We're going to be starting in chapter 2.
We're going to read verses 6 through 8.
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 trample the head of the poor into the dust of the
earth, and turn aside the way the afflicted, a man and his
father go into the same girl, so that my holy name is profaned.
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. Find chapter 5, verses 21
through 24. I hate, despise your feasts, and
I take no delight in your solemn assemblies.
Even though you offer me your burnt offerings and grain
offerings, I will not accept them.
In the peace offerings of your fattened animals, I will not
look upon them. Take away from me the noise of
your songs to the melody of your harps.
I will not listen, but let justice roll down like waters
and righteousness like an ever flowing stream.
Chapter 9, starting in verse 11. In that day I will raise up the
booth of David that has fallen, and repair its breeches, and
raise up its ruins, and rebuild it as in the days of old, that
they may possess the remnant of Edom.
And all the nations who are called by my name, declares the
Lord, who does this? Behold, the days are coming,
declares the Lord, when the ploughmen shall overtake the
Reaper in the treader of grapes, him who sows the seed.
The mountains shall drip sweet wine, and all the hills shall
flow with it. I will restore the fortunes of
my people Israel, and they shall rebuild the ruined cities and
inhabit them. They shall plant vineyards and
drink their wine, and they shall make gardens and eat their
fruit. I will plant them on their land,
and they shall never again be uprooted out of the land that I
have given them, says the Lord your God.
This is the word of the Lord. Well, good morning.
My name is John. I'm one of the pastors here at
Port City. I'm so glad you could join us
today. We're continuing a series called
Turn Back My People and went, you know, we're talking about
and taking a broad look at the minor prophets and more
importantly, at the heart of God for his people in the minor
Prophets. But before we kind of step into
Amos, I want to start with something you've probably
experienced. OK?
Have you ever seen someone who does all the right things on the
outside while something was deeply wrong underneath?
OK, think about that. Maybe it was a company whose
commercials they celebrated generosity in community, but
behind the scenes they were cheating employees.
You saw the documentary on that, right?
Or maybe it was a person who never missed a church service
like this one and knew all the songs, raised their hands high
in the air and worship, but yet they treated people with
harshness, indifference, or selfishness.
And when we see that something in you reacts, right?
You feel the the disconnect, the injustice makes the outward
display feel hollow, even offensive, right?
We instinctively know the real devotion to something, whether
it's a cause, a valuer God, must be expressed in how we treat
others. Otherwise the worship rings
empty, right? The tension between outward
worship and inward injustice sits at the heart of the book of
Amos. That's the heart of it.
But who was Amos? Well, we learned from the text,
Amos was a shepherd and a dresser of Sycamore fig trees, a
blue collar worker for rule. You know, it's from rule Judah.
OK, Nobody would have expected him to be God's messenger.
I mean, he's literally from the middle of nowhere and he was
actually going to go to the northern Kingdom of Israel.
But God calls him saying in verse Chapter 7 of Amos, he says
go prophecy to my people, Israel.
And Amos didn't live among the people he was actually going to
confront. He actually lived in a place
called Tokoa in Judah. Let's look at this map that I
have up here. You'll see that Tokoa set just
South of Jerusalem, but Amos's ministry would actually take
place in the northern Kingdom of Israel.
So if you remember after Solomon's reign, the nation was
split in the 2, it's the Judah was in the South and then Israel
was in the north. So you have southern Kingdom,
northern Kingdom. And so Amos prophesied during
the reign of Uzziah, who was king, and Judah the southern
Kingdom, and Jeroboam the second, who was king of Israel
in the northern Kingdom. And most of his message was
actually delivered in a place you look on the map.
That's called Bethel. Now, Bethel, as we learned in
previous weeks, is a religious power center.
It was intentionally set up to keep people from going to
Jerusalem. All right?
It was a royal sanctuary filled with priests, leaders and
national rituals. This is where Amos, a simple
shepherd, was sent to speak truth to power.
But who is this message for? OK, Israel.
In Amos's day, they were experiencing prosperity,
military strength, and national confidence even.
But beneath the surface was a widening gap between worship and
the way people actually lived. OK, the wealthy thrived while
the vulnerable were ignored or exploited.
