THE DIVINE PLEADING

Micah 6.

Once again the earth is summoned as a witness of God's dealings with His people.1 The mountains and hills are bidden to listen while He pleads and vindicates the righteousness of His acts. What a soul-stirring conception! The Lord hath a controversy with his people, and he will plead with Israel. Nothing shall be left undone which may avert the impending judgment. The people will have only themselves to blame if the language has to be changed to that of Hosea, The Lord hath a controversy with Judah, and will punish Jacob according to his ways.2 But before that pronouncement is made, He will plead, yes, plead with His wayward and rebellious children. What infinite tenderness, compassion, and love! The Lord of all, the Creator, the Preserver, the Redeemer, who has revealed Himself and declared His will, now pleads with the men who have scorned His love and ignored His word. The pleading cannot continue for ever, the controversy must have a definite issue, the Spirit will not always strive with men. When Hosea was prophesying to the Northern Kingdom, the day of grace was over, the controversy sealed the doom of Ephraim. But here Micah is still offering to the Southern Kingdom the opportunity of repentance. The Lord through His prophet is content still to plead.

1. The Challenge.

The message begins with a challenge. O my people, what have I done unto thee? and wherein have I wearied thee? testify against me. Would that men would allow themselves to listen to this challenge, and to come into judgment with God before the bar of reason and experience. If only they were willing to testify to God's dealings with them, there would be some profitable heart-searching. True, Israel had not been free from trial and suffering; but whose fault was that? On the other hand, the prophet was able to remind them that God had delivered them from bondage, had led them through the wilderness, had preserved them from the devices of their enemies. It was one long record of patient and unceasing effort for their welfare.

The challenge comes to men to-day with a force which was impossible in Micah's day. He could recall the fact that God had sent before Israel Moses, Aaron, and Miriam: the preacher of the gospel can proclaim the fact that God so loved the world that He gave His only-begotten Son.

The challenge of the Cross is God's answer to men's challenge of His love. He that spared not his own Son, but delivered him up for us all, how shall he not with him also freely give us all things?3 When we are confronted with the trials and sufferings of life, let us not look at man, and ask, Why did God endow him with the power of free will? though the answer would be reasonable that it was Love which so created him. Let us not look at the consequences of man's sin, and ask, Why did God not cancel the power of free will and reduce man to a machine? though the answer would be reasonable that it is Love which has preserved him as he is. Let us not look at the sufferings, and ask, Why does God permit them? though the answer would be reasonable that Love is working out purposes which we do not yet perceive. But let us look at Calvary's Cross, and then see whether anything remains in which we are prepared to testify against God.

That is God's challenge to men now. God commendeth his own love toward us, in that, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.4 Does any man require more proof than this? If so, let him be shown the wonder of Divine Love, which is manifested

86

The Divine Pleading

in the fact that God still pleads with him. God was in Christ reconciling the world unto himself, not reckoning unto them their trespasses. . . . Him who knew no sin he made to be sin on our behalf; that we might become the righteousness of God in him,5 that is the one marvel of Divine Love. We are ambassadors on behalf of Christ, as though God were intreating by us: we beseech you on behalf of Christ, be ye reconciled to God, that is the other. Having reconciled man to Himself at the cost of so great a sacrifice, God continues to plead with man to be reconciled to Him. Calvary's Cross is the Divine challenge to the doubt and ingratitude of men.

2. The Repudiation.

Micah now proceeds in the form of question and answer to set forth the Lord's requirements (vers. 6-8). There was a false as well as a true conception, and the prophet refers to both.

