do mercy? It said act justly, so you think mercifully—it doesn't say that. Do justice, okay; do mercy—no, it doesn't say do mercy. Why does it say love mercy? This would be really helpful for me to give you like four or five minutes to just think about it and come up with an answer on your own, but I'm not going to do—it's really bad for worship services to just give you four or five minutes, so I'm just going to tell you. You doing mercy doesn't bring you into God's family; God doing mercy brings you into God's family. You are never going to be inclined to act mercifully and sacrificially on behalf of someone else until you fall in love with the idea that God has been undeservedly merciful to you first. You follow that? You can be guilted into showing kindness; you can be proud, self-righteous in showing kindness. You will never do it in a God-pleasing way unless you love the fact that you don't get into heaven by your works, but you get into heaven by God's grace through Jesus Christ. Once you love mercy, then and only then will you be inspired to show mercy and walk humbly with God.



Which brings me to the final point here: what does it mean to walk humbly with God? Once you believe God has been so incredibly merciful to you, you want to go on a walk with that guy, follow him. But what does it mean—what is the metaphor, the biblical metaphor, to walk with somebody? What does that mean? And you notice it—you've got to notice these things—it doesn't say walk humbly. The first one said act justly. Second one said love mercy. The third one, you'd think, would say walk humbly—it doesn't say that. It says walk humbly with God. What does that mean? Okay, well, to go on a walk with somebody—first of all, to go on a walk with God—that's like a significant metaphor in Scripture. If you're going to walk with God, that means you have to go the direction that he's aiming, so you have to aim your life where he's going. Secondly, if you're going to walk with God, you can't stay seated and inactive most of the time. Like, to walk, you literally have to take steps. So, to walk humbly with God, you are going to have to aim where he's aiming and take steps in your life to move there.



Finally, the third part of walking humbly with somebody is intimate communication. You say, "Well, where is that?" Well, has anybody ever asked you to go on a walk with them before? If your friend asks you to go for a walk, nine times out of ten they have something that they want to tell you, right? You know what I'm talking about. If one of you asked me to go on a walk and we walked for 30 minutes and you never said anything to me, I would assume you were taking me somewhere to kill me, you know—like that's so bizarre. Of course you're going to have conversation with someone going for a walk. Walking is never just walking; walking is intimate conversation. And what walking humbly with God, therefore, means is you're on a discipleship pathway. You're taking steps towards God's goal, you're intimately talking with him, and he is talking with you.



The Lord Jesus has you and me on active discipleship steps to protect and honor and disciple not only one another but also the most hurting and oppressed humans amongst us. We bring them—we invite them—we bring them right along with us.



I want to end today—I've wanted to do this for years—when I was in eighth grade, so maybe like 14 years old, I did a report on Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., and I ran across a sermon of his that became—it's probably one of the top 10 or 12 most impactful sermons ever in my life, and I want to end by sharing with you a portion of this. It's from 1956. It was delivered at Dexter Avenue Baptist Church. It's called "The Apostle Paul's Letter to American Christians," and it has profoundly shaped my perception of ministry, of American Christianity, how we repent, what's possible, and what's necessary. So give me a minute; I want to close with this. The whole thing's available online if you want to read it.



Now, just the premise—the clever thing of this is he's channeling the voice of the Apostle Paul, and he's saying, "If the Apostle Paul was imprisoned still in Rome, but somehow writing to 21st century Americans today, here's maybe what he would write." It's brilliant.



