Shape Up, or Ship Out

Amos 7

NOTE: These are just the notes I use to preach from, in order to get the full context/understanding of this, watch the sermon HERE.

-Standard unit of measurement. Foot used to be measured by the emperor’s foot, led to some discrepancy. 

-If/when you’re buying something, you probably want to know you’re getting what you paid for! 

-Necessity of having the same measuring line

-What happens when you’ve got a different standard?

-Ripped off, businesses can’t communicate, building is difficult 

-Today we’re going to be looking at what happens when we don’t compare ourselves to God’s unit of measurement 

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-Beginning the vision section of Amos

-Amos broken into 3 parts: Judgment against the nations (1-2), Israel’s Sin and judgment (3-6), Future Visions (7-9)

-We saw in the first section the wealthy were continually oppressing the poor/marginalized, which led to

-Second section of the incoming judgment, highlighted by justice and righteousness, which we spent a lot of time on the last 2 weeks (God’s definition of justice is very different than the world’s definition)

-The rest of this book (3 weeks) will take a look at God’s response to His people’s lack of responding to His commands/Word

1. 3 Warnings (1-9)

-Theme of 5 & 7 in this book, today we’ll look at 3 warnings, next week will be a 4^thwarning, May 9^th will be the 5^th

-Remember, God has warned his people repeatedly, this is all rooted in the Torah, first 5 books of the OT, consequences for neglecting His commands.

-Plus, Amos had been warning them! God warned them in the Torah, this is why it’s so important to continually be rooted and built up in God’s Word, that’ll come up again, but note it here

1. Locusts (1-3)

-God revealed a vision to Amos. This solidified his prophetic role to the people

-Also begins a theme in this section. Notice vs. 4, 7 all begin with the same phrase. Then move to “behold” with a description, and then the prophet pleads on behalf of his people, wherein God relents, at least the first 2 times!

-“He was forming locust.” God was the one creating these little creatures, working behind the scenes.

-Then it tells us specifically when this locust swarm will be sent out.

-Latter growth would be late spring, after the rains of March/April, meaning entering the dry season.

-After the king’s mowing is the early part was given to the king as taxes, so once again the people who were oppressed were the poor!

-Amos is stuck watching this whole thing take place (remember, this is a vision God is giving to Amos) so God is showing a little picture of what’s going to happen in the future because of Israel’s unrepentance. After witnessing the whole interaction, Amos intercedes on their behalf. 

-Amos pleads for God to forgive the people. Note that it’s not because the people are repenting! Amos is interjecting himself on behalf of the people!

-Can you think of any other places in the Bible where that happens? I mentioned one during our Good Friday service – Abraham interceding on behalf of Sodom and Gomorrah in Gen. 18. God would spare the world for 1 person.

-Also seen again when Moses interceded on behalf of the people in Ex. 32. People had just created the golden calf, Moses comes down and sees it, God threatens to wipe out the people, Moses intercedes. 

-These are small examples that point us to the ultimate intercession when Jesus came down to the earth.

-Amos begins by referring to Israel as Jacob. Perhaps reminding God that Israel was not the choicest of all peoples to choose from! Deut. 7:7 “It was not because you were more in number than other people that the Lord set his love on you and chose you, for you were the fewest of all peoples.”

-Between Jacob & Esau, Esau was the impressive one. He was the hunter/gatherer while Jacob was the mommys boy! Amos goes all the way back to the 3^rd generation of Israelites to make his point that this people are the smallest people!

-Compare this to the way they thought of themselves in Amos 6, 1 “the notable men of the FIRST of the nations”, 2 “are you better than these kingdoms?” 13“have we not by our own strength captured Karnaim for ourselves.”

-While Israel is thinking they’re hot stuff, God (and Amos) remind them they’re nothing, without God’s interceding on their behalf

-Because of Amos’ intervention, God relents. Apart from Amos writing this down, no one would have known what God spared His people from. 

-Isn’t the same true for us today? Who knows what God has spared you OR THE PEOPLE YOU PRAY FOR from? 

-Don’t neglect to intercede on your behalf, on the behalf of your children, or anyone who isn’t walking with the Lord, you don’t know what’s going on behind the scenes!

