Amos 4:1 - 5:17 | Does God Care When His People Sin?

This sermon was recorded at Faith Evangelical Free Church in Grand Forks, North Dakota.

Do you take your Bible, please, and open it to the Old Testament prophet of Amos?

We've been working our way through this Old Testament prophet, seeing how it can apply to today.

I would like to direct your attention this morning to Amos chapter four, and we will work our way through to chapter five, verse seventeen.

Amos chapter four beginning in verse one.

Hear this word, you cows of Bashan, who are on the mountain of Samaria, who oppress the poor, who crush the needy, who say to your husbands, bring that we may drink.

The Lord Yahweh has sworn by his holiness that, behold, the days are coming upon you when they shall take you away with hooks, even the last of you with fish hooks, and you shall go out through the breaches, each one straight ahead, and you shall be cast out into harmon, declares Yahweh.

Come to Bethel and transgress, to Gilgal and multiply transgression.

Bring your sacrifices every morning, your tithes every three days.

Offer a sacrifice of thanksgiving of that which is leavened, and proclaim free will offerings, publish them, for so you love to do, O people of Israel, declares the Lord Yahweh.

I gave you cleanness of teeth in all your cities and lack of bread in all your places, yet you did not return to me, declares Yahweh.

I also withheld the rain from you, when there were yet three months to the harvest.

I would send rain on one city and send no rain on another city.

One field would have rain, and the field on which it did not rain would wither.

So two or three cities would wander to another city to drink water and would not be satisfied, yet you did not return to me, declares Yahweh.

I struck you with blight and mildew, your many gardens and your vineyards, your fig trees and your olive trees the locust devoured, yet you did not return to me, declares Yahweh.

I sent among you a pestilence after the manner of Egypt.

I killed your young men with the sword, and carried away your horses, and I made the stench of your camp go up into your nostrils, yet you did not return to me, declares Yahweh.

I overthrew some of you as when God overthrew Sodom and Gomorrah, and you were as a brand plucked out of the burning.

Yet you did not return to me, declares Yahweh.

Therefore, thus I will do to you, O Israel, because I will do this to you, prepare to meet your God, O Israel.

For behold, he who forms the mountains and creates the wind, and declares to man what is his thought, who makes the morning darkness and treads on the heights of the earth, Yahweh, the God of hosts, is his name.

Hear this word that I take up over you in lamentation, O house of Israel.

Fallen no more to rise is the virgin Israel.

Forsaken on her land with none to raise her up.

For thus says the Lord Yahweh, the city that went out a thousand shall have a hundred left, and that which went out a hundred shall have ten left to the house of Israel.

For thus says Yahweh to the house of Israel, seek me and live.

Do not seek Bethel, do not enter into Gilgal or cross over to Bershava, for Gilgal shall surely go into exile, and Bethel shall come to nothing.

Seek Yahweh and live, lest he break out like fire in the house of Joseph, and it devour with none to quench it for Bethel.

O you who turn justice to bitterness and cast down righteousness to the earth.

He who made the Pleiades and Orion, and turns deep darkness into the morning and darkens the day into night, who calls for the waters of the sea and pours them out on the surface of the earth, Yahweh is his name, who makes destruction flash forth against the strong, so that destruction comes upon the fortress.

They hate him who reproves in the gate, and they abhor him who speaks the truth.

Therefore, because you trample on the poor and you exact taxes of grain from him, you have built houses of hewn stone, but you shall not dwell in them.

You have planted pleasant vineyards, but you shall not drink their wine, for I know how many are your transgressions and how great are your sins, you who afflict the righteous, who take a bribe, and turn aside the needy in the gate.

Therefore, he who is prudent will keep silent in such a time, for it is an evil time.

Seek good and not evil, that you may live.

And so, Yahweh, the God of hosts, will be with you as you have said.

Hate evil and love good, and establish justice in the gate, it may be that Yahweh, the God of hosts, will be gracious to the remnant of Joseph.

Therefore thus says Yahweh, the God of hosts, the Lord.

In all the squares there shall be wailing, and in all the streets they shall say Alas, alas.

They shall call the farmers to mourning and to wailing those who are skilled in lamentation, and in all vineyards there shall be wailing, for I will pass through your midst, says Yahweh.

Amen.

You've certainly heard the idiom stepping on someone's toes.

When we use that phrase, we're generally not speaking literally.

It's a figure of speech.

Now we don't enjoy getting our toes squashed, literally or figuratively.

We don't like it when folks infringe on our space.

When they tell us how to do something or tell us what to do.

