Dennis Tuuri

Reformation Covenant Church, please stand for the reading of God’s word. Finally, my brethren, rejoice in the Lord. To write the same thing to you, to me indeed is not grievous, but for you it is safe. Beware of dogs. Beware of evil workers. Beware of the concision. For we are the circumcision which worship God in the spirit and rejoice in Christ Jesus and have no confidence in the flesh. Let’s pray.

Almighty God, we thank you for calling us together into holy convocation this Lord’s day to worship you in the spirit, to rejoice in Jesus Christ, and to put no confidence in our own flesh.

As we come before you, Lord God, we recognize that in and of ourselves, we are sinners, and apart from your redemptive grace, we have no place in your holy presence. We thank you, Lord God, that Jesus Christ has paid the price for our sins of this past week and indeed of all of our lives through his one atonement made on the cross 2,000 years ago. We thank you, Lord God, for the grace extended to us in his work as our covenant mediator.

And we thank you for his imputed righteousness in which we now stand in your holy courts, ready to praise you this day and always in the power of the Holy Spirit. Lead us into truth now and forever. In Jesus name we pray. Amen. Praise ye the Lord. Praise ye the name of the Lord. Praise him, oh ye servants of the Lord. Ye that stand in the house of the Lord, in the courts of the house of our God, praise the Lord, for the Lord is good.

Sing praises unto his name, for it is pleasant. Lord, who shall abide in thy tabernacle? He that walketh uprightly, and speaketh the truth in his heart, he that backbiteth not with his tongue, nor taketh up a reproach against his neighbor, in whose eyes the vile person is condemned. He that sweareth to his own hurt. He that putteth not out his money to usury. He that doeth all these things shall never be moved.

Turn to Micah 6, verses 6-8. Micah chapter 6, verses 6-8. Wherewith shall I come before the Lord and bow myself before the high God? Shall I come before him with burnt offerings, with calves of a year old? Will the Lord be pleased with thousands of rams or with 10 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 hath showed thee, oh man, what is good and what does the Lord require of thee, but to do justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly with thy God.

At this point in our going through the book of Micah, probably apart from perhaps the reference to Bethlehem, the other most well-known passage from the book of Micah is this one. Although it’s probable that many people may have even memorized these verses from time to time or have pondered on them, particularly verse 8, many don’t recognize that it comes from a minor prophet of the Old Testament, but it does. We’re going to begin our discussion this morning by looking specifically at verse 8.

The title of the talk is God’s Requirement of Men. And we’re going to begin looking specifically when God gets to his requirements in verse 8. And we’ll get back to verses 6 and 7 in a couple of minutes. In verse eight, we read, “He hath showed thee, oh man, what is good. And what does the Lord require of thee but to do justly, to love mercy, and dwell humbly with thy God.”

Before we get to the three obvious requirements of God for man, let’s not skip over the first portion of that verse. Just meditate here for a couple of minutes on these first couple of statements that he makes.

He begins by saying, “He hath showed thee, oh man, what is good.” And so the first point in your outline is that God’s requirements of men are revealed. And that may be rather evident, but it isn’t necessarily evident. And it wasn’t evident to the people that are asking the questions in verses 6 and 7. They pose a series of questions. What do we do? And to which Micah replies, well, you know what you should be doing.

God’s already revealed it to you. And he’s revealed it to you in the holy writ in the scripture. It’s in the Bible in God’s word to you, which of course they had the Pentateuch at that time. And of course, God’s requirements of men are outlined there. Specifically, I want to look at just for a couple of minutes at Deuteronomy 10, verse starting at verse 10. Deuteronomy 10. There’s a relating there of the second account of the giving of the law.

Verse 10 says, I stayed on the mount according to the first time 40 days and 40 nights. Verse 11, the Lord said to me, arise, take thy journey before the people that they may go in and possess the land. And then in verse 12, which we want to just focus on for a minute here in Deuteronomy 10, we read God telling Moses, “And now, Israel, what does the Lord thy God require of thee? But to fear the Lord thy God, to walk in all his ways, and to love him, and to serve the Lord thy God with all thy heart and with all thy soul to keep the commandments of the Lord and his statutes which I command thee this day for thy good.”

Now later on in verse 18 in that passage he says he doth execute, speaking of God of course, the judgment of the fatherless and widow and loveth the stranger in giving him food and raiment. Love ye therefore the stranger for ye were strangers in the land of Egypt. Thou shalt fear the Lord thy God. Him shalt thou serve and to him shalt thou cleave and swear by his name. He is thy praise and he is thy God.

