Micah 6:6-8

I don’t know how to dance. I can’t make my feet move in the right way. Anyone who has ever seen me dance, like at a wedding, will agree with me, Gary does not know how to dance. Dawn likes to dance, so of course then I need get out there on the dance floor. And Dawn knows how to dance, and she has fun. Me, I just kind of move my feet, especially when the music is going slow, and try not to look too foolish. I don’t know how to dance. I don’t know how to move my feet.

But I know there’s something that can help me. Do you guys know Dance Dance Revolution? It’s the video game that you dance to? It shows you where to put your feet, so you follow what you see on the screen, and make your feet do the same thing. And when you’ve been following the video for a while, when you get pretty good at following the instructions, when you do what the game tells you to do, then you find that you’re actually dancing. You put your feet where you’re told, and soon you’re dancing.

You can learn to dance just by watching a video. But how we do learn to follow our God? How do we know what He wants us to do? How do we learn to obey Him? How do we learn to serve Him? What does God want us to do?

These are great questions. They’re important questions. And they are old questions. You have been answering these questions all year in Gems, and the Gems program has been answering these questions for the past 50 years, which you celebrated this year. But these questions go back even further. 2500 years ago, God’s people were asking, “God, what do You want me to do? How do you want me to walk with You? How can I serve You best. Verse 6:

With what shall I come before the LORD and bow down before the exalted God?

We want to do something for God, we love Him so much. In fact, we want to do everything for God, we owe Him our lives. His love for us means more and more to us all the time. What Jesus did for us, hanging on the cross, bleeding, dying, and then coming back to life, bringing new life to us, we’re absolutely amazed. We love Him so much.

So, what can we do for Him? What would He like? What can little human beings do for such a big, majestic God? Verses 6 and 7 throw out a few suggestions. What should I give God? What should I bring Him?

Shall I come before him with burnt offerings, with calves a year old?

We don’t do a lot of calf burnt offerings nowadays, but that was very important 2500 years ago. After all, God had spent a lot of time explaining how to offer these sacrifices to Him. So it makes sense that the first thing that comes to mind is what we can give to God, what we can put in the offering. What sacrifice can we make? How much money should we give?

And in verse 7, we’re not just talking about a little bit.

Will the LORD be pleased with thousands of rams, with ten thousand rivers of oil? Shall I offer my firstborn for my transgression, the fruit of my body for the sin of my soul?

Should I give Him thousands of rams? Should I offer ten thousand rivers of oil? How much money should I put in the collection? How much of my babysitting money, how much of my allowance, how much of my paycheck am I supposed to give to church? We hear that we’re supposed to tithe, which means to give 10 percent. Is that what I’m supposed to do? Should I give Him 10 percent of my income? If I really love God, should I give twice that? Should I give 20 percent? If I really, really, really love God, should I give Him half, half of everything I earn? How much does God want me to give? How much is enough to show my love and awe of God?

The truth is, God is less interested in how much we give, than in why we give in the first place. God tells us, in 1 Samuel 15:22:

“Does the LORD delight in burnt offerings and sacrifices as much as in obeying the voice of the LORD? To obey is better than sacrifice,

Maybe you’ve heard this before, but God can’t cash out-of-state checks in heaven. He wants you. He doesn’t care how much we give. He owns everything anyway. It’s not like He needs the money. Instead, He wants people who have given their lives to Him. He wants obedience more than offerings.

But we’re still trying to answer the question, what does that obedience look like? If God isn’t so interested in our cash, then what is He interested in? The answer, of course, is in verse 8:

He has showed you, O man, [O woman, O Gem, O Gems leader, O girl, O boy, He has showed you] what is good.

He could have just told us. He could have just written us a note explaining what He wanted us to do. He could have just expected us to read His book, learn it, memorize it, and then do it. In that case, verse 8 would read:

He has told you what is good.

But that’s not what He did. He showed you what is good. He acted it out. He told us what to do, by first doing it first. And what did He do? What did He show us? Verse 8:

And what does the LORD require of you? To act justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly with your God.

He showed us what it means to act justly. He did this in two ways. When something happens to us, when someone does something against us that we didn’t deserve, when we suffer because someone else is sinful, God doesn’t just stand back. He doesn’t just watch. When things go wrong, He can’t stand that, He must set it straight. He works to make things the way they’re supposed to be. When bad things happen to good people, He gives strength, He gives patience to make it through the time of struggle. And when good things happen to bad people, He causes them to stumble over the gift. Because God loves justice, because He brings justice, Godly people are able to find joy in the middle of the pain and tears, and ungodly people are never able to find satisfaction, even in the middle of health and plenty.

