Transcript

Well, as you’re being seated, grab your Bibles and let’s go back to the book of Amos. If you are visiting with us today, we’re preaching through the Old Testament, I almost said Gospel of Amos. Well, it is. It’s got a lot of Gospel in it. Amos is a country preacher, a keeper of sheep and a gatherer of sycamore figs, and God called him out of that rural and rough and secluded setting and commissioned him to go to primarily the northern kingdom, primarily the city of Bethel, and cry against her for her sin and her rebellion.

Amos is a strong book of pronouncing judgment. Others of the prophets weave lots of grace and hope throughout the pages. Amos has some of that but unlike the others, he’s more at the precipice of imminent judgment. He uses the metaphor of a lion often in here. The lion that has roused himself. The lion, the male lion that is at full alert. His eyes are fixed. His muscles are tight. It’s just a moment and he will pounce upon the prey.

We come this morning to Amos 4 and we’ll begin in verse 4 and go through the end of the chapter, verse 13. Look at it there with me, Amos 4, beginning in verse 4. He says,

4 “Enter Bethel and transgress; In Gilgal multiply transgression! Bring your sacrifices every morning, Your tithes every three days. 5 Offer a thank offering also from that which is leavened, And proclaim freewill offerings, make them known. For so you love to do, you sons of Israel,” Declares the Lord GOD. 6 “But I gave you also cleanness of teeth in all your cities And lack of bread in all your places, Yet you have not returned to Me,” declares the LORD. 7 “Furthermore, I withheld the rain from you While there were still three months until harvest. Then I would send rain on one city And on another city I would not send rain; One part would be rained on, While the part not rained on would dry up. 8 So two or three cities would stagger to another city to drink water, But would not be satisfied; Yet you have not returned to Me,” declares the LORD. 9 “I smote you with scorching wind and mildew; And the caterpillar was devouring Your many gardens and vineyards, fig trees and olive trees; Yet you have not returned to Me,” declares the LORD. 10 “I sent a plague among you after the manner of Egypt; I slew your young men by the sword along with your captured horses, And I made the stench of your camp rise up in your nostrils; Yet you have not returned to Me,” declares the LORD. 11 “I overthrew you, as God overthrew Sodom and Gomorrah, And you were like a firebrand snatched from a blaze; Yet you have not returned to Me,” declares the LORD. 12 “Therefore thus I will do to you, O Israel; Because I will do this to you, Prepare to meet your God, O Israel.” 13 For behold, He who forms mountains and creates the wind And declares to man what are His thoughts, He who makes dawn into darkness And treads on the high places of the earth, The LORD God of hosts is His name.

Prepare to meet your God. That’s what I’ll entitle this exposition of this section of Scripture.

What happens in a meeting? What happens in a meeting? You say, “Pastor, that’s awful broad. It depends on who’s in the meeting and what the circumstances are.” Well, you’re right. Let me narrow it down a little bit. What happens in a dinner meeting, an intimate dinner meeting? Throughout the ages, sitting down around a table and dining together has always been a statement of friendship, of communion, of intimacy, of welcome. And it’s one of the most amazing truths in Scripture that the Lord has invited us to his table. The Lord has said, “Come be my friend. Come, you’re welcome. Come, you’ll be blessed. Come, let’s have fellowship together.”

On one occasion, the Lord said, “Come let us reason together.” Now, when God tells us to come and reason together with him, he’s not saying, “You come give your side of the story and I’ll come give my side of the story and let’s see if we can work this out.” That’s not what he’s saying at all. What he’s doing, he’s saying, “Come see how I have arranged things. Come examine how I have intended to bring us together and you’ll see that it’s good and blessed and beautiful and right.”

Do you remember the old song? I’ve been singing it all week as I thought about this message.

“Come and dine, the Master calleth, Come and dine; You can feast at Jesus’ table any time; He Who fed the multitude, turned the water into wine, To the hungry Jesus calleth, Come and dine.”

Well, I’m not a song leader but that’s a good song and it’s a true song. Jesus has desired our fellowship with him. God will welcome sinners at his table. It’s an amazing thought.

Let’s exegete the text. Prepare to meet thy God. I. Amos gives a caustic rebuke concerning their counterfeit worship. A caustic rebuke. This isn’t mild. This isn’t tempered. He pulls no punch.

