Amos 5: Truth and Lies
Notes
Transcript
Bookmarks & Needs:
Bookmarks & Needs:
B: Amos 2:4-5
Announcements
Announcements
Good morning, and welcome to our Family Worship service. Whether you are here in person or online, I just want to express how glad I am that we are all gathered right now to worship together.
If you’re visiting with us, we’d love to be able to connect with you after the service is over. Whether you’re online or in person, you can text the word WELCOME to 505-339-2004, and fill out the contact card in the link that it sends back.
I’d also like to remind you that you can log into our Live Event using the YouVersion Bible app, where you’ll find the sermon points and passages, as well as the opportunity to take notes, and you can even save your notes from the app, so you can go back and look at them later.
I neglected to update everyone last week on the results of our annual offering for World Hunger and Disaster Relief, which we focused on throughout July. Our goal was $3,500, and I am blown away at how generous Eastern Hills has been this year. The final total of our annual World Hunger/Disaster Relief offering was $7,151.95! Praise God for that!
On Saturday, August 22, another ministry that we partner with: CareNet Pregnancy Centers, will hold their annual Walk for Life to raise funds to help with their work in caring for people in the midst of a crisis pregnancy… the moms, babies, and even the dads. Because of the restrictions in place this year, they are hosting a virtual Walk for Life. You can go to their website at http://www.carenetabq.org/events.php and register to “walk”, and even set up your own fundraising page, or to just give directly to CareNet to help with this fundraising event.
My final announcement this morning is to let everyone know that we are planning on taking the Lord’s Supper together on Sunday, August 30. We have purchased single-serve elements that we will put out in the foyer as people come in that Sunday morning, but we also don’t want to leave people out who are only able to meet online for now. Starting on Monday, August 24, you will be able to come by the church office at any time between 9 and 4 to pick up enough of the single-serve elements for your household. If you are not comfortable getting out, or if you are simply unable to for health reasons, our deacons have volunteered to deliver sufficient elements to your door before Sunday morning (in-town only, sorry). You’ll just need to let us know in the office how many you need by calling or emailing. We are really looking forward to experiencing the Lord’s Supper together again! (5 minutes max by here)
PRAY and enter musical praise & worship
Musical Praise & Worship
Musical Praise & Worship
Opening
Opening
So we are several weeks into our series now on Amos: Prophet of Judgment and Justice. To this point, we have opened the message of Amos with the thesis of the entire prophecy: “The Sovereign Lord roars.” God is sovereign, and He must and will judge sin. Since He is in charge of all things, it is His perspective, His opinion that matters most, not ours. And He is not just in charge of those who believe in Him, He is over everyone and everything, every tribe, and nation, and tongue. And it is His right to deal with humanity as He sees fit.
Since that opening message, we have spent our time looking at the pagan nations that surrounded the Jewish Southern Kingdom, Judah, and the Northern Kingdom, Israel, and have considered the fact that God’s judgment against them was a judgment against the injustice in them in how they treated other human beings, the dehumanization that these nations perpetrated on others. God judged them because ultimately, they should have known better. This is why the Golden Rule is golden: we are commanded to do unto others as we would HAVE THEM do unto us.
We have taken the messages to these nations in pairs to this point. This morning, however, we are going to look at just the next message, because it is the first message to God’s own people: the Southern Kingdom of Judah. So let’s stand in honor of God’s Word as we look at our focal passage today, Amos 2: 4-5:
4 The Lord says: I will not relent from punishing Judah for three crimes, even four, because they have rejected the instruction of the Lord and have not kept his statutes. The lies that their ancestors followed have led them astray. 5 Therefore, I will send fire against Judah, and it will consume the citadels of Jerusalem.
PRAY
In the first message that I preached in this series, I explained the fact that this prophecy is a couple of hundred years after the division of the nation of Israel into two kingdoms: Judah in the south, and Israel in the north. Jerusalem was still the capital of the kingdom of Judah, but the kingdom of Israel had made Samaria their capital. Amos has been specifically sent by God to preach in Israel, even though he is from Judah.