Injustice. It flowed through the courts.
Worship gatherings were full, but hearts were hollow, right?
The people believed their covenant identity made them
untouchable. I'm God's person.
He's not going to let anything bad happen to me.
Amos arrives with a different message.
And he says privilege brings responsibility, not immunity.
Not immunity. See, God was impressed and was
not impressed by their songs. If their society silenced the
oppressed, he was not oppressed. He was not impressed with them.
Their offerings meant nothing if their courts denied justice.
Their worship was loud, but their compassion was quiet.
See, Amos steps onto the scene to declare that true worship is
not measured by sound or ceremony, but by justice, by
lives that reflect the character of God.
Even despite Amos's humble background in life, the Lord
still called him to his people with a message to turn back to
him. Turn back.
What we ultimately see in Amos is this.
God's people are meant to embody God's heart.
But Israel had abandoned justice, and therefore their
worship had become empty. So Amos gives them and us a
sobering message. See, here's the message.
God will judge a society that oppresses the vulnerable.
He rejects empty worship without justice.
And yet ultimately, he promises restoration in the end.
So let's look at these three things from Amos.
Judgement of oppressors, worship without justice and restoration
in the end. Let's look at that first one,
judgement of oppressors. We're looking at chapter 2.
So Amos starts out with a series of judgements in his book about
the surrounding nations, but it ends with the judgment coming to
Israel. See, Amos puts Israel alongside
the other nations, and he's essentially saying you may be
God's people, but he will judge you just like every other
nation. He will.
God is going to judge Israel for what they have done and they're
currently doing. So what are they doing?
Well, he told us they look back at chapter 2, verse 6.
It says thus says the Lord. That's the way prophets rolled.
They said thus says the Lord and that's what he said, right.
He says 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 trample 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. That's as bad as it sounds.
So that my holy name is profound, profane.
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. See, Amos begins his ministry by
exposing Israel's sin. With painful clarity, he names
the injustices that had become so common that no one even
questioned them anymore. It's just the life in Israel.
Amos condemns how the powerful sell the righteous for silver
and the needy for a pair of sandals.
They trample on the poor into the dust, and they deny justice
to the oppressed. These weren't isolated events.
They had become the economic engine of the nation.
See debt. Sell slavery over trivial
amounts, unfair fines, briberies in the courts, cheating in
business practices. Israel's elites built their
comfort on the crushed backs of the helpless.
See, they even tax grain in ways that ensure the poor could never
get ahead and sold the what's called the sweepings of the
wheat, or essentially the chaff, the stuff you throw away.
Like they sold that to those who had no other option.
That's what we see in chapter 8. This wasn't only a moral problem
though, it was a covenant violation.
Their society had replaced God's values with greed, pride, and
self-interest. So Amos reminds Israel of who
they truly are. He tells them a people delivered
by God, set apart by God, and entrusted with reflecting God's
character to the world. For those who don't know, God
actually rescued Israel out of slavery and oppression in Egypt,
and then he led them into a new land of their own.
See, here's what Amos says in chapter 3.
You'll have to look in your Bible for that one.
It says, hear this word that the Lord has spoken against you, O
people of Israel, against the whole family that I brought up
out of the land of Egypt. You only have I known of all the
families of the earth. Therefore I will punish you for
all your iniquities. See, God is their Redeemer, He's
their savior. He freed them from oppression
and they turned around and became oppressors.
See, Amos calls that out. They knew that God was a just
God and he had loved, loved them by enacting justice on their
behalf. Yet they failed to turn and live
that out. What that privilege with With
that privilege came the responsibility to treat the weak
with the justice and mercy. And instead they crushed the
people, very people that God had asked them to protect.
They were to be righteous people, but they were
unrighteous. But what if?
What does it mean to be righteous?
One pastor was helpfully He's helpfully said that biblical
righteousness is not merely about personal morality.
It is about right relationships. Right relationships.
To be righteous is to live in such a way that the people
around you are treated with the dignity, fairness, and
compassion that reflect the heart of God himself.
That's what righteousness is. By that definition, Israel's
injustice wasn't just social failure.
