-All these angry men are calling out various ways God’s people aren’t living up to His standards. So last week we saw in Joel a warning about “The day of the Lord,” that idea comes up again this week in Amos, but with a slightly different focus. Amos is all about justice, worship, and God. This was a challenging sermon for me to condense down because there’s SO much in this book! So I’ll be for sure be doing a “Sermon Scraps” (video tomorrow where I talk about what ended up on the cutting room floor) to talk more about it. But as we walk through this book today, pay attention to what this teaches us about true worship of God that He loves, how God defines justice, and how it all goes back to the character of the one true God.

READ/PRAY (Amos 4, pg. 813)

1. What is Social Justice?

-One of the things we have to talk about when in order to properly understand Amos is social justice. Now, for some of you, your ears may be pricked and you might be nervous about where this is going because those 2 words aren’t supposed to go together, and anytime they do it’s smuggling in a whole host of secular ideologies that are against the Bible. That may be true in some cases, but I’d like us to potentially have some of our thinking related to that term stretched so that we can better understand what Amos’s message is, as well as some of the implications for us today.

-First – by itself, I would hope no one is opposed to the concept of social justice. Justice, after all, is inherently social in its outworkings. There can’t be justice unless there’s at least 2 parties involved in the process (which means it’s social)! Unfortunately, our world has taken this concept, smashed those 2 words together without thinking through how we can get true justice, and forced it to mean something that we wouldn’t. We’re going to wait a few weeks to really dig into what the Bible says about justice (that’s the theme of another minor prophet!), but one of the keys that we need to be aware of is that we don’t get to define justice, justice is determined by the Creator of the universe.

-Second – social justice isn’t something new that just developed in our culture and nation. As you’ll see through our walk through Amos, God cares greatly about social justice, about ensuring that societies (groups of people living together) are marked out by justice as He defines it: care for people who can’t care for themselves.

-A couple thoughts on this from other people to share with you, and why we’re talking about it today. First, from Peter Gentry, whose book I recommended at the beginning of this series:

-We have a number of things like this in our language. Think of the phrase “by and large” or “try and do” they’re referring to the same thing, and if you break the 2 words apart you lose the original intent of what is being said. Similar with the prophets when they use “justice” and “righteousness.”

-I think the key verse from this book is Amos 5:24, and what 2 words are right next to each other. Justice and righteousness! Amos is saying they need to be marked as being a socially just society!

-Jesus talked about this reality, too. Think of what He said when He was asked what the greatest commandment was, His reply in Matt. 22 was:

-Here we see 2 realities that are connected to each other. First, we must love God. But then the love of God has to be made visible in our love for our neighbors (vertical AND horizontal). And do you see that Jesus says this second command is like the first? That is, if you truly love God, you will truly love your neighbor, which means you will care about the society being marked by justice.

-In our denomination, we’ve had this conversation over the last number of years! There are people that have accused the EFCA of being “woke” or “social justice warriors,” so the EFCA responded by writing a statement titled “Where we stand in the EFCA.” And our church offered a class where we walked through each one of the 8 statements on there (you can google it to read all of them if you want, I’m just going to use the first one for today). But friends, these issues matter! We MUST talk about them in the church, AND talk about them carefully, because otherwise we won’t know how to truly love our neighbors. So here’s the statement from the EFCA:

-Did you notice that social justice in this context is in capital letters to signify a specific thing? This is a whole methodology that contradicts Scripture in foundation yet still tries to get at the same goal of what Jesus offers us. For this thinking, everything is condensed down power dynamics between the oppressed or the oppressor, and the goal is to elevate the oppressed while you penalize the oppressor. But think that through to it’s ultimate conclusion: if you just continue penalizing one group and elevating the other, don’t they at some point switch places? Suddenly the formerly oppressed is now the oppressor. What do you do then? Do we just keep bouncing back and forth over time? This isn’t a sustainable way to live!

-The Bible gives us a different picture. It says all of us are responsible people who can be both oppressors and the oppressed, and sometimes at the same time! The Bible gives us a model of redemption where the person who has all the power and influence willingly lowers themselves to identify with the oppressed and then free them and elevate them back to a place of dignity and honor. The Bible argues that the oppressed or oppressor dynamics don’t get to the deeper reality of sin that’s affects all of us! 

-To summarize this point: our God is a God of justice, and He wants His people to be people of justice (who reflect Him to the rest of the world). That means that one of the places that we’re called to pursue justice is social (with no capital letters!). That’s what we say when we pray the Lord’s prayer, where we ask that His kingdom would come on earth the same as it is in heaven (and heaven is the place where perfect justice reigns and sets the direction for everything that takes place). 

