Sermon for November 9th, 2025
Micah 6:6-8
6 With what shall I come before the Lord,
and bow myself before God on high?
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 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 has told you, O mortal, what is good;
and what does the Lord require of you
but to do justice, and to love kindness,
and to walk humbly with your God?
Provision 1: What We Provide to God
Today's scripture reading is from the book of Micah. Not many people are aware that this ancient book of the bible was actually written by one of our very own distinguished El Pasoans—the prophet Micah, who was a graduate of the University of Texas at El Paso.
In fact, there are twelve books of the Old Testament that were written by various prophets, all of them UTEP alumni. Collectively, they are referred to as the books of the "Miner" prophets.
November, for us here at First Presbyterian Church, marks the beginning of our annual pledge drive, where those of us who are church members remember the promises we made when we joined the church: To support the church with our prayers, our service, our study, and our giving.
And this year, I thought of the perfect bumper sticker that we could give to everyone who increases their pledge beyond what they contributed last year. The bumper sticker would read: "I Upped My Pledge. Up Yours!" (Just kidding, of course!).
So this year, I was talking with Nate Lindsley, who is our Director of Operations. Nate is the guy who takes care of our church’s buildings…and our church’s budget. Those two things are key resources that allow us to provide most of what we provide to the community, through our worship services, our school, all of our communities and all of our ministries. And we are able to provide those things precisely because of what you, our church members, provide to your church.
Nate had the idea of doing a sermon series around the idea of Provision—what we provide to the church, what we provide to our community, what we provide to God…and what God provides to us.
November, in our American culture, also happens to be the time when our thoughts, our preparations, our commercials, and our wallets begin to turn to the holiday season, with all its business, shopping frenzies, and over-the-top, frantic consumerism.
This sermon series is designed to be a counterpoint to that craziness in our culture—a reassurance, amidst all our seasonal angst and anxiety that in the grand scheme of things, God takes care of us, when we are taking care of each other.
Today, we'll start the series by talking about what we are supposed to provide to God, minimally speaking. Then for the next two Sundays, we'll talk about what God provides for us—both minimally and maximally!
And the final Sunday, which is the first Sunday in Advent, we’ll wrap everything up and talk about how all that provision—to God, from God, and for each other—has the power to create real happiness, lasting peace and joy, even in the busiest and craziest time of year.
Our scripture passage from Micah begins with an ancient question: With what shall I come before the Lord, and bow myself before God on high?
Other, modern versions of this question include, "Am I good enough? Am I doing enough? What is expected of me?"
And the answer to those questions depends entirely upon whom is doing the evaluating:
If you're trying to meet the expectations of other people—what am I expected to provide for my parents, my children, my spouse, my boss, my friends, society in general—chances are you'll be pulled in many different directions, never really making anyone completely happy.
Or maybe you're just trying to meet your own expectations for yourself, which can sometimes be the most difficult thing of all. In any case, human expectations are constantly changing, shifting, often contradicting themselves, and always difficult to meet.
How much more so, we might imagine, are the expectations that God, our creator, the maker of heaven and earth, has for us.
This is reflected in verses 6 and 7 of our scripture passage, where Micah asks: "Shall I come before him with burnt offerings? With calves a year old?"
These are valuable things to Micah, the best of what he has to give, and yet he still has the sense it's not enough. He goes on...
"Will the Lord be pleased with thousands of rams, with ten thousands of rivers of oil?" These are things clearly beyond his reach. These are the, "well, if I win the lottery or inherit a bunch of money" kinds of things.
And still, he has the sense that all the material possessions in the world aren't enough to make God happy, to fill that empty sense of what is missing, what is owed. And so he goes on...
"Shall I give my firstborn for my transgression, the fruit of my body for the sin of my soul?"
Now we're over-the-top, in the realm of those things that truly matter most to us. Our children, our very selves, our deepest hopes and fears, things we don't really intend to give up...but we still want to know, "Would it be enough? If I give this up, will God love me, will God accept me?"
Surprisingly, the answer is, "No." None of those things are what God asks us to provide for him. In fact the real answer is much more simple—and yet more profound—than we might imagine. What does God require of us? Just three small things at the end of verse 8:
Do justice; love kindness; and walk humbly with your God.
So let's consider these three things—they are the only things God asks us to provide—and, unsurprisingly, when we provide these things things to God, truly and sincerely, we are actually providing them to the people around us.
1. Do justice — This is the baseline. The Hebrew word for justice here is מִשְׁפָט (mishpat) which implies balance, fairness, or an even exchange. In some ways, the entire Old Testament law is summed up in this concept — an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth. That sometimes sounds harsh to modern ears, but it's intended to prevent an overreach of power.
