Be honest, how many of ya’ll have been trying to read through Amos since we started this sermon series? How far into it did you get before you put your Bible down and picked your phone back up and started scrolling tiktok? It was about half way through chapter one for me the first time I tried. If I had to read “For three transgressions…and for four” one more time I was gonna flip a table. Then you know what tiktok I saw? It was a Nate Bargatze standup bit from an SNL monologue where he says:

I don't read. I don't read any books. I don't do it and I think that matters. Reading, I believe is the key to smart. That's what I've always said. I want to do it. I like the idea of reading. I don't do it cuz every book (AMOS) is just the MOST WORDS! It doesn’t let up! I mean every page is more WORDS, its like “what are you talking about?” Put some blank pages in there! Let me get my head above water for 2 seconds! 

I mean I don’t know about you guys but I’ve never related to anything more than that while I have been trying to read Amos. And let me just take a side bar here and give props to Austin. We have a pastor that genuinely believes 2 Timothy 3:16&17 “All Scripture is God breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness, so that the man of God may be thoroughly equipped for every good work.” Please know church, it’s a blessing to have a pastor that believes that and not only believes it but goes to work to teach and preach the whole Word of God. We need all of it, just like that verse says. Most of us have never sat through a sermon series on Amos, some of us who have been in church for a long time may have never even heard a preacher refer to or draw a verse out of Amos. But here we have the blessing to be in a 14 week sermon series on famous Amos. This isn’t just a tip of the hat. And for the last couple months, in order to prep for this, I’ve been reading and studying a book I otherwise wouldn’t have. And my walk with God and appreciation for His Word is all the better for it. I hope your appreciation for one of the overlooked books of the Bible has had a chance to grow. 

Refresher on where we are at:

It’s about 800 years before the first Christmas. Amos was a very unpopular prophet in his day. But he didn’t start out that way. Amos was a farmer, a very successful farmer from a small town. He raised cattle and sycamore trees. He was not a scribe or a pharisee or a rabbi or any type of religious leader with any type of religious education or background other than what he would have gotten at his local synagogue or from his yearly trips to the Temple in Jerusalem. Yet when God decided to call someone who He would use to primarily confront the sins and idolatry of Israel he didn’t call a religious leader, he called this farmer. He called an ordinary blue collar guy. Some of the greatest contributions in church history have come through ordinary people like Amos. One of my hopes and prayers for this church is that God would raise up more and more ordinary Amoses who are willing to be obedient to God’s call on their lives and they would begin to do and say things that bring God glory and make Jesus famous, even if their neighbors don’t like them for it. 

Amos was an unpopular prophet in Israel because he brought a message of warning during one of Israel’s most prosperous times. In the years around 800 BC, Jeraboam II was King and Israel was still living in the prosperous afterglow of the days of King David and Solomon. They were the unchallenged dominant military power in the region. They controlled the trade routes through the Middle East and this had led to a huge financial boom. The economy was good and they were at peace. So, when Amos shows up prophesying about economic disaster and military destruction it seems really unrealistic to the people. One commentator put it this way, “mighty empires and mighty men are not often brought down by financial or military disaster. They are brought down by sin and corruption from within.” And that is what was happening in Israel. 

In Amos chapter 1 he goes and stands at a place called BethEl, and he begins by pronouncing judgement on 6 of Israel’s neighbors. Well, everyone there loved that and I’m sure he got a few “preach!” and “amen!” and “come on now!” from the crowd. But then in chapter two he pivots and starts talking about Israel’s sin. That of course didn’t go over quite as well. This week I have the assignment of preaching on how Amos as a prophet called the people of Israel to repent. This is only my 4th time to preach at Venture and it’s the second time Austin has assigned me the topic of repentance. Idk what to make of that..maybe he knows I’ve had a lot to repent for so I have the most practice, I’m not sure. But last Spring I preached a pretty heavy sermon on 2 Samuel 12 where we discussed Nathan confronting David after his adultery with Bathsheba. So you have already heard me talk on repentance from some of the big, well known sins like adultery, murder, lying, cover up, etc. Today I’m going in a different direction and talking about repenting from some of the more overlooked sins in the life of Israel and similarly the life of the modern church. 