It was relational and spiritual failure.
They were breaking relationship with God by breaking
relationship with neighbor, right?
Their actions profane, God's holy name.
To profane is to disrespect or to or regard as nothing, right?
So Israel was disrespecting God by the way they were treating
others. One writer said.
Righteousness is not a social status.
It is a way of life. It's a way of life.
So imagine with me for a second a world class orchestra.
You think about this orchestra, all the instruments and each
musician, They might be this amazing musician, OK
individually speaking, but if the strings are playing in a
different key than the brass, the music is just don't sound
right. It's just that it's a disaster,
right? Righteousness isn't just about
me and my instrument or personal morality, but rather it's about
the the harmony of the whole group, how we treat our
neighbors. So when the wealthy exploit the
poor, the song of the nation becomes a screeching noise to
God is what Amos is showing, right?
But Amos audience didn't see themselves as monsters.
They didn't. That simplifies things a little
too much, right? They were they were probably
seeing themselves as the good people of Israel.
So how did they how did they get to the point where they're just
selling the needy for a pair of sandals?
How do you get there right? Well, research into human
behavior shows that injustice doesn't usually start with a
bang, but it actually starts with a slow systematic drift.
And so here's some ways that actually happens.
And may maybe you're familiar, but let's just go through them
real quick. The first one, this, this is
somewhat how people find themselves into injustice.
It's called ethical fading. It's this idea of that this
occurs when ethical colors of a decision start to wash out until
the decision looks purely practical.
Here's what that means. Like in business or personal
life, we stop asking is this right and start asking is this
efficient? Is this legal right?
We turn people into data points or expenses.
And when a person becomes a line item on a spreadsheet, it it's
much easier, much easier to ignore their humanity.
So that's, that's one second one.
Maybe it's this, this idea that the power of like the in Group
bias this in Group, right. So sociologists have long noted
that we are hardwired to care for our people, right?
Those, those who look, vote and live like us, OK, And justice
grows in the gap between US and them.
Let me say that one more time and justice grows in the gap
between US and them. OK, when Israel prospered, the
wealthy spent all their time with other wealthy people.
Probably they lost the proximity required for empathy.
See, injustice is what happens when we stop knowing the names
of the people who are suffering. I don't know you and I don't
care, right? Or maybe it was something like
this one moral justification, this kind of the idea of the
good person myth, right? We are masters of just basically
rebranding our sins. We don't call it greed.
We, we call it smart investing, right?
We don't call it ignoring the poor.
We call it personal responsibility, right?
We research shows that once we do one good thing, like going to
a religious festival in Israel's case, we give ourselves this
moral license to be a little more selfish elsewhere.
So we think I'm a good person because I, I was, I'm here at a
church service. So it's OK if I'm a little
cutthroat at work. See how that works?
Or maybe this last one, It's this habituation and
desensitization, right? The first time you see
something, someone suffer, it hurts, right?
You're like, whoa. The 100th time you see it in
your social media feed or drive past it on the way to work,
Yeah, your brain starts to filter it out and just becomes
background noise. Right?
This is why Amos uses such shocking language.
He's trying to breakthrough the calcification, right, of the
people's hearts. They they hadn't become more
evil. They had just become more numb.
This is how this is how injustices grow and and and and
persist. This drift is how a people can
get there. They didn't just wake up one day
and decide to be evil. They didn't do that.
That's oversimplification. It was one drifting step away
year after year, year after year.
See, if we want to hear Amos rightly, we have to let him hold
up a mirror to us. Where have we personally or as a
society grown comfortable with patterns that exploit, overlook,
or diminish the people around us?
Sometimes these patterns are close to home.
They're really close to home in our own city's history, our own
city's history. Discriminatory housing practices
have made it difficult for entire communities to build
stability. And even today, many immigrants
and asylum seekers experience treatment that fails to honor
their very humanity, their dignity.
Political opponents are demonized, mocked, and stripped
of their humanity. You saw the commercials, right?
People are demeaned continually by those claiming the name of
Jesus. Even see 11 writer wrote
something very hard. So bear with me.
The question. He said that he said this.
