Called To Account

Intro

Have you ever thought about the names or descriptors of God in the Bible?

We see him as our provider, healer, redeemer.

We use names like prince of peace, lamb of God, or lion of Judah.

Let’s talk about that last one lion of Judah.

What do we mean by that?

It comes from a reference in Revelation 5:5. Here we see Jesus being referred as the lion of Judah.

And when we hear this term we often get glimpses of Jesus being this powerful and majestic being.

Strong, mighty and noble.

But do we understand the context of God being described as a lion?

In the context of Revelation, we see this scroll. It is this scroll that contains the revelation of the history of humanity and how everything will play out in the end.

And this scroll has 7 seals, signifying its value and importance. And in heaven, there was no one worthy to break these seals, except for Jesus, the lion of Judah

And so he begins to break these seals one by one, and with each one a judgement over the earth is proclaimed and initiated.

These judgments are no small thing. They are nothing to bat and eye at. They are severe and they are swift.

You see the context of Jesus being a lion is not pretty, it is terrifying.

It isn’t only here that we see this reference to Jesus or God as a lion.

In fact, this morning we are going to start a journey through another book of the OT like we did a few months ago with Habakkuk

I want to turn your attention to the book of Amos. It will be in this book that spend the next several weeks together.

A little background

Just to set the stage, let me give you a little background here.

Amos, like Habakkuk whom we studied a few month ago, is considered a minor prophet of the OT.

Amos who lived during the divided kingdom era lived in the southern kingdom of Judah.

Remember, after King Solomon’s death the kingdom of Israel was split in two. Solomon’s son was king over the south which included 2 fo the 12 tribes of Isreal and maintained control of Jerusalem and the Holy Temple. It was called Judah

The north was ruled by one of Solomons high officials and was comprised of the other 10 tribes. It maintained the name Israel.

As you may recall, the king of this northern tribe was wicked and did evil things in the sight of God.

And for several generations, each king that followed was wicked and evil. Never in the northern kingdom’s history did they have a king that honored God or his word.

So here we cut to Amos. Amos was not like other prophets of the OT. Amos wasn’t a priest, nor did he hold high rank as an aristocrat in the King’s courts.

Rather Amos was a shepherd and part time fig tree farmer. Yet God called him to be a prophet, specifically a prophet to the northern kingdom of Israel.

Amos’ prophetic ministry began roughly 200 years after King Solomon died and the kingdom was divided.

An ominous opening

Let’s look at how Amos’ book starts out.

Amos 1:1-2 NLT This message was given to Amos, a shepherd from the town of Tekoa in Judah. He received this message in visions two years before the earthquake, when Uzziah was king of Judah and Jeroboam II, the son of Jehoash, was king of Israel.

2 This is what he saw and heard: “The Lord’s voice will roar from Zion and thunder from Jerusalem! The lush pastures of the shepherds will dry up; the grass on Mount Carmel will wither and die.”

Here we see this reference to God’s voice roaring like thunder. Another allusion to him being a lion or similar beast.

Anytime we see God speaking as if he is roaring, It is more than him just being loud or powerful, it is usually followed by something that should terrify those he is speaking to.

You see, what Amos is about to reveal is not something that is going to bring the people of Israel peace or comfort.

No one is going to walk away saying wow, what an uplifting and encouraging prophecy we heard today.

Rather what Amos was about to reveal, should have left his hearers completely terrified at what was coming because of their disobedience and rejection of the truth.

Israel stood condemned

Remember the north was wicked and did many evil things in God’s sight. And while God had been patient for 200 years, his patience had run out. They now stood guilty and condemned.

Look at what Amos says about Israel.

Amos 2:6-8 NLT 6 This is what the Lord says: “The people of Israel have sinned again and again, and I will not let them go unpunished! They sell honorable people for silver and poor people for a pair of sandals.

7 They trample helpless people in the dust and shove the oppressed out of the way. Both father and son sleep with the same woman, corrupting my holy name.

8 At their religious festivals, they lounge in clothing their debtors put up as security. In the house of their gods, they drink wine bought with unjust fines.

There is a lot happening here. God, through Amos is saying, Israel you have sinned, over and over again. In other words Israel has sinned and there has been no repentance for it.

As a result, punishment is coming and it cannot be avoided. Its too late.

Then God begins to highlight some of the things they have done in their sin.

They were selling other humans into slavery as means for paying off their debts.

At this time in Israel’s history things were going pretty well economically. People were quite comfortable and prosperous.

In their prosperity they had no need for God. They had forgotten his law and the regulation God had given them for how to treat the most vulnerable among them.

Amos says in verse 7 that they trampled the helpless under foot, shoved the oppressed out of the way.

In their prosperity, they ignored their call to care for the orphaned and the widowed. To provide for those that could not provide for themselves.

They hoarded it all for themselves and saw themselves as better than others.

He also describes their sexual depravity as father and son sleep with the same woman, therefore corrupting or profaning God’s holy name.

How did this profane God’s name?

Remember, these people were to be a holy people. God’s representatives to all the nations of the world.

And as his representatives, their words and actions would show the world who God was.

And by allowing themselves to sink into the depravity that they did, they were showing the world this was the kind of behavior that their God endorsed.

It was corrupting the world’s view of God

Lastly he says that they lounge in clothing their debtors put up as security, which was a violation of the law mind you, in the house of their gods.

