Feast of Trumpets - What Does the Lord Require of Us?

As was mentioned in the opening prayer, the Feast of Trumpets really represents this amazing turning point in earth's history. If you will turn to Revelation 11 and verse 15. Revelation 11 and verse 15. Earth's rulership will move from Satan to Christ. And so what I'd like to start with is let's review two very well-known verses that represent the ultimate fulfillment of this festival. Starting Revelation 11 and verse 15.

Then the seventh angel sounded, and as we know in other places, a loud trumpet blast. And there were loud voices in heaven, saying, The kingdom of this world have become the kingdoms of our Lord and of His Christ, and He shall reign forever and ever. So the kingdoms will become the kingdoms of our Lord and His Christ on this day. And it will represent the end of what humans trying to rule ourselves, or being influenced by Satan in how we try to rule.

Turn next to Matthew 24 verses 30 through 31. Matthew 24, 30 through 31. So this change in overall leadership, overall influence, will not be something that's universally embraced. It's going to have a very different reaction with many people. Matthew 24 starting in verse 30. Then the sign of the Son of Man will appear in heaven, and then all the tribes of the earth will mourn. And they will see the Son of Man coming on the cloud of heaven in power and great glory.

And He shall send His angels with a great sound of a trumpet, and they will gather together. His elects from the four winds from one end of heaven to the other. It literally says, all the tribes on earth will mourn. And meanwhile, of course, those of us who are resurrected at that time will be euphoric. We will be thrilled. The entire transition will be highlighted by the most amazing sound of a trumpet blast ever heard in the history of mankind. There's a very introspective, a very scary question that comes with the day of trumpet.

What does God require of us to be part of this? What does God require of us to be part of this? I feel confident that's a question that's haunted God's people over all of history. Have I done enough? And of course, the follow-up question tends to be, how much is enough?

What more do I need to get right? Do I need to increase? Do I need to sacrifice? And I think the question of what God requires is something we need to think of. So that question is what we will cover today in this split sermon. Turn to Micah 6 and verse 8. Micah 6-8. We're going to see a concise answer to that core question today. And at first glance, it seems easy. It seems straightforward. But like with most spiritual things, once you get into the nuances, it's much more difficult than at face value.

Micah 6 and verse 8. He has shown you, O man, what is good, and what does the Lord require of you but to do justly, to love mercy, and to walk humbly with your God? First thing I'd have you catch in that, that word good in Hebrew goes back to the book of Genesis vocabulary. And it means it's ordered. It's aligned according to God's purpose. It's not sentimental. It's not vague. He has told you what is good.

Micah 6-8, overall, sounds pretty simple. Just do what's right, love mercy or kindness, and walk humbly with God. But I would argue when we study what was going on in the time of Micah, we realize there was much more than just this being a beautiful memory verse, you know, some glib phrase. So to understand Micah, I think we first have to place ourselves in the context of the Hebrew people. And Abraham, yes, is the father of the promises, but the story really begins with Moses, right? The children of Israel being led out of Egypt. And Micah 6 is basically God holding this court hearing against the people he has protected, he has freed, he has married, he has loved, he has cared for.

Start in verse 1. Micah 6 in verse 1. Hear now what the Lord says. Arise, plead your case, court case, before the mountains, and let the hills hear your voice. Hear, O you mountains, the Lord's complaint, and you strong foundations of the earth. For the Lord has a complaint against his people, and he will contend with Israel. O my people, what have I done to you?

And how have I wearied you? Testify against me. For I brought you up from the land of Egypt. I redeemed you from the house of bondage, and I sent before you Moses, Aaron, and Abraham. Abraham. So God goes all the way back to creation, if you see that in verse 2.

The foundations of the earth as proof of his loving kindness, as proof of his goodness. And then he reminds the Hebrew people that they were enslaved. They were building bricks. They were starving when he called Moses to the top of Mount Sinai, right? And he spoke to him from a burning bush. And then he sent Moses in front of Pharaoh with one basic request. Let my people go. And you know the rest of the story. God, through Moses' leadership, led the people out of bondage.

He led them to a promised land. And so he established this covenant with God's people. I will be your God, and you will be my people. And God has held up his end of the deal from creation. All of his promises have continued. He takes care of his people. But covenant relationships, they take two. It's a two-way street. So both parties to a covenant have responsibilities with required behaviors to sustain, to maintain that relationship.

