He has given us more than a surprise Gospel in our text. He has given us everything we need for life and salvation in Him.
Our Old Testament text for Epiphany 4 is certainly a challenge. It is tricky because there is no Gospel in our text whatsoever. Micah 6:1-8 is an accusing message of Micah who is issuing a warning and providing an explicit opportunity for people to do the right thing in order to please the Lord. This pericope is an “elaborate representation of a legal case of “Yahweh verses Israel,” in which God brings a grievance against His people.”[1]
Fortunately, it is conveniently broken into three parts. In the first section “the prophet states Yahweh’s case against Israel (verses 1b–5); in the second the defendant poses self-justifying questions (verses 6 and 7); while in the third the prophet answers, elaborating Yahweh’s requirements of His covenant people (verse 8).”[2] So, there you have it. God has an accusation against His people and though they try to get themselves off the hook, they cannot satisfy His Law’s demands. Because no matter how much we value justice (verse 8), we only want justice which works-out for us. We could care less about anything else or what God wants at all. We only love kindness (verse 8) when it is kindness that benefits us. Every thought of walking humbly (verse 8) about anything flies in the face of our self-centered, sinful aggrandization. No, we are by nature sinful law breakers and anything but law abiders. Even if we are feeling extra pious, we still cannot accomplish what God wants, because as Saint Paul reminds us:
“I am of the flesh, sold under sin. For I do not understand my own actions. For I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate. Now if I do what I do not want, I agree with the Law, that it is good. So, now it is no longer I who do it, but sin that dwells within me. For I know that nothing good dwells in me, that is, in my flesh. For I have the desire to do what is right, but not the ability to carry it out. For I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want is what I keep on doing. Now, if I do what I do not want, it is no longer I who do it, but sin that dwells within me. So, I find it to be a law that when I want to do right, evil lies close at hand. For I delight in the Law of God, in my inner being, but I see in my members another law waging war against the law of my mind and making me captive to the law of sin that dwells in my members. Wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from this body of death? (Romans 7:14-24)”
Who will deliver us indeed! With a text with no Gospel proclamation, who will deliver us from preaching this text?
Who will deliver us indeed! With a text with no Gospel proclamation, who will deliver us from preaching this text?
Typically, when I have a text that has no clear Gospel, I use a “Gospel Handle” to get the sermon to a faithful proclamation of the life, death, and resurrection of Christ which forgives sins. I am going to suggest a “Gospel Handle,” but will also recommend a sermon structure which helps serve the Gospel proclamation for a sermon based off this text. The sermon structure is called a Lowry Loop. It is a homiletical arrangement developed by:
“Eugene Lowry, in his work The Homiletical Plot and his revision of such work in The Sermon. In his design, Lowry “suggests that the sermon creates 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 (i.e., “oops”); (2) analyzing the discrepancy (i.e., “ugh!”); (3) disclosing the clue to the resolution (i.e., “aha!”); (4) experiencing the Gospel (i.e., “whee!”); and (5) anticipating the consequences (i.e., “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.”[3]
But for our purposes when working with Micah 6:1-8, we have a genuine Lowry Loop where the “Gospel Handle” is the “aha” moment in the sermon. Here is how it can work:
1: Oops - Here we have a text from Micah which has no clear Gospel. It is all law and, therefore, no good news. In the sermon we will want to develop this piece a lot more to create the tension we need to have sufficient resolution in the Gospel-turn in the text (see helps above).
2: Ugh - Yahweh’s indictment of our sin leads to His telling us “what he requires of us” (verse 8). But even with our most fervent efforts, we are too miserably corrupted in sin to even keep these commands to “act justly, love kindness, and walk humbly before our God” (verse 8) as Paul makes clear from Romans 7:14-24.
3: Aha - Maybe there is a little Gospel in our text, but it is so small we just might miss it. It really is only one word in Hebrew נגד (naw-gad), but two words in English. The Gospel we need is the first two words of verse 8: He has. You see, we “have not” and “could not” but HE HAS. God has done what we could not do and that is the good news. He has done what is good (verse 8) and He has taken care of the righteous requirements (verse 8) of the Law for us. He has satisfied His justice (verse 8) and in love shown us kindness (verse 8), and He did this in the humility (verse 8) and vicarious life of our savior Jesus Christ.
He has satisfied His justice and in love shown us kindness, and He did this in the humility and vicarious life of our savior Jesus Christ.
4: Whee - He has shown us His Messiah in His “beloved Son with whom He is well pleased” (Matthew 3:17), which is an answer to the rhetorical question of verse 7 in our Micah text that we had no answer for: Will the Lord be pleased? The answer is, “Yes!” but not due to our attempts to keep the Law, but because Jesus would lay down His life as a sacrifice for many sinners such as you and me (Matthew 20:28; 1 John 2:2; Hebrews 10:1-18). In mercy, God would give His only begotten Son for the sin of our souls (verse 7). He has done so much to save us when we could not save ourselves and this one little word in Hebrew was the proclamation we wanted to get to the Gospel in our text. In fact, the Hebrew word נגד, as it is a Hiphil Perfect, means by definition: “to proclaim, communicate.”[4] This is literally the proclamation we required to get to the Gospel we needed to save our souls. He has done it all for us.
5: Yeah - Now we have a message of celebration for the world, a message beyond ethics and law. We celebrate the just requirements of the Law being satisfied in Christ for us on the cross, because He has done for us what we could not do for ourselves. We celebrate the love of God given to us in the kindness of Jesus Christ towards sinners because by His mercy and acceptance He has given us new life by the power of His resurrection. We celebrate Jesus who walked this earth and “humbled Himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross. Therefore, God has highly exalted Him and bestowed on Him the name that is above every name, so that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in Heaven and on Earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father” (Philippians 2:8-11). He has given us more than a surprise Gospel in our text. He has given us everything we need for life and salvation in Him.
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Additional Resources:
Craft of Preaching-Check out our previous articles 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.
Text Week-A treasury of resources from various traditions to help you preach Micah 6:1-8.
Lectionary Podcast- Dr. Ryan Tietz Concordia Theological Seminary in Ft. Wayne, IN walks us through Micah 6:1-8.
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[1] Leslie C. Allen, The Books of Joel, Obadiah, Jonah, and Micah, The New International Commentary on the Old Testament (Grand Rapids, MI: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 1976), 363.
[2] Leslie C. Allen, The Books of Joel, Obadiah, Jonah, and Micah, The New International Commentary on the Old Testament (Grand Rapids, MI: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 1976), 364.
[3] This is the work of master homiletician Dr. David Schmitt who provides a helpful resource on sermon structures in general on the website listed here: https://concordiatheology.org/sermon-structs/dynamic/narrative-structures/lowry-loop/
[4] Ernst Jenni and Claus Westermann, Theological Lexicon of the Old Testament (Peabody, MA: Hendrickson Publishers, 1997), 714.
