SPEAKER_00: This sermon was recorded at Faith Evangelical Free Church in Grand Forks, North Dakota.
SPEAKER_01: Welcome to our worship time together.
SPEAKER_01: I trust that that has all led you to a worshipful reverence for who God is and what he's done for us.
SPEAKER_01: Just love the content of those songs that have just drawn us to Christ and to the cross and what he's done for us.
SPEAKER_01: Well, I hope that you will come back this evening at 5 o'clock for our pie fellowship.
SPEAKER_01: Part of gathering together as God's people is loving being together.
SPEAKER_01: So I trust that you will love to be together with all of us tonight.
SPEAKER_01: And last year I made the mistake of telling you what my favorite pie was.
SPEAKER_01: So we were inundated last year with that pie.
SPEAKER_01: So I will not this year make the mistake of telling you that I love fruit pies.
SPEAKER_01: Just saying.
SPEAKER_01: Would you turn to the Old Testament book of Amos?
SPEAKER_01: If you have your Bible or if you have a pew Bible in front of you.
SPEAKER_01: We have been working our way through this Old Testament prophet seeking to answer the question, does God care?
SPEAKER_01: Does God care?
SPEAKER_01: Each section of the book has an appendage, I guess you could say, to that question.
SPEAKER_01: And our text this morning adds the appendage, does God care about the acts of the religious and the wealthy?
SPEAKER_01: Now that might seem like a strange group to put together, but Amos puts them together.
SPEAKER_01: And I trust that as we work through this you will be able to see why.
SPEAKER_01: I'd like to look with you for our time together.
SPEAKER_01: Amos chapter 5, beginning in verse 18.
SPEAKER_01: And we'll read all the way through the end of chapter 6 if you would like to follow along.
SPEAKER_01: Again, that's Amos chapter 5, beginning in verse 18.
SPEAKER_01: Woe to you who desire the day of Yahweh.
SPEAKER_01: Why would you have the day of Yahweh?
SPEAKER_01: It is darkness and not light.
SPEAKER_01: It is as if a man fled from a lion and a bear met him, or as if he went into the house and leaned his hand against the wall and a serpent bit him.
SPEAKER_01: Is not the day of Yahweh darkness and not light?
SPEAKER_01: And gloom with no brightness in it?
SPEAKER_01: I hate, I despise your feasts, and I take no delight in your solemn assemblies, even though you offer me your burnt offerings and grain offerings, I will not accept them, and the peace offerings of your fattened animals I will not look on them.
SPEAKER_01: Take away from me the noise of your songs, to the melody of your harps I will not listen, but let justice roll down like waters and righteousness like an ever flowing stream.
SPEAKER_01: Did you bring to me sacrifices and offerings during the forty years in the wilderness, O house of Israel?
SPEAKER_01: Now you shall take up Sakuth your king and Cayun your star god, your images that you made for yourselves, and I will send you into exile beyond Damascus, says Yahweh, whose name is the God of hosts.
SPEAKER_01: Woe to those who are at ease in Zion, and to those who feel secure on the mountain of Samaria, the notable men of the first of the nations to whom the house of Israel comes.
SPEAKER_01: Pass over to Kalna and see, and from there go to Hamath the Great.
SPEAKER_01: Then go down to Gath of the Philistines.
SPEAKER_01: Are you better than these kingdoms?
SPEAKER_01: Or is your territory greater than your territory?
SPEAKER_01: Or you who put far away the day of disaster and bring near the seat of violence?
SPEAKER_01: Woe to those who lie on beds of ivory, and stretch themselves out on their couches and eat lambs from the flock and calves from the midst of the stall, who sing idle songs to the sound of the harp and and like David invent for themselves instruments of music, who drink wine in bowls and anoint themselves with the finest oils, but are not grieved over the ruin of Joseph.
SPEAKER_01: Therefore they shall now be the first of those who go into exile, and the revelry of those who stretch themselves out shall pass away.
SPEAKER_01: The Lord Yahweh has sworn by himself, declares Yahweh the God of hosts, I abhor the pride of Jacob, and hate his strongholds, and I will deliver up the city and all that is in it.