So I’ve broken this sermon down into a few questions: 1)What is repentance, 2) What is Amos calling Israel to repent from? Do we have similar things in our own lives? 3) How do we repent of those things?

What is repentance? 

A lot of people think repentance is saying “sorry” to God every time they sin. So they mess up, feel bad, ask for forgiveness then go right back to the same sin. But, that’s not genuine repentance. That’s an abuse of grace. Remorse and/or regret alone are not repentance. Some people sin, get caught and have to face the consequences. During that whole process, they have remorse over what they did and how it hurt whomever all it might have hurt. But, remorse and repentance are not the same. Regret won’t set you free. In fact, regret without restoration will become a burden on your back, a weakness that makes you an easier target for the enemy. A remorseful person will eventually, once the consequences have died down, go back to that same sin because they have never genuinely repented from it. Repentance is a change of direction not just a change of emotion. 

There are different ways to define repentance. Lots of people like to use the word “turn.” Like we are walking in sin and towards things that displease God but when we repent we “turn” from those things towards God and towards things that please God. It can be a remorse or a regret from sin that is accompanied by a change in behavior. For the unbeliever it’s a mental u-turn from whatever false gods (or no god) that they have been holding to and turning to YWH the God of the Scriptures and Jesus as Messiah.

A lot of people think of repentance as a one time thing. It’s something you did at the beginning of your Christian walk when you had a change of mind and went from not believing in God to realizing He is real. Maybe you were an atheist or Buddhist and you began realizing there is no way this all evolved from nothing and turned to the Creator God of the Bible. Maybe your parents were Christian so you grew up just thinking that made you a Christian too and then at some point in High School or college it became real for you and you realized your parents faith isn’t something you just inherit. It’s something that’s personal so you repented of that cultural christianity and entered into a personal relationship with Jesus and placed your faith in his sacrificial death in your place and for your sin. Those are all examples of repentance but I’m mostly here to teach today that repentance isn’t just a one time thing that we do at the beginning of our Christian walk and check that box off and then move on. NO! It’s something we need to practice continually as Christians who still live in a fallen world and are in a spiritual battle daily with a crafty adversary. We constantly need to repent and turn from the false gods (idols) that seek to lure us away. 

Another definition, phrased somewhat academically, Repentance is the act whereby one turns from his or her sin, idolatry and creaturely rebellion and turns to God in faith.

Tim Keller says repentance is “identifying and removing the idols of the heart.” I like this definition for those of us who are genuinely Christian believers because too many times we simply think of repentance as stopping certain superficial, external, behavioral sins. But when we really dig down and read the Scripture and look at what genuine repentance is, we see that the superficial, external sins are all actually coming from idols in our hearts. A lot of times when we think of an idol we think of physical representations of a god. Like the calf A-a-ron (pronounce it Key and Peele style A-A-ron) made for the Israelites as they were at the foot of Mt Siani waiting for Moses to come off the mountain. The images of Ba’al the neighboring nations of Israel worshipped. Or the many gods of Hinduism one of which has a crazy looking elephant head on a human body. Or the Buddah sitting in meditation. [Maybe we could flash some pics of these on the screen as I read them off?] And those graven images are physical idols. But idols can be a lot more than just physical images. 

Psychologically, from our point of view in this western, American context, an idol is actually something that you get your identity from. All of us have things we talk to ourselves about everyday. We say, “if I can have _______ (that), I can just get ____ (that) or if everything will just remain safe/comfortable/stable, etc. then I’ll have happiness, or feel like I’ve made it, or that I have value. We’ve all got something(s). In some cases it might be relationships or financial security or independence. It might be achievement or status. It’s different for everybody. But there are things in your life that you look at and you say if I just had that then I’d be happy or have value. That’s what an idol is. An idol is making something else besides Jesus your life. It’s breaking commandment number 1. Keller teaches that all idols can be sorted into four categories: Power, Approval, Comfort, Control.

