Timmy just read Amos chapter 4 and beginning of chapter 5 out for us.
And what Amos says there should really change our view of God.
I say that and I think it's really important because there's way too many people sitting in churches,
particularly I think in the Western world, where we believe that Christianity means that we should work hard at being really good.
And they believe that God exists to serve them and by helping them in life to make them feel happy and good and secure and at peace in life.
And they believe that even though God might have made the world, fundamentally God isn't active in his world unless I need God to come in and fix stuff,
which is when we pray, when things aren't going so well, God come and fix this situation.
The rest of the time, they work on the assumption that God pretty much stays out of the way as I go on with my life.
And when I need him, he'll come in and fix things up for me, bail me out.
The God that we find here in Amos, in fact, the whole book of Amos, but certainly clear in Amos 4 and 5, is not like that at all.
As we saw last week, Amos was sent by God to preach a message of judgment to the 10 tribes of north in Israel, about 750 BC.
Two tribes, Israel at this point has split into two, Judah down the bottom, two tribes, 10 tribes of Israel to the north.
Judah has got the temple and the city and the north has got naming rights.
Amos was sent by God from the south to the north to preach to a people who had become corrupt and complacent and self-centered.
That is, they were meant to be God's people, but they were no different than the nations around them.
The justice system was corrupt.
The rich exploited the poor.
Their sexual standards were no different than the pagan nations.
And yet at the same time, and Sam will probably touch on this a bit more next week,
at the same time, their religion was, they were really serious about it.
They were deeply serious and committed to their religious practice.
But instead of turning their creed into deeds, they've turned their creed into greed.
Money and security had become their God.
And at the beginning of chapter four, we get a feel for the state of this nation.
It says, hear this word, you cows of Bashan on Mount Samaria, you women who oppress the poor and crush the needy and say to your husbands, bring us some drinks.
See, Amos here is not being particularly polite to the ladies of Israel.
Bashan was the richest agricultural area in Israel.
It was the food bowl, if you like, of Israel.
And the livestock from that area were plumped and round and well conditioned.
They were the ones who got the best price at the market.
And in a time back in those days where the poor looked like they really needed to have a feed, sort of like supermodels,
the rich, on the other hand, displayed their opulence, displayed their wealth by their figures.
They looked like they were well fed.
And so what Amos is referring to here is the champagne set.
They've surrounded themselves in lives of luxury.
These are the desperate housewives of Samaria.
And the problem is not so much with the champagne and the caviar and the thermomixers.
It's in their luxurious lifestyles.
Sorry, I'm just picking the thermomixers.
It's just the theme of mine at the moment.
It's a cult.
So I read that.
Sorry, I read that somewhere.
I read it somewhere.
I know I've got one.
Sorry.
The problem is, it's the fact that in all of this, they've lost sight of the poor and the needy and ultimately God.
They walk over the needy and they don't even notice it.
Like they trample them under their feet.
So what's God's response?
The wall, the city wall, the walls of Samaria, the place of their fortress, the things that they had built up for themselves.
Their place of their fortune and their security are going to have gaping holes in them.
You see, what's described here is that Haman is up in the north, up above Samaria.
And what is described here is what we saw last week that happened 28 years after Amos preached this message.
Assyria, the greater nation of Assyria, up around where Turkey is nowadays, came down from the north and they destroyed the capital city of Samaria.
And they led 27,000 of the rich and the elite away into captivity.
And one of the things they used to do, the Assyrians did, they were fairly brutal kind of people.
And one of the things they used to do was they would attach all of their captives together with chains.
And they would attach the chains through the noses or through the lips of their captives and march them.
And that's what's described here.
You're going to be carted away like fish hooks.
Like if you've got a fish hook stuck in your mouth, you're going to be carted away through the walls of Samaria.
Now, it's just not the women that he's picking on here.
In chapter 6, verse 1, Amos says this about the men.
He says,
Woe to you who are complacent in Zion.
And then in verse 4 of chapter 6, he says,
You lie on beds adorned with ivory and lounge on your couches.
