SPEAKER_00: This sermon was recorded at Faith Evangelical Free Church in Grand Forks, North Dakota.
SPEAKER_01: We've heard the gospel in our psalms.
SPEAKER_01: We've heard the gospel in our prayers.
SPEAKER_01: Hear the gospel in God's Word.
SPEAKER_01: What a wonderful morning.
SPEAKER_01: Just want to say Amen and go sit down, just like Chad.
SPEAKER_01: But I have the privilege this morning, the awesome privilege of leading us before that holy God from the Old Testament book of Amos.
SPEAKER_01: If you are visiting with us this morning, or this is your first time, we want to welcome you.
SPEAKER_01: We've been doing something unusual, and that is working our way section by section, verse by verse, through an Old Testament prophet.
SPEAKER_01: Some might think that these Old Testament books do not apply today or don't make sense today, but I think we would differ with that.
SPEAKER_01: And so we've approached this book asking the question, does God care?
SPEAKER_01: Does God care?
SPEAKER_01: And each step of the way we've asked a variation of that question, approaching it as each text presents it to us, asking the question a little bit different way.
SPEAKER_01: This morning we asked the question, does God care about the actions of leaders?
SPEAKER_01: Does God care about the actions of leaders?
SPEAKER_01: Now this passage specifically addresses the leaders of Old Testament Israel.
SPEAKER_01: But in this passage, we have religious leaders and we have political leaders.
SPEAKER_01: And so it has a very broad application to the leaders in our world today as well.
SPEAKER_01: So I encourage you to follow along in a Bible if you have one.
SPEAKER_01: If you don't, you can use the Pew Bible that is there in front of you.
SPEAKER_01: Going to be covering a large section this morning, from chapter 7, verse 1 all the way through the end of chapter 8.
SPEAKER_01: So I'd like to read that just to get the setting before us if you would follow along with me.
SPEAKER_01: Again, that is Amos chapter 7.
SPEAKER_01: This is what the Lord Yahweh showed me.
SPEAKER_01: Behold, he was forming locusts when the latter growth was just beginning to sprout.
SPEAKER_01: And behold, it was the latter growth after the king's mowings.
SPEAKER_01: When they had finished eating the grass of the land, I said, O Lord Yahweh, please forgive, how can Jacob stand?
SPEAKER_01: He is so small.
SPEAKER_01: Yahweh relented concerning this.
SPEAKER_01: It shall not be, said Yahweh.
SPEAKER_01: This is what the Lord Yahweh showed me.
SPEAKER_01: Behold, the Lord Yahweh was calling for a judgment by fire, and it devoured the great deep and was eating up the land.
SPEAKER_01: And I said, O Lord Yahweh, please cease.
SPEAKER_01: How can Jacob stand?
SPEAKER_01: He is so small.
SPEAKER_01: Yahweh relented concerning this.
SPEAKER_01: This also shall not be, said the Lord Yahweh.
SPEAKER_01: This is what he showed me.
SPEAKER_01: Behold, the Lord was standing beside a wall built with a plumb line, with a plumb line in his hand.
SPEAKER_01: And Yahweh said to me, Amos, what do you see?
SPEAKER_01: And I said, A plumb line.
SPEAKER_01: Then the Lord said, Behold, I am setting a plumb line in the midst of my people Israel.
SPEAKER_01: I will never again pass by them.
SPEAKER_01: The high places of Isaac shall be made desolate, and the sanctuaries of Israel shall be laid waste, and I will rise against the house of Jeroboam with the sword.
SPEAKER_01: Then Amaziah the priest of Bethel sent to Jeroboam, King of Israel, saying, Amos has conspired against you in the midst of the house of Israel.
SPEAKER_01: This land is not able to bear all his words.
SPEAKER_01: For thus Amos has said, Jeroboam shall die by the sword, and Israel must go into exile away from his land.
SPEAKER_01: And Amaziah said to Amos, O seer, go, flee away to the land of Judah, eat bread there and prophesy there.
SPEAKER_01: Never again prophesy at Bethel, for it is the king's sanctuary, and it is the temple of the kingdom.
SPEAKER_01: Then Amos answered and said to Amaziah, Listen, I was no prophet, nor a prophet's son.
SPEAKER_01: I was a herdsman and a dresser of sycamore figs.
SPEAKER_01: But the Lord yet took me from following the flock, and Yahweh said to me, Go, prophesy to my people Israel.
SPEAKER_01: Now therefore, hear the word of Yahweh.
SPEAKER_01: You say, Do not prophesy against Israel, and do not preach against the house of Isaac.
SPEAKER_01: Therefore thus says Yahweh, Your wife shall be a prostitute in the city, and your sons and your daughters shall fall by the sword, and your land shall be divided up with a measuring line.
SPEAKER_01: You yourself shall die in an unclean land, and Israel shall surely go into exile away from its land.
