Josh Turansky: We get to start a new series this morning in Amos.
Josh Turansky: We're going to spend seven weeks.
Josh Turansky: Originally I had said nine weeks.
Josh Turansky: We're going to spend seven weeks in the book of Amos.
Josh Turansky: We're going to look at the first two chapters this morning.
Josh Turansky: What I want you to remember as we go through the book of Amos is what we've talked about before, that God has created you to be a blessable, image-bearing, covenant partner with God.
Josh Turansky: You're blessable.
Josh Turansky: In Genesis chapter one, God created the humans, but then he blessed them.
Josh Turansky: You're a blessable, image-bearing covenant partner with God.
Josh Turansky: And now we're invited, not forced, but invited to follow Jesus according to his new covenant, and we are following Jesus as his kingdom comes on earth as it is in heaven.
Josh Turansky: And so when we step into any part of the Bible, we're stepping into the Bible as those blessable, image-bearing covenant partners.
Josh Turansky: Where we're wanting to learn how do we follow Jesus from the book of Amos?
Josh Turansky: Right?
Josh Turansky: So this is an obscure book.
Josh Turansky: It's in your Old Testament.
Josh Turansky: It may be a book that you've never read before.
Josh Turansky: And it's not on many people's like top five books of the Bible.
Josh Turansky: But that's okay.
Josh Turansky: You're going to be Amos experts by the time we're done.
Josh Turansky: Seven weeks in the book of Amos.
Josh Turansky: As I plan out like the preaching schedule for the church, we like to go through books of the Bible generally.
Josh Turansky: I don't do many series.
Josh Turansky: We just finished up Paul's first missionary journey from Acts 13 and 14.
Josh Turansky: Now we're doing Acts.
Josh Turansky: And I like to jump from both from the New Testament to the Old Testament back to the New Testament.
Josh Turansky: So when we're done with Amos, we're going to 2 Corinthians.
Josh Turansky: Now some people have a negative view or perspective on the Old Testament.
Josh Turansky: If you're new to the Bible and you have a physical Bible in front of you, the bigger chunk on the left-hand side is the Old Testament.
Josh Turansky: And sometimes people don't like the Old Testament because they're like, well, where's the story of Jesus?
Josh Turansky: Like I'm just learning to read the Bible, but Jesus doesn't show up anywhere in Genesis or Exodus or Leviticus, Numbers.
Josh Turansky: Where's Jesus?
Josh Turansky: Other people have a negative view of the Old Testament because it's long.
Josh Turansky: And sometimes it feels like you're bogged down in the history of the nation of Israel.
Josh Turansky: Some people may feel like, man, I don't like the Old Testament because it's got these outdated social codes of how society is supposed to work.
Josh Turansky: I hear that talking in the back there.
Josh Turansky: You gotta, you gotta, you gotta, like, so we can all hear.
Josh Turansky: Exactly, exactly.
Josh Turansky: Thank you.
Josh Turansky: You're jumping ahead in my notes.
Josh Turansky: From the beginning.
Josh Turansky: But I I'm still in my negative list here.
Josh Turansky: You're jumping ahead, you're you're jumping into the positive part.
Josh Turansky: That's right.
Josh Turansky: So the other issue that people have with the Old Testament is that it's like um not your culture, right?
Josh Turansky: It's referencing all these things about culture where it's like a covenant's made by splitting an animal in half, right?
Josh Turansky: Or there's things about garments or um uh monetary systems and and kingdoms, and um, and so there's this just this gap, right?
Josh Turansky: All of those are these gaps that can be felt as you're learning about what the Bible is saying.
Josh Turansky: But this is the thing that you've got to understand, kind of like what Felicia's saying, but I think the most important thing to understand when you look at your Old Testament, you need to know that that was Jesus' Bible.
Josh Turansky: There was no New Testament yet.
Josh Turansky: So when Jesus talked about God's word, he was talking about your Old Testament.
Josh Turansky: And it was also the proof text that the apostles would use as they're explaining Jesus to new converts, they're saying, listen, you've got to understand Jesus in the light of the Old Testament.
Josh Turansky: Now, the church has made mistakes over the last 2,000 years where they've gotten away and they've said, like, well, the Old Testament is not for today, but man, spend some time.
Josh Turansky: First of all, just obviously it's Jesus' Bible, it was used by the apostles, but you start looking at it, you start like one of my favorite resources is like the Bible project.
Josh Turansky: And one of the things that they do is they help you see the design patterns.
Josh Turansky: The first, just the first nine chapters of the Bible.
