Life or Death

Introduction:

In April of 2003, Aron Ralston decided to go exploring through the Bluejohn Canyon alone

-While descending down into a narrow passage, an 800lb boulder was dislodged and fell on his left arm, crushing it and trapping him

-Aron had called out of work for several days, and had not told anyone where he would be going

-With no help on the way, Aron knew that he would die in this canyon

-After 5 days of being in that position, Aron was faced with choice of life or death, and the choice had radical implications

-Aron decided that to cut his own arm off with a cheap pocket knife that he had brought with him

-After an hour of work, he succeeded in the painful task, climbed down the remaining 65 feet and hiked 7 miles before he was picked up

-and because of his choice, Aron survived the incident and is still alive today

In our text today, as hard as it may be to believe, the hearers are the message are faced with an even more radical life or death choice, with even far weightier implications than the choice Aron had to make

Background

-Now that we’re on our 4th message on this book, I don’t think you need a very detailed background or review

-Amos is a sheepbreeder from Judah that is sent up to the Northern Kingdom of Israel during the prosperous reign of Jeroboam II

-The message of Amos to the nation is this: God is not pleased with outward signs of worship and religion while they are accompanied by unrighteousness in our dealings with others

**explain handout and read text**

1. The way of death

-A mourner wailed in the streets of Samaria

-Funerals were not necessarily uncommon in a city this size, but the onlookers soon realized that this was no ordinary funeral dirge

-As people came to the street to watch, they saw no body

-No family

-No procession

-Just one man

-The prophet from Judah who had been preaching to them

-He was probably dressed in sackcloth with torn clothes

-And as he proceeded down the streets, weeping and wailing, he sang a song that haunted the listeners and chilled them to the bone

“The virgin of Israel has fallen; she will rise no more.”

This was not the message of a lunatic or some religious fanatic, or some desperate person trying to become a youtube sensation

-This was the prophet of the Lord with a divinely inspired funeral song

-Now, on the one hand, in verses 1-3 and then in verses 16-17, the prophet is pointing towards the Exile of Israel by the hand of the Assyrians

-He mentions in verse 3 that the will be but a small remnant left

-And He mentions the wailing that will ensue verse 16, presumably talking about the mourning of the few people who are left in the land after the Assyrian takeover

-But there is also a very real sense in which the nation is already dead, even before the coming judgment

-In verse 2, Israel is described as already fallen, already forsaken

-Why is Israel already dead?

-I believe verses 7, and then 10-13 give the answer to us

Look at verse 7:

-the people of Israel “turned justice to wormwood”

-According to commentators, wormwood was an herb known for it’s bitter taste

-Instead of meting out justice

-Instead of upholding the law and defending the helpless,

-On commentator says, “They were changing sweet justice into bitter injustice”

-Imagine a widow coming to seek help when a young man comes and takes one of her few remaining donkeys

-She goes to the judge for help, but she’s poor

-The judge offers to help her for a bribe, but she has nothing to give him

-So he angrily waves her off, refusing to help her since there’s nothing for him in it

-The Israelites “lay righteousness to rest in the earth”

-Other translations say something like “they throw righteousness to the ground”

-Like a an apple core that is mindlessly tossed to the side of the road, righteousness and fairness is discarded without a second thought

Vs. 10 says, “They hate the one who rebukes in the gate, they abhor the one who speaks uprightly”

-When someone is brave enough to take a stand for the helpless and seek to encourage fairness, that person is hated

-Maybe bullied, or threatened, or possibly even killed

-Perhaps at the very least, they are ostracized, maliciously ignored or hated by others in the community

-Perhaps not unlike we’re beginning to see here when people speak out publicly against the LGBTQ agenda

Vs. 11 says that they Israelites tread down the poor and take grain taxes from him

-perhaps the rich had bought up most of the land, allowing tenant farmers to farm it for them, only to take most of the grain for themselves and leave little for the poor farmers to feed their families on

-Perhaps they weren’t technically breaking any laws, but they were certainly violating the law of God which taught them to love others as themselves

Vs. 12 says they afflicted the just and took bribes, they diverted the poor from justice at the gate

-only the rich and powerful were able to get favorable rulings in court

-the poor person, the person who couldn’t afford a bribe or had little influence in the community was unprotected against the injustice

It was so bad, that according to verses 13, the prudent person, the wise person, was just quiet

-There was nothing seemingly that could be done

-So why not just keep my mouth shut so as not to get myself into trouble?

-You see the nation was heading to their death (the Exile), but in reality, the nation was already dead

Let me ask you a question:

-In what sense were they already dead?

Or let’s phrase it this way:

-What is death in a spiritual sense?

-This week, I spent some time reflecting on the message of Amos

-I began to ask this question: why is it that God does not accept our outward acts of worship if we’re not living in righteousness with those around us?

