Amos 4

Amos 4 will help us ask an uncomfortable but freeing question: What if some of the hard things in our lives are not random, but invitations from God to come back to Him with our whole heart? Together we’ll hear the sobering call, “Prepare to meet your God,” not as a threat for other people out there, but as a gracious warning for us—to repent of empty religion, selfish comfort, and injustice, and to rediscover a living, responsive walk with the Lord.

Transcript

Josh Turansky 0:00

We're together in the book of Amos. We're together in the book of Amos. So you can turn to Amos chapter four. Amos chapter four is where we're going to be at. And just as a quick recap, we've got one person feeling sad and one person that's freaked out. Probably it's your first Sunday here, right? Is that your emoji here? We got a couple people who are just like, I don't know. Hey, listen, if you're happy, you're sad, you're tired, or you're freaked out, God loves you. And I want to say you're in the right place. And uh we're gonna see what what God does in our hearts. We want to bring our hearts and all that we are, no matter where you're at, to the Lord. We covered two weeks ago, we were in chapters one and two, and what we saw is that Amos drew this circle, geographic circle, around the surrounding um nations, the the nations all around Israel, and he had these little judgments there against them. And then once he drew this circle, this judgment circle around the surrounding nations, then Amos zeroed in on the nation of Israel. And so we saw the initial indictment in chapter two, and one of the things that's that Amos was particularly sensitive to was the fact that in the northern nation of Israel, the um the economy was great, the army was awesome, they were doing good as a as a nation, and they were neglecting the poor, they were neglecting the vulnerable of society, they were they were just running over, they were they were abusing the people who were weak in society. And so God speaks through Amos this very clear message to the nation that listen, you are not okay in my eyes if you are worshiping me or religious on Sunday, but you have no concern for the vulnerable of society. And that was the beginning. Then last week we looked at chapter three, and he he talks about how Israel is a privileged people. They're a covenant people in covenant with God, but with privilege comes accountability, comes responsibility. And man, Jesus taught on that as well throughout his ministry, this idea of hey, there are expectations that God has for you based on what's given to you, right? You and I are going to be evaluated and judged based off our response to what God has done in our life. And so, as Americans that are, that are, you know, whether you're poor in America or you're wealthy in America, you and I are in that top three or four percent of the world. Like we have it really good in the United States. And we are gonna be held accountable for what do we do, what do we do with what we have? And Jesus taught that, and Amos is hammering that message home for uh the for the nation of Israel. There's accountability, and so um as we step into chapter four, I'm gonna keep putting this in front of you. I think we should make a t-shirt that just says, You and I, we are blessable image-bearing covenant partners. From Genesis chapter one, we see that God made the humans, he blessed them. Do you know that you are a container capable of God's blessing? He blessed them. He said, You bear my image, you are my representation, you're you're my image-bearers on the earth, and then you're a covenant people. You're covenant part, you're intended to be in covenant with God. Now we get to Genesis chapter 3, and that gets violated, and um we see how God deals with the broken covenants throughout history. But as we step into Amos chapter 4, what I want you to remember is that you're a blessable, image-bearing, covenant partner with God. And God is working in your life and my life off of that framework. He wants you to be a person that is blessed. He wants all humans to be blessed. But his, it's his blessing. It's understanding blessing through his eyes. It's not our concept of blessing, it's his blessing. And then we have this responsibility to bear his image in society and in the world. We have this mandate to be fruitful, to be multiplying, to subdue and to rule, and then to abide by the covenant. Some of the things you're gonna hear this morning as we go through this text. One, you're gonna hear that women can be just as guilty as men. So the focus right off the bat is going to be on women within the society who were messing up. Another thing that we're gonna hear is that sometimes God's response to our stupid and our dumb stuff is satire, where he just says to us, yeah, you want to be like that? Go for it. You'll find, you'll figure it out. Sometimes God's gonna respond to you and me in the dumb stuff that I say, where he's just like, Look, you want to be like that? Go ahead. See how it works out for you. The third thing we're gonna hear is that sometimes the suffering that is in our life, the pain in our life, is God allowing pain so that we'll return to him. Not all pain, not all pain in our life is discipline, but some pain is God trying to motivate us back towards him. And I'm gonna give you a framework of how to evaluate the things, the painful things in your life, to know is this discipline or is this something else? Let me read to you from these 13 verses and then we'll pray together. Verse one listen to this message, you cows of Bashan, who are on the hill of Samaria, women who oppress the poor and crush the needy, who say to their husbands, bring us something to drink. The Lord God has sworn by his holiness, look, the days are coming when you will be taken away with hooks, every last one of you with fish hooks. You will go through the breaches in the wall, each woman straight ahead, you will be driven along towards Harmon. This is the Lord's declaration. Come to Bethel and rebel. Rebel even more at Gilgal, bring your sacrifices every morning and your tents every three days. Offer leavened bread as a thanksgiving sacrifice, and loudly proclaim your free will offerings, for that is what you Israelites love to do. This is the declaration of the Lord. I gave you absolutely nothing to eat in all your cities, a shortage of food in all your communities, yet you did not return to me. This is the Lord's declaration. I also withheld rain from you while there was still three months until harvest. I sent rain on one city, but no rain on another. One field received rain while one field r uh with no rain withered. Two or three cities staggered to another city to drink water, but were not satisfied. Yet you did not return to me. This is the Lord's declaration. I struck you with blight in mildew. The locusts devoured your many gardens and vineyards, your fig trees and olive trees, yet you did not return to me. This is the Lord's declaration. I sent plagues like those of Egypt. I killed your young men with the sword, along with your captured horses. I caused the stench of your camp to fill your nostrils, yet you did not return to me. This is the Lord's declaration. I overthrew some of you, as I overthrew Sodom and Gomorrah, and you were like a burning sick, snatched from a fire, yet you did not return to me. This is the