You dine on choice lambs and fattened calves.
You strum away on your harps like David and improvise on musical instruments.
You drink wine by the volfil and you use the finest of lotions.
But you do not grieve over the ruin of Joseph.
You do not grieve over the ruin of God's people.
They're celebrating, they're relaxing, and they should be grieving.
And the absolute height of their hypocrisy is that they think God's more interested in their sacrifices
and their attendance at their church services and all their religious duty
than he is in the state of their hearts.
Chapter 4, verse 4 is referring to their altar in Bethel.
It's where they would go and do their rituals.
Bethel literally means house of God.
So this is what they did when they went to the house of God.
Go to Bethel and sin.
That's what they did when they went to church.
Go to Bethel and sin.
Go to Gilgal and sin yet more.
Bring your sacrifices every morning, your tithes every three years.
Burn your leavened bread as a thank offering.
And brag about your free will offerings.
Boast about them, you Israelites, for that is what you love to do.
Their religion was complacent.
It was smug.
It was self-congratulating.
And in chapter 5, verse 21, Sam will deal with more of this next week,
but it gives us a bit of a sneak peek into what God thought about their religion.
And it turns out here that God hated going to church with these people.
He says,
What does God want them to do?
He wants them to live out who they are as his special covenant people.
That's what he wants.
And what is happening here in Amos chapter 4 is God actually throwing out warning sign
after warning sign after warning sign in the hope that his people would remember
his special relationship with them and they would come back to him in repentance.
So let's see how God does that.
Let's start at verse 6.
I gave you empty stomachs in every city and lack of bread in every town.
Yet you have not returned to me, declares the Lord.
I also withheld rain from you when the harvest was still three months away.
That's crucial because the three-month part is when the grain starts to form in the head.
No rain at that point.
Crops useless.
As sent rain on one town, but withheld it from another.
One field had rain, another had none and dried up.
People staggered from town to town for water, but did not get enough to drink.
Yet you have not returned to me, declares the Lord.
Many times I struck your gardens and your vineyards, destroying them with blight and mildew.
Locusts devoured your fig and olive trees.
Yet you have not returned to me, declares the Lord.
I sent plagues among you as I did in Egypt.
I killed your young men with a sword along with your captured horses.
I filled your nostrils with the stench of your camps.
That's the rotting corpses of their children.
Yet you have not returned to me, declares the Lord.
I overthrew some of you as I overthrew Sodom and Gomorrah.
You were like a burning stick snatched from the fire.
Yet you have not returned to me, declares the Lord.
Five times we read there that God says,
I threw the warning signs out at you.
I threw it at you.
It should have been obvious for you to see so that you would return to me in repentance.
It should not have been a surprise to them at all.
They had God's word in front of them.
It was all spelled out to them in black and white.
You see, 500 years before this, 500 years before,
just as Israel was about to come into the promised land,
God speaks to them.
And in Deuteronomy 28,
we have God telling them what would happen.
He says,
If you ignore me, you get in the land and you ignore me,
I'll withhold the rain.
He says,
If you get in the land and you ignore me,
you will go hungry.
If you ignore me,
I will send blight and mildew upon your vineyards.
If you ignore me,
the promised land that I'm bringing you into will spit you out.
God told them it would happen.
And their only hope here is that they would turn back to God and repent.
So God is saying here,
I have been trying to get your attention.
I gave,
I withheld,
I sent,
I struck,
I killed,
I filled,
I withheld.
God did it all.
He did it all to his people.
He's trying to get their attention.
Now imagine,
my family sound asleep upstairs in our home at two o'clock in the morning,
and someone decides to throw bricks through the bedroom windows.
My immediate response would be,
that's really antisocial.
Probably in a slightly more extreme form than that,
at two o'clock in the morning.
But what if downstairs is on fire,
and those people are trying to get my attention?
That changes it,
doesn't it?
And that's what God's doing here.
All of these things came from the hand of God.
He's calling them to listen,
to read the signs,
to see what's happening.
