Josh Turansky: So we're in um we're in Amos chapter 3.
Josh Turansky: If you are joining us for the first time or you haven't been with us for a while, we we're in we were in Acts 13 and 14, and now we're gonna be for seven weeks in Amos chapter seven.
Josh Turansky: In Amos for seven weeks.
Josh Turansky: So um last week we looked at chapters one and two.
Josh Turansky: This gets us a little bit of exposure as a church to the Old Testament.
Josh Turansky: And when you look at the prophets, you have to understand that the prophets map onto your Old Testament um history.
Josh Turansky: So you know if you go through the Torah, the first five books of Moses, Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy, you get those books from Moses, then you start getting into your history books.
Josh Turansky: And your history books cover like Joshua, Judges, Ruth, then you've got the kings, you've got Samuel, you've got all that material that's there.
Josh Turansky: So if you um are familiar with your Old Testament history, then you know where those prophets fit in to that Old Testament history.
Josh Turansky: So, like we said last week, we talked about how the nation of Israel split in half because of Solomon's divided heart.
Josh Turansky: He was the third king in Israel, and God said, Look, because you have a divided heart, I'm gonna divide the nation.
Josh Turansky: And so we ended up with the northern tribe of Israel and the southern tribe of Judah, two different nations with two different kingdoms.
Josh Turansky: And Amos is a prophet to the northern nation that's called Israel.
Josh Turansky: So at this time, as Amos is speaking, he's talking to Israel in the north, and then you have Judah in the south.
Josh Turansky: Amos, he's from the south.
Josh Turansky: He's from the southern nation, and yet God calls him to speak his mission, his message to the north, uh northern region.
Josh Turansky: And so what we're gonna see is that you and I are blessable image-bearing covenant partners, now following Jesus according to his new covenant, and we want to know what the Holy Spirit have to say to us from the book of Amos.
Josh Turansky: So as we're going through Amos, we're recognizing that the way God designed humans was to be blessed, not cursed.
Josh Turansky: He designed them to be bearing his image on the earth.
Josh Turansky: We see that in Genesis chapter one.
Josh Turansky: And that they're supposed to be in a, not just, oftentimes I talk about a friendship with God, but literally you're designed to be a covenant partner with God in the world.
Josh Turansky: You're a blessable, image-bearing, covenant partner with God.
Josh Turansky: And so we bring that into Amos in light of what Jesus has done on the cross, and we want to ask ourselves, what does the book of Amos teach me?
Josh Turansky: How does the Holy Spirit want to teach me through Amos on what it looks like to follow Jesus?
Josh Turansky: I just want to show you, at least on your phones, the map of where we're at.
Josh Turansky: So you see down in the southern reading, we have the kingdom of Judah on that slide on your on your phones.
Josh Turansky: You see the surrounding nations, and we talked about those last week.
Josh Turansky: There was a prophetic message that God gave to Amos to speak to all the surrounding nations, but then Israel was the focus at the end.
Josh Turansky: We spend a good bit of time, it's like the center of the target, the bullseye was the nation of Israel.
Josh Turansky: So that was chapters one and two, and now what we're looking at is uh chapter three.
Josh Turansky: Just in turn, if you weren't here last week, Amos, he's a shepherd.
Josh Turansky: And then we also see in a later chapter that he is a farmer of fig, sycamore figs.
Josh Turansky: He's from an area of Techoa in Judah, called by God to preach to this nation of Israel.
Josh Turansky: And I think it's also important to say what we said last week that you need to know where Israel is at, right?
Josh Turansky: So God's bringing a message to the nation of Israel, um, and they have a uh a certain thing going on as a nation.
Josh Turansky: They're well off, they're established, they have strong military, they have a vibrant economy, um, they have a vibrant uh pagan worship system that's like a um it was a mix of the surrounding pagan idolatry as well as some of like their Hebrew roots.
Josh Turansky: And they would worship in a place called Bethel.
Josh Turansky: Um that was their place of worship.
Josh Turansky: And the king that was reigning at the time was Jeroboam II.
Josh Turansky: What's important for you to understand for chapter three is relationship, reasoning, and then ruin.
Josh Turansky: That's really the that's the alliteration that we could follow is relationship, logical reasoning, and then ruin.
Josh Turansky: Let me read to you verses one and two.
Josh Turansky: Listen to this message that the Lord has spoken against you, Israelites, against the entire clan that I brought from the land of Egypt.