-Agrarian society, locusts were devastating! Didn’t have the pesticides, insecticides that are so common today. And ultimately God is working behind the scenes even in this incoming trouble. What does this say about God?

-Think of one of the themes we see throughout the Bible – Joseph first says it to his brothers in Gen. 50:20 “You meant evil against me, but God meant it for good.”

-We see a similar theme to the life of Job. God says “Have you considered my servant Job, that there is none like him on the earth, a blameless and upright man, who fears God and turns away from evil?” Yet God allows Satan to tempt him, to test him, and Job continues to trust God in the midst of that.

-brothers and sisters: there may be locusts that God has prepared to send your way to continue to draw you to himself. These locusts could potentially even be lifelong struggles that you will need to face, but God will be with you in the midst of those things. 

-Think of someone like Joni Eareckson Tada who became a quadriplegic at 18, or even the Apostle Paul! 

-I think of Charles Spurgeon, who battled crippling depression so severe he one time had to stop preaching in the middle of a sermon to rest, then finished out his message. Every winter he would travel to the south of France to get away from England in order to have the strength to carry on with the rest of his responsibilities. “I have learned to kiss the wave that throws me against the rock of ages.” 

-God never promises us a worry/pain free life. Instead He promises that whatever comes our way, He will walk us through it! So when locusts comes, take heart!

-This is only the first of the warnings!

• Fire (4-6)

-God’s not done doling out consequences to His people here. After the locusts (and God relents through Amos begging forgiveness), God sends a judgment through fire

-Notice that it “devoured the great deep and was eating up the land.”

-“Great deep” isn’t the ocean (as we would think) instead this is the water from which all other water flows, like Gen. 1:2 “darkness was over the face of the deep.” It was wiping out the source of all water for the people, then once that was consumed, it started moving to the land.

-This time, Amos doesn’t ask for forgiveness, instead he asks God to just stop.

-Once again, the Lord relents, He will not use these means to discipline His people

-This leads us to the third and final vision for this week:

• The Ultimate Standard (7-9)

-My dad one time preached 1 sermon on Amos (misleading me to thinking he preached a whole series on this book so I had asked him for help once I decided to preach through this book, turned out it was 1 message and not a series, so thanks for nothing dad!)

-Nice thing is one of the only sermons I remember from growing up is one this text! So I’ve got something to go on!

-In this vision, God is standing beside a wall that was built with a plumb line. A plumb line is a measuring line, a string and a heavy weight (let gravity do the work) that ensure whatever you’re building is straight/level.

-Having something level is really important when you’re building! Just a little bit off can destroy the whole structure! 

-Plumbline tells you just how far off of “correct” you are. 

-One example is with music. They make this thing called a metronome, the bane of those who are learning music! Keeps you locked into a specific tempo.

-God has similarly built a plumbline/tempo for how we are supposed to live. A standard by which we’re to measure our entire lives. A tempo that we’re supposed to sync our lives to, and if we don’t, destruction is guaranteed to come.

-Here’s the thing about the plumbline. It’s NEVER going to change! Gravity works 100% of the time! The fact that you’re still sitting there proves my point! And that never changing standard is the measurement that God will use to judge his people, as the end of vs. 8 makes clear. 

-So what happens if everyone is walking around with a slanted/skewed perspective? Is the plumbline wrong, or are we wrong? Yet that’s EXACTLY what happens so often in our world today. People are leaning over looking at the plumbline of God’s Word, and blaming God’s Word as being wrong instead of looking at themselves as the wrong ones.

-But let’s take that analogy a step further, what happens when someone else’s slant is different than our own? Anyone ever read the Dr. Seuss book The Sneetches? Divided into star bellied vs. non star. Guy makes a device that puts stars on bellies, then couldn’t divide each other up anymore.

-We spend so much time looking around at other people assuming our “slant” (or star on our belly) is the standard unit of measurement, then try to force others to adopt our same slant. 

-And here’s where it gets even MORE difficult! It literally changes you.

-If you break a bone, get a cast, after the 6-8 weeks the cast comes off and your limb looks anemic! It hasn’t been used. The rest of our body compensates and get stronger at the expense of the broken limb.