SPEAKER_01: And if ten men remain in one house, they shall die.
SPEAKER_01: And one's relative, the one who anoints him for burial, shall take him up to bring the bones out of the house, and shall say to him who is in the innermost parts of the house, Is there anyone still there with you?
SPEAKER_01: He shall say no.
SPEAKER_01: He shall say, Silence, we must not mention the name of Yahweh.
SPEAKER_01: For behold, Yahweh commands, and the great house shall be struck down into fragments, and the little house into bits.
SPEAKER_01: Do horses gallop on rocks?
SPEAKER_01: Does one plough the sea with oxen?
SPEAKER_01: But you have turned justice into poison, the fruit of righteousness into wormwood.
SPEAKER_01: You who rejoice in nothing, who say, Have we not by our own strength captured Karnaim for ourselves?
SPEAKER_01: For behold, I will raise up against you a nation, O house of Israel, declares Yahweh the God of hosts, and they shall oppress you from Lebo Hamath to the bookbrook of the Arabah.
SPEAKER_01: Amen.
SPEAKER_01: One of the most astonishing acts of God recorded in Scripture occurred during an act of worship.
SPEAKER_01: During an act of worship.
SPEAKER_01: Much of the Old Testament book of Exodus details the layout and the construction of the tabernacle, sort of a tent-like traveling temple.
SPEAKER_01: The next book, Leviticus, begins to lay out all of the requirements for worshiping God at that tabernacle, all of the purification rites, all of the rules and regulations for offerings and sacrifices.
SPEAKER_01: God was preparing his people to come together and worship them at this tabernacle.
SPEAKER_01: And then finally, God took Moses' brother Aaron and his four sons and set them apart as priests.
SPEAKER_01: They offered a sacrifice that was intended to atone for their own sins so that they would be purified to serve as mediators between God and the people.
SPEAKER_01: That is how the ninth chapter of the book of Leviticus ends.
SPEAKER_01: It's a great and awesome part of Scripture.
SPEAKER_01: It's a great and magnificent moment, as everything is now ready in the life of Israel for Israel to meet their God at the temple, to come and gather together and to worship him.
SPEAKER_01: It's a wonderful, wonderful position in which to be.
SPEAKER_01: And then we read in Leviticus chapter ten these words.
SPEAKER_01: Now Nadab and Abihu, the sons of Aaron, each took his censor and put fire in it, and laid incense on it, and offered strange fire before Yahweh, which he had not commanded them.
SPEAKER_01: Now pause and process that statement for just a moment.
SPEAKER_01: Two of the four sons of the newly ordained high priest of Israel are present and excited and ready to serve God and to worship him with all of their people.
SPEAKER_01: They're enthusiastic about doing that.
SPEAKER_01: Just as I trust all of us were enthusiastic to come and worship our God together this morning.
SPEAKER_01: So they grab some religious implements and they proceed to do just that.
SPEAKER_01: But there are two problems.
SPEAKER_01: First, they offered strange fire, it says.
SPEAKER_01: And that strange fire leads to the second problem that was not commanded by God as something that they should do.
SPEAKER_01: Taken together, those two issues tell a clear story.
SPEAKER_01: These two newly minted priests did things their own way.
SPEAKER_01: They decided that they had the right and the authority, the training and the knowledge to worship God the way they desired to worship.
SPEAKER_01: God had never authorized what they did.
SPEAKER_01: He never approved of it, and so it was considered strange, out of the ordinary, not normal.
SPEAKER_01: Now, today, today Nadab and Abihu would be lauded as trailbreakers in the ways of worship.
SPEAKER_01: They would be the headliners at the creative worship conferences.
SPEAKER_01: But then comes the astonishment.
SPEAKER_01: In the very next verse, it says, And fire came out from before Yahweh and consumed them.
SPEAKER_01: And they died before Yahweh.
SPEAKER_01: However, we might react to that, and I'm sure there are various ways, one thing is clear.
SPEAKER_01: From that passage, we know God cares about how his people worship.
SPEAKER_01: Nadab and Abihu ignored God's prescriptions for worship.