The question before the American church is simply as simple and
terrifying. Will we be known for our public
displays of claiming Jesus as our own while completely denying
his teachings, or for faithfulness?
For will we be known for our access to power and wealth or
our allegiance to loving God and our neighbors?
He goes on. We must be honest that
Christians are not known by our love for one another and our
country right now. We must do the honest and hard
work of understanding and embodying that love of Christ
once again. Once again, see, Jesus taught us
in John 1335. He says by this everyone will
know that you are my disciples if you love one another, if you
love one another. But these examples aren't meant
to score points, guys. They remind us that the
injustice often hides in places where we've grown used to them.
See, Amos calls God's people to open their eyes.
But the call to see isn't meant to leave us discouraged.
It's meant to lead us to faithful action.
It's it's meant to lead us to repentance.
See, Israel was to repent, which means to turn back.
That's what this whole book is about.
Turn back. We were to turn back to God,
just as we are to move forward, we must actually turn back to
God. You are right and I am wrong,
but repentance isn't walking in. That is walking in a direction
of obedience. It's not just a feeling, it's an
actual action. Like we move into these things.
Our repentance is a turn, right? So here's a quick starting point
like the of of our repentance. We just need to do this.
Move one step closer to someone who is vulnerable in our
society. OK, Just move one step closer.
You don't have to solve entire systems.
You don't have to fix the world, but you can take one step
forward of merge towards mercy and compassion of the people
around you. You can.
This might look like something like this.
Building a relationship with a family who recently immigrated
and helping them navigate life here, right?
Supporting a local ministry that works with refugees, the
unhoused, or the economically vulnerable.
Learning the stories of the communities in our city that
were affected by past discrimination and asking how
can we come alongside you today? Right?
Entering in and learning about what's happening to the
marginalized. Becoming friends with people who
do not look like you, think like you, or have the same background
as you. Volunteering with an
organization that advocates for the fair treatment of, or
provides practical help. It's just a step that we will
not all take the same step. We won't, but we can take a
step. OK, see, these are not grand
gestures. They're just simple, faithful
ways to bear God's character in everyday life.
Amos doesn't just confront us, though.
He invites us. He shows us the gap between the
world as it is and the world as it should be, or as God intense.
And then he calls God's people to step into that gap with
compassion, humility, and courage.
So the first point is this. God's judgment falls on Israel
not because they lacked religion, but because they
lacked love. True righteousness is found in
right relationships that protect the dignity of the vulnerable.
OK, but if in the first part of Amos he exposes how Israel
treated the vulnerable, this section, this next one, it
reveals something even more unsettling is that God rejects
their worship because their lives contradict their songs.
So let's look at Amos 51 more time.
He says, I hate, I despise your feasts and I take no delight in
your solemn assemblies. Even though you offer me your
burnt offerings and grain offerings, I will not accept
them. And the peace offerings of your
fattened animals, I will not look upon them.
Take away from me the noise of your songs to the melody of your
hearts. I will not listen, but let
justice roll down like waters, and righteousness like an ever
flowing stream. And then he goes on to say this.
Did you bring me sacrifices and offerings during the 40 years in
the wilderness? O Israel, you shall take up
Saikuth and your king, and king, you your star God, your images
that you made for yourselves, and I will send you into exile
beyond Damascus, says the Lord, whose name is the God of hosts.
Look at that again. I hate, I despise your
festivals. Take away me your noise of your
songs. Let justice roll down like
waters. The shocking part is that Israel
was worshipping passionately. The festivals were crowded, the
offerings were abundant, the music was loud, but their hearts
and their society were unchanged.
It shows that this is rooted in a dangerous theology, the
assumption that religious ritual guarantees God's approval
regardless of how we live. Or worse, they thought their
political prosperity was a sign of God's favor.
See, the people believe the day of the Lord would bring them
victory, but Amos warns them it will bring darkness because
injustice has hollowed out their worship.
See, they thought they were good because they did the things and
things seem to be going well, but they were wrong.
Judgement was coming. It's kind of like this.