Josh Turansky: The design and the design patterns of Genesis 1 through 9 are unparalleled literature.
Josh Turansky: The repetition, the inversion, the irony, what's going on in your Old Testament.
Josh Turansky: I've got this book I just randomly was looking at my books yesterday, and it's called uh the serpent in Samuel.
Josh Turansky: Some guy went and he found all of the ways in which Genesis 3, where you've got the serpent tempting Eve, he went and found all the times where the serpent without being named is being um the motif is being surfaced in the books of 1st and 2nd Samuel.
Josh Turansky: I mean, your Old Testament is beautiful.
Josh Turansky: What is there?
Josh Turansky: What's like the coded language where it's kind of like you're supposed to see the hyperlinks between stuff?
Josh Turansky: It's just incredible, incredible.
Josh Turansky: So as a church, we spend time in both the Old and the New Testament, and we're gonna do that for the next seven weeks.
Josh Turansky: Let me read to you Amos one and two.
Josh Turansky: Amos one and two, it says this the words of Amos, who was one of the sheep breeders from Tekoah, what he saw regarding Israel in the days of King Uzziah of Judah and Jeroboam, son of Jehoash, king of Israel, two years before the earthquake.
Josh Turansky: He said, The Lord reigns from Zion and makes his voice heard from Jerusalem, the pastures of the shepherds mourn, and the summit of Carmel withers.
Josh Turansky: In a minute we're going to pray, settle our hearts before the Lord.
Josh Turansky: But before we do that, I just want to briefly introduce to you this character, Amos.
Josh Turansky: Here we see that he is a shepherd.
Josh Turansky: We'll see in a later chapter that he's also a sycamore fig dresser.
Josh Turansky: Or in other words, he would take care of sycamore trees and harvest sycamore figs.
Josh Turansky: He's from Tekoa, the southern tribe of Judah, and he was called by God to preach to the wealthier nation of the kingdom of Israel in the days of Jeroboam the Second.
Josh Turansky: He was a prophet.
Josh Turansky: And what it's important to understand is that prophets are not primarily people who guess the future.
Josh Turansky: They are God's covenant attorneys who explain what is wrong right now and what God's covenant, sorry, what is wrong right now and what God is about to do about it.
Josh Turansky: So a prophet is one who oftentimes, we use this metaphor to call the kettle black, who just speaks truth in that very moment.
Josh Turansky: Now there are times where they jump over and the Spirit of God is giving them predictions about the future that come true.
Josh Turansky: But primarily these prophets are these bold men or women that stand in the middle of their culture and speak on God's behalf, saying, This is what God thinks about this moment.
Josh Turansky: And with that, let's bow our heads and pray.
Josh Turansky: Lord, we ask that as we listen to the words of Amos the prophet and we look at how you guided his prophetic speech, God, we pray that you'd speak into our lives individually.
Josh Turansky: We give you permission to speak to us, and we give you permission to speak into our church as a whole.
Josh Turansky: God, where there are things that are wrong, where we need correction.
Josh Turansky: Lord, you have permission.
Josh Turansky: We know that you love us, and you only point out the things that are wrong because you love, you desperately love humans, and you want them to get it right.
Josh Turansky: And so, God, we we just receive from you.
Josh Turansky: We we bow our hearts before you.
Josh Turansky: We come in humility before you with an attitude where we're ready to say, yes, and amen.
Josh Turansky: We're gonna take what you say, God.
Josh Turansky: We're gonna obey you.
Josh Turansky: Lord, we want to obey you this week.
Josh Turansky: We say these things in Jesus' name.
Josh Turansky: Amen.
Josh Turansky: Let me show you a map so just you have a little context.
Josh Turansky: Where again, we're talking about Israel, the nation of Israel, but broken into two pieces.
Josh Turansky: You'll remember in the story of Israel, they had three kings before the nation broke into two parts.
Josh Turansky: Who was the first king?
Josh Turansky: Saul, that's right.
Josh Turansky: Who was the second king?
Josh Turansky: David, that's right.
Josh Turansky: And who was the third king?
Josh Turansky: Solomon, that's right.
Josh Turansky: Solomon was the third king.
Josh Turansky: Now, Solomon committed a grave error.
Josh Turansky: He allowed his hundreds of wives to draw his heart away from the Lord, and he became an idol worshiper.
Josh Turansky: He would worship Yahweh, the God of Israel, and he would worship these pagan gods.
Josh Turansky: And a prophet came to Solomon and said, Because you have erred in this way, and you have a divided heart, God is going to divide the nation.
Josh Turansky: And so as history unfolded, you ended up with a northern kingdom of Israel and a southern kingdom of Judah.