As I have explained for the last three messages, as Amos preached God’s judgment against the injustices in Phoenicia and Philistia, then Aram and Edom, and then Ammon and Moab, he drew closer and closer to the people of God in the center. And now, the message gets as close to home as it can for the people of the Northern Kingdom: Amos preaches to Judah.
This is the first time we’re dealing with the covenant people of God in the book of Amos, and I wonder if Amos’ listeners weren’t perhaps shocked, or elated, or a little of both as the message fell against Judah, just as it had against all of the foreign nations around them. Given how short the message is to Judah, they did not have long to wait to see if the Lord would celebrate the Northern Kingdom or chastise it.
The condemnation against Judah is simple and direct, and unlike the pagan nations around them, it is not about Judah’s treatment of other people. It’s about their treatment of God Himself through their failure to follow the terms of their covenant relationship with Him. The issue is entirely based in their adherence to the truth of God’s Word.
Like last week, I want to take a moment and consider the punishment before the crime. As He had done for all of the six pagan nations before, God promises that He will send fire against the capital (or other important city, in the case of Moab for example) of the nation, and that fire would consume its citadels. In Judah’s case, however, the city in question is Jerusalem, which Scripture refers to as Zion, since the Temple was found there. This must have been a little shocking at least for those in Israel.
Does this seem fair to us? I mean, all of the other nations had treated people like property, or had killed them without provocation, or had even killed their unborn or desecrated their leaders’ graves. All it says about Judah is that they violated God’s Word. Why do they get the same punishment? For some, this might seem out of balance, especially in light of the severity which we place on the issues of our day. I mean, they were God’s chosen people, after all… shouldn’t He cut them some slack, given them a break?
But what if the problem with Judah is the fact that they were His chosen people? What if Judah was in a way even more deserving of this severe judgment of God, because they had as a nation agreed on multiple occasions that Yahweh was their God, and they were His people? What if to sin against the Word of God was to break a covenant bond with the Lord, to treat the Creator Himself as poorly as the pagans treated other people?
As we look at verse 4 again, we can see that Judah’s “excessive sin” was threefold:
4 The Lord says: I will not relent from punishing Judah for three crimes, even four, because they have rejected the instruction of the Lord and have not kept his statutes. The lies that their ancestors followed have led them astray.
They had “rejected the instruction of the Lord,” they had “not kept His statutes,” and they had been “led astray by the lies that their ancestors followed.”
What about us? Could we be in a position to face this same condemnation from the Lord?
1) We must not reject the Word of God.
1) We must not reject the Word of God.
When the Lord accuses Judah of “rejecting the instruction of the Lord,” He is accusing them of doing something that was active. They were choosing to do it. The verb for “rejected” here is that God’s people have “despised, disdained, scorned, spurned, and developed a great aversion to” the instructions of God. They turned away from them as if in disgust. They didn’t like what God’s instructions had to say, so they put them aside as if they were rotten and diseased.
When God brought Israel up out of Egypt, He warned them about what would happen if they turned away from His covenant and rejected His Word:
14 “But if you do not obey me and observe all these commands—15 if you reject my statutes and despise my ordinances, and do not observe all my commands—and break my covenant, 16 then I will do this to you: I will bring terror on you—wasting disease and fever that will cause your eyes to fail and your life to ebb away. You will sow your seed in vain because your enemies will eat it. 17 I will turn against you, so that you will be defeated by your enemies. Those who hate you will rule over you, and you will flee even though no one is pursuing you.
They knew what it meant. They knew that God was serious. But they decided to reject it anyway.
Do we do this? Absolutely. Mostly we do so in order to do the things we want to do. We find ourselves on the precipice of sin, or right there in the beginning throes of it, and we are convicted by the Spirit of God bringing to mind what He has said in the Word. Maybe we’re about to look at something we shouldn’t, or say something we shouldn’t, or post something we shouldn’t, or respond in a way that we shouldn’t, or do something that we shouldn’t. And God’s Word is brought to mind and we are reminded of what the truth is.