In chapter 4, verses 2 and 3, Amos has so graphically announced that imminent judgment, that is, going into captivity is coming upon them, and now the prophet tries something different. He tries sarcasm. He in effect says in verses 4 and 5, “Go ahead. Go ahead and do what you’ve been doing. Nothing’s stopped you so far and let’s see how long this phony going through the motions counterfeit religion is going to get you.” Notice how he says it there, what is it, in verse 5, the last part, “‘For so you love to do, you sons of Israel,’ Declares the Lord.” It’s sarcasm. “You just love to put on the show. You just love the external ritual and ceremony of your religion, but the point is, your heart’s not in it. It’s just a tradition handed down from your father and your father before him and your father before that. You just love it, don’t you, Israel?”

We get the same kind of idea when Elijah in the Old Testament was challenging the prophets of Baal. Remember, Elijah built his offering and he had the false prophets, the prophets of Baal, to build them an offering, and whoever’s God answered by fire was the true God. So Elijah sat over there and had the prophets of Baal and they’re all over there cutting themselves and crying out and dancing and bleeding and screaming to Baal to answer by fire, but nothing happened. 1 Kings 18:27, he sarcastically says this to them, “It came about at noon, that Elijah mocked them and said, ‘Call out with a loud voice, for he is a god; well, maybe he’s occupied or he’s gone aside, maybe he went on a journey somewhere, or perhaps he is asleep and needs to be awakened.” Cutting, caustic sarcasm and that’s what Amos is doing here.

He points out in these verses, “Look how rigidly faithful you’ve been to external rituals in your religion.” Notice that there are several things there. In verse 4 he says, “Bring your sacrifices every morning,” then he says, “Bring your tithes every three days.” His point was: they brought sacrifices every day to God’s temple. They were very faithful to bring their tithes to God’s temple. So he says, “Then you bring your freewill offerings with leaven.” In other words, “You’re dotting every ‘i’ and crossing every ‘t’ but because you’re combining these requirements of the law with the sensual indulgences of Baal-calf worship that you’ve mixed with your Jehovah worship, you have therefore indeed checked off the letter of the law but you’ve violated the heart and the spirit of the law.”

Friend, we have to remind ourselves in this age as in any age, you cannot serve God by giving him a hoop jump token or an external ritual and then from your heart serve only your carnal fleshly appetites and pleasures.

Listen to what we’re reminded of in Hebrews, Hebrews 10:8, “Sacrifices and offerings and whole burnt offerings and sacrifices for sin you have,” notice, “not desired.” Wait a minute, the law required all those things. But he says, “No, you’ve not required all those things, nor have you taken pleasure in them.” The writer is saying, “Don’t you understand? All of those external rites and rituals you were to perform, Israel, or even as a Christian, the things you do outwardly should only be a reflection of an inward reality, a heart that loves the God who gave you the ritual, not just something that’s handed down from your forefathers.” The Psalmist reminds us of this very thing, Psalm 51:16-17, “For You do not delight in sacrifice, otherwise I would give it; You are not pleased with burnt offering.” Well, wait a minute, God required those things. The Psalmist explains, verse 17, “The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit; A broken and a contrite heart, O God, You will not despise.” You can bring sacrifice after sacrifice, offering after offering, you can check off and say, “For 60 years of my adult life I’ve never missed one time doing what God’s law required in ceremonial observance,” but has your heart ever been broken that you are a fallen, wretched sinner compared to the holiness of the one true God? Is there anything in your heart that says, “Oh, I’m unworthy! I’m unfit! I’m contrary to you!” That’s what God is looking for. Israel didn’t have that, right the opposite. They thought they were doing pretty good. They thought they were in great shape. They jumped through the right hoops.

He says in verse 5 again of our text, “Oh, you love to do so.” I sometimes turn on some of the channels on television where they have some of the old established religions showing their service and they have all these certain ceremonies and motions they go through and, oh, they love to do so.

They were steeped in their traditions, Amos would say, but with cold hardened hearts they clung to their Jehovah bull worship cult and they were, in effect, repulsed by this Amos, this country preacher from Tekoa coming into sophisticated Bethel, this brash, sarcastic, hard preaching of Amos.

