SPEAKER_00: Let's talk about Amos.
SPEAKER_00: You remember, how did God create you?
SPEAKER_00: He made you, He made you as an image-bearing or a blessable, right?
SPEAKER_00: A blessable image-bearing covenant partner, that's right.
SPEAKER_00: You're a blessable, image-bearing covenant partner.
SPEAKER_00: That's how God designed you.
SPEAKER_00: Now, do all humans act like that?
SPEAKER_00: No.
SPEAKER_00: No, and so Jesus came to rescue us from our rebellion, from our stupid, and get us back heading in that direction of being blessable, image-bearing covenant partners.
SPEAKER_00: And so we're reading through Amos over the last six weeks.
SPEAKER_00: Next week will be our last week in Amos, seven weeks in Amos, and we're asking God to show us, hey, listen, God, show me what it means for me to be an image-bearing, uh blessable image-bearing covenant partner based on what Amos is teaching.
SPEAKER_00: And this morning, what we're gonna see is that time has run out.
SPEAKER_00: Not my preaching time.
SPEAKER_00: I'm gonna preach for a little bit longer, but time has run out on the nation of Israel.
SPEAKER_00: So what I want to do is I want to walk you through this text together, and I'm gonna read to you a little bit about a guy named Amaziah in just a second.
SPEAKER_00: Have you ever had a many of you have kids, some of you are grandparents, some of all of you were kids at one point, and the parent says, That's it?
SPEAKER_00: I've had enough.
SPEAKER_00: You're in trouble.
SPEAKER_00: Whatever trouble looked like for you as a parent, right?
SPEAKER_00: You cross that threshold where you're in trouble.
SPEAKER_00: And essentially that's what God is saying to the nation of Israel.
SPEAKER_00: Remember, at the time where Amos is speaking, there are two, the children of Israel are broken into two pieces.
SPEAKER_00: You have a northern kingdom and a southern kingdom.
SPEAKER_00: And so Amos is from the southern kingdom, but he has gone north to the northern kingdom to bring God's message to the nation of Israel.
SPEAKER_00: And they're doing good, like they're doing good financially.
SPEAKER_00: They have a strong army, uh, they are flourishing as a people, but there's one significant issue.
SPEAKER_00: It's how they treat the vulnerable people in their society.
SPEAKER_00: And God won't stand for it.
SPEAKER_00: He's like, it's not, it is not the ideal for you to be living the blessed part of blessable image-bearing covenant partners and to violate the covenant.
SPEAKER_00: You can't be blessed and violating the covenant at the same time.
SPEAKER_00: And so Amos is there preaching this message.
SPEAKER_00: Listen, this is not okay.
SPEAKER_00: So God, who waits in mercy at the right time, is going to act in justice.
SPEAKER_00: God is not just merciful upon you, but he is also just.
SPEAKER_00: Amos 7 and 8 is what happens when a nation has exhausted God's patience.
SPEAKER_00: I want to read to you the story of Amaziah.
SPEAKER_00: Before we talk about the plumb line, which I have down here in the basket of fruit, I want to read you a story out of the book of Amos.
SPEAKER_00: Now, there are not a lot of narratives.
SPEAKER_00: A lot of the genre of Amos are the messages that Amos was delivering to the nation of Israel.
SPEAKER_00: But we get this little snippet in the middle of chapter 7 about a priest named Amaziah.
SPEAKER_00: Let me read to you this story.
SPEAKER_00: Amaziah, the priest of Bethel, sent word to King Jeroboam of Israel, saying, Amos has conspired against you, right here in the house of Israel.
SPEAKER_00: The land cannot endure all of his words.
SPEAKER_00: For Amos has said this, Jeroboam, that's the king, Jeroboam will die by the sword, and Israel will certainly go into exile from its homeland.
SPEAKER_00: Then Amaziah said to Amos, Go away, you seer, flee to the land of Judah, earn your living and give your prophecies over there.
SPEAKER_00: But don't ever prophesy at Bethel again, for it is the king's sanctuary, a royal temple.
SPEAKER_00: So Amos answered Amaziah, I was not a prophet or the son of a prophet, rather I was a herdsman, I took care of sycamore figs.
SPEAKER_00: But the Lord took me from following the flock, and he said to me, Go prophesy to my people, Israel.
SPEAKER_00: Now hear the word of the Lord.
SPEAKER_00: You say, Do not prophesy against Israel, do not preach against the house of Isaac.
SPEAKER_00: Therefore, this is what the Lord says to you, Amaziah.
SPEAKER_00: Your wife will be a prostitute in the city, your sons and your daughters will fall by the sword, and your land will be divided up with a measuring line, and you yourself will die on pagan soil, and Israel will certainly go into exile from its homeland.
