Doing better is the only way to get those covenant blessings back. Since this is impossible there is seemingly no gospel in this text at all. That is, unless we remove ourselves from the picture.
Have you ever heard of the crazy thing Israel did when they ratified the covenant God made with them after the Exodus? A lot of Bible reading people have never spent time appreciating how truly bizarre this whole scene from Deuteronomy 27:11-26 and Joshua 8:34-35 really is. They just fly right past it onto something a little more cinematic. Here is the scene; in order to ratify the legal covenant God made with His people, He splits the whole nation in two. Half of them stand on Mount Ebal and the other half stand on Mount Gerizim. The ones who went to Mount Gerizim represent the covenant blessings for obedience, while the others on Mount Ebal represent the covenant curses for disobedience. During this ceremony, the Israelites stood on these two mountains, reciting the blessings and curses that would befall them depending on their loyalty to the covenant terms, with Joshua ultimately reading the entire Law revealed by God through Moses.
Shechem, the little city located between these two mountains, stood as a natural acoustic basin which created an amphitheater like amplification for this public speaking of the Word. This event also had significant historical connections all the way back to Abraham. Interestingly enough, if you read these accounts from Deuteronomy and Joshua you will note there was a sense of pessimism about Israel’s ability to obey the Law, with the ceremony acknowledging that, despite God’s promised blessings, disobedience was more likely to prevail.
The scene is confirmed by our reading from Micah 6:1-8. It is as if little old Micah, like Shechem, is standing between two mountains as God is bringing the charges against His people (us included) for breaking His Law. God has kept up His end of the covenant (6:3-5) citing examples of His mighty deliverance. However, Judah is guilty of breaking every point of the Law. No amount of works, sacrifices, or admissions of guilt will repair the broken covenant with God (6:6-7). Doing better is the only way to get those covenant blessings back. Since this is impossible there is seemingly no gospel in this text at all. That is, unless we remove ourselves from the picture.
The last verse of our reading and the following verse reads like this: “He has told you, O man, 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?” Notice how we are anthropologically incapable of doing any of this at all! But allow me to emphasize the first two words of that verse. HE HAS, where we would fail. HE HAS done what we could not.
You cannot catch this connection, though, without our Gospel lesson. You must meet with Jesus between two mountains. You must go up on the mountain where Jesus proclaimed all the blessings of the beatitudes in Matthew 5. There you must sit under that Law. You must sit under those seemingly demanding imperatives (though they are not imperatives) and listen to Jesus proclaiming the blessed life.
Now, walk with Jesus through the gospel to that other mountain. No, not Mount Ebal or Mount Gerizim, but Mount Calvary where He took all the curses for our sin upon Himself. Jesus is the only one, the prophet greater than Micah, who stands between the blessings of the beautitudinal life and the curse for our sin and keeps the whole covenant of God for us. He took the justice of God for sin. He gave us loving kindness through His grace and He was obedient to the Father, and in that humility, we receive mercy for our sin. Who has saved us? HE HAS. God sent Jesus to not just ratify the covenant but keep the covenant in our stead.
In our gospel lesson (Matthew 5:1-12), we learn to listen to the words of Jesus as we follow Him between these two mountains. We know our sin, but we see in Him how HE HAS become our savior. Only our Lord sets us free from the indictment of God for our sin through His forensic and substitutional sacrifice for our sin. He is the offering we could not offer for ourselves but is given by God for you. What an amazing text to unpack during the season of Epiphany!
To catch the centripetal force of the turn in this sermon you might consider using the Lowry Loop Structure.
“Eugene Lowry, in his work The Homiletical Plot and his revision of such work in The Sermon, suggests that the sermon create a sequence of experiences on the part of the hearers that mirrors the experiences of a typical plot form. The sermon, therefore, moves from conflict through complication to crisis and finally to resolution. Lowry’s The Homiletical Plot depicts this design as having the following five sections: (1) upsetting the equilibrium (“oops”); (2) analyzing the discrepancy (“ugh!”); (3) disclosing the clue to the resolution (“aha!”); (4) experiencing the gospel (“whee!”); and (5) anticipating the consequences (“yeah!”). Just as in a narrative, the climax of the story often arises from a surprising discovery of a new way of looking at things, so too in this sermon the reversal is something unforeseen by the hearers and, therefore, a surprise or, as Lowry calls it, an “aha!” experience. If the preacher simply moves from trouble to grace without that element of a surprising turn (an unanticipated viewpoint that is nevertheless coherent to the story), the sermon structure is probably a law/gospel/application structure rather than a Lowry Loop.”[1]
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Additional Resources:
Craft of Preaching-Check out 1517’s resources on Micah 6:1-8.
Concordia Theology-Various helps from Concordia Seminary in St. Louis, MO to assist you in preaching Micah 6:1-8.
Lectionary Kick-Start-Check out this fantastic podcast from Craft of Preaching authors Peter Nafzger and David Schmitt as they dig into the texts for this Sunday!
The Pastor’s Workshop-Check out all the great preaching resources from our friends at the Pastor’s Workshop!
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[1] https://concordiatheology.org/sermon-structs/dynamic/narrative-structures/lowry-loop/
