Amos 9: The Scorned Sovereign

Bill Connors

Amos: Prophet of Judgment & Justice • Sermon • Submitted 4 years ago

Amos 4:6–13

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B: Amos 4:6-13

Opening

Good morning, and welcome to our Family Worship service this morning! Whether you are here in person or you’re joining us online, we’re glad that you’ve come to be a part of worshiping our Lord together. Thanks to the praise band for leading us to worship the Lord through music this morning. We had a great Night of Worship, which included a lot of great music as well as prayer and testimony on Friday night, hosted by our Student Ministry. It was a blessing to be a part of. Thanks Trevor for putting that together and leading it. We are planning to make something like that a more regular occurrence in the future. The recording of Night of Worship is on our Facebook and YouTube pages.

This morning will be our ninth message from the book of Amos, a message of judgment and justice to God’s people back in the 8th century BC. We established in the first week of the series the fact that Amos opens with basically a thesis statement—a lens through which we are to view the entire message of the book. That thesis is that “The Sovereign Lord roars.” God is bringing a message of judgment and promised punishment to His people, and since only He is sovereign, it is our place to listen and obey—He is the One who determines what is true and what is not, what is right and what is wrong. Last week, we looked at the first part of Amos 4, and considered our own worship of the Lord, as well as what is central to our lives. This morning, we will continue with the remainder of chapter 4. Let’s stand in honor of God’s Holy Word as we open our Bibles and read our focal passage:

Amos 4:6–13 CSB

6 I gave you absolutely nothing to eat in all your cities, a shortage of food in all your communities, yet you did not return to me. This is the Lord’s declaration. 7 I also withheld the rain from you while there were still three months until harvest. I sent rain on one city but no rain on another. One field received rain while a field with no rain withered. 8 Two or three cities staggered to another city to drink water but were not satisfied, yet you did not return to me. This is the Lord’s declaration. 9 I struck you with blight and mildew; the locust devoured your many gardens and vineyards, your fig trees and olive trees, yet you did not return to me. This is the Lord’s declaration. 10 I sent plagues like those of Egypt; I killed your young men with the sword, along with your captured horses. I caused the stench of your camp to fill your nostrils, yet you did not return to me. This is the Lord’s declaration. 11 I overthrew some of you as I overthrew Sodom and Gomorrah, and you were like a burning stick snatched from a fire, yet you did not return to me— This is the Lord’s declaration. 12 Therefore, Israel, that is what I will do to you, and since I will do that to you, Israel, prepare to meet your God! 13 He is here: the one who forms the mountains, creates the wind, and reveals his thoughts to man, the one who makes the dawn out of darkness and strides on the heights of the earth. The Lord, the God of Armies, is his name.

PRAY, remembering the people facing wildfires and the unrest in our society.

There are certain positions in life where God provides us with a certain amount of authority, along with a great opportunity to learn things about our own characters, about how to use authority, about working with others, and even about how God might feel about dealing with knuckleheads like us. I’m thinking about parenting, management of people in the workplace, business ownership, volunteer management, or any other position of leadership. The reason that I say that these things offer great opportunity to learn about ourselves, about authority, about others, and about God is that leadership can be an incredibly frustrating experience.

I’ll use parenting just as an example. Melanie and I joke that parenting is the great equalizer. Just about every parent at some point has a realization that their children are little sinners running around. We discover that punishment is an important means of correction for those little sinners, and we discover that “because I said so” is a perfectly valid answer to the question of “why?” asked for the seventh time by a four-year-old. While parenting is normally an incredible joy, sometimes it’s frustrating, exhausting, or even enraging.

Our children often act in ways that we just don’t get. They disobey. They ignore our rules and instructions. They decide that perhaps they know better than we do. And so we get their attention through maybe verbal correction. Then maybe some other form of punishment. I mean, when I was a kid, I would get grounded. And then if I smarted off when I got grounded, I would get grounded longer. And if I continued to cause problems, I’d get extra chores while I was grounded, or something important to me taken away. In a house with six kids, discipline was critical, because my parents were radically outnumbered. Can any of you relate?

I’ve entitled this morning’s message, “The Scorned Sovereign” because in this passage we find that God’s message of judgment and justice through Amos wasn’t coming out of the blue. God here isn’t acting as a parent, but rather as a King who has had His edicts ignored by His subjects for far too long. It’s not that He didn’t try. In fact, exactly the opposite. God warned His people about what would happen if they tried to go their own way in several passages, perhaps most notably in Deuteronomy 28:

Deuteronomy 28:15 CSB

15 “But if you do not obey the Lord your God by carefully following all his commands and statutes I am giving you today, all these curses will come and overtake you:

And He goes on for the next 53 verses with the explanation of the curses that would come if they persisted in disobedience. That chapter is intense. The Israelites knew what was coming if they disobeyed, but still God worked to get their attention. So we see first of all that:

1) God is not silent.

