Amos 8: It's All About "Me"
Notes
Transcript
Bookmarks & Needs:
Bookmarks & Needs:
B: Amos 4:1-5
N: Laser Pointer
Opening
Opening
Good morning, and thanks for being here in person and online for our Family Worship service. So many have expressed what a blessing it was last week to be able to take the Lord’s Supper together again after so long, and I agree with you. It was a joy to get to worship in that way with everyone again. In doing so, we took a one-week break from our series on the book of Amos: Prophet of Judgment & Justice. If you have been with us throughout this series so far, you’ll remember that verses 1 and 2 of chapter 1 are kind of the “thesis” statement for the message of God through Amos. That thesis is that “The Sovereign Lord roars.” Through Amos, God is declaring His coming judgment against that nation for how they have turned from Him, and one of the biggest indicators of how they have done that is in how they have mistreated other people.
This morning, we will continue this series by looking at the first five verses of chapter 4. Let’s stand in honor of God’s Word as we read our focal passage:
1 Listen to this message, you cows of Bashan who are on the hill of Samaria, women who oppress the poor and crush the needy, who say to their husbands, “Bring us something to drink.” 2 The Lord God has sworn by his holiness: Look, the days are coming when you will be taken away with hooks, every last one of you with fishhooks. 3 You will go through breaches in the wall, each woman straight ahead, and you will be driven along toward Harmon. This is the Lord’s declaration. 4 Come to Bethel and rebel; rebel even more at Gilgal! Bring your sacrifices every morning, your tenths every three days. 5 Offer leavened bread as a thanksgiving sacrifice, and loudly proclaim your freewill offerings, for that is what you Israelites love to do! This is the declaration of the Lord God.
PRAY
In this series in Amos, we have considered the misdeeds of the rich and powerful in Israel… how they would use, abuse, and manipulate the poor and needy among them for their own gain. We saw two weeks ago that God’s judgment was going to come against His people’s sin, because His people were supposed to be a testimony of God’s greatness to the nations of the world, but instead, they were in some ways showing the rest of the world—even nations that had oppressed them like Egypt and Philistia—what the best ways of taking advantage of other people were. And God declared that He was going to bring judgment on them because of it. God continues to build His case against the Northern Kingdom through His prophet by bringing an additional indictment against them.
A: The Lord’s indictment
A: The Lord’s indictment
In our passage this morning, we see that it wasn’t just the rich and powerful men of Israel who were doing mistreating their brothers and sisters, but God’s indictment of the sins of Israel are directed at the rich and powerful women as well. God is definitely an equal opportunity judge. The sins of the women and their impending punishment are called out by God. Certainly, the fate of the women in Samaria was connected to the fate of the men, but these women have their own issues.
1 Listen to this message, you cows of Bashan who are on the hill of Samaria, women who oppress the poor and crush the needy, who say to their husbands, “Bring us something to drink.”
While we would be offended by the term “cows,” they may not have been. In that society at that time, cows were highly valued, especially “cows of Bashan.” The region of Bashan was very fertile pastureland to the northeast of the Sea of Galilee, and it was known for the quality of the livestock that it produced (Deut. 32:14). The really interesting thing is that the qualities of the land were often made in the negative when being used as a metaphor for people’s qualities. For example, Bashan had oaks that were “proud and lofty” and would be brought low, according to Isaiah 2:13. The “bulls of Bashan” were ungodly “strong ones” who “encircled” David in Psalm 22:12.
B: The people’s lives
B: The people’s lives
Therefore, it’s not much of a surprise that God compares the aristocratic women of Samaria with the cows of Bashan, because like those cows, the women of Samaria were pampered, well-fed, and lazy. As the cows of Bashan only cared about grazing, so the women of Samaria only sought their own enjoyment in life. One commentator that I read on this passage said that they “chewed the cud of luxury,” even if it meant oppressing the poor and crushing the needy, something that the nation was condemned for back in chapter 2 verse 7.
The problem with the rich in Israel was that their lives—at least, who they claimed to be—didn’t match up with who they actually were. They claimed to be those who were righteous, those who had earlier in the message looked down in judgment and condemnation as they agreed with God’s just evaluation of the nations around them. You see, their way of living betrayed something about their relationship with God. How they lived showed who they worshiped. And who they worshiped wasn’t the Lord God Almighty, even if they pretended it was.
C: The people’s worship
C: The people’s worship
We’ll get to verses 2 and 3 in a moment, but for now, look at verse 4 and 5:
4 Come to Bethel and rebel; rebel even more at Gilgal! Bring your sacrifices every morning, your tenths every three days. 5 Offer leavened bread as a thanksgiving sacrifice, and loudly proclaim your freewill offerings, for that is what you Israelites love to do! This is the declaration of the Lord God.
