Wholehearted Worship (Micah 6:6-8)

When the words of the prophet Micah, who already knows that you do not trust God, pierce our hearts, please prevent us from being discouraged.

Where can we find a life without problems and incidents? When a problem arises, we instinctively try to solve it. The important thing is to make the right decision on how to solve it, even if we cannot do anything about the problem itself. The way a person faces their problems reveals their character, integrity, and abilities.

We will read the text of Micah chapter 6 from the perspective of problem-solving. Before diving into Micah, let's first look at the structure found in Job and Genesis, and then move on to the text of Micah. The structure of the early parts of Job and Genesis is similar.

First, looking at Job, God hands Job over to Satan. Then Satan destroys Job's property, which is a sign of God's favor that others can see. Even the relationships with his children and wife are severed. Now, there is only one thing left for Job:

 "Will you still trust God?" Job's relationship with God has also fallen into a precarious state. Satan is on the verge of achieving his goal, which is to destroy Job's trust in God.

In the early part of Genesis, we see the incident of Adam and Eve with the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil. When Adam and Eve break God's command and eat from the tree, their relationship with nature is severed, and the relationship between Adam and Eve changes from supporting each other to blaming each other. When the relationship with God collapses, the relationships between people and between people and nature also break. Job and Genesis are similar in this way.

However, it seems that the Genesis document, which speaks of the time of creation, would be older than Job, but Job is an older document than Genesis. The story of Job is around 2000 BC, and the earliest of the various stories in Genesis is around 1000 BCE.. The fact that Job precedes Genesis in time gives us a simple insight.

The story of Job is structured in the order of experiences in life. Life is a series of experiences where material disappears, relationships with people, even family relationships, collapse, and even the relationship with God is shaken. Job unfolds like a confession of a person who has lived through life and leaves a word behind. In contrast, Genesis sighs heavily, saying that it was not because the relationship with material or people was broken that the relationship with God was broken, but because the relationship with God was twisted, everything else fell apart. We see the struggle of life in Job. And we hear the confession of a person who has experienced everything in life in Genesis.

The issue raised by Job and Genesis is the relationship (trust) with God. Whether in the past or now, the core of the religious life is the question of whether or not to trust God. As mentioned earlier, when such a problem arises, people instinctively try to solve it.

The prophet Micah evaluates that Israel has not properly solved the issue of trusting God. Israel was a sacrificial community. The sacrifice was the main function of the temple, and how the sacrifice was carried out was the main measure of their faith. Korean culture also emphasizes sacrifices. While Korean sacrificial culture is a matter of etiquette and respect for ancestors, it was even more important for Israel because it had a religious dimension.

We can glimpse the religious life of Israel and their relationship with God through the words of the prophet Micah. Micah summarizes the religious life of Israel at the time as follows:

"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 olive oil? Shall I offer my firstborn for my transgression, the fruit of my body for the sin of my soul?" (Micah 6:6-7)

Israel grapples with the issue of serving and trusting God, pondering what to bring to their sacrifices. Should they prepare a year-old calf as a burnt offering? Should they prepare a thousand rams, like our ancestor Solomon's thousand burnt offerings? Or should they sacrifice one lamb per day for a thousand days? Should the flowing oil from the sacrificed animals amount to ten thousand streams? They even considered offering their own offspring as a sign of their trust in God. They did not hesitate to offer more sacrifices, more elaborate rituals, and even human sacrifices.

Micah specifically addresses the core of religious life at the time: sacrifice (worship). The proper worship that Micah reveals to us is as follows:

"He has shown you, O mortal, 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)

Micah says that if you want to express your trust in God through proper religious life, live justly, be merciful, and walk humbly with God. Living in this way is walking humbly with God, which is the proper sacrifice, according to Micah. The proper sacrifice is not about offering thousands of lambs, thousands of rituals, or enough oil to fill ten thousand rivers, Micah declares.

At this point, we tend to fall into a bad habit of asking what exactly it means to practice justice, show mercy, and walk humbly with God. We might argue that offering a thousand lambs or ten thousand streams of oil is more concrete. Asking for specifics about proper worship is like the teacher of the law who asked Jesus, "Who is my neighbor?" when Jesus told him to love his neighbor. The teacher of the law did not ask Jesus this question to show mercy and kindness to his neighbor. He asked to test Jesus, regardless of loving his neighbor. Micah says that the Lord has already told you what is good and what is required of you.

We already know that practicing justice, showing mercy, and walking humbly with God throughout our lives is proper worship, even without reading the book of Micah. Micah rebukes us for asking again about something we already know, as if we are trying to avoid it. We already know that living with God in mind throughout our lives is the proper way to live, the proper worship, and the proper way to trust God. Let us prepare our hearts once more as we read Micah.