The Lion Roars

Wickedness

These are strange times we’re living in.

People get outraged over a tweet, and yet calmly gloss over other atrocities.

Individualism has got to the point that you can say whatever you like, but if you knock someone else’s opinion, particularly if its an opinion in line with the mood of the day, then you better watch out.

The sanctity of life only exists as long as a life fits within a narrow definition. For the unborn, there is no sanctity of life. For the dying - well they might be a burden on others, there’s no sanctity there either.

There is no sense of a created order. Because that created order might mess with how I feel as an individual. And so people can be what they want to be. They can have sex with whoever they want - the only bounds being consent.

These are strange times we’re living in.

It a time where gang violence spills into the streets - execution style murders happen in broad daylight.

Mass shootings, (admittedly mostly in America) happen with alarming regularity.

Fraudulant behaviour is becoming more brazen.

Bullying is taking on new forms and becoming far more aggressive.

Rates of domestic violence are on the increase.

There is so much about this world that is wrong.

We can almost start to lose heart when we think of what the world has become. The world has drifted so far from the way God has intended people to live.

If these things make you upset - they should! We can almost become de-sensitized by it all, but you shouldn’t.

The Lion Roars

The good news, there is a lion who stands and roars. A lion standing ready and saying - enough. I will not stand by idly and watch this abhorrent behaviour.

That lion is the Lord - the maker of heaven and earth.

The lion has patiently watched - but always ready to act.

When the time is right - the lion does act.

The horrors of the world of today have not escaped God’s gaze. He sees. He knows.

It might feel at times that he is not acting - but don’t lose heart. He knows the right time and the right way.

There will be judgment.

Ultimately, and in a complete and final way, this will be when Jesus returns. That final day when those who are being transformed will be fully transformed and will spend eternity with God. For those who have rejected Him, an eternity without God.

But while we long for that final day, we can actually still see the lion standing ready. The Lord does care about injustice and at times, even before his final return, he can and he will act.

This should bring us great relief. God has not forgotten us.

Our problem

Now I wonder how you felt as I described those horrific things of this world. I wonder if you were nodding along, agreeing how bad things have become. I wonder if you take delight in knowing that God is not apathetic to all of this.

But of course there is a problem, isn’t there!

You see, while we get all busy, getting ourselves in a bit of a rage at the state of this world, we get very clever at overlooking this big problem.

That is - that as crazy as this world’s become - we’re part of it.

I alluded to the individualism that has been at the heart of many of the problems. Guess what? That same individualistic spirit that has shaped so much of what we denounce - well… it has shaped us as well.

We might congratulate ourselves on avoiding the ‘political correctness - gone-mad!’ but have we really?

You see, here’s the thing. While we’re busy pointing the finger at what others are doing, a huge blind spot forms, meaning we become unaware of just how influenced we’ve become by a sinful world.

We might avoid one form of political correctness, but yet shaped by a different set of values that, if we were honest, actually aren’t quite aligned with our Christian values as we might think they are.

The bottom line, we’re still being sinful. Maybe you can argue that our sinfulness isn’t quite as horrific, (maybe), but here’s the thing. We actually should know better. We know of the God of order who has shown us what is good. And yet we still choose to turn our back on him. You could actually argue that this is worse.

And so while we might take delight at the lion who roars - the lion ready to make a stand, we also need to be aware that this lion is not just roaring at those outsiders - he’s roaring at us!

Link to Series

This morning we continue our way through our series on the minor prophets, coming to the prophet Amos.

What we’re going to find, is a prophet who turns a mirror on the nation of Israel - a nation that is feeling rather smug with themselves, recognising how wicked those other nations are, and how well their doing. Only Amos is about to say - well… maybe you need to think again.

Amos

So let’s figure out where we are in the whole scheme of things.

I’ll bring up my little time line like I have over the last few weeks.

Now, there are three markers on here that I want you to remember. First is the exile of the Northern Kingdom around 722BC. Next is the exile of the Southern Kingdom in about 586 BC. And finally the return from exile towards the end of the 6th Century BC.

We confidently placed Hosea ministering to the Northern kingdom in the lead up to their exile. Joel we’re not so confident about, but I’ve tentatively placed him somewhere later in the whole time period.

Amos, however, we can again be quite confident given that Uzziah was king of Judah and Jeroboam was king of Israel. This actually means we’re at a very similar time to Hosea - they’re essentially contemporaries of each other. However, interestingly, it’s often considered that the prophetic work of Amos came first of all of the written prophets in the Bible, although there probably isn’t much in it when compared to Hosea.

So, what do we know about Amos himself?

Well, chapter 1 verse 1 tells us that he’s a shepherd from Tekoa.

