Rivers of Oil and Empty Hearts

Micah 6:1-8

The offering of justice, kindness, humility

6:1Hear what the LORD says: Rise, plead your case before the mountains, and let the hills hear your voice. 6:2Hear, you mountains, the case of the LORD, and you enduring foundations of the earth, for the LORD has a case against his people, and he will contend with Israel. 6:3"O my people, what have I done to you? In what have I wearied you? Answer me! 6:4For I brought you up from the land of Egypt and redeemed you from the house of slavery, and I sent before you Moses, Aaron, and Miriam. 6:5O my people, remember now what King Balak of Moab devised, what Balaam son of Beor answered him, and what happened from Shittim to Gilgal, that you may know the saving acts of the LORD."

6:6"With what shall I come before the LORD and bow myself before God on high? Shall I come before him with burnt offerings, with calves a year old? 6:7Will the LORD be pleased with thousands of rams, with ten thousands of rivers of oil? Shall I give my firstborn for my transgression, the fruit of my body for the sin of my soul?"6:8He has told you, O mortal, what is good, and what does the LORD require of you but to do justice and to love kindness and to walk humbly with your God?

Micah steps into the courtroom of history, and he isn’t there for a polite debate. He stages a scene where the mountains and hills are set as the ancient witnesses who have watched humanity trip over the same pride for millennia, are called to the stand. God doesn’t speak like a cold-blooded dictator or a hard-hearted judge; He speaks like a wounded partner. “My people, what have I done to you? How have I wearied you?” It’s a question dripping with heartache. God reminds them that their relationship didn’t start with a list of demands or a set of chains; it started with the Exodus. It began in liberation, not control.

But the people don’t want a relationship; they want a transaction. We see this disconnect in our own lives every day. It is the husband who, after years of ignoring his wife’s pleas for partnership, tries to settle the debt with an expensive anniversary diamond rather than a changed heart. He offers a high-priced trophy to avoid the low-cost humility of actually participating in the life they share.

Even the "honey-do" list he asks for is an injustice. He cannot see the mental labor she carries in having to create it, nor the emotional labor of managing her own disappointment when the heart isn't behind the work. He wants to be "told what to do" so he can check a box, while she is left to manage the entire spiritual and emotional infrastructure of their home alone. Nothing is done with heart, and God, like a weary spouse, knows exactly when we are worshiping with heart or just going through the motions.

The Anatomy of the Performance

This same spirit follows us from the home into the workplace and the public square. We see companies that publicly use the word family as a desire they haven't learned how to live into. When profit is prioritized over people, "family" isn't what prevails, toxicity is. In these cultures, managers don't stand up against poor systems or behaviors; they simply tow the company line and please the right higher-ups to stay uplifted. Meanwhile, the competent personnel who point out the rot are labeled as "problematic."

Instead of addressing the incompetence within the system and strive to actually do better as a whole, they double down on the spectacle. HR shames those who speak out, they mask the issues with "team-building" retreats, online required trainings, or they post trendy equity statements while the actual work environment burns out or weeds out the very people who could have saved it. This is the corporate "river of oil." Justice would be the humility to admit there is incompetence, to stabilize the volatile, to genuinely retrain leaders and their teams, and to value the human beings who actually do the work to create healthier systems in the workplace.

Our age is obsessed with grand but empty gestures. Viral slogans to distract. Outrage cycles to shift blame. All-or-nothing rhetoric that demands we prove our purity by how loudly we perform our "side." This too is spiritual theater. It lets us feel righteous without actually requiring us to go inward to change how we live, spend, or treat the person right in front of us. God is not fooled by louder opinions or more aggressive certainties.

The Exodus as a Gift to Egypt

When God brings up the Exodus, it isn’t just a "remember when" story; it’s a a direct challenge to how we view power. We often frame the Exodus as a simple rescue mission for the oppressed, but it was also a massive moral intervention for the oppressor.

Egypt had built an empire on exploited peoples and crushed bodies. Their wealth was tied to chains, and their "order" was dependent on dehumanization. By removing Israel, God wasn’t just saving a people; He was disrupting a system that was spiritually rotting the soul of Egypt.

Perhaps the strife we are seeing and experiencing in our world today is God disrupting our systems to prune the branches of the vine like what we read about in John 15 .