Perhaps the worst kind of stepping on toes is when someone gets in your face and tells you that you are doing something wrong.

Especially when you believe you're doing nothing wrong.

In the 8th century BC, God told Israel they were doing wrong.

He sent the prophet Amos to step on their toes.

He was to get in their business and tell them how God viewed them.

Now in our series of Does God care questions, the question we will ask this morning is, Does God care when his people sin?

God here is pointing at self.

At self.

And here we see the result of almost unchecked selfishness over the course of decades and even centuries.

As we look at chapter 4 of Amos, the first three verses here highlight a self-centered kind of focus.

This kind of focus is displayed when people ignore the needs and the interests of others in order to indulge themselves.

Amos started by using the phrase, hear this word.

He used that at the beginning of chapter 3, here at chapter 4, and he will do it again in chapter 5.

It highlights the nature of what Amos wants to say.

This is the word of Yahweh, listen up.

Pay attention.

Listen when God speaks.

Well, who's to listen?

The primary audience here we are told is women.

Specifically, wealthy, powerful, married women.

Now Amos hasn't let the husbands off the hook.

Don't worry about that.

There is a plural pronoun that is implied in the word here that is in Hebrew that we don't get in the translation into English.

So God is not letting them off the hook.

He's including them, focusing on the wives, but saying, hey, husbands, you're not off the hook.

I haven't forgotten you.

Now it may sound here as though God is being extremely rude and condescending when he calls these women cows of Bashan.

He wasn't name-calling.

God was describing what one author has called the pampered, selfish, ungodly personality of these wealthy women.

See, Bashan was a fertile area known for its agriculture and its cattle.

You might say that was the area where the prime beef came from.

The cows of Bashan were well fed.

They were well watered, they had no needs.

Everything needed was provided to them in the area of Bashan, and as those cattle had the very best, so too did the women of Samaria.

But their possessions came by three dubious methods oppressing the poor, crushing the needy, and commanding their husbands to pamper their indulgences by doing the same.

God focused on the abusive, powerful women, but he didn't ignore the enabling powerful men behind them.

And these kinds of actions were carried out by people who claimed the name of God.

In essence, saying, We belong to God, therefore God sanctions what we are doing, but God replies to them that he is offended by their sin.

In return, a day of judgment would come.

God said the powerful and the wealthy treated the poor and the needy like animals.

So God would do the same to them.

He would, in essence, carry them away as captives as though they were fish caught with a hook.

The walls they built to protect themselves and their animals became the way through which they would be carried out like trash and tossed away.

God's people had become so self-focused that they were blind to the needs of others.

They indulge their own desires at the expense of others.

God cares when his people abuse their position and mistreat others to benefit themselves.

In that Israel was like all of the nations surrounding them.

Now when we move to verses four and five, there are six commands directed towards Israel's self-gratifying worship.

I was tempted to spend just this entire sermon on those six commands, but I won't, I promise you, we've got a lot to get through.

Six commands.

But to understand these six commands, we need to know a little bit of background.

You remember, I'm sure, King David, who wrote most of the Psalms, and David's son Solomon, who reigned after him.

Well, when Solomon died, his son Rehoboam became king in his place.

But Rehoboam's rule was a disaster.

And the united kingdom that Solomon passed off to his son was then divided between Rehoboam ruling over Judah in the south, and Solomon's servant Jeroboam, reigning over Israel in the north.

He didn't want them to go south into Judah to go to Jerusalem to worship at the temple, so he established two golden calves, one at the northern part of his territory and one at the southern part, so that the people could go to those golden calves and worship them as though that was Yahweh.

So he tricked his people into worshiping Yahweh, but at the same time leading them into idolatry, and God said, Uh-uh, not gonna work.

One of those locations was Bethel, the house of God.

The other that people went to was a location called Gilgal, where God says they multiplied transgression.

Gilgal was Israel's first campground after crossing over the Jordan River into the promised land.

So you remember Moses led them out of the land of Egypt, wandering in the desert for forty years.

Moses dies and commands Joshua to take them across the Jordan River into the land of promise.

God would stop the flow of the river, and they would cross over on dry ground, and Joshua commanded twelve elders of the people of Israel to stop in the middle of the river, pick up a stone, and carry it across.

Because when they got across, they wanted to establish a memorial for what God did.

To remember the amazing power and nature and provision of their God.

Centuries later, instead of remembering and honoring God, they turned Gilgal into an evil place of worship to gratify themselves.

God said through Hosea, decades later, after Amos, in Hosea 9, every evil of my people is in Gilgal.

It's there that I began to hate them.

Let that resonate with you for a minute.

