Make Room in Your Life [part 3]

Today is the final message in a series that is giving an overview of a vision about making room in our lives. What we are doing here is laying out a framework for a life of discipleship. It is worth noting that a life of discipleship—following Jesus—does not just happen automatically on its own. We are people called by God to make room in our lives to be disciples. Some people relegate discipleship to the margins and allow God to have whatever leftovers there may be. But we want our relationship with God to mean something more than that. We want a life with God to be a priority part of our identity. That means we make room in our lives for the priority choices that affect deeper discipleship.

making room to listen and respond to the Holy Spirit making room to cultivate meaningful relationships making room to nurture the wellbeing of our community

I will keep repeating the three areas of focus we identify at this church as discipleship priorities. We make room in our lives to listen and respond to the Holy Spirit. I preached a few messages on that already. We make room in our lives to cultivate relationships with other people. I talked about that last Sunday. We make room in our lives to nurture the wellbeing of our community. That is what we will focus our attention on today. We become more complete disciples of Jesus when we make room in our lives to serve our local community, nurturing its wellbeing.

HOW do I make room to serve my community? WHY do I make room to serve my community?

Let me give a roadmap to how I am going to talk about this today. I am actually not going to focus much attention on HOW we make room to serve. The reason is because I don’t think I need to give much application towards explaining and describing how we serve. I think for the most part this is a church that already understands the “how to” of serving. The thing that I think will be more helpful for us today is a reminder of WHY we make room to serve. In other words, what’s the goal of being people who serve? What are we really aiming for and trying to accomplish by making room to nurture the wellbeing of our community?

we serve because: expected obligation | makes us a better person | love other people

Perhaps without really meaning to, we may find ourselves slipping into acts of service for the wring reasons. Maybe we sometimes serve because we think it is an expected obligation. Maybe we sometimes serve because we think it makes us a better person. Maybe we sometimes serve because we love other people (that’s not a bad reason). But none of these reasons point to a purpose or goal. Let’s consider a few verses from the prophet Amos that can help us understand, not HOW we make room to serve, but WHY we make room to serve.

Amos 5:14–24 (NIV)

Amos 5:14–24 NIV

14 Seek good, not evil, that you may live. Then the Lord God Almighty will be with you, just as you say he is. 15 Hate evil, love good; maintain justice in the courts. Perhaps the Lord God Almighty will have mercy on the remnant of Joseph. 16 Therefore this is what the Lord, the Lord God Almighty, says: “There will be wailing in all the streets and cries of anguish in every public square. The farmers will be summoned to weep and the mourners to wail. 17 There will be wailing in all the vineyards, for I will pass through your midst,” says the Lord. 18 Woe to you who long for the day of the Lord! Why do you long for the day of the Lord? That day will be darkness, not light. 19 It will be as though a man fled from a lion only to meet a bear, as though he entered his house and rested his hand on the wall only to have a snake bite him. 20 Will not the day of the Lord be darkness, not light— pitch-dark, without a ray of brightness? 21 “I hate, I despise your religious festivals; your assemblies are a stench to me. 22 Even though you bring me burnt offerings and grain offerings, I will not accept them. Though you bring choice fellowship offerings, I will have no regard for them. 23 Away with the noise of your songs! I will not listen to the music of your harps. 24 But let justice roll on like a river, righteousness like a never-failing stream!

James 1:27 (NIV)

James 1:27 NIV

27 Religion that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless is this: to look after orphans and widows in their distress and to keep oneself from being polluted by the world.

why is God angry in this passage?