SPEAKER_00: Would you pray with me?
SPEAKER_00: Lord, as we look at the text this morning, we want to come before you with hearts that are open.
SPEAKER_00: And we have in front of us two chapters, a lot of material here, and so we ask that you would just gift us with understanding of what you are saying through Amos.
SPEAKER_00: And then we we ask that you would apply it to our lives.
SPEAKER_00: Lord, we each have different stories, and we want to hear what you have for us this morning.
SPEAKER_00: We want you to use the Bible as a surgical tool on our hearts.
SPEAKER_00: We want it to be that light that you promised it will be.
SPEAKER_00: We want it to be our food, our nourishment in our lives.
SPEAKER_00: So, God, here we are.
SPEAKER_00: Give us ears to hear what you would say.
SPEAKER_00: We pray this in Jesus' name.
SPEAKER_00: Amen.
SPEAKER_00: You already have a question.
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, go for it.
SPEAKER_00: We don't know.
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
SPEAKER_00: Yep, we don't know anything about Amaziah's wife or his kids.
SPEAKER_00: But the way that God is working, here again, is he's working with the entire nation.
SPEAKER_00: And so there are going to be people who are more sinful than others, but there's going to be a general suffering that occurs.
SPEAKER_00: There's going to be a general suffering that occurs for the nation because of national disobedience.
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_00: It's like right now.
SPEAKER_00: Sometimes you have people that you didn't do anything wrong, right?
SPEAKER_00: But then somebody is just comes up and is totally rude to you.
SPEAKER_00: Has that happened before?
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
SPEAKER_00: Right?
SPEAKER_00: And you're like, what is going on, right?
SPEAKER_00: The reality is that right now the state of the world is in rebellion to God, and so there is just general suffering.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus stepped in and he suffered so that we could be on this road to rescue or this road to redemption.
SPEAKER_00: But there is general suffering that occurs because of sin.
SPEAKER_00: And so we see this happen even today where there is, there are groups of people.
SPEAKER_00: We see this happening in families across Baltimore, where you've got kids that suffer because the parents are stupid.
SPEAKER_00: And that's not necessarily God punishing those kids.
SPEAKER_00: That's not what's happening, but God's allowing that suffering to go on because the parents are wicked and sinful.
SPEAKER_00: Thank God.
SPEAKER_00: I know it's the same thing.
SPEAKER_00: Well, and you're you're yes, for those of you that are new, we do take questions, so feel free to ask questions as we're going on.
SPEAKER_00: Some of you are used to like just a pastor like preaching.
SPEAKER_00: Well, that's that's rough, right?
SPEAKER_00: So listen, here's the thing though.
SPEAKER_00: The the issue of evil, the issue of evil is one of the most difficult, right?
SPEAKER_00: And there are people who are like, no, I can't follow the God of the Bible because if he's a good God, why would he allow suffering?
SPEAKER_00: And I think the greatest answer to that, I don't think it's something to just brush under the comfort.
SPEAKER_00: I think it should be acknowledged as one of the most challenging issues.
SPEAKER_00: God's answer to human suffering was to send his only son and to suffer on behalf of humanity so that you and I could be rescued.
SPEAKER_00: Yes, image.
SPEAKER_00: So both I both concepts are taught in the Bible.
SPEAKER_00: So every individual is responsible before God, and in God's promises in the law in the Old Testament, there is this visiting of the disobedience of fathers upon their following generations.
SPEAKER_00: And we can kind of see that practically working out, right?
SPEAKER_00: Where we have generational issues in Baltimore City, where it's just like you might have one parent or uh mom and dad who are stupid, and it has this generational impact.
SPEAKER_00: We even see this in science with um like the epigenome.
SPEAKER_00: We can see like this generational impact of earlier generations having disobedience.
SPEAKER_00: But in terms of relating to God and the um the curse, when you step into a relationship with Jesus, this you the sin that you're held accountable to before God is not your parents' sin.
SPEAKER_00: You don't stand before the judgment seat of God for what your grandpa did.
SPEAKER_00: You stand before him and you're accountable for what you have done.
SPEAKER_00: And when Jesus paid for your sin on the cross, he made it possible for your sin to be taken away personally, and he deals with you personally.
SPEAKER_00: So both, it does seem contradictory, right?
SPEAKER_00: So there is this, there's the natural ramifications of like um living in a wicked country.
SPEAKER_00: If if if like if our government is bad in Baltimore City, right, and corrupt, we as citizens feel the effect of sinfulness in leadership, right?
SPEAKER_00: It ripples down.