So as we work to understand repentance and to “identify and remove the idols of our heart” we have to be honest with ourselves. In the core of our being, what are we living for? What are the deep rooted idols that we break the first commandment (Thou shall have no other gods (idols) before Me.) with on a daily basis? To get to the core of this takes some true self reflection, some brutal honesty with yourself, genuine self awareness. Sometimes we have blind spots to them and need to ask those who know us best for help in identifying them. Let’s cherry pick a few of the idols from Amos’s day and see if they relate to us and how we can repent from them.

What is Amos calling Israel to repent from?

Like I mentioned earlier, one can imagine that Amos’s Jewish listeners were happy with him up through chapter one. He was reinforcing exactly what they believed; that God was going to judge their idol-loving neighbors. There was every reason to believe that He was going to use Israel for that task. Little do they know that the last but longest of these opening oracles is aimed at them. And it’s worse for Israel than it is for their neighbors because they are held to a higher standard as God’s chosen, covenant people who had sworn to obey Him.

Amos 2:6 says “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…” 

In other words, they are exploiting the poor. “Silver” was a symbol in those days for a loan or a huge debt. In general, the economy of Israel in this period of time was really prosperous. Jeroboam II had won lots of new territories and being the trade route of the world at the time helped Israel generate a lot of wealth but as in every society there was still a segment of the population that for one reason or another were struggling financially, and for lack of a better word we are just going to call them “poor.” Things had gotten so bad that poorer people were going into debt to even buy a pair of sandals. And, that's what this verse is referring to here. In those days there was no such thing as declaring bankruptcy. If you couldn’t pay your debts you went into forced servitude. Or to put it more bluntly, people were having to sell themselves into slavery just to stay alive. 

Trample the head of the poor into the dust of the earth and turn aside the way of the afflicted. This means they were using their wealth, power and influence to twist the justice system. Later, in 5:12 he describes how the rich manipulated the court system to benefit themselves in ways the poor could not. Does that sound familiar? Someone manipulating the justice system?! The poor had become pawns in their advancement and life of leisure. 

And turn aside the way of the afflicted. They were simply apathetic towards those who suffered. They lived lives of ease, comfort and luxury in the face of suffering. Amos 3:15 says they had summer and winter houses!! What’s really important to notice here is that God calls their apathy towards the poor, INJUSTICE. He makes it clearer in 5:7 “you who turn justice to wormwood and cast down righteousness…” 5:15 “hate evil and love good and establish justice in the gate…” 5:24 “Let justice roll down like waters and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream.” This distinction is important because we tend to think of helping the poor as “charity” and if you don’t then maybe you are stingy but not a big deal. Whereas according to Amos, God sees a failure to help the poor as injustice and that is a much more serious thing!

The word justice occurs more than 200 times in the OT and usually when you see it you'll see four classes of people brought up: widows, orphans, foreigners and the poor (what one writer calls the “quartet of the vulnerable.”) A just person in the eyes of God not only puts down the oppressor but also helps lift up the oppressed. A just person is the person on the side of and actively supporting and benefitting widows, orphans, foreigners and poor. They had forgotten this in Amos’s day. Up to this point in Israel’s history it had been custom to see ones resources as belonging to the whole community. In Amos’s day they were seeing their riches as their individual wealth to be used for their personal benefit and had become apathetic to those who didn’t have them or had little

As an example of them hoarding their riches and their obliviousness towards the poor and to illustrate his point about the wealthy and their injustice against the poor; in Ch 4:1 Amos writes:

“Hear this word, you cows of Bashan who oppress the poor, who crush the needy, who say to your husbands, ‘Bring us more drinks!’” 