Bethel and Gilgal were two very important locations in the life of the nation of Israel. Bethel, which means “House of God,” had been first set up and named by Jacob, who would later be named Israel, when He was visited by God when He was fleeing from his brother Esau after the death of their father Isaac. The Lord appeared to Jacob in a dream and restated the promise to Him that He had made to Abraham and to Isaac, saying that He would continue to fulfill that promise through Jacob. Jacob was blown away by this:
16 When Jacob awoke from his sleep, he said, “Surely the Lord is in this place, and I did not know it.” 17 He was afraid and said, “What an awesome place this is! This is none other than the house of God. This is the gate of heaven.” 18 Early in the morning Jacob took the stone that was near his head and set it up as a marker. He poured oil on top of it 19 and named the place Bethel, though previously the city was named Luz.
Fast-forward to the split of the nation of Israel: Jeroboam had set up a golden calf at Bethel for the people of the Northern Kingdom to worship, so that they wouldn’t keep going back to worship in Jerusalem (which was in the Southern Kingdom). It was still seen as an important location in the life of the nation.
Gilgal was the first place that the Israelites camped after God allowed them to miraculously cross the Jordan river at the outset of the conquest of the Promised Land. When they camped there, Joshua set up a monument made of twelve stones that they had picked up from the riverbed of the Jordan river, so that the Israelites would remember what God had done for them whenever they saw them:
20 Then Joshua set up in Gilgal the twelve stones they had taken from the Jordan, 21 and he said to the Israelites, “In the future, when your children ask their fathers, ‘What is the meaning of these stones?’ 22 you should tell your children, ‘Israel crossed the Jordan on dry ground.’ 23 For the Lord your God dried up the water of the Jordan before you until you had crossed over, just as the Lord your God did to the Red Sea, which he dried up before us until we had crossed over. 24 This is so that all the peoples of the earth may know that the Lord’s hand is strong, and so that you may always fear the Lord your God.”
It is also the location where they first ate from the produce of the Promised Land, the place they first celebrated the Passover in the Promised Land, and where the manna that God had provided for them in the Wilderness ceased because they had arrived. It’s a sad irony that the monument at Gilgal was set up so that the people would “always fear the Lord.”
Both of these locations were important places to remember who God was, and what He had done, and even who the Israelites were because of God’s sovereign choice and love for them. These places were to be a memorial of God’s greatness, places that would draw His people to worship Him and Him alone. But as we saw in chapter 2, the Israelites were not using these places for appropriate worship. They said that they worshiped Yahweh, but God could not be fooled by their play-acting. Sure, they said that they worshiped Yahweh, but instead, their worship was all about themselves.
This is why God calls them to “come to Bethel” and “rebel”, which is to sin against God’s authority. “In fact,” God says, “come and sin even more at Gilgal. Bring your over-the-top sacrifices so that you can look good. Bring your leavened bread and burn it (which wasn’t allowed), and make sure everyone hears you when you shout about what you’re offering voluntarily out of ‘love’ for God.” “Make it all about yourselves,” He says, because it is perfectly clear who the Israelites worship when He says, “for that is what you Israelites love to do.”
Their lives showed the truth of who the worshiped, and their worship practice got farther and farther away from what was right. They really just worshiped themselves.
D: Punishment
D: Punishment
So God would bring judgment. And this judgment was to be terrible.
2 The Lord God has sworn by his holiness: Look, the days are coming when you will be taken away with hooks, every last one of you with fishhooks. 3 You will go through breaches in the wall, each woman straight ahead, and you will be driven along toward Harmon. This is the Lord’s declaration.
Again, in verse 1 God was speaking directly to the rich women who lived in Samaria, so His promised judgment speaks directly to them, although it has ramifications for everyone living in Samaria at the time. He swore by His own holiness: the fact of His complete “otherness” from them is parallel to the fact that this would occur: a day was coming when they would be taken away with “hooks,” with “fishhooks.” This sounds really strange to us, but it apparently wasn’t strange for Assyria, the nation that would swoop in within 40 years, and take them away into exile.
DRAWING
Look up at the screen for a moment. This is a drawing of an Assyrian relief from around the same time period that shows an Assyrian king as he deals with conquered people. The man on his knees is about to have his eye put out with a spear. However, the part I want you to notice is this: ZOOMED DRAWING. Notice that all three of the men are leashed to the king by a line that goes to a ring in either their upper lip or their noses (hard to tell which). This punishment had literal hooks to it.