Look,
look,
look.
Something is desperately wrong.
And he's trying to call them back.
He's trying to remind the Israelites of their covenant relationship.
These disasters were,
yes,
they did come from a God in a sense of judgment,
but they were the severe mercy of a patient God.
They were his tough love,
if you like.
God has been throwing bricks through the window for Israel,
but they hadn't returned.
They hadn't repented.
And so God says,
in chapter 4,
verse 12,
Israel,
prepare to meet your God.
And then,
we get a description of what this God is like.
This is the God who made the stars.
This is the God who turns blackness into dawn.
This is the God who speaks,
and the waters fill this sea.
This is the God who speaks,
and he brings mountains down to nothing.
This is the God who loves righteousness,
justice,
mercy,
and compassion.
So I want to ask you,
the very first thing,
how big is your God?
How big was the God that you came here tonight with?
Is he big enough to be a God of righteous anger and compassion?
A God who brings both blessing and disaster?
Or is he just the God who jumps in and solves your problems when you need to solve a problem
and just stay away from most of the time?
There are not many places in the Bible clearer on this issue than Isaiah 45,
exactly who this God is.
Isaiah 45,
verses 5 to 7,
It says,
I, the Lord,
do all of these things.
Is that your God?
That is the God of the Bible.
A God who,
as you see in,
for instance,
the book of Romans,
who has his heavy hand on his creation.
Has his heavy hand where he has set these frustrations at the creation into frustration
that we might not put our hope in the things that God gives us,
the things that he has made,
but in actual fact have our hope in the God who creates all things.
The bad things of our world are the nature of the world in which we live in under the heavy hand of God.
It is our God,
our creator,
lovingly,
mercifully throwing bricks through the window.
They say,
come back to me.
He's trying to get our attention to remind us that we need him
and that hope and glory and joy and life is found only him.
We need to seek him and come back to him.
And that's the essence of his appeal in chapter 5 of Amos.
It says,
seek me and live.
Seek the Lord and live or he will sweep through the tribes of Joseph like a fire
and it will devour them and Bethel will have no one to quench it.
Seek me and live.
And Amos is saying this to Israel,
saying,
dudes,
it's not too late.
Repent.
Come back to God.
God did all of these things to Israel
and they should have seen the writing on the wall.
They should have acknowledged it as being the hand of God.
They should have feared him and turned back,
but they didn't.
Why?
Because life was too good.
And they just assumed that because life was good and things were flourishing,
that's God,
because that's what God does,
doesn't he?
God just,
he's there to support my life and my goals and my adventures.
And these things that were sent by God were just seen as mere speed humps.
In an otherwise comfortable,
self-indulgent life,
they ignored God.
They rejected his warning signs
and 28 years later,
fishhooks carted off to Assyria.
750 years later,
after Amos,
Jesus turns up in Israel
and declares himself to be
this same God in the flesh.
It's God to come and dwell amongst his people.
The same God who made Israel his special people
centuries earlier,
has now come amongst his people.
And when God actually turned up,
Israel did,
750 years later,
what they did in Amos' time
and they rejected Jesus,
is what they did.
Luke chapter 12 to 14,
if you've got your Bibles,
flick over to Luke.
Luke chapter 12 to 14,
we have Jesus issuing warnings to Israel again
and lamenting the state of Israel.
He says that Israel is desolate
and will be until,
they will be desolate,
they will be barren
until they recognize their Savior and their Lord.
And in chapter 12,
verse 49,
Jesus says that he has come to do God's will.
And his mission statement is this,
I have come to bring fire on the earth
and how I wish it were already kindled.
In other words,
the same language which is used in Amos
as Jesus now uses here,
language of fire,
that is the judgment of God,
is now here.
And Jesus says,
I wish it was already kindled.
In fact,
I wish it was happening right now,
is what he says.
I've come to bring judgment
and I want it to happen right now.
And what he says is,
a little bit,
next verses on,
anyone,
anyone who's got eyes to see
can see that that is what I am here to do.