Josh Turansky: I know the map's hard to see.
Josh Turansky: And I'm as we're working on the website, one of the things that I'm hoping to do is make this so that you can see my notes on your phone in front of you as well as on the screen.
Josh Turansky: But for this morning, we have the northern kingdom of Israel and the southern kingdom of Judah.
Josh Turansky: And this guy, Amos, he is from Judah, the southern tribe, but his message is going to be primarily for the northern nation, the northern tribes that are called Israel proper.
Josh Turansky: So you have north and south, is really the division.
Josh Turansky: Now, if you imagine this northern kingdom of Israel in Amos' day, think of like a booming stock market, strong borders, busy churches, and God uses Amos to say to this very strong nation, something is terribly wrong.
Josh Turansky: Something is terribly wrong.
Josh Turansky: So the nation itself is in a season of prosperity.
Josh Turansky: They're doing really well, they're really strong, they're confident, and yet God sends this prophet Amos to say, there is a disease in this nation.
Josh Turansky: There are things that are not right in God's eyes.
Josh Turansky: Remember, you're supposed to be a covenant people, and you are, at a societal level, violating your covenant with God.
Josh Turansky: Amos's central burden is that the covenant God who cares about justice as an expression of true worship.
Josh Turansky: God cares.
Josh Turansky: The covenant-making God cares about justice in society as an expression of worship.
Josh Turansky: Later in the book, he's going to cry out, let justice roll down like waters that uh Martin Luther King Jr.
Josh Turansky: quoted from Amos in his speech.
Josh Turansky: But chapters one and two are this dramatic setup for this prophetic message.
Josh Turansky: This morning we're going to look at all the way through up until the end of chapter two.
Josh Turansky: And what you need to know is that verses three, Amos one, three through two, five, they function as a geographical trap or rhetorical encirclement.
Josh Turansky: Here's what I mean.
Josh Turansky: There are seven oracles, seven prophetic messages that Amos aims against the surrounding nations: Damascus, Gaza, Tyre, Edom, Amon, Moab, and Judah.
Josh Turansky: And they each begin with a pattern.
Josh Turansky: There's actually a pattern way that these messages go.
Josh Turansky: Here's another map.
Josh Turansky: And you'll see on this map as well as the last that you have these surroundings.
Josh Turansky: Here we have the southern nation of Judah, northern nation of Israel, but we have these surrounding regions.
Josh Turansky: So here's Gaza, right?
Josh Turansky: Gaza.
Josh Turansky: Up here you have Tyre.
Josh Turansky: You have Damascus over there.
Josh Turansky: We have Ammon, Moab, Edom.
Josh Turansky: And basically the message of Amos is it draws a circle around the nation of Israel, including Judah.
Josh Turansky: He has this indictment that God speaks through Amos against these surrounding seven nations.
Josh Turansky: And then after he's done with that, the center of the bullseye, or the bullseye that's at the center, is the nation of Israel.
Josh Turansky: So Amos goes through this exercise and God speaks through Amos to say, all of you have something that's wrong.
Josh Turansky: And God is going to deal with you for those things.
Josh Turansky: So there's a template.
Josh Turansky: If you look in verse 3, you'll see.
Josh Turansky: You'll see that it always starts.
Josh Turansky: For each one of these nations, it's the Lord says, then he says, God says, I will not relent from punishing you.
Josh Turansky: I'm not going to hold back my punishment.
Josh Turansky: I'm not going to stop.
Josh Turansky: I'm not going to relent.
Josh Turansky: You are going to be punished.
Josh Turansky: And then there's this repeated phrase, for three crimes, even four.
Josh Turansky: In our culture, we talk about three strikes, you're out.
Josh Turansky: For them, it's basically four strikes, you're out.
Josh Turansky: It's you've done these three things, but because of this fourth, you've crossed a line.
Josh Turansky: God's been merciful to you in these three things, but with this fourth, it tipped the scale where God has to deal with you.
Josh Turansky: And then he says, because they.
Josh Turansky: So there's always a description of what exactly they're doing wrong.
Josh Turansky: And they're doing different things wrong.
Josh Turansky: And then the next part of the pattern is that God says, I, therefore, I will send fire.
Josh Turansky: And it's always fire against the citadels, or your version might be fire against your palaces.
Josh Turansky: It's always this like it's always that God's going to send fire against them.
Josh Turansky: And so he covers Damascus, Gaza, Tyre, Edom, Ammon, Moab, and Judah.
Josh Turansky: We're going to just take one.
