"Forgetting Where You Come From" - Micah 6

All right, if you've got a Bible, we're going to be in Micah 6,

famously Micah 6, I should say.

In the last four or five years of the political climate we're in,

I've never seen a Bible verse quoted more than Micah 6.8.

But what I want to do this morning is hopefully give you some context for that,

what it means, what it doesn't mean.

And more than anything, as always, I want to challenge you to ask yourself a

few questions about your own life.

I think when we read something like this and we say, well, I know what the Lord

requires of me to do justice, to love mercy, to walk humbly with my God,

but we often fill in the blanks for ourselves as to what that means.

When I hear do justly, walk humbly with God,

love mercy, I think, well, I know what justice is and I know what mercy is and

I know what it looks like to be humble, so I'll do my own version of those things,

and then everyone will love me and God will be excited with who I am.

But that's not exactly what God's asking them to do. And I think one of the

first questions I ask myself is, why is that my immediate thought?

Well, number one, because I'm a sinner and I'm prideful, and I like to think

that my definition of those things is the best definition of those things there could ever be.

But I think it's also kind of built into the, we'll call it the religious culture

that we live in. I'll give you a quick example.

In 2007 at the church I grew up at, we built a youth building.

And at that youth building, which, you know, everybody was kind of building,

we had a coffee shop because you couldn't do that.

Like you couldn't worship without some sort of coffee.

And we had a big foyer room. We had a big worship room with a big screen and a big sound system.

And we had big beanbag chairs and all of the things that made 2007 cool.

But the coup de grace, right, when we built this building and I mean,

full of, like my dad builds things, he built it.

And so I got to like help pick some things out, which, of course,

made me feel even more prideful than I should.

But I remember that the biggest deal that we talked to the church into getting

for us is we had two big screen, 42 inch TVs, baby.

And they were connected to two Xboxes so we could go up there and play against

our friends up on the wall.

I know it was mind blowing that this was a thing.

And I just knew when I saw that, when I came up with that idea,

when I was like, dude, we have to have this. I was like, every single kid in

Tyler is going to come to the Lord because of Halo and these Xboxes.

Like, I don't think you guys realize like this building's not going to be big

enough. You're going to have to build a new one.

You know, like that was going to be what took us to the next level.

And the reason I thought that way is because in my mind, I tied my Christianity

and my holiness and my walking humbly with the Lord with how many people could

I convince to come here? here.

Number one. Number two, how comfortable can I make this for myself?

Because if I'm comfortable, then it must be good, right? If I'm comfortable

here, if I'm comfortable coming to church here and doing worship here and listening

to whoever the guy speaking is, if I'm comfortable doing that,

then this must be a healthy place for me.

This must be a good place for me. And I can go invite more people to come here

because of how comfortable this makes me feel.

Now, again, looking back on that, I don't think there was anything inherently

wrong with the building? Of

course not. There's nothing inherently wrong with 42-inch TVs and Xboxes.

What was unhealthy was my mindset towards those things completely revolved around me.

It was about how much comfort, again, I could provide for myself and what did

I feel comfortable inviting people into? What did I think was a good way to

do things? And what did I think would be loving?

And what did I think would be kind? What did I think was merciful?

And that's the real issue you run into when you read Micah 6 is that everyone's

reading into it what they think, what they want it to mean.

So when I hear do justly, instead of thinking and stopping, well,

what does that actually mean? My first inclination is to think,

well, what do I think justice is?

What do I think that should look like? To love mercy.

Well, what do I think mercy should look like? Well, yeah, I love mercy over

here, but then when my enemy receives mercy, no, thank you.

Or to walk humbly with God. What does that even look like?

Again, I think we're all guilty of that in some way, shape, or form because

of the culture that we live in, just religiously speaking.

And we're built for comfort, right? We're built for those things.

So again, as we get into Micah 6, maybe one of the first questions we need to

ask is, are we as spoiled as the Israelites were?

