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What Does God Want From Me? (6/28/09) |
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Written by Pastor Darrell Cooper
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Monday, 29 June 2009 15:25 |
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Micah 6:6-8
June 28, 2009 - Lindsborg Cov.
“What Does God Want From Me?”
(Holding an offering plate) Well, there it is again. And here we are again. (Looking up at the ceiling) The offering. Can I be honest with you, God? (Looking around, left and right and speaking in a half-whisper) I don’t really like this part of the service. I don’t like it at all. It always makes me feel, well . . . guilty. (Pointing to the offering plate) I never feel like I put enough in here. And how much is enough, anyway? That is really the central question, isn’t it? What do you want from me?
(Putting down the offering plate and picking up the bulletin) And it is not just the money either, God. I mean, look at this! Have you read the bulletin this week? Look at all the stuff the church wants me to do!
For example, they want me to teach a children’s Sunday School class this summer. OK, aybe. But over here they want me to attend an adult Sunday School class. Now I ask you, which is it?
Here (pointing again to the bulletin), they want me to help with VBS this summer, and over here they want me to donate craft items for VBS program as well.
(Picking up the plate and walking side to side for each separate item) They want me to give money to the youth so they can go to CHIC. They want me to give money to the children so they can go to summer camp. They want me to donate nonperishable food items to the Mcpherson County Food Bank this month. They want me to give money to the Benevolent Fund.
(Picking up the bulletin again) Here it says that they want me to come to prayer meeting tonight. And before that they want me to go to the van training and learn how to drive the van (holding the offering plate like a steering wheel and driving back and forth from one side of the stage to the other as you mention each destination) so I can drive the campers to camp, drive the youth to CHIC, drive the women to retreat, drive the men to Covenant Cedars work day, and drive myself crazy!
They want me to bring meat to the next backyard BBQ and (pointing to the bulletin) they want me to bring a side dish to share. They want me to bring a cake to the funeral. They want me to bring two dozen cookies to the Cove. They want me to and come to the next hosting group potluck and of course, bring a side dish to share.
They want me to donate 20 lbs of beef for the next youth fundraiser. Oh, and here is my favorite, Lord. Here’s the kicker. They want me to get baptized this summer, in a swimming pool, no less, and, you guessed it . . . bring a side dish to share!
(Tossing the bulletin on the floor in frustration) Did you write that, Lord? Because I gotta know, God, is that enough for you? What do you want from me?
OK, God, here is what I will do. I will help with the moving crew on Saturdays. Any time they have a moving crew, I will sacrifice my entire morning to serve. How is that? Is that enough for You? (Pause, looking up at the ceiling, waiting for a silent reply) No? OK, I will also volunteer to help with the VBS program - only this year, but I will help. OK? Is that sufficient for You? No?
OK, Lord, You drive a hard bargain. Tell You what. I will go to church every Sunday, OK? No more sleeping in on Sunday mornings. I will be here every week (cringing now) - even on Super Bowl Sunday! Is that sufficient?
Fine! (Walking back and forth from one side of podium to the other with each new activity) I will serve in the nursery. I will sing in the choir. I will help with the youth group. I will serve on a some church committee. I will even join a small group. How is that? Is that enough for You?
(Showing mounting frustration) OK. (Picking up a copy of The Daily Bible) I will read my chronological Bible every single day, just like Pastor Darrell is always nagging us to do. Will that do it?
All right, I will also serve on the church board. I will even be a Deacon, for goodness sake! Will that satisfy You?
(Exasperated and desperately searching for something more) OK. I will . . . fast. I will fast, Lord! I will not eat for a whole week if you want me to. Goodness, I will stop eating for 40 straight days if it will get You off my back! Will that do it? I didn’t think so.
(Really stretching, now) Then I will become a missionary. Yeah. That is what I will do. I will go to . . . deepest, darkest Africa and serve as a missionary for the rest of my natural life! How is that? (Long pause)
OK, Lord. I was hoping it would not come to this. I am even willing to . . . to teach Jr. High Sunday School.
(Glancing around as if suddenly aware of your surroundings) This is getting embarrassing, Lord. We have to hurry this up. (Pulling a twenty dollar bill from your billfold) As You know, I usually throw a twenty into the plate when it comes by, but today I will see that twenty and raise You twenty (pulling out a second twenty dollar bill and throwing it in as well). Is that enough for You? (Pause as if waiting for a response)
I didn’t think so. (Reaching into coat pocket and retrieving stack of $100 bills) OK, God, take a good close look here. This is my entire paycheck, OK? This is everything I have to live on. I am putting it into the offering plate. All of it! OK? Is that enough for You? (Waiting)
Fine! (Pulling car keys from your pocket) Here is my car. Take it for a spin. Keep it! It’s Yours!