Josh Turansky: We're going to look at Tyre, and I just want to show you this example played out in verses 9 and 10.
Josh Turansky: The Lord says, right?
Josh Turansky: Each one starts with that.
Josh Turansky: The Lord says, I will not relent from punishing Tyre for three crimes, even four, because they handed over a whole community of exiles to Edom and broke a treaty of brotherhood.
Josh Turansky: So do you see here we have God speaking, he's not going to relent.
Josh Turansky: There's three crimes, even four, and then he's going to give them.
Josh Turansky: It's because here's what you've done.
Josh Turansky: And in Tyre's instance, they've gone and they've handed over, they've taken a community that was amongst them of exiles, and they handed them over to Edom and broke a treaty of brotherhood.
Josh Turansky: One of the themes that comes up in the book of Amos is this word transgression.
Josh Turansky: In Hebrew, it's pasha.
Josh Turansky: We use the word uh transgression almost synonymous with sin, violation, um, iniquity.
Josh Turansky: But in Hebrew, these Greek words for sin, or in Hebrew, these Hebrew words for sin, they mean different things.
Josh Turansky: Transgression refers to a violation of a relationship.
Josh Turansky: And here we see treachery by those people of Tyre, that they're taking exiles and handing over.
Josh Turansky: We don't know why they handed them over, at least the text here doesn't tell us.
Josh Turansky: But God looks at that and he says, That right there crossed a line, and that's why I'm gonna deal with you.
Josh Turansky: And here's how he's gonna deal with them.
Josh Turansky: Therefore, I will send fire against the walls of Tyre, and it will consume the citadels.
Josh Turansky: And that's it.
Josh Turansky: That's all that Amos has to say to Tyre.
Josh Turansky: This is what's gonna happen to you.
Josh Turansky: So he does this again with Damascus, Gaza, Tyre, Edom, Ammon, Moab, and Judah in a circumference around the nation of Israel.
Josh Turansky: We read through this.
Josh Turansky: We read through each of these accounts.
Josh Turansky: You can look at it this afternoon if you want.
Josh Turansky: And the inclination in our hearts is to say, yes, Lord, judge those war crimes, those traffickers, those who profit from the sufferings of others.
Josh Turansky: We want a God who takes these things seriously, especially if we're the victim.
Josh Turansky: If God looked at genocide, trafficking, and violence, and he said, ah, it's no big deal, you're not my chosen people, we would not call him loving.
Josh Turansky: We would call him a monster.
Josh Turansky: And so when we come through, so so you read through this and it's like, man, that's yucky.
Josh Turansky: What am I gonna do with that in my morning devotions?
Josh Turansky: You know, it's like he's sending fire on Tyre, fire on Damascus, fire on Amos.
Josh Turansky: But you need to know that the God of the Bible sees not just Israel, but he sees the whole picture.
Josh Turansky: He knows who's violated you, he knows who's wronged you, he knows your station in life, and it doesn't get past him.
Josh Turansky: The reality, the theological reality that comes forward is that God is omniscient.
Josh Turansky: He knows everything.
Josh Turansky: He knows exactly what's going on in Tyre.
Josh Turansky: He knows that these exiles that were there in Tyre were vulnerable.
Josh Turansky: And when Tyre said, ah, we're sending you off to Edom, he knew that individuals, families, kids were hurt.
Josh Turansky: And God says, when you did that, you crossed the line.
Josh Turansky: It wasn't just three things, that was your fourth thing that you did, and I'm gonna send fire against you.
Josh Turansky: And that's the God that we want to follow.
Josh Turansky: We want a God who cares deeply about injustice.
Josh Turansky: Well, we're gonna turn to Israel, and we're gonna begin to focus in on um what Amos had to say to Israel because.
Josh Turansky: Each of these surrounding nations, they just got one or two verses.
Josh Turansky: But Israel's going to get the whole 10, 11 verses here at the back half of chapter 2.
Josh Turansky: It says, The Lord says, I will not relent from punishing Israel for three crimes, even four.
Josh Turansky: Notice the same pattern, the same treatment that God does with the surrounding nations is the same pattern for Israel.
Josh Turansky: It's because they sell a righteous person for silver and a needy person for a pair of sandals.
Josh Turansky: Here's what you need to know.
Josh Turansky: If you are well off, if you're well off, you and I, we have a moral obligation for those who are powerless, vulnerable, and poor.
Josh Turansky: You do not, at least the picture that comes forward in the book of Amos is that you don't live in isolation.
Josh Turansky: As much as you may want to say, oh, that's over there, that's a different city, that's a different geography.
