A message from Trinity Baptist Church in Cayce, SC
Sunday morning. You made it. You found the kids’ shoes, got everybody in the car, and showed up. You do this most weeks. You give when you pass the offering box. You try to be decent to people. You say grace before meals, at least sometimes.
And still, somewhere underneath all of that, there’s a quiet voice that says it’s not enough. You’re not doing enough. You’re not good enough. And you can’t quite figure out what more you’re supposed to do.
That feeling is not new. It turns out the prophet Micah was writing into it 2,700 years ago.
The people of Israel in Micah’s day were doing everything they knew to do. They brought offerings. They showed up to the festivals. When it didn’t feel like enough, they brought bigger offerings. The logic made sense to them: if a little is good, more must be better. By the end of that line of thinking, someone floats the idea of sacrificing a child. That’s where it ends up when you keep upping the ante with God.
God’s response through Micah wasn’t “try harder.” It was something most people aren’t expecting. He has shown you, O mortal, what is good. And what does the Lord require of you? To act justly, to love mercy, and to walk humbly with your God.
Three things. Not a longer checklist. A different kind of list entirely.
1. Act Justly
Justice sounds like a big word. A political word. Something that happens in courtrooms or on the news.
But Pastor Eddie made it pretty simple Sunday morning. Most of us wake up and ask some version of the same question: what’s going to be best for me today? That’s not a bad question. It’s just not justice. Justice asks a different one: what would be right?
Sometimes that’s easy. Sometimes it costs you something real. In 1963, Martin Luther King had to decide how to respond to injustice in a way that was itself just. In 1933, Dietrich Bonhoeffer watched Nazi flags appear behind communion tables in German churches and had to decide whether to say no to Hitler. Neither of those was a comfortable choice.
Most of us will never face anything close to that. But the principle is the same whether you’re standing up to a government or just being straight with someone at work. It’s paying people what they’re worth. It’s not twisting someone’s words to make them easier to argue with. It’s treating the person who can do nothing for you the same way you’d treat someone who could.
That last one is worth sitting with. How you treat people who can’t do anything for you says a lot about where you actually are.
2. Love Mercy
Justice has a best friend, and we need it. Because none of us would survive justice alone.
Mercy isn’t pretending the failure didn’t happen. The standard stays. What changes is how you respond when someone doesn’t meet it. You treat them according to what they need, not what they deserve.
C.S. Lewis wrote that everyone says forgiveness is a lovely idea until they have something to forgive. That’s true. We beg for mercy fast and hand it out slow.
Here’s what Micah says about God at the end of his book: You do not stay angry forever. But you delight to show mercy. Not grudging mercy. Not mercy with a lecture attached. Delight. It would be a joy to God to pardon you. That’s worth sitting with too.
3. Walk Humbly With Your God
This one is quieter than the other two, and it might be the hardest.
Andrew Murray put it simply: humility isn’t thinking poorly of yourself. It’s just not thinking of yourself at all. It’s waking up and asking not what’s best for me, but what would God have me do today. Those sound similar. They’re not.
In Micah’s day the people were trusting their wealth, their religious activity, their position. They could always bring more to the temple because they had the money and the animals. They kept substituting stuff for relationship. Peter did the same thing a different way: everybody else might deny you, but I won’t. We know how that went.
Humility sounds like this: God, I’m just a branch. You’re the vine. I can’t do this without you.
If the anxiety is loud and the anger keeps running the show, that’s usually the place to start.
Jesus did all three of these perfectly. He never lied, never cheated, never used his power for himself. He touched lepers, forgave adulterers, prayed for the people nailing him to the cross. He was God and he washed dirty feet. At the cross, all three things land at once. Justice, because sin is paid for. Mercy, because we didn’t deserve that. Humility, because the King of the universe died like a criminal.
He didn’t do that so you could perform your way to him. He did it so you could stop.
If you want to hear the full message, you can watch it at tbccayce.com/media. Or come find us Sunday morning at 9:30 or 11:00 AM.
Trinity Baptist Church | Cayce, SC | tbccayce.com | Sundays at 9:30 and 11:00 AM