It's the same as a marriage covenant for those who are married, where two people promise to love and care for each other. And of course, we gladly agree with the requirements of a marriage covenant because we love somebody. We want to commit our lives to them. Micah 6, 8 starts, He has shown you, O man, what is good, and what does the Lord require of you?

So the three expectations that follow are God's—what he requires from his people. What is God looking for in the Feast of Trumpets? This is what God requires of his people. Deuteronomy 6, 5 says, Love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your might. Leviticus 19, 18 says, Love your neighbors yourself. The Ten Commandments hinge on those two concepts, that framework. You could summarize God's expectations of his people as, Love God and others like God has loved us. Do we love God and others as God has loved us? Something to think about. And God said, once you get to the Promised Land, once you start enjoying this freedom and all the goodness that's there, don't forget me. Don't forget our relationship and the things you need to do to maintain our covenant relationship.

Michael, we're not going to go through the whole book, but you can get a lot of feeling of the social, the economic situation that was going on at this time, by reading the book and seeing what he condemns in the rulers, in the merchants, in the prophets. See, it was a society where the rich, the powerful, were using their influences to exploit the vulnerable. And they created even greater inequities of wealth and influence. And then you add to that that there was an aggressive program of armaments, fortifications, because of the attacking and, you know, countries coming in, that all of that effort and the buildup had to be taken from someone and the poor were being taken the most advantage of. The needy were being taken most advantage of. So, Micah is condemning the leaders of his people for injustices against the powerless. Okay, continuing in verse 6, where now you're going to see the Israelites arguing back their defense. With what shall I come before the Lord and bow myself before the Lord? Shall I come before him with burnt offerings, with calves a year old? In other words, I'm here. They say, hey, we're good Jews. We go to the temple every Sabbath. We offer sacrifices. We generously give to the temple coffers what is God expecting of us anyway?

In our search to be right with God, we may try many things to gain righteousness with God.

A lost person may try to use sacrifices, right, to feel some sort of peace with God. And when we sense God is not pleased with us, we may perform works to gain God's favor.

How many times have we prayed to God and said, I'm doing the best I can?

So, trusting in sacrifices or works is this very dangerous place because it always tends to lead in one of two directions. One is a false sense of peace, and the other is a great sense of frustration.

That leads to the core question of today. What does God really want? What does God really want?

The Israelites observed all the holy days. They performed all the sacrifices while they didn't truly repent. And that was nothing more than this abomination to God. Verse 7, will the Lord be pleased with thousands of rams, ten thousand rivers of oil? Shall I give my firstborn for my transgression, the fruit of my body for the sins of my soul, rivers of oil, and thousands of lambs? That's not really what God wants. They even talked about sacrificing their children. The answer to Israel's sin problem was not simply offering more. You know, more sacrifices of blood. The answer was deeper, because Israel's problem was a heart.

A character problem. Is our problem a heart and a character problem? Or does God like what He sees there? They did not profess they needed God or His atonement in their lives. And throughout the Bible we see two very clear keys to pleasing God. If you want to summarize God in two different ways, I think this is at least one of the ways to summarize it. God hates sin, and He wants us to walk with Him in a loving relationship. Hate sin wants a relationship.

Recognizing those keys exemplified, or is exemplified, when we do justly, when we love mercy, when we walk humbly with God as our actions, that's how we shall we get it.

And that's what God requires of you and I. It's not just a matter of walking through these rote actions and steps. Next holy day, check. Next Sabbath, check. Tithing, check.

God wants actions that stem from the heart, and it's not a suggestion or a good idea that we should try. Remember, this is God's requirement for us to partake in all the day of Trumpets, symbolizes. What does the Lord require of you? And the people of Malachi's time were seeking God's favor on one hand, right, and they're carrying on their sinful way in the other, and they didn't see a dichotomy of what was taking place. Without a true desire to change our ways, then the sacrifices any of us bring before God, they're waste. They wasted physical blood. We waste, symbolically, if we don't have the right heart and attitude. Proverbs 21, 3 says, to do righteousness and justice is more acceptable to the Lord than sacrifice. So God is looking for a heart of repentance, a desire to change, loyalty. Aren't those the things that baptize and baptism we commit to? We get to that point, we get baptized. That's what God is looking for throughout our lives.

So what does God really want? God does not want what we can do. God wants you. God wants me.