SPEAKER_01: And so Moses went on to explain in that chapter that Yahweh said, Among those who are near me I will be sanctified, I will be set apart, and before all of the people I will be glorified.
SPEAKER_01: You see, Aaron and his sons were to be the standard bearers of God's holiness.
SPEAKER_01: They were to display before all of the people that God is holy, that he is set apart, he is distinct, he is different.
SPEAKER_01: Instead, they turned worship into something common, not holy.
SPEAKER_01: And God took their lives.
SPEAKER_01: It should not surprise us to hear that things were not much different 650 years later.
SPEAKER_01: The pattern of ignoring what God had said, what God had prescribed, and worshiping however one wanted was the rule of the day.
SPEAKER_01: And in response, Amos proclaims to them three woes.
SPEAKER_01: Now that's kind of an ancient way of saying what we would say today as watch out and not in a good way.
SPEAKER_01: God is coming and he's not happy.
SPEAKER_01: You've heard the phrase, Mama is not happy, then nobody's happy?
SPEAKER_01: Well, take that a hundred times more.
SPEAKER_01: God's coming, he's not pleased.
SPEAKER_01: I'd like you to look with me at chapter 5, verses 18 through 27, as we really get into what's going on here.
SPEAKER_01: Here we see the detailed pattern of worship that Israel had come to accept as normal.
SPEAKER_01: In verses 18 through 20, we see that the people are theologically confused.
SPEAKER_01: And then in verses 21 to 24, we see their patterns of worship condemned.
SPEAKER_01: So let's look back at verses 18 through 20 first at being confused about the day of the Lord.
SPEAKER_01: They really, really wanted this day of the Lord to come.
SPEAKER_01: Now we're not told what they thought about it.
SPEAKER_01: We're not told how they viewed it, except that they were excited about it and they wanted it here now.
SPEAKER_01: Typically, in ancient Israel, the day of the Lord was viewed as a time of God's victory over all of his enemies.
SPEAKER_01: That was good news for Israel because Israel thought, hey, God's enemies are our enemies.
SPEAKER_01: Our enemies are God's enemies, so if God is coming in victory, that's good news for us.
SPEAKER_01: Our enemies are going to be abolished, they're going to be gone.
SPEAKER_01: Why would anyone not want God to come in crushing victory over his enemies?
SPEAKER_01: We're told that they longed for this day.
SPEAKER_01: Of Israel wandering in the desert.
SPEAKER_01: You remember this story, I'm sure.
SPEAKER_01: They were wandering in the desert and they were craving what they had left behind in Egypt.
SPEAKER_01: They were craving meat.
SPEAKER_01: They wanted good, solid meat to sink their teeth into.
SPEAKER_01: Of course, that wasn't a good thing because they weren't trusting God.
SPEAKER_01: Same word is used in 2 Samuel 23 of someone who is so thirsty that even a drop of water would be refreshing.
SPEAKER_01: They craved a drink of water.
SPEAKER_01: Solomon says in Proverbs 21, verses 25 and 26, the desire of the sluggard kills him.
SPEAKER_01: All day long he craves and craves.
SPEAKER_01: This word is so intense that it is connected to the idea of coveting.
SPEAKER_01: Israel is coveting the day of the Lord.
SPEAKER_01: Sadly, they had become overzealous about a good thing.
SPEAKER_01: That never happens to us, right?
SPEAKER_01: Some of us might become a little overzealous about pie this evening.
SPEAKER_01: That might not be a good thing.
SPEAKER_01: Few days at Thanksgiving, we might be a little overzealous about all the good food that's put in front of us.
SPEAKER_01: That's not, you get what I'm saying, right?
SPEAKER_01: Now we think of the day of the Lord as the end times.
SPEAKER_01: Israel probably wouldn't have thought that way so much as the day of the Lord being the time when they could get a leg up on their enemies.
SPEAKER_01: When they would be the ones in control.
SPEAKER_01: So if God were to help them along in that way, it would be even better.
SPEAKER_01: Wanting God to fulfill his plan is a good thing.
SPEAKER_01: Wanting God to carry out what he has promised to do is a good thing.