Ya’ll see what homie just did?! The brother just called the rich Jewish house wives of Bashan “cows.” I mean Austin is a pretty blunt and sometimes colorful preacher but even Austin on his most caffeinated day hasn’t said something that scandalous (Keri is like, “don’t tempt him!”) and I really love Amos for it. I told you at the beginning I was struggling to read this book, but I got to that verse and I was wide eyed awake, laughing and so curious if that was a direct quote from God, or if Amos took the liberty with the adjectives. Either way it's funny but if that was dictation from the mouth of God then…bro! Amos is saying these women were spending their husbands money, pursuing luxury, all while people around them were suffering. He goes on in 4:2

The Sovereign Lord has sworn by his holiness  “The time will surely come when you will be taken away with hooks, the last of you with fishhooks. “Go to Bethel and sin;  go to Gilgal and sin yet more. Bring your sacrifices every morning, your tithes every three years. 5 Burn leavened bread as a thank offering and brag about your freewill offerings—boast about them, you Israelites, for this is what you love to do,” declares the Sovereign Lord.

Do you see what he is saying here? These “cows” weren’t just ethnically Jews. They were “practicing” Jews. They were bringing their sacrifices and their tithes and burning their leaven and doing their freewill offering. In other words, they were going to church, tithing, singing their hymns and going to small group. But look how much God appreciates that when he knows their lives are full of sin and injustice! God doesn’t care one bit about their external actions or efforts or fake fronts. God is after their hearts!!! The most convicting and scary thing to me in this whole book is how from the outside these people looked like model Jews. They had wealth and were doing all their ritualistic religious practices but God calls them cows and says they will be drug outside the city walls with fish hooks. 

A.W. Tozer once said “Christians don’t tell lies, they just go to church and sing them.” 

They come to church acting like nothing is wrong and sing God’s praise but their hearts are a million miles elsewhere. What we believe about God is not demonstrated by how loudly we worship on Sunday but by how we live during the rest of the week. 

Isaiah says it like this 29:13 “These people honor me with their lips but their heart is far from me.”

What happens when we look in the mirror on these issues? Which of Israel’s sins are we replicating in the church today?

Do we live in a country where justice has often been perverted in favor of the rich? Have we seen the underprivileged or minorities oppressed and at times treated sub-human? Do the rich work the justice system to benefit themselves? Have minorities been treated differently before judges or in schools? Maybe you personally aren’t guilty of any of those things but do we show empathy for those it is happening to and respond like it was happening to one of our own kids? 

Also like in Amos’ day we have Christians who live in luxury while the “quartet of the vulnerable” suffer. Christians on average give about 2.4% of their income to God’s work. A lot don’t give anything. And even if you think you’re some model Christian because you give 10%, those cows of Bashan were actually giving something like 23%, and yet God hated their giving. Generous giving should be an act of worship that is rooted in love for Christ and a desire to make Him known among the poor in spirit. Paul tells us in 2 Corinthians 9:6 that giving is to be done cheerfully and not reluctantly and not under compulsion (that's important). Acts 2:45 tells us that the early Christians were so devoted to the teaching of Jesus that they sold everything they had so no one would be in need. In Amos, God saw the hearts of the people of Israel and despised their compulsory and mandated acts of “worship.” Generous giving to Christ’s causes should be an act of genuine worship. It’s an opportunity to deny yourself something and participate in Kingdom work, not because God needs our money but because He has been so generous to us that we in turn want to generously bless others. God gave it to you, every dime you have, to steward, not to insulate yourself from suffering; he gave it to you to help alleviate suffering. You might make a huge amount of money but there are a huge amount of people who need the gospel. God didn’t give you financial means to insulate yourself from the pain of others but to help alleviate the pain of others. Even being lower wage in this country carries with it a privilege that many people in other parts of the world don’t have. I’ve been there, trust me, all of us are privileged. And hear me when I say that there is nothing immoral about being privileged. But justice demands that we use that position of privilege to help empower those who don’t share it and that the doors of opportunity stay open to them. [This is the part of the service where I call the ushers back forward and we lock the doors!] JK

Next sin that I would like to draw our attention to from Amos is found in 6:1

“Woe to those who are at ease (complacent NIV) in Zion.”