A few items of context may be helpful to understand this passage. Amos is not one of those books of the Bible we turn to all that often because so much of what Amos has to say appears to be dark and dreary. He is one of those prophets who brings news of punishment and destruction—one of those prophets from whom we might get an image of God as being an angry tyrant instead of a loving father. At the same time, the words of Amos are part of the inspired word of God, revealing for us who God is and how we relate to him. That said, let’s be specific on the direction of God’s anger in this passage. He is not angry with the people themselves. And while it may appear that God is angry with their actions, that too seems to only scratch the surface. On a deeper level God is angry with the motivations behind their actions.

key words — verse 14 & 24 — good, justice, righteousness

It might be worth noting that I shortened the reading for today by a bit. The selection of verses we are looking at actually form two sections. Verse 14, where we began, is actually the middle of a section that goes from verses 4-17. And verse 24 where we left off is actually the middle of a section that goes from verses 18-27. This makes verse 14 the pinnacle of that first section, and verse 24 the pinnacle of that second section. All the other words here in Amos revolve around those ideas in verses 14 and 24. The key words in these verses are “good,” “justice,” and “righteousness.”

goodness, justice, and righteousness are being ignored

God is angry that goodness, justice, and righteousness are being ignored. It not only saddens God when injustice and evil persist, injustice and evil make God angry—particularly when it appears that God’s people could be doing something about it, but instead do nothing and carry on as though everything is fine. Amos uses some vivid imagery in verse 19 to convey this.

Amos 5:19 (NIV)

Amos 5:19 NIV

19 It will be as though a man fled from a lion only to meet a bear, as though he entered his house and rested his hand on the wall only to have a snake bite him.

results in worship that is empty and hollow

It results in worship that is empty and hollow. The people of Israel think to themselves that they are religiously pious people. But God says that their worship means absolutely nothing to him. The language of God’s disgust could not be stated more forcefully.

Amos 5:21–22 (NIV)

Amos 5:21–22 NIV

21 “I hate, I despise your religious festivals; your assemblies are a stench to me. 22 Even though you bring me burnt offerings and grain offerings, I will not accept them. Though you bring choice fellowship offerings, I will have no regard for them.

worship means nothing unless people also pursue justice for the oppressed in their communities

Here is the implication of what Amos is saying. Worship means nothing unless people also pursue justice for the oppressed in their communities. Let that settle in a moment. All that that we come into this church sanctuary and do week after week. All the singing; all the prayers, all the readings from scripture, all the sermons. All of this abhors God—sickens God—unless it is accompanied by a genuine pursuit of justice and righteousness in our community. People of God, we cannot ignore making room in our lives to nurture the wellbeing of our community. Because unless we do, none of the rest of this church stuff we do amounts to anything. We can pretend to be as religious as we want. But unless we are pursuing justice it all means nothing. The reminder we saw in James is this:

James 1:27 (NIV)

James 1:27 NIV

27 Religion that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless is this: to look after orphans and widows in their distress and to keep oneself from being polluted by the world.

Again, Amos uses vivid imagery to get at the same idea.

Amos 5:24 (NIV)

Amos 5:24 NIV

24 But let justice roll on like a river, righteousness like a never-failing stream!

Much of the land of Israel is a dry climate. There are many dry riverbeds in Israel called wadis. When the rainy season came or there would be a sudden downpour, these wadis would fill up and become streams or even swift flowing rivers with powerful currents. But they were temporary. Eventually these wadis would dry up again until the next time it rained. God does not want the attention of his people towards justice to be like that—to be temporary. Instead, God instructs that justice and righteousness should be like a river that never dries up. The goodness of God’s people should be ever flowing.

One of the testimonies of the church states it this way in article 4 of the Belhar Confession.

We believe that God has revealed himself as the one who wishes to bring about justice and true peace among people; we believe that God, in a world full of injustice and enmity, is in a special way the God of the destitute, the poor and the wronged; we believe that God calls the church to follow him in this, for God brings justice to the oppressed and gives bread to the hungry.

what does justice look like in our community?