The Israelites, while they didn't have 42-inch TVs and Xboxes,

what they did have was that they had the moniker over their household of God's chosen people.

And because they held that title,

they naturally assumed that that made them better than other people,

that that made them more important than other people, that because of who they

were, they deserved things that other people didn't deserve.

In the same way that one of the reasons I thought the way I thought when I was

18 was because I was just a better kid than other kids, right?

I knew what other kids were up to. I knew what they were doing on the weekends.

I knew what my friends were up to and I wasn't doing that.

Now, was I a perfect kid? Of course not. I'm not a nerd. All right.

Now you think that's rude to say, but here's what I mean by that.

I simply mean that my perfect, this is how prideful I was.

I had found the sweet spot. I was cool enough and did enough things that nobody thought I was weird.

But I didn't do so many bad things that God would be mad at me.

And I just knew if everyone could find this sweet spot like I found it,

oh my gosh, the world would be a better place.

And in many ways, the Israelites looked at the people around them And they were

like, listen, we don't want them to think of us as these religious,

fuddy-duddy weirdos, right?

So we don't want to just do what God's asking us to do because to do exactly

what God's asking us to do, these Assyrians and these Babylonians,

they're just going to think we're weird.

They're going to come conquer us. We don't want to be that weird.

But they also don't want to give up on God. They don't just want to throw him to the wind.

So it's like we've said throughout the whole book, there's people going to worship

on the Sabbath and they're going to the temple and they're doing their sacrifices.

And then on Monday through Friday, they're going to the high places and they're

sacrificing to the Babylonian gods and the Assyrian gods.

And they're there again, deciding for themselves what this should look like. And that's the issue.

That's the issue is they're spoiled brats who think because God has chosen them,

it allows them to do whatever they want to do, that they are entitled to whatever they want to have,

that they're entitled to the

life that they want to live, not to the life that God's called them to.

And again, I think in many ways, that's how many of us, whether we would say

that out loud or not, think about our Christianity. think about following the

Lord is, yeah, I mean, I want to do what God wants me to do,

but I don't really want to be that weird.

I don't want to be put in that bracket.

Well, I know I want to be obedient, but when he asked me to do X,

Y, and Z, I'd like to redefine that to kind of make that fit my lifestyle a little better.

When he asked me to love people a certain way or to be gracious a certain way

or to love mercy, when he asked me to do that, I would like to think I can define

that maybe a little better than the Bible could so it gets me off the hook.

A little bit because I just don't really like people. Can I get an amen? I'm kidding.

But to out a lot of people, right? To be fair, if you've ever said the words,

I don't like people, everyone has said that.

If you don't, like, I feel like sometimes I hear people say,

well, you know, I just don't like people.

And like, that doesn't make you unique. It makes you human.

Everybody has been in a season in life for like, yeah, I just wish I didn't

see people for the next six years. That'd be all right.

Except for my wife, of course. All right. But that's where we're at.

That's where we're dropped into in Micah.

That's the kind of people he's talking to. And that's the kind of mindset we see.

And so what we're going to see is we've got this courtroom scene and we've seen that before in Micah.

It's not the first time, but the question is the first time we saw the court

scene, where was God? Where does God usually sit in his courtroom?

He's usually the judge, right? Remember we talked about Judge Judy.

Come on, you guys can do this. Everybody breathe.

Okay, he's usually the judge in the courtroom. In this scene,

though, he actually is like the plaintiff's attorney.

He's going to defend himself.

It's a really interesting way to do that. So let's just jump into chapter six.

So he says, hear what the Lord says. All right, this is Micah talking on behalf of the Lord.

He's going to make his case.

What's the first thing you do when you make a case of the Lord?

Well, you call witnesses.

Who is God going to call his witnesses against his people?

He says in verse one, Arise, plead your case before the mountains,

and let the hills hear your voice.