I found a sermon on this verse by Charles Spurgeon and he identified 3 groups at ease in Zion. 1) The apathetic: they just don’t care. They are not cruel and vicious people, they just don’t think much about it. 2) The self-indulgent: Maybe they care but they love creature comforts too much to sacrifice. 3) The procrastinators: those who know they are supposed to do good, but don’t actually do anything about it. They might (and this part didn’t come from Spurgeon) post something on facebook or instagram and like other posts on an issue but they never actually do anything about it. I heard one preacher call these the “slactivist’ - they are kind of an activist but not really. Woe to us who are at ease in Zion. 

And since it’s me and since I have the microphone, let’s talk for a minute about the amount of people around the world who have never even heard the name of Jesus. This is a position of privilege all of us occupy! We have heard and know the gospel that has saved us from sin, death and hell. Meanwhile there are people around the world who have never heard it. Don’t we owe it to them? Jesus says we do.

Romans 1:14, Paul says “I am under obligation (debtor) to the greek and uncultured…” Why is he indebted, he has never met them? Because Jesus saved him. Paul is saying he owes the gospel to people who haven’t heard it. I was no more worthy than they are so with that experience of grace comes the obligation to share it with others. It’s not fair or just to experience that kind of grace and keep it to yourself. 

Knowing the gospel and NOT doing everything we can to get it to others, is the greatest injustice the church can commit. Not doing so is more than just a lack of compassion, it’s a breach of justice. 

“Every saved person this side of heaven owes the gospel to every lost person this side of hell.” David Platt

A great story that really helps highlight this point is the life of Eric Lisle. The first American missionary was an African American. Eric was born into slavery in Virginia. His master became a Christian and liberated him. But instead of simply sitting on his new found freedom, he actually sold himself back into temporary servitude to board a ship to Jamaica, where he became a missionary to the slaves there. This was in 1783, 10 years before William Carey (“first” western missionary) and 30 years before Adoniram Judson. If ever there was someone who could have understandably said “I have a right to be at ease in Zion” it would have been Eric Lisle. He could have easily turned the freedom he was given into making something of himself here. But Eric realized that hearing the gospel made him an extremely privileged person and with the privilege of hearing the gospel came the responsibility to take it to others. Again, knowing the gospel and not doing everything we can to get it to those who have never heard is the greatest injustice the church can commit. 

Some of you are listening to this right now and you’re like, "I don't get what you are doing here today Thomas. I thought you were supposed to be preaching about repentance and you’re up there talking about the poor, injustice, lavish living and unreached people groups. What does that have to do with repentance? Repentance is for lost people, how does this affect me?” I’m so glad you said something. Let me start tying all this stuff I’ve cherry picked from Amos together.

How do we repent?

800 years after Amos, a better Prophet came. The one whom all the OT prophets wrote about and pointed us towards. Jesus came and much like Amos he spoke to both the nations and to Israel. Did you know the first recorded teaching/sermon that Jesus preached is in Matthew 4:17 where he kicks off his public ministry with this phrase, “Repent, because the kingdom of heaven has come near.” So the first word of Jesus’ first sermon is “repent.” Like Amos He primarily spends his time on Israel and His harshest critiques are for those who are the most religious, those who think they are doing better than everyone else when it comes to following God’s laws. But Jesus called those Jewish leaders “white washed tombs.” Beautiful graves that are filled with dead men's bones. He said it to their face. To be a Pharisee in Jesus’ day you had to have the Torah (first 5 books of OT) memorized. Some of us have never even made it through Leviticus in our Bible reading plans but these jokers had it memorized. He calls them “a brood of vipers.” Like Amos he is bold in calling out hypocrisy. Jesus said to the Pharisees: “You search the Scriptures because you think that in them you have eternal life but it is they that testify about me.” (Jn 5:39) So he is saying, you think if you follow these rules and these laws then that will save you. But that’s not God's heart at all. Before God, all the good deeds they are fronting are called “filthy rags” and the biblical definition of filthy rags is gross and not the rabbit trail I’m trying to chase right now. But my point is: these Jewish leaders had drifted to a religious, angry, fundamentalism and they took great pride in religious activity and they perceived themselves to be good. 