⁵ I am the vine; you are the branches. Those who abide in me and I in them bear much fruit, because apart from me you can do nothing. ⁶ Whoever does not abide in me is thrown away like a branch and withers; such branches are gathered, thrown into the fire, and burned. ⁷ If you abide in me and my words abide in you, ask for whatever you wish, and it will be done for you. ⁸ My Father is glorified by this, that you bear much fruit and become^[c] my disciples. ⁹ As the Father has loved me, so I have loved you; abide in my love. ¹⁰ If you keep my commandments, you will abide in my love, just as I have kept my Father’s commandments and abide in his love. ¹¹ I have said these things to you so that my joy may be in you and that your joy may be complete.

Israel’s liberation was a gift to the Egyptians, too. It forced a reckoning: Who are we without slaves? It was an invitation to return to the work of their own hands and to rediscover a way of living not built on someone else’s exhaustion. There is a spiritual decay that sets in when we believe we are entitled to comfort, success, or ease without shared effort and responsibility. To depend on the uncompensated labor, emotional, physical, or unseen, of another is to slowly lose touch with our own humanity. In that sense, the loss of their slaves was a severe mercy, a painful gift that made room for Egypt to become more human again. True justice invites all of us into that same dignity, where we each bear our part of the load and stay connected to the real work of love. The only thing we receive without earning is the love of God. Everything else that bears good fruit in this life flows from abiding in that love and choosing to give ourselves, energy, time, and heart, for the sake of one another.

Micah’s Path Through the Propaganda

Micah doesn’t offer a weak, "can’t we all just get along" compromise. He offers a Middle Way that is actually more demanding than the extremes of modern propaganda. It’s not about having an opinion; it’s about having a posture.

Do Justice: This is not just showing up at a protest or writing a spicy Facebook post against "them." To do justice is to choose, daily, whatever just thing you can do in the moment to deeply connect with another human being. It asks: Why do they believe what they believe? What pain or hope shaped their world? Justice is refusing to let a political label erase the image of God in your neighbor.

Love Kindness: This is hesed, the Hebrew word the Old Testament uses for God’s own covenant love toward Israel, a stubborn, loyal, mercy-soaked love that refuses to walk away. It is the decision to stay at the table when you would rather flip it. Kindness is the guardrail that keeps your pursuit of justice from sliding into the very dehumanization you claim to resist. I sometimes have to quiet my inner “gangster,” the part of me that wants to scrap, prove a point, or defend my pride when I know I am right. But even when I am right, I am still called to be kind. The moment my energy sinks into darkness, I lose my grip on the light, and once that happens, rightness alone cannot keep me from becoming wrong.

Walk Humbly: This is the ultimate resistance to the echo chamber. It is the discipline of being teachable in a world that rewards being certain. It’s the willingness to be surprised by God in the person you were certain was your enemy.

The Revelation: The Mirror of Our World

When we pull back the curtain on our global stage, we see the same ancient lawsuit playing out. We see the binary of ICE agents versus protestors, where both sides are often reduced to uniforms or slogans, and the actual human being caught in the middle becomes a political prop rather than a person with a story. We see massive wealth disproportionately pooled in the hands of a few, while the global economy rests on the "idleness" of those who profit from labor they never have to see and pain they never have to feel.

This disproportion is not just an economic crisis; it is a spiritual one. When we build a world where we can thrive while others are invisible, we are living in the "order" of Egypt. Whether it is a border conflict or a boardroom, the propaganda of "all-or-nothing" keeps us from the Middle Way. It keeps us from seeing that the billionaire's soul is just as deformed by the system as the worker's body is broken by it.

God is still calling us out of the spectacle. He is still asking us to stop haggling and start walking. The gift of justice is the gift of a world where we no longer need "slaves", domestic, economic, or ideological, to feel secure. It is the invitation to finally, truly, become human.

The truth woven into God’s creation is that no one ever had to be oppressed for life to flourish. There has always been enough, but humanity has rehearsed the lie of scarcity so that power and prosperity could collect in the hands of a few. To draw close to the divine is to see that distortion for what it is and to hunger for a different way of living together. That is why I say kin-dom and not kingdom, because God’s reign is not about hierarchy and control but about restored relationships, shared dignity, and belonging. The kin-dom of heaven is a family reality breaking into the present, where no one stands on another’s back and everyone has a place at the table.

Prayer

God of liberation and truth, Strip away the performances we hide behind. Where we shout instead of love, quiet us. Where we cling to certainty instead of humility, unsettle us. Free the oppressed, and free the oppressor from the systems that deform them. Help us reclaim the work of our hands and the integrity of our hearts. Teach us the steady way of justice, mercy, and humble walking with You. Amen.