The Remnant

Second Wave

We are on the verge of a second wave here in NSW. Some might in fact argue that we’re not just on the verge, but have actually entered it.

We’ve watched as Victoria moved into a second wave that has dwarfed the first wave, and it would seem the quite possibly, we’re just a month behind our southern neighbours. (Let’s hope that assessment is wrong.)

Now here’s the thing. While the first wave was scary and caused a lot of anxiety in many of us, this second wave has the potential to be worse. For starters, we’re already sick and tired of all the restrictions that we are facing. But I think the scarier part is that in the first wave, the vast majority of cases were from returning travellers, and as cases were detected we were able to control them. But now, it is the community transfers which are the predominant reason for the new numbers, and they are happening in such a way that it is hard to contain.

Just under two weeks ago, a Sydney man transferred the virus and now we have cases in Port Stephens, shutting down two schools and a child care centre.

And so, yet again, we cry out - what are we to do? How are we going to get through this?

Can we even endure another wave? And after this wave, will we have to endure a third and fourth wave? How many are there going to be?

A question of hope

Now this morning, unfortunately I can’t answer all of these questions. I’m not an epidemiologist, and even if I were, there are just too many variables to have any kind of certainty.

But what I can answer, is the question of hope.

Is there any hope in this situation?

Now, I’m going to answer: yes, there most certainly is hope, but the big thing that needs exploring is the nature of this hope.

You see, hope is one of those words that can be easy to bandy about, but it is very easy to misunderstand the nature of the Christian hope.

Someone might say: I hope my footy team wins on the weekend. But that’s quite a different kind of hope.

With relation to the coronavirus, we might say: I hope no one I know contracts COVID-19.

Now, this hope might come from a good place - a desire to see our loved ones being safe - but again, this isn’t quite the Christian hope I’m thinking about.

Well, let’s jump into the last chapter of Amos, and we’ll see if we can tease out a better way of understanding the hope we have as Christians.

A picture of destruction

Now I should warn you, that the start of this chapter is not a pretty picture, but that being said, we need to understand the first half of this chapter if we’re going to understand the hope that follows.

You see, the start of this chapter describes the devastation and destruction that comes on Israel.

We might prefer to skip over this part and go straight to the last five verses - but if we were to do that, we would run the risk of reducing our hope to just a happy ending.

But our hope runs deeper than that.

So let’s first consider this destruction first.

The background

Now, the reality is, this is the culmination of this entire prophecy.

If you’ve been following this series, I’ve described how Amos is actually giving his prophetic message during a time of prosperity. A time when the nation of Israel is somewhat at a peak.

They’ve regained lost territory. Their economy is going great. The rich are living it up, albeit at the expense of the poor. So what could go wrong?

Well, with this background Amos gives them a message from God - politically things might be good - but spiritually, you are bankrupt.

That would have been a hard message for them to hear.

They had placed such a strong connection between their material blessing and the blessing of God, that the idea that God might turn against them just didn’t enter their minds.

But they had turned their back on what was important to God. They had instead turned to pride, and love of self.

God was calling them to love the justice. To care for the oppressed.

But when your focus is on yourself, that’s hard to do.

And so they were blinded to the disaster that was about to come their way.

And so as went through the prophecy, we saw how an enemy was going to over run them. We got a glimpse of the exile that this foreign nation would take them into.

And just to historical perspective into all of this, Amos’ message is considered to have been given around 760 BC and close to 400 years later, in the year 722 BC, the Assyrians did indeed rise up, conquer them, and take them into exile. So this was not just some empty threat.

So, it should be noted in all of this that the destruction that they are about to face is not some indiscriminate act of an indifferent God - it is rather a deliberate act of a God that cared deeply for his people, but they just kept turning their back on him.

Does God act this way today?

Now, before I continue, it is worth touching on the question of whether God actively punishes people who reject him today?

After all, if I’m arguing that God is inflicting a disaster on these Israelites due to their behaviour, does it follow that God will punish the wicked and bless the obedient today?

The ultimate answer to that question is that yes, God will punish the wicked and bless the obedient, but it doesn’t always happen in a nice cut and dried way that we might like.

You see, you need to recognise that we are all sinners. We are all worthy of this punishment.

Now, we also need to recognise the difference between Old Testament and New Testament times. It’s not that God has changed, but rather that we are in a different stage of his plan to save humanity. And so we can expect things to happen differently.