But listen to me: goodness makes a really crappy idol (god). Because none of us are good! We might think we are. Some of us do think we are. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve been sharing with someone and they have said some version of this sentence. “I’m just trying to be good and doing the best I can and hoping it all works out in the end.” We offer our goodness or our good deeds to God as some sort of offering that's going to earn us heaven, but what’s our standard? That we are better than others?  That’s a terrible standard!!! If you look around the room and can’t find someone “worse” than you… you should probably be in jail right now. God is not measuring us against Bill and Sally, He is measuring us against HIS HOLINESS!! But that’s what has some of us on the hamster wheel of good deeds, we are running around like chickens with our heads cut off trying to be “good.” Meanwhile our worship is all distorted because now we think we bring something to the table when it comes to salvation. Paul writes in Galatians 3:10 “all who rely on the works of the law are under a curse, because it is written, everyone who does not do everything written in the book of the law is cursed.” Paul is attacking the idea that moral goodness or religious activity can in any way be salvific. We can’t even follow the 10 Commandments, much less EVERYTHING else written in the law. [Pharisees had 613 other laws]

If goodness is your idol, but you are blinded to the injustice around you or comfortable in your privilege or at ease in Zion… you’re no better than Israel in Amos day or the Pharisees in Jesus day. The Bible tells us without faith it's impossible to please God. What pleases God? Moral righteousness, religious activity? No! Faith. No one's made righteous by works of the law, because righteousness is through faith. So what does righteousness mean? It means being rightly related to God by faith (not in our own action) but faith that He has done the work for me. Because I am a child of God, I am forgiven of my sins, I'm beloved by the Father, not because I do things but because in His mercy He lavished upon me grace upon grace. He did not save me because I had something to offer, He saved me out of His love! 

Righteousness is right relatedness through faith, which means that I am rightly related to God through Christ. But if you are living clinging to your idols of power, comfort, approval, and control…you aren’t living a life of faith. Only Christ could fix that. It also means I'm rightly related to myself which means I believe what He says about me, more than what I think about me and more than what you think about me. Do you see how this starts to set you free? I know I am accepted before the Father because of the Son. That means I can be rightly related to you because you’re not competition anymore. So now I can begin to see all my privilege, all my resources not for myself but given to me for you, now I’m rightly related to the world around me. And now we are talking directly about the problems Amos was calling out in his day. The people weren’t rightly related to God. They were beautiful graves, making their sacrifices and giving their tithes and cleaning out their leaven all while their hearts were far from God and the vulnerable around them suffered. Once our hearts are rightly related to God through faith in the work of the Son on our behalf then and only then can we rightly relate to the world around us. 

Through Amos and other prophets, God says to the people of Israel, (Amos 5:21-24)

 “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 harps I will not listen.”  

Do you see how we can be different from the Jews in Amos day and from the Pharisees in Jesus day? When we know our salvation rests not on our goodness or our moral behavior, then we can approach church, worship, the altar, the Word of God with expectancy, praise, gratitude, thankfulness. You don’t have anything to be grateful for if you’re relying on relative goodness. You're not grateful for a bloody cross if you’re “good.”  You’re not blown away by His sacrifice if you're “good.” You’re not humbled by the love of God if you think God's pumped to have you on the team. Do you see how that makes us cold and indifferent? Do you see how you start growing in self righteousness like the people in Amos’ day? 

