Amos: The God Who Cares that We Care | Pastor PJ Berner

His apathy stands on the shore, but refuses to connect with the sufferer.

So right before this, he's pictured, the sufferer is the one who's drowning.

The sufferer is the one that's in the the pit.

And specifically he uses the idea of quicksand and he says, apathy

stands on the shore and refuses to connect with the sufferer.

Empathy dives in to connect with the sufferer, but loses touch with the shore.

I.

The virtue of compassion or sympathy insists on being tethered to both.

Maintaining contact with the shore so that we can help the person who's in need.

He develops that thought throughout the book, and I think he does so in

a really helpful and compelling way.

But that's a little bit about what we're talking about when we come

to the book of Amos this morning.

Amos is going to present a picture of God and his concern, and his care and

his compassion for those that are needy and destitute and helpless, impoverished.

In fact, God's gonna go after Israel, the Northern Kingdom for their neglect

of their abuse, of their apathy.

They're the ones that are apathetic here towards the

suffering people in their midst.

And as we, as the church think about that, I think this is an area for us to

lean into a little bit to, to understand that as we look around our culture and

society, that we can't take an apathetic.

Point of view that we can't take an apathetic position.

We can't stand on the shore huddled in our, our holy huddles as the church

and look at the destitute, the poor, the needy among us, and just say, well,

uh, we'll preach the gospel to them because that's really what they need.

But that's as, that's our obligation, that is the primary obligation that we have.

It's not the only obligation that we have.

And the Book of Amos is gonna lay that out for us.

In fact, the book of Amos is gonna do this.

It's gonna show us that because God cares.

About the poor and the needy, and the destitute and the helpless.

God cares that we care too.

God cares that we care too.

And we're gonna find out what that should look like as we

walk through this book together.

The book of Amos Falls right around the middle of the eighth

century BC seven 60 to seven 50.

His, uh, reign or his prophecy, his prophetic ministry, according to

Amos one, one, uh, took place during the reigns of the kings that that

reign from about 7 93 to 7 39 bc.

And, and so we kind of take the middle of that range as the time that he probably

wrote, probably prophesied during this.

Amos is a, a unique.

Author of the book, and we know it's him because Amos one, one says that

it is him, the words of Amos, and he's unique because you'll notice

he was among the shepherds of Koa.

And so Amos was not the son of a prophet.

He didn't grow up aspiring to be a prophet.

He was out shepherding.

He was breeding sheep most likely, and God calls him from that and it says he

calls him from that in the region of Koa.

Here's another interesting thing about Amos.

Amos lived about 10 miles south of Jerusalem, which means he was part

of the Southern kingdom, and yet God takes him and calls him to go and

prophesy a message of judgment that's coming against the Northern Kingdom.

If you're not familiar with what's going on here after King Solomon, the, the

Kingdom of Israel split into two kingdoms.

You had the northern kingdom and then you had the southern kingdom of Judah.

And so he comes, Amos does, from the southern kingdom of Judah,

and God is sending him to the northern kingdom of Israel.

Again, date around seven 50, the audience, Israel and, and the theme we've

been talking about, these key words to associate with these books each week.

And so Hosea was the word redemption.

And then we got to Joel and the word was repentance.

Now as we come to Amos, the word for us this week is gonna be the word justice.

Justice.

This is a book again about God's care and compassion for the, the needy,

the destitute, the poor, the helpless, and about how he cares that we care

to Israel neglected that, and God was going to come in judgment against them.

The book's gonna break down this way.

Just a quick outline for you, chapters one and two, indictment.

God's leveling the, the guilt against Israel.

You are being indicted for your neglect of the needy, your neglect of the

compassion ministry that you've been called to chapters three through six.

Then it provide the detailed charges of that indictment.

Here's specifically Israel, what you've done, and here's where you've gone wrong.

And then chapter seven through nine, deal with the judgment of God

against the people of Israel there.

Our task this morning is to cover this book and to say, okay, so what does

this have to do with us Amos written.

Almost 3000 years ago, 2,700 years ago, about to a people that are Northern

Tribe that that's not even there anymore.

The Northern Kingdom is gone exile in 7 22 bc.

What does this have to do with us?

Well, that's what I hope to answer this morning as we look at Amos,

the God who cares, that we care.

Let's pick up in chapter one.

In chapter one through two, we find eight judgements against

eight different nations.

And so what we're gonna see here is we're gonna see 'em

start out with Damascus, Syria.

And that's in chapter one, verses one through five and then you get

Gaza or Philistia chapter one verses six through eight, and then you get

tire nine through 10, you get edem.

That's the mites, the the descendants of Esau.

And then you've get, you've got Amon Ian verses 13 through 15, and then Moab in

chapter two verses one through three.

So you can imagine, as Amos is going before Israel, and he's going through

these initial judgements, these first six Israel's probably sitting there nodding

their heads along going, yes, amen.

Yes, judge, those pagan nations, they deserve it.

They're awful, they're godless.

They don't do what God wants them to do.

This is great, Amos.

We like you.

You're a good prophet.

You can hang around.

But the problem is that in verse four, he turns his sights on Judah.

And my assumption is at that point, the excitement from Israel

kind of died down a little bit.

Wait a minute, this is a little bit too close to home.

This is our own backyard now that God is concerned with.

And then sure enough, in verse six, the Lord turns his attention to Israel.

In fact, the longest portion of judgment in these opening eight has to do with the

northern kingdom, has to do with Israel.

