Episode 303: Expecting to Feast

Good morning, Harbor Church, West Oahu. My name is Christian. I'm a pastor at Harbor Church,

Waipahu. For those of you guys who don't know me, I used to work at this church. I was actually a

part of the community group that led to this church plant. And one of the things I will say

about your church that I'm really grateful for is you guys are not only having an effect out

overseas, which you guys are making an impact out there, but the work that you guys do and your

faithfulness to the gospel, your faithfulness to God has also made its way 10 minutes down the road

Waipahu where we're at. And so we planted three years ago. And I can honestly say that without

your support, without your prayers, without your faithfulness to this local body, our church would

not be here today. And so we're grateful for you guys. But Justin did not ask me to come talk about

how awesome you guys are. So I'm going to preach the word today. And so if you can, you're going to

be in the book of Amos and we're going to be jumping all over the place. And so if you want

to follow along because you're a beast like that with your hard copy Bible, that's awesome. But if

not, we'll have them on the screen. And so before we start, though, in the book of Amos, we are going

through a series called Expecting, and we're in a season of Advent in the church. And Advent is a

time when church life just slows down a little bit as we build towards Christmas, and it's a time for

the church to think and reflect on the coming of Jesus Christ. Like 2,000 years ago, when he came

to his people, it's a time for us to remember what that joy was like, what that hope was like

that they felt when the Messiah was born in Israel.

And also it's a time for us to reflect on the second coming of Jesus, right?

Because one day the good news is,

and the hope that we have is that Jesus will come again one day to right every

wrong, to wipe away every tear from our eye, to make all things new.

But we'll see that before Jesus came onto the scene 2000 years ago,

hundreds of years before God had already promised the Messiah.

God had promised in the prophets that there would come up a person, a savior, who would be a light

to the world, who would be a blessing not only to the nation of Israel, but a blessing to the entire

world. And so we're going to see that as we jump into what's known as the minor prophets. So we're

going to be every week until Christmas going through a minor prophet. Now, if you know anything

about the minor prophets, the minor prophets are not minor because they're insignificant, right?

We don't call them minor because they're, you know what, Isaiah was important, Jeremiah was important,

but the minor prophets are not that important.

No, they're minor because they're shorter.

They're pithy, right?

They're short, they're small,

but they have a lot to teach us about who God is

and who we are in light of that.

And so we're gonna be in the book of Amos today.

If some of you guys don't know what it is,

famous Amos cookies has nothing to do with this, okay?

The book of Amos.

Now, here's the cultural background of the book of Amos.

The book of Amos was written in about 760 BC

during the reign in Israel.

At the time, there was the northern kingdom Israel, the southern kingdom of Judah.

And this was written to the people of Israel, 760 BC, under King Jeroboam II.

During this reign, Israel was prosperous.

I'm talking like wealthy, okay?

They were rich.

They were wealthy.

They were powerful.

They expanded their borders.

They had a great military relationship.

They had solid borders.

The economy was booming.

And it was like, inflation was like 1%.

You know what I mean?

like everything was going well in Israel.

And the crazy part about it is

even though everything was going well,

you get to Amos chapter eight

and all of a sudden,

according to God's perspective,

things aren't actually going well.

Here's what God says to the people of Israel.

Look, the days are coming.

This is the declaration of the Lord God.

When I will send a famine through the land,

not a famine of bread or a thirst for water,

but of hearing the words of the Lord.

People will stagger from sea to sea.

They will roam from north to east,

seeking the word of the Lord, but they will not find it.

So Amos is a prophet, speaking the words of God

to a nation that was thriving economically.

They were wealthy, they were powerful, they were comfortable.

But God says, I am going to send a famine to you,

but not a famine of bread or famine of food.

I'm going to send you a famine of hearing the words of the Lord.

And what this means is it could look like in your life,

everything is going well.

The nation could look like it's thriving.

The nation could look powerful.

You could look powerful.

You could look wealthy.

You can look comfortable.

And life can be spiritually empty.

You could actually be in a time of spiritual famine.

Now, the question we have to ask ourselves is,

how does a nation that God chose out of all nations,

how did the people of God go from being blessed

to now falling under the judgment of God?

Because it didn't just happen, right?

God didn't just wake up one day and go,

Israel, you are under my judgment now.

