08/19/07        

Class: Proverbs 24.21-22 “Fear the Lord and the King…”

Choruses: Micah 6:8; Thank you Lord for saving my soul; I will serve Thee

Scripture reading: #646       

Vespers: 5-6

Wednesday evening 7-8: Developing a Biblically Consistent World-View

Looking for God? Don't come empty handed!

Micah 6.6 With what shall I come before the Lord and bow down before the exalted God? Shall I come before him with burnt offerings, with calves a year old? 7. 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? 8. 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.

When you lay your cards on the table before God, what’s in your hand? “With what shall I come before the Lord…?”

Don’t say you aren’t bargaining with God. Sure you are. We all do. Our entire life as adults is rolling the dice. We are betting that we outlive our spiritual deficit. We are betting that we will live long enough to become what we really know that we ought to be.

In our most honest moments – when we hear of someone we’ve known quite well - suddenly dying, we realize that we really aren’t prepared, to the extent that we hope someday to be, to be standing before God – suddenly; having to give account to Him.

What would I be bringing before the Lord if it had been me this week suddenly standing in the presence of God?

Okay, so I didn’t die this week. I did approach Him with quite a few requests. With what did I come before the Lord?

Was it promises? Was it some notion of worth? Was it an attempt to put a guilt-trip on God? You know the prayer… “God you are a loving God and a merciful God and you promised…” You know the prayer.

It has been prayed by people over millennia; people who were much more pious than I.

With what shall I come before the LORD and bow down?

What will impress God? My life, my love, my devotion, my promise, my accomplishments, my accumulations…my demands…?

With what shall I come before the Lord and bow down?

Will the Lord be pleased? That’s what scares me. Will the Lord be pleased? With what?

With what I present and represent as I stand before Him. No more time then. No more bravado. No more game as to who I really am. I’m standing before God.

No excuses. “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.”

Act justly…

Love mercy…

Walk humbly with your God.