SPEAKER_00: But at the same way, at the same time, in terms of personal judgment and forgiveness, God deals with us individually.
SPEAKER_00: Okay?
SPEAKER_00: Let's go back to Amaziah.
SPEAKER_00: The reason I wanted to start with Amaziah is because it's a story.
SPEAKER_00: This guy is the priest in Bethel, which is the capital of worship for this northern nation of Israel.
SPEAKER_00: He's got everything together.
SPEAKER_00: He's a religious professional in a very religious place, serving in a famous city, close enough to power that literally today he could pick up his, he could pick up his phone and he could text the king.
SPEAKER_00: Like very few people have access like that.
SPEAKER_00: But when the word of God comes through Amos, Amaziah doesn't repent.
SPEAKER_00: He doesn't even wrestle.
SPEAKER_00: He sends a report to the king to spin Amos' words as a political threat, and then he maybe politely tells Amos to take his hard message back south to Judah.
SPEAKER_00: Go back to Judah.
SPEAKER_00: Prophesy there.
SPEAKER_00: Don't prophesy anymore in Bethel.
SPEAKER_00: Amaziah is a man who stands in the presence of God's warnings, and he says, in effect, we're fine here.
SPEAKER_00: Can you relate to that?
SPEAKER_00: You see, some of you have been coming to church every Sunday for the last few months, maybe for a year, and you're standing and you're hearing God's word, and I just want you to know what is going on, I want to ask you, what is going on in your heart?
SPEAKER_00: Are you an Amaziah that's trying to manage it and say, oh, that's for that guy over there, or that's for that person over there?
SPEAKER_00: Or man, I really wish my friend could hear what he had to say today, or are you taking to heart the words that God is speaking to you as we read his word on a weekly basis?
SPEAKER_00: Are you managing it or are you pushing it away?
SPEAKER_00: Let's go through the first six verses.
SPEAKER_00: I'm not going to put it up here before you because we're going to cover so much material.
SPEAKER_00: In verses 1 through 6, there are two images.
SPEAKER_00: There is a swarm of locusts, that God says, I'm sending a swarm of locusts on you.
SPEAKER_00: And then a little bit later he says, I'm sending a fire on you.
SPEAKER_00: And then Amos pleads with God, saying, Please don't do it, and God relents.
SPEAKER_00: Just like when God said to Moses, Moses, I'm going to wipe them out and start over with you.
SPEAKER_00: And Moses pleads with God, says, please be patient with them.
SPEAKER_00: Please be merciful.
SPEAKER_00: And God relents.
SPEAKER_00: There are these two scenes where God brings to bear this idea of judgment, and then he relents from it.
SPEAKER_00: What it shows us is that, man, God's justified in his justice to judge, but God is patient.
SPEAKER_00: He is waiting.
SPEAKER_00: He's seeing.
SPEAKER_00: He's given you a little bit longer, a little bit longer.
SPEAKER_00: A little bit longer.
SPEAKER_00: But the nation of Israel is interpreting God's patience, saying, we're fine.
SPEAKER_00: Nothing's happening.
SPEAKER_00: They're looking at their prosperity, their religious activity.
SPEAKER_00: They're seeing that there's a delay in judgment.
SPEAKER_00: And they're like, we're good with God.
SPEAKER_00: Are you doing that in your life?
SPEAKER_00: Are you looking at the blessings in your life and misinterpreting what God is doing?
SPEAKER_00: That's good.
SPEAKER_00: Don't misinterpret the patience of God.
SPEAKER_00: When you get to verse 7, he says this.
SPEAKER_00: He showed me.
SPEAKER_00: Amos says, God showed me this.
SPEAKER_00: Now remind, now you got to take into account, he's already gone through these two images, a locus and fire.
SPEAKER_00: And God hasn't sent the locusts.
SPEAKER_00: He hasn't sent the fire.
SPEAKER_00: But then God shows Amos, the Lord was standing there by a vertical wall with a plumb line in his hand.
SPEAKER_00: This is a plumb line.
SPEAKER_00: Okay?
SPEAKER_00: So Amos has this vision of this tool being held up against a wall.
SPEAKER_00: So this is used to check whether or not the wall is straight, right?
SPEAKER_00: We're using gravity to pull a straight line to figure out what's true.
SPEAKER_00: We got a lot of brick buildings.
SPEAKER_00: Have you recently walked through Fells Point and seen Bertha's, the green building?
SPEAKER_00: If you were to take this plumb line and hold it up against the wall on Bertha's, that thing's fallen down, right?
SPEAKER_00: It got condemned.
SPEAKER_00: They've got braces up against that wall because the wall is not true to a plumb line.