Josh Turansky: I have known only you out of all the clans of the earth.
Josh Turansky: Therefore I will punish you for all your iniquity.
Josh Turansky: Let's pray.
Josh Turansky: Lord, we ask that as we read through chapter three, that you would be our teacher.
Josh Turansky: We ask, Lord, that the work, the active work of your spirit that's promised to us, that you would really surgically apply Amos III into our own lives.
Josh Turansky: And God, we recognize there's a massive time gap, there's a culture gap, there's a language gap of how this was originally spoken and written.
Josh Turansky: And yet, God, we ask that you would bridge all of those gaps right over to our lives and that you would teach us about yourself.
Josh Turansky: Lord, we give you this time, we pray in Jesus' name.
Josh Turansky: Amen.
Josh Turansky: So verses one and two.
Josh Turansky: Verses one and two really um brings forward that idea of relationship.
Josh Turansky: What's important to understand is this this whole arena of prophecy is more like a siren before disaster than the actual trigger of the disaster.
Josh Turansky: So if you think of God having a relationship with his people, he would use these men and sometimes women who were, they they had the title prophet, and and they were sounding the alarm.
Josh Turansky: We don't really have many earthquakes here, but like let's say you were to go to Japan, and and everybody in Japan has like an early warning alert system, an alarm system that goes off on their phones, typically 90 seconds before there's a major earthquake.
Josh Turansky: It's letting you know this is what's coming.
Josh Turansky: And so a prophet would function like that.
Josh Turansky: It would sound, he or she would sound the alarm on God's behalf of listen, this is what's up with God.
Josh Turansky: When God looks at our nation, this is what he sees, and this is what he's going to do.
Josh Turansky: Now, the important thing for you and I to understand is that the prophet, this role of the prophet, this gifting of prophet, doesn't stop when Jesus comes on the scene.
Josh Turansky: In fact, Paul talks about how that when you and I enter into this relationship with Jesus, we accept the invitation to be his followers.
Josh Turansky: When we respond, we're born again.
Josh Turansky: And he gives us his spirit.
Josh Turansky: We call that the Holy Spirit, or if you're black, you call it the Holy Ghost, right?
Josh Turansky: Amen.
Josh Turansky: Thank you.
Josh Turansky: Thank you, Louise.
Josh Turansky: I gotta warm you up a little bit more out there.
Josh Turansky: You got the Holy Spirit, the Holy Ghost comes and lives in you.
Josh Turansky: And Paul says that he gifts you in particular ways, right?
Josh Turansky: And one of the ways that he gifts some of you is with this prophetic gift for the church, right?
Josh Turansky: And you would function in that gift, it would just be very natural to you to speak the words that God lays on your heart.
Josh Turansky: And it'd oftentimes be the type of truth-telling, speaking the truth out.
Josh Turansky: This is the case.
Josh Turansky: It's usually, it's it's oftentimes a very bold witness to what God, sometimes it's controversial.
Josh Turansky: But in 1 Corinthians 14, Paul says, Let those who are gifted with a word of prophecy speak and then let others judge.
Josh Turansky: So it's not like you just get to go and we just have to take your word for it, but there is an evaluation that happens in the church of like, is that from God, or is that person off their rocker or off their meds today, right?
Josh Turansky: So there's an evaluation, but that is an active work of the Holy Spirit even to this day.
Josh Turansky: So Amos has this call upon his life to be this early warning alert or this siren before disaster occurs.
Josh Turansky: And there is a looming disaster on the horizon for the nation of Israel.
Josh Turansky: They have, as we saw last week, they have been mistreating the poor.
Josh Turansky: They've been thwarting the path of the vulnerable, they've been grinding the face of the weak down into the dust.
Josh Turansky: And God is not happy with that.
Josh Turansky: And he's telling the people who are strong and of means, I am opposed to this, and you are going to be judged because you are treating people in this way.
Josh Turansky: What comes up on your screen there?
Josh Turansky: It just says linked surprise, huh?
Josh Turansky: Okay, we'll fix that.
Josh Turansky: This is um again, verses one and two.
Josh Turansky: What I want you to see, just as we go through one and two, is that God's saying, I have a special relationship with you.
Josh Turansky: That you are the ones that I chose.
Josh Turansky: Notice that he says that I I took you, I took you from Egypt.
