Amos 10: Seek and Live

Bookmarks & Needs:

B: Amos 5:1-17

N:

Opening

Good morning everyone, and thanks for being here for our Family Worship Service today. It’s good to be able to come together and worship as a church family. I was reflecting this week on the couple of months that we were unable to meet together in person, and was reminded of how great it is that many of us are able to come together in this room, which is large enough to hold all of us, and to have the band lead us in praise, and to have Donna share her God-given talents with us as well… It’s a blessing to be a part of this family, and to have every week be a family get-together, albiet a physically-distant, COVID-safe one. I pray we never take that for granted.

This morning marks our halfway point in our study through the book of Amos. There are nine chapters in this book, and we are looking at the first half of chapter 5 today. Remember that the thesis of the entire prophecy is “The Sovereign Lord roars,” and this morning, we will look at what many consider to be the only real glimmer of hope for the Northern Kingdom of Israel in the message from Amos. This passage has much to say about our focus as the people of God as well.

So let’s stand together in honor of God’s holy Word as we read Amos 5, verses 1-17:

Amos 5:1–17 CSB

1 Listen to this message that I am singing for you, a lament, house of Israel: 2 She has fallen; Virgin Israel will never rise again. She lies abandoned on her land with no one to raise her up. 3 For the Lord God says: The city that marches out a thousand strong will have only a hundred left, and the one that marches out a hundred strong will have only ten left in the house of Israel. 4 For the Lord says to the house of Israel: Seek me and live! 5 Do not seek Bethel or go to Gilgal or journey to Beer-sheba, for Gilgal will certainly go into exile, and Bethel will come to nothing. 6 Seek the Lord and live, or he will spread like fire throughout the house of Joseph; it will consume everything with no one at Bethel to extinguish it. 7 Those who turn justice into wormwood also throw righteousness to the ground. 8 The one who made the Pleiades and Orion, who turns darkness into dawn and darkens day into night, who summons the water of the sea and pours it out over the surface of the earth— the Lord is his name. 9 He brings destruction on the strong, and it falls on the fortress. 10 They hate the one who convicts the guilty at the city gate, and they despise the one who speaks with integrity. 11 Therefore, because you trample on the poor and exact a grain tax from him, you will never live in the houses of cut stone you have built; you will never drink the wine from the lush vineyards you have planted. 12 For I know your crimes are many and your sins innumerable. They oppress the righteous, take a bribe, and deprive the poor of justice at the city gates. 13 Therefore, those who have insight will keep silent at such a time, for the days are evil. 14 Pursue good and not evil so that you may live, and the Lord, the God of Armies, will be with you as you have claimed. 15 Hate evil and love good; establish justice at the city gate. Perhaps the Lord, the God of Armies, will be gracious to the remnant of Joseph. 16 Therefore the Lord, the God of Armies, the Lord, says: There will be wailing in all the public squares; they will cry out in anguish in all the streets. The farmer will be called on to mourn, and professional mourners to wail. 17 There will be wailing in all the vineyards, for I will pass among you. The Lord has spoken.

PRAY

Last week, in our study of the last half of chapter 4 of this prophecy, we considered the concept of repentance, and I said that repentance is a change of mind that changes the heart that changes the direction. The issue with the chosen people of God, and more specifically with that Northern Kingdom of Israel, was that their perspective on their sin was wrong, because in fact, it was non-existent. What we see in our focal passage today was that they had just about everything wrong, everything backwards.

Our message this morning from this passage consists of four points, and we are not going to take the passage verse-by-verse today, but rather, theme by theme.

1) Seek the Lord, not religion.

Through Amos, the Lord had given a clear warning of impending destruction to the people of Israel, and in verses 4 and 6, He pleads with His people to seek Him, so that they might live:

Amos 5:4–6 CSB

4 For the Lord says to the house of Israel: Seek me and live! 5 Do not seek Bethel or go to Gilgal or journey to Beer-sheba, for Gilgal will certainly go into exile, and Bethel will come to nothing. 6 Seek the Lord and live, or he will spread like fire throughout the house of Joseph; it will consume everything with no one at Bethel to extinguish it.