I don’t want to labor this point because it’s not the main issue of this message, but we do need to recognise that while we should be very cautious about connecting any modern natural disaster to a specific sin, we can see in a more general way that suffering still exists because evil is in the world.

A vision

And so as we come to chapter 9, we see the final vision in a series of visions that started back in chapter 7.

You might recall, two weeks ago we looked at the first three.

The first two, that is, the locusts, and the fire, were visions of destruction that in God’s mercy were delayed.

The third was of the plumb line where God declared that he would spare them no longer.

The fourth, which we looked at last week continued a similar theme, and was of a ripe basket of fruit, with God declaring that their time was ripe.

The final vision is more direct to the point.

It simply has the Lord standing by the altar.

It doesn’t specify exactly which altar, although given that the majority of the prophecy has been directed at the Northern tribe, I think it would be safe to assume that it is the altar in the temple of Bethel - that is, the place the Northern Kingdom went to worship.

And so, the blow starts at the temple, but then flows to all of the people.

The picture that is painted is complete devastation.

Can’t hide

“Not one will get away...” it says, “none will escape”.

And just to make the point even clearer, it goes on to say that there is no where you can hide. Not in the lowest depth of the world, not in the highest place.

Now that might sound ridiculous - of course you can’t run away from God - but I think sometimes we sub-consciously (or perhaps not so sub-consciously) think we can.

You know, if we just keep a low profile, maybe God won’t see the bad I’ve done.

But we need to recognise that God is everywhere.

That should actually act as both a source of comfort - but also a source of concern.

You see, we might happily acknowledge that God is everywhere when we are in need of comfort. But he’s also everywhere when you’re in that self-obsessed mode and thinking of no one but yourself.

I think sometimes where good at fooling ourselves by thinking that if we keep our indiscretions to ourselves, then God won’t know. But if you actually believe that, then you are left with a very low view of God.

Not resting on our identity

So, sometimes we can pretend that we can escape God’s attention by keeping a low profile.

But we see another mistake being made by the Israelites that we also can easily make.

You see, the Israelites thought that they were safe because of who they were. And who were they? Well, they were God’s chosen people of course.

They were the people established by God with a promise. He miraculously brought them out of Egypt and into the Promise Land. He established a kingdom.

God’s judgement won’t fall on them because they are God’s people.

Us as Christians

Now here’s the thing. Our situation might be slightly different, but we still think in a similar way.

God’s judgement won’t fall on us, because we are Christians.

Now you might be thinking at this point - well, there is some truth to that, isn’t there?

After all, you might quote Rom 8:1 which says: “Therefore, there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus”.

And you would be right - when our identity is in Christ, then we are saved. Nothing can take that away.

However, in Paul’s same letter to the Romans, he is also very clear that this promise of forgiveness is not something we can hide behind as we continue to sin.

You see, we fall down a very similar trap to the Israelites in Amos day when we think our identity gives us an excuse to act however we want without consequence.

God’s response

Now I just love the way that God responds to this way of thinking .

In Amos 9:7 he says something that would have sounded like blasphemy in the ears of the Israelites if it hadn’t come from the lips of God.

He says: “Are not you Israelites the same to me as the Cushites?”

In the same sentence, he then goes on to mention Israel coming up from Egypt with the Philistines comuning from Caphtor and the Arameans from Kir.

In other words, God did an amazing thing with the Israelites, but they shouldn’t think that God hasn’t also directed the ways of other nations. God is not a local deity like the other nations believed in. God is the God of all nations.

What he’s effectively doing is leveling the playing field. That’s not to deny that the Israelites have a special place in God’s eyes, but God treats all people equally.

And for this reason, even though they are central to God’s plan, if they fail to live the way they should, they will face the same consequence as the other nations.

As God declares in verse 8: “I will destroy [them] from the face of the earth”.

Remnant

But there is something interesting that follows. Verse 8 doesn’t end with announcement of destruction.

In fact, they way it ends is something that I want to now pick up on.

You see, remember I wanted to talk about hope.

The way verse 8 ends might initially sound like small comfort, but I want you to stay with me on this one.

It says: “Yet I will not totally destroy the descendants of Jacobs”

This tiny little clarification actually gives us a seed of hope.

The sieve

In verses 9 and 10, the picture that is painted is of a sieve.

I remember as a kid I went to a place near Ballarat in Victoria where I got to do a little gold panning.