SPEAKER_00: And so in the story here, Amos has this vision.
SPEAKER_00: And the Lord is standing with a plumb line in his hand.
SPEAKER_00: And the Lord asks me, What do you see, Amos?
SPEAKER_00: So it's a participatory vision.
SPEAKER_00: You get a question, what do you see?
SPEAKER_00: And Amos replies, A plumb line.
SPEAKER_00: And the Lord said, I'm setting a plumb line amongst my people Israel.
SPEAKER_00: I will no longer spare them.
SPEAKER_00: So the plumb line is figurative.
SPEAKER_00: Isaac's high places will be deserted, and Israel's sanctuaries will be in ruins.
SPEAKER_00: I will raise up against the house of Jeroboam with a sword.
SPEAKER_00: So the idea is that God's saying, Through you, Amos, and through my work, I'm coming and I'm measuring the lives of the people in Israel.
SPEAKER_00: And my plumb line represents what's true and good.
SPEAKER_00: And what my plumb line is finding is that this nation is crooked.
SPEAKER_00: They're a crooked wall that needs to be judged.
SPEAKER_00: Every time that you read through the New Testament and you see the word according to, it's the Greek word kata.
SPEAKER_00: Kata means down and against.
SPEAKER_00: And God is the just judge of the whole earth.
SPEAKER_00: And as he stands in the midst, his presence is in the midst of the nation of Israel, he's saying, You're crooked.
SPEAKER_00: You're crooked.
SPEAKER_00: And the question that the text asks of us, and the Holy Spirit would place upon our life, is what's out of place?
SPEAKER_00: What's crooked in my life?
SPEAKER_00: Remember, these are the people that are a covenant people.
SPEAKER_00: They've got the Torah, the five books of Moses, that has given them clear instructions on how to care for the widow, the orphan, the poor, and the immigrant.
SPEAKER_00: The widow, the orphan, the poor, and the immigrant.
SPEAKER_00: The most vulnerable in society.
SPEAKER_00: And God's looking around, and he's saying, here's my plumb line.
SPEAKER_00: I'm holding it up.
SPEAKER_00: And you're crooked.
SPEAKER_00: You're not doing what I've asked you to do.
SPEAKER_00: So that's the first, that's the image.
SPEAKER_00: And essentially what he is saying is that the time is up.
SPEAKER_00: The time is up.
SPEAKER_00: When Amaziah tells Amos to leave, he's effectively telling this priest, right, in Bethel.
SPEAKER_00: When he tells Amos to leave, he's saying, take the plumb line with you.
SPEAKER_00: Don't measure us.
SPEAKER_00: Don't question this wall.
SPEAKER_00: We like it the way that it is.
SPEAKER_00: But God has already decided to measure the priest as well as the people.
SPEAKER_00: Amos turns to Amaziah and says, You hear the word of the Lord.
SPEAKER_00: Because right after this verse is what we already read about Amaziah.
SPEAKER_00: So we have the plumb line, and then we get the story that I already read to you about Amaziah.
SPEAKER_00: And he says, You've been measured.
SPEAKER_00: You're trying to tell me to shut up and go back to Judah?
SPEAKER_00: You've been measured, and God's going to deal with you.
SPEAKER_00: Alright, so we have the picture of the plumb line.
SPEAKER_00: There's another poem or picture that Amos uses in chapter 8.
SPEAKER_00: Chapter 8, the Lord God showed me, so Amos is having a vision.
SPEAKER_00: It's not just hearing, it's visual.
SPEAKER_00: God showed me this a basket of summer fruit.
SPEAKER_00: I've brought for you a basket of summer fruit.
SPEAKER_00: Where do you think I got this from?
SPEAKER_00: Look at these strawberries.
SPEAKER_00: Look at that.
SPEAKER_00: This one's beautiful.
SPEAKER_00: It's right.
SPEAKER_00: It's good.
SPEAKER_00: Now, I'm gonna give every one of you strawberries.
SPEAKER_00: Not right now, but later on.
SPEAKER_00: So totally off topic, but I'm allowed to do that.
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, this is a good the um the on Monday, I think it was Monday, somebody published a report that um now I'm afraid I got strawberry seeds in my teeth.
SPEAKER_00: You should never preach and eat at the same time.
SPEAKER_00: Somebody published a report that Driscoll strawberries have um high levels of like uh carcinogenic toxins in it.
SPEAKER_00: So anytime that happens, and they deny they've denied it, and um they said, look, we sourced from a bunch of different growers.
SPEAKER_00: Well, anytime that kind of thing comes out in the news, the Amazon that has all the strawberries, they just dump them.
