Global Week: To Act Justly
Opening Prayer:
Lord God,
Give us Your heart for the world. Show us where we can best bring Your justice to life. Reveal to us the people You want us to journey beside and share Your love with.
In Jesus’ name,
Amen.
Key Scripture:
With what shall I come before the Lord
and bow down before the exalted God?
Shall I come before him with burnt offerings,
with calves a year old?
7 Will the Lord be pleased with thousands of rams,
with ten thousand rivers of olive oil?
Shall I offer my firstborn for my transgression,
the fruit of my body for the sin of my soul?
8 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.
Micah 6:6-8
He went to Nazareth, where he had been brought up, and on the Sabbath day he went into the synagogue, as was his custom. He stood up to read, 17 and the scroll of the prophet Isaiah was handed to him. Unrolling it, he found the place where it is written:
18 “The Spirit of the Lord is on me,
because he has anointed me
to proclaim good news to the poor.
He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners
and recovery of sight for the blind,
to set the oppressed free,
19 to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.
Luke 4:16-19
12 The next day as they were leaving Bethany, Jesus was hungry. 13 Seeing in the distance a fig tree in leaf, he went to find out if it had any fruit. When he reached it, he found nothing but leaves, because it was not the season for figs. 14 Then he said to the tree, “May no one ever eat fruit from you again.” And his disciples heard him say it.
15 On reaching Jerusalem, Jesus entered the temple courts and began driving out those who were buying and selling there. He overturned the tables of the money changers and the benches of those selling doves, 16 and would not allow anyone to carry merchandise through the temple courts. 17 And as he taught them, he said, “Is it not written: ‘My house will be called a house of prayer for all nations’? But you have made it ‘a den of robbers.’”
18 The chief priests and the teachers of the law heard this and began looking for a way to kill him, for they feared him, because the whole crowd was amazed at his teaching.
19 When evening came, Jesus and his disciples went out of the city.
20 In the morning, as they went along, they saw the fig tree withered from the roots. 21 Peter remembered and said to Jesus, “Rabbi, look! The fig tree you cursed has withered!”
22 “Have faith in God,” Jesus answered. 23 “Truly I tell you, if anyone says to this mountain, ‘Go, throw yourself into the sea,’ and does not doubt in their heart but believes that what they say will happen, it will be done for them. 24 Therefore I tell you, whatever you ask for in prayer, believe that you have received it, and it will be yours. 25 And when you stand praying, if you hold anything against anyone, forgive them, so that your Father in heaven may forgive you your sins.”
Mark 11:16-26
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God requires more than just private morality from us, not just to believe the right things but to practice active mercy and kindness to others. Mercy and kindness that binds us to the person and where we remain until they are restored into the image of God. This is what doing justice looks like: to be drawn near the broken. What brings pleasure to the heart of God is for His covenant people to be drawn to the broken of this world and to share His restorative love with them.
Discussion Guide:
Overview: Micah 6:6–8
This passage contains one of the most celebrated summaries of active, ethical faith in the Hebrew Bible. Here we see God (through the prophet Micah) pulling the people away from a merely performative transactional religion and back toward true, active, faithful integrity.
The Escalation of Sacrifices (Verses 6–7) Micah uses intentional exaggeration to expose the mistake of trying to appease God through ritual bargaining:
Standard Rituals: Year-old calves (the baseline legal sacrifice).
Extravagant Display: Thousands of rams and 10,000 rivers of olive oil (an absurd, financially impossible scale).
Extreme Desperation: Giving up one's firstborn child (a tragic, pagan practice strictly condemned in Israelite law).
The Divine Requirement (Verse 8) Verse 8 answers the escalation by dismantling the premise entirely. God does not demand ritual excess, but rather three interconnected postures that can together be seen as the one acceptable active response to the heart of God:
Act Justly (Mishpat): Demonstrating active equity, public fairness, and systemic care for the vulnerable, rather than passive goodwill.
Love Mercy (Chesed): Delighting in steadfast, covenantal loyal love and kindness, extending grace willingly rather than begrudgingly.
Walk Humbly (Hatnea Lechet): Maintaining a quiet, dependent, and self-aware posture in daily fellowship with God, free from religious pride.
The central point of the passage is clear: external religious rituals are completely hollow if they are not backed by personal integrity, active public justice, and relational kindness.
Questions for Micah 6:6-8
Why do you think people sometimes prefer offering external sacrifices or ritual behaviours over internal life change and personal obedience?
What is the difference between simply doing merciful things and genuinely loving mercy?
How does "walking humbly with God" serve as the foundation for practicing justice and mercy toward others?
In what ways might modern believers rely on "religious performance" (e.g., church attendance, ministry activities, financial giving) to bypass deeper heart transformation?
Where in your current daily life—at work, home, or in your community—do you find it most challenging to "act justly"?
Practice:
Give, Pray, Go.
This week go on a prayer walk and seek the Lord as to what you might give this year, in support of our mission as a church.
Additional Resources:
For a printable version of this guide click here.