So what are you saying Thomas, stop being good? Listen, I’m glad you’re not getting high anymore, I’m glad you’re breaking free from addictions, I’m glad you stopped ordering the newest smut book the minute it came out, I’m glad you stopped shoplifting for the thrill of it, I’m glad you’re trying to be a better husband or wife. But you know that doesn’t save you right? That isn’t salvation. Salvation is right relatedness through faith in Jesus Christ through no act of your own, no work of your own, no striving of your own. He is the goal, Jesus is what we are after. Awaken our hearts to love, adore and rest in you Jesus. 

When our hearts are right with God then worship is an expression of our gratitude and thanks for what Christ has done for us. But if you're not aware of what Christ has done for you because you are “good” then you can see why there would be no zeal in worship. What is there to be zealous about if you are the one white knuckle shaping your life? You have become your own god, no wonder a church service built on giving glory and honor to God has little impact on you. This is called indifference….repent. No wonder your heart doesn’t break for the poor, the widow, the foreigner or the orphan. This is called apathy…repent. No wonder you aren’t concerned for lost people around the world, I mean you were able to pull yourself up by your own “goodness,” why aren’t they able to pull themselves up? This is called self righteousness…repent.

You want to kill your indifference? Faith is what pleases God. Awareness of our own brokenness leading to repentance and Him lavishing upon us His grace and forgiveness so that we can marvel that he loves us like he does. That kills indifference and moves us into a right relationship with our creator who created us to worship. He is most glorified in us when we are most satisfied in Him. 

So how do we repent of the idols beneath the surface? How do we keep ourselves from idols?  Thomas Chalmers said, “The best way to overcome the world is not with morality or self-discipline. Christians overcome the world by seeing the beauty and excellence of Christ. They overcome the world by seeing something more attractive than the world: Christ.”

Conclusion

Confession time. When I was assigned this book and this topic, honestly I didn’t know what to do, say, write, think… Listen, Amos is hard to read. So I ended up cherry picking certain sins Amos is calling out and I started trying to write a sermon on repentance focusing on those sins. And as I read, wrote, studied, listened to other sermons and in general just going about the stuff one goes about to prepare to preach I realized one morning at 4am laying in bed that the reason I cherry picked these sins of self righteousness, goodness, indifference to “the quartet of the vulnerable,” apathy to lostness is because these are the idols I AM battling in this season of my life. I was writing this sermon to myself and I didn’t even know it. It just hit me like a ton of bricks one day. What I’m about to say is a very relative statement, but for me, “I’ve been pretty good lately.” That's not saying much cuz on a scale of Tom Dyson to Rasputin (if you don’t know who that is, don’t look him up right now but google him later), I’d probably rank somewhere in the middle of a secular scale on moral goodness. But for me, and I’ve already confessed in multiple sermons so this shouldn’t be a shock to anyone but…I like to have a good time and for a little while now I’ve been relatively good and guess what! I can feel the self righteousness and idol of goodness creeping into my heart and ladies and gentlemen it has absolutely NO business being there! I am by far the worst sinner in the room and if Christ had not seen fit to save me I’d be driving the bus to hell (and a few of you would be on there with me, but I’d be driving!) I have zero business having goodness as an idol in my life. I have nothing to offer Christ, I’m 100% fully reliant on His goodness as my substitute. Secondly, on an American scale of salaries I am near the bottom and I’m in the middle of a season where my kids are doing ALL the camps and ALL the extra curricular activities and eating ALL the food and needing to go to ALL the places. But even in my American poverty, I am so financially privileged. I have been to some of the poorest places in Africa, Asia and Palestine. I know what real poverty looks like and yet somehow I’ve turned into a “cow of Gaston” and I’m comfortable in my western wealth. If that’s a problem for me as one who has seen more poverty than most then I know it has to be an issue for many of you who haven’t been exposed to that level of poverty. And lastly, I’ve found myself really at ease in Zion lately. This church is in a growth period, a whole fraternity house at ECU came to Christ a few weeks ago, Ohio State has revival going on on its campus, Gen Z is coming to Christ in numbers that we haven’t seen in generations. You wouldn’t know it from the news but…Things are good here! I find myself feeling at ease. I’ve lived in the Levant and on the Arabian Peninsula, I’ve seen some of the darkest places of Islam. The absolute spiritual darkness during the month of mourning (muharram) in Shia villages as they flagellate themselves. Stuff that’s so lost and dark it makes your skin crawl and your heart sink. And yet somehow over the last few years I’ve gotten at ease in Zion while my passion for people who have never heard the gospel is on back burner status.