And so in Deuteronomy 10 and the verses following that, the people to which this question and answer is directed—the people of Micah’s day—knew what God required of them. And what God required of them according to Deuteronomy 10, the book of the covenant is to love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, and might. And then to love your neighbor as yourself and specifically zeroing in here on the stranger in your land by giving him food and raiment and the widow.

And you’re just supposed to extend God’s grace to those people in your land as well. So they knew what the requirements of God were. They had no need to guess at the requirements of God. However, by the time of Micah’s writing, obviously the southern kingdom—you remember that Micah was the prophet to the southern kingdom—had need of reminding themselves of what the requirements of God were. And indeed, a contemporary prophet Hosea in the northern kingdom had the same need there.

They had forgotten or not attended to or rebelled against the instruction of Deuteronomy 10 and the requirements of God. And of course, Deuteronomy 10 is just a summation of those requirements. But in Hosea 12:2, which is a parallel passage to the northern kingdom, we read very similar words to what we’ve read here in the book of Micah in chapter 6. Hosea 12:2 says, “The Lord hath also a controversy with Judah, will punish Jacob according to his ways.” You remember that Micah in chapter 6 begins by saying he has a controversy with his people.

And it’s a covenantal lawsuit that the statements of God’s requirements are issued in the context of. Well, in Hosea 12, that same statement is made to the northern kingdom. God is a controversy with them. And he says specifically in verse 6 of Hosea 12, therefore turn thou to thy God, keep mercy and judgment and wait on thy God continually. You see, they had also forgotten what were the requirements and they were being reminded to turn to God and wait on him continually.

Again, in Hosea chapter 6, starting at verse 4, we read, “Oh Ephraim, what shall I do unto thee, oh Judah? What shall I do unto thee for your goodness is as a morning cloud and as the dew early that goeth away.” Verse 5, therefore have I hewed them by the prophets. Then in verse six, for I desired mercy and not sacrifice and the knowledge of God more than burnt offerings.

And so in these two passages from Hosea in chapter 6 and chapter 12, the same thing is repeated to the northern kingdom that Micah now is addressing to the southern kingdom. He’s reminding them of the requirements of God. And when they remind them of the requirements of God, he turns them right back really to the substance of the covenant in the book of the covenant in Deuteronomy 20, the restatement of that covenant to the people.

And he points them to the first and second tablets of the law. So God’s requirements for men are revealed. They’re revealed in the scriptures. There’s no need to run around trying to make up what those requirements might be and figure out how we can appease God. He tells us in the scriptures specifically. He also tells the people as a subset of those scriptures through entrance liturgies. And I throw this in because it’s important that you recognize that’s the form that’s being used here in this portion of Micah in this covenantal lawsuit.

We have here a reference in these three verses to an entrance liturgy. Now, what is that? Well, we just sang Psalm 15. We recited it. Psalm 15 is the pre-eminent entrance liturgy. It asks, who can abide in God’s holy hill? Who gets in to the kingdom? Who stays out? And God in Psalm 15 says, “These are the things you got to do to get in. And if you don’t have those things, You can’t have entrance to presence with God.”

And that’s a liturgical device. The psalm—these psalms were used in the temple services of course. And this particular device is to remind people of the requirements for entrance in. We’ve talked before about how the Levites had a responsibility to guard the temple for instance. And the mountain of God’s presence was guarded by Moses and the churches—the table of the church in the New Testament is guarded by the elders.

Well, who do they guard it from? Well, they make sure that whoever doesn’t exhibit these entrance requirements don’t get in. They’re excluded. And that’s why these are referred to in today’s jargon as entrance liturgies. They’re liturgies that taught the people what the requirements of fellowship with God were. And they were also used by the priest. Many people think to actually—they would repeat Psalm 15, demand the response of the people or the people would ask of the priest.

They would instruct the people and the people be able to respond to the priest that these are the requirements. I know what they are. I’ve fulfilled these things. Let me in now. And so there was a requirement of entrance issued in these things. And it’s important to recognize that’s the structure that’s being used in Micah 6. Psalm 15, as I said, is the pre-eminent one. Psalm 24 is another entrance liturgy.

We’ll talk about that more in a couple of minutes. And next Sunday, we’ll read Psalm 24 responsively. And again, it asks in the first half of Psalm 24, who gets in? And in the second half of Psalm 24, it tells us something very important to recognize about who it is that actually comes in. Isaiah 33 starting at verse 14 is also within the context of Isaiah 33, and there is also this same thing said specifically in verse 14 the sinners in Zion are afraid fearfulness have surprised the hypocrites, and it’s important to keep that hypocrite notion in mind here because I think that’s probably what Micah is dealing with in Micah 6—is hypocrisy.