SPEAKER_01: This is what the Lord Yahweh showed me.
SPEAKER_01: Behold, a basket of summer fruit.
SPEAKER_01: And he said, Amos, what do you see?
SPEAKER_01: And I said, A basket of summer fruit.
SPEAKER_01: Then Yahweh said to me, The end has come upon my people Israel.
SPEAKER_01: I will never again pass by them.
SPEAKER_01: The songs of the temple shall become wailings in that day, declares the Lord Yahweh.
SPEAKER_01: So many dead bodies they are thrown everywhere.
SPEAKER_01: Silence Hear this, you who trample on the needy, who bring the poor of the land to an end, saying, When will the new moon be over that we may sell grain, and the Sabbath that we may offer wheat for sale, that we may make the ephah small and the shekel great and deal deceitfully with false balances, that we may buy the poor for silver and the needy for a pair of sandals and sell the chaff of the wheat?
SPEAKER_01: Yahweh has sworn by the pride of Jacob, surely I will never forget any of their deeds.
SPEAKER_01: Shall not the land tremble on this account, and everyone mourn who dwells in it, and all of it rise like the Nile, to be tossed about and sink again like the Nile of Egypt?
SPEAKER_01: And on that day, declares the Lord Yahweh, I will make the sun go down at noon, and darken the earth in broad daylight.
SPEAKER_01: I will turn your feasts into mourning and all your songs into lamentation, I will bring sackcloth on every waist and baldness on every head, I will make it like the mourning for an only sun, and the end of it like a bitter day.
SPEAKER_01: Behold, the days are coming, declares the Lord Yahweh, when I will send a famine on the land.
SPEAKER_01: Not a famine of bread, nor a thirst for water, but of the hearing of the words of Yahweh.
SPEAKER_01: They shall wander from sea to sea, from north to east, they shall run to and fro to seek the word of Yahweh, but they shall not find it.
SPEAKER_01: And that day the lovely virgins and the young men shall faint for thirst, and those who swear by the guilt of Samaria and say, As your God lives, O Dan, and as the way of Beersheba lives, they shall fall and never rise again.
SPEAKER_01: Amen.
SPEAKER_01: God's people must mirror God's character.
SPEAKER_01: You know, Peter tells us that quite clearly in the New Testament, in the book of 1 Peter.
SPEAKER_01: Not that one.
SPEAKER_01: Sorry, guys, I must have messed something up up there.
SPEAKER_01: 1 Peter chapter 1, Peter says, as obedient children, do not be conformed to the passions of your former ignorance.
SPEAKER_01: But as he who called you is holy, you also be holy in all your conduct, since it is written, You shall be holy, for I am holy.
SPEAKER_01: As obedient children, do not be conformed to the passions of your former ignorance.
SPEAKER_01: Instead, be conformed to the one who called you.
SPEAKER_01: God's people must mirror God's character.
SPEAKER_01: And so we must conduct ourselves in our world wherever God has placed us with a reverence and a fear that guides how we live.
SPEAKER_01: Now in 1 Peter, that is specifically seen in loving one another earnestly.
SPEAKER_01: Peter goes on to talk about that at the end of the first chapter.
SPEAKER_01: He says, love one another earnestly.
SPEAKER_01: We display the character of our Father when we love one another earnestly.
SPEAKER_01: Now we've all spent the last few days eating.
SPEAKER_01: So I want you to think about eating for a moment.
SPEAKER_01: Have you ever watched someone eat a favorite meal?
SPEAKER_01: They dive in with a vigor and an appetite that is unique to that situation, don't they?
SPEAKER_01: Maybe it's a child attacking a piece of birthday cake.
SPEAKER_01: Maybe you haven't eaten all day long.
SPEAKER_01: Your day has just been stressful and hurried.
SPEAKER_01: You've been racing all over, and you get home and you are feeling starved and you just dive into that evening meal.
SPEAKER_01: You can imagine how one might approach an all-you-can-eat meal consisting of a favorite food.
SPEAKER_01: There's a restaurant in town that occasionally has all-you-can-eat shrimp, which I partake in occasionally.
SPEAKER_01: You know, there's no holding back in that situation, is there?
SPEAKER_01: It's full speed ahead, downing as much as your body can hold until your body starts to fight back.
SPEAKER_01: That is earnestness.
SPEAKER_01: We mirror the character of God when we love one another earnestly.
SPEAKER_01: It's been that way from the very beginning.
SPEAKER_01: When God created Adam and Eve in his likeness, he created them to serve as his image within creation.
SPEAKER_01: They were to live and to act all throughout creation as God would act.
SPEAKER_01: In all they did, in all they thought, in all they felt, they were to do all of that as God Himself would do.
SPEAKER_01: God created man in his own likeness, we're told in the first couple of chapters of Genesis.
SPEAKER_01: And then we're told that Adam fathered a son in his own likeness, showing us that that passing on of those same characteristics.
