What does God require of you? He has told you. Act justly, love mercy, and walk humbly with your God. We spoke two weeks ago about what it means to act justly and concluded that to act justly one must approach life with an uncorrupted heart seeking to do what is right without regard to favoritism toward anyone. Last week we spoke about what it means to love mercy and concluded that we must seek, look, for those opportunities in which we can release others from situations they cannot free themselves. And so we must forgive offenses against us. We must enter the lives of those who are alone and those who are hopeless. We must share the good news of Jesus Christ with those who stand at the very gate of hell. All these things we can do if we first love the mercy God has granted us through the salvation we have received through the completed work of Jesus Christ upon the cross. Today, we will talk about what it means to walk humbly with God.
These commands of God, to act justly, love mercy, and walk humbly with God come from the voice of a man named Micah, the prophet. Micah was called upon by God to read a charge against the people of God, the nation of Israel. God saw that “11 Israel’s leaders judge for a bribe, her priests teach for a price, and her prophets tell fortunes for money” (Micah 3:11). Israel had become corrupt. The leaders were taking advantage of their positions of power, judges ruled by who brought the bigger bribe, priests taught but only if they were paid the right price, and prophets of God had become fortune tellers. Israel no longer believed in transcendent morality, that is morality from God. Instead, Israel had become a nation in which everyone determined for themselves what was right, what was wrong, what was fair, and what was moral.
Micah’s message to the people was that they must repent and return to the ways of God by returning to justice, mercy, and walking humbly with God. What then does it mean to walk humbly? The Hebrew words here are yālaḵ (ya-lack) ṣānaʿ(sa-nawh), walk humbly. Firstly, the word yālaḵ (ya-lack), from which we get walk, means literally or figuratively to walk on your feet, or to move, to go, or to come. We can understand this sense of motion because we walk in some manner every day. Secondly, the word ṣānaʿ(sa-nawh), from which we get humbly, means to be modest and meek. The word ṣānaʿ(sa-nawh), is used only one other time in the Hebrew Scriptures, our Old Testament, in Proverbs, “2 When pride comes, then comes disgrace, but with humility (ṣānaʿ(sa-nawh)), comes wisdom” (Proverbs 11:2). Pride then is presented as the opposite of humble. The combined effect of these Hebrew words, yālaḵ (ya-lack) ṣānaʿ(sa-nawh), is to suggest movement in a gentle and lowly manner not as the leader of the band, loud and proud, but in a reflective manner, waiting for guidance from another as to the next step. The movement is done with a humility, a profound sense of being in the presence of someone significant. Who is the someone significant? It is God, 'ĕlōhîm, el-o-heem'.
I want to try to give some sense to this expression of walking humbly with God through two related illustrations, both involving being rescued from drowning. The first illustration will deal with the sense of walking or moving at the direction of another. The second illustration will deal with the sense of humility.
The first illustration comes from basic training in the United States Navy. Part of the basic training involves water survival skills. The recruits, wearing their uniforms, are instructed to jump into a large swimming pool and to make their way from one end of the pool to the other. This task is challenging because they are wearing their duty uniform. The recruits are told that should they find themselves exhausted and in fear of drowning, then they should signal the lifeguards along the edge of the pool. The lifeguards will then extend a long metal pole to the recruit. The recruit is to grab onto the pole and allow the lifeguard to pull the recruit to the edge of the pool and thus safety. But if at any time in that rescue process, the recruit pulls on the pole being held by the lifeguard, the lifeguards are instructed to let go of the pole. The effect is the recruit will again flounder in the water only now holding onto a large metal pole.
This rescue process teaches the recruit that in moving to safety they must allow the one who is safe to guide the one who is struggling to safety. This illustration helps us to understand that the command in Micah 6:8 to walk, yālaḵ (ya-lack), must be seen as allowing ourselves to follow or be led by one who is in the position of safety. We know this sense movement toward safety from the 23rd Psalm, “1 The Lord is my shepherd, I lack nothing. 2 He makes me lie down in green pastures, he leads me beside quiet waters, 3 he refreshes my soul. He guides me along the right paths for his name’s sake” (Psalm 23:1-3). There is a sense that the psalmist is following and being led to safety carefully and thoughtfully by the one who is safe.
The second illustration helps us understand the significance of being humble and, as I said, this illustration also involves a water rescue. Suppose now you are on a boat in the ocean, you fall overboard, and for whatever reason you are not able to swim. Another person comes along, and you grab his hand, and you realize that person, holding on to you is keeping you from drowning. In that instant of realization, you would then both love and fear the person holding you. You love him because you are being held up by him. And in the same instant, you fear him for if he lets go, you will perish.
This illustration helps us to understand what it means to be humbled. To be humble is to have that mixture of love and fear coursing through your body as you are in the presence of one who holds your life in the balance.