-We need to keep this in mind with everything we’ve talked about so far: if you remember Hosea, the focus of that book was justice between us and God (vertical), in Amos the focus shifts to justice between each other (horizontal)

• The Message of Amos:

-Who was Amos? Amos’s name means “to carry a burden or a load” which once again gets to the purpose of the book where the role of follower of God is to help carry the burdens of others. But his self-description here labels him as a “sheep breeder” (some of your translations may say “shepherd”) the word he uses is not the typical one used of shepherds, in another place it’s used to describe a King, so it’s a shepherd of a LARGE flock. He also describes himself later on as taking care of sycamore figs, and sycamore trees grew near the coast, so it’s likely that Amos was a wealthy man who was able to speak to many of the excesses in the culture because he knew it well. Another reason scholars think Amos was wealthy is because this book is written with a high level of skill. He uses irony throughout to make his point, he also writes very carefully which signifies a high level of education. Finally note that it says the WORDS of Amos, of what he SAW, which is a good way of summarizing the book: words against Israel accompanied by visions for Israel.

-Just to situate ourselves, Amos identifies himself as prophesying during the reigns of Kings Uzziah & Jeroboam, 2 years before the earthquake. No one knows when this earthquake took place, but the first readers would have known exactly what he was talking about. This makes Amos a contemporary of Jonah, Hosea (who we studied earlier), Isaiah, and Micah. Here’s a picture I’ve shared before of where the prophets were stationed, Amos is called to go north to Bethel to prophesy.

1. Judgment on the Nations (1-2)

-The judgment begins with a note that this is coming from the Lord who is coming from Jerusalem, not Bethel or Dan, the competing religious sites in Israel. 

-There’s some debate about how to summarize the ways God’s indicting the nations, but do you notice that they all begin the same way? 3, then 4. 7 throughout the Bible refers to perfection, so it could be saying they’re perfectly evil. The book of Proverbs also uses this phrase regularly, so it could also be a common phrase that the people would have used and understand that has been lost to time! In Proverbs it always is followed by the correct number, this time it’s not, which just makes it even more confusing! 

-1 thing we DO know is the ordering is significant to communicate a specific point. If you look at this map, you can see how the judgments are handed out. Damasus – Gaza, Tyre – Edom. Who’s in the middle of that X? And then we start circling in from there: Ammonites – Moab – then we get to God’s people at 7. And remember what I just said about 7 referring to completion in the Bible? This is where the people would have expected the Lord to stop! And we know from Amos 7, that Amos also was prophesying in Bethel, which means his journey looked like this: 

-For all these, the people of Israel would have been celebrating! AND surely that would be the end of it, because 3+4 is 7, so obviously Amos was building up to Israel being the one true remaining group. But that’s not where he stops, is it? And not only does it not stop, but Israel gets the longest condemnation!

-And I think this serves as a picture of how we can summarize the reason for God’s judgment: because of a lack of social justice towards other people. Do you see the description here? People who are righteous (morally upright citizens) are being sold to build out wealth, those who are poor are being sold to buy a pair of sandals, and it gets worse! They step on the poor as they pass by, grinding their faces into the ground, and get in the way of the needy for their own self benefit. And this is probably one of the more mild descriptions of the ways people are being treated. 

-I’ve shared these pictures before, but the nation that’s the biggest threat to the people at this time is the Assyrians. I got to visit the British Museum in London a couple years ago and saw some unbelievable treasures, including these doors. You can’t read it, but the plaque on the right side of these doors says, “Enter the palace of the Assyrian king, ruler of the world’s first empire. The sculptures in these rooms are from the royal capitals of Nineveh, Khorsbad and Nimrud.” Wood doesn’t last the few millennia it would take for me to see them, so these are replicas of the originals, but they do have the bronze bars that held them together (those last a little longer). Here’s just 2 of them: on the left you can see a field of people being crucified on stakes, and on the right you can see the slaughtering of children. What do you think seeing that every day on your city gates would do to the psyche of a civilization? And this is the world in which God is calling these civilizations out!

-Compared to this way of living, Israel’s sins seem minor, don’t they? They’re “only” alienating the poor, not murdering them brutally, right? But that’s not how God sees it. Of all the nations, Israel should know better! And that’s where Amos spends the bulk of the rest of this letter:

• Words to Israel (3-6)

-The difference between Israel (and Judah) and all these other nations is they know better. God’s covenant stipulations and expectations weren’t given to anyone else, just Israel, and how is Israel living? No better than the rest of the nations! And God says He will hold them responsible for it. God says that at Bethel (means “house of the Lord”) He will punish them, the alternative sites of worship have become places of sin, and it’s because they’ve living in luxury while they ignore or take advantage of the poor. See, they’re so wealthy they have both winter and summer houses, their houses are full of beautiful (and expensive) things.

-And this begins the contrast God will make in these chapters between their acts of worship to Him and their lack of lives of worship marked by care for the suffering and marginalized. We’ll talk about this more later, but as we walk through this pay attention to what God expects from His people in regard to the worship of Him. Do you think God cares how we worship Him? 