-Why is that?

-And then I realized why

-You see, true worship of God is when God is at the center of everything in my life

-When He is the Sun that everything is revolving around, then that is true worship!

-Yes, coming here to church, singing, getting on our knees, or even your personal time with the Lord,

-Those are acts of worship

-But those things are only true worship when our entire lives are God-centered

-And you know one of the easiest ways to tell how God-centered someone is?

-How do they treat their spouse?

-How do they treat their children?

-How do they treat that annoying coworker?

-How do they treat that person at the cash register who just messed up their order?

“Surely, you’re making a big deal of this Braden”

Am I?

If anyone says, “I love God,” yet hates his brother, he is a liar. For the person who does not love his brother he has seen cannot love the God he has not seen. (1 John 4:20)

-You see, the way we treat other people actually reveals who is at the center of the universe for us

-When I am at the center of the universe, I care very little about the convenience or feelings of other people

“who cares if I hurt their feelings! They got my order wrong!”

“Who cares if I was a little snappy with my spouse? he shouldn’t be so sensitive!”

-That’s why God doesn’t accept these outward acts of religion from the Israelites

-Because true worship means that I’m God-centered

-And yet, my relationships shows that I’m me-centered

This is what death is in Scripture: it’s to have me as the center of the universe instead of God

Genesis 2:17 NKJV

but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall surely die.”

Adam and Eve did not physically die that day

-but they did die in the biblical sense of the word

-they were no longer God-centered when they were sinning. They were me-centered

And we have this theme all through Scripture

Romans 5:12 NKJV

Therefore, just as through one man sin entered the world, and death through sin, and thus death spread to all men, because all sinned—

Romans 8:6 NKJV

For to be carnally minded is death, but to be spiritually minded is life and peace.

Romans 6:23 (NKJV)

For the wages of sin is death

You see, Israel was dead

-And every single person in the whole world who does not have God at the center, that person is dead to

-And even as Christians, though we are made alive in Christ, we can often choose to pursue after our old way of life, the way that was leading us to death

-Brothers and sisters, we desperately need to be delivered from the horror of self-centeredness

-Is there anything more miserable than being a self-centered person

-I don’t know about you, but the most miserable times in my whole life are always when I am most focused on myself

-And the whole human race, each individual person, needs deliverance from the our inherent self-centered ways

Thankfully, we have been provided such deliverance

2. The Call to Life

-The message of this sermon is one of hope in the midst of despair

-In the middle of this song of death for, the prophet cries out this message of life

“Seek me and live!”

“Seek Yahweh and live!”

“Seek good and not evil, that you may live!”

Now, I want to ask this question of the text on this second point:

And hopefully this is the kind of question you would have as you’re reading the word of God in a text like this:

-How are the Israelites to seek the Lord and live?

-Like, what does that mean, to seek the Lord and live?

Let’s look at the text in verses 4-6 first**

-What we can see first of all, is that it is not merely some outward acts of religion

-After the command to seek Him and live, God tells them not to seek Bethel, enter Gilgal, nor pass over to Beersheba

-You see, all three places had religious significance in Israel

-Bethel and Beersheba were both places where some of the Patriarchs (Abraham, Isaac, Jacob) built altars to the Lord

-And we saw last week that Gilgal was the place where the Israelites crossed the Jordan led by Joshua and there erected a memorial to the Lord

-So whatever it means to seek the Lord in this text, it’s much more than simply doing outwardly religious things at outwardly religious places

-Do you know that it’s possible to come to church, sing songs, listen to preaching, get on your knees during worship time, come to prayer meeting, even have your own devotional time everyday, and it not necessarily be done out of a heart that’s seeking the Lord?

-Whatever seeking God means, it has to go deeper than just outward actions

-It has to be a change that touches the heart

And whatever seeking the Lord entails, according to verse 6, it’s so serious that if Israel doesn’t do it, they will be destroyed

-they will be burnt up in judgment

-So whatever seeking God means, it is absolutely vital

Look at verses 14-15**

-I think here is where we get to the very heart of the matter

-The command to seek God and live is the opposite of what we saw that death was:

-If death is being completely self-centered, cut off from God and right worship of Him

-Then life is being God-centered

-True life is being in right fellowship with God, enjoying His presence, and rightly worshipping Him as the center of all things

Why do you say that?

-Look at verse 14 again

-What does the Amos equate living with?

-God being with them

And this God-centeredness, this life, is shown in how they treat others

-They would love good, hate evil, and establish justice in the gate

-They would treat others fairly!

-Since they would no longer be the center of the universe, but God would, they would begin to care about other people as image-bearers of God

-Their love for God and worship of Him as the center of all things would cause them to love what God loves and hate what God hates

Is this what the Scriptures really teach?