So we argue with God. But we WANT to do whatever it is. We might even say we NEED to do it—as if it’s some kind of moral imperative. We might say we DESERVE to do it, or that other person DESERVES to have whatever we’re going to do done to them. We explain to God that it’s not going to be a problem, or that it isn’t going to affect anyone, or that His instruction is too strict, or that in some way, it’s actually HIS FAULT that we are in this position of sinning anyway (that’s the tack that Adam used, after all). Or maybe worst of all, we tell God that we’re going to go ahead and go down this road of sin, because golly, He’s so very graceful and forgiving, He’ll forgive us for our sin anyway.
This is what it means to reject the Word of God. It’s to know what it says, and choose to go against it. It’s to willfully turn away from the instructions of the Lord because we honestly don’t believe that they are the best way to live our lives, at least not in that very moment.
Much of what we are going to look at this morning in support of this message is going to come from Psalm 119. Psalm 119 is 176 verses long, so we aren’t going to read all of it, although that’s a very good thing to do. It’s broken up into 22 pieces of exactly 8 verses, one section for each of the letters in the Hebrew alphabet. Of its 176 verses, only 6 (only 4 depending on your point of view of specific words) do not mention God’s Word in some way. The psalmist refers to God’s instructions, decrees, ways, precepts, statutes, commands, judgments, words, ordinances, sayings, or promises in almost every single verse. I want to challenge us as a church to read through Psalm 119 together over the next 22 days, 8 verses (one section) a day, in addition to whatever other Bible reading you might be currently doing. If you’re interested in joining me in this, break out your phone right now and set a daily reminder to read from Psalm 119. Let’s read the first 8 verses right now, to get started:
1 How happy are those whose way is blameless, who walk according to the Lord’s instruction! 2 Happy are those who keep his decrees and seek him with all their heart. 3 They do nothing wrong; they walk in his ways. 4 You have commanded that your precepts be diligently kept. 5 If only my ways were committed to keeping your statutes! 6 Then I would not be ashamed when I think about all your commands. 7 I will praise you with an upright heart when I learn your righteous judgments. 8 I will keep your statutes; never abandon me.
What a great beginning passage to reflect on in thinking about not rejecting the Word of the Lord! Notice who the psalmist says is “happy” (meaning blessed)—the one whose way is blameless, who follows the Lord’s instruction, and who keeps His decrees and seeks Him with all their heart. This is the opposite of rejecting the instruction of the Lord.
“But, Bill,” you might say, “what about my feelings? Sometimes the Bible contradicts how I feel.” In our culture today, we are being constantly indoctrinated that our feelings are true, and so if we feel something, we must believe it and act on that belief. I don’t have time to dance around this, so I won’t: that’s a lie. Yes, you may feel something, and your feeling truly exists. However, that doesn’t mean that your feeling is based on truth. We feel all sorts of things that JUST AREN’T TRUE. Should we act on every single one of them? Of course not. We must remember that our feelings are constantly willing to lie to us.
9 The heart is more deceitful than anything else, and incurable—who can understand it?
Your heart is going to doubt. It is going to want other things. It is going to tell you not to believe God, not to trust His Word, not to follow His ways. Your heart is going to lie. Your feelings are going to lie. They, along with every other part of creation, were broken at the fall, and that is why we need to hearken to the Word of God, and not reject it—because our feelings, our hearts, are not trustworthy, but God’s Word is. We have to decide that God’s command for us is better than our desire for ourselves.
But doing that is going to require something of us: that we not neglect His Word.
2) We must not neglect the Word of God.
2) We must not neglect the Word of God.
Let’s bring verse 4 back up for a moment so that we can be reminded of what it says:
4 The Lord says: I will not relent from punishing Judah for three crimes, even four, because they have rejected the instruction of the Lord and have not kept his statutes. The lies that their ancestors followed have led them astray.
The first condemnation listed against Judah was active: they “rejected” the Lord’s instruction. The second one is that they “have not kept His statutes.” The verb for “kept” is to guard, observe, follow, or revere something. With the negation of “not” before it, it seems to lend itself more to a failure to keep the Word of God in its proper place and perspective than a willful denial or rejection of it. So this failure of the people of God is more passive: they simply didn’t do the things that they were supposed to do in order to keep up their part of the covenant.