But in any event, Isaiah 33:14 goes on to say, “Who among us shall dwell with the devouring fire? That’s God, of course. Who among us shall dwell with everlasting burnings? He that walketh righteously and speaketh uprightly. He that despiseth the gain of oppressions, that shaketh his hands from holding of bribes. See that there’s an intensification there, isn’t there? It’s not just that you don’t take bribes. You shake your hand to make sure you get rid of any possible bribes that may be there. That stoppeth his ears from hearing of blood and shutteth his eyes from seeing evil. He shall dwell on high. His place of defense shall be the mountains of rocks. Verse 17, thine eyes shall see the king in his beauty. They shall behold the land.”

So again, there are requirements listed of the people there. And these requirements, of course, as I said in Deuteronomy 10, are summations of all the requirements of God, of course, but nonetheless, they’re important. And the scriptures has given us these summation liturgies, as it were, these summation questions and answers of who gets entrance into the kingdom for a purpose to summarize these things. I think that this is probably the basis for catechism instruction that the reformers stress so heavily. Many people believe there’s much evidence to support the fact that these were actually catechism devices and that the people would be required to memorize these specific answers—questions and answers—the way that our children are memorizing questions and answers about the catechism.

And so if you ask your child—most people in this church—if they shorter catechism which is the chief purpose of man—they can give you the catechism answer. And so it’s the same thing here. If you ask the respondent—the person coming to gain access to the temple—what are the requirements of God? They’d be able to respond with the answer to that catechism question. And so that is given to us. By the way, Jesus uses the same sort of thing in the New Testament where he summarizes the law: you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart soul and mind and love your neighbor as yourself. Same sort of thing—it’s a summary statement that teaches our children, teaches us what the obvious requirements are, and the knowledge of what those requirements mean are worked out in our lives throughout our lifetime.

Okay. So God’s requirements of man are revealed by God in the scriptures in general—the whole book of the scriptures—and then specifically in these entrance liturgies and other devices in the scriptures that tell us summary statements of what men are required to do in covenant with God.

The second thing that’s important to see that Micah 6 tells us is it says he hath showed thee and we’ve dealt with that—man, what is good, right? You don’t want to rush over that either. These entrance requirements are not burdensome. They’re good. God says specifically, they’re good. And beyond, of course, the fact that he was dealing with the people that were probably sarcastic as to what those requirements might be, and we’ll talk about that in a couple of minutes by going to all these extremes, he’s saying look at—don’t put down the requirements of God, no matter what they be.

They are good. They’re good and wholesome altogether. Now, a couple of other things that word “good” should call to mind in our own minds. First of all, good in the scriptures is defined as in relationship to covenantal fidelity. In Hosea 8, we see this in verse one. It says that they have transgressed my covenant and transgressed against my law. God is, you know, here again having a covenantal judgment against a people for transgressing the covenant and transgressing my law.

And then in verse two, it says, “Israel shall cry unto me, my God, we know thee. Verse three, Israel hath cast off the thing that is good. The enemy shall pursue him.” In spite of Israel’s remonstrations to the contrary, God says that because they’ve transgressed my covenant and transgressed against my law, by definition, Israel has cast off the thing that’s good. What’s good? Good is the covenant—is their relationship to God and their obedience to the stipulations of the covenant.

And they’ve cast that off for themselves. So good is defined in relationship to covenant. And we know that in Romans 7:12, we read that the law is holy and just and good in the book of Romans in the 7th chapter. And so we know that the law, the law of the covenant, of course, coming forth from the person of God and his relationship to us through covenant, the revelation of who he is, the law reflecting his holy character, his holy character is good, his law is good, covenant is good.

And so as soon as he tells them he’s shown the man what’s good, it should put them in mind of the covenant and of the covenant stipulations. And that’s of course what he then goes to teach them these requirements in relationship to that. Psalm 119:68 says, “Thou art good and doest good. Teach me thy statutes.” Goodness is found in the person of God and as a result of his revelation to us through his statutes and judgments, through his law, reflecting what our relationship to him is to be and to our fellow man.

And that’s good. And that’s what Micah is reminding them of in his description of God’s requirements of man. So God’s requirements of men are revealed by God. That’s gracious, of course, and that’s a good act on his part. And secondly, they’re good. They’re covenantally understood, and they’re understood in terms of the law.

