and bow down before the exalted God?
Shall I come before him with burnt offerings,
with calves a year old?
7 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?
8 He has showed you, O man, 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.
-Micah 6:6-8
The passage utilizes a variety of literary devices such as developmental parallelism phrased in the form of question and answer, apostrophe (addressing all of Mankind in v. 8) and hyperbole. The hyperbole is masterfully done. To atone for the massive sins that stand charged against the Children of God, the poet throws out a variety of suggestions to appease the Lord. He suggests progressively more radical offerings. First the standard burnt offerings and a sacrificial calf. Then he moves to thousands of rams and ten thousand rivers of oil. Lastly, he even suggests sacrificing his own firstborn child.
The passage asks a question: ‘how do I approach the Lord to make up for my sins?” Ironically, Micah’s conclusion is one that we see often in the Bible. In Psalm 51 David says,
“You do not delight in sacrifice, or I would bring it; you do not take pleasure in burnt offerings. The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit; a broken and contrite heart, O God, you will not despise” (v. 16-17).
God doesn’t want offerings or sacrifices. It doesn’t matter the number (thousands of rams) or the value (firstborn child). God isn’t interested in Israel’s ritualistic offerings. He wants our contrition, our devotion and our obedience. God wants them to return to Him and live the way He wanted in the first place.
Does the NT teaching modify the principle of the OT passage? Simply yes, in one word: Jesus!
My dear children, I write this to you so that you will not sin. But if anybody does sin, we have one who speaks to the Father in our defense—Jesus Christ, the Righteous One. He is the atoning sacrifice for our sins, and not only for ours but also for the sins of the whole world.
Jesus is all we need. We should follow is teachings and walk humbly with Him. In Him we find new life and our sins are forgiven. We all fall short of the glory of God. We sin. We repent. We cling to the Lord- but we inevitably sin again. We should seek God’s forgiveness. Jesus Christ died for our sins. We need not bring Him burnt offerings or sacrifices. He wants us to act according to His teachings, to love one another, to treat people fairly, to watch after the poor and the orphan and to walk humbly with Christ in our hearts.
Religion that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless is this: to look after orphans and widows in their distress and to keep oneself from being polluted by the world.
A lot of people don’t get this. They think that all they have to do to be ‘Christians’ is come to church, go through the rituals, take communion twice a month, throw a check in the offering plate every now and then and they are covered. But our lesson from this text is to the contrary. God doesn’t want a dead ritualistic orthodoxy. He doesn’t care if you read the confession if you don’t mean it. He doesn’t care if you come to church every Sunday for the rest of your life if you leave the building a terrible person; cheating people out of money at work, boozing at the local tavern, cheating on your spouse. So what then does the LORD require? He wants us to act justly, according to His teachings. He wants to us act empathetically, reaching out to those in need with a tender heart, He wants our devotion to be a daily thing, not a destination on Sunday. He wants our lives to become an act of praise. Walking humbly with our God requires us to turn our everyday routine into opportunities to serve in His name. Our jobs become our mission; our friends and family become our fellow disciples. Our walk becomes our offering to the Lord.
There's not much I can do to repay all you've done
So I give my hands to use
This is my desire, this is my return
This is my desire to be used by you
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