The Promise

I am preaching my way through the Old Testament prophet Amos, and, quite frankly, enjoying myself.  Each week I am digging into one the much less-known books of the Bible and trying to understand it in such a way that it shapes my life and the life of my congregation.   This morning was the fourth sermon from Amos, being all of chapter 3.  I'm planning three more sermons before Advent and then setting Amos aside until after Christmas, when there will be seven sermons to get to the end of the book.

And in a surprising way, I am enjoying myself.  Amos is not exactly a prophet bringing glad tidings to God's people.  He can tend to sound pretty gloomy, and frankly harsh, from one chapter to the next.  And it takes some work to be able to make a connection from Amos to Jesus each week.  So what makes it fun?

The fun for me last week was in reaching a point where I thought I understood the meaning of the passage as it reached its original audience, and also with valid application today.  Kind of like digging something out of a hole in the ground, a hole that took a lot of work to make, and then cleaning that thing off to find something of unexpected beauty.  That metaphor works for preaching in a general sense, but it has been particularly pleasant to see it work out in Amos, at least so far.

This morning I talked about how God's chosen people had been given responsibility to live in ways that pleased Him, and how in their failure to do so they were being called to accountability.  I showed how the text made it clear that there was a cause-and-effect relationship in play, where their sinfulness was the cause of the effect of their receiving God's judgment.  I showed how God was being merciful in giving them a warning that judgment was on the way.  I talked about how the sinfulness of God's people was so evident that even their pagan neighbors could see it.  And the last part the text showed us was that everything that they might have thought would give them safety would be shown to be false, when it came to God delivering His promised judgment. 

In a nutshell, God had given His children His rules for their good and, ultimately, for His glory.  Their failure to listen to God, or to His prophets, would result in their being held accountable.  You could say that Amos is reminding the people that their deal with God is to do things His way, or else pay the price. 

The interesting thing is that while Amos is being very direct as a messenger from God, there is a gap in history between delivering the news of coming judgment and the moment when that judgment actually comes.  Unsaid is that in that time gap lies the opportunity to repent of sin and trust in God, which was the basic call of Jesus shortly after His baptism.  In Mark 1:15, He says:

"The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is at hand;

repent and believe in the gospel."

We live in an age where it can seem that every time we turn on the news we are greeted with something that defies our comprehension.  Sometime between the end of worship today and my beginning to write this post I learned of the tragic shooting at a church in Texas this morning.  Mass shootings and other acts of terror seem to happen with such frequency that we can become numb to them.  See the headline, skim the story, and then move onto whatever is next.  All we can know for certain in the shooting is that the world is a very fallen place, and that no place is exempt from being a place where sin will appear in all it's ugliness.  

But I read something else before beginning to write today, from the letter to the Hebrews, which includes this phrase from chapter 4, verse 1:

"…while the  promise of entering His rest still stands…"

The ring in the picture is on my wife's hand, and there is a  matching one on my hand.  Those rings represent promises that we made to each other ten years ago.  The prophetic words of Amos and the letter to the Hebrews remind us that there is a much better promise awaiting us as we turn to God and receive what He holds out in Jesus, and that there is still time right now to receive that promise and enter God's rest. 

Today is the time to embrace the promise, and to receive the unfailing, everlasting hope within it, hope that only comes through faith in Jesus. 

Scripture quotations are from The Holy Bible, English Standard Version® (ESV®), copyright © 2001 by Crossway, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers. Used by permission. All rights reserved.