And what was God judging in Israel?

We'll look at chapter two, verse six with me.

Chapter two, verse six.

It says this, thus says the Lord for three transgressions of Israel and for

four, I will not revoke the punishment because they sell the righteous for

silver and the needy for a pair of sandals, those who trampled the head of

the poor into the dust of the earth and turn aside the way of the afflicted.

A man and his father go into the same girl, so that my holy name is profaned.

And they lay themselves down beside every altar on garments taken in

pledge and in the house of their God.

They drink the wine of those who have been fined.

And, and so God provides these three kind of four high level

indictments against Israel.

These, these charges, number one, the devaluing of human life There in

verse six, he says, you're selling the needy for silver and for a pair

of sandals, you don't value those.

That, that God would say I have created in my image.

You're devaluing human life.

Second, he says, the needy were abused and neglected.

They trampled their head down into the dust of the earth and turn

aside the way of the afflicted.

They're not executing justice for those in need.

Third sexual immorality and perversion were running rampant.

The man and the father going into the same girl.

I won't go any further than that on that one.

And then finally, verse eight, oppression of those who are in debt.

This one might take a little bit of explanation.

Verse eight.

They lay themselves down beside every altar on garments taken in pledge.

A person's cloak was really the last item that they had that they

could give in payment of a debt.

And, and in fact, Jesus even talks about that if, if somebody has l you

their cloak, make sure you return it before the, the evening comes so

that they can be warm, they won't be cold, they won't be exposed.

This was really the last thing somebody had, the last shred of

dignity, the last element that they had to be given to repay a debt.

And in fact, it was oftentimes when debts were exacted to their fullest, they

would take the garment and here God is charging Israel with having done that.

You've taken the garments and you haven't taken them because you need them.

You haven't taken them to sell them so that then you can get some of the

money back that you lent to this person.

No, no, no.

You've taken them and you've just made them, uh, something to lay beside the

altar on top of you've taken these things without even really needing them.

In other words, and that's the same idea with the wine too, he says, and they

drink wine in the house of their God, uh, uh, from those who have been fined.

Wine was also used from time to time to repay a debt.

And here the scene is not that they need the wine.

It's not that they're gonna take the wine and and sell it to again, make

up the money that they had loaned.

No, they're gonna take the wine into the house of God and they're gonna use it

for frivolity and mirth and drunkenness.

And so again, the oppression of those in need, God is calling

Israel for account on these things.

What had happened at this time was Israel was living in a time of, of

great opulence in the northern kingdom.

During the reign of these kings, things were going, well, not morally,

not spiritually, but financially I.

This was a culture wherein they were blessed, they had every

luxury that they could need.

They may have been living in the, the prosper of Israel at the

time, if we could put it that way.

And yet the problem was, what that had done is it so often does is it

created the haves and the have nots.

And what the problem with Israel was, is that the have nots were

being abused and neglected and mistreated by those that had.

And the biggest issue with that is that God had called

them to something different.

Exodus chapter 23, verse six says, you shall not pervert the justice

Exodus 23 · chapter mention

due to the poor in his lawsuit.

That's just one example from the law where God said, Hey,

you need to care for the poor.

You need to care for the needy, the afflicted.

If you've been tracking with us in our daily Bible reading, the book of

Proverbs has been replete with times where Solomon has instructed his son

about how evil it is and wicked it is to take advantage of those that are

less fortunate than you to hurt them, to oppress them, to do evil against them.

We're gonna dive more into the subject of justice in our second point this morning.

But for now, I want us to notice God's intentionality here in how

he sets up this opening indictment.

Again, he could have come straight outta the book and said, Israel,

you got a problem with justice.

But instead, he kind of circles the runway with them until he finally sets them up

and lands the plane with the longest of all the judgment passages in chapter one.

If Israel was listening to this.

Then those that were listening to it with ears to hear should have been

terrified by this Amos two 13 through 16.

Behold, I will press you down in your place as a cart

full of Sheaves presses down.

The image there is of after a harvest and the cart is loaded down with all of the

weight of the harvest and it is crushing anything in his path under that weight.

He says, I will press you down in your place as a cart full of sheaves presses

down flight shall perish from the swift.

You won't be able to run from me.

Strong shall not retain their strength.

You're not gonna be able to resist me, nor the mighty save his life.

He who handles the bow shall not stand.

Weapons, won't stand against my judgment, and he who is swift of

foot shall not save himself, nor he who rides the horse save his life.

He who is stout of heart, among the mighty shall flee away naked

in that day to clears the Lord.

Even the bravest among you are going to be terrified again.

For the person with ears to hear that message would've been terrifying.

Frightening.

Even as we listen to this message as, as we sit here today, it's a message

that should instill a little bit of, of terror in us, discomfort in us.

That, that this God is the same God that we serve and worship today.

Now there's a difference.

We're not afraid of obliteration.

See, Israel was gonna be taken out in 7 22 BC and they would

never be a kingdom again.

The northern Kingdom would never exist again and will never exist again.

There's a remnant from them that will be part of true Israel as it's restored.

But God was, was done.

And that's his message here, Israel, I'm done with you.

And, and so we don't fear that as Christians, right?

Because why?

Because of the cross.

God is never gonna look at you and say, I'm done with you.

If you are in Christ, God is never gonna look at you and say, you are

being condemned to hell God this morning doesn't want you to carry

the weight of a fear of judgment.