SPEAKER_01: But that then ends the record of mankind bearing the likeness of God until a single comment by James in the New Testament.
SPEAKER_01: Now it's difficult to really define with precision what likeness means, but at the very least it involves a resemblance of some kind to God Himself.
SPEAKER_01: And throughout Scripture, it becomes very clear that a primary way that God intended us to carry his likeness is in character.
SPEAKER_01: We are to be the kind of people who mirror God's character.
SPEAKER_01: Now, as you trace this theme of likeness, you find that it next occurs in Exodus.
SPEAKER_01: But that time it occurs in a negative way.
SPEAKER_01: God commanded his people to not make idols, to not build or carve idols in the likeness of created things.
SPEAKER_01: Interesting that he would say that.
SPEAKER_01: He says, Don't make an idol in the likeness of anything on earth or anything in heaven.
SPEAKER_01: Telling us that not long after God created man in his likeness, man had already begun to refuse bearing the likeness of God.
SPEAKER_01: Instead, he chose to create new gods in the likeness of things he could see.
SPEAKER_01: So man could then be and do whatever he wanted to be and do.
SPEAKER_01: In that sense, we become our own masters.
SPEAKER_01: Of course, when we do that, that leads to all kinds of wrong thinking and wrong living.
SPEAKER_01: If we do not bear the likeness of God in our lives, then we're not going to obediently live out the character of God.
SPEAKER_01: If we're not obediently living out the character of God, then we will not be treating one another as though you and I both bear the likeness of God.
SPEAKER_01: If we fail to display the character of God to one another, if we fail to live like him, then life becomes all about me.
SPEAKER_01: And if life is all about me, then it doesn't matter who you are.
SPEAKER_01: Because I need to take care of myself.
SPEAKER_01: It shouldn't be surprising that we see exactly that among God's people in the book of Amos.
SPEAKER_01: Failing to live out the likeness of God, they began to pursue what benefited themselves.
SPEAKER_01: It was all about me.
SPEAKER_01: That's why we see records such as what Amos recorded in chapter 8 and verse 4.
SPEAKER_01: You trample on the needy, you bring the poor of the land to an end, you deal deceitfully with false balances in verse 5.
SPEAKER_01: You do that to be able to buy the poor and the needy.
SPEAKER_01: God said, My character cannot be found anywhere in the land.
SPEAKER_01: Loving one another earnestly had been replaced with love yourself earnestly.
SPEAKER_01: That in itself shows us that Amos is quite applicable today.
SPEAKER_01: In our individualistic society, we excel at loving ourselves earnestly, don't we?
SPEAKER_01: From the top down, leaders and all the other people in Israel loved themselves, and not much different in our world.
SPEAKER_01: But loving others as Christ loved us, that's rarer, isn't it?
SPEAKER_01: Now in this particular section of Amos, the charge is directed towards Israel's leaders.
SPEAKER_01: When we read of the house of Jeroboam and Amaziah the priest, they stand as representatives over all of the people.
SPEAKER_01: Just as though our in our nation, the president and all of our congressmen and women stand as our representatives.
SPEAKER_01: They reflect us, and we reflect them.
SPEAKER_01: Jeroboam was the king over Israel at this time, and in the way that Amaziah is described, it appears as though he's sort of the high priest of the false religion in Israel.
SPEAKER_01: Ironically, at Bethel.
SPEAKER_01: Bethel means house of God, but apparently at this point in time, it had turned from a house of God to a place that didn't want to hear God.
SPEAKER_01: You can think of Amaziah sort of like an archbishop or a cardinal, or maybe even a smaller version of a pope.
SPEAKER_01: So we have the religious leader and we have the political leader as representatives of the entire group of people, and then the character of leaders is often reflected in the character of those they lead.
SPEAKER_01: And that is true in this case.
SPEAKER_01: God's patience, God's kindness, and God's mercy could go no further because his people were not reflecting his character.
SPEAKER_01: His people's failure to bear his likeness would now lead them right into judgment.
SPEAKER_01: And that judgment is shown to Amos in a series of five visions, all the way from chapter 7, verse 1 through the end of the book.
SPEAKER_01: The first two visions, verse 1 and verse 4, are parallel.
SPEAKER_01: They essentially say the same thing.
SPEAKER_01: The third vision in verse 7 is a statement of fact that God would judge.
SPEAKER_01: Then there's an interlude where Amos is confronted by the priest of a false religion, and then verse chapter 8, verse 1, is a fourth vision of terrible judgment.
SPEAKER_01: Now, through all of that is a very consistent theme.
SPEAKER_01: And that theme is that God is a sovereign Lord who calls his people to account.
SPEAKER_01: Over and over again, ten times in this passage, the term Lord Yahweh is used.
SPEAKER_01: There will be Lord with God in all caps, or sometimes Lord in all caps with God in small caps.