Lord's declaration. Therefore, this is what I will do to you, and since I will do that to you, Israel, prepare to meet your God. He is here, the one who forms the mountains, creates the wind, and reveals his thoughts to man, the one who makes the dawn out of darkness and strides on the heights of the earth, the Lord, the God of armies, is his name. Let's pray together. Lord, as we study through these 13 verses, we want to open up our hearts to you. And Lord, there's a lot of things that go through our hearts and through our heads as we're sitting here for a few minutes reading your word. And we pray and we ask that you would divinely capture our attention. And then, Lord, that you would just speak right into our lives, into our specific story. Lord, where where we need correction, where we want to hear that correction, where we need the comfort of your spirit, Lord, we receive your comfort. Where we need a rebuke, Lord, rebuke us. Where you need to just guide us in our life. And your word is a lamp to our feet, Lord. Would you just guide us? We are ready to encounter your spirit. And Lord, what we bring to the table is a readiness and willingness to say yes. When you speak to us this morning, we want to say yes, Lord, and we ask that even before we know what you say, God, we pray that our follow-through, our obedience would be clear and evident this week in our lives. We pray this in Jesus' name. Amen. Amen. So here we have these first two verses, verses one and two. And basically he says to the women, Y'all are cows. I'm serious, he does. He says, Listen to this message, you cows of Bashan, who were on the hills of Samaria, women who oppress the poor and crush the needy. Now, okay, you gotta understand when Amos calls the women cows, you need to understand that there could be a cultural thing here going on where it's not a derogatory statement. There was a um an appreciation within their culture for a cow, and it was a sign of preeminence. So it could be, it could be that he is um being more ironic because he's honoring them and saying you have this prestigious position in Samaria. So Samaria was a very fertile area, beautiful pasture land. The cows would graze there, and he's identifying these women with like a good part of society. He's not insulting their weight, okay? Probably. You gotta remember there's a cultural gap when we read the Bible. There's a gap between when this was written in our time. And so he's honoring them, probably, but he's saying, look, you are these dignified women who are well fed. Maybe that would be fat. Let's get off that, okay? And he says, but look at your life. Do you see what he says there? He says, You women, what are they doing? They oppress the poor and crush the needy. That's the first thing. These are women who are well off and they're crushing the needy. They're oppressing the poor and crushing the needy. Again, it's just like when we were studying Matthew. What do we see? We see God's heart. He's looking at this society. He's gonna say, I'm in your midst. And when I look at you, ladies, what I see is that you are not treating the poor and the needy in the way that I want. Instead, you're oppressing, you're crushing. God, the God of the Bible cares about Baltimore City. He cares about you if you're in a position where you're powerless. Sometimes, maybe not the entire life, not maybe you're um not always in a state of powerless, maybe you go, but go through a season where you are particularly vulnerable. You do you the the way that I define like the idea of being vulnerable is that um you are susceptible, particularly susceptible to outside threats. And you are powerless or lacking the power to protect yourself. So that's why we would say a child is vulnerable, a widow is vulnerable, somebody who's handicapped is vulnerable, somebody that is poor is vulnerable. We have uh women sometimes or oftentimes are vulnerable because they are like weaker, unless you have like you're an MMA lady or something like that, right? All of that would be like, look, you're in this position where you're particularly vulnerable. And so here's God bringing this word through Amos saying, here's what you're doing. But the second thing that they're doing is they're saying, they're calling to their husbands and saying, Bring us some more wine or bring us another drink, right? So they're just caught up in self-indulgence, they're brutalizing the weak, the needy, the poor, and they're just asking their husbands, yeah, just bring me another, bring, bring me another drink. And the Lord has sworn in his holiness, look, the days are coming when you will be taken away with fish hooks, every last one of you with fish hooks. So Amos now goes from he was wearing the hat where he's being a prophet and he's saying, This is the case, and now he's going to be predictive. Do you see the shift there? He's going from saying, This is what's wrong, to this is what's coming, you're gonna be taken away. This is speaking to the Assyrian exile. Israel, the nation of Israel, is gonna rebel against God and rebel against God, and the point is gonna come where God is going to allow the people in all of these northern cities to be completely taken captive by the Assyrian army. And we know from history that what would happen is they would put hooks in their noses, rings in their ears, chain them together, and march them over to Assyria, like towards Iraq, like a long distance, marching with literally hooks in their noses. Here he calls it fish hooks. The chapter, this whole chapter highlights this link for us between social injustice and religious hypocrisy. Now, I know you've never known anybody that's a Christian and totally a hypocrite. That's just unique to me. No. We all have a degree of hypocrisy in our life, but man, this just chaps God's hide, right? If you could say that, if you could use that metaphor. It is upsetting to God. It was upsetting to Jesus when he saw the religious hypocrisy, the religious leaders being religious hypocrites and neglecting the poor. You cannot be a follower of the God of the Bible on a Sunday morning and then leave here and be a total jerk to the people around you. It just doesn't, it just doesn't work that way. Like, if you want to be a jerk to the people out there, then I'm sorry. You go ahead and you do that, right? But please don't call yourself a Christian. Don't call yourself a follower of Jesus. A follower of Jesus is one who has God's heart for society and a particular care, a particular emphasis is placed on those who are most vulnerable. And you say to me, well, you know, that's inconvenient. Vulnerable people sometimes are a lot of work. Vulnerable people sometimes smell. Vulnerable people sometimes fall off the bandwagon and are, you know, suck in their addiction. Hey, I'm just reading to you the Bible. The God of the Bible cares about vulnerable people. And you and I, we've got to make a decision whether we're gonna obey what the Bible says. And there's no part of Amos where he's giving you and I like a loophole to not care for the vulnerable. It's interesting though, the the geography here in verses one and two. There is this reference to Samaria. Well, in verse four, he's gonna mention Bethel, Gilgal. There is a geography as theology that's going on here in this case. Oh, yeah, you got sorry, you have to, I guess my computer went to sleep.