Very quickly, we have already addressed the locations of Bethel and Gilgal in previous messages. Bethel (meaning “house of God”) was where the Lord had appeared to Jacob as he fled from Esau, and it had become kind of the center of worship in the Northern Kingdom, so that people didn’t travel to the Temple in Jerusalem in the Southern Kingdom in order to worship. Gilgal was a place of great importance for all of God’s people, as it was the first place that they worshiped the Lord following the crossing of the Jordan river into the Promised Land.

Beer-sheba was another important location, as it was a place where Abraham had settled, and where he had called on the name of the Lord in Genesis 21 and 22. Later, his son, Isaac, went up to Beer-sheba, and the Lord appeared to Him there, and so Isaac constructed an altar there in Genesis 26. Even later, Isaac’s son Jacob stopped in Beer-sheba and offered sacrifices to the Lord on that altar when he was on his way to Egypt during the famine, and God spoke to him at Beer-sheba as well.

The additional interesting thing we need to note is that Beer-sheba is located in the southern part of the Southern Kingdom of Judah. So either the people of the Northern Kingdom were still occasionally traveling to Beer-sheba to worship, or the nation of Judah is somehow included in this warning in Amos 5. It could be a little of both, but I think that the glimmer of hope is because the message is for Judah as well, which we will see a little more clearly when we get to Chapter 9 at the end of our series.

Anyway, remembering what happened at these places wasn’t a bad thing. These places had a long history. It’s not sinful to look back and recall what God has done. The problem is that the people were seeking the special places, not the God that made the places special.

So God tells them not to seek the places, because they would go into exile, or will come to nothing. He says that these places would be burned down if His people continued to seek those places instead of seeking a relationship with the Living God. They could simply go to the places, do their religious duty, and then go home feeling as though they had somehow appeased the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, the God who had piled up the waters of the Jordan, the God who had made these incredible promises to the patriarchs. Sure, they went. But they never met God there. They were looking for a religious experience, not a relational one. Remember back in chapter 2 what they were actually doing when they went to Bethel to “worship.”

Religious adherence is a cheap substitute for a relationship with God. Religion is us doing the right things or saying the right words or at least not doing and saying the wrong things. Focusing on religion is us putting on all the trappings of what we think it should “look” like if we have a relationship with God, all the while hoping that our performance is good enough.

But what God calls us to is something so much greater than some idea of religious adherence. He calls us into the waters of a true relationship with Him, getting to know Him as we experience Him and as He speaks to us by His Spirit, who is with us and is in us, according to John 14:17. He calls us into a radical and total change of life, change of perspective, change of focus, change of priority, not just a change in behavior. God calls us to trust Him, and not ourselves. To listen to Him, and not the world. To place our hope in Him, and not anything else. I’m reminded of the parables of the treasure in the field and the pearl of great worth in Matthew 13:

Matthew 13:44–46 CSB

44 “The kingdom of heaven is like treasure, buried in a field, that a man found and reburied. Then in his joy he goes and sells everything he has and buys that field. 45 “Again, the kingdom of heaven is like a merchant in search of fine pearls. 46 When he found one priceless pearl, he went and sold everything he had and bought it.

Being in a relationship with God is worth anything and everything, and nothing else compares. When we trade being in that relationship with God by faith for going through the motions of religion, we end up missing out on all of the enjoyment that comes from being one of God’s chosen people.

Sadly, it’s easy for us to live very religious lives while not honoring God at all in how we act or in what we pursue. Think about the Jews on the day Christ was crucified. They were in the days of one of their most religious times: the Passover. But they murdered Christ anyway, and likely just went back to their religious celebration when the deed was done, and also likely felt completely justified in the process. We think that since our religious actions are what justify us, then as long as we keep those up, then we must be okay with God. This is exactly what Israel was doing here in Amos as well.

2) Act justly, not unjustly.

In response to God’s little message of hope here for Israel, He reconfirms His indictment against them: that they are treating people unjustly:

Amos 5:7 CSB

7 Those who turn justice into wormwood also throw righteousness to the ground.

Amos 5:10–13 CSB

10 They hate the one who convicts the guilty at the city gate, and they despise the one who speaks with integrity. 11 Therefore, because you trample on the poor and exact a grain tax from him, you will never live in the houses of cut stone you have built; you will never drink the wine from the lush vineyards you have planted. 12 For I know your crimes are many and your sins innumerable. They oppress the righteous, take a bribe, and deprive the poor of justice at the city gates. 13 Therefore, those who have insight will keep silent at such a time, for the days are evil.