Notice who I am
and what I've come to do.
You'll be able to see that God is at work.
He's doing something really important.
And so right at the very end of chapter 12,
Jesus calls people to settle
their spiritual accounts with God.
And he says,
a failure to settle the spiritual account with God
will result in God extracting
every single last cent out of you
that you owe him.
And it's a debt which is incalculable
that we can never pay back.
And it's a picture of God's eternal judgment
upon sinners.
And that is what sets up
this interaction that Jesus has
in Luke 13,
where he says,
now there was some present at that time.
So hearing Jesus say this,
there was some present at that time
who told Jesus about the Galileans
whose blood Pilate had mixed with their sacrifices.
So there's some kind of political uprising
in Galilee
and Pilate comes along,
squashes it,
and he squashes it
by killing everyone in church.
That's kind of what he does.
And so,
and then it goes on,
Jesus answered,
do you think
that these Galileans
were worse sinners
than all the other Galileans
because they suffered in this way?
I tell you,
no.
But unless you repent,
you too will all perish.
Or,
those 18 who died
when the Tower of Siloam fell on them,
do you think that they were more guilty
than all the others living in Jerusalem?
I tell you,
no.
But unless you repent,
you too will all perish.
In our world,
there's two major ways
that we respond to disasters in this world.
There's the moralistic,
legalistic,
religious approach,
which instinctively assumes
that when I've,
when something disastrous,
some crisis hits my life,
I've done something wrong.
I cannot tell you
the number of people
who I face
who have,
who've got some problem
in their life
and their immediate response is,
I must have done something wrong.
I can't think of what I've done wrong.
I must have done something wrong.
We put the blame
on the individual.
Another name for it is karma
or the,
what we generally refer to
as what goes,
what goes around,
comes around.
The other response,
so one response lays it
on the responsibility
of the individual.
The other response
is the skeptical,
irreligious response
where we blame the universe
generally or God.
The purposelessness of the universe,
you know,
they're really unlucky,
bad timing,
wrong place,
wrong time,
that kind of stuff
or we just simply blame it on God.
And this view
works on the assumption
that most people
are good,
hardworking
and deserve a decent life.
The first one assumes
you do something wrong,
you deserve to pay for it.
The other one assumes
we're good,
we're hardworking,
deserve a decent life.
This means that some people
don't get the good life
they deserve.
Life stinks,
it makes no sense
and the universe
or God
is unfair
and doing something
terribly wrong.
So it's either
I'm doing something wrong
or God's doing something wrong.
That's generally
the two ways we split it.
And Jesus comes along
and says,
no,
that's not wrong.
That's right.
That's all totally wrong.
He said,
no,
is what he said.
He said,
no.
He said,
that's not the way
to look at it.
He says,
both of those alternatives
don't work.
One makes you
incredibly proud
or smug
because no disasters
happen in my life
and I'm getting
what I deserve.
I'm doing all right.
I'm not doing anything wrong.
Proud and smug.
The other makes you
totally despondent.
Don't know if I'm going
to step out today.
I'm going to get
splattered by a bus
no matter what I do.
It doesn't matter how I live.
Anything.
A rock can fall on me.
Who knows?
And in verses 3 and 5,
Jesus says,
no.
But if he just
lifted it at that,
the crowd would go,
well,
that's a relief.
Thanks for that.
Fantastic.
Let's move on.
But he adds.
He says,
no.
And then he adds,
but unless you repent,
you too will all perish.
Why do you have to add
that bit?
Why does he add it?
Because he's saying
something really tough.
And it's probably
one of the hardest things
that Jesus says.
This has been the category
of hard things Jesus says.
What he's saying here is
everyone deserves
to have the tower
fall on them.
Not just that 18.
Everyone deserves
to have the tower
fall on them.
He's saying
if God gave us
what we deserve,
if he,
going back to the end
of chapter 12,
if he extracted
the very last cent
out of what we owe him,
we all would have
towers fall on us
with no mercy
whatsoever
if he gave us
what we deserve.