Third, God’s requirements of them are summarized. He has revealed to thee. He has showed thee, oh man, what is good, and what does the Lord require? And of course, the context of all that we say this morning is that these are requirements. They’re not suggestions. They’re not things God hoped that we do. They’re requirements for entrance. Okay? They’re not what you should get entrance and then maybe hope to do after you get entrance to God. They’re required to come before his special presence.

What does God require of us? But to do justly, to love mercy, and to walk humbly with thy God.

First, he says, God’s requirements summarize. The first thing is to do justly. That’s a requirement of entrance with God. Now, it’s interesting here that to do justly obviously has primary reference to a relationship man to man. Second tablet, you know, we’ve talked about the first tablet—love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, and might. Second tablet, love your neighbor as yourself. And in this particular statement of the requirements of who gets entrance and who can appease God’s wrath against sinful men, Micah starts with the second tablet, which is kind of interesting.

Now, if you were listening closely to what I read from Deuteronomy 10, you would have noticed that Deuteronomy 10, the requirements are spelled out in more length and they’re spelled out by beginning with the first tablet. You got to love the Lord your God. That’s what he begins with in Deuteronomy 10. And then as the result of that, he says, you got to love God. You got to worship him only and him only. And then he goes on from there to say that God’s been gracious to strangers and widows—representative of people in need—and you’ve got to be gracious to them as well. Second tablet. So Deuteronomy 10 follows the structure of Exodus 20, the Ten Commandments themselves, which starting with a relationship, the requirements to God, then requirements to men.

Micah here reverses it. Now, Deuteronomy 10 is laying out a theological teaching to the people of the covenant. Okay? It’s like a comprehensive thing. But Micah, what he’s doing is the context is a covenantal lawsuit. And Micah goes to second tablet. Why does he do that to begin with here? Well, I think he does it because what he’s looking for here is evidence of access to God. Requirements, yes, but evidence that they really do love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, and strength.

They’ve just claimed, and we’ll get to this in more detail a little later, they’re willing to do all these great sacrifices for God. They love God a lot. And you remember in First John, it says, “Hey, you can’t love God if you hate your brother. You’ve got to love your brother in order to love God.” And so, Micah says, “Okay, great. We’ll tell you what the requirements are. How are you doing in terms of justice to your fellow men in the covenant community?” And so, he looks at the second tablet because these are requirements that evidence first table of obedience.

It’s kind of tough sometimes. We evaluate first tablet obedience, isn’t it? We can go through the forms, but when the rubber hits the road is when we get outside of the church and we go into the week and we start dealing with other people, that’s when the evidence begins to mount of our relationship—either correctly to God or incorrectly with God. Now, specifically to Micah’s crowd, of course, they were notoriously poor at second tablet.

Remember, we said that chapter one of Micah stresses first tablet. Chapter 2 begins second tablet critiques. And in chapter 2, right away in verses 1 and 2 of chapter 2, he says, “Woe to them that devise iniquity and work evil upon their beds. When the morning is light, they practice it because it is in the power of their hand, and they covet fields and take them by violence and houses and take them away. So they oppress a man in his house, even a man in his heritage.”

Verse 8 of chapter 2: “Even of late my people have risen up as an enemy. He pull off the robe with the garment from them that pass by securely as men averse from war. The women of my people have ye cast out from their pleasant houses. From their children have you taken away my glory forever.” See that’s again a specific reference to the second half of Deuteronomy 10—those second tablet violations because God says I show mercy to people. You should show mercy to people and they don’t do it.

And so Micah starts with the second tablet both because it’s an entrance liturgy that is looking for evidences of relationship to God. And secondly, because that’s the specific problem that his hearers had and he knew it. And so he nailed them as it were with their violations. He wasn’t about to be distracted by their claims to piety. Okay. And it’s real important to realize the importance of that statement here.

Deuteronomy 10 repeated in 1 John: on that if you don’t love your brother, you don’t—you lie when you say you love God. That isn’t, you know, he—what he’s saying there is not just evidence that may tilt the scales one way or the other. He’s saying that if you don’t love your brother actively by doing justice and these other things we’ll talk about, then you don’t love God. And that has big implications for each of us individually, for this church, and for the Christian church in America at large.

Now in terms of this first requirement of the second tablet to do justly, Richard M. in our elder training program was assigned some qualifications out of Titus 1:8. The three qualifications that he was—requirements of the elders—that he was given to talk about were the elder must be holy and just and a lover of good. And he did a real good job and I think he brought that over into his sermon primarily of linking those three things together.