SPEAKER_00: So I'm gonna give you a bunch of cancerous strawberries when you come to the Compassion Center.
SPEAKER_00: Hey, go read the end of Mark.
SPEAKER_00: It says, you know, you'll take up snakes and poisonous stew and just pray before you eat them and consecrate it to God and you'll be fine.
unknown: I know.
SPEAKER_00: Well, I just want you to know why we have so many strawberries.
SPEAKER_00: Maybe that's the case with the bananas, too, because like it's been raining bananas over there.
SPEAKER_00: Let me read to you the rest of the story about the ripe fruit.
SPEAKER_00: He asked me, What do you see, Amos?
SPEAKER_00: So it's again, it's a participatory vision.
SPEAKER_00: And Amos replied, Oh, I see a basket of summer fruit.
SPEAKER_00: And the Lord said to me, The end has come.
SPEAKER_00: For my people Israel, I will no longer spare them.
SPEAKER_00: Wow.
SPEAKER_00: That's heavy.
SPEAKER_00: When God says the time, the end has come, I'm done.
SPEAKER_00: I'm done.
SPEAKER_00: We serve a merciful God.
SPEAKER_00: We serve a God who's intervened, like he stepped, he sent his son in in the flesh to pay for our sin on the cross.
SPEAKER_00: And he gives every human, he gives everyone an opportunity to repent and turn to him.
SPEAKER_00: But there is a point where God says, I'm done.
SPEAKER_00: And I don't know when that point is for you, but I know that the door is open.
SPEAKER_00: You're here this morning.
SPEAKER_00: You're hearing again an invitation to come to Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: Thank you.
SPEAKER_00: You're hearing again an invitation to come to Jesus and let Jesus forgive your sins.
SPEAKER_00: And I just pray that you accept that invitation because there is a point where God says, the end has come.
SPEAKER_00: The end has come.
SPEAKER_00: I will no longer spare them.
SPEAKER_00: The Bible teaches a lot about eternal life and life found in Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: But the Bible is also very honest and clear that there is an eternal judgment.
SPEAKER_00: That if you choose to reject God's offer of forgiveness, to reject Jesus, you will live eternally condemned.
SPEAKER_00: And this statement here will be the statement over your life.
SPEAKER_00: It doesn't matter what people say at your funeral, it doesn't matter the good things that you did.
SPEAKER_00: If you're not right with God through this, you're with through Jesus Christ, you will be condemned and live eternally condemned, separated from the presence of God.
SPEAKER_00: And so God tells the nation that he's no longer going to spare them.
SPEAKER_00: In that day, the temple songs will become wailing.
SPEAKER_00: This is the Lord's, the Lord God's declaration.
SPEAKER_00: Many dead bodies thrown everywhere.
SPEAKER_00: Silence.
SPEAKER_00: Terrifying.
SPEAKER_00: It's a terrifying image.
SPEAKER_00: God's standard is revealed.
SPEAKER_00: They are ripe for judgment exposed.
SPEAKER_00: Now, why a fruit basket?
SPEAKER_00: Why a fruit basket?
SPEAKER_00: It's a simple ordinary thing that they would be familiar with.
SPEAKER_00: A basket of ripe summer fruit.
SPEAKER_00: In Israel, this kind of fruit, it was picked at the end of the harvest season.
SPEAKER_00: Remember, they don't have refrigerators, there's no cold storage.
SPEAKER_00: The fruit was beautiful, sweet, ready to eat, but also just about to go bad.
SPEAKER_00: That's the picture.
SPEAKER_00: These bananas right here.
SPEAKER_00: If you took these bananas home and you left them on your counter, in about four to five days from now, you would not want to have anything to do with it.
SPEAKER_00: You might be a banana bread maker, and you'd be like, okay, I'm not going to eat those, but I can use them for banana bread.
SPEAKER_00: But but there's a shelf life on these, right?
SPEAKER_00: And that's what he wants you to have in your hand.
SPEAKER_00: There's a shelf life.
SPEAKER_00: There's a shelf life with God's patience.
SPEAKER_00: With 8-1.
SPEAKER_00: Okay.
SPEAKER_00: Hold on, let me.
SPEAKER_00: I gotta go back to 8-1.
SPEAKER_00: Why would he say Okay?
SPEAKER_00: There we go.
SPEAKER_00: The bodies everywhere.
SPEAKER_00: You like the bodies everywhere?
SPEAKER_00: I feel like that's a song, right?
SPEAKER_00: Bodies on the floor.
SPEAKER_00: Yes.
SPEAKER_00: Maybe it's from Amos.
SPEAKER_00: Okay, why is God saying this?