That's one John four, when it says perfect love, cast out fear.

That's what it's talking about.

You don't have to fear God in the sense of saying, God, I, I'm afraid

that you're going to send me to hell.

If you're in Christ, God's not gonna send you to hell.

That's the whole point of the cross.

And yet the Bible does say as Christians, that there is a fear

of God that we should possess.

So as we see this opening chapter, I.

One of the things that's gonna cause us to respond to loving those, caring for

those that are needy and destitute and helpless because God cares that we care.

The the foundation of that is gonna come in a right understanding of who

God is, a right relationship to God.

That's based on this point.

Number one, we need to accept fear alongside love.

We need to accept fear alongside love.

The right kind of fear, not the fear that man, God's gonna turn you into a burn mark

on the ground if you don't please him.

Not that kind of fear.

A different fear.

A fear that is a fear of awe.

A fear that understands the power of God, the majesty of God, the

glory of God, the holiness of God.

A fear that says God, you care about something, so I need

to care about that thing too.

If you remember the song by Rich Mullen's originally, awesome God,

I think Phil Wickham has recently taken it in, in modernize it,

I guess you could call it that.

Um, but our God is an awesome God, right?

What does that mean?

We say awesome.

We say, that's awesome.

That's great.

We, we've lost all sense of meaning in that word, haven't we?

Thanks to the 1980s and the skateboard culture that came outta that, right?

Awesome, rad.

All that stuff.

That word means to be filled with awe, to be fearful even is what

the word in the Hebrew means.

To have reverence for something, to have honor for something.

Or maybe you can think about it this way, this relationship of love and

fear, because we need to love God undoubtedly, and that is so important

in our relationship with him.

We love him because he first loved us, and that is so crucial for us, right?

We draw near to him as adopted sons and daughters of God.

And yet we also marry that with a, a fear and a reverence for him.

Let me e explain it this way.

Um, picture a gun, if you will.

You can look at a gun and, and let's go back to the, the time when people had to

hunt for their food or to Amir's house, um, where he still hunts for his food.

You can look at a gun and you can go, man, I love that gun

because of what it does for me.

That gun protects my family.

That gun helps me get food for my family and put food on the table.

So in a sense, I love that gun, and yet you can also look at that gun and say, but

I have a respect for what that gun can do.

If I'm not careful in my approach to that gun, if I don't use that gun the way I

need to, the way that I'm supposed to use that gun, then that same thing that I

love, that can be so helpful and so good for me and my family can become something

that is horribly devastating to us.

That's a little bit of the relationship of fear and love and

how they can coexist together.

Those of you that are are weapons specialists out there?

I'm not.

I don't pretend to be one.

I carry a pocket knife and I'm, I'm okay with that, but not great with it.

You don't, you're not afraid every time you pick up your gun, but you

do understand what it is to have the fear of it, and, and yet you

also have that passion for it too.

You're like, I see the good in this thing.

When we approach God, we approach him that way.

We're not always trembling and trepid being totally fearful when we come

before him saying, God, you're, you're gonna cast me away from your presence.

You're gonna throw me into the pit of hell.

He's not gonna do that.

That's one John four.

You don't have to fear that.

You come before him, knowing the God that you come before Israel had

forgotten that God and God was calling them to account on that following God

involves both the fear and the love.

And so if you know a profession Christian who would say, I don't fear God,

man, you should fear for that person.

I've talked to people.

In fact, there was a person back in California that I talked to him

multiple times that sat with me and said, I don't think fearing

God is a New Testament concept.

Peter literally says, in one Peter, fear God.

And and beyond that you have Jesus in the gospel saying, I don't fear man.

What can man do to you?

Man can kill the body if you're the one that can destroy both

the body and soul and hell.

And even if it was just an Old Testament God concept, the God of the Old Testament

is the God of the New Testament.

And so to, to isolate these commandments to the Old Testament, go, well, we don't

have to fear him anymore because you know, the New Testament God is Jesus

and the Old Testament God is Yahweh.

That's a perversion of the scriptures by itself.

But it is something that's called on for us as Christians.

So I guess we need to ask the question then, what should

that look like in my life?

If it's not this trepidation where I'm like, God, I don't

want any to be around you because I'm afraid you're gonna zap me.

That's not the right fear that a Christian should have it.

It's a different kind of fear.

It's a respect, it's a reverence, it's an honor.

As we approach him, what does that look like?

Well, by God's providence, we're in the Book of Proverbs now in our daily Bible

reading, and here's some of the things that Proverbs says, the fear of the Lord

is the fear of the Lord is hating evil.

It's looking at sin, it's looking at wickedness in my life and

saying, man, I I, I hate that.

I don't want that to be present in my life, which I follow up to.

That is what we talked about last week.

The fear of the Lord is repenting from sin.

It's putting sin off and saying, I, I wanna turn from this.

I don't wanna walk in the way of the wicked.

I want to write these things.

The fear of the Lord is also Proverbs one, seven, loving wisdom.

The fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge and understanding.

So the fear of the Lord is to love the wisdom of the, the

word of God, to love God's word.

The fear of the Lord is also growing in humility.

Proverbs 1533 associates having a, a, a mindset.

That is a humble mindset because we fear God.

The fear of the Lord is also resting in confidence.

In Proverbs 1923, part of the fear of God on the, the positive side of

of the scale is you're gonna say God.

I, I fear you in the sense that I believe in your, your

promises and your commandments.

I, I trust that you are gonna follow through.

