What God Requires: Our only hope.

/ Sandra Bivens Smith

People have all sorts of notions about God and what He is like, but the testimony of Scripture is plain: unless you know Jesus Christ, you do not know God, and you cannot walk with Him.

So what is our only hope for harmony? The answer is not in our own attempts at living justly but in “the righteous acts of the LORD” (Micah 6:5). To every Christian, God has demonstrated His righteousness most clearly in the Gospel. Indeed, God has shown each and every one of us what is good—namely, the Lord Jesus Christ and His mission “to reconcile to himself all things” (Col. 1:20).

We will never fix the world. We can never restore harmony. Only the Conductor can cause His world and everything in it to live at peace and to reverberate with beauty and euphony. But until God chooses to fully restore order and harmony, we can all pledge, by the power of the Spirit, to live in a manner worthy of the Gospel by doing justice, loving kindness, and walking humbly in our spheres of influence, however great or small.

This article has been adapted from the sermon “What God Requires” by Alistair Begg

What God Requires: We cannot walk with the Lord absent the Gospel.

/ Sandra Bivens Smith
And we know that the Son of God has come, and has given us understanding so that we may know Him who is true; and we are in Him who is true, in His Son Jesus Christ. This is the true God and eternal life. (1 John 5:20)

It should be obvious to us by this point, but we cannot walk with God except by means of the Gospel. “Our fellowship is with the Father and with his Son Jesus Christ,” says the apostle John (1 John 1:3, emphasis added). Or as Jesus Himself put it, “No one comes to the Father except through me” (John 14:6).

The Gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ is the ultimate display of God’s justice.

People have all sorts of notions about God and what He is like, but the testimony of Scripture is plain: unless you know Jesus Christ, you do not know God, and you cannot walk with Him.

This article has been adapted from the sermon “What God Requires” by Alistair Begg.

What God Requires: We cannot love kindness apart from the Gospel.

/ Sandra Bivens Smith

Often, the message of Micah 6:8 sometimes replaces the Gospel. Instead of heralding “Christ and him crucified” (1 Cor. 2:2), we sound a message of generic love and goodwill. Now, again, we should take no issue with people—believers and unbelievers alike—loving one another insofar as they are able. But the Scriptures call us to more than just good feelings.

The apostle Paul puts it this way: “The aim of our charge is love that issues form a pure heart and a good conscience and a sincere faith” (1 Tim. 1:5, emphasis added). Pure love issues only from a pure source, and that source must be a heart made new by the transforming power of the Gospel. Apart from the Gospel, we have no hope to genuinely love kindness and mercy.

This article has been adapted from the sermon “What God Requires” by Alistair Begg.

What God Requires: Helpless Without the Gospel

/ Sandra Bivens Smith

He has told you, O man, what is good; And what does the LORD require of you But to do justice, to love kindness, And to walk humbly with your God? (Micah 6:8)

By the time we arrive at what God requires in [Micah] verse 8, it’s all too easy for us to neglect the call in verse 5 to remember and know what the Lord has done. But unless we ourselves have come to know the steadfast love of the Lord, we have no hope to rightly dispense it to others, and we can neither do justice nor love kindness nor walk humbly with God.

This article has been adapted from the sermon “What God Requires” by Alistair Begg.