The divergence is as modern as it is ancient. It arises out of the fact that religion has always been institutional as well as experimental, and has demanded expression in rite and ceremony as well as in character and conduct. There has consequently been a perpetual conflict between the two expressions for the position of supremacy. Man and the Sabbath are both Divine creations, but the ways in which they were related by the Lord Jesus, on the one hand, and by the Pharisees, on the other, were entirely different. The Sabbath was made for man, and not man for the Sabbath was the Lord's answer to the institutionalists of His day, who made their religion consist primarily in ceremonial observances.6

The abuse of institutionalism is the most subtle cause of the decay of true religion. It offers a substitute for the harder service of mind and will. The ethic of the thing done is allowed to take the place of the ethic of the clean heart, means are confounded with ends, and religion is lost in religiousness.

It was this that caused the ceaseless conflict between prophet and priest under the Old Dispensation, and led to the constant stream of Prophetic protest against the misuse of ordinance and ceremony.7 Institutions and ceremonies, whose Divine appointment was part of the accepted creed of the time, were nevertheless condemned by the prophets as being not merely useless but positively abhorrent in the sight of God. Sacrifices, offerings, fasts, incense, festivals, were all alike disowned by the messenger of the Lord. It was not that the people were wrong in regarding them as Divinely appointed elements of their religion, but that they had allowed religion to consist in these institutions as its heart and centre. They had come to regard the bond between the Lord and themselves as a matter of rite and ceremony, whereas all the time it had to be a matter of heart and life. This was the reason why Zion was to be ploughed as a field, and the Temple razed to the ground. By the hard discipline of the Captivity the people were to be taught the true proportion of things. And yet, such is the proneness of the human heart to substitute the outward for the inward, the lesson was only too soon forgotten, and in our Lord's time the institutional side of religion had become as strongly centralised again as ever it had been in the days of the monarchy. The holy city which was steeped in religiousness, and whose temple courts were crowded with worshippers, caused tears to flow from the eyes of the Saviour, because it knew not the things which belonged to its peace.

The Christian Church was founded on principles which give no excuse for the repetition of the mistake. Relationship to the Lord Jesus is the secret of life, and that relationship is determined by the doing of the will of His Heavenly Father.8 Faith in Jesus Christ is the condition of salvation,9 love of Him is the essence of discipleship,10 abiding in Him is the secret of fruit-bearing.11 Institutionalism is not ignored, but it is extremely simple, and manifestly provided for the assistance of the spiritual relationship. The gospel is not the good news that the Sacraments save us, if only we have faith to make them operative; but it is the good news that whosoever believeth in Jesus hath everlasting life.12 It is primarily their function of quickening and confirming our faith in Jesus that constitutes the Sacraments means of grace. For the highest possible work of grace in the human heart is the production and perpetuation of a living faith in the Redeemer, and the consequent participation in His character; and it is because the Sacraments are the Divinely appointed signs of His grace and seals of the Covenant promises, that they are so intimately related to this work of grace. As the ordered means of giving visibility to the gifts which they signify, they bring the powers of sight, sense, and touch to the help of faith. For illustration of this order of things in the teaching of the Lord, it should be sufficient to quote the words, He that helieveth and is baptized shall be saved: he that disbelievetb shall he condemned.13 The centrality of faith is here indisputably asserted, and, by implication, the centrality among the means of grace of that which first leads to, and constantly nourishes faith; that is to say, the message of the gospel. And it is because of their relation to the Word that the Sacraments, as verba visibilia, are effectual means of grace where the Word is known and accepted. The institutionalism of the gospel is subordinate to the gospel itself and to the faith which responds to it and is produced by it.14

When we turn to St. Paul's teaching, we find the same order. In Christ Jesus neither circumcision availeth anything, nor uncircumcision, but faith working through love;15 and this is the condition of human experience which corresponds to the new creation.16 Now what an opportunity the Apostle flung away here, if he regarded institutionalism as the central thing in Christianity! Why did he not mention Baptism as being the Christian ordinance which corresponds to circumcision? The same centralising of faith is exhibited in his words, With the heart man believeth unto righteousness; and with the mouth confession is made unto salvation.17 Again, when the Apostle recounts his Jewish claims and privileges, and renounces them as worse than useless to him as a Christian, it is not the institutions of Christianity that he substitutes for the institutions of Judaism, but the knowledge of Jesus Christ, the gaining of Christ, the being found in Him, the possession of the righteousness which is through faith in Him, the knowledge of the power of Christ's resurrection and of the fellowship of His sufferings.18