This is what he's getting after. If you could just imagine with
me for a second, imagine a husband who buys his wife a
massive bouquet of roses. Valentine's is coming up,
fellas, and he buys a diamond necklace every anniversary.
So a dozen roses and a diamond necklace every anniversary.
But the rest of the year, he's cold, he's dismissive, and he's
unfaithful. Now, does she want the diamonds?
No, no, she does it. The gift actually becomes an
insult because it's used as a substitute for real love.
See. But here's the point.
God sees Israel's songs and sacrifices like those diamonds,
right? They are offensive because they
are being used to cover up of actual love and faithfulness in
the relationship. See Amos uses.
Irony and vivid metaphors to expose the contradiction.
He reverses their expectations, though, and showing them that
their confidence in worship is misplaced.
Their gatherings were full, but their obedience was empty.
Their songs were sincere, but their treatment of others was
corrupt. Amos wants them to see that God
desires righteousness and justice, not ritual for ritual's
sake. See, one pastor has.
Said that he said that care for the vulnerable is not an
optional add on to faith. It's actually the evidence that
faith is real. See, Jesus himself taught this,
that to embrace the poor and the vulnerable is to embrace him.
If our hearts truly love Christ, they cannot remain cold toward
those who bear his image. That's what first John teaches,
right? For Amos, this is the heart of
the matter. Here's here's what he's getting
at. He says worship that ignores
injustice is worship God refuses to receive.
That's the core message of Amos. All right.
Worship is only as authentic as our ethics.
Singing wildly on Sunday means nothing if we ignore the cries
of the vulnerable from Monday to Saturday.
Singing. Singing about a God of
compassion when we have none negates the song.
See. To God.
Justice is not a distraction from worship.
It's not a distraction from worship.
It is essential expression of it.
OK, if our songs rise to God while our lives remain
untouched, Amos invites us to pause and really take inventory.
See, what would it look like for justice to roll down through our
homes, our workplaces, and our neighborhoods?
What would it mean for our worship to shape the way we
treat people who are overlooked or pushed to the margins, right?
Maybe it starts in very small, very ordinary ways, right?
Imagine the Justin Justice rolling down in your home, where
conversations become kinder, where the you we teach our
children to see every person is made in God's image.
Where we open our doors to someone who needs a meal or or
listening ear. Where justice begins to look
like less like a program, although we need programs, but
more like hospitality, patience and shared life.
Imagine justice rolling into your workplace where we refuse
to participate in gossip, where we advocate gently for fairness,
where we treat Co workers essentially, especially those
with less authority, with dignity.
Right. But Amos also presses us to
think about the integrity behind our work itself.
See, in his day, businesses used rigged scales.
They diluted products and took advantage of people who had no
power to push back. The forms have changed right in
our day, but the temptations have not.
See, justice in the workplace can look like doing what is
right even when no one's watching.
Being honest in how we bill our hours and how we handle money
and how we speak about customers or clients.
It's not upselling a client in ways that are in for something
they don't need. It looks like refusing to cut
corners in ways that would harm others, even if it's how
everyone does it, right It It can be offering a word of
encouragement to someone who is routinely overlooked, or
choosing to listen carefully before making assumptions.
Right? Sometimes justice is simply
treating people as people. Not as obstacles, not as tools,
not as competitors, but as image bearers of God.
In these quiet, unseen decisions, justice begins to
flow. And when justice flows, it is
right. Worship.
Every bit is honoring to God as a song we sing.
Imagine. Justice flowing into your
neighborhood. Slowing down enough to.
Notice the person who always walks alone, right?
Learning the stories of people who are different from us,
choosing to be a steady presence of kindness, even it might, it
might even look like befriending someone who feels out of place,
new someone's new to the area or disconnected.
When Amos speaks of justice rolling down like water, he's
he's not imagining A1 time fire hydrant, a passion.
He's not. He's describing a steady,
ongoing stream, a way of life in which God's heart shapes ours.
OK, These small faithful acts are not disconnected from
worship. They are worship.
Don't miss that. They are worship.
They're the ways our songs begin to take on flesh in the world
God loves. And it's no accident.
It's no accident that Doctor Martin Luther King junior, many
years ago, he reached for these very same words from Amos to
say, let justice roll down like waters.