Josh Turansky: Like, um listen to the message of the Lord that he has spoken against you, Israelites, against the entire clan I brought from the land of Egypt.
Josh Turansky: And then he goes on and he says, I have known only you out of all the clans of the earth.
Josh Turansky: This is relationship, right?
Josh Turansky: God's establishing for um Israel that they are unique and special.
Josh Turansky: And there's a right way and a wrong way to take that special relationship.
Josh Turansky: You've got these relationships in your life.
Josh Turansky: You got people that are close to you.
Josh Turansky: Maybe it's family, maybe it's it's friends, but people can take either that closeness and abuse that closeness and think they can get away with whatever because they're close to you, or they can steward over the closeness they have with you and realize this is a treasure, there's greater accountability.
Josh Turansky: We're chosen, we're safe.
Josh Turansky: That can be the mistake.
Josh Turansky: We're chosen, we're safe, or we're preserved.
Josh Turansky: We're preserved.
Josh Turansky: And what you need to know is that when God chooses you, there's greater accountability.
Josh Turansky: And that's what's happening with Israel.
Josh Turansky: Israel is facing the scrutiny, the the the um magnifying glass over their treatment of the poor and needy because they're God's chosen people.
Josh Turansky: There was there's a man, he went to the playground, and uh he was watching from afar these two kids messing around and they're kind of fighting with each other and started to get a little heated.
Josh Turansky: Then another man walked up to these two kids and broke up the fight, and the man took one of these kids off to the side and like whooped his butt.
Josh Turansky: And this guy who's watching runs over.
Josh Turansky: He's like, Whoa, whoa, whoa, what are you doing?
Josh Turansky: You can't just go and hit some kid at the park, you know.
Josh Turansky: What are you doing?
Josh Turansky: And the guy that broke it up, he says, Yeah, I can't I can't hit that kid.
Josh Turansky: I can't spank him, but this one's my son.
Josh Turansky: And he's gonna get special treatment from me, he's gonna get that discipline from me because I have that special relationship with him.
Josh Turansky: And this is what God's doing with the nation of Israel.
Josh Turansky: He's saying, I'm gonna hold you accountable, you're gonna get a heavenly spanking because of the way that you're treating the poor and needy.
Josh Turansky: So we have relationship, and and this is the thing being chosen by God increases accountability.
Josh Turansky: It does not grant a hall pass for your sin.
Josh Turansky: So we talked, I prayed earlier that we are a people that we celebrate, when we come together as a church, we're not in here like, wow, we are the most awesome, behaved people ever.
Josh Turansky: That's not like what we're cheering about when we gather.
Josh Turansky: Instead, we're we're together saying, what sets us apart and makes us unique is that we are forgiven people.
Josh Turansky: We're forgiven people.
Josh Turansky: Don't ever think when you're out there and you're interacting with your friends that are just maybe they're sinning up a storm, they're on a tear, they're on a run, they're doing everything you could possibly do wrong.
Josh Turansky: Don't start thinking like, oh, you know what, I'm I'm so much better.
Josh Turansky: What makes you different from them is that you're forgiven.
Josh Turansky: You're forgiven.
Josh Turansky: That needs to be your attitude, not a condescension, because you could just be as you could be just as easily running like they're running, unless God had like rescued you from that, right?
Josh Turansky: God's intervened in your life, he's forgiven you.
Josh Turansky: You've got to walk in that humility.
Josh Turansky: So we're a forgiven people, but we're not a people who have accountability thrown off.
Josh Turansky: We're still accountable before God.
Josh Turansky: We're gonna go into the reasoning part next.
Josh Turansky: And I have on your phones there 3-3.
Josh Turansky: I'll read the whole thing from 3 3 through 3-6.
Josh Turansky: And I want you to see seven questions.
Josh Turansky: Seven questions.
Josh Turansky: Can two walk together without agreeing to meet?
Josh Turansky: Does a lion roar in the forest when it has no prey?
Josh Turansky: Does a young lion growl from its lair unless it has captured something?
Josh Turansky: All you young lion experts, you're gonna have to answer that one for me.
Josh Turansky: Does a bird land in a trap on the ground if there is no bait for it?
Josh Turansky: Does a trap spring from the ground when it has caught nothing?
Josh Turansky: If a trumpet is blown in a city, aren't people afraid?
Josh Turansky: If a disaster occurs in a city, hasn't the Lord done it?