If you knock out my tooth and I'm stronger than you, I'm going to knock out ALL of your teeth. If someone from your family killed someone from my family, I'm going to kill everyone from your family.
This is still a tactic used today by drug cartels, bullies, predatory lenders, and unfor-tunately, even corporations and governments: Over-whelming, disproportionate force, or total dominance. And the scriptures teach that it's completely wrong.
If you are in a position of power, you have to exercise justice, which means restraint. At the very least, we are to do what is right, not what is possible.
When it comes to your relationship with other people, it means you don't take advantage of others in their weakness, you don't take what you don't pay for, you don't consume what you don't really need.
And when it comes to your relationship with the church, it means that if you come to this place, if you benefit in some way from your presence here, that you contribute something in return, whether its through service, through financial support, or through active engagement in the work of the church.
"Do justice" means striving for balance in all you do: in giving and taking, in loving and hating, in building up and tearing down. Be fair.
2. Love kindness — this is the next higher step. Go beyond what is fair, beyond what you are entitled to, and beyond what is merely "right."
Of course, this is harder. Notice the change in verbs. DO justice, but LOVE kindness. Even when you can't DO kindness, you can still cultivate a LOVE of it, which eventually (though not always immediately) leads to doing it.
If the Old Testament law can be summed up in "Do Justice" then everything that Jesus teaches in the New Testament is summed up in this second directive, to "Love kindness."
When it comes to your relationship with other people, loving kindness means putting the needs of others ahead of your own needs—and not just for the people you already love.
Especially this applies to the stranger, to the foreigner, or to the ones in that “other” political party you you are not particularly inclined to be kind to.
This is not justice or balance. This is intentional IM-balance, or sacrifice for the sake of something greater than you.
When it comes to your relationship with the church, this is moving beyond merely contributing out of a sense of obligation or duty, to giving wholeheartedly, sacrificially, because you truly believe in this place, because you believe we have the power and the potential to make a difference in our community and in the lives of everyone who walks through these doors.
"Love kindness" means going beyond what is right and fair, beyond what you think you are capable of, and loving others with generous, perhaps even foolish, self-sacrificing love.
3. Walk humbly with your God — This one is last because you've probably already realized how hard, how darned near impossible it is to "Do Justice" and to "Love kindness" on your own.
We want to be just and fair. On our better days, we want to be loving and kind. But some days, if we're really honest with ourselves, we just aren't.
We are broken and flawed human beings, overly concerned with ourselves and our own narrow interests.
But...recognizing and admitting our imperfections is the first step, in the process of "walking humbly."
The next step is recognizing and admitting that we need help, direction, guidance, inspiration from something or someone larger than ourselves. That's "walking humbly WITH your God."
When it comes to your relationship with other people, walking humbly with your God means letting go of the presumption that your understanding of God is "right" and everyone else's is "wrong."
For that matter, it means letting go of the idea that YOU (and your idea of justice and kindness) are right and everyone else is wrong.
Let God be God. Walk with God as best as you can, and let your life (not your rules, not your politics, not your purchases) inspire others to do the same as best as they can.
When it comes to your relationship with the church, walking humbly with your God means walking humbly with God's people, with your faith community, with the church.
It means being faithful and consistent in your support of the church, even when you think you are right and all those miserable, rotten sinners who make up the church (including the pastor) are wrong.
It also means walking. Forward. With the people of God...not digging in your heels or sitting passively in a pew, or waiting for someone to carry you forward in your relationship with God.
You have to walk. You have to move. You have to grow. You have to keep up as best as you can.
So DO justice. LOVE kindness. And WALK humbly with your God. It's really that simple, and that profound all at once.
I’d like to close today with a little story:
Back in the days when pots and pans could talk, there lived a farmer. In order to have water, every day he had to walk down the hill and fill two pots and carry them back up the hill again.
One day the farmer discovered that one of his pots had a crack in it, and as time went on, the crack widened.
After several years, the pot said to the farmer, “You know, every day you take me to the river, and by the time you get home, most of my water has leaked out. It’s not fair to my brother, the pot who gives you a full portion of water, while I cannot. Please throw me away and get another pot.”
And the farmer said, “You don’t understand. Yes, your brother gives me a full portion of water, and I thank him for that. But as you spill your water, you nourish the flowers by the side of the path.”
Sure enough, on the side of the path where the cracked pot was carried, beautiful flowers grew, while the other side was barren.
“I think I’ll keep you,’ said the farmer.”
The farmer in this story is God. You may be the pot who provides the full portion of water, or you may be the broken pot, who waters the beautiful flowers.
Sometimes we don’t even realize what we provide, or to whom we are providing it.
Still, we give what we have, justly and kindly, while walking humbly with our God.