Hear, you mountains, the indictment of the Lord, and you enduring foundations of the earth.

The Lord has an indictment against his people. He will not contend,

and he will contend with Israel.

Oh, my people, verse 3, what have I done to you?

How have I wearied you? Answer me, for I brought you out from the land of Egypt

and redeemed you from the house of slavery, and I sent before you Moses, Aaron, and Miriam.

Oh, my people, remember what Balak, king of Moab, devised, and what Balaam, the son.

So what's the first thing he does? He calls witnesses. Who are God's witnesses?

God has an issue in some ways because the people that were around when he made

this covenant with Israel, they're gone.

They're gone. In Deuteronomy 30, 19, we see this recorded. God's making a covenant with his people.

He says, this day I call the heavens and the earth as witnesses against you

that I have set before you life and death, blessings and curses.

This covenant that God has made with his people that says, anyone that does

what I'm asking them to do, that holds up this end of the covenant, I will bless you.

I will be with you. I will give you the promised land. I will do everything

that I said I was going to do.

If you refuse to follow me, if you go after idols, I will curse you.

He says, I set before you life and death. But he says, the heavens and the earth as witnesses.

Imagine if you're in the courtroom and you're the defendant and somebody sets

up and they go, hey, your honor, I'd like to call some witnesses and they go, who is it?

It's like the clouds, the sky, the trees, the mountains, the heavens.

If you were sitting there and you thought, you know, I'm going to get away with

this because everybody that saw me do the wrong thing that I did,

everybody that knew about those things, they're dead and gone,

or they're not here, or they're not going to find them.

And then God goes, I will call the heavens against you.

This is God's way of saying, I've seen everything.

I know exactly what you've done. The mountains that I've created,

the heavens that I roll over are going to be witnesses against his own people

as if to say, you think that because Moses is dead or because Miriam is dead,

because David is dead, because these people are dead.

You think because these people who witnessed you do these things are dead that

you might be able to get out of this.

And God says, that's not how this works. I know everything.

I'm going to call witnesses against you that know everything,

that have seen everything, like calling the tree outside of the window to your

house as a witness, who's watched everything that's ever gone on in your house.

That's what this would be like.

It's God preparing to humble his people, to lay their sins out before them.

Hebrews 4.13 would say it this way, and no creature is hidden from his sight,

but all are naked and exposed to the eyes of him whom we must give account.

I've never met anyone caught in sin who sits and ponders this very long.

I say that about my own self. When I'm sinning, when I know I'm sinning,

when I know I'm in a pattern of sin, whether it's an attitude or an anger or

anything, anything in my life,

you know what I don't like sitting around thinking about? Man, God sees all of this.

God sees all of this. He considers all these.

He knows exactly what I'm thinking right now.

Here's exactly what I'm thinking. No, I stay busy.

I keep my life busy. I just keep doing as much stuff as can.

I don't want to sit there and think about the fact that God knows every single

thing about me, every thought that I have, everything going on in my life.

He literally says in Micah 2 that one of the things that he brings against them

is that evil people lay on their beds at night and consider how they will commit evil.

It's as if God's getting ahead of these people to go like, well,

I didn't even say that out loud. I didn't even act on that simple thing.

I wanted to do it and I did it in my heart, but I didn't actually do it.

So you can't hold that against me. And God's like, no, no, I can't.

And I will. And my witnesses are mountains and heavens.

Those are his witnesses. Number two, he brings the evidence,

verses four and five, two parts to this evidence.

Part number one, the Lord has kept his part of the covenant.

The Lord has kept up his end of the covenant, verses four and five,

he lays out as a reminder to them, hey, remember you were slaves. That's what you were.

You were slaves in Egypt.

Again, who are the Israelites when he writes this? They're puffed up religious

people. They're the chosen people of God.

They're laughing at other nations. They're talking about how dumb and stupid

it is to be something besides who they are, how awesome they are, how great they are.