Do you remember how Jesus defined what eternal life really is?

John 17:3 NKJV

And this is eternal life, that they may know You, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom You have sent.

True life is knowing and loving and worshipping God as the Center of All Things!

And brothers and sisters, we have this theme of life and death, self-worship and God worship, all through the Scriptures!

We start with the garden of Eden, in which Adam and Eve experienced life as the perfectly fellowshipped with God

-And then they disobeyed God, and they immediately died!

-Yes, they lived on physically for many years more, but they were cut off from true worship and fellowship of God

-But God promised them there in the garden that He would send Someone who would reverse the curse of sin and death

And through the next few thousand years of human history, we have these two paths

-There is the path of life, that God offers to people if they will repent and worship God!

-But mankind is so sinful! We constantly choose to worship self

-Even though it destroys our lives, our marriages, our relationships, our societies, we simply can’t break away from our self-worship

-And all through the history of Israel, God would command His people to choose life by following Him

-And constantly throughout Israel’s history they would choose their way, which was death

-Until Christ finally came, and He told His followers:

John 10:10 NKJV

The thief does not come except to steal, and to kill, and to destroy. I have come that they may have life, and that they may have it more abundantly.

He said of Himself:

John 14:6 (NKJV)

“I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through Me.

And the way that He made that life possible

-The way that He made it possible for the chains of self-worship and death to be broken, to free people to be true worshippers of God, is that He Himself died

-The Author of Life experienced the pangs of death, the consequences and judgment of our self-worship were placed upon Him

-And He died and rose again to give us life!

You see, without Christ, we were doomed to self-worship and death

-We were so lost in our sin, that we were not even capable of choosing life

Paul tells us:

Ephesians 2:1–6 (NKJV)

And you, who were dead in trespasses and sins, in which you once walked according to the course of this world, according to the prince of the power of the air, the spirit who now works in the sons of disobedience, among whom also we all once conducted ourselves in the lusts of our flesh, fulfilling the desires of the flesh and of the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, just as the others.

But God, who is rich in mercy, because of His great love with which He loved us, even when we were dead in trespasses, made us alive together with Christ

Christ Himself came to free us from this death and give us life!

And the Bible ends with this invitation:

Revelation 22:17 NKJV

And the Spirit and the bride say, “Come!” And let him who hears say, “Come!” And let him who thirsts come. Whoever desires, let him take the water of life freely.

And this is the what Yahweh speaks to his audience in the midst of his prophet’s funeral dirge, lamenting their death:

“seek Me and live”

Which leads us to the heart of the message of this lament:

The way of death

The call to life

3. The God at the center

-At the very center of these two paths, the path of death and the path of life, stands the God of the Universe

Vs. 8-9**

-He is the One who created all the stars of the sky

-He is the One who can turn darkness into light and light into darkness

He is the One who can pour out the waters and flood the whole earth

-He is the One who can bring down the strong

-He is the One who can bring judgment on the most powerful

And His name is Yahweh

This is what life is: it’s knowing and worshipping God

-It’s savoring and enjoying Him forever

-It’s treasuring Him above all else

This is why God is not pleased with our outward acts of religion when it is not accompanied by relational righteousness

-Because the sinful way we treat others shows that we aren’t truly worshipping God

-God isn’t the center of our life

-God desires people to worship Him by making their life completely and totally about Him

-God, because He is worthy, and because He loves us immensely, is not willing to settle for anything less than that

Application

-So what does this mean for us?

Do you know that Lord? Have you obeyed the command to “seek Me and live?”

-Salvation is more than just praying a prayer

-It’s more than just making sure you don’t end up in hell

-It’s becoming a true worshipper of God

-It’s making life all about Him

-Have you become a true worshipper of Yahweh through the provision of Christ?

2. Christians, are we treasuring and loving and worshipping Christ?

-It can be easy for us to slip back into centering our lives completely on ourselves

-We can do that through pursuing money, career, or a certain relationship,

-We can do that by giving our days over to movies, social media, entertainment, etc.

-But there’s no joy there

-We were meant to worship and enjoy Christ!

-And while these things aren’t necessarily bad, they can reveal a heart of self-worship as opposed to Christ worship

-Another way we can check to see if we’re really worshipping Christ is to take stock of our relationships

-How do I treat other people

-Do my relationships and the way I conduct myself with other people show that I truly worship Christ as the center of my life?

-Or do my interactions with others show my life is all about me?

Finally,

3. Let’s worship Christ

-Aren’t you so thankful that God is a God who breaks the bonds of sin and death?

-Aren’t you so thankful that God has freed us from our self-worship through the finished work of Christ

-Let me encourage you to go from here and love and savor Christ more than you ever have