And so, to walk humbly with God, is to hold on and allow God to move you carefully to safety as you experience a love for Him as Savior and a fear of Him for his ultimate power over you. It is this sense that Micah is trying to get across to when he said it is good that you should walk humbly with your God. Said another way, we need to trust God.
Why then do so many people, including many Christians, walk on their own or want to walk with God and try to do so without humility? The simplest explanation I can offer is that humanity, including you and me, understand what Eve desired in the Garden of Eden. Scripture tells us that in the Garden, Eve saw the fruit from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. This is the fruit that she and Adam were not to eat. Eve saw the fruit as pleasing to the eye and good for food. There is nothing wrong with that. But Eve also saw the fruit as desirable for gaining wisdom, that is to be just like God. And so, she ate the fruit as did Adam. Eating the fruit is like pulling the pole out of the hand of your rescuer. Eating the fruit and believing you are like God is to lose your sense of love and fear of God. All humility is gone and is replaced by pride. Pride, the desire to be like God, is at the root of all evil and sin. Prideful people do not have a desire to walk with God and do not have a love and fear of God because in pride they want equality with God.
And despite humanity’s the lack of humility and the desire to set its own path, God remains good, and God remains faithful. God had shown what was good, that is to walk humbly with God. He did this through teachings of his judges, kings, and prophets and then he did it through his own son. The Apostle Paul described Jesus and his relationship to the Father. Paul wrote, “[Jesus] 6 Who, being in very nature God, did not consider equality with God something to be used to his own advantage; 7 rather, he [Jesus] made himself nothing by taking the very nature of a servant, being made in human likeness. 8 And being found in appearance as a man, he [Jesus] humbled himself by becoming obedient [to God] to death—even death on a cross!” (Philippians 2:6-8). Jesus, who was with God in the beginning and through whom all things had been created, came to earth and lived a life obediently walking humbly with God.
Jesus went where God wanted him to go and Jesus did what Jesus saw God doing. Jesus spoke the words that God spoke to Him through the Holy Spirit. And what was the response from God to the way Jesus walked with God? God said to those who had ears to here, “This is my Son, whom I love; with him I am well pleased” (Matthew 3:17). Jesus was walking humbly with God, following God’s desires and ways. Jesus displayed perfect humility before God and therefore, Jesus could say, “I and the Father are one” (John 10:30).
Without humility, “there can be no true abiding in God’s presence or experiencing of His favor and the power of His Spirit; without humility there is no abiding in faith or love or joy or strength. Humility is the only soil in which virtue takes root; a lack of humility is the explanation for every defect and failure. Humility is not so much a virtue along with the others, but is the root of all, because it alone takes the right attitude before God and allows Him, as God, to do all.” (Andrew Murray, Humility, pg.17).
To walk humbly before God is not an easy thing to do, in part because of our nature, and in part because our culture is awash in pride. The marketing strategy for many products encourage us to buy it because we will be proud to use it. Higher education uses pride infused words as more knowledge is acquired – master’s degree, doctoral degree. Society envies those individuals in powerful positions of government because power brings out pride. Even whole segments of our society claim an entire month to celebrate pride in who they are, with Pride Month. Every step we take to express pride is one step further away from God.
What then are we to do? We must come to see ourselves as helpless and powerless, because in the end that is what we are. I was thinking the other day how we can be so proud of accomplishments and our possessions. Someone might say to you, “Come look at my beautiful car or see my magnificent home.” And the car and the home can be beautiful and magnificent but does that person really own them? You see, immediately upon death, that person no longer owns anything. Upon their death we say, “That was their car or was their home.” All the pride in those possessions evaporates with their last breath. They are now a spiritual being only and are helpless to control what eventually happens to those prized possessions here on earth. The time we can control or believe we can control things on earth is limited and we are helpless to stop the inevitable end of our control.
We have heard it said, and likely have said it ourselves that, “Life is short.” And life is short. In that expression, there is a realization about the brevity of life and there is an acknowledgement of helplessness in that expression. But perhaps the next time someone says to us, “Life is short,” we ought to say in response, “Yes, I know. That is why I chose to make my life eternal.” God has given us the opportunity and done everything necessary for us to live eternally not briefly. All we need to do is to reach out and hold onto Him. We must recognize God’s gift and not try to be God, as if we are going to pull the rescue pole out of God’s hands. We must recognize that the difference between living briefly and living eternally is God and God alone. We should live life on earth with that odd mixture of love and fear recognizing that it is God’s hand, strong and eternal, that keeps us above the water. It is by God’s hand that we can say, “Life is short. That is why I chose to make my life eternal.”
This brings us to a deeper understanding that to walk humbly with God is not just a command of what is good to do, it is also a embodies a gift of eternal perspectives and eternal life. To walk humbly with God is to imitate Jesus by moving through the full range of human experiences with the assurance of God’s presence and then to move seamlessly into eternity when our journey on earth is done. To walk humbly with God is good. It is very good. Amen and Amen.