God wasn’t subtle with Israel. When we read our focal passage, we see five times that God recounts the actions He took that were designed to bring the promised punishment in order to get His people’s attention, to remind them of their covenant with Him. These are found in verses 6-11:

Amos 4:6–11 CSB

Just to quickly break down what God used to get their attention:

Famine: verse 6, promised in Deuteronomy 28:48.

Drought: verses 7 & 8, also promised in Deuteronomy 28:48.

Blight and mildew: verse 9, promised in Deuteronomy 28:22, 26.

Locusts: verse 9, promised in Deuteronomy 28:38.

Plagues and war: verse 10, promised in Deuteronomy 28:25-26.

Overthrow: verse 11, promised in Deuteronomy 28:62-64.

God had told them what would come as His means of correction for them. And He wasn’t kidding around. Here in Amos 4, we don’t have exact references for each of these things in history, but they were things that God had done, and that the people understood and remembered that God had done. He had been speaking loud and clear to get their attention about their sin.

As we read through Amos, one thing that we need to keep in mind is that this prophecy is primarily for those who are God’s chosen people. And since those who are in Christ are now God’s covenant people through the new covenant in the blood of Jesus, we need to take heed of the fact that God will discipline us when He deems necessary. I don’t think there is a more clear passage showing this fact than Hebrews chapter 12:

Hebrews 12:4–11 CSB

4 In struggling against sin, you have not yet resisted to the point of shedding your blood. 5 And you have forgotten the exhortation that addresses you as sons: My son, do not take the Lord’s discipline lightly or lose heart when you are reproved by him, 6 for the Lord disciplines the one he loves and punishes every son he receives. 7 Endure suffering as discipline: God is dealing with you as sons. For what son is there that a father does not discipline? 8 But if you are without discipline—which all receive—then you are illegitimate children and not sons. 9 Furthermore, we had human fathers discipline us, and we respected them. Shouldn’t we submit even more to the Father of spirits and live? 10 For they disciplined us for a short time based on what seemed good to them, but he does it for our benefit, so that we can share his holiness. 11 No discipline seems enjoyable at the time, but painful. Later on, however, it yields the peaceful fruit of righteousness to those who have been trained by it.

God is not silent in how He deals with us. In the first 3 verses of Hebrews 12, He calls us to throw off what slows us up and the sin that trips us up, to keep our eyes on Jesus, so that we won’t give up. We are to do battle with our sin, and remember that if God is bringing correction to our lives, that is actually a GOOD thing, even if it’s not so much fun in the moment. His bringing discipline and correction into our lives is a confirmation that we are His children. He corrects us in order to make us more like Him, and so that our lives might bear the “fruit of righteousness.”

Sometimes, that discipline is a quick “talking to.” We choose sin, even just in our minds and hearts, and we are immediately chastised by the Lord. Anyone else experience that? Sometimes, it might be something deeper. We sin, and we are found out, which is intended to bring us to a point of “cleansing our hands, and purifying our hearts.” as James wrote in James 4:8, so that we will, “humble [our]selves before the Lord, and He will exalt [us],” or lift us up as James said in James 4:10.

If God loves us, and if God is holy, then He must correct us when we stray. The question then becomes one of our response to that correction. The author of Hebrews continues in verses 12 and 13… note the “therefore,” which starts these verses:

Hebrews 12:12–13 CSB

12 Therefore, strengthen your tired hands and weakened knees, 13 and make straight paths for your feet, so that what is lame may not be dislocated but healed instead.

There’s a right response to God’s corrective discipline. That right response is to listen and obey, so that the discipline is effective. This leads us to our next point, which really is a question we need to ask ourselves:

2) Are we listening?

In our focal passage, we see that although God spoke loudly and clearly to the Israelites as He promised He would, they refused to repent. We won’t read through verses 6-11 again, but note that each section ends with the same thing: “…yet you did not return to me.” (verses 6, 8, 9, 10, & 11)

That word, “return” is the primary word in the OT Hebrew for “repent”. To “repent” is to “change your mind about your behavior.” It is not just to “think differently,” but it is also to feel regret or remorse over your sin, and be convicted to strive to act appropriately in that instance in the future. So repentance is a change of mind that changes the heart that changes the direction. Repeat that.