Josh Turansky: Amos is giving questions that have the same logical framing behind it, cause and effect.
Josh Turansky: He's saying, like, well, let's go to the one that's on your screen here.
Josh Turansky: Can two walk together without agreeing up to meet?
Josh Turansky: In other words, can you have a meeting with somebody without agreeing to have a meeting?
Josh Turansky: Well, you kind of, you mean you run into people here and there, but in general, you're not going to go for a walk with somebody else unless you agree, let's go for a walk, right?
Josh Turansky: Another one that he gives here is this trumpet.
Josh Turansky: He says, if a trumpet is blown, bless you, if a trumpet is blown in a city, aren't people afraid?
Josh Turansky: Or, you know, if the alarm goes off.
Josh Turansky: I used to live in a place where we would get like tsunami alarms that would go off to just check the system.
Josh Turansky: And there was a sense of like, oh my gosh, is there a real tsunami that's coming?
Josh Turansky: It's cause and effect, right?
Josh Turansky: Amos wants you to grab a hold of that idea of cause and effect because he's going to justify his ministry.
Josh Turansky: Please hold on to this because in a few weeks, after we're done with Amos, we're going to get to 2 Corinthians.
Josh Turansky: And the book of 2 Corinthians, one of the undercurrents of that book is Paul being led by the Holy Spirit to justify and legitimize his ministry to a people who had other spiritual, so-called Christians at their church trying to undercut Paul.
Josh Turansky: And so Amos and Paul kind of are in the same boat for a chapter.
Josh Turansky: And here Amos is setting that defense up by showing that there is cause and effect.
Josh Turansky: When we get here, to the middle of verse 6, he says, if a disaster occurs in a city, hasn't the Lord done it?
Josh Turansky: There is this sense in what Amos is saying that judgment is not random.
Josh Turansky: It follows a chain reaction.
Josh Turansky: If we go a little bit further, verse 7, he says, indeed, the Lord does nothing without revealing his counsel to his servants.
Josh Turansky: Who was I talking to about this earlier?
Josh Turansky: Not not here.
Josh Turansky: It was earlier this week.
Josh Turansky: It was somebody in this room.
Josh Turansky: We were talking about how God just gives you a sense of something before it happens.
Josh Turansky: It was Friday morning.
Josh Turansky: We were together.
Josh Turansky: I can't remember.
Josh Turansky: But but when we go together, we're going to be in the Experiencing God book.
Josh Turansky: For those of you that sign up for waypoints in the fall and you're able, you've done the first two classes.
Josh Turansky: When we get to experiencing God, you're going to see that Henry Blackaby uses this text to justify his framing about your spiritual experience as a principle that God doesn't, he does nothing without revealing his counsel to his servants, the prophets.
Josh Turansky: And when we go through this in experience in the Experiencing God book, hopefully we have some vibrant conversation about this.
Josh Turansky: Of like, is this always the rule?
Josh Turansky: Is this the principle that is always the case, or is it a general principle?
Josh Turansky: I would I would put it in the category of a general principle that God gives you a like being a Christian, one of the aspects of following Jesus, being a follower of God, being in touch with the work of the Spirit, is that He is giving you a sense of anticipation of what's coming.
Josh Turansky: And the reason, and the way I would, I would defend that idea is when we read through Matthew, we saw all the times where Jesus was telling his disciples, aren't you looped in?
Josh Turansky: Like, don't you see what's going on?
Josh Turansky: He's rebuking the rabbis and the Pharisees.
Josh Turansky: Remember that?
Josh Turansky: He's like, you know the weather, you can discern the weather, but you're not aware of what's going on in this moment.
Josh Turansky: There is this expectation that Jesus brought to the table that the people of God are keyed in on the kingdom narrative or God's story unfolding.
Josh Turansky: So what does that look like for you and I?
Josh Turansky: Well, we already talked about it in one sense that sometimes God gifts, like us as a church, he may gifts.
Josh Turansky: Somebody in our church with the gift of prophecy, right?
Josh Turansky: And somebody may have a prophetic word about, hey, here's what's going on.
Josh Turansky: We we had that, we have a lady, I don't know if I've seen her recently at the compassion center, but she's got a gift of prophecy.
Josh Turansky: And she doesn't wear a shirt that says, I've got the gift of prophecy, but you go up and you talk to her at the compassion center, and she just begins to speak over your life.
