Answer Me (Testify to the Mountains)

Biblical Text: Micah 6:1-8

This text is one that is often appropriated for its final verse. And honestly I hate most of those appropriations. They rip it out of its context and turn it into a pure law. You better walk humbly with God, usually meaning adopt my entire ideological program, or let me tell you. But the context is pure Gospel. In seven verses everything that God does for us is placed before us. God calls on the heights and the depths to testify to this. And he calls on Israel to answer him. Which they do, with what I take as true contrition. And that verse that so often gets changed into law in the service of our desires? It is God’s absolution. What do we do? From this day walk rightly.

On a personal note, I love preaching on the Old Testament. Maybe I’m odd, but it always feels so much more present to me. I get it. Of course we Christians read the OT through the NT lens. But to me what the NT represents is largely the OT books of Exodus and Joshua. The rest of the OT is our lives. Where Israel struggled and failed are good lessons for our learning.