So this sermon was for me. Amos was talking to me. But if you find yourself relating to any of it, then I invite you…. Repent with me. Let us turn away from our self righteousness, our terrible “goodness,” our indifferent wealth and privilege, our unjust neglect of the poor, our ease in Zion. Let us plead for mercy, like David in Psalm 51: Have mercy on me O God, according to your steadfast love; according to your abundant mercy blot out my transgressions. Wash me thoroughly from my iniquity and cleanse me from my sin! 

Let us repent of our idolatry not by looking at ourselves in the mirror and telling ourselves: I can displace it in my energy, might, or goodness. Let us repent of our idols by remembering the Great God who is above all gods. His power is greater. His control is perfect. His comfort is satisfying. And His approval is eternal. There is no god like our God.

What are some ways we abuse God’s Grace?  (especially related to repentance)

 What is repentance?

What’s the difference between confession, remorse, regret and repentance?

What must be included for repentance to be sincere?

What would prevent us from repentance when we recognize wrong?  (answer the question alongside this quote from Tim Keller:  repentance is “identifying and removing the idols of the heart.”)

What is Amos calling Israel to repent from?

Amos 2:6 “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…”

Amos 5:12 For I know how many are your transgressions and how great are your sins—
you who afflict the righteous, who take a bribe, and turn aside the needy in the gate.

 Amos 3:15 I will strike the winter house along with the summer house, and the houses of ivory shall perish, and the great houses shall come to an end,” declares the Lord.

What’s the sin?

What does it look in our society/church?

What’s a better response from us?

 Amos 4:1-2 “Hear this word, you cows of Bashan who oppress the poor, who crush the needy, who say to your husbands, ‘Bring us more drinks!’” ² The Sovereign Lord has sworn by his holiness “The time will surely come when you will be taken away with hooks, the last of you with fishhooks.

 Amos 4:4-5 “Go to Bethel and sin; go to Gilgal and sin yet more. Bring your sacrifices every morning, your tithes every three years. ⁵ Burn leavened bread as a thank offering and brag about your freewill offerings—boast about them, you Israelites, for this is what you love to do,” declares the Sovereign Lord.

Isaiah 29:13 “These people honor me with their lips but their heart is far from me.”

 What’s the sin?

What does it look in our society/church?

What’s a better response from us?

 Amos 6:1 “Woe to those who are at ease (complacent NIV) in Zion.”

Define these 3 groups of people:

1. Apathetic
2. Self-Indulgent
3. Procrastinators

Romans 1:14 “I am under obligation (debtor) to the greek and uncultured…”

What’s the sin?

What does it look in our society/church?

What’s a better response from us?

David Platt: “Every saved person this side of heaven owes the gospel to every lost person this side of hell.”

Someone share the Gospel in 30 seconds

How do we repent?

Matthew 4:17 “Repent, because the kingdom of heaven has come near.”

Amos 5:21-24 “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 harps I will not listen.”

Break this down as a group:  Salvation is right relatedness through faith in Jesus Christ through no act of your own, no work of your own, no striving of your own.

Conclusion

Psalm 51:1-2 Have mercy on me O God, according to your steadfast love; according to your abundant mercy blot out my transgressions. ² Wash me thoroughly from my iniquity and cleanse me from my sin!

What caused you to repent and turn to Jesus?