Micah 6:8 – “He has told you, O 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 you God.”

Micah is a humble man from the common people. He was from Moresheth, a small town near the Philistine boarder. He didn’t speak to kings or rulers, like Isaiah his contemporary. Micah spoke to the common people. But God gave him a broad ministry. Micah prophesied to the people of the northern kingdom of Isreal and the southern Kingdom of Judah, and his message from God was the same to both of them. God was angry with them for their rejection of Him and their worship of idols.

His message wasn’t all condemnation like Jonah’s was to Nineveh. Interspersed through his message are reminders that though God will bring punishment to them for their sins, He will also redeem them.

Remarkably, God used insignificant Micah to tell us that hundreds of years later God’s messiah would be born in Bethlehem (Micah 5:2).

When Micah gets to the middle of chapter six Micah begins voicing the thoughts of the people he’s preaching to who might be convicted. In chapter 6 verse 7 Micah knows that the people are so far from God that even if they want to repent, they don’t know how. They have forgotten what’s good and what God wants. So Micah tells them in verse 8:

What is justice? In this case it’s what God says is right and good. Those are the things God wants His people to accomplish. God had already told them this once in Deuteronomy 6:18. He says it again in the reverse in James 4:17 where the scripture says , “whoever knows what is right to do and fails to do it, to him it is sin.”

What’s kindness? It’s mercy, goodness, compassion, and faithfulness. Those attributes describe the very nature and character of God Himself, later manifested by Jesus when He walked this earth. God wants His people to be like Christ. Paul said in I Corinthians 11:1 “Be immitaors of me as I am of Christ.”

What does it mean to walk humbly with God? In its simplest form I believe it means to agree with God. If God’s word or the Holy spirit convicts you, rather than arguing, rebelling, or dismissing those convicting thoughts, humble yourself before God and agree with Him. To “walk humbly” means that it’s not a onetime thing that we did at Bible camp. God wants us to live our lives this way.

There is good news and bad news here. And I’m going to tell you the bad news first. You can’t make these things that God requires of us happen consistently in your life. We are just too broken. Even Paul said in Romans 7:15-20 that he was incapable of doing the good things that he knew God wanted him to do.

So what’s the good news. As you’ve probably already guessed, Jesus Christ can do these things and far more in our lives if we surrender ourselves to Him. The same guy that wrote Romans 7 also wrote Galatians 2: 20 – “I’ve been crucified with Christ, nevertheless I live, yet not I but CHRIST LIVES IN ME (emphasis mine). And the life which I now live in the flesh, I live by faith in the Son of God who loved me and gave Himself for me.”

I’ve tried the whole stumbling and bumbling my way through life and to be honest with you, that kind of life is frustrating and miserable. You’ll have to decide for yourself, but having Christ live in and through me sounds like a pretty exciting way to live.

Being crucified with Christ costs,

but the payoff is immeasurable and lasts forever.