Josh Turansky: No, the Bible says that if you are a position, if you're a person of means and power, you have a moral obligation towards those in your community who are powerless, vulnerable, and poor.
Josh Turansky: God's chosen people in this text get a treatment, get a focused treatment from God while it follows the same pattern.
Josh Turansky: What comes forward is that you're my people, so I'm gonna, I've got some special words for you.
Josh Turansky: It's kind of like parenting, right?
Josh Turansky: Like you might go on a field trip with a bunch of kids, and your kids are on the field trip, and you might give a little bit of structure and tell some kids like, hey, shut up, you know, you're in the in the bus, you gotta calm down, kids.
Josh Turansky: But man, when it's your kid that's speaking up, you got some special words for them, right?
Josh Turansky: You got a different relationship with them.
Josh Turansky: Yeah.
Josh Turansky: And that that's how it is for God as he's working with um with the nation of Israel.
Josh Turansky: And so he says to them that he has there's three crimes, even four, and then he's gonna begin to name them.
Josh Turansky: And we're gonna go through a couple verses here where there's specific things that Israel is doing wrong.
Josh Turansky: First of all, they sell a righteous person for silver and a needy person for a pair of sandals.
Josh Turansky: Do you see that?
Josh Turansky: Because they sell a righteous person, they sell a righteous person for silver and a needy person for a pair of sandals.
Josh Turansky: This likely refers to perverting justice for a bribe or even using debt slavery to sell people into servitude.
Josh Turansky: The point is not the footwear, but the triviality that a poor person is sold or handed over for an absurdly small amount.
Josh Turansky: It just trifles in terms of the value of a human life.
Josh Turansky: We have wealthy people, powerful people making decisions about individuals and families as if they're a pair of crocs.
Josh Turansky: You have a pair of crocs?
Josh Turansky: Got a phone.
Josh Turansky: Grab that phone.
Josh Turansky: And so God cares.
Josh Turansky: Who is God defending here?
Josh Turansky: The needy person, right?
Josh Turansky: The righteous person who may be righteous but powerless.
Josh Turansky: And God's saying, look, as a society, those of you that have means and have power, you're treating other humans, poor people, as if they're worth a pair of crocs.
Josh Turansky: Isn't that crazy?
Josh Turansky: A few years ago, in in 2018, uh Baltimore City decided that Perkins homes needed to be torn down and redeveloped.
Josh Turansky: If you're new to the city, that's a housing development that's less than a mile from here.
Josh Turansky: There were 605 or 604 apartment buildings.
Josh Turansky: There's Section 8 housing.
Josh Turansky: So the poor lived there.
Josh Turansky: Some of you live there, right?
Josh Turansky: You got an you got a stipend to be able to live there.
Josh Turansky: And those of you that live there, you know that the city came, they had meetings with the neighborhood, and they said, listen, we're gonna do this in a gentle way.
Josh Turansky: We're gonna move you out just one apartment at a time, and and we're gonna move you out, we're gonna help you find housing, and um, but we're not gonna move your neighbors out because we're just gonna do it one building at a time.
Josh Turansky: Once we move you out, we'll tear down that building, we'll build a new one, and you can come move back in, and then we'll we'll tear your neighbor's building down, and um, we'll do it in a phased way.
Josh Turansky: Meetings and meetings and you know, neighborhood council meetings.
Josh Turansky: How do we how do we be gentle?
Josh Turansky: How do we care for this neighborhood of the most vulnerable?
Josh Turansky: They got approval, they got the city approved the thing, they wanted a grant of I think $35 million from the federal government to do the project, got greenlit, got approved, and I think it was in October 2018.
Josh Turansky: I started hearing, oh no, they're moving everybody out in 30 days, 60 days.
Josh Turansky: Everybody's gotta go.
Josh Turansky: They said the infrastructure is were you there?
Josh Turansky: Yeah.
Josh Turansky: They said, oh, it's the infrastructure.
Josh Turansky: The infrastructure we we can't do it how we said.
Josh Turansky: Everybody's gotta go.
Josh Turansky: It was just this violent process.
Josh Turansky: And I attended as an as uh representing the church and representing uh the neighborhood, and I looked at this and it was just like that is wrong.
Josh Turansky: That is that is like a violation of the poor, that it was more convenient to just be like, yep, whoop, we're wiping the whole thing out.
Josh Turansky: That's the kind of thing where God is watching that happen.
Josh Turansky: People of power who decide, you know what, we're in power, we can make this decision, and nobody's gonna be able to to um nobody's gonna be able to like oppose us.
Josh Turansky: There's nobody has the power.