SPEAKER_01: And Yahweh, that covenant name is connected to the term for Lord ten times in just the passage that we read.
SPEAKER_01: Yahweh is Lord.
SPEAKER_01: And as Lord, he has the sovereign right, the sovereign authority to address the sin of his people.
SPEAKER_01: Now, chapter 7 begins with two different visions communicating the same truth.
SPEAKER_01: In the first vision, we see Yahweh forming locusts that would come and destroy the livelihood of people.
SPEAKER_01: But there's more than that.
SPEAKER_01: This is the second cutting after the king's mowings.
SPEAKER_01: You see, there were taxes back then, too.
SPEAKER_01: I'm sorry, I shouldn't make you think about April yet, should I?
SPEAKER_01: So the first cutting was the tax that went to service the king.
SPEAKER_01: That provided the food and everything that the king desired.
SPEAKER_01: Then there would be a fuller, greater crop that would sustain the common people through the rest of the year.
SPEAKER_01: So the king had already brought in the taxes, and now the sovereign Lord is sending out locusts to come and destroy what the common people would need to survive.
SPEAKER_01: Amos saw all of that.
SPEAKER_01: He saw that devastation and realized that the normal people and the poor could not survive such a judgment.
SPEAKER_01: Oh, sovereign Lord, please forgive.
SPEAKER_01: How can Jacob stand?
SPEAKER_01: He's so small.
SPEAKER_01: The second vision was a destroying fire from the sovereign Lord.
SPEAKER_01: We're told it it devoured the great deep and was eating up the land.
SPEAKER_01: This wasn't a prairie fire.
SPEAKER_01: It wasn't even a forest fire.
SPEAKER_01: The fires in California currently might be a closer picture to what is imaged here, but they still don't suffice.
SPEAKER_01: Amos described this as a fire that consumed the great deep.
SPEAKER_01: These are subterranean waters, not the Mediterranean or the Sea of Galilee, but the water that continually fed the springs and the rivers that watered the land.
SPEAKER_01: See, the thought at the time was that these subterranean waters were an endless supply of water.
SPEAKER_01: They just kept coming and coming and coming.
SPEAKER_01: They would never end.
SPEAKER_01: But this judgment is so severe that it all evaporated.
SPEAKER_01: Even the waters of the great deep, the land and the water was eaten up.
SPEAKER_01: Nothing can stand before the sovereign Lord in judgment.
SPEAKER_01: Again, Amos is devastated by this vision.
SPEAKER_01: He begs God, please stop.
SPEAKER_01: Cease.
SPEAKER_01: In both visions, then God relented.
SPEAKER_01: It shall not be, said the sovereign Lord.
SPEAKER_01: Don't get confused by that.
SPEAKER_01: That's not a changing of God's mind.
SPEAKER_01: God didn't change his mind.
SPEAKER_01: Judgment was coming.
SPEAKER_01: It was decided.
SPEAKER_01: That was over.
SPEAKER_01: What we see here is God altering the course of action by which judgment would come.
SPEAKER_01: And this is a compassionate result of the prophet's concern.
SPEAKER_01: If you have any wonder whether or not your prayer on behalf of someone else can be of effect, look at Amos.
SPEAKER_01: Because of Amos's great concern and intercession on behalf of his people, God chose a different course.
SPEAKER_01: These visions begin with the sovereign Lord showing compassion to those that the leaders ignored.
SPEAKER_01: The rulers and the leaders of the people would likely survive.
SPEAKER_01: They would be the wealthy, they would be the powerful, they would be the rulers who would tax the goods, they possessed the power.
SPEAKER_01: And the position to take advantage of the poor and the common people, they would have the status to then take what they needed to survive.
SPEAKER_01: But Israel wasn't small.
SPEAKER_01: She wasn't insignificant.
SPEAKER_01: So Amos doesn't issue a plea because the whole of Israel is small.
SPEAKER_01: His plea is for those who are small within Israel.
SPEAKER_01: For those who would not survive, who could not survive, who wouldn't stand a chance before God's command.
SPEAKER_01: It's the people of chapter 8, verses 4 through 8 that are the small ones.
SPEAKER_01: The ones that had been used and abused.
SPEAKER_01: In both of these visions, God is shown to be the sovereign over creation.
SPEAKER_01: It says he formed locusts.
SPEAKER_01: That's a reference to Genesis.
SPEAKER_01: Same word used here that was used of God forming in Genesis.
SPEAKER_01: He called up fire to devour.
SPEAKER_01: He is sovereign over all the elements.
SPEAKER_01: They all answer to his command.
SPEAKER_01: It's to that sovereign God that Israel did not respond.
SPEAKER_01: It's that sovereign God they ignored.
SPEAKER_01: Friend, let me warn you, it is never safe to ignore the sovereign God.
SPEAKER_01: It is never safe.