Speaker 1 19:54

I might have to stick my finger on that. Okay. That's a good thing to know.

Speaker 20:10

And then maybe wiggle the mouse every five minutes so it doesn't go to sleep. Thank you. Alright, let's go to um well, we'll go to this slide. Israel's um social justice and religious hypocrisy are intertwined. Their worship, divorced from judges um justice is offensive to God. So um verse, let's look at verse four and five. Come to Bethel and rebel. So the first three verses focus on these women who neglected the poor and needy. He may still be speaking to the women, or he may open the aperture of his remarks to all of society, but he's going to now in two verses satirically use satire to ask them to double down on their rebellion. So Bethel and Gilgal were two prominent cities, and um Bethel goes back to Abram. It was it was called Bethel because that that means in Hebrew the house of God. The meeting, it's where these patriarchs met with God. And now Amos, speaking on God's behalf, is saying to the people, Go ahead, come to Bethel and rebel. Rebel even more, like double down on stupid. Bring your sacrifices every morning, your tenths every three days, your tithes every day three days. Offer leavened bread as thanksgiving sacrifice. Loudly proclaim your free will offerings, for this is what you Israelites love to do. This is the declaration of the Lord. The text is challenging the nation that religious ritual, this idea that religious ritual provides immutable immunity from moral accountability. Remember, when you um go as a kid and you get your vaccines, right? You get the polio vaccine, that vaccine is supposed to make you um inoculated so that you are immune from getting polio, right? And there is this way that religious people think that by going to church or by doing some spiritual activity that somehow God's not going to hold me accountable for all of my dumb stuff that I'm still doing. And Amos challenges that idea by ironically inviting the people to rebel at Bethel through their sacrifices. Amos asserts that worship divorced from social justice is offensive to God. And so, real quickly, just in your own hearts before the Lord, do a heart check. Are you playing games with God? God, am I playing games? Do I talk a good talk? Do I use spiritual language around other Christians? Do I post Bible verses to my Facebook account and have a Bible verse on my coffee mug? But the way that I engage culture and society is falling short of your heart. Man, may it not be so. So the first section, the women. The second section is satire. The third section, this last section, is this repeated phrase, you did not return. And what we have is this um series of judgments. Here it says their um, I always forget this word. Where's Anthony? Pagogical judgments, meaning they're judgments intended to teach. God is putting the nation through painful circumstances to teach a lesson that they need to return to God. Here's what it says in verse 6 I gave you absolutely nothing to eat in all your cities. That's a famine, a shortage of food in all your communities. Here we have the first one. Yet you did not return to me. This is the Lord's declaration. So here's a situation, right? You have a you have a city, you have a set of cities, and God allows the food supply to dry up. God allows that painful circumstance to happen. And his hope was, his expectation was they'll experience pain and they'll cry out to God, they'll return to Yahweh, their Maker. And yet they did not return. Let's go to the next verse. I also withheld the rain from you while there were still three months until harvest. I sent rain on one city, but no rain on another. One field received rain, while a field with no rain withered. So here's another painful experience. The farmers till their field, they sow their seed, they have the initial rain, the plant grows up, and then all of a sudden that plant begins to wither because God's allowed it to stop raining. God's working through weather to cause a painful experience in hopes that they will return back to the Lord. Then we have two or three cities staggered to another city to drink water, but were not satisfied. Yet you did not return to me. This is the Lord's declaration. So we have no food, we have no rain, we have a lack of water. And what does he say again? You did not return to me. Can you say that with me? You did not return to me. That's what God wants for us. He wants us to encounter these things and return back to him. And they didn't. So we go to verse 9. I struck you with blight in mildew. The locusts devoured your many gardens and vineyards, your fig trees and olive trees, yet you did not return to me. This is the Lord's declaration. So they get this um blight, mildew, this disease, and these locusts come and destroy their crops. That would be painful if that's your source of food. And yet again they do not return to the Lord. Verse 10 I sent plagues like those of Egypt. I killed your young men with the sword, along with your captured horses. I caused the stench of your camp to fill your nostrils, yet you did not return to me. This is the Lord's declaration. I overthrew some of you, as