When he longed for a world shaped by righteousness and
compassion, he wasn't introducing a new idea.
He was echoing the ancient call of God's heart right?
See doctor King. He stood in a long line of
Christians who did the same thing.
Reformers like John Calvin often turn to Amos to emphasize the
genuine faith must express itself in in mercy and integrity
and equity toward neighbor and long before that medieval
theologians. They appealed to Amos when
challenging rulers and business practices that oppress the poor
through unjust taxation and dishonest gain.
And going even further back, early church fathers such as
Basil the Great and Expressory of Nice, he used Amos to call
believers to generosity, economic fairness, and care for
the vulnerable. And even further still, all the
way back into the the 1st and 2nd centuries, John Christosum,
one of the most influential voices of the early church,
regularly invoked Amos when confronting the mistreatment of
the poor and the misuse of wealth, insisting that worship
without justice is worship God refuses to accept.
Not to speak of the countless, countless passages of the Old
and New Testament that push us to treat others with dignity,
value, and worth just like this one.
This isn't some kind of progressive agenda.
It's not. It's called Christianity.
See these ideas? They didn't come from cultural
ideologies. They did not.
They came from the Bible. In fact, our culture got these
ideas from centuries of Christian influence on culture.
I praise God for that. That's his common grace, that we
would even care as a society about these things.
See, across the centuries of Christian history, the church
has returned to Amos because his his message is timeless.
True worship is inseparable from justice.
And that I'm I'm not naive. That might rub you the wrong
way. That might rub you the wrong
way. All this justice talk may
actually make you feel like it puts you into one political
party, but I'm here to tell you it doesn't.
It doesn't. The Bible is neither completely
conservative nor liberal. It's not.
Being a Christian doesn't put you on either camp.
It's like HP, Charles says. He says Jesus didn't come to
take sides, He came to take over.
He did. So as we follow Jesus and his
word, we will not fit into one political box entirely, but we
will confound both. We will.
So .2 is that religious ritual is hollow when it ignores social
injustice. God rejects the noise of our
songs. When our lives do not echo his
heart for the oppressed, He does.
But Amos doesn't end with rebuke.
He doesn't. After calling God's people to
justice and exposing the hollowness of their worship, he
does something surprising. He turns our eyes towards hope.
See, the God who confronts his people also restores them.
See, judgement is not the final word, graces.
So if you look at Amos 9 once more, he says this towards the
end. He says, In that day I will
raise up the booth of David that has fallen, and prepare its
breeches, and raise up its ruins, and rebuild it as the
days of old, that they may possess the remnant of Edom.
And all the nations who are called by my name, declares the
Lord. Who is, who does this?
Behold, the days are coming, declares the Lord.
Even when the plowmen shall overtake the Reaper in the
treader of grapes, on him who sows the seed the mountains
shall drip sweet wine, and all the hills shall flow with it.
I will restore the fortunes of my people Israel, and they shall
rebuild the ruined cities and inhabit them.
They shall plant vineyards and drink their wine, and they shall
make gardens and eat their fruit.
I will plant them on their land, and they shall never again be
uprooted out of the land that I have given them, says the Lord
your God. See, after 8 chapters of
blistering indictment, and there's a lot, Amos ends with a
breathtaking vision of renewal, of renewal.
See, he describes a future in which God raises up what has
fallen, repairs what is broken, and restores what has been lost.
He says, I'll raise up the fallen booth of David.
This is this is more than a political repair.
See that the booth evokes like this fragile collapse, shelter,
OK, and Israel's glory and unity are just in ruins.
Yet God promises to lift it up again, reestablishing his
gracious reign among his people. Restoration comes not because
the people deserved it though, but because God is faithful.
OK, He also, as he kind of summarizes, he says I will
repair what has been shattered. Israel's life will be cracked at
every scene. It will be as socially,
economically, spiritually. See, injustice had torn the
community apart, but what sin had fractured God himself would
meant he promises to heal these broken relationships, restored
fractured community and renew the hearts of the people.
OK. And if you look further in this
in this text, he says I will restore the land essentially and
I'll renew my people with blessing and stability.