And again, Romans 7 says the law is holy and just and good. And so God’s character is holy and just and good. Men are required to be holy and just and good. And certainly then men that are being put in leadership positions in the church have to be characterized by those requirements. And one of those things is justice. Richard did a great job of pointing out the fact that when we think of justice today, it’s some sort of Greek notion that isn’t connected to any kind of standard.

You just got to sort of do what’s right by people, you know. But it’s important to realize, of course, that should be obvious and it would be as soon as you point it out, that justice according to the scriptures is defined in context of his law. The law is holy and just and good. And you can’t be just if you violate the law. And so when he’s saying here to do justly, he’s saying fulfill those requirements of God’s law in relationship to your fellow man.

And it’s important to point that out. I won’t go into a lot more detail on that because Richard did a real good job on the sermon. And also, if you want a copy of the paper that he submitted, we’ll have copies of those hopefully fairly quickly. But in any event, tying justice back to Old Testament concept of justice and standards of righteousness and the same thing in the New Testament tying it to the law.

But justice is defined by God’s holy standard.

One aspect of this however is that frequently one of the commentators—I don’t remember which one it was—talked about justice in terms of courts and of course in the context of Micah the civil authorities themselves were unjust and this has application to them but it also has application to our own lives. We’re used to in America thinking of the three divisions of the government—the civil government. Those divisions being the judicial, the legislative and the executive. Legislative, what the laws are; judicial, how you judge and evaluate people on the basis of those laws; and executive, how you administer those laws.

And what God is saying here in terms of justice, it’s an all-comprehensive term. We won’t take time to look at the scriptures now, but you can go to scriptures that show that justice has implications for each of those three areas. You can’t be just if you don’t have God’s standard, God’s law as your standard of justice as your legislation as it were. But that isn’t enough just to have that. You have to have administered those laws in accordance with the laws. You have to have justice in the administration in your ethical requirements and then in your administration of those ethical requirements.

And third, it has implications to do justly for how we evaluate ourselves, other people, our children, whatever. The standard for evaluation must be God’s law. Otherwise, it won’t be a just judgment. It won’t be a just judge. And so, it’s important to recognize that has implications for those three areas. Our standard, how we carry those standards out, and how we evaluate ourselves and others on the basis of how well they meet those standards. All those things must be governed by God’s law.

Proverbs 23:26 says, “My son, give me thine heart, and let thine eyes observe my ways.” And of course, my ways according to God are the ways that he is. And he reveals to us in the scriptures and in the law. Now, I bring up that verse because the word “observed” there is the same word that’s used as “please” in the text before us in verse 7. “Will the Lord be pleased with thousands of rams?” And of course, he won’t be. But by telling us we’re to do justly and observe God’s ways and keep them, we can also see that in correlation to Proverbs 23:26.

If we want to please God, then we have to be pleased with him and with his standard of righteousness and holiness and his standard of evaluation and his standard of conduct. And so we have to do justly and to be delighted in that doing of justice rather. Okay.

The second requirement of God—of God to man—is to love mercy.

Now there’s a lot of controversy in various literature these days about what this term “mercy” is. And I don’t know how to pronounce the Hebrew, you know, I’ve never been taught Hebrew pronunciation, but the word—I guess is translated often as kindness or mercy or loving kindness. There’s a lot of—well there’s two main schools of thought.

Up until 50 or 60 years ago this word was primarily looked upon as implying kindness in general. Okay. Or they would—it would have aspects actually of love and of mercy and of kindness all kind of rolled up into one thing but it’s an active sort of word. It does things. Okay. It’s to act kindly, mercifully, lovingly toward another person. And it has the implication of doing beyond what’s required of you for another person.

Well, lately in the last, as I said, 40 or 50 years, there’s been various people who have written on the covenantal implications of this word. And they have said that what essentially you have here in this word is covenant loyalty as opposed to kindness in general. It’s covenant loyalty. And there’s various verses that they use to support that. And I think that from what I can understand of the scriptural use of this word, I don’t see any reason to go with one or the other of these two schools.

I think that it is God’s kindness to us that brings him—that causes him to condescend to make covenant with us to begin with and then he acts on the basis of that covenant in a kindly fashion, merciful, loving way. He does these good things for us in the context of the covenant, of course, and what he’s declared he’ll do in that covenant. But to tie this word just to covenantal obligations, I think is probably overstating the case.