He wants us to walk with him, and Malachi isn't reflecting a list of performance criteria, but what God requires for us to be aligned, for us to be restored. He wants a relationship. So how's your journey going?

We're going to work through all three of the different characteristics, but before we do that, I really want you to reflect on those three requirements in detail and realize God has already extended those three characteristics to us first. He walked that path, and in a sense, we're walking back the same steps that he already showed. God has been completely just and righteous in everything he has ever done with mankind. One of God's defining characteristics is his loving mercy. We never need to doubt if it will change because God can be fully trusted. He's completely unwaveringly loyal to our relationship, to the covenant he made with us. He has that covenant, love with us, that willingness to forgive. God has been loyal and lived up to his part. He even willingly humbled his son to become human after creating the universe, to give his life so that we would have a way to be pardoned for our inability to be completely just.

Right? He's gone through all three of those, and as a result of God first starting the process, then he says we should respond with faith and humility. In a sense, the reverse order. Live justly. Look to God's mercy and extend it toward others.

That way he sees we get it. The relationship is working in its cycle.

Those who live that way will be the ones who God resurrects at the Feast of Trumpets.

So God extended these three traits to us. He wants us to return that same type of response to him as he first offered to us. He wants total and complete devotion in return.

That's what God is looking for. And that is what it looks like to be in alignment with God and in his presence. Okay, let's go through all three parts now. The first thing he said for us to do is to do justly. To do justly. Now, I don't know about you, but I can easily develop like a Frank Sinatra, a philosophy of life. I did it my way. It's easy to be all for God's agenda as long as it matches what I want. I'm guilty of that at times. And that's how his role was living in Micah's day. That's how America lives a lot today. And in the most simple form, to do justly essentially boils down to doing the right thing in all circumstances, in all occasions. Well, the question then becomes, how do I know what's right? Well, that's told to us. Read the beginning of that verse again.

God has shown you, oh man, what is good. God defines right and wrong behaviors in the Bibles you have, in the Word that is right in front of you. It tells us what right understanding is. We have God's law, which is this expression of his order. God's law, his commandments were given so that we could understand how to align to God. And to act justly is to live by God's standard. Justice is the ordering of life according to God's design, living as God designed it for us to live, to act, to interact.

The challenge, of course, is us always choosing the right thing when there's all those difficulties that start facing us. Even when it's not the popular thing or the expedient thing, we're still supposed to do the right thing. And in the world we swim upstream, because largely this is an unjust world. And he says, live justly. So being just in this atmosphere isn't always going to be easy. It's not always going to be accepted. It's not always going to be popular. But again, living justly is a requirement God has for his people. Proverbs 11.3 says, the integrity of the upright will guide them, but the perversity of the unfaithful will destroy them. So we're supposed to walk. We're supposed to walk in integrity. And when we do that, we're doing the right and the good thing. We're doing it because of a heart that wants to be the way God created us and wants us to be.

The word justice means fairness, fair play, equity with other humans. So in Israel, if you think about community, to do justice meant respecting the basic needs of others, the requirements, the rights of people. It's the social concept in nature in many ways. Now, interestingly, there are nine words that are most often associated with the word justice. Widow, fatherless, orphans, poor, hungry, stranger, needy, weak, oppressed.

Right? Doing justly takes seriously the responsibilities to provide equity, especially protecting the vulnerable and the defenseless. I'm sure in your mind you're thinking, you know, James 1, 27, what pure religion to care for the fatherless and the widows and their affliction.

It's examples of what that word gets associated. So in the list you don't find the word rich.

It's, you know, not that wealth is condemned by God, but more often in the Bible it's associated with injustice because it's about people trying to buy justice. Instead, God requires that we work for fairness for the little people. Remember, how's God described? The helper of the helpless, right? The father of the fatherless. And he expects us to show the same level of this just compassion to others as well. We're to worry about the widows and the fatherless and the orphans and the poor and the hungry, the strangers, the needy, the weak, the oppressed. We're supposed to take personally wherever we see that not occurring. And God expects his people to behave justly in our dealings and actions both in the church and in the world. And that includes in our marriages, that includes in our families, that includes at work, school, wherever.

It's that perspective really that kind of lies at the heart of the Exodus, the heart of what God set up at the beginning. Because if you think about it, God's covenant required the people whom God delivered from slavery to never treat others as they had been treated in Egypt.

