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He was the funny one of the twins. His sister was the serious one. Seemingly from birth, she had served as a constant audience for his antics. 

Elizabeth and I were out for lunch after church with this family one day. The twins by then were about five years old. After a trip to the restroom, the little boy began to revel the whole table with a few too many details about what had just gone on in the bathroom. 

His mother, now red in the face and trying to stifle her own laughter, started to try to reign him in. She appealed to him that the table didn’t need to know all of those things. 

She tried simply telling him to be quiet. Finally, she said, “Look at me. Do I look serious?!” To which this irrepressible little comedian replied, “Yeah, you look serious, Baby!”  That was it. We all lost it, including her. Although funny, he was misreading his mother’s seriousness indeed. His father picked him up and took him outside for a moment so they could have a little reset opportunity. 

Micah, the prophet in our Bible, is no comedian. Micah is likelier to say to us from the pages of this prophecy, “Look at my face. Do I look serious?” The obvious answer from reading his words would be “Yes. Yes, you do.” 

Micah wants, as Harold Bosley points out, to be sure everyone knows that God should be taken seriously. This book begins with an important acknowledgement. It is one that we make every Sunday at our church as we worship. What is that phrase? “The word of the Lord…”

That’s how Micah begins, serving notice that this will not simply be him dispensing his own opinions or thoughts to bear. No, this will be Micah in the role of a distributor of  proclamation that is received directly from God. Oh, and one other thought that should be a little chilling in this case: God was coming near, and God didn’t like what was happening. 

When God comes near, whatever truly is will have these things happen. A light will be shined upon whatever truly is when God comes near. God always illuminates and clarifies. Good or bad, we will see more clearly once God has come near. 

Additionally, once God comes near, nothing is ever left quite the same. A reorganization and reordering of sorts will always have to happen once God has truly come near. Also, once God has come near the things that aren’t real, the things that matter less seem to melt away and be left only with that which is of lasting importance. 

Micah was sounding the alarm here that God was coming. They would do well to pay attention and get as ready as they could. 

What could Micah see? This prophet saw important institutions, even ones that God had called upon humanity to establish, that were practically rotting from the inside out. 

Want me to be more specific? The rich oppressed the poor. The leaders corrupted justice, such that the system was stacked against those who had no real wealth or power and in favor of those who wielded more influence precisely because of their wealth and status. 

Sometimes, hardworking farmers had powerful and protected people come in and seize their farmlands and couldn’t do anything about it. If someone liked the way your house looked, they might just grab it for their own if they knew they could. 

Here were people simply trying to get by, working honestly and working hard. They were surviving. They were slowly advancing and maybe even accumulating. Now, sometimes multiple generations were set back by these crooked marauders from within their own people. 

Here is tough news for us, and then I want to get to Micah’s hope. The hard news is that these kinds of corrupt and unjust behaviors are timeless. We see them in every era of human history up until our own time, globally. 

Meanwhile, those who want to be blessed of God and saved of God have a clear-cut assignment. Micah 5 says it this way. “What does the Lord require of you but to do justice and to love kindness and to walk humbly with your God?”

Our hope is not found just in works. Certainly, our tradition places salvation in Jesus Christ. But the truly saved are the transformed—transformed to walk humbly with God, to do justice, and to love kindness.

DR. CHARLES QUALLS is senior pastor at Franklin Baptist Church. Contact him at 757-562-5135.