Amos:

Tonight you will know that God is roaring here and He is letting the enemies of God know that an attack is coming and He wants you to know that He WILL destroy you and here is why, and I wanted to come in front of you tonight and point out all of the flaws of Israel’s neighbors and say how much better we are doing than them and call it a night after a few minutes of chest beating and exalting all of us in this room. However, God, HAS ROARED in the past, know that He can ROAR in the present and through the study of Revelation that He will ROAR again and destruction will follow and I will not ignore the ROAR of the Future echoing into the past or the past ROAR echoing into the present. Let me say that again I will not ignore the ROAR of the Future echoing into the past or the past ROAR echoing into the present. I will learn from the mistakes of those in the past and of those who will come after us. Will you learn with me?

For those of you who do know me, know that I like to laugh and joke around and all of that, but tonight is not a night for having a good time. Tonight is about listening to what I believe God wants us to hear and then for each of us to react to it. Will we pick up the challenge that will be laid out later or will we continue on as we currently are?

So tonight we will be talking about Amos chapter 1. Now this is not a hippy God that we encounter, this not a love conquers all, this is a God who is ticked and ready to bring justice to the world. As you will read tonight you will see that very clearly in black and white. See this is a chapter and a book of a prophet who has had enough of the world around him and is seeking to confront it and hopefully change it.

Tonight you will know that God is roaring here and He is letting the enemies of God know that an attack is coming and He wants you to know that He WILL destroy you and here is why, and I wanted to come in front of you tonight and point out all of the flaws of Israel’s neighbors and say how much better we are doing than them and call it a night after a few minutes of chest beating and exalting all of us in this room. However, God, HAS ROARED in the past, and know that He can ROAR in the present and through the study of Revelation that He will ROAR again and destruction will follow and I will not ignore the ROAR of the Future echoing into the past or the past ROAR echoing into the present. Let me say that again I will not ignore the ROAR of the Future echoing into the past or the past ROAR echoing into the present. I will learn from the mistakes of those in the past and of those who will come after us. Will you learn with me?

Before we truly begin let me say that I love everyone here and that this is not directed at anyone in particular other than me. If you feel guilt, shame, or anything else just know that that is King Jesus working on your spirit and not clever word play from me. I am only a vessel I pray that I step out of His way.

The first thing that we must do every time we open up the bible and begin to read is to explore the context of what is happening in the section that we are in...in our case it is Amos chapter 1. Our main character is Amos, which means Burden-bearer, and he is a poor farmer in northern Judah and he has been living with and surrounded by people who are not honoring God. So he gets fed up and goes north into Israel and lets everyone have it. Imagine being Amos and being surrounded by idol worship, baby killing, your people sold into slavery and much worse and that no one seems to be doing anything about it. How frustrated would you be? Would you be bold enough to stand up to all of that social injustice? What we see happening, on a 30,000 foot level is that there is pure rebellion against God in just about every area of life. First we see that Damascus is threshing Gilead, threshing is where you continuously beat wheat to get the grains, so the analogy here is that the people of Damascus were killing their neighbors into submission just to get their goods. Next we see Gaza, the nation of Philistine, is guilty of taking the people of Judah captive and handing them over to Judah’s enemies.

Then we have the people of Tyrus who are guilty of breaking a brotherly covenant with the people of Israel which had been established during the reigns of David and Solomon. Tyrus had begun to sell Israelites into slavery. The people of Edom who were descendants of Esau the brother of Jacob, who later became Israel, had been waging an unjust war against the Israelites for a long time. And rounding out the gentile nations we have the Ammonites who in their viciousness in war is guilty of killing babies by bashing them against rocks and literally ripping pregnant women in half to ensure that their borders can expand without opposition. The Hebrews crime, as we will see in later chapters is simply not following the Law of God and being the people that they were created to be.

So that is the 30,000 foot view and now I would like to zoom in to focus on the role of Israel, its people, and later through the life-death-resurrection of Jesus, us the Christians . You see the Jews were supposed to be a royal priesthood who exalted God, brought His Kingdom to earth, and spread the message of God. We get this from Deuteronomy, where He tells the newly freed Israelites to destroy things not of God and to establish His presence wherever they go. We, also, get this from 1 Peter and Romans when Peter and Paul basically repeats this to Christians. And here is where I want to focus for the rest of the night. I want us to focus on the work that we were given by King Jesus.