SPEAKER_00: Why is why why does he get to this point?
SPEAKER_00: He's been patient.
SPEAKER_00: Can I can you hold that question until we get to Romans in just a second?
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, why why do you think?
SPEAKER_00: Why do you think?
SPEAKER_00: You have to take, I I I think you actually don't want that.
SPEAKER_00: Because when somebody wrongs you, let's say that somebody punched you on the street.
SPEAKER_00: Do you want God to be like, no problem?
SPEAKER_00: Go ahead, punch as many people as you want.
SPEAKER_00: Or do you want that person to have a degree of justice?
SPEAKER_00: Maybe not like uh facing the electric chair, but some form of justice.
SPEAKER_00: Do you want there to be justice?
SPEAKER_00: Didn't somebody kick your dog like a while ago.
SPEAKER_00: I know the dead body.
SPEAKER_00: It's such an image, right?
SPEAKER_00: Throwing the bodies everywhere.
SPEAKER_00: Okay.
SPEAKER_00: Felicia, go and read.
SPEAKER_00: Read the book of Revelation, and you'll see that as much as Jesus is merciful, he's also gonna judge.
SPEAKER_00: He he is the judge.
SPEAKER_00: But when we say he's got a wicked temper, when when somebody human like like us, he does judge, yeah.
SPEAKER_00: Okay, so that's important right there, what you're saying.
SPEAKER_00: So if you read into this that Felicia is going to be judged like this, then you're misreading it.
SPEAKER_00: Because Jesus came and laid down his body to be brutally slaughtered so that you didn't face this kind of judgment.
SPEAKER_00: See, these people here are under the old covenant of Moses.
SPEAKER_00: And so they're relating to God.
SPEAKER_00: God's in his love, he's given them all this verbal instruction.
SPEAKER_00: And then in his love, he's allowed them to suffer a little bit to try to remind them you need to repent, you need to change your ways.
SPEAKER_00: They keep they keep disobeying, they keep disobeying.
SPEAKER_00: The dead bodies.
SPEAKER_00: Okay.
SPEAKER_00: All my job is to show you what the Bible says.
SPEAKER_00: You've got to wrestle with God on that.
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_00: You've got to wrestle with the justice of God.
SPEAKER_00: If you feel uncomfortable with that, complain to him.
SPEAKER_00: You got his number.
SPEAKER_00: But it's a good, it's a good, it's a good thing to wrestle with.
SPEAKER_00: You just need to know that he died and he stood in the place of those who, like what happened to his body?
SPEAKER_00: He had a dead body thrown around.
SPEAKER_00: Like Jesus did that so that you don't have to face that judgment.
SPEAKER_00: The opportunity is that you've taken, you've been, you've trusted in Jesus, you've been baptized, you do not face that judgment.
SPEAKER_00: The other side of God, yep.
SPEAKER_00: Yes, the justice.
SPEAKER_00: So the beautiful thing about God is that he perfectly holds in balance the most amazing love, love that's unsearchable and unknowable, and the most incredible perfect justice.
SPEAKER_00: He is both perfectly just and perfectly loving.
SPEAKER_00: Well, he said, no, he has been turning the other cheek.
SPEAKER_00: He has been turning the other cheek for years, century after century.
SPEAKER_00: He's been turning the other cheek.
SPEAKER_00: He was gonna send a fire, he was gonna send locusts, and they prayed and they said, Can we have mercy?
SPEAKER_00: They said, Okay, I'll give you a little bit more time.
SPEAKER_00: I gotta I gotta read this to you.
SPEAKER_00: Okay?
SPEAKER_00: Look at this.
SPEAKER_00: This is jump over to the New Testament, Romans chapter 2.
SPEAKER_00: Okay?
SPEAKER_00: Please, please, this if you if you get anything, please get this.
SPEAKER_00: Okay, look at this, what Paul says.
SPEAKER_00: He asks a question.
SPEAKER_00: Or do you despise the riches of his kindness, his restraint, his patience, not recognizing that God's kindness is intended to lead you to repentance?
SPEAKER_00: Do you?
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
SPEAKER_00: And the question is, is do you despise how kind God is being with you?
SPEAKER_00: How patient he's being with you, how merciful, how restrained he is being towards you.
SPEAKER_00: Are you interpreting it as like that God's okay with your rebellion and your bad behavior?
SPEAKER_00: And not understanding that right now God's not throwing your body around and just striking you dead because he wants it to lead you to this place of repentance.
SPEAKER_00: God deals with us with this incredible patience.
SPEAKER_00: And we can't take that for granted.
SPEAKER_00: We have to recognize, okay.