It has that element to it. And there’s many scriptures that talk about God’s being kind in this context and loving when it’s obviously talking about God in covenant relationship to us. But there are other references in the scriptures to where this word is used in terms of kindness outside of covenantal groups that you would normally think of when there’s no obligation to be kind or merciful to another person.

So, I think that the term here to love mercy means that we have to participate in acts of kindness, goodness, and love toward other people—mercifully—with covenantal obligations in mind of course, but even beyond those covenantal obligations we have. It’s a word that really I think is similar to the word love in the New Testament. Love really emanates from God’s character. God is love, and God is this word. That’s one of his character qualities. It’s one of his attributes.

Because of that, when his love and his—this word causes him to condescend into covenant with us and to send his son to pay the price and to effect that covenant salvation for us, that then characterizes the covenant as well because it characterizes God. And because it characterizes the covenant and characterizes our God, it should characterize us as well. We have obligations to God and we have obligations for kindness, love to our fellow man. And particularly in context of the covenant unit although outside of that as well.

Now I’ve listed some references there—Exodus 20:5 and Exodus 34:5 and following—that show God’s being having those qualities and I won’t take the time to read them now but essentially then this word is characterized with those sorts of actions stemming out of the person of God and also stemming out of the covenant relationship we have with him.

Now, we’ve talked about this before, but it’s important here to point it out. Deuteronomy 10 again is the model for this entrance liturgy. And Deuteronomy 10 said, “You got to love God and love your neighbor.” And then it gave in terms of loving your neighbor a specific example of you have widows and you have strangers and you have obligations to help them that wouldn’t normally accrue to you under the strict obedience to the law. But the scriptures say you’ve got to show kindness to those people.

So, it is a requirement of the law in that sense. But the point of it is to be looking for people that have needs and concerns outside of perhaps the narrow definitions of what the law tells us and apply this word to those people as well. And so, it’s a balance, I guess, is one way of thinking this—to the correct obedience of the law required in doing justly. It says that just those just actions must be characterized in deeds of love that go beyond just—if you want to look at it that way—to issue forth in deeds of kindness one for another.

It’s kind of hard to describe, but it really is akin to what we’ve talked about before, what Reverend Rushdoony has written about in Salvation and Godly Rule, what he and others many years before him have characterized as the royal virtue. We have been recipients of God’s grace, God’s—this word owed us nothing. And so, we turn around there and exhibit that love and compassion and deeds of kindness to other people even though we owe them nothing. Okay? And in fact, of course, since it is a requirement, we do sort of owe it to God to do those things, but it is beyond the strict requirements of God’s law.

Now, Micah’s people were obviously noticeably short on this as well as on justice, as we pointed out.

As I said, there is a correlation to the word love. And it’s interesting, there’s a fellow named R.H. Feifer who wrote a book called Religion in the Old Testament, and he said this about this word: “As it is vain for a man to give all his goods to feed the poor and to give his body to be burned if he has not agape. So for the Israelite it is vain to offer a thousand rams if he love not this word.”

See and that’s what the passage is pointing out. These things have to stem—what we do for God and for our fellow man must stem from this word and be characterized by it.

Now as I said it’s kind of tough to give a specific definition because they say the word is really untranslatable in the English. But perhaps it’d be useful just to look at a couple of examples from the scriptures of what this word is referred to in Genesis 24:12. The servant has gone out to seek a wife and he says oh Lord God of my master Abraham I pray thee send me good speed this day and show kindness unto my master Abraham. Kindness is this word there. And let it come to pass that the damsel to whom I shall say let down thy pitcher I pray thee that I may drink and she shall say drink and I will give the camels drink also. Let the same be she that thou hast appointed for thy servant Isaac and thereby shall I know that thou hast shown kindness—this word unto my master.

And so he’s asking for God to do something sort of special here and to characterize that specialness is this word or kindness or mercy. And that’s an example of this. Another example is found in Genesis 40:14 where Joseph says think of me when it shall be well with thee and show kindness I pray thee unto me and make mention of me unto Pharaoh and bring me out of his house. The person that was being released and going out of the jail who had benefited from Joseph’s gifts had no obligations to him really.

So, Joseph is calling on him to exercise this word toward him—to do this act of mercy and kindness. Again, in 2 Samuel 2, David sends messengers to the men of Jabesh Gilead. Saul had been killed. His body I think had been—if I remember correctly—poked up on a wall someplace and left there headless. And the men of Jabesh Gilead went out and got Saul’s body at night, fearing they could have been attacked, of course, by their enemies, but they got Saul’s body and buried it.