In addition to that, the destruction of Samaria’s defenses would be so complete that each of the women Amos is addressing would go “straight ahead” through breaches in the wall. Basically, it wouldn’t matter what direction you went toward the wall of Samaria, there would be a breach there… either by military conquest or by earthquake. They will go into captivity with hooks in their mouths. Their lives have shown that they do not love the Lord, and that they do not love their neighbor, and even their so-called “worship” is sinful, so punishment is coming. The Sovereign Lord is roaring against the massive contradiction He finds in His people.
What a terrible state of affairs for God’s people, isn’t it?
Application
Application
When we reflect on what the Lord’s people did with the grace that had been shown to them, when we think about the fact that their worship had gone horribly astray, when we consider the lives that the rich and powerful in the land lived, where they took advantage of the disadvantaged… we must come to the place where we consider ourselves in light of them. Is our focus, like their’s, all about “me?”
So we must first ask of ourselves: “Who do we worship?”
C’: Our worship
C’: Our worship
For those who claim to follow Christ, we have come here this morning whether in person or online, we claim, to worship the King of kings, the Lord of lords, the One True God, the only eternally existent One, without beginning and without end, through Whom all things have been made, and we claim that we come to worship Him in the mystery of His Tri-unity as God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit, one Godhead in three distinct persons: that the Father loves us so much that He gave His Son who loves us so much that He is the Lamb who was slain for us, who then gives His Spirit to live within us so that we might be made holy as He is holy.
This might be one way to put it. But is this what we are actually doing? Are we really here to worship the Lord, or are we here to worship something or someone else?
These might sound like harsh questions, and I don’t ask them rhetorically, expecting some particular answer. I ask them because each of us, all of us, must ask ourselves the question: who or what am I worshiping this morning?
I suppose we might first need to define our term. What does it mean to “worship” something or someone? Biblically, to worship God is to declare the supreme worth of God as a response to His incredible grace. The word “worship” actually comes from the idea of “worth-ship.” Therefore, the chief end of worship is not us and what we do, but God and who He is and what He has done. We are to worship God because of Him, not because of us. This declaration of God’s greatness can be in word and in deed, since it is a response to His work.
Consider what Jesus said about our acts of worship and keeping the perspective straight in Matthew 6, which Providentially, we read yesterday if you are joining us in reading through Matthew:
1 “Be careful not to practice your righteousness in front of others to be seen by them. Otherwise, you have no reward with your Father in heaven. 2 So whenever you give to the poor, don’t sound a trumpet before you, as the hypocrites do in the synagogues and on the streets, to be applauded by people. Truly I tell you, they have their reward. 3 But when you give to the poor, don’t let your left hand know what your right hand is doing, 4 so that your giving may be in secret. And your Father who sees in secret will reward you. 5 “Whenever you pray, you must not be like the hypocrites, because they love to pray standing in the synagogues and on the street corners to be seen by people. Truly I tell you, they have their reward. 6 But when you pray, go into your private room, shut your door, and pray to your Father who is in secret. And your Father who sees in secret will reward you.
16 “Whenever you fast, don’t be gloomy like the hypocrites. For they disfigure their faces so that their fasting is obvious to people. Truly I tell you, they have their reward. 17 But when you fast, put oil on your head and wash your face, 18 so that your fasting isn’t obvious to others but to your Father who is in secret. And your Father who sees in secret will reward you.
Giving. Praying. Fasting. These “practices of righteousness” can all be acts of worship: our grateful response to the incredible grace of God. But Jesus says that we can do these acts of worship as a means of getting the attention or recognition of people, rather than as a response to God. And if that is our focus, then when we receive that attention or recognition, adoration or praise, consideration or relationship, then we have received our full “reward”. If we ourselves are the center of our worship, then when we lift ourselves up and receive the accolades we seek, then we’re done. That’s all we get. We miss out on the point of worship: God Himself, and we get a cheap substitute. Isn’t this what was happening in Bethel and Gilgal?
The people had replaced the worship of God with the worship of themselves, on their terms, for their benefit. They decided that their thoughts were better than God’s. Their ways were higher than God’s. Paul writes that it is in our worship that we will go astray from fidelity to the Lord:
21 For though they knew God, they did not glorify him as God or show gratitude. Instead, their thinking became worthless, and their senseless hearts were darkened. 22 Claiming to be wise, they became fools 23 and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images resembling mortal man, birds, four-footed animals, and reptiles. 24 Therefore God delivered them over in the desires of their hearts to sexual impurity, so that their bodies were degraded among themselves. 25 They exchanged the truth of God for a lie, and worshiped and served what has been created instead of the Creator, who is praised forever. Amen.