Amos continues on in this text. Notice what he says in verse 4, he says, “In Gilgal multiply transgression!” Well, now, this is the first mention of Gilgal as a worship place. Now, we already knew about Bethel. Remember, Bethel was the new false Jerusalem. Jeroboam decided, “We’ve got to have our own Jerusalem. We can’t do what God’s word says and let the people keep leaving the northern kingdom, going down to the southern kingdom to bring their offerings and sacrifices to Jerusalem, like God’s law requires. We can do better than that. We can be more creative than that. We can be more relevant than that. We’re cleverer than that.” So he built an altar in Bethel and said, “Let’s just worship here. As a matter of fact, we’re going to make it better than Jerusalem. We’re going to bring in some Baal-bull worship in here and it’s full of entertainments, excitements and sensual pleasures. You’re going to love the new church we’ve set up here at Bethel.”

Now that must have done really well because now there is a worship site built at Gilgal. Evidently this new contemporary church was very successful and they had to set up a satellite location. That’s exactly what’s happening. First Bethel, now Gilgal.

Have you ever heard someone say, “I love my church”? Well, that can be a very good thing, by the way, “I love my church.” We were having a yard sale, let me correct that, the ladies in my life were having a yard sale. Somehow I work at it some but I don’t get any of the proceeds. And they were having a yard sale and there was this lady and her family that pulled up and she was a sweet lady, and we got to talking about church things. She said, “I love my church.” She said, “Man, the music is so stirring and so exciting, I could just raise my hand and praise the Lord.” And I thought, “Well, that could be good.” And then she continued to tell me why she would get excited and continued to tell me what they would do and I knew a little bit about her church and I thought, “You know, that’s the same kind of emotional stirrings you get at a football game. That’s the same kind of emotional stirrings you can get at a secular music concert.” God wants you to get stirred about him, not what you can put on with his name on the outside of it.

You see, that’s what they were doing when they brought this Baal-bull worship in with Jehovah worship, they made it contemporary, fleshly and amusing and entertaining. I’m telling you what, if you really taste and see how good God is, there is something in you that says, “O God, help me keep being weaned off the worldly entertainments. I want the pleasures of God.” Stirring the emotions with carnal things in worship is not necessarily true worship.

Harry Ironside, he’s written some good commentaries. Harry Ironside’s been dead for decades but many decades ago in America, one of the most prominent evangelists was an evangelist by the name of Gipsy Smith. Some of y’all heard of Gipsy Smith? And I know God used Gipsy, I know people were converted under his ministry, but sometimes Gipsy Smith would talk more about gypsies than he did Jesus and Harry Ironside went to one of Gipsy Smith’s evangelism crusades and said at the end of the service, Gipsy Smith had told about seven gypsy stories and almost nothing about Jesus. And he said when he called people to come forward, they were weeping and they were moved but, he said, I wasn’t sure if they were coming forward to be gypsies or to be Christians.

Well, that’s the kind of stuff, I think, Israel was sliding into and I think in today’s churches we’ve got a lot of stuff that if it’s not Jehovah bull cult type worship, it’s leaning hard toward Bethel and we just need to remind ourselves, notice as we go through Amos, he condemns a lot of things but he keeps coming back to this false religion because that’s the foundation stone that brings God’s greatest anger and wrath. Don’t you mix God’s name with the world and call it worship.

The theologians sometimes call this self-willed religion. “I like it this way or I like that.” They want a church and a worship style that fits them. You say, “Well, I just don’t like that.” What does it matter if God likes it? You find a church that God likes and learn to like what God likes. That’s what Christianity is. “Well, that’s not for me.” No, but it might be for God.

They desired in this day and Amos is preaching against them a sensual, carnal, pleasurable, amusing, Baal type worship. They just put Jehovah in with it so they could feel good and clear their conscience. And by the way, it worked. Bethel bursting at the seams. Had to build another satellite location in Gilgal. It’s working.

He says something else that’s interesting here in verse 5, he says, “And proclaim freewill offerings, make them known.” Make them know. In other words, they were very proud and excited about the way they did worship. They were telling everybody how wonderful it was. They were so proud and so loud about their clever, creative, contemporary, worldly yet counterfeit worship.