And it's like God wants to remind them, you are nothing but slaves without me.

There's nothing about who you are inherently as an Israelite that makes you special at all.

This is a great father's speech. You're nothing without me.

That's called emotional abuse. In the Bible, that's called good parenting.

All right, just so you know.

But God wants to remind them, listen, you were slaves.

I love how he starts verse three. Oh, my people. There's a love.

There's an aching in the Lord's heart here when he says, oh,

my people, what have you done?

Again, like a father walking on a kid who's made shipwreck of his whole life.

Oh, my children, what have you done?

What have you done to your life? What have you done to yourself?

What have you done to the people around you?

He says, I brought you from the land of Egypt. I redeemed you from the house

of slavery. And I sent before you Moses, Aaron, and Miriam.

Then he goes through these different things that he's done where he delivered

them from kings and he delivered them from armies, specifically that the exodus

was the definitive act of God in the Old Testament.

This is the center point of the Old Testament. It's referenced over and over

and over again in the prophets.

Much so that in Deuteronomy 5, one of the commandments that Moses gives his

people is, you shall remember that you were a slave in the land of Egypt.

What a weird thing to say.

What a weird thing to say, especially in our culture that's caught up on getting

out, getting your head out of what you were.

Don't worry about what you were. Don't worry about where you were.

Don't worry about what happened to you. Don't worry about those things.

Move forward, move forward, move forward. Don't think about it.

And yet God comes to his people and he says, you should remember that you were a slave.

Don't ever forget it. Don't ever forget what you were. Don't ever forget where

you were. Don't ever forget that. Why?

Why would you not forget that you were a slave? He says, because you should

remember that the Lord, your God brought you out from there with a mighty hand

and an outstretched arm.

God is saying, again, the first piece of evidence that he wants to lay before

his people is that I have held up my end of the bargain.

You were slaves and I rescued you and redeemed you because of the covenant that

I made with your father, Abraham.

I did what I said I was going to do. I have held up my end of the bargain by

sheer grace and mercy. I have kept my end of the bargain.

That's the first piece of evidence. The second piece of evidence, you have broken yours.

You have broken yours. Now, remember, the reason he's making a case is he's

about to send them into exile. He's about to judge them, and he's going to make

a case as to why he's doing that.

He's doing that, again, as his witnesses have seen, as he's laid out the evidence.

God held up his in the bargain, and they have not. So jump down to verse 9,

and we're going to finish.

I promise we're going to study 6.8. I thought about doing a whole sermon on

Micah 6 and not even doing verse 8, just to freak people out. But I didn't.

He says, verse 9, The voice of the Lord cries out to the city.

It is sound wisdom to fear your name.

Hear of the rod and of him who appointed it.

Can I forget any longer the treasures of wickedness in the house of the wicked

and the scant measure that is accursed?

This is what God's saying. Shall I acquit or shall I say that this man is innocent

with wicked scales and with a bag of deceitful weights?

Your rich men are full of violence, your inhabitants speak lies,

and their tongue is deceitful in their mouth.

Goes on to say what he said almost in every chapter, what he's going to do with them.

But again, these pieces of evidence, this is what God has done. You were a slave.

I rescued you. I redeemed you. I brought you out. I gave you the law of Mount

Sinai. I kept you alive in the wilderness.

I gave you the promised land. I drove the people out.

I'm the one that's made you prosperous. I'm the one that gave you the right king.

I'm the one that's done all these things. And all that you have done is turned

into liars, deceivers, evil people.

That's what his people have done.

He says they are known for having dishonest scales.

In other words, that's how trading was done, right? You would have a scale in

front of you and you would have a one pound rock.

You would put a one pound rock on this side and you would put supposedly a pound

of whatever you were trading with on this side.

And what they would do is they would shave down these rocks,

and they would say, well, this is a pound, and it would be half a pound,

half a pound of barley, whatever it was, and they would sell them on the pound.

