For Lord’s Day, December 16, 2012

Dear Saints,

Last Lord’s Day evening we heard from God through Micah 6:8 (noted by some as the Golden Rule of the Old Testament and the summary of the Ten Commandments).  It was a call to do good through doing justly, loving mercy, and walking humbly with Him.  We saw that this was exactly the opposite of what the people had been doing (vss. 1-2) and they respond to God’s controversy with them with thoughts of extra empty praise (vss. 6-7) as if He were an idol to manipulate.  The real problem was they had forgotten their duties under the First Commandment and its preface with the context of the Covenant of Grace (vss. 3-5).

It was convenient to want to just show up for worship and go through the motions, maybe even some extra motions.  But they needed to be convicted by God that obedience in life is better than sacrifice in worship, and that the latter is meaningless to Him without the former (1 Samuel 15:22) and thus unacceptable.  I was reminded of this same idea coming across the following Proverb this morning:

To do justice and judgment is more acceptable to the LORD than sacrifice. (Proverbs 21:3)

May you and I be concerned with what God is concerned with: a holy life living out His righteousness because of our gratitude to Christ our Righteousness.  Remember the WLC 104 said this kind of thing is what we should be thinking about, remembering, meditating on, and adoring if we are going to obey the First Commandment upon which all else is foundational: “Thou shalt have no other gods before me.”

Semper Reformanda,

Pastor Grant