SPEAKER_01: But Israel was confused about what that good thing was.
SPEAKER_01: And as a result, they became very unbalanced in their theology.
SPEAKER_01: It's a good warning for us.
SPEAKER_01: Sometimes we struggle to be balanced people.
SPEAKER_01: We can become so caught up in our eschatology that it becomes a bad thing.
SPEAKER_01: Parts of Christendom today emphasize blessing from God, and as a result of that overemphasis on the blessings of God, they move into the false doctrines of a prosperity gospel.
SPEAKER_01: Some today overemphasize the work of the Holy Spirit and become off-center in their beliefs about the work of the Spirit.
SPEAKER_01: Israel was driven to desire a twisted form of the day of the Lord.
SPEAKER_01: Watch out, Amos said.
SPEAKER_01: Why would you desire the day of Yahweh?
SPEAKER_01: It's a day of darkness rather than a time of celebrating God's victory.
SPEAKER_01: Oh, you wonder about that?
SPEAKER_01: Let me give you a couple of examples, Amos said.
SPEAKER_01: Imagine that you are scared out of your mind because a lion has come out of nowhere and is chasing you.
SPEAKER_01: You are fleeing with all of your might away from the lion, and as you're running away from the lion, you only come face to face with a 700-pound grizzly bear.
SPEAKER_01: Is that really what you want?
SPEAKER_01: Or after a long, hard day, all you want to do is go home and relax.
SPEAKER_01: The couch is calling.
SPEAKER_01: So you go home and you just stretch out on the couch, and then seconds later you shriek because a snake has slithered out from beside the cushions and has bitten you on the hand.
SPEAKER_01: Is that really what you want?
SPEAKER_01: Is not the day of Yahweh darkness and not light and gloom with no brightness in it?
SPEAKER_01: Watch out, friends, lest your enthusiasm over a particular doctrine or practice lead you to a warped view of God's word.
SPEAKER_01: We don't know exactly when the prophet Joel wrote, but he said in Joel chapter two, the day of Yahweh is a day of darkness and gloom, a day of clouds and thick darkness.
SPEAKER_01: He describes an army, like blackness there is spread upon the mountains a great and powerful people, their like has never been before, nor will be again after them.
SPEAKER_01: Speaking of the Assyrian army, and yet Israel sat comfortably in place, with no fear of what was going on around them, feeling quite secure in their twisted theology.
SPEAKER_01: And that theology drove their worship.
SPEAKER_01: Worship that God detested.
SPEAKER_01: Imagine that.
SPEAKER_01: Imagine God saying to us gathered here this morning, I hate your worship.
SPEAKER_01: Just stop it.
SPEAKER_01: Every aspect of Israel's worship is spoken to here in verses twenty-one to twenty-four.
SPEAKER_01: Religious feasts and solemn assemblies, burnt offerings, grain offerings, peace offerings.
SPEAKER_01: Even the melodies of their worship songs have become nothing but noise to the sovereign God.
SPEAKER_01: And don't just don't just glance at those verbs.
SPEAKER_01: Don't don't just rush through them.
SPEAKER_01: Let the voice of God reverberate in your soul for a moment.
SPEAKER_01: I hate your worship.
SPEAKER_01: I despise it.
SPEAKER_01: I take no delight in your offering.
SPEAKER_01: I won't accept it.
SPEAKER_01: Get it away from me.
SPEAKER_01: I'm not gonna look on your offering.
SPEAKER_01: Take it away.
SPEAKER_01: I'm not going to listen to you.
SPEAKER_01: Commentator Doug Stewart has written, like the student who received an F for a paper he thought was brilliant, or the employee fired after doing what he thought was excellent work, or the person whose spouse suddenly announces that he or she wants a divorce when the marriage seems to be going so well, the Israelites were undoubtedly stunned at such a reversal of their expectations.
SPEAKER_01: Astonishing.
SPEAKER_01: Back in Amos chapter 2, Amos shined a light on the hearts of God's people, describing what they were doing.
SPEAKER_01: Amos said, You trample on the poor, you crush the needy.