In verse 5 he says there, “you have multiplied transgressions.” Multiplied transgressions. They went to church and meticulously followed the letter of the law but in coming to church and bringing heartless offerings and performing rituals with a heartless spirit, in indulging the carnal pleasures, they were worse off by going to church. They multiplied transgressions. I’m sorry, I said verse 6, it’s actually verse 4. “Enter Bethel and transgress; In Gilgal multiply transgression!” Listen to what I’m about to tell you: there are good pastors and good churches all over the world and I thank God for them, but in many of today’s evangelical and Baptist churches – are you listening to me – people are sinning more by going to church than they would be than staying at home. That’s what this prophet is saying. They actually sin more by going to a so-called church.

Amos is a part, as scholars teach and I believe this is accurate, he is a part of a small remnant of reformers who are trying to get Israel back to the truth and I’m sure those folks didn’t take part in this stuff. They probably would rather stay at home than to be a part of it.

“Pastor, how do we know?” Well, that’s another sermon or two, but if you’re spiritual, I think you can sense what is really holding this church together. What is this church really built on. Those are important questions to ask because let me remind you, fathers, all of you heads of households and dads, listen to me: God did not just send the judgment on the prophets and the priests and the king, he sent it on the households. You’ll be responsible too for what you go along with and what you support.

II. Caustic. This has been a caustic rebuke of their counterfeit religion. Notice he chronicles now their indifference to preliminary judgments. He’s going to list the things God’s done to them already but it didn’t help any.

Well, I’m just going to have to run through this quickly because as we look through this, we will find that what they had done, they had created this false house of worship and this false worship, a false practice, and in the name of God they’ve amassed a religion that any worldly man would love. Think about the way Baal religion worked: it’s all about you; it’s all about being blessed; it’s all about manipulating nature to give you better herds and better crops and more children and more blessings. So they had warped religion to be a health and wealth and blessing now kind of a society. So their religion dealt with crops and harvests and bank balances and prosperity and, of course, tolerating sexual immoralities.

We’ve see all of that in Amos and God said, “Look at all these things I’ve done.” Look at verse 6, if you will. He said, “I gave you also cleanness of teeth,” that means I cut back on the things you had available to eat, yet verse 6, “Yet you have not returned to Me.”

He says in verses 7 and 8, “I caused it to rain in some places and not rain in other places.” People would literally have to stagger to cities to try to find water. “Yet in that kind of judgment, it didn’t get your attention.” Verse 8, last line, “you did not return to Me.”

Verse 9, “”I smote you with scorching wind and mildew; Your many gardens and vineyards, fig trees and olive trees.” He said, “I sent a destitution,” if you will, “upon their crops and their harvests.” He said, “Yet you did not return to Me.” Verse 10, “I sent a plague among you after the manner of Egypt,” and even some opposing enemies had victories against them. “I slew your young men by the sword along with your captured horses, And I made the stench of your camp rise up in your nostrils; Yet you have not returned to Me.”

Verse 11, “I overthrew you, as God overthrew Sodom and Gomorrah, And you were like a firebrand snatched from a blaze.” I saved you from utter devastation, “Yet you still didn’t return to Me.”

Verse 12, “Therefore prepare to meet thy God.” Now, this is very interesting, that phrase, because he says, “God did this and this and this and this and this and this to get your attention but it hadn’t had any effect.” So now the preliminary judgment is over. That was just a foreshadowing. That was just a forerunning of what God’s really going to bring against you. Now you’re going to meet God face-to-face. “Prepare to meet your God.”

That reminded me of the book of Revelation. In the book of Revelation, the Bible tells us about these years of awful tribulation that are coming on the earth, much worse than anything God’s ever done in judgment on the earth before. Wave after wave of the most unbelievable devastation and destruction. Yet in all of that that God’s going to send against the earth, what’s the one thing that terrifies men the most? Here it is, Revelation 6:16, “and they said to the mountains and to the rocks, ‘Fall on us and hide us from the presence of Him who sits on the throne.'” It wasn’t the fire and the plagues and the earthquakes and the destructions, it was the Lamb of God we saw face-to-face that terrified us. That’s why Amos says, “You’ve had the preliminaries, now you’re going to see God face-to-face.”