Some research has just come out from the American Bible Society and the Barna Group about Bible engagement during this pandemic. According to their most recent report on the State of the Bible, Bible engagement is slipping quickly during COVID. Not that a lot of people are all that Bible engaged normally, but the research showed that in January 13.7% of Americans would read their Bible four or more days per week not including during church services, a number that has been fairly static for several years. Since January, that number has dropped to 8.5%. That’s nearly half of the “Bible engaged” people that have started to neglect reading God’s Word regularly.
Why is this? Because we get out of the habit. We’ve gotten out of the habit of meeting in person, of being actively engaged in Bible study, so we have started falling out of the habit of picking up our Bible and reading it. It turns out that our togetherness seems to have a meaningful impact on whether we stay in the Word or not.
It’s not that we are willfully rejecting the Word of God. It’s that we just forget about it. We have extra stresses and worries. We are taking in probably way too much news, and hearing so many harsh and polarizing voices. Maybe we’re following politics too much, or maybe it’s that there just seems to be this underlying weight of anger in our world today, and these things keep us from feeling peace, so we struggle to open up the Word. Or maybe we’ve gotten so used to rejecting the Word by willfully engaging in sinful behaviors that we now have lost our “taste” for God’s Word, and so we just don’t consider it important to read. I don’t know what it is for you, but I get it.
But if we’re going to keep the Lord’s statutes, we’re going to have to read them. We’re going to have to focus on them. We’re going to have to concentrate on them, even if the world is screaming for our attention simply by the sheer volume of the noise it’s creating.
Notice what the psalmist said in Psalm 119:
9 How can a young man keep his way pure? By keeping your word.
11 I have treasured your word in my heart so that I may not sin against you.
15 I will meditate on your precepts and think about your ways. 16 I will delight in your statutes; I will not forget your word.
37 Turn my eyes from looking at what is worthless; give me life in your ways.
This isn’t about legalistic, checking the boxes, Christianity. This is about wanting to know the Word of God so that we might know God more. That’s why this was such a big deal for Judah. As they neglected God’s statutes through their passive ignorance of them, they broke the covenant that they had made with Him.
And brothers and sisters in Christ, God has given us this wonderful book to read and reflect on and meditate on so that we would know Him, His will, and His ways, and that by keeping His statutes, we might have life, and know the truth, which brings us to our last point:
3) We must hold to the truth, and deny the lies.
3) We must hold to the truth, and deny the lies.
Let’s look at verse 4 one more time to make sure we remember it correctly:
4 The Lord says: I will not relent from punishing Judah for three crimes, even four, because they have rejected the instruction of the Lord and have not kept his statutes. The lies that their ancestors followed have led them astray.
When this says that the lies that their ancestors followed have “led them astray”… this means that they caused them to wander, to stray, or to be misled. The Dictionary of Biblical Languages explains the picture like this: “To hold a wrong view of something, with a focus that this wrong belief also has wrong behaviors which need correction, as a figurative extension of wandering off a correct path.”
Whereas their rejection of His instruction was active and their not keeping His statutes was more passive, this is something of a cross between the two: Lies lead us somewhere, so while we actively choose to believe and follow them, we don’t have to make the decisions on where we are being led… the lies need no help from us in that.
Now, for Judah, these lies might have been in the form of false prophets or false gods, each bringing a message of false hope. Jeremiah would later write about those who were deceiving the people of Judah with their lies:
30 Therefore, take note! I am against the prophets”—the Lord’s declaration—“who steal my words from each other. 31 I am against the prophets”—the Lord’s declaration—“who use their own tongues to make a declaration. 32 I am against those who prophesy false dreams”—the Lord’s declaration—“telling them and leading my people astray with their reckless lies. It was not I who sent or commanded them, and they are of no benefit at all to these people”—this is the Lord’s declaration.