And David commends them in the scriptures for showing to Saul and showing this kindness to him that wasn’t required of them, but they went above and beyond the requirements of what the law would tell us to do. Again, in 1 Kings 2, and this is a very important passage. Well, let’s see. 2 Samuel 9:3. “2 Samuel 9:3, David says, “There’s not yet any of the house of Saul that I may show the kindness—this word—of God unto him.”

And Ziba said unto the king, Jonathan hath yet a son which is lame at his feet. And so David actually seeks out somebody from Saul’s household to show kindness to them. And again, it wasn’t a requirement, but it was a seeking out of somebody to show kindness and mercy to. First Kings 2:7, “Show kindness unto the sons of Barzillai, the Gileadite, and let them be of those that eat at thy table.”

And of course, we have a great picture. There are people that want the king to show kindness to them. And specifically that kindness is evidenced by letting them eat at his table. And see when we come to communion, we come to the table. We come to the table that is there because God has shown to us kindness to us. And certainly covenantal loyalty is part of that. But beyond that, there is the kindness that led him into covenant with us to begin with. And those are some examples.

I thought of another example on the way to church this morning. Last week, my oldest daughter Lana wasn’t here. She’s not here again today, but last week a bunch of the kids in the Sabbath school decided to make her a card and they made a real nice card and they signed it and whatnot. Now, they weren’t required to do that, but they sort of are in a way because God says you’re supposed to demonstrate kindness one to another and that was a good thing they did for her above and beyond what would be required of just justice in terms of covenantal loyalties.

Okay? Hope I haven’t belabored that too much, but it’s such an important thing to recognize the requirements of this upon us here—that we are to demonstrate this royal virtue to others. It’s interesting that in Hosea 6, we talked about Hosea 6 before and I said we’d come back to this. He says, “Oh Ephraim, what shall I do with thee, oh Judah, that what shall I do unto thee for your kindness? For your goodness,” and that’s the same word here. “Your goodness is as morning cloud as a morning cloud and as the early dew it goeth away.”

See, they didn’t have that. And sometimes it might be there, but it was as a morning cloud. A little bit of work and then it goes away and it’s gone. And we have to be very careful that we understand this is an entrance requirement to God’s presence to show this word and kindness one to another specifically in terms of the covenant community. Of course, there are covenant implications to the word.

And so it’s very important that we all recognize that when we see people within the context of our covenant, we should be going out of our way to assist them, to help them, to show them kindness. That’s the second requirement here of entrance. And if you don’t do that, if you stop just at doing justly and you don’t move on to showing this word, you’ve missed the point. You’re into some sort of thing that doesn’t stem forth and demonstrate itself in acts of mercy and grace and kindness one to another.

Another example of this word is in Proverbs where it talks about the good wife and how the wife—how does it read? I think I’ve got it here. Proverbs 31:26. “She openeth her mouth with wisdom and wisdom of course begins with the fear of the Lord and goes on to talk in terms of applying his law to all situations. And in her tongue is the law of kindness—law of this word.”

See, so there is a law of love mentioned—the law of this word in Proverbs there—that’s supposed to characterize mothers. And you see, we’re supposed to be teaching our children with our tongue and of course also with our actions about going beyond the requirements and doing what is gracious and kind and good. Specifically in terms of the context of the covenant church—the covenant community we have here—but also outside of that to other people as well.

It’s interesting, you know, Jesus said that if you do it to one of the least of these, you’ve done it to me, and if you haven’t, you haven’t done it to me. We, the church, is referred to as the body of Christ. And there’s a very real sense in which this word that we show to one to another is showing also our kindness and our toward God. And Jesus says that the church, the specific covenant community you’re in the context of here, is like the evaluation area for how well you fulfill the second requirement.

I mean it’s a very important thing to recognize. This isn’t just a collection of people into some geographic or faith or distinctives here. This is a body. This is an organism and it represents to you the body of Christ and it is your opportunity to evidence your love and concern for the body of Christ. It’s specifically found in the context of this covenant community and then by extension of course into the covenant communities around us. But if you don’t do it here and you do it out there, you’ve kind of missed the point.

And so it’s real important that we all come to grips with this and understand the importance of the covenant we’ve entered into here at Reformation Covenant Church. You know, every anybody who signs church covenant, there’s a statement about how we entered a covenant with them. They’re signing saying, “Yeah, I’ll do all these things.” But then when you say, “Amen” after they’ve signed and I’ve read the statement, you’re saying, “We’ll do all these things. We’ll help you and we’ll do whatever is necessary to encourage and exhort and show you in the context of the of this covenant community.”