-The excesses continue in Amos 4, where Amos compares women to cows of Bashan signifying that they are healthy with excess. Meanwhile, these women who live in excess oppress the poor and needy. But it goes on, they not only oppress the poor, they also make demands of their husbands. So God again invites them to come to their places of worship to continue in their sin (insert joke about Bethel here)

-And look at what God says they’re doing at these places of “worship.” All these things listed are things God expects them to do! But not at the expense of the poor and needy. It’s not enough to turn God’s commands into a checklist so that you can ensure you’re “good enough,” God actually expects you to live an entirely different life.

-God’s condemnation continues in chapter 5, but with a twist of irony. I just want to briefly point out the continuity between what we saw in Joel last week and what we see in Amos this week. Remember that topic of “the day of the Lord”? Here it is again! The people are expecting that day to be amazing, but that’s the opposite, and Amos lays some irony on thick to explain: imaging running away from a lion and run straight into a bear! Yikes! Or he finally escapes into his home, leans against a railing and is bitten by a snake! This is supposed to be funny. 

-And this comparison continues through the end of the chapter, and builds to what I think is the primary point of this book. Once again, God is calling out their acts of worship as useless, but it doesn’t just say He’s not happy, it says He HATES them! Their offerings are pointless because He won’t accept them, and He plugs His ears when they’re using music to try to worship Him. 

-Instead the people are supposed to pursue justice and righteousness for everyone in their nation, and only if they pursue those things (which remember can be summarized as social justice). They must care for the poor among them. And that same drumbeat continues through chapter 6.

• Visions for Israel (7-9:10)

-God then reveals some things to Amos by giving him visions. First locusts sent from God to destroy their crops, but Amos begs God to relent and He does. Then there’s a vision of fire destroying the land, and Amos again begs God to stop and He does. Then there’s a vision of a plumbline, where God hands the plumbline of His standards up to the people and no one can measure up, no one is aligned to God’s perfect expectations (even though He told them how they should live!)

-After these visions come a brief interlude where Amaziah, the priest of Bethel comes out to confront Amos, but Amos continues prophesying and speaking down to Amaziah.

-The visions continue in chapter 8, with a basket of summer fruit. The Hebrew word for “summer fruit” (qayits) sounds similar to the Hebrew word for “end.” (qets) God’s way of saying the end is coming. Finally, the last vision is the Lord standing beside the altar where He promises the destruction of all the people.

• Restoration (9:11-15)

-But that’s not where this book ends. After chapters of judgment and destruction, the book ends looking far into the future where God promises to completely turn the tides of the destruction, but it only comes about by the repentance of His people.

-He says He will rebuild, restore, repair the house of David. But remember back in the beginning when it seemed like the bad news was going to stop before it got to Israel, now the reverse is true, the blessing won’t stop with Israel, it will go out to ALL the nations! Everyone can become a part of this blessed community where true justice reigns! And look what that day will look like:

-You won’t be able to wait from planting to harvesting, the wine will flow in abundance. God’s telling them they think they’ve seen prosperity now, but they’ve seen nothing. And all this is God’s doing, no one will be able to take them away from their land. And this book ends, appropriately, with God having the final word. He has spoken, this will happen.

• Amos for Us Today

-What’s the point of worship? Why do we meet here every week? I’ve asked this question before, but it really comes to the front in this book: when we gather as God’s people, as the church, is it for believers or for unbelievers? That’s one of the biggest questions churches ask! But it’s the wrong question, because we gather for God. So then the question becomes: was God honored in our worship today? Unfortunately for many people today the only metric is: did the music emotionally move me? That’s the wrong question to be asking, God says that’s what he hates! Instead, what Amos teaches us is that worship is meant to change us, to make us more like Jesus. That means sometimes you might feel a little uncomfortable here because you’re being stretched to change! That’s not a bad thing! So instead of rating our worship services either on how much you liked it or how much it emotionally moved you, let’s think about whether or not God was honored and glorified through what we did.

-The inclusion of EVERYone. God has commanded His church to go out to the ends of the earth, but what we might miss it that wasn’t a new message! God’s plan from the beginning has been that He would be the God of the entire world, but it requires people who are going out to share that message with others. AND 

-One of the ways we demonstrate that reality, that we’re truly worshipping God is that we care for the poor and marginalized. This is not optional for Christians! The only option is which of the poor and marginalized is God calling you to. I heard someone in a parenting talk say that God told is to feed the hungry and clothe the naked, and every morning when I wake up I have a house full of both of those things, so for those of you with kids, this command is for you every day! AND for all of us, none of us are excluded from the command to love our neighbor, and work to bring God’s true peace and justice to bear in our world today. What is God calling you to do to accomplish that goal? I’ve talked about this before, but one of the best ways for you to care for others is by sponsoring a child. Our denomination supports kids through Global Fingerprints, and they’re doing some really cool things across the world! Maybe it’s coming to help with Project Count on Me on Saturday, maybe it’s creating a “blessing bag” that you keep in your car to hand out to people who are begging on the streets. And maybe it’s as simple as inviting someone over to your house. There’s all sorts of ways we can do this, I’m just beginning to scratch the surface here, but I’d encourage you to take some time to pray and ask how God wants you to carry out His mission of reaching out to EVERYone.