SPEAKER_01: They hated truth and they crushed people.
SPEAKER_01: And yet they wanted God to crush their enemies while they ignored what he had to say and worshiped him improperly.
SPEAKER_01: Watch out if you think you can play fast and loose with God's word without consequences.
SPEAKER_01: Watch out if you think God will accept your self-centered versions of worship.
SPEAKER_01: For Israel, it was all a show.
SPEAKER_01: But they came dutifully, every opportunity to offer sacrifices, to do their duty, without any heart change.
SPEAKER_01: That's why God said, Let justice roll down like waters, and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream.
SPEAKER_01: Rather than seeing God as someone in whom they could trust, they saw God as merely another one of the panopoly of gods that they could manipulate.
SPEAKER_01: They claimed to be God's people, but there was no inward change from their faith.
SPEAKER_01: The evidence of faith should have been seen in their treatment of other people.
SPEAKER_01: But there was no evidence.
SPEAKER_01: Like a small stream that dries up with the heat of summer, any sense of God's character dried up within Israel.
SPEAKER_01: Justice, that which is right in the eyes of God, disappeared like water in a small stream evaporating in the middle of summer.
SPEAKER_01: Righteousness, that character of God that his people ought to mirror, is absent.
SPEAKER_01: Proper theology informed not Knowledge of God's word and biblically driven, heart-motivated worship leads to ever-flowing streams.
SPEAKER_01: If you truly know God's word, and if you worship him in spirit and in truth, if you have, like the scriptures that we heard a little bit earlier, had that heart of stone taken out and replaced with the heart of flesh, his character will be seen in you like an ever-flowing stream.
SPEAKER_01: God says that looks like righteousness and justice, doing what is right, acting what is right, expressing the character of God.
SPEAKER_01: That's the exact thing that God had been telling his people for centuries.
SPEAKER_01: That's what he tells us in Psalm 96.
SPEAKER_01: Worship Yahweh in the splendor of holiness.
SPEAKER_01: Say among the nations, Yahweh reigns, yes, the world is established, it shall never be moved, because he's judging.
SPEAKER_01: How?
SPEAKER_01: With equity, with evenness, with rightness.
SPEAKER_01: Psalmist goes on to say a little bit later in verse 13, He will judge the world in righteousness and the peoples in faithfulness.
SPEAKER_01: That's the character of your God.
SPEAKER_01: Your character, the character of your God is right.
SPEAKER_01: He does what is right.
SPEAKER_01: The judge of the earth will always do what is right.
SPEAKER_01: He is always faithful, he is always righteous, he is always just, and that same character will be seen in us if our faith is genuine and our worship is informed by God and his word.
SPEAKER_01: But God's people struggled to do that 2,600 years ago.
SPEAKER_01: But if we're honest with ourselves, we may still struggle with that today.
SPEAKER_01: Because it's very easy for us to be carried away by every wind of doctrine and empty philosophy.
SPEAKER_01: And if we're not careful before we realize it, we're worshiping idols of our own making without realizing it.
SPEAKER_01: That was the path Israel took.
SPEAKER_01: When false doctrine rules our theology and worship, we are moved then to a false understanding of what God says, and then we are open to moving away from God Himself toward things that begin to compete with him.
SPEAKER_01: As time progressed, Israel came to accept the worship of other gods alongside Yahweh.
SPEAKER_01: Amos mentions a couple of them Sakuth and Cayun.
SPEAKER_01: According to archaeological records from Mesopotamia, these idols represented the planet Saturn.
SPEAKER_01: Yes, they had moved to worshiping planets.
SPEAKER_01: Bad theology led to improper worship where things that are not gods competed for Israel's trust and love.
SPEAKER_01: So God said they would go into captivity along with their gods.
SPEAKER_01: Why is that?
SPEAKER_01: It's because the sovereign God detests when idols compete with him.
SPEAKER_01: It's a fascinating but incredibly sad and ironic story.
SPEAKER_01: Sometime before God killed his two sons for improper worship, Aaron, Moses' brother, had led Israel to construct a golden calf in the desert to represent Yahweh.