Now, God is not like that.

And we're going to see that God actually has reasons for judging Israel.

He doesn't just do it, you know, out of the blue.

But before we see that, what I want to be careful at,

we always have to be careful when we're listening to a sermon that talks about sin,

which Amos does, that we're careful.

Like for me, I don't get to sit in sermons very often anymore.

I used to.

I used to preach once a month, which is great.

And I would sit in here and I would sit in the sermon and listen.

And as the pastor's talking about sin, I would think to myself,

oh, that would be good for that guy to hear.

I can't wait till she hears that one.

Yeah, I think like that, right?

And the book of Amos says,

I don't want you to think about all the sins

that exist out there in the world.

I want you to turn the mirror on yourselves

and I want you to see your own sin.

When God speaks to the people of Israel

in Amos chapter one,

we don't have time to read it all,

but he goes out and God starts off not calling out Israel.

He starts off calling out all the other nations around them.

He goes kind of from the farthest nations

and kind of spirals inward.

He says Damascus and calling them out for their sins.

He says, Gaza, you've sinned.

He says, Tyre, you sinned and you didn't care for people.

He says, Edom, you have a lack of compassion for the people of God.

He says to the Ammonites and the Moabites that you are wicked and you are a violent people.

And you can imagine as the Israelites are hearing God wanting to punish all their enemies,

they're cheering them on.

Yes, Lord, get those guys.

Get them.

Crush them.

Destroy them.

They make our life miserable.

They make us feel unsafe.

Crush those other people.

And yet God saves and reserves his greatest judgment in the book of Amos,

not for the nations of this world, but for Israel itself.

It's as if God is saying, don't be so comfortable criticizing and condemning the sin out there

that you forget that you yourself have sinned.

Right? You guys know this, right?

That the greatest sin, the only sin that affects your relationship with God

is not the sin that people commit to you.

It's not the sin that somebody out there sins in this world.

It's not the evil that exists out there.

The only sin that you're condemned for as a person, as a human,

is the sin that you commit against God every single day.

And so the book of Amos wants you to confront not other people's sin,

but your own sin, to see where you fall short every single day.

And so what is that?

What are the reasons that God punishes the nation of Israel?

What is the reason God says that he's going to judge the nation of Israel?

And here's the first one.

They cared more about money than they did about people.

They cared more about money than they did about people.

Amos chapter two, verse six and seven.

The Lord says, I will not relent.

That means I will not stop from punishing Israel for three crimes, even four.

Just a poetic way of saying all these crimes they've committed.

Because why?

Because they sell a righteous person for silver and a needy person for a pair of sandals.

They trample the heads of the poor on the dust of the ground and obstruct the path of the needy.

Israel had come under judgment from God because in here, they turned a blind eye to the people in need around them.

That's all they did.

They turned a blind eye.

They would sell a righteous person, which is another form of slavery, right?

That's kind of slavery that we have that existed even in our own country,

where you buy and sell people, man-stealing, which is condemned in the Bible.

They would trade a needy person.

So there's a person in need.

There's this person that needs something, and they trade that person for a pair of sandals

because they care more about their fashion

and they care more about what they look like

and what they feel like

than they do about the needs of other people.

They are so consumed with themselves,

they cannot see a needy person.

And then it says right here

that they trample the heads of the poor.

They make it difficult for poor people

who have nothing to live.

They make it difficult.

And here's the thing.

It was well within their power to help others.

Remember, this is a time of prosperity.

This is the time when there was no lack of wealth.

And if you feel like, man, if I had it within myself,

if I had the wealth and the power that Israel had,

I would have been different.

Well, you know what?

The rich people in the book of Amos compared to you,

you put them to shame with the wealth that you have.

All right, like think about the wealthiest person

that existed in the Bible, King Solomon.

He had a lot of things.

King Solomon was awesome.

He had a lot of wise people that he could talk to.

He was the wisest man in the Bible.

And you might not have all the wise people.

You know, you look at your friends, you go, they're not wise.

But what do you have?

Chat GPT.

Super assistant, right?

Super assistant AI.

You get chat GPT, right?

Solomon probably when it was hot in the summertime had, you know, a bunch of people just fanning

him all day long.

What you got?

HVAC.

If you've been to Vietnam, you know.

Wow.