I trust that when I breathe my last here, I will open my eyes in

the presence of you in eternity.

That's part of our fear, and the Lord is resting in that confidence, fear, the

Lord that is also learning contentment while we're here, that we will be content

with what God has provided for us.

If this is what the fear of the Lord looks like in our life,

the question might follow, okay, well how do I cultivate that?

How do I grow in my fear of the Lord?

And the answer is through God's word.

The more time you spend in the word of God, reading it, memorizing it,

meditating on it, the more you will find that you fear the God of the

Bible, the more you'll get to know him.

And the more you get to know him, you will have an awesome view of him.

He will inspire all within you, and at the same time, the more

your love will increase for him.

And so it's a both and it's not an either or.

And so we have a relationship with God that is based both in a fear of God and a

love for God, and that has to be intact.

If we're gonna understand where we're gonna go from here, uh, because God

is going to now in the next part of this book, in chapter three through

six level, the charges against Israel.

Israel, I've, I've given you the high level what you've done, but now Israel,

let's talk specifically about some of the things that I'm upset with.

And so in chapter three through six, Amos Unpacks the reason for the indictment

that was announced in chapter two.

Look at verse seven.

Here's the high level of it, of chapter five.

Yeah, verse seven of what's chapter, chapter five.

It says this, oh, you who turned justice to wormwood and cast

down righteousness to the earth.

Wormwood was a, a poison you who poison justice and you cast

down righteousness to the earth.

Those two terms, those two concepts were at the heart of the, the

problem facing the northern kingdom.

They had neglected righteousness and justice.

Amos chapter three.

We're gonna do a little bit of flip-flopping back and forth here

in these middle chapters here, Amos chapter three, verses nine and 10.

Amos three, nine and 10 says, proclaim to the strongholds in Ashdod and

to the strongholds in the land of Egypt, and say, assemble yourselves

in the mountains of Sumaria.

And see the great tumults within her and the oppressed in her midst.

And so here God is calling on these pagan nations to come and take root

on the mountains of Samaria, the capital of the northern kingdom.

And he says, I want you to look at at how depraved they are.

This is sobering.

God is calling foreign nations to come and look at how evil Israel had been in

oppressing the needy and oppressing those that were destitute, those that were

needing care and concern, instead, the perversion of justice and righteousness.

So he's calling for them and then he says this in verse 10, they do not

know how to do right, declares the Lord, those who store up violence

and robbery in their strongholds.

And so God is calling on these foreign nations to come and look

at how they've oppressed people and to be appalled at that.

Look at chapter four verse one.

Amos chapter four, verse one.

He says this, hear this word you.

Cows of baan.

Alright, he's talking about the ladies of the Northern Kingdom.

This tells us Amos was not looking for a wife as he was

prophesying the cows of Baan.

What does that mean?

Well, Baan, we have to understand first was an area that was, was very lush green.

It had pastures that were very rich and always well supplied.

And so the cows from that region were just, they were plumped, they were

good, they were roton, they were round.

And so he's looking now at the ladies, specifically in the northern kingdom, and

he's saying, here this word you cows of baan, you are on the mountain of Samira.

You oppress the poor and crush the needy.

And you say to your husbands, bring that we may drink.

So he's indicting the, the opulence and, and the comfortable lifestyle

of these women who have even, I think what's partially implied here, usurp

the roles even of, of marriage there.

I think this is a problem that is, is thorough.

It's reached not just from the leaders of the nation, not just in the men

of the nation, but the ladies in the nation are doing the same things here.

One more.

Amos five 12.

Amos five 12.

He says, for I know how many are your transgressions?

How great are your sins?

You who afflict the righteous, who take a bribe and turn

aside the needy in the gates?

And so you see that the reason God was so angry with Israel was because

of how they had treated the poor, the oppressed, the needy, the afflicted,

the destitute, the comfortable and prosperous in Israel, were enjoying a

life of ease while oppressing the poor and ignoring the call that they had from

God according to the law to make sure that they did justice in accordance with them.

God had tried to get their attention prior to this.

By the way, this is not the first time God had tried to grab their attention

and, and to shake them out of this apathy.

We know that because in verse six of chapter four, he said, I gave you

cleanness of teeth in all your cities.

In other words, Israel, I sent famine to you, and what does it say?

Yet you did not return to me.

Amos chapter four, verses seven through 80 says, I also withheld rain from you.

So I, I, I sent drought upon you Israel, and, and what did you

do yet you did not return to me.

Amos four, nine.

He says, I, I struck you with blight and mildew.

I went after your crops, your gardens, your vineyards.

I went after your food supply, Israel, and, and yet you did not return to me.

Amos four.

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

I killed your young men with the sword, and yet Israel,

you, you did not return to me.

Amos four 11.

I even overthrew some of you as when God overthrew, Sodom and Gomorrah.

And yet Israel, you, you did not return to me.

So you see God had fired warning shots across the bow multiple times with his

people trying to get their attention, trying to say What you are doing is wrong.

And yet Israel had ignored God the whole time.

Such to the point that it leads to verse 12 of chapter four, where he

says, therefore, thus I will do to you O Israel because I will do this to you.

Prepare to meet your God O Israel.

Prepare to meet your God.

It's a terrifying prospect for anyone who is living in a life

of disobedience to God in.

In fact, God confronts them in chapter eight, chapter five, verse

18, because there's some that were even welcoming the day of the Lord

saying, bring the day of the Lord.