Josh Turansky: She comes to get food and she'll say stuff over my life where it's just like, there's no way you would say that to me unless you knew what was going on in my heart.
Josh Turansky: Because it's like she's got an insider view into like the things I'm thinking about and praying about.
Josh Turansky: So sometimes God's doing this where he's revealing his counsel through that gift of prophecy.
Josh Turansky: Other times there's dreams.
Josh Turansky: Some of you will have almost prophetic dreams, dreams where it's just like you remember them, there seems to be a significance about it, and then you just got to pray.
Josh Turansky: Like, God, do you want to give meaning or interpretation to that dream?
Josh Turansky: I've told you my story that three weeks before 9-11, I had had a dream that I woke up from, and I remembered vividly carrying the the side of a the stretcher of a woman who was bloodied, and she had, and it was like some war-type event, and we were taking her to a triage center.
Josh Turansky: And I remember waking up that thing with this clear sense, something's about to happen in our country.
Josh Turansky: Three weeks later was 9-11.
Josh Turansky: Six months later, they had like the USA to USA Today or US News and World Report commemorative 9-11 edition.
Josh Turansky: And I'm thumbing through it, and one of the pages is a picture.
Josh Turansky: Literally, the image in my dream is the picture in the magazine.
Josh Turansky: And it literally says, here's this woman being carried to a triage center, right?
Josh Turansky: So God can give us that sense of like, oh, this is what's coming.
Josh Turansky: Now, in Hebrews, it says that our spiritual exer our spiritual senses have to be exercised.
Josh Turansky: Because when you're spiritually immature, you start thinking like every coincidence is like, oh, it's God, God's doing that.
Josh Turansky: Oh, that's what it is.
Josh Turansky: And it can be kind of misinterpreted or over-spiritualized.
Josh Turansky: But just because when you're young in the faith, you kind of can get stuff wrong doesn't mean that you mature and to stop looking for God's patterns and signals and revealing.
Josh Turansky: It just means that just like you learn to appreciate third-wave excellent coffee from like a ceremony coffee shop as you get better in drinking coffee.
Josh Turansky: In the same way, the more you're reading your Bible and listening to the Holy Spirit's voice, the older you get with Jesus, the more you're able to discern that's the Lord.
Josh Turansky: He's giving me a sense of what's about to happen.
Josh Turansky: Man, I can't remember.
Josh Turansky: Who was it on Friday?
Josh Turansky: We were talking about this.
Josh Turansky: Nobody's gonna offer, right?
Josh Turansky: You won't you don't remember who we're who I was?
Josh Turansky: Okay, maybe it wasn't somebody here.
Josh Turansky: But yeah, God just He wants to give you a sense of what's going on.
Josh Turansky: And Amos, what he's saying is, listen, I'm playing a role in a logical sequence.
Josh Turansky: You're all screwing up as a nation.
Josh Turansky: God has decreed that you're gonna be judged.
Josh Turansky: And my job is to communicate to you that that judgment is coming and to tell you exactly what you're doing wrong.
Josh Turansky: To open up the service, we read from Psalm 51, God put Nathan the prophet into David's life, and Nathan the prophet came to David and said, through a parable, this is what you have done wrong.
Josh Turansky: And David had the opportunity to respond and repent.
Josh Turansky: And then he wrote his repentance as Psalm 51, so that the nation of Israel had language to express.
Josh Turansky: David provided for the nation devotional language.
Josh Turansky: Moses provided the law, the guardrails, the structure, the societal framing, but then David was used by God to gift the nation devotional language to say, I'm sorry, or I love you, or I need you, do you hear me?
Josh Turansky: Do you see my pain?
Josh Turansky: That's what's in the Psalms.
Josh Turansky: And they should have, they should have, as a nation, taken that, and they should have repented of their sin, but they didn't.
Josh Turansky: And so God is decreeing that he's going to judge.
Josh Turansky: You have the cause and effect.
Josh Turansky: Amos is the effect.
Josh Turansky: He's not the cause of God's judgment, he is the result of God's determining because God loves his people, and he is the one who does nothing without revealing his counsel to his servants, the prophets.
Josh Turansky: Are you tracking with me?
Josh Turansky: So there's on your screen, on your uh on your phone there, you have a chain of judgment.
Josh Turansky: God plans and reveals, the prophet speaks, people ignore, judgment arrives.