restoring a path of shalom to people from whom shalom has been denied or taken

let’s get back to the main point. As I said earlier, I do not think I need to say much about the HOW of making room to serve; this passage today is a reminder of WHY we make room to serve. What is the goal and purpose of our serving others? Justice is the goal. Seeking justice for those who are oppressed and trampled upon is the purpose for our service. You have heard me talk so many times before about shalom. God created the world good with the intent that it flourishes and thrives in all the good ways he folded into the good creation. When we make room in our lives to nurture the wellbeing of our community, we are making room for the advancement of shalom in our world around us. Justice, then, is about restoring a path of shalom to people from whom shalom has been denied or taken.

justice enables for others the conditions in which they may produce spiritual fruit—a byproduct of shalom

There are three application points we can learn from the Bible here. One: we make room in our lives to nurture the wellbeing of our community when we work to restore a path towards shalom for other people—especially people for whom shalom has been denied or taken. I would dare to say that this what justice looks like if we were to frame it in spiritual terms. Injustice is the denial or taking of shalom from someone else. Justice, then, is the restoration of that shalom. It enables for others the conditions in which they may produce spiritual fruit—a byproduct of shalom. When we think of what it means to nurture the wellbeing of our community, we are drawn towards the advancement of shalom in our community.

identify and address the ways in which I may be contributing to injustice

Two: we make room in our lives to nurture the wellbeing of our community when we identify and address the ways in which we may be contributing to injustice. Let’s acknowledge that we are all broken and sinful people. Besides being people who fail to advocate and advance for justice, we are also prone to actively advance injustice. Certainly, that is one of the charges God brought against the people through the prophet Amos. One of the confessions of our denomination, the Christian Reformed Church, has been to admit and repent of ways in which we as a denomination have perpetrated injustice against indigenous people in this country. For decades we sponsored a mission effort in New Mexico which sought to eradicate the Navaho culture and language. Our method for decades was to insist that the only way native American people could be Christians was to embrace white western European culture and values. In recent years, the Christian Reformed Church has changed course on our approach to missions. We no longer pursue an effort to eradicate indigenous cultures, but rather seek to affirm the ways in which faith takes shape within a diversity of cultures. We, as a denomination, owned up to a way in which we were perpetrating injustice against an oppressed people, and had to make room for adjusting our actions so that we were no longer participating in injustice. It is worth taking time to seriously consider the ways in which our lives may be contributing to the injustice of others.

And three: something about motives. There is a difference between the world of the prophet Amos and our world today. The difference is Christ. This passage today feels rather depressing. It is a judgement of God’s anger against the people of Israel. It is a proclamation of God’s punishment against the people for their sins. Perhaps one of the possible reactions to reading a passage like this is that we walk away and feel a certain sense of dread that we better do what God wants or his anger will be turned against us like it was turned against Israel in the time of Amos. Maybe there is a twinge of guilt which says oh no, I better do what God wants here so that I do not get punished the way the Israelites did in the Old Testament.

God’s anger against my sin has been directed towards the cross

But there is a difference. Jesus is the difference. In the time of Amos the anger of God about the injustice of God’s people was placed upon the Israelites. However, God himself has done something about that. God is still a God of anger against injustice. God still punishes the injustice of this world. But the punishment of God’s anger against the sin of injustice does not come to us. The punishment of God’s anger against sin went to the cross. The entire weight of God’s anger against sin was carried by Jesus at the cross. No longer do we live as those who need to live under fear or threat of punishment from God. Jesus has taken all the guilt of our sin to the cross and already paid the penalty for our sin.

I am a more complete disciple of Christ when I make room in my life to nurture the wellbeing of my community

Our motives for pursuing justice are different. We do not obey God out of a sense of fear or obligation. Jesus has already taken care of that. We obey God and pursue justice out of a sense of gratitude. We live as people thankful to God. We do not make room in our lives to serve others out of obligation or fear. We make room in in our lives to serve others out of joy and thanksgiving! It is because of the way in which Jesus came to be a servant among us that we make room to serve others. In the end, we nurture the wellbeing of our community so that our community may see and experience the love of Christ through his people. That is the reason why disciples of Christ make room to nurture the wellbeing of our community.