SPEAKER_01: To ignore him is to drift away from him.
SPEAKER_01: To drift away from him is to be drawn further into sin, and being drawn further into sin draws you further and further away from where he wants you to be, and closer and closer to his judgment.
SPEAKER_01: We've already heard in the songs that we've sung this morning and the prayers that we've offered a call to trust in him entirely.
SPEAKER_01: Don't ignore the sovereign Lord's call to abandon your own sin and find your delight in him.
SPEAKER_01: Don't ignore that he is sovereign over all things, including the judgment over your sin.
SPEAKER_01: Now at the same time, in this passage of Amos, we are encouraged to remember that God is compassionate to the poor and to the burdened.
SPEAKER_01: The sovereign God is full of compassion, and he calls his people to display that same characteristic.
SPEAKER_01: But the leaders of Israel ignored the poor and the burdened.
SPEAKER_01: They didn't show compassion, and instead they took advantage for their own benefit.
SPEAKER_01: We've already seen how they took advantage of the poor to build their own mansions, to stock their own pantries.
SPEAKER_01: Amos now intercedes on behalf of those people, and God determined that he would not send judgment in that way.
SPEAKER_01: But judgment would come.
SPEAKER_01: In the third vision, we see why.
SPEAKER_01: Beginning in verse 7, it says God was standing beside a wall built with a plumb line, and he stood there beside the wall with a plumb line in his hand.
SPEAKER_01: Perhaps you've seen a plumb line.
SPEAKER_01: This is a modern plumb line.
SPEAKER_01: In ancient times they would have had a stone tied at the end of the line.
SPEAKER_01: But a plumb line obeys the laws of gravity, and so you can put it up to a wall, and you can determine whether or not a wall is constructed vertically.
SPEAKER_01: So God is showing Amos this vision of a plumb line, and God is standing beside the wall, the plumb line in his hands.
SPEAKER_01: And he asked, Amos, Amos, what do you see?
SPEAKER_01: Well, I see a plumb line.
SPEAKER_01: If you hold the plumb line next to the wall of Israel, Israel wasn't even close to matching God's standard.
SPEAKER_01: So God said, I will never pass by them again.
SPEAKER_01: That's probably a reference to God passing over their sin.
SPEAKER_01: See, for centuries he had mercifully passed over their sin.
SPEAKER_01: He had withheld judgment for their sin, but no more.
SPEAKER_01: God says the high places, those are places where they worshiped false gods, shall be made desolate.
SPEAKER_01: Your sanctuaries, I'm going to lay them waste.
SPEAKER_01: I'm going to destroy them.
SPEAKER_01: I'm going to flatten them.
SPEAKER_01: And I will rise against the house of the king Jeroboam with the sword.
SPEAKER_01: Maybe this is a source of concern for you.
SPEAKER_01: Perhaps it's also a source of comfort for you that the sovereign Lord measures leaders.
SPEAKER_01: And those who are crooked will face judgment.
SPEAKER_01: They were measured by God's character, and they failed to measure up.
SPEAKER_01: The likeness of God could not be seen in them.
SPEAKER_01: And so God would destroy the king's house.
SPEAKER_01: So far we've seen Amos address the notable men of the land in chapter 6.
SPEAKER_01: Chapter 7, we see the king and the high priest.
SPEAKER_01: Now God focuses solely on the king, and he says, I will rise against the house of Jeroboam with the sword.
SPEAKER_01: God would destroy the king's house, and that was fulfilled, actually, in 745 BC when Jeroboam II's son, Zechariah, was assassinated.
SPEAKER_01: See, the leaders of God's people, and even the leaders of all people, are held to a high standard.
SPEAKER_01: They are measured by God's character.
SPEAKER_01: And here in Amos's world, they failed to measure up.
SPEAKER_01: The likeness of God couldn't be seen in them.
SPEAKER_01: Their hearts were far, far away from the sovereign God.
SPEAKER_01: And do you see?
SPEAKER_01: Do you see how this shows a progression of mankind away from God's design?
SPEAKER_01: God intended human beings to be image bearers, to be his likeness in his creation.
SPEAKER_01: And then Adam and Eve sinned.
SPEAKER_01: And then Cain murdered his brother.
SPEAKER_01: And then the world was so evil that God determined that it must be destroyed.
SPEAKER_01: If not for God's grace, to Noah and his family, there would be no one left from God's original creation.
SPEAKER_01: But even that, even God starting over with eight people was not sufficient to return mankind to God's intention, was it?
SPEAKER_01: Was the flood effective?
SPEAKER_01: Well, it was effective in its destruction.
SPEAKER_01: But it was not effective in its ability to change the hearts of people.
SPEAKER_01: Not long after people begin to sin against God's command to scatter and to multiply and to populate the earth.
SPEAKER_01: Instead, they said, no, we're going to gather together and we're going to build a tower that reaches the height of heaven to show who's in charge.