The people of Israel were taking the sweet truth of justice and throwing it to the ground, making it bitter by their sin. They actually hated people who spoke against the guilty, and condemned the witness who spoke the truth. They abused the poor, distorted justice with bribes and lies, and they essentially (by our modern American terminology), paid off the judges to get the verdicts that they wanted. And the successful, the wealthy, those with understanding of the evil of the days, kept silent about the injustice because it padded their pockets.

I feel like in many ways, we see our nation today reflected in this passage. I have neither the time nor the inclination to go into that in great detail, although if you look back and read over it again, I believe you’ll see what I mean. I’ll just use one example this morning:

We have watched for months now as cities have destroyed themselves under activity that is just criminal. Rioting is criminal. Looting is criminal. Vandalism is criminal. These things aren’t just. I’m all for the peaceful means of protest that many in our nation have utilized in seeking redress of their concerns and complaints from our government. But to claim that the rioting and looting that we’ve seen throughout our nation in the past several months is just? No, it’s not. And brothers and sisters, we need to stand for what is just and against the injustices in our society—but to be unjust while we do so is to paint ourselves as hypocrites. When we act unjustly but call it justice, we “throw righteousness to the ground.” It’s okay to stand FOR racial equality AND stand AGAINST rioting and looting. It’s not one or the other. Mistreating or abusing someone because of the color of their skin is wrong. So are the violence and destruction that come with rioting and looting.

How does God call us to act? It’s clear in Micah 6:8:

Micah 6:8 CSB

8 Mankind, he has told each of you what is good and what it is the Lord requires of you: to act justly, to love faithfulness, and to walk humbly with your God.

This connects well with our first point also, because in context, the Lord is condemning the religious manipulation that the people were attempting, instead of just being broken over their sin, acting justly, loving faithfulness (or kindness), and walking humbly with Him in the day-to-day.

And then, in addition to acting justly, we are also called to pursue a certain kind of life.

3) Pursue good, not evil.

Verses 14 and 15 of Amos 5 are sort of the thematic “center” of the book of Amos, the roar of the Sovereign Lord that there is still hope for His people if they will just repent and respond to His call:

Amos 5:14–15 CSB

14 Pursue good and not evil so that you may live, and the Lord, the God of Armies, will be with you as you have claimed. 15 Hate evil and love good; establish justice at the city gate. Perhaps the Lord, the God of Armies, will be gracious to the remnant of Joseph.

God was calling his people to live their lives in pursuit of what is good, instead of what is evil, and to hate what is evil and love what is good. As we have seen, the wealthy and powerful in Israel were putting their own needs ahead of the needs of every one else, mistreating and abusing them for their own gain. The call here by God is a clear call to repent—to change their minds about their sin so that they would regret the evil they were practicing so that they would stop practicing it.

In verse 14, it says that if they repent, then the Lord “will be with [them] as [they] have claimed.” While they have been going their own way, they have claimed that God was with them, but He most certainly was not. Israel needed to repent in order to correct their fellowship with God.

In verse 15, they are called to “establish justice at the city gate.” The city gate is where cases were tried, and the elders of the city were to act as the tribunal. The wealthy bribed the elders to obtain the verdicts that they wanted. Isaiah 5:23 says, “Woe to those… who acquit the guilty for a bribe and deprive the innocent of justice.”

The hope here is that if they repent, then perhaps the Lord would relent in bringing the disaster which He has promised for their sins.

Unfortunately, we in our culture are great at calling good evil and evil good. According to Isaiah, there is a curse of woe involved in our doing this:

Isaiah 5:20 CSB

20 Woe to those who call evil good and good evil, who substitute darkness for light and light for darkness, who substitute bitter for sweet and sweet for bitter.

Church, we need to call things like they are. We need to be willing to declare that evil is evil, and that good is good, and to live that out in our own world. I think what is sometimes difficult about this is that it’s not necessarily always perfectly clear which is which, because wherever we turn, there are those who create false “all or nothing” dichotomies between these two perspectives. And not only that, but we call things evil which are simply not our preference, or we declare things good by intentionally overlooking the ugly parts. I know that I’m guilty of this very thing at times.