Remember, the temple was in the southern kingdom of Judah. Because the northern kingdom of Israel did not have access to the temple or the priests, the Kings of Israel instituted worship and sacrifices in pagan shrines and temples, a direct violation to the law of Moses.

As a result the people of Israel had completely lost their identity as God’s chosen people because they fully embraced the pagan religions of the nations around them.

Israel had broken what Jesus said were the two most important commandments.

To love LORD your God (here adonai, greek translation of Yahweh, the name God gave to Israel to differentiate him from all of the false gods of the day) with all your heart, all your soul, and all your mind.

And the second being to love your neighbor as yourself.

Matthew 22:37-39

Israel had traded the one true God for false gods and treated others abhorrently.

As a result judgment was coming.

A much needed reminder

Next, God begins to remind Israel of who they are dealing with.

Amos 2:9-11 NLT 9 “But as my people watched, I destroyed the Amorites, though they were as tall as cedars and as strong as oaks. I destroyed the fruit on their branches and dug out their roots.

10 It was I who rescued you from Egypt and led you through the desert for forty years, so you could possess the land of the Amorites. 11 I chose some of your sons to be prophets and others to be Nazirites. Can you deny this, my people of Israel?” asks the Lord.

Here God is referencing back to Israel’s history where he rescued them from Egypt when they were slaves there and how he provided from them as they wandered for 40 years in the wilderness.

He reminds them of how he destroyed the wicked nations who inhabited the promised land so they could inhabit it.

He reminds them of how he chose them out of all the nations of their earth to be his people, his prophets who would speak on his behalf to the nations around them.

He asks them, can you deny any of this. No you can’t, because you know it is all true. And yet you have chosen to follow not the one true God, but false gods who did none of those things.

He says in verse 12...

Amos 2:12 NLT “But you caused the Nazirites to sin by making them drink wine, and you commanded the prophets, ‘Shut up!’

In other words, you corrupted those who made holy vows by making them break those vows. You have failed to be holy.

And you have told the prophets, the ones who speak on my behalf to shut up. We aren’t interested in what God has to say anymore.

A preview of what’s coming

So God says here is what’s going to happen.

Amos 2:13-16 NLT 13 “So I will make you groan like a wagon loaded down with sheaves of grain. 14 Your fastest runners will not get away. The strongest among you will become weak. Even mighty warriors will be unable to save themselves.

15 The archers will not stand their ground. The swiftest runners won’t be fast enough to escape. Even those riding horses won’t be able to save themselves. 16 On that day the most courageous of your fighting men will drop their weapons and run for their lives,” says the Lord.

Here Amos is prophesying not of some general judgment, but of something very specific that will be teased out more throughout the book of Amos.

But Amos is telling Israel that someone is coming, and when they do, no one will be able to stop the destruction they will leave in their wake.

He is referring to the kingdom of Assyria who in just 30 years time will come and utterly destroy the northern kingdom of Israel just as Amos predicted.

Why? Because Israel had turn her back on God. Rather than keeping him at the center of their lives, they had abandoned him.

Here God is calling the northern kingdom to account for turning away from him.

Application/Closing

We just finished a series on holiness and our calling to be set apart in the way we speak and live so that the world might know Jesus and be reconciled to our heavenly father.

Like the northern kingdom of Israel, if we aren’t careful to keep ourselves oriented toward God and his word, our holiness, or lack of it, will likewise corrupt the way a lost world sees and understands who Jesus is because we claim to be his representatives.

We too will corrupt or profane God’s name.

I can’t help but see parallels to our own lives today. I can’t help but notice how as a country, we have turned from God, and pursued our own way.

We have forgotten our call to care for the most vulnerable in society and instead we kill them in the womb.

We create programs that on the surface appear noble to give people a helping hand when in reality we are creating a class system of us against them designed only to control those in need by making them dependent on these programs.

We too have allowed sexual immorality and depravity to not only become acceptable, but endorsed.

Like the corruption of their religious festivals, we have allow corruption into the Church and refused to hold Church leaders accountable for leading others astray.

And if God didn’t allow his own chosen people to get away with it, how in the world do we think we will get away with it.

I will close with what Amos says here...

Amos 3:2 NLT 2 “From among all the families on the earth, I have been intimate with you alone. That is why I must punish you for all your sins.”

This word intimate comes from the Hebrew word yada. It means to make known or reveal or learn about.

Here God is saying that like a husband and wife who allow themselves to be known by each other in a way that is special and in a way that no other person will ever know them. That is how God had revealed himself to Israel.

No other people on earth would know God the way they did. And it was because of this revelation they would be held accountable.

How much more accountable will we be as people who have an even greater revelation of God than Israel did as followers of Christ?

Please don’t be confused by what I am saying this morning.

We are not Israel. Amos was not prophesying about America.

There are preachers who want to tie these prophecies to the United States. That is bad Biblical exegesis.

What I am saying is that we know God’s character and we know how he deals with sin, especially from people who should know better.

As a nation, we should know better.

I don’t know if God will bring judgment on our country. What is do know is that it wouldn’t be inconsistent with his nature to do so.

I don’t say all of this to leave everyone feeling defeated. I don’t say this because I enjoy it.

I say it because I am concerned and more importantly because its what God has already said.

But this isn’t all that God said through Amos but unfortunately we are out of time.

So I hope you will join me next week as we continue our series through this book.