And God says, listen, that's an evil thing to do.

I say that because if you've ever had any moment in your life where you thought,

well, you know, it's a quick way to make a quick buck if I just shortchange

somebody a little bit here, if I just shortchange them a little.

God has no problem with you having money. He does take issue with how some people

make their money. God has no issue with you being a millionaire.

I don't think he has any issue With people being rich at all I think he does

take many issues With the way that some people get rich.

That's what he's saying here is that there's dishonest people amongst his people. What do they do?

Your rich men are full of violence. Again, reference Micah 2.

They lay on their beds thinking about how they can devour the children of Israel. But listen to this.

It's not just the rich people that are the problem, right? We would all love that.

We love doing that. Well, you know, if those rich people would get it together,

everything would be better.

And yet he says, your inhabitants speak lies and their tongue is deceitful in their mouth.

The picture here is that people are not concerned with being honest.

They're not concerned with saying what's true.

They're simply concerned with saying whatever it is will bring them the most

comfort, the most joy, the most pleasure in the moment.

In some ways, it's whatever I can tell these people to leave me alone,

whatever I can tell these people to get what I want.

You go, well, that's lying. Doesn't matter because this is about them in the

same way that it's about us. What does it mean for me? How does this cost me?

What am I going to have to give up? What am I going to have to lay down?

What is this going to cost me if I tell the truth? What is this going to cost

me if I'm an honest businessman?

What is this going to cost me if I do what God has asked me to do?

If I'm obedient the way that God's asked me to be obedient, what is it going to cost me?

The Bible over and over again, especially right here, says that's the wrong question.

The wrong question is not what will it cost you if you do? The right question

is what will it cost you if you don't?

What will it cost you if you don't?

What will it cost you if you don't do as the Lord has required of you?

Man, what has happened to God's people? One more time, in case you've forgotten,

they've become prideful.

We deserve the promised land. We deserve to be blessed. We deserve to have these

things. I deserve to have a big bank account.

I deserve to be comfortable. I deserve to be loved.

I deserve to be wanted. I deserve to have the things in my life that I want

to have. I've put in the work. I've put in the time.

I've gone to church. I've done missions. I've done VBS. I've done everything right, God.

And now I deserve to have everything that I think I should have.

And God says, no, you don't. You were a slave.

Ephesians 2, you were dead. Galatians, you were an orphan.

You have forgotten who you were. That is their greatest sin.

The greatest sin of the Israelites is they have forgotten who they were.

They have forgotten who they were, so therefore they have forgotten how good God is.

And instead, they look to their lives, and they look to their bank accounts,

they look to their comforts, and they go, well, God can't be good because look at my life.

Look at how we're being treated by the Babylonians and the Assyrians,

the same way that we would look at our life and go, God, this isn't fair. This isn't fair.

I've done everything right. I've done everything. I know everyone has had a

moment where they felt that way.

I had a moment like that not too long ago in my life where it's like,

God, I've given up the life I thought I wanted.

I've gone to school. I even went and got a master's, which is pointless.

It's not, but at the time, that's the argument I was making. I've been faithful.

I've served in every way I can. I've and I feel like I've been humble.

I feel like I've put up with so much.

And yet, God, none of this is working out for me. And I don't know why that

is. I don't know why I'm looking at other people seem to be prosperous who've

done none of those things.

None of those things.

I sit with friends all the time who look at other people's lives and say things

like, man, why are they married? Why do they get to have kids?

Why do they have those things? Why does he have that job?

And time and time I've given them the same advice. listen you're not the Lord

you don't know right and yet when it happened in my life what is the first words

out of my heart God why me why me this isn't fair this isn't right.

God, because he loves me, met me with the same, we'll say, charge that he brought

his own people in my case.

You have forgotten who you are.

You think that I owe you something. You think that I haven't been gracious and kind.