He says, "The important thing, however, is that I can imagine the Apostle Paul writing a letter to American Christians in 1956 AD, and here is the letter as it stands before me: I, an apostle of Jesus Christ by the will of God, to you who are in America, grace be unto you and peace from God our Father through our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. For many years I have longed to be able to come to see you. I have heard so much of you and of what you are doing. I have heard of the fascinating and astounding advances that you have made in the scientific realm. I have heard of your dashing subways and flashing airplanes. Through your scientific genius you have been able to dwarf distance and place time in chains. You have been able to carve highways through the stratosphere, so in your world you have made it possible to eat breakfast in New York City and dinner in Paris, France. I have also heard of your skyscraping buildings with their prodigious towers steeping heavenward, and I've heard of your great medical advances, which have resulted in the curing of many dread plagues and diseases and thereby prolonged your lives and made for greater security and physical well-being. All of that is marvelous," he's saying. "You have made tremendous technological and scientific and material advances. But America, as I look at you from afar, I wonder whether your moral and spiritual progress has been commensurate with your scientific progress. It seems to me that your moral progress lags behind your scientific progress. Your poet, Thoreau, used to talk about improved means to an unimproved end. How often this is true. You have allowed the material means by which you live to outdistance the spiritual ends for which you live. You have allowed your mentality to outrun your morality. You have allowed your civilization to outdistance your culture. Through your scientific genius you have made of the entire world a neighborhood, but through your moral and spiritual genius you have failed to make of it a brotherhood. So America, I would urge you to keep your moral advances abreast with your scientific advances. I am impelled to write you concerning the responsibilities laid upon you to live as Christians in the midst of an unchristian world."



He's writing this, by the way, in 1956. "That is what I had to do," he's talking about the Apostle Paul here, "that is what every Christian has to do. But I understand that there are many Christians in America who give their ultimate allegiance to man-made systems and customs. They are afraid to be different. Their great concern is to be accepted socially. There's another thing that disturbs me to no end about the American church—this is the most famous part: you have a white church and you have a black church. You've allowed segregation to creep into the doors of the church. How can such a division exist in the true body of Christ? You must face the tragic fact that when you stand at 11:00 a.m. on Sunday morning to sing ‘All Hail the Power of Jesus' Name’ and ‘Dear Lord and Father of All Mankind,’ you stand in the most segregated hour of Christian America. They tell me that there is more integration in the entertainment world and other secular agencies than there is in the Christian church. How appalling that is. I understand that there are Christians among you who try to justify this segregation on the basis of the Bible. This is against everything that the Christian religion stands for. I must say to you as I have said to so many Christians before, that in Christ there is neither Jew nor Gentile, there is neither bond nor free, there is neither male nor female, for we are all one in Christ Jesus. So Americans, I must urge you to get rid of every aspect of segregation. The broad universalism standing at the center of the gospel makes both the theory and practice of segregation morally unjustifiable. Segregation is a blatant denial of the unity that we all have in Christ, and the segregator relegates the segregated to the status of a thing rather than elevating him to the status of a person. The underlying philosophy of Christianity is diametrically opposed to the underlying philosophy of segregation, and all the dialectics of the logicians cannot make them lie down together."



"Now may I say just a word to those of you who are struggling against this evil: Always be sure that you struggle with Christian methods and Christian weapons. Never succumb to the temptation of becoming bitter, and as you press on for justice, be sure to move with dignity and discipline, using only the weapon of love. Let no man pull you so low as to hate him. I still believe that standing up for the truth of God is the greatest thing in the world. This is the end of life. The end of life is not to be happy. The end of life is not to achieve pleasure and avoid pain. The end of life is to do the will of God, come what may. So the greatest of all virtues is love. It is here that we find the true meaning of the Christian faith. This is, at the bottom, the meaning of the cross. The great event on Calvary signifies more than a meaningless drama that took place on the stage of history. It is a telescope through which we look out into the long vista of eternity and see the love of God breaking forth into time. It is an eternal reminder to a power-drunk generation that love is the most durable power in the world, and that is, at bottom, the heartbeat of the moral cosmos. Only through achieving this love can you expect to matriculate into the university of eternal life."



Let's pray now—let's clap first. We'll clap for King; Dr. King’s gotten more applause in one sermon here at St. Marcus than my ten years at St. Marcus, just so—but he deserves it, you know. You can read the whole thing online. I told you, from when I was 14 years old, that hit me like a ton of bricks. I looked around and saw how true it was, and it's shaped me as much as, like I said, just about any of ten or twelve sermons I've ever heard.



Let's ask God to bless our teaching. Father, may our Juneteenth celebration honor you. May this ministry be a place where everyone—no matter what categories they do or don't fit into, no matter what their background, no matter what their race—make it a place where everyone is shown respect and dignity and grace. May we understand the mercy that you have shown to us in Christ Jesus. Let it lead us to do justice and love mercy and walk humbly with you, and may it glorify your name. It's in your name we pray. Amen.