He's he's, you know, drought, famine and scarcity is what's
going to symbolize Israel's spiritual drought and and famine
and scarcity, right? See, God promises a reversal of
all these things. He's going to give them
abundance, fruitfulness, and peace.
These fields blooming again become like a picture of people
being made whole. These are images of Shalom, of
God putting things right. That's what he's going to do
now, centuries later, a long time after this.
The early church is actually they saw something astonishing
in these promises because in in Acts 15, when the apostles
discern like how Gentiles can belong to God's family.
James quotes this very passage from Amos and he declares that
the rebuilding of David's fallen tent is being fulfilled in Jesus
right. Not in a rebuilt political
Kingdom, but in a restored people, Jews and Gentiles
together under the reign of Christ.
See, the community formed around Jesus becomes the first sign of
the renewal, Amos for Saul. Notice that.
But here's the thing. We are not ancient Israel, but
yet through Christ we have been grafted into God's family, Paul
tells us, and made heirs of his promises.
And because of that, the calling Amos lays before God's people to
reflect his justice, mercy, and righteousness is now Our Calling
as well. If this is the heart of God, it
should be our heart as well, right?
But we need to pause here because it can seem like that
all that's being said is be just love the vulnerable.
And that is what's being said, OK?
But if we're honest with ourselves, it sounds like a lot
of work and I'm tired, and you might be tired, or I'm just not
there, or simply, if we're honest, the safe place.
I just don't want to. I just don't want to.
You see, if we're honest, we are just like the people of Israel.
We are. We may not be openly committing
injustice, but we're not necessarily ready to lift a
finger to stop it either. What would make?
But what would move us? What would make us want to live
into these things? We have to ask.
How do we actually become the people Amos describes?
How do we stop the 1° drift into apathy and start letting justice
roll down like a river? Right.
If we if we try to do this out of pure willpower or some kind
of social duty, we'll burn out or we'll become self-righteous.
See, The Secret isn't trying harder to be just it's looking
closer at the one who is Justice Incarnate.
See think about this. Jesus was the ultimate Amos,
right? He was the ruler or he's the
rule outsider, you know, a person from nowhere, Nazareth
even, who came into the religious power centers and he
spoke truth to power. He saw the widows being cheated
and the poor being ignored and it broke his heart.
But Jesus did what Amos could never do.
See, Amos could only point to the the broken booth of David.
Jesus is the booth of David rebuilt.
OK, Amos could only call for a stream of justice.
Jesus is actually the river from which justice comes from, right?
See on the cross, the day of the Lord, that day of darkness, Amos
warned about fell on Jesus so they wouldn't have to fall on
you and me. He took the judgement for our 1°
drifts, our hollow worship, and our quiet apathy.
He was treated unjustly so that we could be made right with God.
See, one pastor has said, he said it this way, that biblical
justice does not grow out of guilt or moral striving, but out
of grace. See, those who experience God's
mercy become people who extend it.
Justice becomes the fruit of a heart reshaped by divine
compassion. That's what Israel should have
been. They had.
They had everything there. If you remember, they were
actually brought up out of the land of Egypt.
They have been shown immense compassion, immense salvation,
but yet they turned from it. They needed, they needed
something more. If we were to embody these
things in our city, we must come to terms with the reality that
first we were the vulnerable. This was what Amos was trying to
get Israel to remember by pointing them back to the
Exodus. They like us in our sin.
We're not deserving of mercy, but justice.
And that meant condemnation for us, just like Israel.
We, like Israel, deserve to be judged and expelled from the
land and the presence of God for that matter, and we deserve it
all. We are the unjust.
But something is different this time.
Whereas they didn't have before, something else has happened.
Someone has come because Paul gets to tell us.
But God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with
which he loved us, even while we were dead in our trust us as a
sin, made us alive together with Christ.
By grace you have been saved. See, when we realized that we
were those who did not deserve mercy but have received it, when
we realized that we were those undeserving of grace, but we we
have received it anyway, it changes things.
There is a humility that is put in us.
We who were once lost are now found.
We who were blind now see. We were them.
