Not
Yours, But You!
Micah 6:6 “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?
7 Will the Lord
be pleased with thousands of rams, or with ten
thousands of rivers of oil? shall I give my
firstborn for my transgression, the fruit of my body
for the sin of my soul?
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?”
1. What Does God Want?
2. Sacrifice
from Outer Things
3. Sacrifice from Inner Things
1. What Does God Want?
Verse six: “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?”
The prophet Micah is asking this question. How can we come to God?
How can we approach a most holy and high God?
This is a very important question that we all need to find the answer, which thing has eternal consequences.
What did God want of the people [of Judah] in Micah’s day?
Was it the “burnt offerings”?
And what does God want of you and me today?
Is it the sacrifice of our money and our time in the ministry? Is this what God wants from us?
2. Sacrifice from Outer Things
Verse seven: “Will the Lord be pleased with thousands of rams, or with ten thousands of rivers of oil? shall I give my firstborn for my transgression, the fruit of my body for the sin of my soul?"
Men have this tendency to see only the outward … the outside of things. Re-stated; men see the outward appearance of things, and not the true inside of things.
More than this, men want to hide what is really in the inside of them from all others, including from God.
Now, let me bring this a little closer to all of us … to you and me. What do we see of others? We see of others, what others want us to see of them. We all play the game? Is not that true?
We all erect what is called a façade. The façade is that outward wall of appearance that we all erect.
This outward wall is erected to project an image to others of we want others to see of us. This outward wall is meant to hide what is really inside of us.
This is how men work … with men. This is our normal operating mode. We are content with the outward appearance of things. But is not the case with God. The Bible shows us clearly what God wants from man and it is more than just the outward things.
In First Samuel chapter fifteen, the prophet asks Saul a question of what God really wants from a man, or woman, or a child, in his relationship to Him. This is a very telling question and it reveals the true nature of what God really desires in a personal relationship.
Read verse twenty-two: “And Samuel said, Hath the Lord as great delight in burnt offerings and sacrifices, as in obeying the voice of the Lord? Behold, to obey is better than sacrifice, and to hearken than the fat of rams.” [1 Samuel 15:22
Sacrifice, here, involves giving to God of the outward things that we have earned, or produced from our own hands. It is the outward fruits of a man. This is what an unsaved man is willing [on reflex] to offer as a sacrifice to God. This is as far as a man or a woman or a child is willing to go. They want to keep it on the outward.
Now, why is this, the case? It is the case, because when Adam and Eve disobeyed God in the Garden of Eden nearly six thousand years ago, they wanted immediately to hide from God [behind a façade of their own making]. They had both spiritually died, and they had begun to physically to die … when the clock of time started to tick.
3. Sacrifice from Inner Things
Verse eight: “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?”
Chew [or mediate] on this. The LORD is not interested in the sacrifices of men in the outward things.
How do we know this? Well, we have this BOOK [The King James Bible] which shows us what God wants and what God does not want. God shows us what is good and what is required of us. Are you ready?
• [Matthew 12:7] “But if ye had known what this meaneth, I will have mercy, and not sacrifice, ye would not have condemned the guiltless.”
Mercy … mercy … mercy and not sacrifice is what God seeks from us.
• [Psalm 40:6] “Sacrifice and offering thou didst not desire; mine ears hast thou opened: burnt offering and sin offering hast thou not required.”
Then it is not burnt offering and sin offering that is required. Then what is the will of God for us?
• [Psalm 40:7-8] “Then said I, Lo, I come: in the volume of the book it is written of me, I delight to do thy will, O my God: yea, thy law is within my heart.”
Then it is not about sacrifice. It is all about delighting to do the will of God. Delight is an inward thing! Delighting to do the will of God is what God wants from us.
• [Psalm 51:16-17] “For thou desirest not sacrifice; else would I give it: thou delightest not in burnt offering. The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit: a broken and a contrite heart, O God, thou wilt not despise.”
If there is a place for sacrifice before, it is having “a broken spirit”, which is first inward … on the inside … in our heart! It is a heart matter.
• [Psalm 107:22] “And let them sacrifice the sacrifices of thanksgiving, and declare his works with rejoicing.”
To the sacrifice of a “broken spirit”, we need to add “the sacrifices of thanksgiving” and the witness to others of God’s great works and salvation “with rejoicing”.
• [Psalm 116:17] “I will offer to thee the sacrifice of thanksgiving, and will call upon the name of the Lord.”
God wants us call upon name of the Lord. God is a personal God and God wants a personal relationship with Him where we go to Him for everything.
• [Psalm 141:2] “Let my prayer be set forth before thee as incense; and the lifting up of my hands as the evening sacrifice.”
God loves prayer, which us talking to Him. Reading the Scripture … by the Holy Ghost … is God talking to us.
• [Romans 12:1] “I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, that ye present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable unto God, which is your reasonable service.”
When we present our bodies as a living sacrifice, it will come from an inward relationship with a Holy God that shows on the outside of our body for all to acknowledge and see the fruits of the Holy Ghost.
• [Ephesians 5:2] “And walk in love, as Christ also hath loved us, and hath given himself for us an offering and a sacrifice to God for a sweetsmelling savour.”
You see, it not about your things, your money or your time. It is all about you, and your heart. Jesus Christ wants to be to you your all, and for you to have Jesus Christ for your all.
Not Yours, But You!