Just as our hearts are willing to lie to us in order to get its way, the world is willing to lie to us in order to get its way. Satan is the father of lies, according to Scripture, and so he will most certainly lie to us. So we must be discerning and wise as we deal with the messages of this world. The only way that we are going to successfully do that is to make sure that we are clinging to the truth of God’s Word at every step: that His Word is what is most important in our thinking. Not popular opinion, not what’s trending, not what sounds good, but His Word.
Look at how the psalmist wrote about the truth of God’s Word:
59 I thought about my ways and turned my steps back to your decrees. 60 I hurried, not hesitating to keep your commands. 61 Though the ropes of the wicked were wrapped around me, I did not forget your instruction.
103 How sweet your word is to my taste— sweeter than honey in my mouth. 104 I gain understanding from your precepts; therefore I hate every false way.
And the most important truth that we need to cling to is the truth of the Gospel of Jesus Christ: That God created us to be in a relationship with Him, but we have ruined that relationship by our sin. Knowing that we can never be good enough to repair that relationship, God sent His Son, Jesus Christ, to live a perfect life and then to die in our place to pay the penalty due to us for our sin. And then, by the power of God, Jesus beat death and lives forever. If we surrender our lives to Him, trusting in His finished work to save us from the wrath of God because of our sin, then we are set free from our sin and are promised eternal life. This is the truth of the Gospel. And you can trust in Christ right now, wherever you are, believing the truth and denying the lies that the world might tell you about what salvation is all about. Turn to Jesus and be saved this morning!
Sadly, the very message that will bring life is rejected because for many, they would rather believe the lie, as Paul wrote in 2 Timothy:
3 For the time will come when people will not tolerate sound doctrine, but according to their own desires, will multiply teachers for themselves because they have an itch to hear what they want to hear. 4 They will turn away from hearing the truth and will turn aside to myths.
Hold fast to the truth of the Gospel. Deny the lies of the world, the lies of the past, and the lies of the devil.
Closing
Closing
As I was praying about this message, I felt as though God impressed upon me a warning for us all: Before we make the mistake of thinking that this message is too elementary or basic, we must realize that this is exactly why God would judge and punish the kingdom of Judah.
Is it possible, oh Christian brother or sister, that we care entirely too little for the holiness of God and the high calling of being His people? Is it possible that we care so little for His holy Word that we see transgressing it as of almost no consequence, but God sees His Word as so vitally central that for us to sin against it is to sin against Him? Is it possible that we have become so used to neglecting His Word that we find it uncomfortable or awkward to sit down and read it? Are we listening to messages that lie and lead us astray, taking them in without any care to the truth of the Word of God?
Can we come to a place where we can consider the Word of God and say, as the hymn says:
Holy Bible, Book divine, Precious treasure, thou art mine: Mine to tell me whence I came; Mine to teach me what I am.
Mine to chide me when I rove, Mine to show a Savior’s love; Mine thou art to guide and guard; Mine to punish or reward.
Mine to comfort in distress, Suff’ring in this wilderness; Mine to show, by living faith, We can triumph over death.
Mine to tell of joys to come, And the rebel sinner’s doom: O thou Holy Book divine, Precious treasure, thou art mine.
Maybe you have been neglecting the Word of God and today you believe that you need to repent of that. You are welcome to come and pray at one of the blue dots on the steps if that would be helpful for you.
If you have been praying about joining this church family formally through membership, I would invite you to stay in your pew as we are released at the close of service, so that we can talk about that some more after service is over.
And if this morning, you are committing your life to Christ for the first time, trusting in the truth of the Gospel which you have heard me share today, please do the same: stay in your pew and we will speak more after service is over. If that is you and you’re joining us online today, please reach out to us by email or on Facebook and let us know that you have trusted in Christ to save you, so that we can minister to you and help you as you begin this journey of faith.
As Donna plays our reflection song, feel free to use this time to pray or to give online as the Lord leads you. You can also give physically by putting your offering in the plates at the doors as you go out.
PRAY
Donna
Thank you all for being here this morning. Remember to read 8 verses of Psalm 119 each day, and set a reminder to do so if you haven’t already. I’ve already put the schedule on our Facebook page, if that would be helpful to you. God bless you, and have a wonderful week.