SPEAKER_01: He gathered all the gold that he could in an offering, and they fashioned it into a golden calf, and Aaron stood before them and said, Behold, O Israel, the God Yahweh who led you out of Egypt.
SPEAKER_01: Aaron led them into false theology and false worship.
SPEAKER_01: And in the New Testament, in the book of Acts, Stephen referenced that moment.
SPEAKER_01: Stephen said this, and they made a calf in those days, and they offered a sacrifice to the idol and were rejoicing in the work of their hands.
SPEAKER_01: But God turned away and gave them over to worship the host of heaven, as it is written in the book of the prophets.
SPEAKER_01: Little did Aaron know that he was setting the stage for his own sons to be sadly misinformed, and to participate in misdirected worship and lose their lives.
SPEAKER_01: And then eight hundred years later an entire section of God's people would be further drawn to idols, somehow thinking that worshiping a planet would be okay with their God.
SPEAKER_01: That God would accept the competition.
SPEAKER_01: Because of their departure from God's word into idolatry, God would lead them and their idols far, far away.
SPEAKER_01: Reformer John Calvin wrote, and I agree with him, all who forsake the word fall into idolatry.
SPEAKER_01: That's why on the front of your bulletin you will see the very first thing declaring the word of God.
SPEAKER_01: It's our only hope to remain proper.
SPEAKER_01: But we must ask ourselves the question: what do we allow to compete with God?
SPEAKER_01: What do we allow to come into our lives to compete for our hearts and minds and our attention?
SPEAKER_01: Well, the idols we construct are not, hopefully, going to be carved out of wood.
SPEAKER_01: They're not going to be chiseled out of stone or overlaid with gold and silver.
SPEAKER_01: But we lie to ourselves and we belittle the sovereign Lord if we say that we don't allow things to compete for our heart's attention.
SPEAKER_01: We allow time and money to compete for our attention.
SPEAKER_01: Take the place of God.
SPEAKER_01: Places or people compete to hold our affections.
SPEAKER_01: The things to which we desperately cling, that we know ought to be given up, they compete for God's attention.
SPEAKER_01: Think for a minute of what is important to you.
SPEAKER_01: What matters to you in life?
SPEAKER_01: If God would suddenly come to you and say, I'm taking that away because I hate it, would you be able to let go of that and relinquish that without anger and bitterness and disruption to your life?
SPEAKER_01: If not, then it may be an idol that competes for your love and trust.
SPEAKER_01: You're here because of faith, perhaps a desire to be religious, to express an association with God.
SPEAKER_01: See, God cares when his people claim to be religious, but their hearts are far from him.
SPEAKER_01: They make a good show of being faithful, but their hearts allow competition to come in with God.
SPEAKER_01: Amos 6 now shifts to a second and a third woe, this time addressing another group, another category.
SPEAKER_01: They may be the same people, the rich and the powerful.
SPEAKER_01: Starts out, woe to those who are at ease, woe to those who feel secure, who think themselves first.
SPEAKER_01: Israel had prosperity, they had ease, they had security, they had status and position.
SPEAKER_01: And all of those elements of God's blessing provide a fertile growing ground for pride.
SPEAKER_01: So as he has before in this book, God directs their attention to other nations in a challenging way, sort of saying, Hey, think about all of these other people around you.
SPEAKER_01: Are you better than them?
SPEAKER_01: Really?
SPEAKER_01: Are you better than these nations?
SPEAKER_01: They were not, but they believed they were.
SPEAKER_01: And they were so secure in their belief that God was on their side that they believed danger to be a world away.
SPEAKER_01: God could see that in their indulgences.
SPEAKER_01: Verses four, five, six, and seven describe a particular kind of cultic banquet.
SPEAKER_01: A lavish banquet where they indulge the appetites.
SPEAKER_01: And it's full of images of wealth and finery.
SPEAKER_01: There are beds of ivory, couches to stretch yourself out on.
SPEAKER_01: Most of the common people might only have meat once, twice, maybe three times a year at special moments.
SPEAKER_01: Here they are specifically raising fattened animals to have in their feast.
SPEAKER_01: They're indulging in their desires of food and fat and fun.