But why do I often feel like my perspective the most important one? Remember that our thesis for this series is that “The Sovereign Lord roars.” His opinion, His perspective, is the only one that matters. We need to cling to what HE says is good, to resist what HE says is evil.

Paul calls believers to this in the book of Romans:

Romans 12:9 CSB

9 Let love be without hypocrisy. Detest evil; cling to what is good.

Romans 12:21 CSB

21 Do not be conquered by evil, but conquer evil with good.

And according to Peter, we are are to be about the pursuit of those things that God has declared are good, and we are to turn away from those things that God has declared to be evil:

1 Peter 3:10–12 CSB

10 For the one who wants to love life and to see good days, let him keep his tongue from evil and his lips from speaking deceit, 11 and let him turn away from evil and do what is good. Let him seek peace and pursue it, 12 because the eyes of the Lord are on the righteous and his ears are open to their prayer. But the face of the Lord is against those who do what is evil.

Where are we getting our perspectives on good and evil? From politicians? Celebrities? News sources? Movements? Or are we drawing our perspectives of good and evil from the Lord Himself, the One who determines what is good and evil by His own character and quality? This is the only way we’re going to get this right. This is how we are going to “love life and see good days,” according to Peter. So we have a choice to make:

4) Choose life, not death.

Our focal passage today is kind of “bookended” by a lament. A lament is a funeral dirge, or a death song. At the beginning of the chapter, the Lord laments over His people and their state:

Amos 5:1–3 CSB

1 Listen to this message that I am singing for you, a lament, house of Israel: 2 She has fallen; Virgin Israel will never rise again. She lies abandoned on her land with no one to raise her up. 3 For the Lord God says: The city that marches out a thousand strong will have only a hundred left, and the one that marches out a hundred strong will have only ten left in the house of Israel.

He refers to the Northern Kingdom as “Virgin Israel,” meaning either what His people used to be, or to their youthful vigor, which they certainly thought they had. At the time Amos preached this message, Israel was doing very well militarily and economically. They were not at war. They had a lot of trade happening. They had a fairly strong (although not moral) monarchy. And then Amos says that the nation “has fallen…lies abandoned… with no one to raise her up.” And he predicts this military decimation: a 90% loss of soldiers. Imagine if someone came into your house and started singing about your death as though it had already happened. That’s kind of the message behind this lament from the Lord. And the lament ends in verses 16-17:

Amos 5:16–17 CSB

16 Therefore the Lord, the God of Armies, the Lord, says: There will be wailing in all the public squares; they will cry out in anguish in all the streets. The farmer will be called on to mourn, and professional mourners to wail. 17 There will be wailing in all the vineyards, for I will pass among you. The Lord has spoken.

Remember last week that chapter 4, verse 12, said “Israel, prepare to meet your God,” and I explained that this was not a happy announcement for them. God says that when He visits them, there will be cries of anguish and wailing throughout the land, much like there was when He visited Egypt in the Exodus. He offered them hope, but He is certain that they will reject His offer. They will choose destruction.

We will see more about what that visitation of the Lord means for the people next week, when we look at “The Day of the Lord.”

Back in Deuteronomy, when the Israelites prepared to enter the Promised Land, Moses gave them this very choice: life and death, blessing and cursing.

Deuteronomy 30:15–20 CSB

15 See, today I have set before you life and prosperity, death and adversity. 16 For I am commanding you today to love the Lord your God, to walk in his ways, and to keep his commands, statutes, and ordinances, so that you may live and multiply, and the Lord your God may bless you in the land you are entering to possess. 17 But if your heart turns away and you do not listen and you are led astray to bow in worship to other gods and serve them, 18 I tell you today that you will certainly perish and will not prolong your days in the land you are entering to possess across the Jordan. 19 I call heaven and earth as witnesses against you today that I have set before you life and death, blessing and curse. Choose life so that you and your descendants may live, 20 love the Lord your God, obey him, and remain faithful to him. For he is your life, and he will prolong your days as you live in the land the Lord swore to give to your ancestors Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.”