With teaching such as this before men's eyes, it might have been expected that the Church would never fall into the error of subordinating the experimental in religion to the institutional. And yet it was just this that reduced Christianity in mediaeval times to matters of form and ceremony. The Reformation of the sixteenth century effected the deliverance of a considerable portion of the Western Church from this error: the old conflict between prophet and priest was revived, and the Church was rent over it. The battle still continues: it is represented in our own day by the conflict of the principles and ideals of Evangelicalism and Sacerdotalism. As far as English Christianity is concerned, we may well believe that the light and liberty which were won for us at the Reformation will effectively prevent any national return to the darkness and superstition of the mediaeval Church; and yet as long as the institutional aspect of the gospel is presented to men after the manner of mediaeval thought, and the true relation of the Sacraments to the Word on the one hand, and to faith on the other, is not perceived, for so long will the old conflict between prophet and priest have its counterpart in the experience of the Church.

3. The Demand.

The repudiation by the prophet of the false conception of religion is followed by a statement of the true conception. God does not accept pools of blood and rivers of oil as means of escape from a life of equity and fellowship with Himself. Blood and oil may be the accepted means of approach for a penitent spirit, but they are no substitutes for morality. God's requirements consist in an attitude of heart and will towards our fellow-men and Himself, and a life which corresponds to that attitude.

In respect of our fellow-men He asks us to do justly and to love mercy, that is to say, to be both righteous and good.19 Justice is not to be sacrificed to kindness, but it is to be enlarged by it. The doing of justice is to be no niggardly submission to legal code, but it is to be expanded into the generous expression of a heart which loves mercy. Taught and inspired by our experience of Divine mercy we have not merely to show mercy but to love it, to set our affection on the finding out of matters in which we can forget the wrong suffered, and seek to do the best for our neighbour instead of pressing home advantage for ourselves.

The other side of God's demand is that we shall walk humbly with Him. This means a life of fellowship and communion in which we recognise His wisdom and submit to His will, sinking our own desires when they conflict with His claims, and accepting Him always and in everything as our Lord, our Owner, our Guide, our Master.

The judgment which was to fall upon Judah was not a judgment upon erroneous belief or irregularities of institutional religion, but upon conduct which was inconsistent with the first principles of religion (vers. 10-12). The nature of the punishment was to be such that the very conduct which was prompted by ideas of self-pleasing would completely fail to bring any satisfaction. Labour would have no reward, and the issue would be nothing but loss and deprivation (vers. 13-15). So was Judah to learn that the supreme fact in life is God, and that the supreme necessity is that of character and conduct which are in some degree the reflection of the Divine.

1 Cf. ch. i. 2.

2 Hos. xii. 2.

3 Rom. viii. 32.

4 Rom. v. 8.

5 2 Cor. v. 19 ff.

6 St. Mark ii. 27.

7 Sec 1 Sam. xv. 22; Isa. i. 10 ff.; Jer. vi. 20, vii. 21 ff.; Hos. vi. 6; Amos v. 21 ff.; Mic. vi. 7 ff.; cf. Ps. 1. 8 ff., li. 16 f.

8 St. Matt. xii. 50.

9 St. John iii. 16.

10 St. John xiv. 15, 21, 23.

11 St. John xv. 4ff.

12 Cf. Gal. v. 6; Eph. i. 12 ff.

13 St. Mark xvi. 16.

14 Cf. Gal. iii. 26 f.

15 Gal. v. 6.

16 Cf. Gal. vi. 15.

17 Rom. x. 10.

18 See Phil. iii. 4 ff.

19 For the distinction, see Rom. v. 7. It is the difference between the attitude which expresses itself by the question, "What must I do for others?" and that expressed by, "What can I do?