Josh Turansky: That is the that's the logical sequence of what's going on.
Josh Turansky: And Amos is saying, hey, just like just like there's just every day cause and effect things that you are familiar with, God plays by the same rules of cause and effect.
Josh Turansky: And I'm just in that sequence of chain and effect bringing to you what's about to happen.
Josh Turansky: Let's look at verses 10 and 11.
Josh Turansky: 10 and 11, well, nine.
Josh Turansky: Proclaim on the citadels in Ashdod, on the citadels in the land of Egypt, assemble on the mountains of Samaria, and see the great turmoil in the city and the acts of oppression within it.
Josh Turansky: So what's going on here?
Josh Turansky: Amos is calling to these two foreign nations.
Josh Turansky: He's calling to Ashdod and Egypt.
Josh Turansky: And he's saying, You guys are the bleachers.
Josh Turansky: Imagine like an arena.
Josh Turansky: You got Egypt on one side, you've got Ashdod on another, and they're peering down, and on the field is the nation of Israel.
Josh Turansky: And he calls them as a witness.
Josh Turansky: Remember, Amos is kind of like a lawyer making a using the covenant language to make his indictment against the nation.
Josh Turansky: And he's saying, I want you to observe what God does with his people in this arena.
Josh Turansky: I want you to see the great turmoil in the city.
Josh Turansky: I want you to see the guilt of the people, what they're doing wrong, their acts of oppression.
Josh Turansky: That would be embarrassing.
Josh Turansky: He invites them to see what's going on.
Josh Turansky: Do you have a thing there that pops up on your phone?
Josh Turansky: I don't know why that's popping up there in that spot.
Josh Turansky: That's from Honey.
Josh Turansky: I shrunk the kids.
Josh Turansky: Did you ever watch that movie?
Josh Turansky: Cause and effect, right?
Josh Turansky: He shrunk the kids.
Josh Turansky: There was a cause, and you ended up with these like microscopic little kids running around in the movie, right?
Josh Turansky: Cause and effect.
Josh Turansky: And what Amos is saying is like, listen, you need to understand.
Josh Turansky: I bet that broke my slides too.
Josh Turansky: It did.
Josh Turansky: Oh yeah.
Josh Turansky: What you need to understand, you're gonna have to turn.
Josh Turansky: If you don't want to look at honey, I shrunk the kids for the rest of the sermon, you're gonna have to turn your phone off.
Josh Turansky: What you need to understand, what Amos is saying is listen, God is, He is up, there's like this impending judgment that is about to happen.
Josh Turansky: I want the nations to watch it, I want them to observe, and I want them to be aware of what um I how I handle the violation of the covenant.
Josh Turansky: He goes on, he says, the people are incapable of doing right.
Josh Turansky: This is the Lord's declaration.
Josh Turansky: Those who store up violence and destruction in their citadels.
Josh Turansky: In that amazing language, the people are incapable of doing what is right.
Josh Turansky: It reminds you of like Noah before the flood, when when um when God's about to send the flood, there's like there's no one that does any good.
Josh Turansky: He says there you you as a people are incapable of doing what is right, and the Lord's declaring it.
Josh Turansky: They're storing up violence.
Josh Turansky: Here's one of the things we hit on this last week, we're gonna hit on it every week.
Josh Turansky: If you're a person that's facing violence, destruction in your personal life, God sees it.
Josh Turansky: It's easy to read this and feel like, man, that guy's Amos, he's beating up on me.
Josh Turansky: But maybe that's not what you're supposed to hear from Amos.
Josh Turansky: Maybe what you're supposed to hear is that God sees your suffering.
Josh Turansky: He saw the suffering of the vulnerable in the nation of Israel, he saw the poor, he saw the needy, and God's about to go ham on these rich people in Israel that are just like destroying.
Josh Turansky: Like literally, the imagery last week was like pressing their face into the dust.
Josh Turansky: And you know, if you've been in that place, that you're if you're vulnerable the essence of being vulnerable is you're powerless to change your circumstance.
Josh Turansky: And yet here's God showing up with his prophets speaking, saying, This is what's about to happen to you.
Josh Turansky: Verse 11.
Josh Turansky: Therefore the Lord God says, An enemy will surround the land, he will destroy your strongholds, and plunder your citadels.
Josh Turansky: Amos, man, he loves this word.
Josh Turansky: This was all over like one, two, and now here we have it again.