What a blessing, right?

We might, Solomon had people preparing the best meals for him, the best food.

What do we have?

DoorDash.

You know what I mean?

at our door, right? At our beck and call, we can get whatever we want. And yet God says it is a sin

to spend all your money and all your wealth for yourself. That's a sin. It's not a sin to be rich.

It's not a sin to have a lot of money. As a matter of fact, if you can make a lot of money,

the Bible says you should make a lot of money, but not for yourself, never pursuing wealth at

the expense of looking at the needs of other people. And notice the weight of this, because me,

I will tell you personally, I do not feel the weight of my own selfishness in regard to this

situation. Like when I hear Christmas is coming around, I get all giddy. I got an awesome wife.

I know what I mean? Like I still think about myself when I think of Christmas. And yet when we look

here, God says, turning a blind eye to the knees of the poor for your own comfort isn't just a lack

of generosity. It isn't just a lack of insight. God says these are crimes. These are crimes.

In scripture, if you read through all the prophets,

it says a lack of concern for the needy around you

is actually an injustice.

It is literally unrighteousness.

And God says that is the level

that a lack of care for others around you,

especially those in need,

that is the level that it rises to.

And so you deserve judgment

because of your lack of justice.

The second thing God judges them for, verse seven,

is they pursued pleasure over purity.

They pursued their own pleasure.

That what was at the center of their experience

in their life was, oh, me, me, me, me, me.

Verse seven says this,

a man and his father have sexual relations

with the same girl profaning my holy name, right?

When you see this word girl here,

this is a very particular type of sexual sin.

All sexual sin is bad.

It doesn't matter what type it is,

but this is particularly bad.

Why?

Because that word for girl in there

is the word that means a young maiden or a young girl.

So this is someone who completely lacks power,

lacks any authority.

This isn't something consensual happening.

This is a man and his father abusing their power,

abusing their authority in the society to get their way.

This is the sin that they're committing.

They are exploiting other people around them.

And notice it says, when you do that,

when you sin, you profane my holy name.

The reason that God saved Israel

was not so he could just pour out blessing on Israel,

but it's so that Israel would be a light to the nations.

So when the people saw Israel following and obeying God,

they would see not Israel,

but they would see the good God that loves them and cares for them.

They were meant to bring glory to God.

And when you pursue your own pleasure over anything else,

the Bible says you don't just make a mistake.

You spit on the name of God.

You profane God's holy name.

Look at Amos 2.8.

They stretch out beside every altar on garments taken

as collateral. Altars were places of worship. So they stretch out on every altar garments taken as

collateral and in the house of their God, they drink wine obtained through fines. So this is at the

heart of everything that they're doing, right? There were people that God is speaking to were people

with money, with influence, with power, and they were using their money, influence, and power to

exploit other people, not to serve other people. And a lot of times we think like this. We think,

man, my sin that I commit in the dark, it won't affect my relationship with God.

It won't affect anybody else. My sin that I commit that nobody sees, it's just my sin.

And what the Bible says is, no, every sin that you commit, actually, if unrepentant,

affects your very worship with God. It makes its way into your worship. So what happened to them?

It says right here, the Israelites were taking garments from the poor,

which is already a command outlawed in scripture.

You are not allowed to steal from a poor person,

take something they needed for warmth,

and then to use that yourself.

But they were going a step further.

They were stealing these garments

and then using them on the altar to worship God.

If you can imagine the picture,

it's like, imagine somebody steals from other people, right?

They walk out of here, they rob some other people.

And in order to like kind of help ease their guilt,

they come in the church

and they drop it in the offering box.

That's what the people of Israel are doing.

And you got to imagine God sees past that.

What they were doing is they were using their religion

as a cover-up for their sin,

which is actually why God is punishing them.

The third reason, they weren't really worshiping God.

They worshiped him with their lips.

They showed up to church.

They sang the right songs,

but their hearts were so far from God.

Imagine me as a husband, okay?

Maybe not me, okay?

Just imagine a husband, okay?

Imagine a husband who says all the right things to his wife

cleans up whenever she needs it,

supports her whenever she needs it,

and then takes her on nice dates.

He buys her flowers all the time.

He gives her a hug and a kiss and says,

I love you, honey.

But secretly he is cheating on his wife.