Josh Turansky: Who's gonna oppose?
Josh Turansky: They will complain, but but there's nobody that's just gonna be like stand up and say that's that's wrong and have any influence.
Josh Turansky: And that's the type of thing that God's looking at in Israel, the northern tribe of Israel, the kingdom of Israel, and he's saying, This stuff is wrong.
Josh Turansky: Verse 7 says this they trample the heads of the poor on the dust of the ground, and they obstruct the path of the needy.
Josh Turansky: A man and his father have sexual relations with the same girl, profaning my holy name.
Josh Turansky: So they trample.
Josh Turansky: It's a this vivid picture of crushing the poor.
Josh Turansky: Imagine someone's face just being pressed into the dirt.
Josh Turansky: It covers both the physical and legal oppression, grinding the poor down.
Josh Turansky: Taxes, rent, interests, harsh labor until they cannot lift their heads.
Josh Turansky: God cares.
Josh Turansky: God cares if you're a person of means and a person of influence, he cares how you operate in society.
Josh Turansky: If you are that poor person, he cares for you deeply.
Josh Turansky: He sees your head being tread down and being pressed down.
Josh Turansky: He talks, he goes on, and he says, he talks about the obstruction of the path of the needy.
Josh Turansky: The way, like the way that you're gonna go, right?
Josh Turansky: You've got you've got a path that you want to go in life.
Josh Turansky: They block, there's these people of power who are blocking the afflicted from getting justice and moving forward in life.
Josh Turansky: Now, listen, listen, if you're a person of means, it is very easy to be like, well, it's not my problem.
Josh Turansky: It's not my problem, right?
Josh Turansky: It's very easy to put yourself in a position where you just kind of be like, well, tough, man.
Josh Turansky: You know, you you you made your bed, you got to lie in it, right?
Josh Turansky: You're poor, and maybe you're poor because you made bad decisions.
Josh Turansky: It's it's easy if you're a person of means to just kind of like shrug your shoulders and not realize that maybe you're obstructing the path of the person who is needy.
Josh Turansky: Then he goes on, and he talks about this man and his father having sex with the same girl.
Josh Turansky: This is likely a cultic, um, like a cult prostitute at a temple.
Josh Turansky: And they're having some kind of sexual, there's some kind of sexual exploitation.
Josh Turansky: And this would be like analogous to our human trafficking that would happen today.
Josh Turansky: It's not like these girls were like, oh yeah, I want to be a temple prostitute.
Josh Turansky: No, they would be forced into this horrible position, and they're being taken advantage of both by this father and son.
Josh Turansky: It's a picture of generational corruption.
Josh Turansky: Hold on.
Josh Turansky: It's sin passing from the father to the son and normalizing abuse.
Josh Turansky: And so we have this idea: the poor are under their boots, and the vulnerable women are in their beds, and God says, profaning my name, that's what you're doing.
Josh Turansky: You are giving me a bad name.
Josh Turansky: Did you see that at the end there?
Josh Turansky: He says, You're profaning my holy name.
Josh Turansky: You see, as much as Israel as a kingdom had rebelled against God and they were worshiping idols, they were still God's covenant people.
Josh Turansky: They still were the they were Yahweh's people.
Josh Turansky: And they represented to those surrounding nations Yahweh.
Josh Turansky: And this is how they're acting.
Josh Turansky: And God's saying, you're making me look bad to those surrounding nations.
Josh Turansky: Now, I know Christians don't ever do that.
Josh Turansky: Like we don't ever make God look bad in society.
Josh Turansky: Right?
Josh Turansky: That's the idea here.
Josh Turansky: That's the idea here is that these, the behavior of these people in society was profaning God's name.
Josh Turansky: And so the the the um the indictments continue.
Josh Turansky: Remember, Amos is acting like a covenant lawyer, an attorney that's indicting this northern kingdom.
Josh Turansky: And he says this they stretch out beside every altar on garments taken as collateral, in the house of their God, they drink wine obtained through fines.
Josh Turansky: It's the picture of wealthy worshippers lounging by altars, likely on shrines and shrine feasts, and they're relaxed, they're satisfied.
Josh Turansky: But notice he says this you're stretched out beside every altar on garments that are taken as collateral.
Josh Turansky: One of the interesting things that comes up in the first five books of Moses, the Torah, is that God allowed for a person's cloak to be used as the asset backing a loan, right?
Josh Turansky: When you go to get a loan, they look at what assets do you have that can be used as collateral or to back your loan.
Josh Turansky: Well, God said in the Torah through Moses that a person's cloak can be used like a pawn shop, right?
