"Amos' Message To Israel & To Us"

Sermon on Amos 8:11-12, 9:11-15

Weekend of February 27, 2000

Saint Mark's, Watertown, WI

Pastor Karl Walther

As we heard last week, the Lord invites us: Even now, return to me with all your heart, with fasting and weeping and mourning. Rend your heart and not your garments. Amen.

These past two weeks we've considered together the message of two of God's minor prophets: Hosea and Joel. Today we conclude this little bit of a series of ours on the Old Testament minor prophets by considering the message of the Prophet Amos-- specifically Amos chapter eight, verses eleven and twelve, and Amos chapter nine, verses eleven through fifteen:

"The days are coming," declares the Sovereign LORD, "when I will send a famine through the land -- not a famine of food or a thirst for water, but a famine of hearing the words of the LORD. Men will stagger from sea to sea and wander from north to east, searching for the word of the LORD, but they will not find it."

"In that day I will restore David's fallen tent. I will repair its broken places, restore its ruins, and build it as it used to be, so that they may possess the remnant of Edom and all the nations that bear my name," declares the LORD, who will do these things.

"The days are coming," declares the LORD, "when the reaper will be overtaken by the plowman and the planter by the one treading grapes. New wine will drip from the mountains and flow from all the hills. I will bring back my exiled people Israel; they will rebuild the ruined cities and live in them. They will plant vineyards and drink their wine; they will make gardens and eat their fruit. I will plant Israel in their own land, never again to be uprooted from the land I have given them," says the LORD your God.

This is the Word of the Lord.

Introduction: Israel In Amos' Time Is Like America In Our Time

Dear fellow Christians-- famished by sin, restored by the Lord:

In all your life, you've never seen anything like it: this country's current economic climate....

Just this month our nation surpassed its own record for prosperity, a record set in the early nineteen sixties. Ever since the Gulf War, nearly nine years and a couple presidents ago, the economy has been chugging along. Today the stock market is at record highs (with the Dow well over ten thousand points), unemployment is at nearly record lows (isn't it hovering at about four percent nationally, less than three percent around here?), inflation is very low (a couple percent per year), and productivity is at a record high.

We've noticed the prosperity in our own lives, too, haven't we? Very few of us have no home of some sort to call our own. It's only a rare family which has a single vehicle. T.v.s and v.c.r.s and stereo systems and phones and computers fill our homes. Vacations and trips here and there fill our lives. Even the crime rate is quite low. There isn't even much cause for concern for any war on our horizon.

So, God must be very pleased with us, right? He wouldn't give our nation all this prosperity if we hadn't somehow earned it, right? -- Well, that's not quite so...!

Consider the account of the Prophet Amos. He lived in about the year seven hundred sixty bc. Although he came from the Southern Kingdom of Judah, the Lord sent him as his messenger to the Northern Kingdom of Israel.

Everything was peaceful and prosperous there. The Bible tells us that King Jeroboam the Second of Israel had extended Israel's boundaries to a record extent. Amos himself refers to Israel's "winter houses" and "summer houses", "houses adorned with ivory" and "mansions". Amos himself describes the people by saying: "You lie on beds inlaid 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 bowlful and use the finest lotions."

Yet he had a very severe message for that northern kingdom of Israel....

Theme: Amos' Message To Israel & To Us

And so today we consider together: * AMOS' MESSAGE TO ISRAEL & TO US. Essentially the message is: (1) SIN BRINGS US FAMINE FOR THE LORD'S WORD, but (2) GOD'S GRACE PROMISES US A RESTORATION.

Part One: Israel's Sins Would Bring a Famine For the Lord's Word

Listen again to the words Amos pronounces upon peaceful, prosperous Israel: "The days are coming," declares the Sovereign LORD, "when I will send a famine through the land -- not a famine of food or a thirst for water, but a famine of hearing the words of the LORD. Men will stagger from sea to sea and wander from north to east, searching for the word of the LORD, but they will not find it."

Those days did come upon Israel-- and all too quickly. The words of this prophet, Amos, were in fact the last words the Lord addressed directly to Israel. Only forty years later: peaceful, prosperous Israel would lie in ruins-- its people in exile. It would be true, then, that people from the Northern Kingdom could wander from east to west, and north to east, never to find the Word of the Lord. Of course, had they headed south (the one direction not mentioned here) -- south to Jerusalem and its king and its temple and its prophets -- there they could have found God's Word....

Be that as it may, we still have to ask: Why-- why this famine for, this thirst for, the Word of the Lord in the Northern Kingdom of Israel? It was because the Northern Kingdom's people had practiced themselves in rejecting the Word of the Lord. They would worship golden calves in the cities of Bethel and Dan-- but they wouldn't listen to the true Word of the Lord. They would worship the filthy fertility gods Baal and Asherah -- but they wouldn't worship the one true Lord. Finally, they would so reject the Word of the Lord that they'd face a famine for hearing it.