Josh Turansky: It's like the your palaces, your fancy rich houses, basically.
Josh Turansky: They're gonna get destroyed.
Josh Turansky: The Lord says, as the shepherd snatches two legs or a piece of ear, this is like a poem, okay?
Josh Turansky: A piece of an ear from a lion's mouth, so the Israelites who live in Samaria will be rescued with only the corner of a bed or the cushion of a couch, right?
Josh Turansky: Imagine a shepherd is like the sheep gets grabbed by the lion, and the lion runs off with the sheep, and you're the shepherd, you chase him down, and you're like, you get there just in time to just grab like a piece of an ear out of his mouth.
Josh Turansky: But pretty much he ate the whole thing.
Josh Turansky: There's gonna be a remnant, there's gonna be a small leftovers after this judgment occurs, but it's only gonna be a fragment.
Josh Turansky: Or if you had a piece of furniture that you threw into the back of a garbage truck, and that garbage truck door comes down and is crushing it, and you're like, oh, I wanted that.
Josh Turansky: Try to grab a piece, it's like, oh, there's only a cushion, half a cushion left, you know.
Josh Turansky: He says, That's what you're gonna be like as a nation.
Josh Turansky: There's only gonna be fragments of you that remain.
Josh Turansky: Listen and testify against the house of Jacob.
Josh Turansky: This is the declaration of the Lord God, the God of armies.
Josh Turansky: I will punish the altars of Bethel the day I punish Israel for its crimes.
Josh Turansky: On the day I punish Israel for its crimes, the horns of the altar will be cut off.
Josh Turansky: The horns of the altar was, so this was their worship place.
Josh Turansky: They went, wouldn't go to Jerusalem, they would worship in Bethel with a like a false religion.
Josh Turansky: And the horns were like handles, so they would rub the blood of the the um animal sacrifice on the horns.
Josh Turansky: It was the most important part of the altar.
Josh Turansky: And so God says, I'm gonna cut off the horns of the altar and fall to the ground.
Josh Turansky: It's gonna be broken.
Josh Turansky: You're like the the the the central place of your worship is gonna be destroyed.
Josh Turansky: I will demolish the winter house in the summer house.
Josh Turansky: Like these guys are rich, right?
Josh Turansky: They got the winter house, they got the summer house.
Josh Turansky: Yeah, no, I'm gonna dis demolish it.
Josh Turansky: The houses inlaid with ivory.
Josh Turansky: We've we've found these, we've found these ivory pieces.
Josh Turansky: Archaeologists have seen that they were sold out of Egypt, brought to this uh northern Israel area.
Josh Turansky: Uh the houses inlaid with ivory will be destroyed, and the great houses will come to an end.
Josh Turansky: This is the Lord's declaration.
Josh Turansky: Remember, God we started off with relationship, and then we get to reasoning.
Josh Turansky: Why is this message happening?
Josh Turansky: And it's Amos saying, look, this is how God works.
Josh Turansky: And then we get to the results or the ruins of the people.
Josh Turansky: And you just need to know that the way that Israel felt as they were listening to this guy was, Amos, you're crazy.
Josh Turansky: Look at how much money we have.
Josh Turansky: Look how strong our military is.
Josh Turansky: Look at, I've got a winter house and a summer house.
Josh Turansky: Like, are you kidding me?
Josh Turansky: Like, who's gonna overcome this?
Josh Turansky: And yet, when we step back, we look at history, God's word came to pass.
Josh Turansky: When God speaks and God declares, there's no escaping from it.
Josh Turansky: So, where do we fall as believers?
Josh Turansky: And we'll we'll end with this.
Josh Turansky: Where do we where do we land as believers in the Lord Jesus Christ?
Josh Turansky: Because this is um this message was given to people who are under the old covenant, but you and I are followers of Jesus under the new covenant, which we'll celebrate in just a minute.
Josh Turansky: And I just want to give you four quick things because the pieces, do you ever play the game Tangos as a kid?
Josh Turansky: T A N G O E S Tangoes?
Josh Turansky: You'd get these geometric shapes and you'd get a card, and you had to make like the geometric shapes look like what was on the card.
Josh Turansky: Anybody ever play that game?
Josh Turansky: Was it just me?
Josh Turansky: Oh my gosh.
Josh Turansky: I'll bring it.
Josh Turansky: If my if my phone app was working, I would show you a picture of it.