SPEAKER_00: We've got to wrap this up because we've only have two minutes left.
SPEAKER_00: Two minutes.
SPEAKER_00: Verses four.
SPEAKER_00: Hear this, you who because so okay, so let me just read you three verses, okay?
SPEAKER_00: Four, five, and six from chapter eight.
unknown: Okay.
SPEAKER_00: Here's what they're doing wrong.
SPEAKER_00: Okay?
SPEAKER_00: Here's why judgment is coming down on their heads.
SPEAKER_00: Okay?
SPEAKER_00: Here's what they're doing wrong.
SPEAKER_00: You who trample on the needy and do away with the poor of the land.
SPEAKER_00: Just throwing away.
SPEAKER_00: Are you are you do you make less than$30,000 a year?
SPEAKER_00: We're gonna throw you in the garbage.
SPEAKER_00: What if, yeah, what's, I don't know what you know, like the poverty line is now.
SPEAKER_00: But let's say you make you your annual income is under the poverty line.
SPEAKER_00: And and we're gonna just take you as society, we'll just throw you in the garbage.
SPEAKER_00: That's what they were doing.
SPEAKER_00: For year after year after year.
SPEAKER_00: Here's what they're asking.
SPEAKER_00: When will the new moon be?
SPEAKER_00: Right?
SPEAKER_00: When's gonna be the new moon?
SPEAKER_00: So that we can sell grain?
SPEAKER_00: And the Sabbath, when's it gonna end so that we may um market wheat, we may market wheat, and we can reduce the measure while increasing the price and cheat with dishonest scales.
SPEAKER_00: Just corrupt.
SPEAKER_00: Remember the plumb line?
SPEAKER_00: Just they're crooked.
SPEAKER_00: They're doing society bad.
SPEAKER_00: They're cheating people in the marketplace.
SPEAKER_00: We can buy the poor with silver and the needy for a pair of sandals.
SPEAKER_00: Remember, we we saw that in chapter two.
SPEAKER_00: It's basically like they're basically they are evaluating a human as if they're like, oh yeah, I got an extra pair of crocs.
SPEAKER_00: You give me that person over there.
SPEAKER_00: I'll tread you my crocs for the human.
SPEAKER_00: That's how they're treating people.
SPEAKER_00: Even sell the chaff.
SPEAKER_00: The bottom line is that the way they're treating their fellow humanity is as if they're garbage, worthless.
SPEAKER_00: And this is what you need to know.
SPEAKER_00: Some of you have faced that type of treatment in your life.
SPEAKER_00: And the God of the Bible goes to war for you and says, that is wrong.
SPEAKER_00: That is not how it's supposed to be.
SPEAKER_00: And if you are living in this day and you were a poor person or a needy person, God is literally about to bring judgment on the heads of leaders and wealthy people because of how you've been treated.
SPEAKER_00: That's the God of the Bible.
SPEAKER_00: He's not okay with it.
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
SPEAKER_00: Since God is a higher power, I'm sorry, I can't hear you.
SPEAKER_00: Somebody's had a phone on.
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
SPEAKER_00: Okay.
SPEAKER_00: Okay, are you exempt from God's judgment if you're from a lower class?
SPEAKER_00: No.
SPEAKER_00: You're not exempt from because you and I answer to God.
SPEAKER_00: Right?
SPEAKER_00: Now, that's on a like a moral level, right?
SPEAKER_00: When we rebel, let's say that we're rude to our girlfriend or we lie to our neighbor, we're accountable, no matter what our financial state is, we're accountable to God.
SPEAKER_00: That's rebellion.
SPEAKER_00: And everybody who's ever been born since Adam and Eve has rebelled against God, is guilty before God, and the Bible says that the wages of sin or rebellion, the wages of sin is death.
SPEAKER_00: So the reason why humans die is because they've rebelled against God.
SPEAKER_00: That's that's on this vertical relationship.
SPEAKER_00: Now, in society, the Bible teaches to whom much is given, much is required.
SPEAKER_00: So there is a greater accountability for leaders.
SPEAKER_00: There's a greater accountability for pastors.
SPEAKER_00: You look up, I think that's James, no, that's uh yeah, James 3 or James 4, the beginning.
SPEAKER_00: I think it's James 3.
SPEAKER_00: So he says, you shouldn't, you shouldn't, not everybody should want to be a pastor or be a teacher, because there's greater accountability for it.
SPEAKER_00: So in that sense, there is a higher standard, but there's not, I think you use the word exemption, there's no exemption from judgment, but there's a higher standard for those who lead.
SPEAKER_00: So yeah, you want to run for political office, you want to be a judge, you want to be a cop, you want to hold a position in society where you're the decision maker, you need to know that God's holding you accountable.