Let’s go to III. not only does he give a caustic rebuke to this counterfeit worship, not only does he chronicle the preliminary judgments that are leading up to this great judgment of being taken captive by the Assyrians, III. The confrontation with sound doctrine concerning the Lord their God. You see, they had their doctrine wrong so their belief was wrong and their practice was wrong.

Look at verse 13, “For behold, He who forms mountains and creates the wind And declares to man what are His thoughts, He who makes dawn into darkness And treads on the high places of the earth, The LORD God of hosts is His name.” Now notice the doctrine here. We have the doctrine of omnipotence. He creates all this stuff. Only an omnipotent God could do that. He’s actively creating all of it. God is active all the time. He didn’t just act it one time and wound all this stuff up and now we’re to figure out how to live it. No, God is active now. He’s continuing to work in these things. That talks about God’s omnipresence. Then it says he knows the thoughts of a man. That’s his omniscience.

Here’s the point: the Lord God of Jerusalem, the Lord God of Israel is omnipotent, he’s omnipresent and he’s omniscient. Now how does that square with how Baal is presented? “Why would you forsake me, why would you abandon me to worship Baal? He’s not omnipotent. He’s not omniscient. He’s not omnipresent. Why would you do that?” Well, you and I know the answer to why: because men love sin. Men love sin. They don’t love God, they love sin. That’s why they come up with all these vile, corrupt viewpoints and ideas and philosophies and they call it progressivism. Are you kidding me? Progressing? Our culture is not progressing, it’s digressing. Why? Because they need something to accommodate their lust and make them feel better in it.

That’s why Baal worship in this day, that was just the most convenient thing available. Now we do different things today, it’s the same idolatry though. It’s just that Baal worship accommodated men’s lust. It let them be religious but it accommodated their sin and lust. So he confronts them with the true doctrine of the Lord God of heaven.

Let me hurry on. Let me go to IV. A clear note of grace in a symphony of judgment. I like that. A clear note of grace in a symphony of judgment. As a matter of fact, you should go through Amos, it’s like the symphony is building and new parts and new instruments are joining in and joining in and joining in and he’s building to this crescendo of judgment which is what he means when he says, “Prepare to meet thy God.” But there is a clear note of grace that comes through in this mighty symphony of judgment.

He said to them in verse 12, “Okay, you love your counterfeit religion, you profane my name by mixing Baal worship with Jehovah worship, I’ve chronicled all the preliminary judgments I’ve brought against you and it didn’t do any good, so prepare to meet thy God.” Now here’s what I want you to know: I think there’s a twofold meaning to the phrase “prepare to meet thy God.” That’s what he says in verse 12.

First of all, it’s judgment. Face-to-face. In his great displeasure and judgment, God is coming against you. In a more powerful way than all those preliminary judgments. Prepare to meet thy God. Those of you in the stronghold of worldly and carnal indulgence that love sinful pleasures more than you love God, he says, prepare to meet thy God. Those of you who love your hoop jump religion, you love ritual so you can just check off the box and feel like you’re done with God for the week so you can go and indulge in your sinful heart’s desires, he says to those, prepare to meet your God. Those of you who love mixing the carnal amusements and pleasures of Baal worship with the holy worship of Jehovah worship, he says, prepare to meet thy God. Those of you who love to promote this false counterfeit church as the greatest and best thing that’s every happened in Israel, he says, prepare to meet thy God.

This is a warning to us in our day. Those who love self-willed religion and would have the audacity to clearly violate Scripture in the ordinances and in the doctrines and in the methodologies of the local church in order to please men and place God’s name on it, he says to all of those who would do that even in our day, prepare to meet thy God.

Is this a word of God? That means it applies today. This is not a history lesson on ancient Israel. It’s truth that applies to all of us in every age. If not, let’s just shut the doors and quit. Prepare to meet thy God.

“Pastor, you said there was a clear not of grace in this symphony of judgment.” Here it is: the phrase “prepare and meet thy God” includes a clear note of grace. As a matter of fact, the only other place I know of in the Old Testament where that terminology is used is in Exodus 19. God has already given Moses the law and they saw the smoke and the fire and the lightning and the trembling. It was an awesome thing when God gave his law and then after God gives his law, he says to Moses, “Lead the people from the camp to meet God.” Interesting. From the camp. That means, “Come out from your place and come to my place. Come and meet with me on my terms. I have a way we can meet.”