Appropriation One: America's Sins Will Bring a Famine For the Lord's Word

Friends, I fear the same for our nation. I mean: most of our people also favor anything else ahead of hearing and believing God's Word. Haven't most of our people constructed for themselves a namby-pamby God, who first of all isn't much involved with their lives anyway, and secondly shuts a grandfatherly eye to their perverted behavior? Haven't most of our people constructed for themselves a God who doesn't care by what name you call him, who sort of snickers if his name is taken in vain, who can be worshiped at a sporting event as easily as in a Christian church? Haven't people constructed for themselves a God who understands a married couple's "irreconcilable differences", an unmarried couple's lusts, and people's need to kill off an unwanted baby or elderly person?

I fear that the way our gracious God left Israel at Amos' time, left Judah at Jesus' time, left the Mediterranean basin during the Middle Ages, and Germany and England in more recent times-- he will leave us. And that average of four Bibles that each of us has in his home will crumble to dust as the decades pass. And the neighborhood churches within which we worship will be swept away with the centuries, as well.

And I fear that you and I could also be a part of that. When our culture sneezes, we catch a cold, too. Do we always act contrary to the culture and read the Scriptures every day? Do we forever buck the trend and worship Christ week after week? Can a person look at your life and my life and see right away that we are divinely different-- or do we boast that we're as perverted as everybody else? Are we willing to be persecuted for saying that the Bible is a unique book without error given by God? Are we willing to face persecution for our insistence on the absolute exclusivity of salvation found in Jesus Christ-- or no?!

Part Two: God's Grace Promised a Restoration For Israel & For All

Obviously, we have all fallen short. Obviously, we all deserve a famine for God's Word, an unquenched thirst for the Scriptures. So, was there any hope for Israel-- and is there any hope for us?

Well, in the book of Amos there is precious little hope. For one hundred forty-one verses Amos hammers at his people for their sins. But in the final five verses, he offers hope for those who believe.

Listen again to those verses. God says: In that day: and now we're looking ahead more than seven centuries to the coming of Christ--"In that day I will restore David's fallen tent. I will repair its broken places, restore its ruins, and build it as it used to be." God is turning the Northern Kingdom's eyes to the south, to Judah. He's saying, "Judah, too -- the house of David -- is going to fall. But afterwards I'll build David's tent into a temple. From his sinful human line I will produce a holy divine Savior."

"In fact," the Lord continues, he'll be so great "that they will possess the remnant of Edom and all the nations that bear my name," declares the LORD, who will do these things. God is saying to Israel: "Your cousins, the Edomites descended from Esau: he who fought with your father Jacob and they who have fought with you-- even they will get to know this Savior. And not only will they, but also all the other Gentiles will get to know him" (just as James recognized in the reading from the book of Acts that we heard earlier).

And how great will Christ's kingdom be? -- Listen to this: "The days are coming," declares the LORD, "when the reaper will be overtaken by the plowman -- the harvest will be so heavy, no one will be able to keep up! -- and the planter by the one treading grapes. Furthermore: New wine will drip from the mountains and flow from all the hills-- a valuable commodity producing itself automatically.

God promises: "I will bring back my exiled people Israel; they will rebuild the ruined cities and live in them. That happened after some years: for some in the Northern Kingdom, and many in the South. They will plant vineyards (requiring peace and security) and drink their wine; they will make gardens (in the absence of any marauding army) and eat their fruit. To sum it up: I will plant Israel in their own land, never again to be uprooted from the land I have given them," says the LORD your God.

Appropriation Two: God's Grace Promises a Restoration For Us & For All

So, is there hope for us wicked-acting, foul-mouthed, evil-hearted modern Americans? Yes! And his name is Jesus Christ!

It was Jesus Christ who, as this section of Scripture says, rebuilt into a holy Christian temple the fallen sinful tent of our lives. It was Jesus Christ who swept the ruins and rubble of our sins away, preparing a clean foundation-- through his death on the cross. It is Jesus Christ who -- brick by brick -- spies us, seeks us, embraces us, and squeezes us into place in his holy temple, the Church; it happens when he baptizes us and teaches us everything he wants us to know by way of his Word.

It's Jesus Christ who promises to bring us through our exile into a new and eternal land. There the harvest will always be heavy, but many hands will make the work light. There beverages will flow from the hills, and gardens will fill every backyard. In paradise there's a permanent place for us, which we'll never have to leave.

Conclusion: America's Only Hope As a Nation Lies In the Lord's Word

That's Amos' Message To Israel & To Us. Sin Brings Us Famine For the Lord's Word, but God's Grace Promises Us a Restoration-- eternally.

To conclude-- you might wonder, though: Is there much hope for our nation this side of heaven? Well, let me say that some economic downturn is bound to come, and eventually America's power is bound to crumble like that of history's every other country. Nevertheless, yes-- I personally do have some hope.

I have some hope-- when day by day I see young ladies and gentlemen like those in my seventh grade confirmation classes: not only learning God's Word here, but reading a chapter of the Bible a day at home. I have some hope-- when week by week I see a dozen young Mexican-American families with pretty little children and no ulterior motive coming here to hear God's Word.

See, that's our only hope.... God's Spirit-inspired Word of Christ our Savior is always our only hope. Let's get busy studying it! Let's get busy celebrating it! Let's get busy supporting it! Let's trumpet together its message of Christ! Amen.

As we heard last week, the Lord invites us: Return to the Lord your God, for he is gracious and compassionate, slow to anger and abounding in love, and he relents from sending calamity. Amen.