(Pulling a stack of envelopes from another coat pocket) Here is the deed to my house. Here is my 401K. While You are at it, You can have my IRA as well. There! Now I have sacrificed my entire financial future to You. Is that sufficient?! (Pause, waiting)
No? Well then let me sacrifice my children’s financial future too. Here is their whole college education fund!
(Looking up at the ceiling and almost shouting in total exasperation) WHAT ELSE DO YOU WANT FROM ME?
(Looking around rather sheepishly, and then quietly handing the offering plate to the next person in the pew) Here you go.
Have you ever said something like that? OK, maybe not quite so dramatically, but have you ever felt that way? You come to church week after week and every time you get another list of things you are supposed to do. What does God want from you?
In the first five books of the Old Testament, what we call the Pentateuch or the Torah, there are 613 different commandments. That is just the first five books. If you take the Old Testament as a collective whole, there are over 1,050 separate things God wants His people to do.
Then, when we get to the New Testament, Jesus not only adds to these commands, but He makes the ones we already have even harder to obey! It is enough to make you want to throw your hands up and shout to the heavens, “WHAT DO YOU WANT FROM ME?!”
Well, if you have ever felt that way, you are not alone. In Micah’s day, the people of Israel were asking similar questions. Fortunately for them and us, the answer they received is boiled down to something very simple - all of God’s expectations in a nutshell.
So, if you want to turn there, we are in Micah 6:6-8. I want you to pay particular attention to the progression in these verses. Notice the escalation of the gifts, both in size and value.
They begin with the question, “Lord, what do you want from me? Shall we give you burnt offerings?” That sounds reasonable. “How about calves a year old?” But now it ramps up.
“Will the Lord be pleased with thousands of rams?” Sounds expensive.
“With 10,000 rivers of oil?” Now they have gone completely overboard. But they are not done yet.
“Shall I offer my firstborn child for my transgression? Now they have crossed the line into offerings so extreme that they aren’t even moral. This isn’t even legal. Of course God will not be pleased with child sacrifice as He has already condemned such behavior as repulsive to Him. But this kind of exaggeration does serve to make the point, doesn’t it? It expresses the frustration and exasperation of the people who wonder how much is good enough for God? Does He want my car, my house, my children, my future? What?
But the fundamental problem here was not a genuine ignorance about what God considered an acceptable offering. The problem was that their lives did not match up with their offering. Their ways did not match up with their worship. The people of Israel were going through the motions of spirituality and worship, but it was meaningless and empty. Their worship in the Temple didn’t mean anything because of the way they were treating people in the marketplace.
We are told elsewhere in Micah that the Israelites in that day were stealing people’s very homes from them (Micah 2:2). They were cheating people out of their inheritance (Micah 2:2). Their leaders were corrupt and greedy people who took advantage of their position in order to make a profit (Micah 3:9-11). They were becoming wealthy through cheating, violence, and deception (Micah 6:10-12). So, they would treat one another like this in the open marketplace, and then rush back to the Tempe, congratulating themselves on the generosity of their offerings to God.
This reminds me of another story, deeper in the history of the Jewish people. It is a story recorded in 1 Samuel 15. God sent the prophet Samuel to speak to King Saul. He said,
“You remember the Amalekites? Do you remember what they did to our people when we were coming out of Egypt. They took advantage of our weakness and vulnerability and attacked us and killed many of our people.
Well, God has never forgot that, nor has He ever gotten over it. He is still angry and the time has finally come for Him to avenge Himself on His enemies. So, here is what God wants you to do, Saul. He wants you to kill them. Kill them all. Every last one of them. He wants you to destroy every man, woman, child, and animal. Make no distinction. Kill them all. Leave nothing breathing. Completely wipe them from the face of the earth.”
Well, Saul did attack the Amalekites and he did defeat them, but he did not fully obey the command of the Lord. He didn’t destroy everything. He let the king live and he kept all the best animals for himself.
When confronted, Saul rationalized that he kept the best as an offering to the Lord. He wanted to make a generous sacrifice to God, so he had kept the best of the plunder alive.
To this, Samuel rather famously replied, “Does the Lord delight in burnt offerings and sacrifices as much as in obeying the voice of the Lord? To obey is better than sacrifice, and to heed is better than the fat of rams. (1 Samuel 15:22)
I think this old story lies at the heart of today’s story as well. Here are the Israelites again, completely ignoring God’s commands and living in rebellion against Him, but pretending to be pious by offering lavish sacrifices to Him. But God says, “To obey is better than sacrifice”
In the words of Micah, “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 6:8)
That is the answer to the question. The answer to their question as well as ours. What does God want from me? The answer, in a word, is You. He wants you.