I overthrew Sodom and Gomorrah, and you were like a burning snick snatched from the flyer, yet you did not return to me. This is the Lord's declaration. So we have this list of painful events followed by you did not return to me. These were curses that we would have we would be able to find from the book of Leviticus and from Deuteronomy 28. It feels almost like Amos is saying your own Torah, your own law book, the first five books of your Bible, my Bible, that is what is prosecuting you. That is the indictment against you. Instead of them learning dependence through hunger or through thirst, like they did back when they were in the Exodus, Israel has become hardened by these covenant disciplines. Remember, these people are God's covenant people, and they're violating his covenant by how they do normal life in society, by turning a blind eye to the vulnerable and the poor. And then God is causing these painful circumstances to occur to motivate them to return, and instead they harden their hearts. The failure to return, it highlights for us the limitations of Moses' law. So you remember when we talk about covenants, we're talking about, when we're talking about covenants, think of Moses and the Ten Commandments. God made a covenant with the nation of Israel. He said, These are your laws. And they were to be God's people, and that was their constitution as a nation. And yet the weakness of that covenant was that it was only written on stone. It's good that it was written, but the problem, the limiting factor of the Ten Commandments is it wasn't internal, it wasn't in their hearts. And so they continued to rebel. Their hearts were not transformed, and yet it sets the stage for a new covenant. If you go to Jeremiah 31, if you go to Ezekiel 36, you see that when the prophets spoke of the new covenant that would be made through Jesus, one of the core tenets is that God's law would be put in your and my heart. When we take communion in a few minutes, one of the things that we're remembering and celebrating is that God now can work inside of us. It's not just this external set of laws written on Ten Commandments, but God is at work in your heart and my heart. And so when we engage in looking at these different judgments against the nation, we see that they just don't return. But I just I want you to know that you're different from them in that the presence, if you're a follower of Jesus, if you've given your life over to Jesus, God lives in you and enables you to return quickly. It is easier for you, listen, it is easier for you to return to the Lord than it was for these people. That's a privilege. What do we say comes with privilege? Accountability, responsibility. That's right. So when you and I sin, when you and I rebel, we have even fewer excuses. Right? Because we have the presence of God in our life. We have him changing our hearts, we have him bearing witness to his law in us and changing us. It is we we have this real privilege to be under, we we have it, we have it good as followers of Jesus. Do you hear that? But listen, it's only as good as our cooperation with him. Your cooperation with him. You see, the Bible, one of the reasons I love the Old Testament is because it lays out a vision for being a good human. You get Genesis 1 and 2, and you just have like this um mandate, this human mandate to be fruitful and multiply, subdue and rule. But the empowerment to do that comes under the new covenant by the grace of God. So you we take in the Old Testament, we learn about what God cares about and how he works, but you and I, we're living in like the promise of God. Like what these people didn't have, you and I have. But we've got to live it out. We have to, we have to to to to do what these people did not do, returning to the Lord, living out Genesis 1 and 2. Let's let's look at this for a second. Let's talk about the painful stuff in our life, and we're almost done, so I appreciate your patience. Um, painful stuff happens in every human life. And you've got to ask the question where is this thing coming from? Is it is God disciplining me as he did with the nation of Israel? Um, the King James word for that is chastening. Is he disciplining you, chastening you, making some things painful in your life so that you will turn back to him? Is another option is is this the result of living in a world that's sinful? Maybe you have painful stuff happening to you just because right now humanity has sin in it. There is a general rebellion against God. This is Satan's realm, right? And you are an exile and an invader in Satan's territory, right? But you and I, like when we go out, when we go around, you're walking around in Satan's kingdom. And Jesus stepped in to rescue you from that kingdom so that you could have life. But that life is not pervasive across society yet. We live in the midst of brokenness. So sometimes the painful stuff that you're experiencing is just the result of sin. The third option is that sometimes God lets you and I go through painful stuff to highlight our weakness because he wants to be strong in you. He taught told his disciples, take up your cross and follow me. Um Paul talked