SPEAKER_01: They had so much leisure time that they could invent their own instruments.
SPEAKER_01: Rather than drinking from ordinary cups, they wanted their wine to come in bowls so that they could have more of it, gorging themselves.
SPEAKER_01: Only the finest of oils would cover their bodies, and so gluttony, luxury, and drunkenness ruled all at the expense of other people, and God then comes to them and says, But you're not grieved over the ruin of my people.
SPEAKER_01: All of these blessings, God says, I've given to you.
SPEAKER_01: They've only led to your ruin.
SPEAKER_01: And it doesn't grieve you.
SPEAKER_01: In their pride, they thought they were the first of nations, the people of God.
SPEAKER_01: Well then God said they would be the first to go into exile.
SPEAKER_01: Because God despises when his blessings are used in proud self-indulgence.
SPEAKER_01: This is such a challenge to us in the Western world.
SPEAKER_01: We are incredibly blessed, wealthy on a worldwide standard.
SPEAKER_01: To what end do we use the blessings that God has given us?
SPEAKER_01: Do we take freely from the hand of God to only benefit ourselves, to indulge our own desires of leisure, fun, and luxury?
SPEAKER_01: Do we build ourselves up while we ignore others?
SPEAKER_01: Do we look at all that we have, all that we've obtained, all that we possess, and all that we've become, and say with Nebuchadnezzar, look at what I've done.
SPEAKER_01: God calls his people to live out his character of justice and righteousness.
SPEAKER_01: Because he knows that when he continually pours out blessing on us, that can turn our hearts away from him to the blessings themselves.
SPEAKER_01: In this last section of chapter six, self-indulgence turns to self-confidence.
SPEAKER_01: Verse 8 is God's judgment.
SPEAKER_01: The one who is justice and is righteousness, that's his character, declares his hatred of his people's sin.
SPEAKER_01: He says, I abhor the pride of Jacob, hate his strongholds, and I will deliver up the city and all that is in it.
SPEAKER_01: God's blessings were initially received with joy, with gratitude, with thankfulness, and then they were viewed expectantly, and then with ambivalence, and finally with pride.
SPEAKER_01: Look at what I've done.
SPEAKER_01: We see here that God despises when self-confidence replaces humility and trust in him.
SPEAKER_01: God's people had turned away from him and said, Look at what I've done.
SPEAKER_01: You might remember that Hosea served a few decades after Amos.
SPEAKER_01: He summarized God's desire.
SPEAKER_01: God said, For I desire steadfast love and not sacrifice, the knowledge of God, rather than burnt offerings.
SPEAKER_01: Self-confident pride will replace humility and trust when our when our connection with God is primarily external rather than a change of heart.
SPEAKER_01: If you're here because you feel obligated, if you're here because you think it's expected.
SPEAKER_01: That's the kind of thing that we mean when it's external, when there's no heart-motivated reason for what you're doing.
SPEAKER_01: That's God's people here.
SPEAKER_01: Just listen to Hosea's record of God's response.
SPEAKER_01: This is what God said of his own people.
SPEAKER_01: So imagine yourself being the recipient of this.
SPEAKER_01: God said, They dealt faithlessly with me.
SPEAKER_01: The iniquity of Ephraim is revealed, the evil deeds of Samaria.
SPEAKER_01: They deal falsely.
SPEAKER_01: The thief breaks in and the bandits raid outside.
SPEAKER_01: They do not consider that I remember all of their evil.
SPEAKER_01: None of them calls on me.
SPEAKER_01: They do not return to Yahweh their God.
SPEAKER_01: They don't seek him.
SPEAKER_01: They've strayed from me, they've rebelled against me.
SPEAKER_01: I would have redeemed them, but they speak lies against me.
SPEAKER_01: They devise evil against me.
SPEAKER_01: In fact, when a people go so far from God that they begin to embrace idols, the word of God becomes strange to them.
SPEAKER_01: God said, Were I to write for my people my laws by the ten thousands, they would be regarded as strange things.
SPEAKER_01: Imagine God's word being a strange thing to you.