We welcome the day of the Lord.

And he says, the prophet does.

Why do you desire the day of the Lord?

We talked out about that a little bit last week in Joel, that the day of the

Lord is the day of wrath and judgment.

And God is saying to Israel, you're gonna be a target of that.

Prepare to meet your God.

All because of what?

Because of injustice.

Now, when we talk about justice in the church, it makes us squirm a little bit.

In fact, some of y'all who have not been here before are probably wondering, what

kind of a church did I walk into here?

Are we about to go woke?

Are we about to go social justice?

No, we're not.

We're about to go biblical though.

See, here's the thing.

Justice makes us uncomfortable because it's been kidnapped and hijacked.

The term has by the woke left who have said, this is what it is to,

to be a light amongst the nations.

And my fear is this.

My fear is that we've thrown the baby of a gobbly concern for justice out with

the bathwater of social justice ideology.

And as a church, it's upon us.

To regain an understanding of what the God of the Bible calls us to biblically as far

as our concerned for those that are needy and oppressed and poor and afflicted.

See, we have to care about them because God cares about them

and God cares that we care.

And so along those lines, as we approach the book of Amos and say, man, what do we

do with the book of Amos as it's written to Israel back in 750 BC around that

time, and we're sitting here in 2020.

What year is it?

2025.

Thank you.

Uh.

In America.

What does this have to do with us?

Well, I think the lessons are ours to learn as well.

Point number two, this morning, along those lines are this value justice

alongside righteousness, value justice alongside righteousness.

It's not just that, yeah, we need to know love and fear.

We also need to know righteousness and justice.

I think we're good with righteousness.

We're comfortable there.

We're like, yes, we need to be a godly people, a holy people, a purified

people in our, we're righteous in Jesus Christ, our Lord and Savior.

Amen.

Yes.

And we need to be a people of justice.

In fact, these two terms, righteousness and justice, are related to one

another, the related to one another.

In the Hebrew, the word righteousness has undergirding it as its root.

The idea of being right with God.

That's why we must be declared righteous.

To be declared righteous is to be declared right in relationship with God.

The problem is in our broken and fallen world, through sin, through

acts of injustice, we are, we see that that rightness broken, and

so that rightness that's broken is through what we know as injustice.

And so that's why we need to be justified, right?

To be declared righteous, to be declared at one again with God.

We need to be justified, which means that brokenness has to be restored.

And so that's from a, a, a spiritual salvation level, the term

righteousness and justice, those two things are married to one another.

Righteousness is the presence of justice.

Unrighteousness is the presence of injustice.

And so those two things go hand in hand.

And, and so let's take that now into the church.

We can understand that relationally with one another, right?

We can have a righteous relationship with someone else in the church when things are

on, on level with one another, where we have a good relationship with one another.

But when we sin against one another, when we commit an injustice against

our brother or sister in Christ, that relationship is severed for a time.

And what that means that we need to do is through reconciliation, through

confession, through repentance.

That relationship needs to be brought back together.

It needs to be made righteous again, made right with one another again.

That's within the church.

Now let's take that to the full scope of humanity.

We live in a world that is a world of injustice because we

live in a broken and fallen world.

And so the primary methodology of us saying, man, the the world, and

God, there's a of a gap here, is to say, we need to preach the gospel

to those that are lost and they need to be made right with God.

100%.

That is the mission of the church.

Alongside that, though, not in place of that, not above that.

Alongside that though, I do believe the church needs to look at the realities

of injustice that are done in the world as far as the affliction of

the poor, the needy, the destitute, the helpless, and to say we have

an obligation to love them too.

We have an obligation to do something about that as well.

Proverbs 31, verses eight and nine says this, open your mouth for the mute for

the rights of all who are destitute.

Open your mouth, judge righteously defend the rights of the poor and the needy.

Psalm 1 46, 9 says The Lord watches over the sojourner.

He upholds the widow in the fatherless, but the way of the wicked

he brings to ruin the word wicked.

There in Psalm 1 46, 9 is the Hebrew word that means one who transgresses,

another person who commits injustice.

James 1 27 defines religion this way.

He says Religion that is pure and undefiled before God is to keep

oneself, unstained from the world.

Y'all.

I'll be honest that that's how I like to read that verse Mo most often because

that that's easier, albeit not easy.

It's hard to keep oneself tained from the world, but it's easier for me to just

focus on my relationship with Jesus and to say it's about me being a godly person.

But it's not everything that James says.

He says religion that's pure and undefiled before God the father is this.

To visit the orphans and widows in their affliction and to keep

oneself, unstained from the world.

So James is saying that we have an obligation to the needy, the poor,

the helpless, the destitute, that that's part of what it looks like to

practice pure religion in this world.

And, and I think the reason he does that is this, I think James

understands that this is a natural overflowing byproduct of our lives.

If we rightly understand the gospel to begin with, because of this spiritually

speaking, all of us in this room.

Poor afflicted, needy, destitute, and helpless when Jesus Christ came for us.

That's Romans five.

Paul uses different words there.

He says, you were weak, ungodly, sinful enemies of God when

Christ Jesus died for you.

All of us spiritually were in need of God coming to us.

And again, taking that broken relationship, that injustice, that

arson had created and making us right with him again, and he came

and did that to us, he became.

Impoverished for us, that we might become rich in him, as Paul says.