This is first a WORSHIP issue. We look out at the world, and we know that there are problems. We can see it all around. We know why it exists! It’s because we as people worship what we were never made to worship. We worship things. We worship others. We worship ideas. But ultimately, we worship ourselves.
Instead, God calls out:
6 Seek the Lord while he may be found; call to him while he is near. 7 Let the wicked one abandon his way and the sinful one his thoughts; let him return to the Lord, so he may have compassion on him, and to our God, for he will freely forgive. 8 “For my thoughts are not your thoughts, and your ways are not my ways.” This is the Lord’s declaration. 9 “For as heaven is higher than earth, so my ways are higher than your ways, and my thoughts than your thoughts.
We don’t think like God. We don’t act like God. We don’t deserve to be in the place of God, especially in our own hearts. God knows the truth. We can’t fool Him and put on an act. He knows who we worship. This is why He calls us to abandon our ways and our thoughts and return to Him—so that we can be forgiven. And that way, according to Scripture, is through faith in Jesus Christ.
12 There is salvation in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given to people by which we must be saved.”
He made a way where there was no way. Jesus Christ, the Son of God, came in the flesh and died the sinner’s death that we deserve, so that we could be set free from our sins and be made right with God. It is only in Jesus that we have salvation. This is His way. The only way. Salvation is found in no one else. Stop believing the lies that you are telling yourself. Stop thinking that you know better than God. Turn to Christ, trusting that He is the way, the truth, and the life, and surrender to Him. Worship Him, and nothing and no one else.
And we come to our second question: “How do we live?”
B’: Our lives
B’: Our lives
How we live points to what we worship: Our lives declare what we actually hold as valuable, what we actually ascribe “worth” to. So if we step back and look at the tone, the direction, the bend of our lives, if you will, we can to a certain extent see what or whom we worship. We can see this in the rich of Samaria in our focal text. Their lives show that the worship that they performed was not our of gratitude to Yahweh, but for themselves, because their lives were lived out not in reverence of and obedience to the Lord, but in the pursuit of luxury and comfort at all costs, even taking advantage of others in the process. How they lived showed who they worshiped.
But we are called to live differently if we belong to God through faith in Christ, because our worship of Him is to include the giving of ourselves. Paul said it this way in Romans 12:
1 Therefore, brothers and sisters, in view of the mercies of God, I urge you to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God; this is your true worship. 2 Do not be conformed to this age, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, so that you may discern what is the good, pleasing, and perfect will of God.
Our lives are to belong to Him completely. This is what it means to be a “living sacrifice—” it means to be a living dead one. Dead to ourselves, and completely given over for the use of God. Our lives are to be surrendered to Him so that He can transform us into what He wants us to be by His will and in His way. And that way is to be more like Christ Himself:
3 Do nothing out of selfish ambition or conceit, but in humility consider others as more important than yourselves. 4 Everyone should look not to his own interests, but rather to the interests of others. 5 Adopt the same attitude as that of Christ Jesus, 6 who, existing in the form of God, did not consider equality with God as something to be exploited. 7 Instead he emptied himself by assuming the form of a servant, taking on the likeness of humanity. And when he had come as a man, 8 he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death— even to death on a cross.
This isn’t about legalism. This is about living a life that points to God. This is an easy trap to fall into. It’s not about jumping through the right hoops at the right time, and believing that we are right with God as a result. It’s about living in surrender to Him, understanding what His grace has done and is doing in our lives, so that we can humbly walk with Him and He gets the glory from our lives.
This is what we are called to. We are to be a blessing to others because of what God has done for us. We are to give grace and mercy to others because God has given them to us. We are to stand for the truth because the One who is Truth stands for us. We are to die to ourselves, because the Giver of Life died for us.
Closing
Closing
Our structure for this sermon then looks like this:
A: The Lord’s indictment
B: The people’s lives
C: The people’s worship
D: Punishment
C’: Our worship
B’: Our lives
And so this brings us back to the beginning:
A’: The Lord’s invitation
A’: The Lord’s invitation
Who or what are you living for? Who or what is worthy of your time and attention? The people of the Northern Kingdom lived for themselves, but play acted at worship to make themselves look better and maybe feel better. But God condemned both their lives and their worship practices as sin, because in their hearts, it was all about themselves. Is this us this morning?
There is only one right response to the realization that we have sinned against God. Repentance.
Join the church.
Respond to the Gospel. Act of worship.
Keith and Debbi Michal are joining by transfer of letter from church in Arizona.
Reflection, offering, and prayer.
Closing Remarks
Closing Remarks
Prayer for Hunter?
Keith and Debbi will be in the courtyard if you’d like to go and introduce yourself in a COVID-safe manner.
Exit instructions.