God's chosen people that he brought out of Egypt caused them to cross over and establish a memorial so that they could remember him.

And it's at that place where they were to remember him that God said, It's there that I began to hate you, my people.

That's astounding.

It's astounding.

Instead of remembering and honoring God, it became an evil place of worship.

And what follows then in verses four and five is a description of hyper-focused worship.

Today we might say that these are the folks who are at church every single time the doors are open.

They're the people who serve everywhere.

They give tithes every Sunday and they celebrate communion and they sing their hearts out.

And then they go and they make sure that everybody knows that they were in church today.

They make sure that they know how much they sacrificed for God.

But their motives are evil, because God says in verse 5, For so you love to do.

You love to come and make a show of worship, but you're doing it out of evil intent.

During the week they ground the poor and needy into the dust of the earth, but on Sunday they stood up and proclaimed how holy and righteous they were.

Now let's not miss that Amos intended to not only step on toes, but to stomp on them.

And so we need to hear the application in a similar kind of way.

How could we apply this in a way that feels like stepping on our toes?

Oh, we can't give an exhaustive list, but maybe here's a way to start.

This is the man who appears to be a solid Christian on Sundays but is merely one of the guys the rest of the week.

This is the husband who makes a good showing at church and at men's events, but goes home and berates or beats his wife and children.

This is the the wife who volunteers all over the church's ministries but undermines her husband's leadership at home and demeans him in public and to their children.

This is the teenager who is at youth group every week but lives it up whenever possible with the unsaved cool kids.

Oh, we're not that bad, are we?

Well, how about this?

This is the man, woman, boy, or girl, spouse, roommate, who holds anger and bitterness in their heart against another while pretending to be a good Christian by coming to church and taking communion with no confession or repentance.

This is the Christian overcome by worry and anxiety during the week, but comes to church on Sunday morning and talks heartily of trusting in God's sovereignty.

We all fit in here somewhere, don't we?

Beloved God cares when his people make a show of faith while their hearts are far, far from him.

But the sovereign Lord is just getting started.

Verses six through eleven list seven I did this statements, and none of them are good.

In response to their sinfulness, God acted in seven different ways to draw his people to repentance, to mold them and make them to return to him.

At the same time, it illustrates God's perfect discipline and his complete patience while highlighting the self-conceited ignorance of his people.

Look at what God says.

Verse 6.

I gave you clean teeth.

That's a poetic way of saying I starved you.

You didn't have bread and meat to get stuck between your teeth.

I gave you empty stomachs and lack of bread.

That's famine.

I withheld rain, he says, that's drought.

I gave selective rain, that's partial drought.

I struck you with blight and mildew, that's crop disease.

And locusts, that's crop destruction.

I sent pestilence like Egypt, that's plagues.

I killed your men with the sword, that's war.

I overthrew some of you.

The language that Amos uses indicates it was probably a natural disaster like an earthquake or a fire or a flood or tornado.

I did this, I did this, I did this, I did this, and they're all terrible.

Even in our modern world, we we tend to see these kinds of events and circumstances as chance happenings.

In fact, our insurance companies call them acts of God.

Some things that just happen because somehow they happened, even though they don't believe in God.

Take the recent hurricanes and the fire in California now, as terrible as it is.

We have scientific explanations for storms.

We even have the ability to watch hurricanes develop in the seas.

We know what causes fires to rage out of control.

In fact, these things are so prevalent now that in some ways they seem just normal to us, at least until they happen to us.

We must remember that the sovereign God is behind all things.

As God's people, we must always come back to that truth.

The same God who caused the earth to quake at the crucifixion and who calmed the storm from a boat is powerful enough to bring about famine, drought, crop destruction, plagues, war, and other disasters.

Israel received all of those things, all seven of them, and merely went on about her sinful business of crushing the poor and the helpless, and taking advantage of the less fortunate in self-conceited ignorance.

They refused to recognize the hand of her God behind all of those disasters.

They were so caught up in themselves that they did not look to God.

Now, in this situation, God gives us the reason behind his seven actions of disaster.

He desired repentance.

He wanted his people to turn to him in faith and love and obedience, leaving behind their sinful ways.

Again and again, five times God said, Yet you did not return to me.

In our home, we are working diligently, sometimes it feels fugitively, but diligently to help our three-year-old son obey the first time.

He's three.

Seven times God sent disaster.

Five times he said, Yet you did not return to me.

Sometimes we don't listen.

Even when we claim to know God.

And it makes sense for the unbelieving world to respond that way.

God's power and his deity are evident in all of creation, but the God of this world has blinded them to that truth.