-Similarly, when we’re walking with a skewed perspective we focus on the strength at the expense of the weakness, so instead of using the right plumb/level, we just look at each other and refuse to give grace. We too carelessly and callously throw names out instead of looking to listen.

-What measuring line(s) does our world use today?

-Hyper-individuality 

-Sexuality

-Gender

-Vocation

-Finances

-What measuring line does God use?

–Amos 5:24 “let justice roll down like waters, and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream.

–Micah 6:8 “He has told you, O man, what is good; and what does the Lord require of you but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God?

–Acts 2:44-47 “And all who believed were together and had all things in common. ⁴⁵ And they were selling their possessions and belongings and distributing the proceeds to all, as any had need. ⁴⁶ And day by day, attending the temple together and breaking bread in their homes, they received their food with glad and generous hearts, ⁴⁷ praising God and having favor with all the people. And the Lord added to their number day by day those who were being saved.

–James 1:27 “Religion that is pure and undefiled before God the Father is this: to visit orphans and widows in their affliction, and to keep oneself unstained from the world.”

-How are we doing at these things? This is getting back to what we saw as a biblical definition of justice: radical generosity, universal equality, special concern for the poor & marginalized, both corporate and individual responsibility. We did this just this week with the blankets and pillows!

-When we’re tempted to rely on our own works, our own efforts, or at times even the world’s standard of measurement, remember what God has called us to pursue, remember which standard God will use! God calls us to love unconditionally

• A Message from the King (10-17)

-This is a very interesting section that contains the only personal information about Amos other than the first 2 verses of the book.

-We’re also introduced to a new character in the story: Amaziah, priest of where? NOT Jerusalem. 

1. Amaziah’s Complaint (10-13)

-Amaziah, turns out, is a tattle tale. No one likes a tattle tale. Runs off and complains to the king about Amos. 

-Accuses Amos of “conspiring against the King” and Amos has the audacity to do so within the king’s own kingdom! And the nation can’t bear his words.

-Amos is attacking the national theology of Israel. Since the people are living in unrepentant sin, Amos’ job is to call them out! And the high priest’s livelihood is threatened by it. Remember, Amos has called out these worship centers in Bethel and Gilgal.

-But Amaziah is sneaky, he references the prophecy Amos has given about Jeroboam. He knows if the king is attacked, it’ll be dealt with.

-After sending off a message to king Jeroboam, he then turns his attention back to Amos.

-First, notice that Amaziah at least acknowledges that Amos is a seer. Just doesn’t like what Amos is seeing. But nowhere does he try to downplay or dismiss Amos’ message. 

-Second, urges Amos to flee back to his homeland of Judah. Amaziah may have thought he could go to Jerusalem and be a thorn in the side of the high priest there.

-Third, he accuses Amos of earning his living through prophesy. One translation translates “eat bread” as “earn your living.” 

-Amaziah has essentially walked all over Amos, refusing to hear or heed Amos’ message! 

-Has that ever happened to you? You’re doing your best to obey God and all you face is blatant opposition? You’re not alone!

-Not saying just be a (as a seminary professor used to say) “ignoramus” who is unwilling to be taught and corrected, but when God is leading/guiding you somewhere (and has been confirmed by your church body), don’t back down! Continue living out your calling!

-One of the most potent verses getting to this idea is another prophet, Jeremiah 20:9 “If I say ‘I will not mention him, or speak any more in his name.’ there is in my heart as it were a burning fire shut up in my bones, and I am weary with holding it in, and I cannot.”

• Amos’ Critique (14-17)

-Amos gets a chance to reply. He begins by dealing with Amaziah’s accusations first, that he is not in the prophecy business to make a living. At this time in Israel’s history, their arose guilds of prophets who were trained/discipled in how to be effective prophets, but not all of them were true prophets who were speaking on behalf of God.

-One of my favorite lines from Dr. DA Carson “I am neither the prophet, nor the son of a prophet, and I work at a non-profit.” 

-Amos wasn’t in prophesy to make money, he does that other ways. Got commanded Amos to go prophesy, he didn’t have a choice! He must obey, or suffer the consequences. 