SPEAKER_01: Sin spread throughout the world, even among God's people, who eventually became no different than all the other nations around them.
SPEAKER_01: You remember as we walk through this passage in chapter 1, walking all the way around Israel, focusing on each of the nations that surrounded them.
SPEAKER_01: God said, You are no different from the rest of them.
SPEAKER_01: It makes us wonder today, are we as God's people any different from those around us?
SPEAKER_01: That's where we are, friends.
SPEAKER_01: Like these ancient leaders of God's people, we stand in a long, long line of people who refuse to bear God's likeness.
SPEAKER_01: To be his image in his world.
SPEAKER_01: Yes, that's us.
SPEAKER_01: You might think, I have a hard time with that, Pastor.
SPEAKER_01: I just can't imagine myself being that bad.
SPEAKER_01: Well, listen what the New Testament teaches.
SPEAKER_01: All people are under sin.
SPEAKER_01: As it is written, none is righteous, no not one.
SPEAKER_01: No one understands.
SPEAKER_01: No one seeks after God.
SPEAKER_01: They've all turned aside.
SPEAKER_01: Together they have become worthless.
SPEAKER_01: No one does good, not even one.
SPEAKER_01: The people's throats are open graves, they use their tongues to deceive, the venom of asps is under their lips, their mouth is full of curses and bitterness, their feet are swift to shed blood, and their paths are ruin and misery, and the way of peace they have not known.
SPEAKER_01: There is no fear of God before their eyes.
SPEAKER_01: Now we know that whatever Scripture says, it says to those who are under the law, so that every mouth may be stopped, and the whole world may be held accountable to God.
SPEAKER_01: If we're really honest with ourselves, our hearts are not much different than the leaders and the people of Amos' day.
SPEAKER_01: So we can see then that we need help.
SPEAKER_01: If God does not step in to change us, if God does not step in to restore us to what he intended, then with time we too will be held up against God's plumb line and be found to be crooked.
SPEAKER_01: In fact, even the religious can be crooked.
SPEAKER_01: Amaziah, the priest, tried to shut up Amos and have him deported for anarchy and treason simply because he spoke God's word.
SPEAKER_01: He didn't like what Amos declared.
SPEAKER_01: Of course, if Amos was right and spoke the truth, then everything that Amaziah had going for him would suddenly be taken away and suddenly disappear.
SPEAKER_01: Amaziah was one of the leaders taking advantage of others.
SPEAKER_01: He ought to have pointed everyone to the sovereign Lord, but instead he pointed everyone to himself.
SPEAKER_01: Life had become all about Amaziah.
SPEAKER_01: And so he objected to Amos, in essence, telling him to shut up and go home.
SPEAKER_01: Leave Israel, return to Judah, and don't attempt to declare the Word of God at the temple of God again.
SPEAKER_01: Sometimes there are religious leaders who refuse to hear the Word of God.
SPEAKER_01: Sometimes there are religious leaders who are so hard-hearted that they cannot even respond to God's judgment.
SPEAKER_01: I love Amos' response.
SPEAKER_01: Here's a paraphrase.
SPEAKER_01: Amaziah never claimed to be a professional prophet.
SPEAKER_01: My father wasn't a prophet.
SPEAKER_01: I wasn't trained as a prophet.
SPEAKER_01: In fact, I'm a shepherd and I'm a farmer.
SPEAKER_01: But when Yahweh says, go and speak, you go and speak.
SPEAKER_01: So listen up, you priest of God.
SPEAKER_01: For once in your life, hear the word of Yahweh.
SPEAKER_01: The life you've been living is over.
SPEAKER_01: Don't you like Amos?
SPEAKER_01: The king, the priest, and the people of the land refused to live in God's likeness.
SPEAKER_01: They refused to heed God's word.
SPEAKER_01: They were all crooked.
SPEAKER_01: And God was about to demolish the crooked wall.
SPEAKER_01: So let me ask: does God care about the actions of leaders?
SPEAKER_01: Yes, he does.
SPEAKER_01: He expects them to display his character to those they lead.
SPEAKER_01: And so now all of chapter 8 describes the tearing down of that crooked wall.
SPEAKER_01: It's a fourth vision.
SPEAKER_01: The fifth vision is in chapter 9.
SPEAKER_01: We'll look at that next time.
SPEAKER_01: Here in the fourth vision, God's judgment, his destruction is described with yet another farming illustration.
SPEAKER_01: A basket of ripe summer fruit.
SPEAKER_01: Might be appropriate here for a little bit of Hebrew lesson.
SPEAKER_01: There's a play on words in verse 2.
SPEAKER_01: The Hebrew word for summer fruit is kaiats, kaiats.
SPEAKER_01: And the word for end is kates.
SPEAKER_01: You are like kaiats, and the kates will come.
SPEAKER_01: Not only do they sound familiar, but they look familiar on the page.