Josh Turansky: You can use the cloak at the pawn shop.
Josh Turansky: But in in Deuteronomy, it said that the cloak, whether the loan was repaid or not, the cloak had to be returned at the end of the night.
Josh Turansky: Because that was the only way to warm yourself through the night.
Josh Turansky: That was your only protection through the desert chill that they would face.
Josh Turansky: And yet these people in the northern kingdom of Israel, they were using that garment as a cushion as they're worshiping their pagan altar, at their pagan altars, their pagan idols.
Josh Turansky: The cushion is under their elbows.
Josh Turansky: It's while it's supposed to be the only coat of some poor person out there.
Josh Turansky: And then they're drinking wine.
Josh Turansky: They're drinking wine in the house of their God that was obtained through fines.
Josh Turansky: So they're going to their church essentially, having communion in their church setting to modernize it.
Josh Turansky: But it was obtained through these like gross fines, these societally endorsed fines.
Josh Turansky: Anybody ever park in like a bus stop?
Josh Turansky: Yeah, that's a fine, right?
Josh Turansky: One time I challenged a ticket from Fells Point like eight years ago, um, and I went to traffic court, and it was a great learning excuse.
Josh Turansky: Everybody should go to traffic court because you learn a lot in traffic court if you have like a half a day to waste.
Josh Turansky: And um the judge sits there and he listens to different people who've gotten fined, and they have really good excuses.
Josh Turansky: Like one lady, she was a nurse, and she had come to pick up, she was uh like a caretaker for somebody who was um handicapped.
Josh Turansky: So she parked in the handicapped parking spot in front of the house to get her patient.
Josh Turansky: But she didn't have the handicapped stickers, she got the $502 fine for parking there.
Josh Turansky: And so that judge, the judge listened to the case and he was willing to knock down the fine to like $25 or something like that.
Josh Turansky: But there's all these different scenarios that happen in society where fines are given out, and in this society, there's fines being given out, probably to the poor, the needy, and then that revenue is being used to go and worship in the house of their gods.
Josh Turansky: How perverted is that?
Josh Turansky: Like, how messed up is that?
Josh Turansky: They brought their injustice to church with them.
Josh Turansky: The very coat they took from the poor became the cushion in worship.
Josh Turansky: The wine they wrung out of the venerable became their communion cup.
Josh Turansky: It's a serious, serious indictment.
Josh Turansky: And so God says, Listen, we got some history here.
Josh Turansky: You ever did that with your kids?
Josh Turansky: Say, look, look, we got we got some history.
Josh Turansky: Like you didn't just come into my life today.
Josh Turansky: We got some history.
Josh Turansky: And God goes through their history with them.
Josh Turansky: He says to them, Yet I destroyed the Amorites as Israel advanced.
Josh Turansky: This goes back to the story of being in the wilderness for 40 years, and God's wiping out Israel's enemies as they're going into the land.
Josh Turansky: He destroyed the Amorites.
Josh Turansky: And he describes the Amorites, their height was like the cedars.
Josh Turansky: He was as sturdy as the oaks.
Josh Turansky: So you had these nations and these tribes that were compared to sturdy trees.
Josh Turansky: And God wiped those sturdy trees out on Israel's behalf.
Josh Turansky: I destroyed his fruit above and his roots beneath.
Josh Turansky: And I brought you out of the land of Egypt.
Josh Turansky: I led you 40 years in the wilderness in order to possess the land of the Amorites.
Josh Turansky: I raised up some of your sons as prophets, and some of your young men as Nazarites.
Josh Turansky: In other words, I gifted to you as a nation godly people, consecrated people.
Josh Turansky: Is this not the case, Israelite?
Josh Turansky: This is the Lord's declaration.
Josh Turansky: It's posed as a question.
Josh Turansky: Do you remember your history?
Josh Turansky: Do you remember what God has done for you?
Josh Turansky: But then look at verse 12.
Josh Turansky: But you made the Nazarite drink wine.
Josh Turansky: One of the things that a Nazarite was was their life, their whole life was just different.
Josh Turansky: Kind of like a John the Baptist.
Josh Turansky: They're consecrated to God and they couldn't drink wine.
Josh Turansky: And so these people are taking their Nazarites and they're making them drink wine.
Josh Turansky: And then they're commanding the prophets, that's God's gift to them as a nation.
Josh Turansky: They're saying, don't prophesy.
Josh Turansky: They're turning their back on God's, God gifts this work to them as a nation, and they're rejecting God's work.
Josh Turansky: We often do exactly this by pressuring serious Christians around us, devoted Christians around us.