It’s almost a statement of, “I gave you the law but now you’re going to meet with me outside of that camp. We’re going to come over…we’re not going to meet in the law camp because you’ll just get tore up there.” Amen? “You’ll get destroyed if we meet in the law camp, but I’ve provided something. I’ve got a grace camp over here. Come over here. I’ve got another provision and we can meet in the grace camp.” The key is this kind of meeting is a meeting as a friend with a friend. It’s a meeting of welcomed fellowship. It’s like a sweet, blessed, intimate fellowship meal, eating together, dining together.

And he says, Amos says to Israel, “Prepare to meet your God.” That’s unusual for Amos. Amos does not use the phrase that most other Old Testament prophets use where he talks about God as the Lord God of Israel. He doesn’t use that phrase because Amos is implying, “You’ve sinned away that privilege and that position,” but yet not completely. “Prepare,” he says, “prepare this intimacy.”

You see, God never bids people to prepare to meet him without a purpose of good. Did you hear me? God never says to anybody, “Prepare to meet me,” without a purpose of good. So he’s not saying at this point, “Come and hear thy doom.” But he’s saying, “Prepare to meet thy God.”

It is in the promised Messiah, Jesus, that they can prepare to meet their God. As God brings this punishment against them and the mighty Assyrian army will completely obliterate Israel, mow down everything and take those who survive away into captivity, he’s saying to them, “View this punishment of the captivity of Assyria not in cruelty but in love.”

In this day, God continues to warn us that he strikes us that we might understand what he’s doing in these punishments. We must not assume that we are utterly abandoned and brought to a place of brokenness and helplessness and all of our looking to self, Baal religion and other things, but he’s breaking us to wean us off what’s ruining us. Even when they seemed most cast away in sin and reprobation, the prophet is suggesting they should rouse themselves and prepare to meet their God. You see, God will do what it takes to bring the wanderer back to himself. Jesus is God’s means. Jesus is God’s plan so that sinners and rebels can come and meet with God and God and man can, indeed, sit down and dine together in welcomed fellowship.

Now, Israel had tried the law. She was meticulous at the ceremonial law, the sacrifices, the offerings, the rituals, but that left them condemned and not prepared to meet God. She tried the moral law, “Thou shalt not steal. Thou shalt not bear false witness. Thou shalt not covet. Thou shalt not take the name of the Lord thy God in vain.” But she failed at that and it left her condemned. She became clever, contemporary, and she tried mixing Jehovah worship with Baal worship, the pleasures of the world and God all together in one and that left her condemned and not prepared to meet with God.

But God has a way. God has a way were you can be a friend with him and come into welcome fellowship with him. That way – listen – is the way of grace. Grace means unmerited favor. It means God says, “I’m going to do you a favor. I’m going to do something good for you that in no way you earned or deserve.” It’s grace and Jesus is King of grace. He’s Lord of grace. Psalm 25:8, the Bible says, “God instructs sinners in the way.” God can come to you, sinner, to me, sinner, to us, sinners, and instruct us in the way to know God. In John 14:5-6, “Thomas said to Him, ‘Lord, we do not know where You are going, how do we know the way?’ Jesus said to him, ‘I am the way.'” Thomas, when I showed up the way showed up. Man wants to follow Jesus to get to the way, Jesus says, “No, look to me. I am the way.” Man wants to look to Jesus and says, “Tell us a new rule. Tell us a new precept. Tell us a new law. Tell us an order of hoop jumps we can go through.” And Jesus says, “Forget that. That left you condemned. When I showed up, come and let’s reason together on these new terms.” You just look to Jesus. He is the way.

“Prepare to meet your God” is saying to those who have ears to hear, “Make your way to Jesus and you will be prepared to meet God even face-to-face, even as friend meets a friend, even as intimate blessed ones fellowship around the table.” In fact, Revelation 3:20 reminds us if we will receive him, he will dine with us and we can dine with him. It’s a beautiful picture. You can literally be at rest and enjoy the intimate fellowship with God and know that you’re one who is delightfully loved by God and welcomed by God, but only through Christ. Only through Christ.