SPEAKER_01: Like ripe summer fruit, Israel was ripe for judgment.
SPEAKER_01: And so their celebratory songs of worship would turn into cries of death and war.
SPEAKER_01: Notice the evidence that God throws out at them in this court.
SPEAKER_01: Verse 4, you trample on the needy.
SPEAKER_01: You bring the poor to an end.
SPEAKER_01: In verse 5, they can't wait for the religious holidays to be over so that they can make more money.
SPEAKER_01: They use deceitful balances so that they can extort money from the unsuspecting.
SPEAKER_01: They treat the poor as property to be bought and sold and used.
SPEAKER_01: They take advantage of the poor by selling them the chaff of the wheat, the leftovers, so that they can even get money from that.
SPEAKER_01: Now ask yourself this question: Is that a display of loving the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind, and with all your strength?
SPEAKER_01: Is that a display of loving one another earnestly?
SPEAKER_01: Is that living out the likeness of God?
SPEAKER_01: I trust that by this point your answer is no.
SPEAKER_01: That is not what God expects.
SPEAKER_01: And so God said, Surely, I will never forget any of their deeds.
SPEAKER_01: Now, as believers in Christ, we have a wonderful privilege.
SPEAKER_01: God says, of our sins when we come to faith in Christ, I will remember them no more.
SPEAKER_01: So imagine for a moment that God says to you, I am going to remember every single little detail of your sin.
SPEAKER_01: And I will remember it forever.
SPEAKER_01: None of the leaders of the land trembled over their sinful deeds.
SPEAKER_01: It didn't shake them.
SPEAKER_01: No one mourned as they moved further and further from the character of God.
SPEAKER_01: And as the leaders went, so went the people.
SPEAKER_01: And so the sovereign Lord will now turn everything upside down.
SPEAKER_01: Verses 9, 10, 11, 12, he says over and over again, I will do this, I will do this.
SPEAKER_01: I will make the sun go down at noon.
SPEAKER_01: I will darken the earth in broad daylight.
SPEAKER_01: Maybe that's a sign of an eclipse, a sign of judgment at the time.
SPEAKER_01: He says, I will turn your feasts, your thanksgiving feasts into a time of mourning.
SPEAKER_01: I will bring sackcloth and baldness.
SPEAKER_01: I will make it like the day of mourning when you lost your only son.
SPEAKER_01: As though it's like a bitter day.
SPEAKER_01: God says, I am going to bring mourning to all of your celebrating.
SPEAKER_01: That's what judgment does.
SPEAKER_01: The judgment of the sovereign Lord leads to mourning.
SPEAKER_01: And this is the result of the actions of leaders.
SPEAKER_01: But there are two kinds of judgment listed here.
SPEAKER_01: The first is a material judgment.
SPEAKER_01: They would lose everything they had worked hard to accumulate.
SPEAKER_01: They had stolen, they had extorted, they had taken by an abusive hand all that they could take, and God said, I will now take that from you.
SPEAKER_01: But that isn't the worst thing.
SPEAKER_01: Not by far.
SPEAKER_01: There would be a spiritual judgment, God says, and that spiritual judgment would be God taking away his word.
SPEAKER_01: Bethel means the house of God, and God says, if you don't want to hear my word at my house, then I'm going to take it away.
SPEAKER_01: That's what you want?
SPEAKER_01: Fine.
SPEAKER_01: I'll give it to you.
SPEAKER_01: I'm going to take my word away from you, and you will never find it.
SPEAKER_01: He says they shall fall and they shall never rise again.
SPEAKER_01: God would bring about a famine for his word.
SPEAKER_01: He said they would go around staggering as though they were staggering from dehydration and starvation, looking for God's word, and they would not find it.
SPEAKER_01: They shall fall and never rise again.
SPEAKER_01: You remember, I'm sure, the words of the Lord Jesus that he quoted from Deuteronomy chapter 8, verse 3.
SPEAKER_01: Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of God.
SPEAKER_01: It is better to be deprived of food and drink than to be deprived of the word of God.
SPEAKER_01: And yet so many of us go days and weeks, even months and years without feeding ourselves with the Word of the Living God.
SPEAKER_01: God says, I'm going to take it away.
SPEAKER_01: So that even if you might desire to have it, you can't find it.
SPEAKER_01: So what do we take away from this?
SPEAKER_01: On the surface, it's just incredibly depressing.
SPEAKER_01: And right after Thanksgiving, no less.
SPEAKER_01: Well, there's hope in the next chapter.
SPEAKER_01: And we'll cover that next time, but I'd like to get a little glimpse of it now.
SPEAKER_01: The evidence used against these leaders of Israel was their actions towards those that Jesus called the least of these.
SPEAKER_01: Those who had nothing, those who had very little, those who could not do for themselves.