The problem that the people of the Northern Kingdom had was that they didn’t repent. We saw last week in verses 4 and 5 that they did all kinds of religious stuff, but it was all smoke and mirrors. They had no sense of their own sin, even though God had made it clear by His disciplinary actions. Their doing religious things for the sake of being religious was just more sinning, because it had nothing to do with seeing their choices differently or with remorse. So over and over, God acted in ways that He told them that He would act in order to get their attention, to get them to listen, so that they would repent, and they just refused to do so.

This is what the author of Hebrews was getting at for believers when he wrote verses 12 and 13 of chapter 12: he was painting a verbal picture of what repentance looks like. Are we repentant?

In his little booklet “What is Repentance?”, the late R.C. Sproul wrote this that I found helpful:

What Is Repentance? Chapter One: What Is Repentance?

Have you ever been asked what you would do differently if you had your life to live over again? It amazes me when people respond that they wouldn’t do anything differently. I simply can’t imagine someone not having anything they’d want to change. Don’t we all have regrets? Certainly, as Christians who understand our sin, we would relish the chance to relive some of our past. Perhaps we have words we’d love to take back or painful scenes we’d like to rewrite. These desires hint at our need for repentance.

I don’t know about you, but I have lots of things in my life that I wish I could go back and undo, things I wish I could unsay, things I neglected to do that I wish I could go back and do. The desire to have changed it, knowing what it should have been, along with the regret of the failure, and the conviction to do it differently next time, are kind of the pieces of repentance.

The sad thing is that we are incredibly prideful and stubborn. We are so invested in our own lives that when God brings the correction we so desperately need, we double-down instead. We justify ourselves, giving reasons why our sin is acceptable, why it’s someone else’s fault and so we aren’t to blame, or like Adam we blame God for our sin, or perhaps most terrifyingly, we argue that it’s probably even God’s issue and that somehow HE is wrong to say we’re wrong. We just refuse to listen, refuse to obey, refuse to repent.

Brothers and sisters, we certainly do not want the Lord to have to do all that He is capable of and entitled to do as the Sovereign in order to correct us.

In Matthew chapter 21, we find a parable of Jesus that speaks to the results of a failure to repent. This parable is found in verses 33-41:

Matthew 21:33–41 CSB

33 “Listen to another parable: There was a landowner, who planted a vineyard, put a fence around it, dug a winepress in it, and built a watchtower. He leased it to tenant farmers and went away. 34 When the time came to harvest fruit, he sent his servants to the farmers to collect his fruit. 35 The farmers took his servants, beat one, killed another, and stoned a third. 36 Again, he sent other servants, more than the first group, and they did the same to them. 37 Finally, he sent his son to them. ‘They will respect my son,’ he said. 38 “But when the tenant farmers saw the son, they said to each other, ‘This is the heir. Come, let’s kill him and take his inheritance.’ 39 So they seized him, threw him out of the vineyard, and killed him. 40 Therefore, when the owner of the vineyard comes, what will he do to those farmers?” 41 “He will completely destroy those terrible men,” they told him, “and lease his vineyard to other farmers who will give him his fruit at the harvest.”

Are any of us like the tenants in this parable? Are we so committed to remaining in our sin that we will somehow ignore the fact that the land has a Sovereign, One who has all power, and Who will not sit idly by while we refuse to listen to Him? This parable was originally addressed to the super-religious, which is what the Israelites might have argued that they were. Maybe this is who some of us are as we sit here this morning.

Which leads us to the final two verses of our focal passage today:

3) Are we prepared to meet our God?

I’m not here to cause anyone to doubt their salvation today, but we have to ask this question because of what verse 12 says:

Amos 4:12 CSB

12 Therefore, Israel, that is what I will do to you, and since I will do that to you, Israel, prepare to meet your God!

This is not a happy statement for the Israelites, “Hey, prepare to meet God! Woo hoo!” Not even close. Ever since chapter 3, verse 2 of Amos, God has been explaining what is coming for the people of Israel and why. The Sovereign Lord is roaring, and Israel has refused to listen. So they had better be ready to meet Him, just like the landowners in the parable in Matthew.

God then reminds them of exactly who He is by having Amos recite what appears to be a part of a hymn that the Israelites knew, a hymn that reflects on the awesome might and power of God:

Amos 4:13 CSB

13 He is here: the one who forms the mountains, creates the wind, and reveals his thoughts to man, the one who makes the dawn out of darkness and strides on the heights of the earth. The Lord, the God of Armies, is his name.

