"WHAT IS GOOD?"
Fourth Sunday after the Epiphany
January 29, 2017
Bethel Evangelical Lutheran Church
Glenshaw, Pennsylvania
TEXT:
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?
Micah 6:8 (ESV)
If there is one thing in this conflicted world that nobody seems to be against, it's goodness. We want everything to be good. We value good health and good friends. We try to get a good education at a good school so that after we graduate we can get a good job and have a good income. We like living in a good neighborhood, eating good food, and enjoying good entertainment. In fact, we refer to all of this as "the good life." We strive to exhibit good behavior and to instill that good behavior in our children as well. The only problem with all of this is the question: What is good? Is there any kind of objective definition for this word? What is good for you may not necessarily be all that good for me, and vice versa. What a person planning a crime sees as a good result is not good at all to the victim of the crime or to any other law-abiding citizen. When you feel pain, is that good or bad? It's certainly not pleasant, but it can be good if it serves as a warning to you before you become even more seriously injured than you already are. The truth to be learned from all of this is that what is good and what is not good depends to a great extent on the perspective of the person who is asking the question.
As Christians we ought to be concerned above all else about how God defines good. Ultimately, God's definition of good and what God requires of us are the only things that really matter anyway. So what is good from God's perspective? In particular, what is the good that He would have His people pursue? In the verse of Scripture before us this morning the Lord speaks to us through the prophet Micah to give us an idea of what we should regard as good. As we take a careful look at what He tells us here, we can see that it really breaks down into two things: a good attitude and good behavior--the good attitude forming the basis and source from which the good behavior is derived.
One of the most important ingredients of the good attitude that our God desires us to have is genuine humility--especially in our dealings with Him. No matter how close or how familiar we would like to be with our heavenly Father, we dare not lose sight of the fact that He is the almighty Creator and that we are only His weak creatures, that He is the all-knowing Source of wisdom and that we are severely limited in our intellect, that He is perfect and just and that we are helpless and hopeless sinners. When we think about having a humble attitude in the presence of our God, what matters more than anything else that is that we show repentance for our sin. Now repentance is not something that we do just a couple of times a month at the beginning of our public worship services, nor is it something that we do only once or twice a day in our personal prayers. Repentance is an attitude--an attitude that permeates and pervades everything that we think, say, and do--an attitude that, above all else, causes us to look exclusively to the Son of God, our Savior Jesus Christ, for the forgiveness of our sins and reconciliation with God so that we might somehow be accounted acceptable in the sight of God in spite of our sin.
If we have that attitude of repentance for our sin and a genuine faith in the grace of Christ, then we are able, as the text puts it, to "walk humbly with [our] God." What that means is that we are able to have fellowship with God despite the great gulf that exists between Him and us--the gulf that has been created by the sin of our first parents and has been enlarged by our own ongoing disobedience. To "walk humbly with your God" means to stay close to the One who has redeemed you from sin and death, to glorify Him in thanksgiving for what He has done for you, and to tell others about the richness of His grace in Christ. The attitude of walking humbly with God is an attitude of love toward God. It is an attitude that grows in us as we are fed and nourished with the means of grace--the spiritual food of Word and Sacrament.
When we have this good attitude--the attitude of repentance for our sin and faith in the forgiveness of Christ, it results in good behavior as well. If our attitude toward God is really an attitude of love, we will always want to do the things that God has determined to be good. This attitude of love should move us to do what Micah says that the Lord desires us to do: "to do justice." As Christians living in this broken and unjust world, we are to be a voice for justice--not in the sense of strict legalism but rather in the spirit of the so-called "golden rule," taught by the Lord Jesus Himself: "Whatever you wish that others would do to you, do also to them for this is the Law and the Prophets" (Matthew 7:12). Because of our attitude of humility, we are to have a respect for God's Law--a respect that makes us want to treat all people with justice and equity in all our dealings with them, and because of our attitude of faith in Christ we are to realize that the innocent blood of our Savior was shed for all sinners without distinction.
Our good attitude should show itself especially in our desire "to love kindness." As people who have received undeserved kindness and forgiveness from the perfect Judge, we also are to be kind and forgiving toward those who have wronged us. Forgiveness, after all, is a two-way street. It is what the entire Christian hope depends on. If we refuse to forgive others, we are burning a bridge that we ourselves must cross. If there is no such thing as forgiveness for the person who has sinned against me, neither can there be any forgiveness for me, since I have sinned against God and others. You can't have it both ways. You cannot on the one hand deny forgiveness to another and on the other hand seek it for yourself. Neither can we delude ourselves into thinking that our sin is somehow not as bad as that of others, because the fact of the matter is that God's Law sets a standard of perfect righteousness and therefore a sin is a sin is a sin. We can't even hide behind the excuse that the person who has offended us has committed the same offense repeatedly, because we likewise have committed the same offenses against our God repeatedly. The glorious fact of the Gospel is that the grace of Christ is infinitely greater than all sin--yours, mine, and that of others--especially those who have sinned against us.
Through His prophet Micah God tells us what is ultimately good for us. In a nutshell, He urges us to remember who we are and who He is. We are sinners, but sinners who are loved by Him, redeemed by His Son, and called to faith and discipleship by His Holy Spirit. He is God--perfectly just and perfectly kind and merciful. Living always in that relationship of humility with our heavenly Father, we humbly receive all good things from Him according to His mercy and grace and, by the power of His Holy Spirit, we willingly and joyfully share those good things with others, both in this life and in the life to come.
Amen.
May the God who caused light to shine out of darkness cause you to increase and abound in love toward one another and toward all people, as His love abounds for us; and may the glory of His Son be manifested to you and in you, that you may be witnesses to all nations now and until the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ. He who calls you is faithful, and He will do it. Amen.