Josh Turansky: It's so fun.
Josh Turansky: It's like a puzzle.
Josh Turansky: You gotta put it together with the pieces.
Josh Turansky: The reason, the reason I I wanted to bring that up is because it's the pieces under the new covenant get rearranged.
Josh Turansky: You still have, you still have covenant, you still have the idea of relationship, privilege, responsibility, judgment, warning, consequences.
Josh Turansky: All of those things still exist, but they're rearranged.
Josh Turansky: They're rearranged.
Josh Turansky: And the center of gravity under the new covenant, it shifts to Christ and his finished work on the cross.
Josh Turansky: So the nation of Israel was in a covenant relationship with God based off of Moses' law.
Josh Turansky: So there was a covenant relationship, but but the covenant was not the same covenant that you and I relate to God with.
Josh Turansky: We relate to God under the new covenant.
Josh Turansky: And so the first thing you need to know is that as we finish out this chapter, there's this declaration of a curse, basically, that destruction is coming on your homes.
Josh Turansky: And you need to understand that Jesus was cursed and destroyed for your sin and your rebellion.
Josh Turansky: And so you don't live in a place, you're not living in a place where you're afraid that these things, God's not dealing with your life in the same way.
Josh Turansky: Jesus took the curse of the law so that you do not have to face the same curse outlined under the law.
Josh Turansky: There is still a form of judgment, but it comes as discipline in our life.
Josh Turansky: The way that God relates to us is not like Zeus, I'm gonna smoke you with a lightning bolt.
Josh Turansky: That's not how God deals with us.
Josh Turansky: When we are walking in sin in our life, what he does is he disciplines us like a father does with a child.
Josh Turansky: Like if you really love your kids, you're gonna discipline them.
Josh Turansky: And that's the relationship that we have with God.
Josh Turansky: Not a smoke them, destroy them, tear them down, but more of a corrective.
Josh Turansky: I'm gonna let you experience some pain, not because I'm super mad at you, but because I deeply love you and I have given you the resource to change that pattern in your life.
Josh Turansky: Third, the final judgment, the final judgment like this moves on to this, what we call an eschatological horizon.
Josh Turansky: That's a fancy word for the end time events.
Josh Turansky: So, judgment like that, this is still a reality under the new covenant, but it's anticipated as a future event that will happen with the return of Christ.
Josh Turansky: That there will be this ultimate judgment that occurs.
Josh Turansky: So in the old covenant, in the old covenant, the covenant people themselves absorbed the brunt of the judgment in history.
Josh Turansky: In the new covenant, the mediator, who's our mediator?
Josh Turansky: Jesus, he absorbs that judgment, the curse.
Josh Turansky: We experience instead fatherly discipline and sometimes temporal consequences, but not wrath.
Josh Turansky: We can think in terms of direct parallels as well as Christ-fulfilled differences.
Josh Turansky: We don't have time this morning to go through all of those, but we have, we are a privileged people just like the people of Israel were privileged people.
Josh Turansky: We have responsibility just like the people of Israel had responsibility.
Josh Turansky: God gives us warnings just like he gave them warnings.
Josh Turansky: There are consequences just like there were consequences for them.
Josh Turansky: But the differences are just this the curse.
Josh Turansky: Jesus has taken the curse on himself.
Josh Turansky: He's taken the curse on himself so that you and I can be in this place of abounding grace, where sin abounds, grace abounds much more.
Josh Turansky: That God has got a reservoir of grace for you that will always outdo your sin.
Josh Turansky: And so stop sinning.
Josh Turansky: Right?
Josh Turansky: Stop walking in dumb, stop walking in rebellion.
Josh Turansky: Let the work of the spirit in your life move you towards those patterns of living as a kingdom person.
Josh Turansky: All right.
Josh Turansky: Let's pray together.
Josh Turansky: Lord, we do thank you for the fact that all these curses here that Amos spoke of for the nation of Israel, for us, you took on those curses.
Josh Turansky: You were destroyed so that we could experience life.
Josh Turansky: And Lord, as we take communion together as a church, I just ask that you would help us, Lord, to repent of our sins, just like David did in Psalm 51.
Josh Turansky: I ask, Lord Jesus, that you would give us a sense of your mercy and that you would renew our vision for the new covenant life, the life empowered by grace.
Josh Turansky: We ask this in Jesus' name.
Josh Turansky: Amen.