By Reverend David Whitney
November 29, 2015
NewsWithViews.com
What does God desire of us has the disciples of Jesus Christ? Micah 6:8 puts it in a way that you could call…Discipleship Defined - Micah 6:8 “He hath shewed thee, O man, what is good; and what doth the Lord require of thee, but to do justly, and to love mercy, and to walk humbly with thy God?”
Here are three things God requires. Beginning at the last it is a personal relationship with Him, humbly walking through life in step with Him. That means we hear from Him by reading His Word, we talk with Him in prayer. Of course having a special time of day set aside to focus on this (a quiet time) should set the tone for our whole day; so that we walk in His truth and talk with Him throughout the day.
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One Christian who had an enormous impact on the world was William Wilberforce. This Christian statesman of Great Britain in the late 18th and early 19th centuries, once said, "I must secure more time for private devotions. I have been living far too public for me. The shortening of private devotions starves the soul. It grows lean and faint.” Following a failure in Parliament, he remarked that his problems may have been due to the fact that he spent less and less time in his private devotions in which he could earnestly seek the will of God. He concluded, "God allowed me to stumble.” That humble walk with the Lord is the foundation.
The middle item is to love mercy, it is simply to do unto others as our Lord has done to us - shown us His very great mercy. As He has forgiven us, so we must forgive others. I like the account Erwin Lutzer uses to tell the gospel. “In the 14th century, Robert Bruce of Scotland was leading his men in a battle to gain independence from England. Near the end of the conflict, the English wanted to capture Bruce to keep him from the Scottish crown. So they put his own bloodhounds on his trail. When the bloodhounds got close, Bruce could hear their baying. His attendant said, "We are done for. They are on your trail, and they will reveal your hiding place." Bruce replied, "It's all right." Then he headed for a stream that flowed through the forest. He plunged in and waded upstream a short distance. When he came out on the other bank, he was in the depths of the forest. Within minutes, the hounds, tracing their master's steps, came to the bank. They went no farther. The English soldiers urged them on, but the trail was broken. The stream had carried the scent away. A short time later, the crown of Scotland rested on the head of Robert Bruce.
The memory of our sins, prodded on by Satan, can be like those baying dogs--but a stream flows, red with the blood of God's own Son. By grace through faith we are safe. No sin-hound can touch us. The trail is broken by the precious blood of Christ. "The purpose of the cross," someone observed, "is to repair the irreparable.”[1] As we have been shown mercy, we are to love mercy.
Then first item on this list in Micah 6:8 is to do justly. We have an obligation to work for justice in our life and in our families and in society at large. Now today when you hear the word justice there is a problem because those with and anti-biblical worldview have become the propagandists for what they call justice. When you hear of justice today, you will commonly hear another word linked directly to it; the word social.
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Social justice, is this what the Word of God is referring to? When you look at the typical understanding of Social justice it is essentially the redistribution of wealth and has as its goal a so called equality of outcomes. I would understand that to mean everyone has exactly the same income, the same possessions, no one has more than any other in any way. So I think you can quickly see this is not at all what God’s Word recognizes as justice - it is merely the thinly veiled lie of legalized plunder. Government stealing from those who have to give to those who don’t. True justice is objective, it is a fixed standard and is not a system invented by man, but rather has been given to us by our Creator in His written Word the Bible. To do justly we must understand the true standard of justice and take action based upon that standard which is given to us here in God’s Word.
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