And so a natural response to that, an overflow of that is realizing, man,

if, if God in Christ love me to that degree, then it makes sense for me to

physically care for the needs of the less fortunate around me as God has

given me means to be able to do that as an expression of my understanding of

what God has done for me spiritually.

Now the problem is when the church isolates that and says that's

our main mission as a church.

Our main mission as a church is to preach the gospel of Christ.

To say, repent and believe in Jesus Christ is your Lord and

Savior, and be reconciled to God.

But those two things are not in opposition to one another.

They're not in in juxtaposition to one another.

And I think as the the conservative church, we need to regain some

of this focus on what it means to be a church that pursues justice

for those that are in need.

And so as we get into that a little bit, what does that look like?

Well, I think one of our primary concerns for those that are in need should be the

fact that we understand that they too have been created in the image of God, right?

And so we hope every time that we go and and have an opportunity to show

mercy to somebody in a physical way, that we also have an opportunity

to preach the gospel to them.

But that may not be the case every time, and I think there's still

value in us loving them that way.

I think there's still an act of obedience to God and us loving them that way.

You come up to the panhandler on the side of the road, you've got

a couple of choices there, right?

You can pull up cynical and look at them and be like, well, they

got themselves in this position.

Or Why do they have a dog?

I can't believe the, they have a dog.

If they have a dog, they should be able to afford to feed themselves maybe,

but where in scripture are we called to examine the motive in the heart behind the

person that's on the, the street corner?

That's, that's helped us in needy.

We are called to love them.

Well, I don't wanna put cash in their hands that they might use for alcohol.

Okay, there's more cynicism, number one.

But number two, fine.

Go out and buy some $5 McDonald gift cards and put them in your car.

Say, Hey, I wanna, I wanna give you this because I want you to know that God loves

you more than I love you, but I love you enough to say, I wanna buy you a burger.

Here's this.

If the light turns green and then you keep going.

Little things like this, right?

It's about giving because of how much we've received, and that

begins spiritually, but it's also.

It flows over into how much God has given us as far as material

resources go to good stewardship.

It's about being salt and light.

It's about obedience.

And listen, it's okay for us to preach that without being

guilty of the social gospel.

It's okay to preach that we should feed and clothe the poor because

God commands that and that the poor ultimately need to be made right with

God, with the riches of Jesus Christ.

It, it, it's okay to preach that we should fight against the murder of the

unborn and vote in accordance with that.

And to say that our ultimate concern is that baby and that mom and that dad

all come to faith and repentance in Jesus Christ, our Lord and Savior it,

it's okay to preach that racism is a great moral evil because God shows us

that all men are created in his image and that that is one of a plethora of

moral evils, that faith in Jesus Christ as our Lord and Savior overcomes.

We don't have to choose.

In other words, and I think God in the Bible, and I think Amos is a good,

good example of this, calls us to both.

As Christians, we have to be concerned about justice because that which is unjust

is a product of broken and fallen world in which we live, and God is concerned about

it, so we need to be concerned about it.

Was this a concern in the early church St.

Pastoria?

We're preaching Amos, how about the early church?

Do we see this in the New Testament?

I think we do.

The book of Acts as the church first began, it says everybody was selling

what they had and giving that anyone who had need their needs might be cared

for and provided for Acts chapter six.

A big reason for the creation of the deacons was what?

The widows, the Hellenistic widows, the Greek widows, they were being neglected.

People weren't caring for them, and the apostles said, this isn't right.

We need people to specifically care for the, the afflicted,

the helpless, the needy.

Paul writes to Timothy.

About the process of enrolling widows on the support of the church and saying

the church needs to care for those that can't care for themselves as well.

And as we saw earlier in James, James defines pure religion as caring for

the widows in the orphaned as well.

So practically that can take on a lot of different ways and, and, and methods.

And, and we can pursue this a lot of different ways and we'll talk

about that a little bit more on our, our third point this morning.

But I wanna say three things.

If this makes you uncomfortable, if you're out there going, man, I, I.

This makes me uncomfortable.

I wish you would just preach the gospel and not so much of this social justice

stuff, which is is not what I'm after.

I'm after Biblical justice.

So a few things.

First, that I'm not trying to conflate these two things.

The primary mission of the church is to preach the gospel of Jesus Christ.

The way that a person is saved is only through faith and repentance in

Jesus Christ as the Lord and Savior.

And that is why we're here as a church.

That is what we're called to do.

That is the main thing that we're called to do.

Okay.

So I'm not trying to conflate these things.

Second, if this makes you uncomfortable, let me suggest this.

Maybe it's uncomfortable to us and I, y'all, I, I wrestled with this this week.

Maybe it's uncomfortable to us because such a mentality forces us to get in

the trenches of a fallen world, and we just don't want to, we don't want

to think, oh man, God cares that I care for those that need my help.

Maybe we wrongly and cynically write off a person's economic, social,

racial, or physical state with whether or not God has chosen to bless them.

That's a God thing.

That's not a me thing.

And then finally, third, I want us to see this morning that our love for those in

need has to flow from our love for the God who rescued us from our greatest need.

That goes back to that first point of love and fear of God.

That's the basis that's gonna produce this mindset.

Understanding how much God has loved us.

Listen, if stuff like this fires you up and gets you excited, I wanna talk to you.

I do.

I'd, I'd love to, to talk to you.

I, I, again, like I said, I, I think we have room to grow in this

area as a church, and I'd love to think and, and get creative as,

as to what that might look like.