Josh Turansky: We say, hey, just relax.
Josh Turansky: You know, get off your get off your high horse.
Josh Turansky: Chill out, right?
Josh Turansky: And yet God's gifting you, gifting to your life somebody that's willing to speak into your life.
Josh Turansky: Maybe it's a counselor, maybe it's a parent, maybe, maybe nobody else would tell you the thing that that person's willing to tell you, but you know it's true.
Josh Turansky: But instead of responding to it, it's like, no, stop it.
Josh Turansky: Stop it.
Josh Turansky: Get away.
Josh Turansky: Get away from my life.
Josh Turansky: He goes on in verse 13.
Josh Turansky: And God says, Look, I am about to crush you in your place as a wagon crushes when full of grain.
Josh Turansky: So he's going to go into the indictment here.
Josh Turansky: He's going to describe, look at the description.
Josh Turansky: Escape will fail the swift, the strong one will not maintain his strength, and the warrior will not save his life.
Josh Turansky: The archer will not stand his ground, the one who is swift of foot will not save himself, and the one riding a horse will not save his life.
Josh Turansky: Even the most courageous of the warriors will flee naked on that day.
Josh Turansky: This is the Lord's declaration.
Josh Turansky: It's a poetic piling up of military images.
Josh Turansky: And he's saying there's not going to be an escape.
Josh Turansky: The swift are not going to escape.
Josh Turansky: The courageous are not going to escape.
Josh Turansky: Everything that you would maybe place your confidence in with your military, God's going to obliterate it.
Josh Turansky: He says, This look, I am about to crush you in your place as a wagon crushes when full of grain.
Josh Turansky: Have you ever seen those pictures or gone to a third world country where it's like a rickety car, or even it is a wagon, and it's just like piled up like two stories high?
Josh Turansky: And you're like, how does that thing not fall over?
Josh Turansky: That's kind of the image here.
Josh Turansky: And God says, like, my judgment upon you is you're the wagon.
Josh Turansky: You're gonna just be crushed.
Josh Turansky: But this is what you need to know for those of us living today is that Jesus stood in your place.
Josh Turansky: Jesus was the wagon that was crushed.
Josh Turansky: He was loaded up with your sin on the cross so that all your guilt could be taken away.
Josh Turansky: And so God can look at your life and my life in an unvarnished way and say, that attitude is wrong.
Josh Turansky: The way you're treating that person is wrong.
Josh Turansky: That language is wrong.
Josh Turansky: But we're able to look at those things and we're saying, yeah, God, you're right.
Josh Turansky: But there's nothing that we can do to put away our guilt.
Josh Turansky: Our response is that we turn and we say, Jesus, forgive my sin.
Josh Turansky: You went to the cross, you paid for my sin on the cross.
Josh Turansky: Please, please forgive me.
Josh Turansky: And you know what the Father says?
Josh Turansky: It's finished.
Josh Turansky: That cart was loaded up with your sin and he's put it away.
Josh Turansky: He's put it away.
Josh Turansky: And so our response as we go through this is we're comforted knowing that God sees when we're wronged, and God is able.
Josh Turansky: In his love to now speak to us and say, that's wrong, that's wrong, and that's wrong.
Josh Turansky: And I've given you the Holy Spirit to help you grow.
Josh Turansky: In my love, I've endowed you with the power of the Holy Spirit to live a life of obedience, to no longer wrong your neighbor, to no longer mistreat the poor and the vulnerable.
Josh Turansky: Now you can be contributing within society.
Josh Turansky: You can flourish within your society.
Josh Turansky: You can be a good neighbor because I have given you the power of the Holy Spirit.
Josh Turansky: That's what he wants to teach us.
Josh Turansky: That's how he wants to work in us.
Josh Turansky: We have a Savior who was crushed in our place so that we could be forgiven.
Josh Turansky: We're going to take communion together.
Josh Turansky: I'm going to pray.
Josh Turansky: And after I'm done praying, I'm going to ask you, those of you that are followers, if you're not a follower of Jesus yet, don't take communion.
Josh Turansky: This is for believers.
Josh Turansky: Okay?
Josh Turansky: And if you're not a believer yet in Jesus, what I want you to do is I want you to pray and begin to talk to God.
Josh Turansky: I want you to begin your relationship with Him.
Josh Turansky: If you have questions about that, if you don't know how to have a relationship with Jesus, talk to me.
Josh Turansky: Talk to one of our other leaders, and we'll help you.
Josh Turansky: But for those of us that are believers, I want you to come and get the communion elements and we'll take communion together.