You think that because of what you've done, you deserve more than someone else

says. You forgot you were a slave.

You were dead. You were an orphan. You've forgotten that.

All right, six through eight. So God has called witnesses. He's put the evidence in front of them.

What is their response going to be? Well, their response is what everybody's response is.

Listen to what they say. With what shall I come before the Lord,

this verse six, and bow myself before God on high?

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

Will the Lord be pleased with a thousand rams, with 10,000 rivers of oil,

shall I give my firstborn for my transgression, the fruit of my body for the sin of my soul.

So how do they say when God lays it out before them? You may even feel that

this morning as God's laying out your sins before you.

I hope that how do you wanna respond? Well, we wanna respond this way.

Okay, what religious thing do I need to do to make you happy?

What do I need to do? For them, it was, do I need to bring you burnt offerings?

Do I need to bring you a thousand rams? How about 10,000 rivers of oil?

How about my firstborn? God, is that what you want?

Whatever you need, you let me know so I can feel okay about how awful I've been

acting, not how I've disobeyed you at every turn.

Well, God, would you just let me know what aisle I need to walk,

what song I need to sing, what church I need to join, how much money I need to give the church?

Would you just tell me, God, what you want from me? How much of my Bible do I really need to read?

I'll read Leviticus if that gets you off my back, right? I'll do it.

I'll go to church on Sundays and Wednesdays, and I'll even help put up chairs

afterwards, God, if you will just get off my back.

Will that appease you? Will that help me get off of your naughty list?

That's how people treat the Lord. That's how you and I tend to treat the Lord.

This is, verse eight is a response to all of those things.

Verse eight is not a political maxim. That's not what it is.

It's not a life slogan. It is God's judgment on his people to say,

you think what I want from you is what you could ever give me.

You think that rivers of oil were firstborns like I'm some false God.

You're treating me as though I'm an Assyrian God or a Babylonian God.

That's what you think. And what does he say?

He has told you, oh man, what is good.

There's nothing more indicting than that. Think of your own life when you've

done something incredibly wrong and you have no excuse.

It's one thing to make a massive mistake because you didn't know.

You were ignorant. You weren't sure. You got into a bad situation.

You didn't see it coming.

You weren't sure how it was supposed to work out. And man, I just kind of got lost along the way.

It's completely different when someone can come to you and say, I told you.

I told you exactly what to do. I told you exactly how to act.

I gave you the exact blueprint on what you should do. He has told you, oh, man.

Lord require, but to do justice, to love kindness or mercy, and to walk humbly with your God.

When he says that, he is not trying to allow any interpretation.

He's simply quoting the law.

He's not, again, this is why this gets so messed up, is people will quote that

verse and be like, well, this feels like injustice to me.

And so I'm going to quote this verse to you so that hopefully you'll feel bad

about this injustice and I can convince you that you're wrong.

When the point of this verse is, he's given you a law. What is justice? Go read Leviticus.

What does mercy look like? Go read the law. Go read the first five books of

your Bible. Do you want to know what these words mean?

Do you want to know what he means by this? Go read what he has said.

He has told you, oh man, Stop trying to figure it out on your own.

That's the dumbest way you can read the Bible. Sorry, I didn't mean that to

be rude, but that is the dumbest way you can read the Bible.

It is amazing what people will come up with on their own and they could say,

you know, I read this verse the other day and I just really spoke to my heart

and I just feel like it's telling me this.

And you want to go, stop, don't do that. Go read more.

Go read more. Go read Leviticus and really take it in and think,

what in the world is God trying to show his people here?

Go read Deuteronomy and say, what does it mean to be holy? What does it mean to be humble?

Go read Genesis and read what God is doing in those places. He shows us again

and again, this is what justice looks like.

Looks like to love mercy. That's hard to do, to love mercy.

Because the truth is we all have some older brother in us that when our brother

takes off and then when he comes home and he receives mercy from the father,

we love to sit outside and pout and go, well, I was here doing the right thing the whole time.