To do so, that would kind of violate the very promise God made with the Hebrew people.

So as Christians, we're to represent a kingdom of justice. The kingdom of God will be a just kingdom.

And as citizens of the kingdom of God today, we must represent a kingdom in which righteousness will reign by our example each and every day. So the best to the best of our abilities seek after doing justly in all aspects, treat others the way God would want them to be treated.

Let's go to the second part. Next phrase Micah mentions is to love mercy. Okay, so we might say, I, of course, I love mercy, right? Grace is God's mercy extended to us.

But do we only love mercy when we're receiving it?

Or do we love to extend mercy as well? And do we even know what that word means?

Mercy in the Hebrew term is this powerful, amazing word has said H-E-S-E-D or C-H-E-G. There's a lot of ways you're going to see it spelled because people are trying to transliterate sound. But it's, there's a depth of meaning to that word that no one, or I'd even argue two or three English words, can capture fully. It's been translated kindness, loving kindness, mercy, steadfastness. But again, no one word can capture it. Covenant, faithfulness, compassion, loyal love, loving devotion, steadfast love. Those are other areas that modern translations try to approximate the term. It's often used to describe God's faithful actions throughout history on behalf of God's people. So, so it has said then is this relationship term. It's not this warm and fuzzy kind of feeling. It's this commitment. It's steadfast dependability that arises from a mutual relationship. And in that covenant context, people are expected to respond to God with the steadfast loyalty and love that reflects the compassion and grace that God has demonstrated to them, to you, to me. To love, as said, was to be committed not only to God, who demonstrated has said to us, but it was also to live in our community in such a way that has said, marked how we live together as God's people. So, to love has said was to be committed to a quality of life that was governed by the principles of mutual respect, of helpfulness, of loving concern.

And that concept of showing mercy indicates the matter in which we get along with those around us. How well do we get along with those around us? There's any friction this week? To love mercy is to love others with God's heart. It's showing others mercy like God does. And there's, you know, all these ways we can envision that. We do this by sharing His grace and not judgment. We do this by sharing His forgiveness and not blame. We do this by sharing His patience, not irritations.

We do this by sharing His kindness and not our hardness. We do this by sharing His holiness and not our fleshiness. So after eating open a door for somebody, right, let that car get in front of you and don't get too worked up. You know, phone a friend! Not because you need a lifeline, but because you may be God's lifeline to that person in the way that God knows they need to be helped. Has said is an act of kindness, compassion, or favor, and it is the way we reflect our Father.

So a question for us today is, do we love mercy? Do we love mercy? Not just like it, not just thinking it's a good thing when it applies to us only, but do we truly love it?

You can turn forward a chapter to Micah 718, and you'll see how God views mercy. Micah 718 says, who is a God like you, pardoning iniquity and passing over the transgressions of the remnants of His heritage? He does not retain His anger forever because He delights in mercy, has said. Covenant loving kindness. And in context, Micah spent an entire book condemning the Hebrew people of Israel at that time, and walked through all the judgments they'd earned.

Then he ends in hope of restoration with God if they repent. I mean, that's God's nature. God hates sin. God wants a relationship. Two keys to remember. And so God's nature, His character, delights in showing mercy and loving kindness because that allows you to also learn to hate sin and keep a relationship. That's the equation God is trying to work in us.

He does not retain His anger forever. He has so much compassion for us. Again, He gave Christ to die for our sins. And in the middle of Israel, to give a perspective how God sees this, so you have the nation of Israel. In the middle of Israel, nearly geographically, was the tabernacle. Tribe in the middle of Israel had the tabernacle in the middle of it, and in the middle of that was the Holy of Holies, and in the center of that was the Ark of the Covenant. What sat on the top of the Ark of the Covenant? The mercy seat. There was symbolism intended there.

That's how important mercy was for God. And it should be the center of our lives. It should be the center of our community as well.

That's the model for how we're to act in order to be resurrected into God's Kingdom at that final trumpet blast.

And we have to have a repentant heart, an attitude, a humble desire to change, and then live justly and mercifully.

That's the formula. It's God's desire that all would come to repentance. God wants His mercy to be accepted by all of mankind.

2 Peter 3.9. God is so long suffering toward us and not willing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance.

So it's God's desire to have a reconciled relationship. But He knows that some will not turn to Him because humans have that power He gave us of choice.