At that point, all his outward actions can look like love,

but really we know that his heart is so far from his wife.

He doesn't actually love her.

He actually hates her.

And God says, I look past all the things you bring to me.

In the book of Amos, he actually says,

All your sacrifices mean nothing to me.

All your songs are nothing to me.

They are garbage because your heart is so far from me.

So he sees these people.

They say the right words.

They do the right things.

They show up to worship.

They sing these songs, but their heart is so unfaithful to God.

And when you're unfaithful to God in your life,

your worship is not a response of love to God.

Your worship is the saddest part.

It's just a performance.

If your heart is not really loving God,

and that is exposed by your lack of love for other people,

then your worship is just a performance.

It means nothing.

And again, Amos is not about looking at Israel and going,

bad Israel, how dare you?

But the question we have to ask ourselves is,

how are we, as people of God, sinning in these ways?

How are we?

Are there ways that you've cared more for your own well-being

and your own comfort than the people around you,

than the needs around you?

Are you loving, pursuing your own pleasure over obedience to God?

And one of the ways you can ask yourself this is just ask yourself this question.

When push comes to shove and it's God's commands versus what you desire and what you want,

in that situation where you got to choose God or choose yourself, who wins?

Who wins?

Like when God says, treat others as more significant than yourself, which is a command,

you treat others more significant than yourself.

and you got the option to treat others more significant,

to sit on the seat of a king and to be respected,

or to be a doormat,

which one are you going to choose?

Husbands, God says, love your wife as Christ loved the church

and gave himself up for her,

without any qualifications, by the way.

And your wife says something that's disrespectful, dishonoring,

that really does happen.

In that situation, do you stop loving your wife?

Do you choose your way?

Or do you choose God's way?

wives God says honor and submit to your husbands and give them respect not because they deserve

it because very often as husbands we do not deserve it but your husband does something that's unloving

do you stop doing what God commanded who wins does your own desires win or does God's win

does what God desires for you win and I think if you're honest with yourself and if I'm honest

with myself, oftentimes my flesh wins. Not only in my personal relationships, but online. We're

to speak in love towards others. And there have been times when I've not spoken in love online.

Who wins? Is it God or is it us? All of us, the Bible says, fall short of the glory of God. All of

us don't worship God like we should. All of us have ways that we do not say yes to God and we say yes

to our flesh. And because of that, the Bible says we deserve the wrath of God. And the point of Amos

is this church, and I don't want you to take this lightly. Don't think that God will not deal with

the injustice in your heart. Don't think that God is not a God who deals with sin. God is a God who

deals with sin. And here's the kicker starting with you. Here's what Amos 3.8 says. A lion has roared,

who will not fear? The Lord has spoken, who will not prophesy? In other words, Israel thought,

because God is not dealing with my sin, God must not care about my sin. And Amos says,

God cares a lot about your sin. God has come to speak directly to your sin. And then fast forward

Amos chapter eight, verses nine and 10, God says this, and in that day, this is the declaration

of the Lord. I will make the sun go down at noon. I will darken the land in the daytime. I will turn

your feast into mourning and all your songs into lamentation. If you don't know what that is,

you little boy like me, sadness. Okay. Lamentation. I will cause everyone to wear sackcloth and every

head to be shaved. I will make that grief like mourning for an only son and its outcome like a

bitter day. God says, because of your lack of love, because you're pursued pleasure, because you don't

worship me, you deserve judgment. And judgment looks like this. You don't deserve God to shine

his light upon us. That's what it means. The sun will go down at noon. I know some of you guys are

thinking like, that sounds pretty nice. Hawaii's kind of hot. If the sun goes down at noon, praise

God. Okay. Some of you guys like be in Alaska. Okay. That's how I feel during the summer. But that's a

bad thing. It's a bad thing for the sun to go down at noon. The Bible says we don't deserve for the

to ever shine on us again.

We don't deserve any bright days.

We deserve to be in darkness.

We deserve to be apart from the presence of God.

And if you're apart from the presence of God,

in the presence of God,

there is fullness of joy at his right hand

are pleasures forevermore.

That means God is saying to us,

we don't even deserve to have pleasure and joy in this life.

We deserve to mourn.

We deserve to weep.

We deserve for God to never speak to us again.