SPEAKER_00: So there's people that go into those positions just for control, to get like an angle, to make more money, to just be um a jerk, sometimes.
SPEAKER_00: If that's your angle, man, God's coming down on you.
SPEAKER_00: That's a great question.
SPEAKER_00: Um, man, lots of good questions this morning.
SPEAKER_00: How do I end?
SPEAKER_00: Um by the end of the story.
SPEAKER_00: So what I'm not gonna, I read to you what they did wrong.
SPEAKER_00: I'm not gonna read through all the judgments because I read through one judgment and Felicia asked me like a 10-minute question.
SPEAKER_00: But there's a bunch of judgment.
SPEAKER_00: If you read through the rest of chapter 8, there's a lot of judgment that's there, okay?
SPEAKER_00: Of how God's gonna deal with this nation because of the wrong things that they're doing.
SPEAKER_00: The key thing, and and what I've what I've touched on is Amaziah.
SPEAKER_00: Amaziah hears a hard word from God and tries to silence it for the sake of his own safety and comfort.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus is the hard word.
SPEAKER_00: Listen, I want to just compare Jesus with Amaziah very quickly.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus is the hard word of God, and he refuses to be silent even when it costs him his life.
SPEAKER_00: So what did what did Amaziah, who's a priest, and Jesus, who is the high priest, they both come into town.
SPEAKER_00: Amaziah is just a political pushover who is not representing what the covenant people need to hear.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus comes in and he speaks those hard words that need to be heard.
SPEAKER_00: Amaziah uses his position to stay close to the king and preserve the status quo, but Jesus walks away from earthly power, identifies with the poor and broken, and he announces a kingdom that will overturn the status quo.
SPEAKER_00: Amaziah the priest pushes the prophet out of Bethel to keep the temple running smoothly.
SPEAKER_00: The religious leaders in Jesus' day did the same thing, trying to push the true prophet, being Jesus, out of the city, and they crucified him to keep their system intact.
SPEAKER_00: In both cases, religion protects itself instead of receiving the truth.
SPEAKER_00: The Jesus, Amaziah, would have tried, the Jesus that Amaziah would have tried to silence is the very one who dies for the Amaziah type people.
SPEAKER_00: When Jesus went to the cross, he died for the people that are like Amaziah.
SPEAKER_00: He's the bad guy in the story.
SPEAKER_00: He's the one trying to push God away.
SPEAKER_00: And yet Jesus stepped in the world because we're all rebellious, we're all enemies of God until we repent and turn towards him.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus came and paid for that rebellion.
SPEAKER_00: Let's stop there.
SPEAKER_00: We're going to celebrate what he did, what Jesus did on our behalf by taking communion together.
SPEAKER_00: There's communion here, there's communion there.
SPEAKER_00: We're going to take this meal together.
SPEAKER_00: And I just want to remind you that this is a meal for those of you that have already made that decision to follow Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: If you're still on the fence and you're not right with God yet, you're still kind of deciding what you want to do with Jesus, please don't eat this meal for your own sake, because you're eating judgment on your head, because you're not a follower yet.
SPEAKER_00: For the rest of us, we're going to eat this meal.
SPEAKER_00: I just want to, I read this beautiful article this week based on Hebrews chapter 12.
SPEAKER_00: It says, like, we've we're when we're gathered here, this is just a part of the gathering.
SPEAKER_00: Like there's Christians all over Baltimore City that are gathered in the name of Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: We are just participating in this big body that represents the saints.
SPEAKER_00: And uh it's a good it's good to be a part of the family.
SPEAKER_00: So we take this token meal because someday we're gonna eat together in the presence of God.
SPEAKER_00: We're gonna have a feast with him.
SPEAKER_00: So this is a sampling, a reminder of like, hey, this is what Jesus did on our behalf so that we can be together.
SPEAKER_00: So I'm gonna have the worship team come up.
SPEAKER_00: I'm gonna pray for us as they're coming up.
SPEAKER_00: And uh Lord, we just thank you for your word this morning and just the reminder of your patience, your incredible patience in our life.
SPEAKER_00: And Lord, we just ask that you would, if there's anyone here that is not yet repented, Lord, thank you for being patient with them.
SPEAKER_00: Lord, today is their day.
SPEAKER_00: Lord, I just pray that you would work in their hearts and that they would turn their life over to you.
SPEAKER_00: And Lord, that you would find in us just a readiness to keep repenting, to keep running back to you, to keep finding your forgiveness.
SPEAKER_00: And I ask this in Jesus' name.
SPEAKER_00: Amen.