-Because Amaziah begged Amos to leave and stop prophesying, Amos offers a word from the Lord to him. In summary, everything someone would hold dear would be utterly stripped away from him. Another series of 5

-First his wife will be defiled. This would be a 1 2 punch to Amaziah. First, that he wouldn’t be able to protect the women he most dearly loves. Second, one of the requirements for priests affected the women they would marry. A prostitute was not the type of women priests could marry, so essentially Amos is calling Amaziah’s calling of priest into question

-Children will be killed. Already knew there would be an incoming judgment, but didn’t know how it would affect him personally. Now he does

-Land that he owns will be divided up. Just as the plumb line would be used to judge each person, a different sort of plumb line will break down Amaziah’s land and give it to victors of the coming war

-Amaziah will be taken out into exile. Just as we saw last week in 6:7, the rich being the first to be led into exile, Amaziah will be on the front of that line, and will die in “an unclean land.” A land that is not the chosen land, that is not where God’s chosen people are to live.

-Lastly, just as Amaziah will go into exile, so will the entire nation!

-Not a cheery ending to this chapter! What do we learn? We see the need to stand fast to God’s Word. Amos knew the ultimate standard by which he would be judged, and it wasn’t Amaziah! He clung to the truths of what God had spoken, and we need to do the same today! So soak, saturate your mind in the truths of the Bible, then find a church community who will hold you accountable to the Bible and strive day by day to fight against sin, and keep your eyes and your gaze fixated on Christ! 

Let Justice and Righteousness Flow

Amos 5

One note, this is just the manuscript I used to preach from, meaning there may be some making context below. If you’d like to listen to the message, please check it out here.

-Examples of justice. We all long for it in every area of our lives. Think of your favorite movies: the little guy finally beating the big bully and getting his justice. The Mighty Ducks get revenge on the Hawks. Marty McFly gets the best of Buff.

–Louie Zamperini Unbroken. 

–John Perkins Let Justice Roll Down.

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1. The Lord is His Name (1-17)

-I realize it’s been a couple weeks since we were last in Amos, so quick catch up:

 -Amos 1, 2 the surrounding nations and God’s people have not been living right, so God will bring a judgment upon them

-Amos 3 more sins of Israel, lion coming upon them

-Amos 4 their false worship and all the ways the people are not returning to God, towards the end “Prepare to meet your God, O Israel!” then “the Lord, the God of hosts is his name”

-Chapter 5 reverts back to oracles against Israel

1. The Decimation of Israel (1-3)

-Remember, last chapter God listed 5 plagues he’d brought, yet they did not return to Him, this is picking up that theme about what it’s going to look like now as He passes out his judgment

-This judgment is not doled out callously, this is a dirge God is singing. One translation said this is a grave song, a minor key, said with much mourning.

-Israel is pictured as a young lady

-Where there used to be someone to help (God) He’s no longer there, forsaken

-It will be so bad, their forces will be reduced by 90%

-Those aren’t great odds – that’s like UCLA, the 11 seed beating Gonzaga, the 1 seed of the whole tournament 

-So how will God’s people respond to this judgment? Is it utterly hopeless?

-Thankfully, whenever God’s involved, there’s always hope!

• Seek God and Live (4-13)

-If, and only if, the people will seek the Lord, then they will live, instead of being decimated.

-So what does it mean to seek the Lord? The rest of these verses are an explanation of what that will look like, but I’ll give you a spoiler: to care about justice. We’ll talk about justice in just a bit, after we finish walking through this section, so if you want to sleep for a minute, do it now!

-Second time these cultic centers have come up

–4:4 “Come to Bethel and transgress, to Gilgal, and multiply transgression.”

-This time God is calling out their sin. Instead of encouraging them to visit these places to continue in their sin, this time he’s saying if the people REALLY want to live, if they want to worship acceptably, they need to seek Him instead of going to these centers. 

-Also through Beersheba in southern part of Judah. Place where Abraham lived, and where Jacob received God’s blessing and built an altar.

-Places are all the wrong ones, remember back to 1:2 “The Lord roars from Zion and utters his voice from Jerusalem.”

-The people keep going back to what they know and are accustomed to, and this whole time God is saying “I’m over here! Come back to me! Stop running away!”

-If any of you have dogs you’ve experienced this. Anytime they get a taste of freedom they’re gone! I have countless memories growing up after a dog had gotten out with treats trying to entice my dog to come back. In the same way, God is trying to entice His people to come back to Him. And why?