We deserve a famine of God's word.

and that's exactly what happens to the people of Israel, right? After God speaks these words,

Israel never repents. They never follow God again for 400 years. God remains silent. He doesn't send

prophets. He doesn't send messengers and the Jews wrote about this between the time of the Old

Testament and the New Testament. They called this the 400 years of silence, the 400 years when the

heavens were shut up, when God did not speak to us. And when I think about it, I think about myself,

I'm like, if I were God, which I'm not, thank goodness, if I were God, I would have just let

that ride a little longer. You know what I mean? Like when people sin against me, I mean, you know

how it is, right? Like husbands and wives, can we be real? Right? When things are not going well,

It's icy, right?

It's icy.

You don't want to talk to each other.

You want to speak.

And it takes a lot for someone to kind of break that ice, right?

To speak up, to speak in love.

Well, guess what?

If God was like us, I would have ignored the people of Israel.

I wouldn't have spoken to them.

I would have said, you know, you want spiritual famine?

You want to live your life apart from me?

Fine.

That would have been my attitude.

But praise God, we do not worship God who is like us.

That God is so different that when we would withhold love,

the Bible says that God is the one who goes first.

He's the one who speaks tenderly to his people.

After the 400 years of silence,

when Israel was spiritually starved,

when Israel was living out the consequences of their own sin,

when Israel was in darkness,

the Bible says God broke the silence

and God spoke to his people.

John 1.1 says,

in the beginning was the word and the word was with God

and the word was God.

And then in John 1, 14, it says,

the word, that word that was God became flesh

and dwelt among us.

We observed his glory,

the glory as the one and only son from the father,

full of grace and truth.

Now, if somebody sinned against you

and you guys weren't talking,

but you were still angry,

would you be speaking words of grace and truth?

Now, oftentimes when we have difficulty,

the first words we speak are words of anger and judgment.

but God is so gracious that he comes to his people.

The people have sinned against him

and he speaks words full of grace and truth.

God sent his son, Jesus Christ, the word of God

to take on human flesh and to speak truth and grace

to the very people who did not deserve his words.

Now the question we gotta ask ourselves is

why would the word have to become flesh?

Why couldn't God just like write a love letter

and just send it to us?

Why did God have to send his son, Jesus Christ,

to take on human flesh?

And the reason is God could not break the silence

that we fell under by just sending a prophet to share a word.

Because it's not because he couldn't,

but it's because the depth of our sin problem was so great.

It did not require mere words.

It required a display of God's love.

And your sin issues, if you're struggling with sin,

your sin issues aren't solved by more information.

More information will not transform your life.

A prophet could come speak about God and tell you all the amazing things about God.

You could sit in a sermon and hear the preaching of the word every single day of your life

and still not be transformed.

What we needed was not just a word from God.

We needed the word from God to step into our world, step into our darkness and deal with

our sin and deal with our sin is what Jesus did.

The Bible says that Jesus, from the moment that he was born, lived a perfect life.

At no point in his life did he disobey God.

At no point in his life did he dishonor God.

Everywhere he went, the Bible says he did good to everyone,

even the people that were hard to love.

You know that Jesus, before he was betrayed by Judas,

washed his feet knowing that he would betray him?

Do you know that Jesus,

even when people were coming against him,

only spoke words of love,

giving them truth when they needed it,

but always caring for people, always doing good?

And the Bible says that even though he did good to everyone

at the end of Jesus's life,

he would suffer and die a shameful death on the cross.

And for what?

Look at Amos chapter eight.

Remember that passage again.

God says, I will make the sun go down at noon.

In three of the gospel narratives, Matthew, Mark, and Luke,

they record that from noon to 3 p.m.

on the day that Jesus was crucified,

darkness fell over the land.

That Jesus was in darkness suffering on the cross.

God says that he will turn their feast into a time of mourning.

The greatest feast in all of Israel was the feast of the Passover.

And that was the week that Jesus got killed was during the Passover.

And during that Passover, when Jesus was killed, his disciples weren't celebrating.

His disciples were grieving.

They were mourning.

They were at a loss for words.

They were fearful for their own lives.

The Passover feast became a time of mourning for the people of God.

They were broken over this time.

And then God says in Amos chapter eight,

that he will make the grief like the mourning for an only son.