An old power of choice.

And so there's going to be some who perish.

But that's not God's desire. It's an option that we were given to choose.

God hates sin. God wants that relationship.

You know, you never need to doubt how much mercy God will show to you. John 3 16. God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son that whoever believes in Him should not perish, but have eternal life. It was out of God's love and His compassion for mankind that He offered His Son as that sacrifice. So mercy is at the heart of Christian living. Jesus Christ as He was dying, what did He cry out? He said, Father, forgive them for they know not what they do as they killed Him unjustly and mocked Him and whipped Him and on and on and on. And so we as the people of God are to be taking on the nature and character of God.

And we must be people who love mercy in order to extend mercy to others.

If we love God's mercy toward us, then we need to extend that same mercy toward others.

Oh sure, but the challenge sometimes is we want mercy for ourselves, but we want judgment for others who wrong us.

Right? We can kind of talk to God and say, God, be merciful to me. I am a sinner.

But they wronged me.

Give them what they deserve. And do you have that rationalization going on?

Do we love mercy only when it's incoming?

Or do we love to extend it outwards?

In the Monoprare in Matthew 6, Christ said we should pray, God, forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors.

So remember, it's this vital principle to remember what God extends to us in terms of forgiveness and mercy we are supposed to turn around and extend toward others.

There is this this dependency on us being willing to extend it to the freedom in which it's shown to us. God's willing to show it constantly. Forgive it any time. But then he says, what are you going to do with this? Are you starting to hate sin? Are you starting to build a relationship to be like me? Where are you at? So again, remember there are three parts mentioned by Malachi.

Mercy is this extension of compassion, but it does not dissolve justice. It does not dissolve God's law.

Christ extended compassion to the woman caught in adultery. And what did he say? Go and sin no more. Don't do it again.

Walk justly before God, in a sense. The point of mercy is to take somebody who is under a penalty, and then try to provide the opportunity to stand them back on their feet, and get them not to do it again. Go in the right direction.

Right? The final requirement is we're to walk humbly with our God.

We're to walk humbly with our God.

And that picture is following in God's footsteps. That's a better way to visualize it.

Which is this function of faith. It's this function of complete trust.

We're to recognize this awesome and amazing power of God, the rightness of His justice, the generosity of His mercy, and then respond in humble faithfulness.

We're to respond in obedience.

We should seek God for who He is, what He has done, and then our response should be to be incredibly thankful in relation, and have a relationship with Him.

God wants us to align our lives in His order, to maintain loyalty to Him, to prioritize our relationship with Him above everything else.

Just like sin, have a relationship. And when that happens, we do walk humbly and faithfully with Him. We trust God is who He says He is, and we'll do what He says He will do. You don't need to turn there, but you know, Matthew 23, 23, where Christ echoed almost exactly what Malachi said. He says, Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites, for you pay tithe of mint and anise and cumin, and have neglected the weightier matters of the law, justice and mercy and faith.

The weightier matters of the law. That is what God really wants most.

We are to obey, but we must first exercise justice, mercy, and faith.

The religious leaders were so intent on keeping the law, in the minutest details, they missed what God really desired of them, what God was trying to teach us through all the instructions of the Bible. And they got to being so precise, they take just as little leaf of a little herb and cut it into a tenth to give it as an offering. Remember the foundation. God hates sin. God wants a relationship.

That doesn't counter or void out the law. The reason Jesus was so intent on those core principles is because no one can fully extend or no one can fully live the law and keep it to its full extent. Right? He knew that. That's why he knew he had to come and give his life.

So, by trying to make some laws greater than others, we forget our need for God. We forget our need for a relationship with Him. We forget what it's all about. And that's what God is trying to help us to understand. So, as Jesus said, the time was to continue, regardless of whether they figured out its deeper meaning. But if you want to be part of the the feast trumpets when he returns, figure out its deeper meaning.

It's not just about the robotic parts. God started in Micah 6-8 saying, He has already told us what is good, but we can't do it perfectly. There is no level of performance or devotion that can make us appropriate before God. This is not some kind of a merit system to divine favor.

Justification only comes from God. It's the only place it's going to come from.

So, God put his house in the middle of Israel. He made a system so anyone could come to Him. It was about this accessibility, because God wants His people nearby.

Sacrifice, at that time, was just the language of access.

