We have been looking at Micah chapter 6 verse 8 which says, “He has shown you, O mortal, what is good. And what does the Lord require of you? To act justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly with your God.” We have already discussed acting justly and loving mercy. In this episode we will dive into walking humbly with your God, or righteousness.What does it mean to be righteous? Most theologians would say it means being in right standing with God. But what does this mean? Being in right standing with God and walking with God are relational terms. They mean that a person is relationally in a good place with God. A person who is righteous understands that God loves them, and they love God. They have freely accepted the mercy provided to them by God through Jesus. 

The Hebrew prophet Micah records this message in his writing, chapter 6 verse 8 says, “He has shown you, O mortal, what is good. And what does the Lord require of you? To act justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly with your God.” These actions are very important to God. In the previous episode we looked at justice and how to live justly. In this episode we are going to look at mercy and how God can be both just and merciful at the same time. This will allow us to understand how we can love mercy.God is the source of justice. In God’s view of justice, the goal is repentance by the person. The root of justice is love, not God's holiness. How can mercy be a part of true justice? How can we love mercy?

The Hebrew prophet Micah records this message in his writing, chapter 6 verse 8 says, “He has shown you, O mortal, what is good. And what does the Lord require of you? To act justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly with your God.” These actions are very important to God. Over the next few episodes we will unpack this verse by looking deeper at what each action entails. In this episode we are going to look at living justly, which means we need to understand what justice really involves. We will begin by getting an overview of what the Bible says about justice, and then move on to the important foundational properties of justice, which are morality, truth, and righteousness.

In this episode we will examine the works of the Apostle Paul found in the New Testament, including his letter to Philemon, to see what his view of slavery was. You might be surprised.

In this episode we will begin looking at the New Testament and what it has to say about slavery. We will start with Jesus and then quickly look at the book of Acts.I believe the best summary for the New Testament concerning slavery is found in Galatians chapter 3 verse 28: “There is neither Jew nor Gentile, slave nor free, nor is there male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus.” Equality is the focus for human relationships. This equality is punctuated by love for one another, which is where we begin as we look at Jesus.There are three scenes in the Gospels that I believe state emphatically the position God has toward slavery. The first is found in Matthew chapter 22 verses 34 through 40. But maybe the slave isn’t your “neighbor” that is meant in Leviticus? This question leads us to the second scene that we find in Luke chapter 10 verses 25 through 37. There is one more scene in which Jesus is answering questions from His disciples about the end of everything. Matthew chapter 25 verses 31 through 46 is usually titled, “The Judgment of the Sheep and the Goats.” Jesus tells a parable beginning with chapter 19 verse 30 and ending in chapter 20 verse 16 in which He explains the phrase, "The last shall be first and the first last."Acts chapters 4 and 6 show us examples of the early church putting in place systems to prevent slavery among its members.

In this episode, we want to look at what God told the people about slavery and its causes through the Hebrew prophets. We will look at prophetic words to Israel and other countries spoken through the prophets Isaiah, Jeremiah, Amos, and Joel. We will see the condemnation and punishment God announces for those who are involved in slavery. 

In this episode we will look at some of the prohibitions to stop institutional slavery, and some of the laws designed to prevent slavery by stopping poverty and injustice.Concerning foreigners, God does ban institutional slavery within Israel. The first thing that is to keep Israel from making slaves out of those who are permanent residents of Israel but not of the family of Abraham is the command to love them. The second thing that is to keep Israel from institutional slavery is that the stranger is under the same law as the Israeli. There are some passages of Scripture that we might not think pertain to slavery, but they do. Within each society there are moral deficiencies and practices that help to feed the need or desire for the behavior of slavery. There are also peripheral actions to these main practices that exacerbate the problem of slavery. Whenever we try to combat any negative moral actions, there are always these side issues that feed the main practices. God made laws that targeted the moral deficiencies and practices, along with the peripheral actions and attitudes that feed them. 

In this episode we want to look at the laws God gave to Moses for Israel to follow and how they relate to slavery. In Exodus chapter 20 God gives the Ten Commandments to Moses, beginning in verse 2 with the words, “I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of Egypt, out of the land of slavery.” From the very beginning of the Law, God attaches the idea of freedom from slavery to that Law. It is extremely telling that the first specific issue God addresses in Exodus chapter 21, right after the Ten Commandments, is slavery. I believe this strengthens the idea that the prohibition of slavery is a key value within the Kingdom of God. 

Many people mistakenly believe that slavery was only a problem in the 1600s to the mid to late 1800s in the United States and England. But slavery did not end on Juneteenth (June 19, 1865). Even though it is euphemistically called human trafficking, which makes it sound like you are simply transporting people from one place to another, there is rampant slavery in the United States and around the world at this present time. People are kidnapped and then sold to be sex slaves, or other types of slaves. Some immigrants to the United States end up becoming slaves to those who helped them enter the country.It comes as no surprise, then, that, because of our history and our present, one of the most hotly debated topics concerning the Bible is its view of slavery. In this series of episodes we want to examine the question “What does the Bible really say about slavery?” When looking at a topic like this, we cannot simply pull out a couple of choice verses from their proper context that seem to prove our point. The problem with doing this is that we do not get to understand the full meaning of someone’s speech, or the complete intent behind their words. While we will be looking at some of the “proof texts” that people like to point to, we will also be looking at the texts surrounding those verses, as well as gaining an overall view of what the Bible is saying about slavery. We will discover that slavery is much more of a dominant topic in the Bible than we originally thought. Through the biblical writers of Moses, the Hebrew prophets, the letters of Paul, and the teachings of Jesus, we will see that, from the very beginning God demonstrates that slavery is not a part of the Kingdom of God and is something to be fought against and eliminated in this world.

In this episode we will look at the question, “Is God good?” The answer to this question becomes a basis for how we interpret the Bible. Some of the events we see related in the Bible, and the sayings of Jesus, must all be looked at through the lens of either a good God or a bad one. To move this further, in our own life, the events we experience must be seen through the lens of a good or bad God. While we will not be looking at the problem of evil in this episode, how we see God directly relates to how we view evil and its work within humanity. If God is bad, then there is no problem understanding why evil is in the world. However, if God is good, we have difficulty understanding how evil entered this universe.We will look at the holiness of God; creation; the incarnation, death, and resurrection of Jesus to show that God is good.