SPEAKER_01: And then as a final blow, God said, Israel has forgotten his maker and built palaces.
SPEAKER_01: So I will send a fire and will destroy her strongholds.
SPEAKER_01: Amos says that judgment would kill just about everyone.
SPEAKER_01: And those remaining would be so terrified of the name of Yahweh as a result that they would ask that it not be mentioned.
SPEAKER_01: The emblems of her prosperity and blessing would be crushed, all of their homes, the big ones and the small ones, would be demolished.
SPEAKER_01: God says, you would never consider galloping a horse over a field of rocks.
SPEAKER_01: That would be foolish.
SPEAKER_01: It's ludicrous to think of taking your yoke of oxen out into the sea and plowing the sea.
SPEAKER_01: That's foolish.
SPEAKER_01: That doesn't even make sense.
SPEAKER_01: And yet somehow it made sense for Israel to turn God's character into opportunities for sin.
SPEAKER_01: Instead of benefiting people, justice became a poison.
SPEAKER_01: And righteousness became bitter because they trusted in their twisted religion, their status, their wealth, and their power.
SPEAKER_01: But God desires a genuine faith that pursues him.
SPEAKER_01: He desires a trust that follows him in humble obedience, that trusts him and displays his character in everyone.
SPEAKER_01: As in all of the passages that we've looked at so far in Amos, Jesus is our example.
SPEAKER_01: He is the one that we imitate.
SPEAKER_01: And as you consider all of this, this heaviness that's here, this judgment that God is just pouring out on his people, don't forget to think of Jesus.
SPEAKER_01: All of this is intended to motivate us to consider Jesus.
SPEAKER_01: So let's consider Jesus for a moment from Isaiah chapter 11.
SPEAKER_01: This is God's prophetic statement about his son.
SPEAKER_01: His delight shall be in the fear of the Lord.
SPEAKER_01: He shall not judge by what his eyes see, he will not decide disputes by what comes into his ears.
SPEAKER_01: But with righteousness, with rightness he will judge the poor.
SPEAKER_01: He will decide with equity for the meek of the earth.
SPEAKER_01: Yes, he will strike the earth with the rod of his mouth and with the breath of his lips he shall kill the wicked, but righteousness shall be the belt of his waist.
SPEAKER_01: He's going to have faithfulness tied around his garments.
SPEAKER_01: What Israel failed to do, Jesus did perfectly.
SPEAKER_01: When we were weak, even sinning against God Himself, Jesus came to redeem us, to deliver ultimate justice to us.
SPEAKER_01: Not by wiping us out, but by taking the judgment for our sin upon himself.
SPEAKER_01: So that we might become the righteousness of God in him.
SPEAKER_01: God says to us through Amos, look at your heart.
SPEAKER_01: Now look at what I've done to come and change that.
SPEAKER_01: And so we trust in him.
SPEAKER_01: We trust in his obedience.
SPEAKER_01: We trust in his faithfulness and his righteousness.
SPEAKER_01: And so now, through the work of his spirit within us, Jesus' justice and Jesus' righteousness must now roll down like an ever-flowing stream that waters the world with the character of God through you.
SPEAKER_01: Let's pray together.
SPEAKER_01: Lord Jesus, we confess our sin to you.
SPEAKER_01: We know that we fail so often to have our hearts right.
SPEAKER_01: And so we come and we bow before Jesus, the author and the perfecter of our faith, who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising its shame, and through whom we now stand before you by faith in Jesus, declared righteous, clothed not with our own dirty garments, but with the robes of Jesus, the Son of God.
SPEAKER_01: His robes are ours.
SPEAKER_01: Not because you see us, but because you see Jesus.
SPEAKER_01: Your people come to you and ask that you would bless us.
SPEAKER_01: Not with blessing that distracts us or turns us away, but with the blessing of your spirit within us so that we might be fruitful people who display your character to a needy world.
SPEAKER_01: Amen.
SPEAKER_00: That concludes this sermon from Faith Evangelical Free Church.
SPEAKER_00: Our mission is to declare the Word of God and disciple believers into mature, devoted followers of Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: You can learn more by visiting our website at faithfree.com.