That ancient story about Saul and the Amalekites inspired one of my earliest spiritual mentors, Mr. Keith Green to write a song titled, “To Obey Is Better Than Sacrifice” I want to read to you just one line from that song. The lyric is in the mouth of God and He says, “To obey is better than sacrifice. I don't need your money, I want your life.” I don’t need your money. I want you life. He wants you. He wants all of you. He wants your whole life, not just your money.
You see, the last part of verse eight contains the very heart of the whole passage, and God’s heart as well. What does God want from us? He wants us to walk humbly with Him.
Humility means honesty. It means sincere authenticity. God is saying that He wants us to maintain an honest and close relationship with Him. That is what it means to offer ourselves wholly to Him.
Perhaps that begs the question, “How do you know if you are giving all of you to Him? The answer is simple: OBEDIENCE. Remember, “To obey is better than sacrifice”. But fortunately for us, we have here not hundreds of commands, but only two: act justly and love mercy. Let me, very briefly, comment on each of these.
Acting justly means doing what is honest and right and fair. It means to live in right in relation to others in social, political and economic affairs.
You see, God is not only interested in how we give our money on Sunday morning, and He is not only interested in how we spend our money on Friday and Saturday night. He is also keenly interested in how we make our money Monday through Friday. Have we been honest and fair in all our business dealings?
The second thing is to love mercy. This means demonstrating the same loving-kindness to others that God has shown us.
Justice and mercy. These two things represent an apparent dichotomy which is nevertheless held together in constant tension throughout the Bible. Grace and Truth, Mercy and Righteousness, Love and Holiness, Pardon and Purity. These two things, Mercy and Justice summarize the whole obedience factor. This is how we know we are giving all of us to Him!
So let me ask you a question, and it is not intended to be rhetorical. If I were to come up to you today and ask you, “How is your relationship with God?” what would you say? If I asked, “How is your spiritual life recently?” how would you respond? How would you even begin to evaluate that question? What criteria would you use to evaluate your walk with God?
If you came up to me and asked, “Darrell, how is your relationship with Jesus going?” I might say, “Well, let’s see. I have been having consistent quiet times. I am caught up in my Daily Bible reading. I have been going to church regularly. I have been tithing faithfully. I guess I am doing pretty good!”
These are all good things, but notice that they are all externals. What about the internal things? What if instead I were to use this passage, Micah six, as my criteria to evaluate my life and relationship with God? What if I were to ask questions like this:
Have I been completely honest in all my business dealings?
Have I cheated or taken advantage of anyone financially?
Have I been motivated at all by greed?
Is my life characterized by integrity and upright living, treating others honorably and fairly?
Do I delight in extending lovingkindness to people, even people who don’t deserve it?
Am I quick to forgive people who hurt or wrong me?
Am I walking close to Jesus in an open and honest way?
Are these things more true of me now than they were a year ago? Five years ago? Am I growing in my relationship with Him?
The reason, I think, that we often substitute these external criteria is because they are easier to do and easier to measure. By using only external criteria, I may be lying to my boss or exploiting and oppressing my employees, but at least I tithe on my income.
I may be gossiping about people at school, work, or home, but I am faithful to pray for those people on my prayer list.
I may essentially ignore God Monday through Saturday, but come Sunday I am raising my hands in corporate worship.
But God says, “To obey is better than sacrifice.”
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.
These are perhaps better criteria by which to evaluate our own personal relationship with God. They might also be helpful in evaluating how we are doing corporately. How is our children’s Sunday School program going, for example?
I will be the first to admit that it is very difficult to measure subjective intangibles like mercy, justice, and humility, but what if we tried?
It is relatively simple to test if our children can recite the ten commandments, but quite another to find out if they are honoring and obeying their parents at home.
W can easily check off the number of verses the children have memorized, but are they doing good to those who hate them and praying for those who mistreat them?
It is great that our children know their major prophets from their minor prophets, but are they treating their younger siblings with gentleness and respect?
You see, one of these categories is an issue of curriculum. The other category is an issue of character. All those things I mentioned are good things - Bible Study, memorizing Scripture, etc. I think they are extremely important. But they are only important as a means to an end. Knowledge OF God is critical, but it is only valuable if it fosters a genuine relationship WITH God as their Father and if they walk in sincere humility before Him.
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.
To quote Keith Green again, he once said, “It’s so easy to write a check. It’s SO easy. But God can’t cash out of state checks in Heaven. He needs you.” He wants you.
That is why Paul said in Romans 12:1, “Therefore, I urge you, brothers, in view of God’s mercy, to offer your bodies as living sacrifices, holy and pleasing to God—this is your spiritual act of worship.”
God does not need your money. He is not satisfied with our most lavish gifts. He is not necessarily impressed with our most extreme sacrifices. He wants much less than that, and He wants much more. He wants you. He wants your life. All of it. All of you. Does He have it?
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 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.
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Last Updated on Monday, 29 June 2009 15:30 |
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