He's showing us
something really important here.
Something that,
frankly,
our human hearts
don't want to accept.
There isn't a single person
who has ever received
even a small fraction
of the consequences
of the stupid
and the wrong
and the proud
and the selfish things
that they've done.
not a single person.
I cannot tell you
how many times
I have escaped
certain death
because of the stupidity
of my actions.
I grew up with motorbikes,
explosives,
and guns.
Just to give you an idea.
Stupid actions.
God has rescued me.
God graciously
again and again
and again
does not give us
what we deserve.
And yet,
on the other hand,
if we really saw
what was truly wrong
with our hearts,
the pride,
the anger,
the deception,
the envy,
the denial,
the greed,
we would actually
know that God
owes us
nothing.
He doesn't owe us
anything
and he certainly
doesn't owe us
a comfortable life.
That is not
the purpose
of his mission.
We are much more
flawed and lost
than our hearts
dare believe
and yet,
what we'll see
in a moment
in Jesus,
we are much more
loved and cared for
and protected
than we could ever
dream possible.
Notice it's Jesus
who's doing the talking here
and notice who it is
that he's talking to.
Jesus is addressing
people who have
witnessed
a tragedy
but they haven't
experienced it
themselves.
They've seen
towers fall,
they've heard about it
but it's not
falling on them.
He's warning
these people
because when you
are going through
a smooth patch
in your life,
you're seeing
disaster somewhere
else but it's
not happening to you,
you're in a very
dangerous spiritual
territory is what
he's saying.
what he's saying
here is there's
no greater
spiritual crisis
than to have
no crisis
in your life.
That was the
problem for Israel
and it's a problem
for us.
The default mode
of the human heart
is it's self-justifying.
That's what it does
and there is no
better time
for self-justification
to happen
than during the
calm times,
the safe times,
the comfortable times,
the prosperous times
because in that
moment we get
greater and greater
confidence in ourselves
and our ability
and we don't need
God.
We become self-made
people
and what does
Jesus say to do
in the dangerous
times,
the safe times,
the comfortable
times,
the secure times?
He says repent.
That's what the call
is here.
Repent
and the most
important time
to repent
is in fact
when things
are going well.
it's in those
times we become
complacent,
self-assured,
self-secure,
self-confident.
You see the essence
of sin in the Bible
is where we substitute
God for ourselves.
We don't need a
sovereign God
to run life
our way
and it's in those
days of comfort
and safety
and ease
that we're most
likely to say
we don't need
God,
we've got life
worked out
ourselves.
That's what Israel
did in Amos'
time and in
Jesus' time,
they become
complacent,
they become
self-righteous,
self-justifying
and very
religious.
The real hope
of their hearts
had become
the comforts
that they were
enjoying,
they had given
their hearts
and their
allegiance to
the blessings
God had given
them and taken
it away from
God himself.
And so like
Amos before him,
Jesus walks
into this
situation,
he calls
Israel and
us to
repent,
and that's
where Jesus
leaves us
as he goes
on to tell
this little
parable in
the very next
verses in
Luke 13.
Starting at
verse 6,
it says,
a man had a
fig tree
growing in
his vineyard
and he went
to look for
fruit on it
but did not
find any.
So he said
to the man
who took care
of the vineyard,
for three years
now I've been
coming to look
for fruit on
this fig tree
and I haven't
found any.
Cut it down.
Why should
it use up
the soil?
Sir,
the man
replied,
leave it
alone for
one more
year and
I'll dig
around and
I'll fertilize
and if it
bears fruit
next year,
fine.
If not,
then cut
it down.
So there's
this owner
of this
tree,
looking for
fruit,
finds no
fruit from
the tree.
Fig trees
bore fruit
in the third
year so it's
totally reasonable
that the owner
would expect
fruit from
this tree.
There's no
fruit.
The owner
is patient
with his
fruitless tree.
It's given
one more
chance before
the chainsaw
comes out.
The person
who tends
a tree is
going to
try and
make it
fruitful
before it
cuts it
down.