The reason that I want to focus on Israel’s role and our role is because it is the same job given by the same God and demonstrated through the life of King Jesus. We need to understand that Men and Women were created to work and work hard. We were not made to relax and coast on through life. The biblical definition of work is that it was ordained by God as a means of fulfilment, service, and praise. It is to be supplemented by rest, in the fashion God during the Creation. But both the Israelites and modern society today have gotten this backwards somehow and we think that we should rest all of the time or that work is a journey to partying on the Weekends and maybe go to church if we aren’t somehow kept away through laziness, addiction, or something else altogether. When we do life that way we lose focus on God and what He thinks our purpose is. We have such an identity crisis today and we wonder what it is we are supposed to be doing, but if we would just do some honest work and wait on God our purpose would start to be fulfilled and we would know our identity. And yes I am talking about secular work, working a 9-5 whatever that looks like to us as individuals. You see God gets pleasure, Glory, and Praise through our daily actions and we are able to reach people that the staff at Church would never be able to interact with.

We might be the only Christians living a life by The Word in their lives and that is beautiful. We should not all want to be members of a Church Staff. We need to be getting in the world and uprooting the sins around us so that God can plant a piece of the Kingdom here on earth. If we do not do this how can we honestly look ourselves in the mirror and call ourselves Christian or little christs? God knew that the world needed more than professional teachers of the word, He knew that He needed doers of the word that is why we have the Great Commission in . Can anyone quote the Great Commission? Or even know what it is? If not that is okay that’s why we surround ourselves in a group like this. The Great Commission says “All authority has been given to Me in heaven and on earth. Go, therefore, and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe everything I have commanded you. And remember, I am with you always, to the end of the age.” Did God say pastors, or teachers, or Andrew King? No, He said “Go” or “You go” do all of that. How can we do that if we stay comfortable in homes, or here at church all of the time? This is the trap that we all fall into from our spiritual ancestors during Amos’ time to right now.

We need to become infinitely more uncomfortable in the way we live our lives. We need to have those tough conversations about what is right to say or do with people who do not believe. How can we expect those around us to live and act like Christ when we are incapable of doing so? We need to invest more time in the word, prayer, and worship and not just at Church, but at home when it really matters, in the dark of the night when we should be asleep, God should present in our private lives and not just our public. This can be an immensely hard thing to do, I understand it. I struggle sometimes with letting God in my life when I am tired or doing well, but not when I am actually struggling. Isn’t that weird?

You see says “Whatever you do, do it enthusiastically, as something done for the Lord and not for men.” We have somehow gotten it into our minds that work and God are two separate things when in reality they are the same. We should not separate them because when we do we begin to separate God from us and we honestly never want to be in that situation it is not ideal.

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At this point you maybe wondering why I am harping on working so much, and the reason for that is simple. If the Israelites in this chapter had been doing their jobs of being a royal priest, sons and daughters of the One True King, and been spreading their testimony of how God brought them out of Egypt and provided mana from the sky and water from solid rocks, if they had told of God giving them the land that they were in through His hard work, if they had only shared the prophecies that had come true, then maybe just maybe their neighbors and themselves would not be in the position to hear God’s ROAR.

I have learned from hard experience that if I focus on God and tell others about Him and all that He has done, is doing, and will do I find myself in a position that I am not able to sin because my focus is on the Kingdom and not myself. People around me who I had invested time into and showed that I actually cared for them started to listen when I spoke because they knew that I only wanted the best for them and over time their lives have transformed just as mine did. But will people ignore you, mistreat you, or separate from you because of Jesus? Yes, some will and that is okay, especially if you have done your best to share God with them.

In Jesus says “If you love me, you will keep my commands. ”

The Holy Bible: Holman Christian standard version. (2009). (). Nashville: Holman Bible Publishers.

(Watch video of Penn Jillette, A gift of a bible)

To paraphrase Penn here,How much must we hate those around us to not share the hope of Jesus Christ King of All? I hear it now that you don’t hate anyone you’re a Christian. Okay how about this? How many people are you “loving” to hell? How many conversations about God do you avoid to save offending someone? How many times do we keep our Christianity to ourselves only to find out a year into a job that there are other Christians around you hiding as well? It’s time to once again don the boldness of Christ. I’m not saying that you have to hand a bible to everyone you meet, but what I am saying is Let’s love Jesus through our actions of spreading His good news, lets love Jesus by buying someone a cup of coffee and sharing life stories, Let’s love Jesus by working as hard as Jesus did.

(Closing Prayer)

The Holy Bible: Holman Christian standard version. (2009). (). Nashville: Holman Bible Publishers.