What Does God Require Of A Man?

"Shall I offer my firstborn for my sin,
My body's fruit for the wrongs of my soul?"
So Micah voiced Israel's remorse and chagrin,
In response to God's indictment of old!
They well knew He cared not for sacrifice,
To atone for many years of cold hearts;
What He wanted, they hated most precise:
Humble obedience on all their parts!
The Lord asks but little of any man;
To do even-handed justice; to love
And show mercy, insofar as one can;
To walk humbly with their God above!
What God wanted, proud Israel would not do;
The things He despised, they would not subdue!

Micah lived in southern Judah near the border with Philistia in the latter part of the 8th century B.C., at the same time as Isaiah. David's great nation of Israel had been long divided into two nations, named Israel and Judah. Both nations had stubbornly drifted into disobedience to God, breaking their duties under His covenant with Moses. His and Isaiah's messages to Israel were similar, warnings of judgment to come followed by restoration. It was a short time before the destruction of Samaria (Israel) in 701 B.C. by the Assyrians, and more than a century before the Babylonians demolished Jerusalem and Judah in 586 B.C. Micah's prophetic message took the form of a court trial---God acting as prosecutor, Israel the defendant, and the surrounding nations as judge and jury. Micah's written words conveyed both God's charges and a generalized defense from Israel. The poem highlights Israel's petulant plaint that perhaps God would be placated for its sins if the people would slay their firstborns in atonement. This was far from pleasing to the Lord, who had used the plague of slaying firstborn Egyptian children to force Egypt to free Israel from slavery; He had also used the threat of it to test Abraham's obedience. Both of these events were about as far removed from substitution for atonement of sin as anyone could imagine; their use by Micah as coming from Israel was at least sarcasm, and at worst insulting to God.

"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? He has showed you, O man, what is good. And what does the Lord require of you? To act justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly with your God." (Micah 6:7-8)

God knew the future as well as the past; how do you suppose it made Him feel to hear from these obstreporous sinners a sarcastic, insincere parody of giving the lives of their firstborns to have their odious sins forgiven when in a few short centuries His own firstborn Son would in stark reality be nailed to a cross and killed for nothing less than their sins and ours? Nevertheless, He calmly responded with a prescription for forgiveness remarkably similar to that given by Jesus in Matthew 22:34-40. He was asked what the most important commandment of God's 10 was. His answer was "To love the Lord your God with all your might, mind, body and soul", followed by the second greatest commandment, "To love your neighbor as you love yourself". Micah's formula for God's approval and Jesus' prescription for keeping the Ten Commandments in reality mean the same: To act justly and to show mercy is a good interpretation of loving your neighbor as yourself; and to walk humbly with your God is the same as loving Him above all others or anything else! Either mantra would make an excellent memory prompt for you and me to keep continuously in mind every day.