-All these places are on the chopping block. Gilgal will be sent into exile, Bethel will be destroyed 

-Gilgal into exile is a play on words, Hebrew galah is go into exile

-Pointing out the irony of looking to a place that sounds like exile as your source of hope and confidence

-Instead of finding their comfort & hope in various cultic centers, God again says “Seek ME if you want to live” 

-If they do not seek God, it’s repeated that he will destroy Joseph (head of all of Israel), anyone that would normally be able to help is gone.

-Then we get the first glimpse of the primary problem God is calling his people out for in vs. 7. Justice and righteousness is not being demonstrated by His people (again, we’ll dig further into this in a bit)

-The reason God is not accepting His people’s attempts to seek Him are because they are not actively living out justice and righteousness.

-Justice is being treated like wormwood, an unbelievably bitter plant. Anyone ever try to do a warhead challenge as they were growing up? 

-Righteousness cast down to the earth. Remember back in 2:7 “trample the head of the poor into the dust of the earth.” Not just the poor that are being trampled, the whole idea of righteousness is treated just a poorly as they’re treating the poor

-Focus then shifts back onto God

-Don’t forget, Israel’s God created the stars! He causes the sun to rise day by day, time passes through His hands. He also controls the rain that waters the earth. That’s who these people are messing with! Yahweh is His name.

-One of the features of Hebrew writing is using chiasm to create focal points. Think of it like a funnel, 2 equal points on each side that parallel each other leading into the primary point of the section. In all of vs. 1-17 the chiastic center is “The Lord is his name.” then everything else is something related to that theme

-Everything that we just studied will come up as a theme again as we continue in this section.

-Just as vs. 8 showed us Yahweh’s power, so 9 shows us God’s power again. Nothing can stand against God!

-Then, just as vs 7 was an accusation against Israel, 10-13 are an accusation against the powerful. 

-One note, the gate was the entrance to the city, patriarchs would gather there in the cool of the shade, people would bring cases to them to hear their verdicts. So when you read gate in many of the prophets, should think a court of law

-MSG “people hate this kind of talk, raw truth is never popular”

-Similar to the injunctions in Chpt. 2, poor are being used and abused

-They’ve extracted from them to build their houses and vineyards, but won’t get the reap the fruit of what they’ve built.

-Isn’t that rough? All the planning, hard word, execution, to not enjoy it? There’s good examples of this throughout history – basically every major movement in Christianity being traced back to a tiny group of believers who committed to pray together regularly for the good of their community. Sometimes not seeing the fruit of that until a century AFTER that entire group had died. Are you willing to do that kind of work today?

-We then see the same 2 words that appeared back in 7 in 12 “you who afflict righteousness, who take a bribe, and (CSB) deprive the poor of justice” See how this is a theme throughout this chapter?

• Seek Good (14-17)

-Just as they were exhorted to seek God in the previous section, so here they’re exhorted to seek GOOD. So to seek God is equivalent to seeking good. How do you do that? Vs. 15 tells us: “hate evil and love good.” 

-Remember, I said 2 weeks ago when the love idea first came up in 4:4 all the fake offerings/worship they tried to do were called out, and they LOVED to openly commit these transgressions, these sins. Here is the alternative, instead of loving sin, love good, and not evil. That’s how God will be with you! And you do this by establishing justice in the gate – in the courts of law.

-Then, to conclude the chiasm, is the last lamenting for Israel in 16-17. People will be wiling, because the Lord will pass through their midst. That would have caused their minds to go back to an earlier moment when the Lord passed through their midst during the Passover in Ex. 12:12. When God comes, judgment comes with him.

Excurses: What is justice?

-Been alluding to this idea/topic pretty much since the first week we started studying this book, and here we now get to deal with it! What does biblical justice look like?

-Let’s keep this in perspective, has anyone heard of Calvinism or Arminianism? How about infant baptism or believer’s baptism? How about sacraments vs ordinances? Or a more recent example do we sing modern songs or only songs written over 100 years ago? Today one of the most hotly debated issues is over justice.