We understand that they can't get it, but we ought to be able to expect God's people to respond properly to the hand of God.

You know, I think sometimes that we are afraid to connect our kind, loving, and gracious God to disaster.

We don't want to put him as the cause of something terrible.

Because it's more comfortable to view those acts of God as a form of evil, or at least an element of a world gone wrong because of sin.

Maybe we don't have answers, so we resort to what makes sense from our own personal point of view.

I think sometimes that we've made our God too loving to bring about destruction.

But that belief doesn't fit with what God says about Himself.

For example, in one of the, in my opinion, one of the most astounding verses in Scripture, Isaiah 45, verse 7, God says, I form light and create darkness.

Isaiah 45:7

Wonderful.

Paraphrasing Genesis 1, right?

We understand that, we get that, but then he goes on to say, I make well-being and create calamity.

I am Yahweh who does all these things.

The sovereign God is behind all things.

He may directly cause them or he may allow them to occur, and all that he does without sin, and we may not know the reasons.

We may never know the reasons why God is sending fires in California.

We may never know the reasons why God sent a tsunami in Indonesia.

We cannot point to the disasters and the conflicts in our world and say with certainty what God is intending, but there are at least two things that we do know with certainty.

At least two things are true.

One, God is still enthroned in the heavens above all of the earth as Lord of all, and two, it is his kind and loving desire that all people everywhere move closer to him through repentance of sin, faith in him, trust in his son, and follow him in obedience.

God desired repentance from Israel.

And these terrible events were designed, were intended to be examples of his kindness and grace.

Imagine that.

Imagine a terrible event, a disaster being an example of God's kindness and grace.

God said, I'm giving you famine so that you'll turn to me.

That's kindness and grace.

God says, I'm giving you drought so that you'll turn to me.

Kindness and grace, patience.

He may want to increase our trust in him.

God may send a terrible situation into our world, into our lives, to reduce our reliance on our worldly supports.

He may want us to pursue him for our comfort rather than the things that we possess.

He may discipline us or bring temporal judgment in response to no repentance.

Amos looked around and saw his people looking to false gods for hope and for help.

The one they desperately needed wasn't not even considered.

They were still prospering, their economy was still thriving, so why turn to God?

Yet you did not return to me.

What do you think?

Do we do this?

Do we turn to God in faith, trust, and obedience as a result of disasters?

As a result of situations in life that try us and test us.

See, God cares when his people don't respond to him in faith, repentance, and obedience.

The problem is that we're so focused on ourselves.

And yet, even at this point, even after seven times of bringing disaster and five times of saying, Yet you did not respond to me, you did not turn to me, even still God is gracious and kind.

He is still giving them a chance.

He says, Seek me and live.

The problem is that those who think that they are good with God, that there's nothing wrong, because, hey, well, we're good people who do so much for him, after all.

I was in church on Sunday.

They cannot see their need for him.

They're self-righteous, and as is most often the case with self-righteous people, they benefit from others.

In Amos' time the self-righteous people carried out self-righteous extortion.

Look at chapter five.

Chapter five, verse seven.

O you who turn justice to wormwood, wormwood is a reference to bitterness, to bitter fruit.

The joy of justice they replaced with bitterness.

Righteousness and innocence is trampled underfoot rather than sought out.

In verse ten, correction was hated.

They declared, I'm right, and I cannot be wrong.

Verse eleven of chapter five, the poor are taken advantage of and taxed heavily.

The rich and the powerful benefit from that.

As we go on, the righteous and the innocent are afflicted, bribes rule the day, the needy can't even get a hearing, much less justice.

I have a difficult time not hearing our own country and culture in those statements.

Now, Israel may have been worse, but it feels as though we're traveling down that same path today.

In the midst of this self-righteous extortion is an abrupt interruption, and we need it because we're driven to silence by this stepping on of toes, of this getting into our business.

The interruption is found in verse 8, in Amos's description of an awesome and sovereign God.

But before we get to verse 8, we have to notice in verse 7 this description of an evil kind of turning.

The wealthy and the powerful of Amos' day sought to turn their society, turn their world around so that everything in it would benefit them, would give them more possessions, more wealth, more status, and more power.

That kind of turning, that kind of transformation is evil.

But the sovereign God, Amos says in verse 8, is an incredible contrast.

Think of his power.

He turns the constellations of the universe to mark the seasons, and he transforms the earth from day to day.

He brings about eclipses.

His power is such that he can unleash destroying water on the earth and bring judgment at any moment.

And all of that is intended for us to see the character of God.

Yes, his power on the one hand, but his character in using that power.