And we know from scripture that it would feel the day of judgment,

he says, would feel like what a parent feels like,

not when they lose a son, even though that's difficult and hard.

But if they only had one and they lost that one son,

that's what that day would feel like.

And on the day that Jesus died, the Bible says he wasn't just a son.

He was the son of God.

the only begotten one of the father at the cross,

the world would witness the death of God's only son on that cross.

And you know what that means?

It means that all the judgments that you deserve in Amos chapter eight

were not felt by you.

They were felt by God.

That Jesus himself, who has all authority and all power,

remember what Amos was saying,

that you are people with money, with wealth, with power,

and you don't care for the needy.

And that yet God sends his son, Jesus Christ,

who leaves his wealth and power in heaven.

And he instead comes down, takes on the form of a servant

and serves the most needy among us.

That Jesus himself looks out for every single one of us

who fell so far from God.

Every single one of us who cared very little for the poor,

cared very little for anyone but ourselves,

Jesus came and suffered.

He was the one who God's darkness fell on.

He was the one who was cut off from the land of the living.

He was the one and only son who suffered.

He was the one who was grieved even to the point of death.

But the good news of the gospel is our Jesus does not stay dead.

He suffers and died and is buried.

And three days later, because he is perfect,

because he is good, because he is God,

he rose from the dead signifying his victory over sin,

and over death. Jesus tasted the judgment of Amos chapter 8 so that you can taste the goodness

Amos 8 · chapter mention

and forgiveness and peace of God. And that means for all of you who feel far off, for all of you

who know that your sin has kept you from God, if you believe in Jesus today, God doesn't keep his

love from you. God doesn't. There's a story, a passage in Revelation chapter 3, a very powerful

Revelation 3 · chapter mention

passage, but it's one where Jesus is actually criticizing a church in a city called Laodicea.

Laodicea was very much like the city in Israel, rich and powerful, very much like our church.

And here's what Jesus says as he comes to this church. He says, I know your works that you are

not. He says right here, the faithful and true witness, the originator of God's creation, I know

your works that you are neither cold nor hot. I wish that you were cold or hot. So because of your

lukewarm and neither hot nor cold. I'm going to vomit you out of your mouth. So this people were

far from God. To be lukewarm is to be far from the source, far from the springs of water, which cool

and refresh people, and far from the hot springs, which provide medicinal water, water to heal your

soul. He says, you're not refreshing. You're not healing to anyone around you. You are no good. And

why? He says this, for you say, I'm rich. I've become wealthy and need nothing. And you don't

realize that you are wretched, pitiful, poor, blind, and naked. You think that your riches and your

wealth make you something before God. And God says, if all you have is riches and wealth and you do not

have me, you have absolutely nothing. You have wandered so far away from my goodness and my grace.

You are no good because you are far from me. And some of you guys might feel that way. You've sinned

walking in here. You've sinned in the last week and you wonder if you have sinned too far.

You've done too much to be forgiven by God. And if you feel that way, here's what I want to tell

you. If you feel like your sin has separated you too far from God, it has. But I also want you to

see that even though you've strayed far from God, I want you to see how close God is to you.

Here's what God says right after this.

He says this,

see, I stand at the door and knock.

You see how close God is?

You might've strayed far from God.

You might've put up walls

that keep you out of God's presence.

But God says, I am so close to you.

I am right outside the door and I am knocking.

I am knocking, wanting to pursue a relationship with you,

wanting to come in.

And he says this,

if anyone hears my voice and opens the door,

I will come into him and eat with him and he with me.

That God's hope is not just to save you from your sin

and to leave you on your own.

God's hope is to save you and to come in with you

and to eat with you and fellowship with you.

You know, when someone sins against me,

you know, the last thing I want to do,

I can say I forgive them and move on.

But the last thing I want to do with them

is go hang out and eat food with them.

And yet God is so loving that God says,

I am knocking on the door of you who have sinned

and put up walls and blocked me out of your life,

but I love you so much that I wanna come in with you

and I wanna eat with you

and I wanna fellowship with you.

And so this is the good news of Advent, church.

The good news of Advent is this.

If you have strayed far from God,

the God who loves you,

who sent his son Jesus to die on the cross for your sins,

stands at the door and knocks.

Jesus has come to you, church.

Open the door and let him in.

Amen?

Let's pray.