Many and various, in all ages, have been the answers to this question, but in spirit and principle they reduce themselves to the three which in these verses are tacitly rejected, that the fourth may be established for all time.
I. The first answer is, Will Levitical sacrifices suffice? "Shall I come before Him with burnt offerings, with calves of a year old?" i.e."Shall I do some outward act or acts to please God?" Men are ever tempted to believe in this virtue of doing something to ask, as they often asked our Lord, "What shall I do to inherit eternal life?" There have been attempts in all ages to revive such ceremonials as the Levitical institutes, because they are easier than true holiness, and tend to pacify and appease the perverted conscience. But God's own Word about them is plain: they perish in the using, they cannot sanctify to the purifying of the flesh.
II. If, then, we cannot please God by merely doing, can we by giving? "Will the Lord be pleased with thousands of rams, and ten thousands of rivers of oil?" Surely not one of us is so exquisitely foolish as to imagine that he can by gifts win his way one step nearer to the great white throne.
III. What third experiment shall we try? Shall it be by suffering? Shall I, lacerating my heart in its tenderest affection, "give my firstborn for my transgression, the fruit of my body for the sin of my soul?" Has any man ever found these sufferings sufficient? Has any man ever testified that he found forgiveness through voluntary torture? Or is not that true which is said of the prophets of Baal: "They leaped upon the altar, and cried aloud, and cut themselves after their manner, and it came to pass that there was neither voice, nor any to answer, nor any that regarded."
IV. What, then, is the true way of pleasing God? What is the prophet's answer? By being.By being just and merciful, and humble before our God. It is the answer of all the prophets, it is the answer of all the Apostles, it is the answer of Christ Himself. God needs not our services, He needs not our gifts, least of all does He need our suffering; but He needs us, our hearts, our lives, our love.
F. W. Farrar, Silence and Voices of God,p. 71.
References: Micah 6:6-8. J. Vaughan, Christian World Pulpit,vol. xix., p. 237; Old Testament Outlines,p. 274; A. Watson, Good Words,1872, p. 131; C. Kingsley, Sermons for the Times,p. 93.