God is powerful, but he always uses his power for good.

We ought to turn the world, to turn our society not for our personal benefit, but to display the character and the power of our God.

God cares when his people refuse to display his character toward others.

When life and society and our world becomes all about us, and we seek to transform it, we seek to turn it within our power, within our abilities, for our benefit, we are not showing God's character, we are showing our own evil nature.

Israel was not even able to show God's character because they were motivated by a self-sufficient faith.

For the third time, they were exhorted here in verse 14 to seek God in faith and faithful obedience.

Ironically, they believed that Yahweh was with them.

That he was benefiting them, that he was prospering them, but their faith was not in him, but in themselves.

God cares when his people prefer themselves over him.

God cares when his people's joy is found in what pleases them rather than what pleases him.

How do you approach God?

How do you how do you approach him?

Do you come to his word for yourself?

For your own pleasure, for your own feel-good?

Or do you come to know him?

Do you approach his word to know the one who gave himself for you?

Do you come to church for personal benefit?

To feel like you've done your duty?

Or do you come to bow the knee before a sovereign God?

Do you come away from gathering with his people, changed by his awesome holiness, so that his character is now evident in you?

Of course we do, Pastor.

We're not evil.

I hope that is not your attitude, because we need to be careful with that kind of an attitude.

It was to a church, to a church in the book of Revelation that the Lord Jesus Himself said, I know your works.

You have a great reputation of being alive, but you're dead.

Wake up, strengthen what remains, and is about to die, for I have not found your works complete.

Remember then what you have heard and received.

Keep it and repent.

If you will not wake up, I will come against you like a thief.

To a church he said that.

God's conclusion to Israel is not much different in verses sixteen and seventeen.

Therefore, thus says Yahweh, the God of hosts, the Lord.

In all the squares there shall be wailing, and all the streets they shall say, Alas, alas.

They shall call the farmers to mourning and to wailing those who are skilled in lamentation, in all the vineyards there shall be wailing, for I will pass through your midst, says Yahweh.

That's a veiled reference to God's passing through the midst of Egypt to slaughter the firstborn sons.

That's not the kind of presence of God that you want to have or encounter.

Their self-sufficient faith would not stand God's test, and according to the book of Jude, our churches today may be filled with these kinds of people who have a false self-sufficient faith.

So what is required of us?

As we have our toes crushed by a prophet from twenty six hundred years ago, what what do we do?

Seek Christ and live.

Seek Christ for saving grace.

Friend, you may be hearing this and feeling that tug of God's Spirit drawing you to let go of those tightly held to pleasures of this world.

He may be moving you to let go of your reliance on your religiosity and your self-sufficiency to run to Jesus.

Run.

Don't walk, run.

Run to Jesus and live.

Maybe you've been in church your whole life.

But this morning, right now, you are realizing that your life has been characterized by a fake faith.

Run to Jesus.

Run to him, asking him to grant you a repentant and believing heart.

Seek his saving grace and live.

Seek his forgiving grace.

Beloved in Christ, God cares when his people sin.

Now he knows that we are weak and he knows that we do sin.

It's not a surprise to him, it doesn't catch him off guard.

Run to Jesus.

Run.

Don't walk, run.

A hard, unrepentant heart may develop if we stand firm in our self-conceited ignorance or self-sufficiency.

But his forgiving grace is there.

He promised, and he who promised is faithful and just to forgive.

Run to Jesus and seek his forgiving grace.

Seek his sustaining grace.

The world in which we live seeks evil, not good.

It hates good and loves evil.

Justice will not be established as it should be until the Lord Himself returns and reigns and rules in justice.

The influence of this world and indwelling sin will push you away from Christ, not towards him.

The desires of this world will not lead you to his word, but away from it.

It will not feed you with his word, it will starve you.

So we must see our need, a continual, daily need in all of life for Christ Himself and for the power of His Spirit to sustain us through His Word as His people.

Run to Jesus, run to His Word, and He will be with you.

Run to His Word and hear Him speak.

He promised to hold you fast.

Seek Jesus and live.

Let's pray.

Our Lord Jesus, we come to you, acknowledging our weakness, acknowledging our inability to seek you, to hold on to you.

By the power of your spirit move mightily within us so that we might run to you for whatever we need.

Hold us fast to yourself, do not let us run away.

Do not let us drift, do not let us be caught in the pleasures and the desires of this world, but to seek you and live.

Amen.

That concludes this sermon from Faith Evangelical Free Church.

Our mission is to declare the Word of God and disciple believers into mature, devoted followers of Jesus.

You can learn more by visiting our website at faithfree.com.