And we are offered that same choice every day. Will we choose the path of life, or the path of destruction? Will we leave a legacy of hope, or leave despair in our wake? Will we live for God, or will we live for ourselves? If you have never trusted in Jesus Christ to save you, then you’re already on the path of death. In the Gospel of John, Jesus said this:

John 5:24 CSB

24 “Truly I tell you, anyone who hears my word and believes him who sent me has eternal life and will not come under judgment but has passed from death to life.

God wants that relationship with you that I spoke about earlier. But because of our sin, we have broken any ability to be in that relationship with Him. So God solved the problem by sending His Son, Jesus, to die on a cross, taking our punishment on Himself, so that we could be set free from the death that our sins deserve. And then He defeated death for us, so that if we belong to Jesus through faith in what He did to save us, we receive His gift of eternal life as well. We get to live forever with Him, and we have the blessing of being right with God while we live our lives here and now. Will you surrender your life to Jesus right now, wherever you are?

Choose life, not death.

Closing

In closing, we only have verses 8 and 9 to look at:

Amos 5:8–9 CSB

8 The one who made the Pleiades and Orion, who turns darkness into dawn and darkens day into night, who summons the water of the sea and pours it out over the surface of the earth— the Lord is his name. 9 He brings destruction on the strong, and it falls on the fortress.

Unlike those in Israel who were changing sweet justice into bitter wormwood in their land through their unjust actions as we saw in verse 7, God is in charge of the universe! He changes darkness into dawn, and then day into night. He turns the sea into rain, which then flows back to the sea. He turns the powerful into the weak, the falsely secure into the broken.

Only His work can change hearts. This message has been primarily for those in the church—those who belong to Jesus. But I’ve also shared with you the truth of the Gospel: that Jesus died so that those who were already dead could be made alive. Those blind to the truth could be made to see.

And that is a change that He wants to make in your life even in this very moment, whether you are here in the room or online. Surrender your life to Jesus, trusting only in what He has done on the cross to save you. Quit going your own way, and follow Christ.

If that is you, then we want to be able to help you in those first steps of following Jesus, or if you have more questions about trusting Christ, please let us know. If you’re watching online, you can feel free to post to Facebook or Youtube, or to fill out the response card at the bottom of our Live Stream page. You can also email me at [e-mail]. For those of you here in the room this morning, we are going to have a very short business meeting following the service, and if you’re willing to wait, then just remain in your seat when we dismiss in a few moments, and then wait through the business meeting as well. I’d love the chance to speak with you about Jesus.

If you believe that God is calling you to join this family of believers in formal membership, then I invite you to wait in your seats after dismissal and through the business meeting, so that I can chat with you after service is over. If you can’t wait that long this morning, feel free to email me and set up a time to talk this week. But we do have a couple of young men who are coming this morning to join the church. Jonathan and Andrew Barndt are brothers who came to Albuquerque for school at UNM. Jonathan has graduated, and Andrew is a junior. They’ve been a part of EHBC for not quite a year at this point, and I had the blessing and privilege of sitting down with them on Wednesday to talk about their testimony and faith in Jesus, and to answer questions about the church and talk about our Statement of Beliefs. Jonathan and Andrew believe that God is leading them to formal church membership this morning. They have both been baptized as believers, and will be joining by statement of their faith.

If you have a need to come down and pray at the steps this morning, you are welcome to do that while Donna plays our reflection song. That is also a great time to give online if you would like to worship in that way. There are plates at the exits if you would prefer to give in person.

PRAY

Closing Remarks

Just a couple more quick announcements before we dismiss some of you and go into our business meeting:

I preached specifically about abortion back in our 4th message in this series, and so you should all know that I am staunchly pro-life. So when the Right to Life Committee of NM asked if they could host a voter registration table on campus this week and next, I was glad to have them come. We very much appreciate them coming this morning. If you aren’t registered to vote, if you need to change or update your address or party affiliation, or if you would like additional information about voting locations and procedures or information about the Right to Life Committee of NM and information regarding candidate stances on this important issue, please stop by and see them in the courtyard. They will also be here next Sunday as well.

Bible studies NOT reopening on October 4 at this point.

Business meeting.

Post Business Meeting

Instructions on leaving. Jonathan and Andrew go first and meet in courtyard (away from the Right to Life table). God bless you all, have a wonderful week!