First of all, the fact that he was a shepherd would have been quite unexpected. Shepherds didn’t have the greatest reputation. Sure King David had been a shepherd, but that was also unexpected. We’re not talking about some professional prophets who’s come from a long line of prophets, we’re talking about a fairly ordinary person.

Secondly, he comes from Tekoa, which is not somewhere I’d necessarily expect you to be familiar with, but the important thing to know is that Tekoa is in the Southern Kingdom, whereas we’re going to find him ministering to the Northern Kingdom. This is perhaps one of those little interesting facts to keep in mind as we got through the book.

We also have this work placed more specifically in time, namely two years before the earthquake.Unfortunately however, we’re just not entirely sure when this earthquake is, because outside the Bible, which hardly references this event at all, we don’t have any other source which talks about this earthquake.

The Lion Roars

But then we come to the second verse of this whole book and we find what I consider one of the dominant pictures throughout this prophesy. An image I’ve already alluded to.

The Lord - Yahweh - roars from Zion.

Here it is the Lord roaring.

But if we jump down to chapter 3 verse 8 - we read there: “The lion has roared”.

In this image, we find a God who is disgusted by sin.

A lion is an image of strength. The roar is an image of a readiness to act.

But what is in the lion’s gaze?

The wickedness of the nations

Well, for the first chapter and a half of this book, Amos systematically goes through the neighboring nations, detailing some of their sins. And there’s some pretty bad ones there. Whole communities are being sold, disregarding a treaty.

But perhaps most shocking, chapter 1 verse 13, we read of pregnant women being ripped open.

We are talking horrific things here.

These people deserve the roar of the lion - and they’re getting it. These atrocities do not go unnoticed.

The wickedness of Israel

Now you can imagine the people hearing Amos’s report - and cheering. This is exactly what they want to hear.

That is of course until we get to the sixth verse of chapter 2. And here their cheering stops. Because Amos puts Israel in the focus.

The Lion is roaring - but his gaze turns to Israel - the people of God.

What is their sin?

Well, before we look at what they’re called out for, let me just quickly set the scene.

Politically, things are going well for Israel. They’ve regained a lot of the territory that they had previously lost.

Economically things are also good. People are making money. There is much wealth to be found.

Things are good.

Except - are they?

You see, when economically and politically things are going well, it tends to be the case that we get a bit of a situation of the haves and the have nots.

The haves, tend to get a sense of entitlement - the have nots… well, who cares about them. Of course, it’s pretty easy to justify our lack of care of the have nots, because after all, it’s their fault that they’re there.

So let’s now look at what catches the lion’s gaze which set off his roar.

Just look at chapter 2 verse 7. They trample the heads of the poor. They deny justice to the oppressed. (But who cares - isn’t this the price of progress?)

As you continue to read - you start to see a brazen attitude - isn’t this what you would expect for those feeling entitled.

In verse 12, they’re trying to make their religious practices fit their desires.

It’s sad - they’re making God fit them - it’s the result of individualism.

And so in chapter 3 we see the lion roaring again - only it’s very clear - the lion is angry because God’s people, the very ones who have the most reason to be walking in the light of God, have become so immersed in the sin of this world. They don’t even realise.

They think because economically things are good - that their sins aren’t that bad. How wrong they are.

Us

The problem for us as we read this prophesy is that you can change Israel for us, and you wouldn’t need to change much.

Perhaps we might argue that things are different for us - but are they?

Sure there are some changes, but we have the haves and the have nots. If you’re one of the haves, chances are you don’t even realise half the times that you sin against others - denying justice to the have nots.

We sit in our pretty houses, unaware of how so much of what we have is actually the result of people who aren’t being paid a proper wage.

Baptist World Aid over the last few years have produced some ethical guides, particularly focussing on electronics and fashion - and unfortunately some of the biggest brands that we all have, source much of their materials from places where people are being exploited.

There are so many areas of our lives where we are just blind to the many injustices that surround us.

Thankfully, we’ve started to become somewhat more aware of the injustices towards Aboriginal people here in Australia, although this can still be a blind spot, where we can be denying justice to a group that has not been treated fairly.

When we’re the ones that don’t feel the force of the injustice, it is so easy to be blind to it.

Amos helpfully reminds us that the lion roars - not just at the sinfulness of the world around us - but at the way that we in the church continue to deny justice to the oppressed.

Lament

Amos’ prophecy continues in a similar vein for the next few chapters.

Until we get to the fifth chapter where Amos offers a word of lament.

Now I suspect this would have been a hard message to hear for Israel. Remember, things are going well - at least from their privileged position it seems to be.

Hearing a lament would not feel right.

The lament starts with the words - “Fallen is Virgin Israel, never to rise again”.