So this
tree I've
got in the
backyard over
at home,
it's a
lime tree and
when I first
moved there
about eight
years ago,
I had about
four or five
limes on it.
I didn't know
what they were
actually initially.
Found out they
were good for
G&T.
And apparently.
So this
tree, I
thought, well, I'd
like a lot more
limes than that.
So I decided to
look after it.
So dug around
it, fertilised it,
constantly put
trace elements in
it, all the
stuff you're
meant to do
for citrus
trees.
And ever
since then,
not a single
fruit has come
on this tree.
Years have been
waiting.
I've even
taken Luke
13 out to
the tree and
read it to
the tree.
One more
year tree is
all I'm going
to give you.
But no fruit
yet.
I'm just
obviously patient
with this poor
tree.
So, but the
point here is
that God's
patience is long,
but we should
never be
jam on it.
Even God's
patience has an
end.
fruit.
What he
wants here is
fruit.
And what's the
fruit that he
wants?
Repentance.
How do I
know that?
Because that's
what he calls
us to do in
the early
verses of
Luke 13.
He calls
us to
repent.
And what
God's wanting
here from
Amos, from
Israel in
Amos' time,
again here from
Israel in
Luke, and
what he's
calling us
to here as
well, is a
life of
repentance and
faith.
And repentance
and faith,
sorry,
repentance is the
fruit of
faith.
Now, many
people, religious
people, think
that repentance
is what you
do when you've
done bad
things.
But the
Bible says
all of life
is repentance.
Repentance is
all of life.
The first of
Martin Luther's
95 thesis that
he nailed to
the door at
All Saints
Church in
Wittenberg about
500 years ago,
which started the
Protestant
Reformation in
which we stand
as a church,
the very first
of the 95,
he wrote
this.
I'll read in
English because
I can't read
German.
When our
Lord and
Master Jesus
Christ said
repent, he
willed the
entire life of
believers to
be one of
repentance.
And he was
particularly
kicking against
the idea you
just come to
church, you
say you're
sorry, and
then you leave
church and
you live how
you want to
live for the
rest of the
week.
Religious
understanding of
repentance is
I'm atoning for
my sins once a
week, just say
sorry and that's
it.
Gospel repentance
is fruit of
faith in God.
Religious
repentance is
what I do when I
fail.
Gospel repentance
is what I do
when I succeed.
All of life is
repentance and
the fruit that
God is looking
for in Luke
13 is
repentance.
You cannot
separate repentance
from faith.
That is, the
idea that you
can say, Jesus,
forgive me for
my sins, but I
don't want you
to be in
charge of my
life, is a
destructive
delusion.
Repenting of
any error means
going in the
opposite direction
by practicing the
virtues that are
directly opposite to
the vice.
Repentance is the
pathway to having
sins forgiven and
restoration of
relationship with
God.
A refusal to
repent is the
road to
destruction.
Anything,
anything can be
repaired except
for an unwillingness
to repent.
Any wrong can be
made right, but
not if you don't
admit that it is
wrong.
Disaster looms
for the
unresponsive.
That is the
message of Amos
chapter 4.
It's the message
of Luke 13.
And that's the
toughness of
Jesus' words in
Luke 13 verse
9.
If it bears fruit
next year, fine,
but if not, cut
it down.
Even God's
patience has an
end and his
judgment will
fall.
Now the most
interesting and I
think the
marvellous thing
about this little
story, the fig
tree, is that
apparently there are
two people involved
in this little
story.
There's the owner
of the fig tree
and there's the
person who cares
for the fig tree.
The owner who
wants the fruit
and the carer
who wants to
give it one
more chance.
In fact, it's
one person.
The owner of
the tree is in
fact the one who
tends the tree
and it's this
person who is
wrestling with
themselves over
the fate of
their tree.
I want it to
bear fruit, but I
will cut it
down.
There is a
desire for both
justice and
mercy.
The owner of
the tree is at
the same time
the one to be
escaped, the one
that the tree
means to escape
from because it
doesn't want to
be cut down and
yet it's also the
one in which the
tree might find
refuge.