God defends the helpless. God stands up for the weak. God steps in to protect those who can’t protect themselves. When someone doesn’t have the ability to protect themselves, and someone else is taking advantage of that, God doesn’t let the bully get away with it. God says, in Psalm 12:5:

“I have seen violence done to the helpless, and I have heard the groans of the poor. Now I will rise up to rescue them, as they have longed for me to do.”

God wants people to treat each other fairly, and God makes sure that happens. God shows us justice, by acting justly.

So, what does the Lord require of you? To act justly, like He acts justly. To be bothered when you see an act of injustice. To be bothered so much that you just have to do something about it. If you don’t, you can’t sleep well, you’re thinking about it all the time, you can’t just sit there, not when someone is being treated unfairly. One of the things that the Gems program is doing right now is training more leaders in African countries, so that more Gems programs can get started, so that more girls can know about Jesus. This is so important, because especially in Africa, and the Middle East, girls are treated like dirt. Girls, women are treated like property. It’s not fair. It’s not just. What does the Lord require of us? Not offerings so much as wanting justice for girls in Africa.

Even closer to home, there are slaves here in the United States. Doesn’t that sound strange? Like slavery was supposed to have ended with Abraham Lincoln 150 years ago. But actually, there are as many 17,000 people strapped in slavery here in our country. That’s not right. It’s not fair. It’s not just for one person to own another person and make them do whatever they say.

Even closer to home. We see people getting picked on at school, teased for their hair or their clothes or their looks. And it’s not fair, it’s not right. It’s not just. What does the Lord require of us? To hate slavery enough to do something about it.

But justice is only part of it. What does the Lord require of us? To act justly, and to love mercy. And again, He showed us what that means, in the way He treats us. Because each of us has done something sinful, something evil. And if He just acted justly, then every time we sinned, it would only be right to zap us, to knock us over the head, to teach us a lesson by some form of pain or suffering. And if we think about how many sins we do every day, and that justice means we get zapped for every one of them, we’d be going through life getting zapped about every 5 minutes or so.

But God acts justly, AND He loves mercy. Which means that for every sin that you and I have ever done, for every sin that anyone has ever done, God didn’t just zap Jesus, God blasted Jesus with His blazing anger. God punished Jesus with the punishment that we deserve, an eternity in hell. And because He punished Jesus, He then forgives us, who believe in Jesus. He forgives. That’s how He shows His mercy. He takes care of us, even when we forget about Him. He stays with us, even when we have more important things to do then spend time with Him. He gives us good things, even when we don’t recognize where those good things came from, even when we don’t thank Him.

And what does the Lord require of us? To love mercy, like He loves mercy. To forgive other people, even when they don’t deserve to be forgiven. To treat people with kindness, even when they aren’t kind to us. To want what is best for another person, even when they want the worst for us. To love people who aren’t lovable. To love them, the way we love ourselves. To love mercy in the same way God has shown mercy to us.

And what does the Lord require of us? To act justly, to love mercy and to walk humbly with Him. He showed us what a humble walk looks like. Philippians 2:5:

Your attitude should be the same as that of Christ Jesus: Who, being in very nature God, did not consider equality with God something to be grasped, but made himself nothing, taking the very nature of a servant

He came to serve us, to serve us with His life. He came to lay His life down for us, His friends. And so what does the Lord require of us? To do the exact same thing for Him, to lay our lives down for Him. To walk with Him wherever He wants to take us. Which can be kind of scary sometimes, especially is He wants us to do some things that we don’t really know how to do. Like, maybe He wants us to tell a friend that Jesus loves them and died for them, and we’re a little nervous about doing that. Or maybe He wants us to talk to a friend who is in trouble, who’s doing some things that are dangerous to themselves, like smoking, or drugs. And we’re nervous about talking to that friend. But we do it, because God did it for us. We humbly obey.

But we do it WITH God. He doesn’t just show us what He requires, and then take off and leave us on our own. He doesn’t just tell us to obey, and then walk off saying, “Good luck with that.” No, He stays with us, we walk with Him, we stay close to Him, He stays close to us, helping us to do what He requires of us.

See, He did more than just show us what to do. He shows us, and then He gets us to do it. He shows us what justice and mercy and humility looks like, and then He changes our hearts and minds so much that we start to act justly, we start to love mercy, we start to walk humbly.

You know, come to think of it, there’s another way that someone can learn to dance. You can watch it on TV, and then try to copy it. Or, someone can teach you by helping you to do it. Like the little girl who puts one foot on each of her dads feet, and hangs on. And as he moves his feet, he also moves hers. As he steps, she steps. As he dances, she dances.

What does the Lord require of you? What does He want us to do? To do as He does. To act justly, as He acts justly. To love mercy as He loves mercy. To serve, to obey, to dance with Him, to walk humbly with Him, to walk humbly with our God.