But as Hebrews 10-4 said, it's not possible that the blood of bulls and goats could take away sin.

So what did Micah mean when he said, Walk humbly with your God? Walk.

Walking a path. That's a common metaphor of living a certain kind of life.

That's what it's all about. Walking humbly with God is a call to do more than come to God with offerings, thinking we can buy God's favor.

It implies this sensitivity to living our lives with God. It's so that we see the world the way God sees the world. We act in the world the way God would act.

We allow our hearts to be broken by the things that break God's heart. We're in a relationship with Him.

And when the final requirement is placed alongside the first two, then walking with God becomes synonymous with having a heart for justice and God's level of compassion toward God and others.

These three all go together. You can't separate the three of them.

Walking with God is actually the overarching, arching category for doing justice and loving, has said. So they all fit together. And to walk with God, both parties have to be going a couple things. Let's just throw a couple analogies to think on. To be walking with God, both parties have to be going in the same direction, first of all.

You will never learn to walk with God until you know which way He is going.

And that means you then need to change your course to match His.

We need to do more than make sharp turns. When we do something wrong, we oftentimes want to make a sharp turn. We feel like, oh God, I'm changing a little bit. God wants us to make a U-turn. When we... repentance is a U-turn.

Are you making sharp turns with God, or are you making U-turns to totally go in the direction God is going? In order to walk humbly with God, we must match God's pace, His speed, His tempo, and stop easily. Either getting ahead of Him or falling behind Him. See, God will perform His purpose. One of the things we learn the most is that it will be at His pace.

And every now and then we go, God, I want to get there, and I want to get there yesterday.

We also must be going for the same purpose as God.

Otherwise, we're not doing God's will.

And finally, we must be operating under the same spiritual power. Not trying to do our walk on our own. I got this, God. You just leave me alone. I got this.

Because we have to recognize God is the source of our success.

And the instant we begin operating under the power of the flesh, we have stopped walking with God.

When we reach the point where our only option is God, then we start walking humbly with our God.

I love a prayer I read. It made me laugh. It said, Your Lord, so far today I'm doing all right. I've not gossiped, lost my temper, been greedy, grumpy, nasty, or selfish. I've not whined, cursed, or lusted. However, I'm about to get out of bed, and I will need a lot more help after this.

Isaiah 57.15 describes God as the holy and lofty one who inhabits eternity. The holy and lofty one. That perspective keeps us humble. It keeps everything in perspective.

There is no one higher, or greater, or deserving more respect and awe than our mighty God.

And that's the amazing God who gave Christ's life to help us to live justly, shows us covenant love and has said, so that we can show that to others. And He wants us to hate sin and have a relationship with Him.

Let's conclude. I'd like to return back to the meaning of the Feast of Trumpets.

Turn to John 14, verses 2-3.

John 14, 2-3.

See, God wants us to arrive at a destination, which is our place in the Kingdom of God.

John 14, verse 2. In my Father's house are many mansions. If it were not so, I would have told you, I go to repair a place for you.

And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and receive you to myself, that where I am, there you may also be.

God ultimately wants us to be at home with Him. What does the Lord require for that to happen?

To do justice, to love kindness or mercy, to walk humbly with your God.

The God who Jesus called Abba has that same expectations of us that were passed along to the Hebrew people back at the time of Malachi, or I mean, Micah.

And as Christians who have received the gracious gift of God's love, we have been delivered from slavery like Israel had been.

Bondage. Bondage to everything we can think of.

We now have the opportunity to live as Christ lived, to love as Christ loved. And if Micah were here today, I think he would ask us if we have forgotten our covenant with God. Like the Hebrew people, we would protest God. I go to church every Sabbath. I keep the Holy Days. Look, I'm here. I support my church. What do you want from me?

And Micah would say, what does the Lord require of you?

And hopefully we would answer now to do justice, to love mercy or kindness, and to walk humbly with our God.

And Micah would just nod his head, and he would say, it doesn't matter where you are on Saturdays if you're not walking humbly with your God on Sundays. And Mondays. And Tuesdays. And Wednesdays. Thursdays. And Fridays. To be resurrected at the ultimate feast of trumpets when Christ returns, we need to be aligned with God. We need to ordain our lives to live as he would have us to live. That means ordered according to his justice, sustained by his covenant loyalty and mercy, and humbly and faithfully walking in his presence in nature.