He creates the mountains that we see towering over us, and the wind that we can only feel, but He reveals His thoughts to us in His Word and by His Spirit, so that we are without excuse before Him. He brings the morning and walks on the highest points as if they were the open plains. He is completely and utterly unique in His glory, holiness, and might. And this is the One who is our judge. Are we prepared to meet Him?

God’s judgment will come to all:

Revelation 20:11–15 CSB

11 Then I saw a great white throne and one seated on it. Earth and heaven fled from his presence, and no place was found for them. 12 I also saw the dead, the great and the small, standing before the throne, and books were opened. Another book was opened, which is the book of life, and the dead were judged according to their works by what was written in the books. 13 Then the sea gave up the dead that were in it, and death and Hades gave up the dead that were in them; each one was judged according to their works. 14 Death and Hades were thrown into the lake of fire. This is the second death, the lake of fire. 15 And anyone whose name was not found written in the book of life was thrown into the lake of fire.

It is neither foolish nor faithless to come back to the question of whether or not our names are written in the book of life. This is eternity we’re talking about here. We should make sure that we’re sure.

So how do our names end up written in the book of life? Only through faith in what Jesus has done for us. The Bible tells us that our sin separates us from our perfect God who made us and loves us, but who is so perfect that He has to judge sin… every sin. And any sin is enough to make us not perfect like Him, and so deserving of His judgment and punishment. But we are terrible at being perfect, because we aren’t… so we can’t ever get back to perfection. We literally CAN’T be because of our selfishness, pride, lust, etc. So God gave us a way to be considered perfect as if we had lived perfectly: His Son Jesus Christ died to pay our penalty, even though He is perfect and we aren’t. If we trust what He has done to save us instead of trying to save ourselves or justify ourselves, then we will be forgiven of our sins and have our names written in the book of life.

And Jesus beat death for us, so that if we have trust Him to save us, we have the promise of living forever with God in heaven. Jesus rose from the dead and had gone ahead of us to heaven, to prepare a place for us. And He’s going to come back and get those who belong to Him:

Hebrews 9:27–28 CSB

27 And just as it is appointed for people to die once—and after this, judgment—28 so also Christ, having been offered once to bear the sins of many, will appear a second time, not to bear sin, but to bring salvation to those who are waiting for him.

This is how we are made ready to meet our God: only through faith in Jesus Christ.

If you’re already a believer in Jesus, then you can rest in confidence that salvation is yours because of what Jesus has done. However, that doesn’t mean that God won’t discipline us and bring correction into our lives. Search your heart and mind. What do you need to change your way of thinking about? What sins, if Jesus showed up right now, would be left unconfessed and unrepented? These things don’t undo our salvation, but keep us from experiencing the full measure joy that our salvation brings. We need to take those things to God and agree with Him about our sin.

Closing

Unlike the Northern Kingdom of Israel in the time of Amos, we are still in a place every day where we get to make a choice. There will come a time when Jesus is going to come back, when God is going to roll up all of creation, and we’ll be out of time, just like Israel. If you have never trusted in the work of Jesus, I pray that today is the day of salvation for you. Today is the day to repent. Today is the day to believe the Gospel of Jesus Christ, because today is the only day you’ve got for sure. The author of Hebrews wrote:

Hebrews 3:12–13 CSB

12 Watch out, brothers and sisters, so that there won’t be in any of you an evil, unbelieving heart that turns away from the living God. 13 But encourage each other daily, while it is still called today, so that none of you is hardened by sin’s deception.

I’ve presented the truth of the Gospel of Jesus Christ as clearly as I know how to this morning. If you have surrendered your life to God today, trusting in what Jesus has done on the cross for your eternal salvation, we want to know about it so that we can celebrate with you and help you in your first steps as a Christian. If that’s you and you’re here in the room, please just stay in your seat after everyone else leaves, and I’ll come find you so we can talk. If you’re online, send us a message in the chat on Facebook, or you can go to our Live stream page at ehbc.org and fill out a contact form, asking for a pastor to follow up with you.

If you believe that God is calling you to join this church family in formal membership, please stay in your seats after everyone exits, and we’ll come and find you and get more information, and set up an appointment to meet to talk further.

If you have some other prayer need, and just need to get on your knees before God in confession and repentance this morning, feel free to come and pray at the steps during our time of reflection.

You can also use this time to worship God through giving if you would like to do that online. If you want to give in person, you can put your offerings in the plates by the exits as you leave this morning.

Let’s pray as Donna comes to play our song of reflection this morning.

PRAY

Closing Remarks

Bible reading: Matthew 14 today.

Instructions on exiting.

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