God cares for the needy, the vulnerable, the poor, the defenseless, the orphans,

the widows, and he cares that we care to his admonition, to those in

Israel, that that still could listen.

Was this in Aus five 14 through 15?

He says this, he says, seek good and not evil that you may live.

And so the Lord, the God of Host will also be with you.

As you have said, hate evil and love good, and establish justice.

In the gate.

It may be that the Lord, the God of host, will be gracious

to the remnants of Joseph.

Seek good and not evil for Israel.

Judgment was coming though.

For the majority there was gonna be a remnant, but for the majority it was done.

God had fired his warning shots across the bow with the drought and the famine and

the, the, even the plagues and the death.

And, and yet now he was done.

And that's where we turn to next in chapter seven through nine.

This is the judgment of God that's coming and he's gonna lay this out for Israel

and tell them what he's going to do here.

Here in Amos chapter seven, verses eight and nine, it says this, the Lord

said to me, Amos, what do you see?

And I said, A plumb line.

Then the Lord said, behold, I am setting a plumb line in the

midst of my people, Israel and I will never again pass by them.

The high places of Isaac shall be made desolate and the sanctuaries of Israel

shall be laid waste and I will rise against the house of ome with a sword.

The high places of Isaac, by the way, uh, they had Beersheba

as one of their high places.

Beersheba was the birthplace of Isaac.

And so they had made that one of their, their glorified high places, and so God

is calling that out there in Amos, chapter seven, as well as all of the other ones.

Basically, God is saying there's no place for pure worship to be

found here in Israel any longer.

All of it.

I'm taking it all out.

And then he said in chapter eight, he said, I, I, this is

what the Lord God showed me.

Verse one a, a basket of summer fruit.

And he said, Amos, what do you see?

And I said, A basket of summer fruit or a basket of ripe fruit.

Then the Lord said to me, the end has come upon my people, Israel.

I will never pass by them.

The Lord was bringing judgment and it was done.

Was as good as it's done 7 22 bc maybe 30 years from when Amos is

prophesying the northern kingdom is gonna be no more carried into exile.

Never will there be another king in the north for the rest of all time.

And so God is, is telling them that and his judgment that and perhaps one of

the most sobering judgments is found in chapter eight verses 11 and 12.

Chapter eight, verses 11 and 12.

He says, behold, the days are coming to clear as the Lord God, when I

will send a famine on the land.

Not a famine of bread, nor of a thirst for water, but of a hearing of the words.

Speak the Lord, but they shall not find it.

That's the most startling.

They had rejected God's word.

They had rejected the prophets.

They had ignored the conviction that God had brought upon them for so

long that God was saying no more.

One of his initial acts of judgment before the exile was gonna be

that he was gonna pull back.

To turn them over to their ways to cease his prophetic ministry with them.

And even though they might exhaust themselves searching for the

voice of the Lord, they weren't gonna be able to find it anymore.

Listen, as those who have God's spirit in our seal for the day of

redemption, like I said in point number one, we don't fear this level

of judgment against God or from God.

We're not fearing that God is gonna put an end to the church.

In fact, we know he won't 'cause he promised that.

He said, upon this rock, I'll build my church and the gates of

hell will not prevail against it.

So we don't fear that.

At the same time, we need to understand that God has given us his word to produce

what he was intended to produce in Israel, which is conviction and change.

And so even today, God has given us his word.

He's given us conviction, but to allow that conviction to then

produce change in our lives as well.

Third and final point this morning is this pursue change alongside conviction.

Pursue change alongside conviction.

We have to have both.

Having one but not the other is.

Not understanding what, what we're supposed to have to, to begin with.

Conviction that doesn't produce change is what Paul refers to as, as worldly

grief in second Corinthians chapter seven.

We can feel bad about our sin.

We can feel bad about disobeying God, but if we never do anything to change

that, if we never say, okay, so how do I need to adjust course, well then we're,

we're acting like Israel was at the time.

And so when we encounter God's conviction, when we line ourselves up against God's

plumb line, so the, the plumb line was this instrument that's dropped, and they

still use it today, that's dropped in and dropped vertically there because

it would be, uh, perpendicular to the, the, the horizontal plane there.

And with that perpendicular plane, you could measure what is

called the, the plumb of a wall.

Is the wall in accordance?

Is it parallel to that plumb line?

And if it is, then you know you've got a sound structure.

But if that plumb line hangs and that wall crosses over one way or

the other of that plumb line, then you know that your wall is not plumb

and the structure is not sound and it needs to be torn down and destroyed.

And so for God with Israel, it was a total destruction for you

and I, he's given us his word.

He is given us the Bible.

He is given us the the spirit.

As the plum line in our lives to say, when we find areas of our lives that

are not in, in lined up, they're not parallel with his word, not in keeping

with his word, then we found something that's structurally unsound spiritually

that needs to be torn down and rebuild.

That's what conviction does for us.

And it's meant then to produce change in our lives in response.

And now when we're talking about this, this morning, specifically what I'm

talking about for us is the church is saying, okay, if God cares for the weak,

the needy, the destitute, the poor, the helpless, and he cares that we care too.

Man, if we're out here this morning saying I need to care more, then

I would say, man, that that's conviction for us to lean into.

And I think all of us in the room have room to excel still

more in this at minimum.

To say, how can I be more merciful, more charitable, more

giving to people who are in need?

How can I physically show what spiritually God has done for me?

What does that look like for me?