Same thing is true of baptisms. We all pledge to help each other with the upbringing of our children. And it’s important that we act faithfully on the basis of those requirements that we have entered into here in this covenant community. Okay. So the second requirement is to love this word.

Now you notice by the way before I move quickly away from that—it doesn’t just say to do these acts of kindness. It says to love it. I mean it’s not enough just to do it and then to like have the thing fade. You’re supposed to love doing it. It’s supposed to be a good thing for you to do. You’re supposed to like it. You’re supposed to do it lots. You’re supposed to continue to do it. Okay.

Third requirement: to walk humbly with thy God.

Now, the word for humbly here is kind of an unusual word. There’s only one other verse I think that the specific word is used. Proverbs 11:2. But that tells us all we need to know about it, and it’s not that different from the other words for humble. Proverbs 11:2 says, “When pride cometh, there cometh shame, but with the lowly,” same word here is humbly, “is wisdom.”

Now, Proverbs 11 goes on to say, in verse three, “The integrity of the upright shall guide them, but the perverseness of transgressors shall destroy them.” Now, in other scriptures, it talks about how the pride—the word for pride used in Proverbs 11:2—is one who is puffed up of himself. Several years ago, we watched a few episodes—I think it’s called the Rumpole of the Bailey. And there was an expression in there that Rumpole’s wife would tell him when he was getting too cocky or what not. She’d say, “You’re full of yourself tonight, aren’t you?”

And I guess that’s an older expression, but really that’s a good way to think of pride—when you get full of yourself, you know. Well, God says that we’re supposed to walk humbly with thy God in opposition to being prideful. And so humbleness is an emptying of oneself as it were in terms of our relationship to God and seeing that we can bring nothing to him. It’s a recognition that we come to God empty-handed. And you see now at this third requirement, we’ve moved from specific orientation to first to our neighbor in the first of those three requirements.

Justice was acting toward one another, but also with God in his covenant in mind. And then third, now we moved actually to a specific requirement in terms of the first tablet. Now so make us come back to first tablet after demonstrating their weakness in the first two areas. And what he does in this third requirement is he says you got to walk humbly with God—don’t be full of yourself when it comes to God. Be empty of yourself. Recognize you have nothing to bring into God’s presence. If you’re trying to say what can I do to gain entrance, really there’s nothing you can do. You got to accept entrance from God.

You can evidence your acceptance of walking humbly before God by these facts. Now this is repeated of course in the New Testament. The scriptures are one word. Jesus says that blessed—and we’ve gone through the Beatitudes in Matthew 5 in our communion talks. But remember he said that blessed are the poor in spirit. Those who are empty, who recognize that they have true poverty of spiritual worth before God in and of themselves apart from Christ’s imputed righteousness. Jesus and his atoning work. “Blessed are the poor in spirit for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.”

They get in. Theirs is the kingdom. They get into the temple. They get into the holy mountain. They get into the communion table. See the poor in spirit. Those who walk humbly with God, who are emptied of themselves in relationship to their understanding of who they are and what requirements they can bring before God to make him happy. “Blessed are they who hunger and thirst for righteousness. The Beatitudes say, for they shall be satisfied.”

Somebody who’s full of himself does not hunger and thirst for anything other than what he’s already got. He is the rich man—is that to use the analogy there. He doesn’t hunger and thirst for food that he can’t—that he doesn’t have which he can only come to God’s table to receive. He is already full of himself. But it says that if we’re hungry and thirst for righteousness, we shall be satisfied.

Now we come to communion here this afternoon. This is a requirement to walk humbly with God. Remember the Magnificat—it said that he hath filled the hungry with good things with the rich he hath set empty away. And that among other things this can be applied to the picture as we go to communion. If we come to communion not walking humbly with God, not recognizing our spiritual poverty, not hungering and thirsting for his righteousness for us and his justice, then we come as the rich man comes and he is sent away empty.

Now, you may get the cup and you may get the bread, but that’s all you get. You go away empty. But when you come poor in spirit, you’re filled with good things from God’s holy table. So humbleness is to characterize our attitude toward God. And is to be our part of our walk. We’re not just to do it once in a while to understand our spiritual poverty before God. We’re to walk humbly with thy God to walk.

Ephesians 5:15 says, “See then that you walk circumspectly, not as fools. And a fool is one who is filled with himself when it comes to God. Walk circumspectly, not as fools, but as wise. Wherefore be not unwise, but understanding what the will of the Lord is.” What the will of the Lord is—what are God’s requirements? And our walk is to be characterized by those understandings.