Scripture interprets scripture. That's the kind of stuff I want you to see.

When you read the story of the older brother, the older brother lacks all of these things.

Namely, he hates mercy.

And walk humbly with your God. All right, let me close here.

What's the New Testament equivalent of this? I don't know that this is a perfect

equivalent, but if you have a Bible, 1 Corinthians 1.

Paul's been writing to this Corinthian church. And in many ways,

Corinth is a good mirror of the kind of people, the kind of attitudes that we find in Micah.

This is not the church that we see in 1 Peter. This is not even like the Galatian

church or the Philippian church. These aren't podunk churches.

Corinth was a massive city that had massive impact, and the church at Corinth was a pretty big deal.

The problem with that is they knew they were a big deal.

It's easy to look around when you're the big church and go, God bless you,

brother. I know it's hard where you're at.

Maybe one day you'll be like Corinth, You know, maybe one day you'll be like us.

Maybe one day you'll figure it out until then keep grinding.

But they did. They thought much of themselves.

It was a place where most people were educated.

Most people knew what they were talking about. Most people had means.

If you lived in Corinth, there was a reason you lived there.

Paul writing to the Corinthian church begins chapter one, verse 26,

like this, as he begins his letter, he's laying this down for them.

For consider your calling, brothers.

A whole lot like Deuteronomy 5. Remember where you came from.

Remember where you came from.

Consider your calling, brothers and sisters. Not many of you were wise according

to the worldly standards.

Not many were powerful. Not many were of noble birth.

But God chose what is foolish in the world to shame the wise.

God chose what is weak in the world to shame the strong.

God chose what is low and despise in the world, even things that are not,

to bring to nothing things that are.

Why? Why? Why would he do that?

So that no human being might boast in the presence of God, so that you might walk humbly with God.

He says, and because of him, you are in Christ Jesus, who became to us wisdom

from God, the wisdom that we didn't have, who became to us righteousness from God,

the righteousness we couldn't gain on our own and sanctification and redemption

so that as it is written, let the one who boasts, boast in the Lord.

He quotes Jeremiah 9, 24.

Your own calling. One of the reasons that we're pretty passionate about this

idea that God has called and chosen his people is for this reason.

Because if there's any part of me that can stand up here before you today and

say something like, I'm so glad that I did X, Y, or Z,

then when I remember my calling, what I'm going to remember is not the 99% that

God did, but the 1% that I did. That's how we're wired.

It's how we're wired. I can still remember to this day when I was a kid,

I'd go to work with my dad, eight, nine, 10 years old for insurance purposes

and legal reasons, 16, 17 years old.

Okay. But we would go to these job sites and we'd work all day on stuff.

And of course, in my mind, I'm doing everything. I would carry one two by four

while he would carry 20. Big deal.

Right. I would use the nail gun one time and think I just shot a nail gun.

What more could life bring me?

While he builds a whole roof, right?

He would do this massive amount of work and I would do little,

but then you know what would happen when I would go home, my mom would go,

Hey buddy, what'd you do? I'd say, I built a roof today.

I did that. What God is trying to do because he is gracious and kind with you

is the exact same thing here in Corinthians that he did through Micah is to say, you did nothing.

You did nothing.

Your calling. You weren't wise. You weren't noble.

You weren't powerful, but God chose what was not wise. He chose what was not

powerful. He chose those things. Why?

And he's going to use you to bring down things that are.

The truth is the reason that I build stuff even today is because my dad is my dad.

I never went to school for any construction related things ever.

I've never been in a class that

taught me how to swing a hammer or build something or read blueprints.

I just know how to do those things because my dad is my dad.

People would say, well, why do you know how to build things?

And I would be wrong to say, I figured it out.

No, I didn't. I didn't figure it out.

Well, you know, I watched some YouTube videos. Maybe some people can say that. I can't.