Maybe not educationally, maybe
not physically or monetarily, but in relation to God.
All of us, we were them. We were the vulnerable, every
one of us. See, once we were not a people,
but now we have been made God's people.
We were far once we're far off, but now have been brought near
by the blood of Christ. He is our peace.
Ephesians tells us we should have died and suffered the
punishment we deserve, but Jesus stepped in and he took our
place. He took our place.
Should have been us. When Jesus died on the Roman
cross, He died for you and for me.
He substituted himself for us. He died so that we can live.
He stood in the gap and so we would know.
His victory was certain, though. Three days later he rises from
the dead, defeating Destin in hell, right?
And he'll never die again. Now he, and now he offers us new
life to be brought into his family so that we are restored,
so that we are restored. And restored people, they become
agents of restoration. Why?
Well, it's no different from the simple fact that Amos pushes us
to. As God has been to me, so I will
be to you. As God has saved me and brought
me from the land of Egypt, so I will be to you.
There's this tradition in Japanese culture and it's called
King Zungi, where basically they take broken pottery and they
repair it using gold or silver resin.
OK, so instead of hiding the cracks, which I would probably
be more inclined, they actually just put gold or silver in the
cracks, OK. And the gold makes the breaks
the the really the most beautiful part of the piece.
But here's the point. We're kind of like the pottery.
God just didn't throw us away when we were broken by sin and
injustice. He actually repaired us with
gold and silver by his grace. So now when people look at us,
they don't see perfect people, but repaired people.
But there's a beauty in that because they see the gold, if
you will, the mending. See God has taken what was
broken and he makes it beautiful, makes it beautiful.
See people healed by grace become people who practice
grace. Those who have received mercy
become a community where mercy and justice flow.
Don't you see the power for these things comes from the
transforming grace of God? And see, when God redeems you,
He changes you. The power to live into these
things comes from the truth of the gospel.
See, justice flows from grace. Unlike the nation of Israel, God
puts His spirit in those who trust in Jesus.
They did not have the Spirit of God, but those who trust in
Christ do. And therefore, because of the
Spirit in God's grace, I am kind because in Jesus God has been
kind to me. I am, I will advocate for you
because God, Christ has advocated for me.
I will extend grace to you as God has extended grace to me.
And so when Amos speaks of raising up what has fallen and
repairing what is shattered and restoring his people, he's
describing this kind of community that God intends the
church to be. A people under the compassionate
reign of Jesus, A people who mend what is broken instead of
ignoring it. A people whose life together
brings healing, stability, and blessing in the world that God
loves. See, this is the hope that
follows judgement. Not only only that God restores
us, but that he makes us participants in his restoring
work. See this closing vision.
Pulls back the curtain on God's heart, even his judgement.
Even his judgement aims to heal. He relents when his people
intercede. And revealing that mercy sits at
the heart of his character. Right.
See, our hope is not in human systems or our ability to fix
the world. Our hope is in the God who
restores what is broken, who raises up what has fallen, who
repairs what sin is shattered, the gospel forms of people who
practice justice because we ourselves have been restored by
grace. This is the invitation Amos
leaves us with to become a community shaped not by guilt or
fear or guilt, but by the renewing love of God, of people
through whom blessing and justice flow into the world.
These aren't hot just high ideals, though, but Kingdom
realities made visible by his grace.
So .3 is this, that our capacity to practice justice flows
directly from the grace we've received in Christ?
Because God restores us when we were vulnerable, we are now in
power to be agents of his restoration in the world through
his word and deed. All right, so the book of Amos,
it's a call to align our lives with God's heartbeat.
We worship a God who refuses to accept a faith that ignores the
suffering of others, but who provides the very grace we need
to become the people of justice and restoration that he's called
us to be. That's what is in his heart, and
His desire is for us. Let's pray.
Father. I ask.
That would you make us into those people that advocate for
the vulnerable and champion what is right.
God left her own devices. We are selfish and myopic and we
just don't see anybody else. God, we are so guilty in all
these things. But God, we lean into your grace
knowing that you, you can change us.
Father, I ask that you would empower us by the Spirit to do
justice in our city. It's for your beautiful name.
Amen.