about just the weakness in his flesh. He had an eye disease, probably, that just made life kind of miserable for Paul the Apostle. And when he when Paul prayed and asked for God to take it away, God said, Listen, my strength is made perfect in your weakness. And so sometimes there's painful stuff in our life. Some maybe it's even just your relationship with money. Maybe you're poor, right? And you've like prayed, like, I don't want to be poor. And I've tried to work and I've tried to find a job, but you know, maybe maybe you have a disability or and you can't change it. And and maybe God's response to you is like, you're not poor because God's judging you, but God wants to make his power known in the midst of your poverty. Maybe you're going through like a physical disability, and it's like, man, I wish I didn't have that. And God's like, I'm not gonna take that away. I want my power to be made known in the midst of your weakness. And then the fourth is like what we see with Job, where it's just say it's a satanic attack. And God allows Satan off the chain for a little bit longer, where he can attack you and I. He can't live in you, but he can oppress you, he can afflict you, and sometimes the painful things in our life are just satanic. And sometimes it's multiple multiples of these together. So you may have a painful thing going on, and God, and and the instrument of that is is a satanic, a demon is oppressing you, causing something to occur in your physical life or in a relationship, and it's satanic in origin, and it's highlighting your weakness. This is Paul, you know, he called it uh a thorn in the flesh, a messenger of Satan sent to buffet me. That's how he talks about it in 2 Corinthians. And yet God is at work to make his power known. So think for a second with me. Do the mental exercise. What are you going through? What's the hard thing, right, for you? And what I want you to do is I want you to run it through in your head. Is God trying to get your attention? Is he disciplining you? Okay? If it and if you think through and you're and you just check in with God and you're like, I don't know of any open rebellion in my life. Nothing comes to mind, then that's fine. You don't have to worry about it. Move to the next one. Maybe God just wants to put on display his power in your life. Maybe it's just a satanic attack and you've got to put on the spiritual armor, you've got to weather it, right? I think the key is so that you and I are not guilty of what Amos is talking about, is that simple prayer. God, search me, know me, see if there be any wicked way in me. If he doesn't highlight something, I mean the Holy Spirit lives in you. The Spirit of God lives in you. And if there's something that you're doing wrong, he'll activate your conscience and help you see it. And sometimes the Christians around you will speak into your life and say, hey, you know what? That thing that you're doing there, I don't think that lines up with Scripture. And so between the community of the church and the work of the Holy Spirit in our life, you know whether God needs to address something in your life or not. And if you feel like you have a clean conscience, you're probably not the cow of Bishon that needs to get like knocked over the head, you know, in that moment. Does that make sense? If you have questions, you can put them in on your phone. I see you, Latia. I'm glad you're here as well. Um, therefore, Israel, that is what I will do to you. And since I will do that to you, Israel, prepare to meet your God. There's this word here that comes to Israel where God's going to show up. And you may have heard this statement before, prepare to meet your God. But this is a preparation to meet your God in judgment. They're going to face the judgment of God because they're the clock is running out on the on God's patience. Final verse, verse 13. He He is here, the one who forms the mountains, creates the wind, and reveals his thoughts to man, the one who makes the dawn out of darkness and strides on the heights of the earth, the Lord God of armies is his name. He basically just says, Look, God is here. God is presence. Okay, we can, we're we're almost done here. God is present in your midst. God's present in our midst. We talked about this last week. This is this Amos passage is spoken under the old covenant to the covenant people of God. And what you need to understand under the new covenant is that they're the same pieces. The same pieces, but rearranged around Jesus. So the God who cares about you sent his son Jesus to face thirst, to face the famine, to face the judgment like Sodom and Gomorrah faced. Jesus took on, he bore that suffering so that you and I do not face that same judgment. So judgment is still a reality, but for you and I, let's say that you're a Christian, but you're stupid and you're rebelling and you're like knocking your head against the wall of sin every day. What you need to know is that God's going to discipline you because he loves you. He's going to try to get you to return and come back. But the judgment that's spoken of here is not the judgment for you because Jesus was already judged.