You would scoop up some of the dirt in your pan, gently shake it, and with a bit of luck, if you’re very careful you separate a bit of gold from the dirt. Of course, the amount of people that went before me, I don’t think there was much gold left, but still it was a bit of fun.

Well, God is doing something similar - he is sifting through. And here is our first sign of hope.

But it’s from verse 11 where this hope is expanded upon.

Restoration

You see, while almost this entire prophecy is one where judgement is in focus, in the last five verses we actually get a picture of restoration.

David’s fallen shelter will be restored. The walls will be repaired.

There will be a rebuilding of what was once ruined.

You see, while judgement comes - God’s remains a merciful God.

Nations that bear my name

Now just a moment ago, I took a seed of hope from the last half of verse 8. It told us that it wasn’t going to be a full annihilation.

There would be a remnant that remains - and we see this word “remnant”, when we come to verse 12.

But interestingly, the remnant that is pictured here is actually the remnant of Edom - one of the surrounding foreign nations.

What appears to be in picture is that God is pulling a small number of people together, but not just from Israel, but from foreign nations as well.

As verse 12 continues, it adds - “and all the nations… that bear my name”

Now, it is here that I want to suggest we get a clue as to the nature of the hope that we find.

You see, there is something about the remnant that will be saved - that is, they bear the name of the Lord.

But what does it mean to bear the name of the Lord?

Well, it’s about identification.

But this identification needs to be more than a superficial identification. It is easy to put a label on yourself - but as Jesus says during his ministry: many will say Lord, Lord, but I will say, surely, I do not know you.

You see, bearing the Lord’s name means that you have been shaped by him.

As it also says in the New Testament - you will be known by your fruit.

Now I just want to be clear so I don’t get misunderstood. I am not saying that you are saved by your good works. I completely stand by the clear teaching of the bible which says that we are saved only by the blood of Jesus. But once we are saved, there should be a transformation.

So we don’t find our identification with the name of the Lord by doing good deeds, rather once we identify with the Lord, our lives will be changed.

Our hope

But let me come back to the question of hope.

You see, what we can get from this is that we don’t just have to have some vague hope that maybe we might be part of some sort of remnant that God will take through.

Rather, if we identify with Christ, if we say, Lord, I have done wrong but I want you to transform me into your likeness, then we can actually have assurance that we will be part of a remnant that survives.

What it will look like

But… I need to make a very important clarification.

You see, being part of this remnant is not to say that everything will be all nice and rosy.

You see, this remnant that God is restoring here in the last five verses of this book, have actually just gone through all of the turmoil that came upon the nation of Israel.

And we know quite a bit about that turmoil. The Assyrians rose in strength, and when they struck - they struck hard. They were cruel and horrible.

Even God’s remnant had to endure this hardship.

But for this remnant that bore the name of the Lord, there was something different.

And that’s because they went in with the knowledge that no matter what happens, God is with them.

And this is the beautiful thing for us - God is always with us!

You know, we are in the middle of this pandemic. We thought we had it under control as a nation.

But we learnt something - this is bigger than us.

And for this reason, I can’t promise what may or may not happen.

But what I can promise is that we can have hope in the midst of it all.

Not hope that things won’t get worse, but a hope that we have God with us the whole time.

But it gets even better than that. And that is, we have an ultimate hope. We know the ending.

We know that a day is coming when there will be no more tear, no more pain, because the old order of things have passed, and the new order will be here.

I’m talking of course of the time when Jesus returns.

Again, I don’t know when that will be, be it will come, and when it does, it will be glorious.

And it will be at this time that we will really see this idea of the remnant coming through.

This remnant that now knows the hope of the Lord with them, will then know a blessing like no other.

Where wine will drip from the mountains (now isn’t that an interesting picture from verse 13).

Where the ground will be so fertile, that the person ploughing, will overtake the person planting.

Where God’s people will be in their land, and have the security of never being uprooted again.

You see, these last few verses ultimately point to this future time - a time that is still future even for us.

Conclusion

As I said earlier, we could have jumped straight to this picture of restoration to find our hope - but the reality is that it when we understand this hope rising through the justice and righteousness of God. When we know that this justice and righteousness are not empty sentiments, but actually meaning that we are deserving of judgement.

But as we go through the struggles turmoils of this world, we actually find ourselves closer to God.

There is hope. It might not feel like the hope that our head says we want right now - but it is the hope that our hope will savour, because it is a hope that goes well beyond just a vaccine, but rather has eternity in view.

It is a hope that we find when we find our identification with Christ.

So let me pray...