-Brief history of where we’ve run into problems. We viewed justice primarily from a social/horizontal lens. So social justice became THE primary means of whether or not one was a Christian. Ran into problems because it was quickly divorced from robust theology. I remember “social justice week” at my rich, Christian school. People would sleep in tents outside, eat only rice & beans, and then go back to their nice comfy dorm rooms for showers, homework, etc. Does that really make a difference?

-2 wings of a plane, faith & works. James 2:14-17 “What good is it, my brothers, if someone says he has faith but does not have works? Can that faith save him? …faith by itself, if it does not have works, is dead.”

-It’s not works to get faith, “it is faith alone that saves, but the faith that saves is never alone.” Calvin

-Before we dig in, a couple notes/caveats to keep in mind

-Tendency today to take anything that’s said politically, we as Christians need to do a better job of not viewing everything exclusively through a partisan lens.

-We need to do a better job of listening James 1:19 “be quick to listen, slow to speak, slow to become angry” Our cultural climate today boasts in the opposite: quick to speak, quick to become angry, and if there’s silence just start yelling about something being a justice issue. 

-Here’s where it gets tricky: because of that climate we’ve become conditioned to quickly jump to conclusions about things, we already have our responses formed before the person has even gotten their first word out. We’ve become conditioned to respond to the news with incredulity. We maybe believe about 5% of what the news tells us, so we inherently assume a position of suspicion, and continue in the suspicion until it’s proven to be right beyond a shadow of a doubt. Watch The Social Dilemma

-Then where it gets REALLY difficult is when we bring that same level of suspicion into the church, where we’re supposed to be a family who loves each other unconditionally. So instead of assuming motives of people, or jumping to conclusions about what they REALLY mean, ask questions to try to make sure you know what is really being said.

-While I know I’m still new here, God has called me to come preach the Word here every week to you, and I take that responsibility VERY seriously! I try VERY hard to not let it just be my words that I’m saying, but is an opportunity for us to hear from God Himself.

-So because it’s not my words that I’m saying, there are going to be things that challenge, convict, and at times even shock us, because last time I checked none of us are perfect, so there will always be ways in which we’re not measuring up to God’s perfect standard.

-That being said, I’m human, so I will make mistakes, I’ll misspeak, I do my best to not do that, but I talk a lot, so if/when something rubs you the wrong way, instead of jumping to conclusions, PLEASE come talk to me! I promise I don’t bite, and I’m operating with a certain dictionary that I know. EXPLAIN

-Using Tim Keller’s 4 articles on biblical justice. 

-The world tries to define justice from the wrong starting point. Basically, since the Enlightenment, people have been viewed as islands unto themselves. You enter the world as a blank slate, and then make the best of the circumstances you’re given.

-So what’s the problem with them?

-Sin. Rom. 3:23 “all have sinned and fallen short.” We don’t start with a blank slate.

-What experience and history show is sins tend to be passed down generationally along family lines. Example, anger. 

-Gross oversimplification of the heart of these issues, one side views the problem as exclusively an individual problem, the other side views it as exclusively a corporate problem. Then you’ve got others anywhere between those 2 extremes.

-Then the proposal to get justice comes at it from those 2 extremes

-1 says people just need to pull themselves up by their bootstraps

-Other says we need to enact laws/policies to address the injustice around us

-So what does the Bible say about justice? 

-Bible says justice isn’t built on either individuals or societal evils, instead it is based in the very character of God, who is both just and the justifier (Rom 3:26) This is another area the world misses – what happens when someone “sins”? Today they’re simply cancelled. Think of JK Rowling. This past week it’s been happening to Jeff Bezos.

-God’s justice is both retributive and reparative. Punishes evildoers, and restores those who are victims when injustice reigns supreme.

-Because acting justly is rooted in God’s character (and we as His people are commanded to be like Him) there are 4 key aspects to biblical justice that we are to realize: radical generosity, universal equality, concern for the poor & marginalized, responsibility individually and corporately

1. Radical Generosity

-World says either your money is yours, or your money belongs to the state. God says your money is His, and he entrusts it to you (1 Cor. 4:7 “what do you have that you did not receive?”)