SPEAKER_01: But those actions that these leaders showed demonstrated that their hearts were far, far from God.
SPEAKER_01: There was no likeness of God in them.
SPEAKER_01: Evidence of the character of God within them could not be found.
SPEAKER_01: Do you see now that as you turn the pages of your Bible, the likeness of God from the first pages of Genesis has faded away and been replaced by the likeness of created things which God despises?
SPEAKER_01: As we turn the pages of time, even to today, not much has changed.
SPEAKER_01: But two of the most beautiful words in all of Scripture are, but God.
SPEAKER_01: God Himself stepped in to orchestrate change.
SPEAKER_01: In Romans chapter 8, verse 3, we read, For God has done what the law, weakened by the flesh, could not do.
SPEAKER_01: He said, By sending his own son in the likeness of sinful flesh, and for sin he condemned sin in the flesh.
SPEAKER_01: Do you hear that?
SPEAKER_01: He sent his own son, not in his own likeness, but in my likeness.
SPEAKER_01: We did not display the character of God.
SPEAKER_01: We did not bear his likeness.
SPEAKER_01: And so God the Son said, I will come in your likeness in order to condemn your likeness.
SPEAKER_01: To condemn your sin, and in so doing, he made the way for us to once again be his images who bear his likeness.
SPEAKER_01: We've sung all about that this morning.
SPEAKER_01: Come to Christ, abandon your sin and embrace the Savior.
SPEAKER_01: I'd like you to turn to Ephesians chapter 4.
SPEAKER_01: Ephesians chapter 4.
SPEAKER_01: We'll wrap up with this, but I want you to just see how this all comes together.
SPEAKER_01: Ephesians chapter 4.
SPEAKER_01: Beginning in verse 22.
SPEAKER_01: In verse 21, it says we've we've learned and been taught about the truth in Jesus, and what does that look like?
SPEAKER_01: Verse 22, he says, To put off your old self, which belongs to your former manner of life and is corrupt through deceitful desires, and to be renewed in the spirit of your minds, and to put on the new self, created after the likeness of God, in true righteousness and holiness.
SPEAKER_01: God says, I came so that you can put off your likeness, and now put on my likeness once again.
SPEAKER_01: Therefore, having put away Falsehood, let each of you speak the truth with his neighbor, for we're members of one another.
SPEAKER_01: Be angry and do not sin.
SPEAKER_01: Do not let the sun go down on your anger, give no opportunity to the devil.
SPEAKER_01: Let the thief no longer steal, but rather let him labor, doing honest work with his own hands, so that he may have something to share rather than take.
SPEAKER_01: Let no corrupting talk come out of your mouths, but only such as is good for building up as fits the occasion, that it may give grace to those who hear.
SPEAKER_01: And do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God, by whom you are sealed for the day of redemption.
SPEAKER_01: Let all bitterness and wrath and anger and clamor and slander be put away from you, along with all malice.
SPEAKER_01: Be kind to one another, tender hearted, forgiving one another, as God in Christ forgave you.
SPEAKER_01: Put off your own own likeness.
SPEAKER_01: And in coming to faith in Christ, receive the likeness of God in Christ once again.
SPEAKER_01: And notice what the evidence of bearing the likeness of God is.
SPEAKER_01: He says that the evidence is putting away falsehood and instead speaking truth.
SPEAKER_01: It's being angry and not sinning.
SPEAKER_01: It's don't steal, but work hard.
SPEAKER_01: Don't use corrupting language, but build one another up.
SPEAKER_01: Don't grieve the Holy Spirit with your sin, but put away bitterness, wrath, anger, clamor, and slander and malice, and be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another.
SPEAKER_01: That's what Israel's leaders ought to have displayed.
SPEAKER_01: That's what all of God's people are expected to show.
SPEAKER_01: But on our own, we fail.
SPEAKER_01: Just like Israel, we need God to do something for us and in us.
SPEAKER_01: And when we come to Christ, He does.
SPEAKER_01: Because He has done something for us by first sending His own Son.
SPEAKER_01: And through Him we are now a new creation bearing once again the likeness of God so that we now in Christ and through Christ might show his character by loving one another earnestly.
SPEAKER_01: Let's pray.
SPEAKER_01: Our Lord Jesus.
SPEAKER_01: May we never be found to be crooked.
SPEAKER_01: And if you by your Spirit's work are placing pressure on a heart that is present today to let go of all of that selfish, self-focused sin and to trust in you.
SPEAKER_01: Give them new life.
SPEAKER_01: Cause them to trust, right?
SPEAKER_01: This moment.
SPEAKER_01: So that you will remember their sins no more.
SPEAKER_01: Lord Jesus, we come as your people, created anew, reborn from above.
SPEAKER_01: Now bowing before your presence, bearing your likeness, asking that through your spirit, your likeness, your character would be seen in us.
SPEAKER_01: To the praise of your glorious grace.
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.