It’s written in the past tense. But Israel hasn’t fallen.

Well, maybe not in a literal sense. The literal falling of Israel, well… that’s going to happen in 722 BC - a time still in the future for Israel. But in a sense Israel has fallen. It’s fallen in the sense that it has lost it’s way.

And so in verse 4 of chapter 5, we get the advice for Israel - seek me and live.

It’s not in a physical place of worship, or the place of economic security.

It’s in seeking after God.

In seeking after God we need to recognise where we have gone astray and allowed ourselves to become secure in our own making.

When we seek after God, we will find that our heart will start to take the shape of God’s. A heart that cares about justice. We will hate evil and love good. We will maintain justice in the courts.

How do we seek after God. Well, perhaps a good start is taking the posture of lament like we see in Amos here in chapter 5.

Day of the Lord

But chapter 5 also takes us to a new place. It introduces us to a theme that will become a bit of a recurring theme in all of the prophets. It gives us the phrase - the day of the Lord.

Now I’m only going to touch on this very briefly now, but what we see is that this is obviously a concept which the people of God had started looking forward to. It’s a day when God will act decisively.

It’s perhaps the concept the Israelites would have had in mind when they read at the start of this prophecy that the Lion roars. But as we’ve seen, the gaze of the lion is not just on the wickedness of the surrounding pagan nations - it’s on Israel and her sins.

Amos is quick to clarify, the day of the Lord is not light - it will be darkness.

There’s a correction here that we all need to hear.

Don’t just think of all of this from your own position - you need to see what’s going on from God’s perspective, and that means taking an open and honest look at your own life.

You see it is only when we are honest with ourselves that we will be in a position to start seeking after God in a more genuine way.

But it is in the middle of this section that we find an absolutely amazing verse. Chapter 5 verse 24 says: “But let justice roll on like a river, righteousness like a never-failing stream!”

It’s a beautiful image that Amos gives us - but it’s only an image that we will be able to achieve once we have stopped our selfish ways and sought after God and his ways.

But it is with this image that we see how important justice is to God.

We need to care about justice in the same way that God does.

Justice

Time isn’t going to allow an exploration of the images Amos offers in subsequent chapters. We see images of judgment including locusts and fire. We also see an image of a plumb line, reminding Israel that they had what they needed to know when they had got out of align of God’s good order.

It’s interesting to note in chapter 7 we get this short section where we see how Amos started to irritate the king of Israel. The king brought him in and tried to shut him up.

It’s because what Amos was saying would have been hard to hear.

And in many ways its hard for us to hear.

Because if we’re going to take the words of Amos seriously, we’re also going to have to do things which at times are not comfortable.

At times it’s going to mean avoiding things that are going to be financially beneficial to yourself because you know that in that benefit to yourself, your harming someone else.

This means sometimes getting down from our privileged position.

That’s not easy.

We all care about justice - but it’s much easier to say that then to actually do it.

The real test is whether we really care when it means that we suffer as a result.

I think if we want to see that image of Amos 5:24, where justice flows like a river, we will only see it happen if we’re prepared to do some self-sacrifice.

It is self-sacrifice that we find in Christ. Ultimately it was in his sacrifice that we see ultimate justice.

So what is the injustice that you are contributing towards?

That might not be an answer you can give quickly. In fact, while I can see some areas where I contribute towards injustice, I recognise that there are still many things I don’t see. And to be honest, many areas that I don’t want to see because it won’t be good to really see.

But as we seek after God, we will begin to have those blind spots brought into focus. We need to have the courage to accept them, even if it means changing views we might have previously held.

Restoration

The book of Amos is a tough book to read because it calls us to be really honest with ourselves.

It’s a book that reminds us of the lion that is roaring - not just at the godless people around us, but at us. And for this reason we’re reminded that because God cares about justice, he will not allow the evil within us to remain.

But here’s the thing. Even though Amos is pointing Israel to destruction - the destruction that they would have experienced in a literal sense in 722BC - but Amos ends the prophecy with a positive note.

Chapter 9 verse 11 starts with the words - “In that day...”

… and goes on to say… “I will restore David’s fallen shelter”

You see, even at this point, though Israel needed to hear of it’s own problems, there’s already a picture that God is still keen to bless.

And it is through Jesus that this happens.

God will purge the evil from this world, but because of the work of Jesus Christ, if you call on his name then you will be brought through this and made whole.

Conclusion

It is wonderful to know that this hope is here. But it is in this hope that we will be part of the restored world, that we should be motivated to create a world now where justice reigns.

So let justice flow like a river. Allow yourself to be open to seeing the injustices that exist in this world, and when you do, take a stand, even if it means taking a hit to your own circumstances.

So let me pray...