In the same way, do you want to do justice, to love mercy, and to walk humbly with God?

God, my advice to you is to consider your calling, to remember that you were

slaves, to remember that you were dead in your trespasses and sins,

to remember that you were orphans who were adopted into a family.

Do you want to live the life that God has called you to live?

Remember the life that you had before he called you.

I've said this before, I'm adopted, so has my older or sister,

and nothing humbles you more than realizing there's zero reason for me to have that, zero.

And it upsets me a little, excuse me, when people talk about Christ like they

earned something, when people talk about Christ like they deserved it.

And I pray that our church is never that place.

Think because we think we have the theological reasoning right.

Or we think that because, well, you know, we're small, we're not simple like

those big churches, you know.

We don't have those problems here. We're smarter than everybody else.

We're wiser, we're more righteous, we're more kind, that we never forget to consider our calling.

Adopted into God's family, that he owes you nothing. He owes you nothing.

If all he ever did for you was adopt you into his family, and we spent the rest

of our lives being persecuted every single day, like millions of Christians around the world are,

and we suffered every single day, and we had zero dollars in our bank account,

and no one ever loved us the way that they should, and we were taken advantage

of every day, then our cry should still be, God is good and gracious and kind

and merciful, and I will obey him.

I will do what he asked me to do because he has been good to me.

So two questions. Number one, are you spoiled? Are you spoiled?

Are you spoiled? Do you know that in your own life, God's calling you to be

obedient in places in your life and you're not doing it because you've thrown

up your hands and just gone, you know, I'm above that. I'm smarter than that.

If people knew what I knew, if people were as smart as I was,

if they were as righteous as I was, man, everything would be better with the world.

But I know he's called me to love people. I know he's called me to be kind.

I know he's called me merciful. I know he's called me to love my neighbor.

But I just don't have time for that because my brain is so big and my heart is just so heavy.

All right, are you spoiled? Number two, when was the last time you considered your calling?

When was the last time God reminded you that you were a slave and that you were

an orphan and that you were dead and that he chose you,

he ripped you out of a grave and put flesh on you and gave you a new heart and

gave you eyes to see and ears to hear everything that he says and to love it?

As we pray, I'm going to pray And we've got the Lord's Supper this morning,

I'm going to ask Paul and Matt to come up as I'm praying And we're going to

go straight into that So as soon as I say amen over this prayer I'm going to

ask you to just get up You can come grab a cup and a juice They're stacked together, so just grab one,

I'm a writer as we always do That if you are saved and baptized,

you're invited If you've accepted Christ And Christ is your king You're invited

to partake in this with us But let me pray and then we'll go straight to Lord's

service and Lord's supper.

Father, thank you for today. Thank you for who you are.

God, as we began the service by reminding ourselves that our God has made us blameless.

We are sinners in need of a savior.

We have read Micah, and your word has reminded us, God, that if you chose to

bring a case against us, your witnesses are the heavens and the earth.

Nothing is hidden from your sight, God. We stand before you,

barren, naked, in front of our God.

Every single thought, every single action has been laid bare before you.

And God, that we would be reminded like you reminded your people in Micah,

like Paul does to the church in Corinth, to consider our calling,

to remember where we came from, that we were slaves, that we were dead in our trespasses and sins.

We were orphans in need of a father and that you redeemed us from sin and death.

You adopted us into your family.

The reason that every good and perfect gift comes from you is because there

is no other source from which a good and perfect gift can come from.

And the greatest gift you have given us is the person and work of your son,

Jesus Christ, and his redemption that he has offered to us.

And God, as we come to the table this morning, as we partake of the Lord's Supper,

it is an incredible reminder to remember where we came from,

that we've been invited to a table we have no business sitting at, none.

But yet you have invited us to eat of your flesh, to drink of your blood.

To partake and to be called sons and daughters of God, not because of what we've

done, but because of who you are. So I pray, amen.