of faith is tender-hearted and I want to tell you why. If you have a Bible there with you, turn with me to Micah 6. “With what shall I come before the Lord, and bow myself before God on high? Shall I come before Him with burnt offerings, with calves a year old? Will the Lord be pleased with thousands of rams, with ten thousands of rivers of oil?
Shall I give my firstborn for my transgression, the fruit of my body for the sin of my soul?”
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 your God?"
It's really hard to understand the power of this passage unless you understand what Micah is about. Micah is essentially a series of God's complaints against the people of Israel. God is upset with Israel. Upset with the way they were living. Upset with the duplicity of their lives. Upset with the state of the culture where there was massive oppression and massive injustice. And so, God's complaining against Israel. Now imagine with me, if someone in your life kept complaining to you about you, eventually you would say, “Okay, what do you want from me? What could I do that would finally silence your complaint? What could I do to please you?” That's Micah 6. It's the ultimate question of Christianity. It's the ultimate question of biblical faith. This is not a little question: what would it take to please God? What would I ever do to finally satisfy Him? To finally satisfy the just complaints that He would have against me? What if I gave 1000 rams? That seems like a huge sacrifice, but would that be enough? The resounding answer is no, it wouldn't be. What if I would even go so far as to sacrifice my only son, my firstborn, would that be enough? The answer is no, it wouldn't be. This is a deeply humbling passage. This is a passage that levels the human playing field. It doesn't matter how rich you are. It doesn't matter your race or ethnicity. It doesn't matter how powerful you are. It doesn't matter whether you're poor or rich, or knowledgeable or ignorant or whatever you are, the playing field is level. There is nothing I can do to satisfy God's righteous requirements. Nothing. I will never be righteous enough. I will never make sacrifices enough. There's nothing I can do. If it's up to me to please God, I'm done. I'm cooked. I have no hope. It's deeply humbling. And like Psalm 112, this passage points us to the Messiah because that gap between what God wants of me and who I am is so huge, I will never be able to bridge it. It's only Jesus who would ever be able to bridge that gap. It's only Jesus who would be righteous enough whose sacrifice would be acceptable enough to satisfy the holy requirements of righteous Almighty God. Listen, men, you will never be tender of heart unless you are first humble of heart. It's humility that is the soil in which tenderness grows. Listen, pride crushes compassion. Pride crushes tenderness. Pride crushes mercy. Because when you're proud, you tell yourself that you're righteous. When you're proud, you take credit for what you could have never earned or produced on your own. And when you're proud, you look down on people who are less and who have less than you. Pride is the enemy of tenderness of heart. And that's why the expansive language in this passage - that not even 1000 rams are enough - is meant to bring us to the end of ourselves. The words are meant to help us to understand the point that there is nothing we can do. Listen, I have to say this, it's important to say hopelessness is the doorway to hope. Because you have to give up on you. You have to give up on your ability. You have to give up on your righteousness. You have to give up on your wisdom. You have to give up on your strength. If you want to be a man of God, if you want to be a man of faith, you have to quit trusting in you. And you have to say that the only measure that truly matters in life - not the measure of my friends, not the measure of my culture, not the measure of my job - is the measure of Holy
Transcript: Week 2
MEN OF FAITH
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