The same Jesus
who said this
hard word is
also the same
Jesus who opened
up the way back
to God.
He's the one who
said,
my mission is
to bring fire,
but he's the
one who put
himself under
the flame.
He made it
possible for us
to seek God
and live.
Jesus is the
one who allowed
the ultimate
tower of God's
judgment to fall
on him
instead.
He allowed
himself to be
cut down by
God, the
massive tower of
God's eternal
justice.
What we deserve
for trusting
everything else
apart from God
and ignoring God
came down on
him on the
cross.
And so the
reason God can
be so patient
with us and
good to us and
give us good
things that we
do not deserve
day in and
day out is
because Jesus
Christ got what
he didn't
deserve.
He was cut
down so that
we don't have
to.
And the
reason that
God will
never give
the Christian
what they
deserve but
something infinitely
better is
because God
gave Jesus
what he
didn't deserve.
Something
incredibly bad.
Cut down to
death and
abandoned by
God, pushed
aside so that
the great
tower might
fall on him.
and he
says to
Israel, and
we get to
look on as
he says this
to Israel,
look, look
and see what
I am doing.
Look at the
cross and
marvel and
see something
significant that's
happening at the
cross here.
See the
justice of
God on
display as
mercy for
you.
see the
justice of
God poured
out on the
cross and
flee to
the cross.
Don't
ignore the
cross, read
the signs,
see, look
at the cross
and see what
your sin and
your injustice
deserves.
That's what you
should be getting
when you see
Jesus on the
cross.
Look and see
what you
should be
getting and
flee to
Jesus.
Find refuge,
as I said
last week, in
the lion who
roars.
He is a
safe place.
Now in the
last number of
weeks, I
preached on
loving our
neighbor and
the need to
live below
our means.
For the
gospel of
Jesus demands
a change in
the stand of
our lifestyles.
I preached on
the spiritual
battle that we're
involved in and
the need for
us to be
Bible saturated
people,
committing this
church consistently,
its leaders,
its mission,
its vision,
its finances to
God in
prayer.
There's been a
lot of
challenges in
the last
number of
weeks that
I've been
preaching and
I want to
ask you,
what has
changed?
What have
you done?
What's
changed for
you?
Because to
hear the
word of
God and
to ignore
it and
for nothing
to change,
isn't that
what Israel's
been accused
of here in
Amos?
Of ignoring
the word of
God?
This is a
great sermon.
In fact,
we're actually
going to see
they were very
religious in
church all
the time.
They
presumed on
the patience
of God.
They took
his patience
as an
excuse for
complacency.
They
actually just
assumed God
was on their
side because
he wasn't
doing anything
too bad to
them.
Money and
security become
their true
God.
Money is what
they actually
served and in
the pursuit of
money they
lost sight of
what's right and
they especially
lost sight of
God.
Now let me tell
you that as I
said last week
or the week
before, we saw
an incredible
response to the
mission project,
a one-off
response.
We've got a
card for it.
But the church
finances have not
changed at all.
At all.
We're currently
$37,000.
I got it wrong.
I said $34,000 this
morning.
$37,000 behind.
That's a
repentance issue.
It's not a bank
balance issue.
It's a repentance
issue.
It's a spiritual
issue.
The New Testament
word for repentance
means the
changing of my
mind so that my
values, my
views, my
goals, my
ways, my
behavior, my
lifestyle change.
All of life
changes, live
differently.
And this radical
change is both an
inward change and an
outward change.
It's my mind and my
judgment.
It's my will and my
affections.
It's my behavior and my
lifestyle.
It's my motives and my
purposes.
Everything is changed.
That's what repentance
is.
It's not just saying
sorry for doing some
bad stuff.
It's the radical
reshaping of my mind
because that's what the
gospel demands.
It's Lord and Savior
Jesus demands my
entire life.
So friends, as Amos
said to Israel, I
say to you, seek the
Lord and live.
Theologian