Speaker 1 42:11

Oh, you know what? My slides are jumping around on me.

Speaker 42:22

Under the new covenant, Jesus has taken the penalty for our rebellion. So when we take communion in a couple minutes together, what we're celebrating is that Amos could have walked in the door this morning. God could have given him a word about your life. My life. The rebellion in my life, the rebellion in yours. Could have named it. He could have gone through a checklist. This is what you're doing wrong, Bob, Gary, Susie, you know, could have walked through it. Because he's here. Right? That's what he says. I'm the God that made the wind, the mountains. I'm here. He knows exactly what's going on in your life. But what you need to know, what where we are at in God's timeline, is that Jesus already came. He died on the cross. And he knows, he knows you and I, but he paid that penalty for your sin. So we're going to celebrate his redemptive work in our life. We're going to take communion together. What I'm going to do is um I'm going to invite you to get the elements from either here or in the back. But before we do, before we do, let's pray. Let's pray. And uh, and then I'll I'll have you take uh get the elements so we can take communion together. Lord, we thank you for your word. And Um, just the place where we stand today, 2026, where we get to look back on the cross, the penalty for our sin, that you've that we're a people that are forgiven, that you've put away our sin. And Lord, I I ask that you would um just cement in our hearts these truths so that we walk out of here as a people that are not continuing on in our pattern of sin, but that we're returning back to you. We're seeking your forgiveness. Lord, we um we are grateful. Thank you for this word this morning. We pray in Jesus' name. Amen.