And, and this is where I have to be careful 'cause I can't say thus says the

Lord on this because a lot of this is gonna be a matter of personal conviction.

My point is though, if you feel the conviction, let it produce change.

So, for example, maybe somebody out there, a family has been thinking

about foster care or adoption and you've thought to yourself, man, I

I I feel like God has, has put us in a position where we can do this.

We should do this.

This is the right thing to do.

Our, our kids in our good position for this.

And, and maybe all a while you've been hesitant to, to do that though.

You're like, yeah, I, I just don't know.

Maybe this morning God is, is kind of giving you that final nudge on that

one, and you're gonna say, that's a way for us to care for literally

the orphans and those in need.

Or maybe for example, you're a lawyer or a doctor and you've made a, a good

living, you, you've got a good career, and yet you've also thought about,

man, how could God use my talents to help those who can't afford them?

How could God use what I'm able to do to, to help those that, that are needy,

to help those that that can't afford to hire a lawyer or to pay the medical bills?

Maybe God's prompting you and inviting you to step out in faith to care for the

needy and watch what he'll do in response.

Or maybe for you, your family, you've been saving up for that European vacation

and you're like, man, we, we've got a, a good nest egg going and we can't

wait to get to Europe and we deserve it because we've never been there before.

And then you hear of a family in the church that's facing

medical bills that they know they aren't gonna be able to pay.

Maybe you caring for the helpless, the destitute, the

poor, the needy is taking that.

Vacation fund and saying, you know what?

It's more important for me to see their needs met than to see the Eiffel Tower, so

I'm gonna sacrifice to meet their needs.

I think for everyone, it can mean a look at our monthly budget through fresh eyes

to ask ourselves, man, maybe I can add a line item in for generosity to my budget.

I'm gonna budget a little bit more so that I can get some McDonald's

gift cards and throw 'em in my car.

I'm gonna budget a little bit more so that I can take somebody a meal.

I'm gonna budget a little bit more so that I can fill in the blank.

There's other ways I, I, I know some of your community groups out here

have gone to Children's Hunger Fund and backed, packed boxes of food

for them and, and sent that out.

That's great Habitat for Humanity.

I know that I, I did that when I was growing up and built houses for people.

Again, I think there's, there's value there, even in just honoring the image

of God and the people that are needed.

You say, can one adoption, can one lawyer, can one doctor, can one

vacation fund really make that much of a difference in a broken and fallen world?

Well, again, hear me say, it's not gonna undo the the effects of the

fall, only the gospel does that.

But when I look at the early church, they were preaching Christ and seeking

the welfare of all who came to them and to their enemies, it looked like they

were turning the world upside down.

I think maybe if we recapture some of this, we have potential in the room

here, even a little bit to, to maybe not turn the world totally upside

down, but to tilt it a little bit

as I close, I want you to think back to a parable that Jesus told that I think

really captures the idea and the motive, and the drive and the why behind all this.

Jesus had just given a commandment.

You should love your neighbor as yourself.

Or he had asked the question actually, teacher, what's the greatest law?

How do you understand it?

Well, love the neighbor as yourself.

Okay?

You've answered well, but who's my neighbor?

Is the question that was asked to Jesus.

Who's my neighbor?

The guy asking the question is basically asking in that

question, who do I have to love?

Who do I have to be compassionate to?

And Jesus tells a story of a man who was coming back from

Jerusalem after worshiping God.

Falls among some robbers on the way he's beaten.

He's waylaid.

He's left for dead.

He's bleeding out on the side of the road.

A priest comes by and passes by.

He doesn't wanna defile himself and he is also nervous.

The, the robbers might be nearby still.

He passes by a Levite, somebody serving in the temple.

He comes by, I I, same reasons.

I'm gonna pass by the road.

And a Samaritan shows up

and the Samaritan goes to the man beaten and bloody laying on the

ground, and he meets his need.

He not only meets his need by risking his personal safety, knowing the same

thing that the robbers could be nearby.

But he risks also his financial wellbeing.

He takes his material goods, his bandages and his oils, and he treats the wounds

as best as he can there, and he also going, so he is willing to be made

uncomfortable to meet the needs of those that are, are more worse off than he is.

And he puts his finances at risk because he goes to the in and lays the man

up in the in goes to the innkeeper, who in those days innkeepers were

some of the most fraudulent people that were, were walking the face of

the planet and says to the guy, Hey, I'm gonna trust you with his care.

Whatever additional expenses you incur to care for this man, let me know and

I will pay you back when I get back.

And Jesus says, who was the neighbor?

And in a Jewish audience, you can picture them gritting their teeth.

Saying The Samaritan, 'cause they hated the Samaritans.

And so Jesus took this question, who do I have to love?

And he took the most unlovable person and made him the hero of the story and said,

love like that guy, y'all in that parable.

By the way, we're not the good Samaritan.

We're also not the Levite or the priest.

You know who we are.

We're the guy that's beaten and bloody and bleeding out on the ground.

Jesus is the one that loved us at such exorbitant risk and cost to himself,

and the message of the Parable of the Good Samaritan is in light of that

love your neighbor.

Who's my neighbor?

I don't know that there's borders on that one.

I think that was Jesus' point.

Part of being the church, being a light, being different, loving in such

a way that goes, why would you do that?

And so do we need to be concerned about justice as a church?

Yes.

Do we need to care for the poor to help us?

The needy, the destitute?

Yes.

Why?

Because God does, and God cares that we care too.

We stand with me as we pray.