-Mosaic law talked about theft always being wrong, yet every 7 years debts were all cancelled, every 50 years land went back to original landowner

-Also forbid landowners from harvesting all the way to the edge of their field so that the poor could glean food from their labor (Lev. 19, Deut. 24)

-Most striking passage is Acts 2:45 “They were selling their possessions and belongings and distributing the proceeds to all, as any had need.” Not socialism (willingly selling possessions) but not completely libertarian either (distributing proceeds to all)

-Bruce Waltke “The righteous are willing to disadvantage themselves to the advantage of the community; the wicked are willing to disadvantage the community to advantage themselves.” 

–Ezek. 18:5, Job 29, Isaiah 1, Luke 12 all talk about the need to be radically generous with the resources God entrusts to you. Unlike the world, which says this is only a horizontal/social issue, the Bible says this is primarily a vertical/God issue

2. Universal Equality

-You cannot get to everyone needing to be treated apart from a biblical worldview, there’s just no way. We’re too different! 

-Aristotle said some races and nationalities deserved to be slaves.

–Prov. 22:2 “Rich and poor and this in common: the Lord is the Maker of them all.”

-Jesus treated everyone with dignity, even sinners and Samaritans

3. Concern for the Poor & Marginalized 

-While we treat everyone with dignity, we’re to have a special concern for the poor, weak, and powerless. 

-Think of James 1:27 “religion that is pure and undefiled before God the Father is this: to visit orphans and widows in their affliction, and to keep unself unstained from the world.” 

-Notice 2 things: not “It’s not a religion it’s a relationship” 

-Keep unself unstained = holiness/sanctification 

-Jesus, when John the Baptist asks if he’s the one “the poor have good news preached to them.” 

-God always goes to the poor/marginalized, Jesus came poor & marginalized

–Gal. 6:10 “as we have opportunity, let us do good to everyone, and especially to those who are of the household of faith.”

4. Both Corporate and Individual Responsibility 

–Joshua 7 – the sin of Achan, whole family died for his sin. Paul blames those who lived in Jerusalem and their rulers for crucifying Jesus in Acts 13:27

-Or think of the nations in Amos 1-2. Not all sins they committed, but they’re still held responsible/culpable. 

-but ultimately, we are individually responsible for our sins, think of Acts 16:31 “what must I do to be saved?” 

-Individually we all must believe in the Lord Jesus Christ to be saved. We can’t depend on the faith of your grandparents, you won’t be saved by walking into the church, you need to believe. Then when you believe you can start enacting biblical justice.

-So there are both corporate and individual dimensions, but individual is the strongest

(Timothy Keller, Generous Justice)  – “We do justice when we give all human beings their due as creations of God. Doing justice includes not only the righting of wrongs, but generosity and social concern, especially toward the poor and vulnerable. This kind of life reflects the character of God. It consists of a broad range of activities, from simple fair and honest dealings with people in daily life, to regular, radically generous giving of your time and resources, to activism that seeks to end particular forms of injustice, violence, and oppression.” 

-All of this starts with the us in the church. Even though we may disagree on some of our approach to policies and procedures, we need to be able to talk about these issues, otherwise our world will never see a faithful example of what they should be aiming for in relation to justice, and it begins with us, we need to start having conversations here with each other. 

-As I was thinking/praying through this idea this past week, I was struck with where/how I spend my money. I like Amazon, it’s fast, easy and cheap. Should I be buying things for the convenience factor?

(John Perkins, Let Justice Roll Down) – “This Jesus, this One who had brought good news directly from God in heaven, had lived what He preached. Yet He was arrested and falsely accused. Like me, He went through an unjust trial. He also faced a lynch mob and got beaten. But even more than that, He was nailed to rough wooden planks and killed. Killed like a common criminal. At the crucial moment, it seemed to Jesus that even God Himself had deserted Him. The suffering was so great, He cried out in agony. He was dying. But when He looked at that mob that had lynched Him, He didn’t hate them. He loved them. He forgave them. And He prayed God to forgive them. “Father, forgive these people, for they don’t know what they are doing.” His enemies hated. But Jesus forgave.” 

-We’ll get to the rest of this section next week, and see how justice ties into righteousness. But as you leave this week, be thinking/praying about what it looks like for you to live out God’s command to pursue justice through: radical generosity, universal equality, concern for the poor & marginalized, responsibility individually and corporately