I Hate Your Worship! --God

This is not a passage that I would choose if I were choosing on my own, because it’s difficult, very difficult. I tried very hard to come up with a good three-point sermon, but it just wasn’t to be. So, what we’re going to do today is read through the passage making comments as we go along.

When we come to the book of Amos, we come to a very different sort of literature than our studies so far. Up until now we have been dealing with historical accounts of God’s dealing with his people. With Amos we come to the literature of the writing prophets. Amos is the first of the writing prophets. Not the first prophet; we have seen prophets before—just last week we talked about Elijah; but Amos is the first prophet whose messages were written down and put into a book bearing his name.

There are sixteen writing prophets in the Old Testament. Four “major prophets”—Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel and Daniel—and twelve “minor prophets”—Hosea, Joel, Amos, Obadiah, Jonah, Micah, Nahum, Habakkuk, Zephaniah, Haggai, Zechariah and Malachi. The minor prophets are called that, not because their messages are less important, but because their books are shorter than those of the “major Prophets.” Even though Amos is third in the minor prophets in the Bible, he is first chronologically.

Let’s consider the man Amos in 1:1,

¹The words of Amos, one of the shepherds of Tekoa-the vision he saw concerning Israel two years before the earthquake, when Uzziah was king of Judah and Jeroboam son of Jehoash was king of Israel.

Here we establish the identity of the prophet, his background and the time in which he ministered.

He is described as “one of the shepherds of Tekoa.” Tekoa was a town, 12 miles south of Jerusalem, in the territory of Judah. It stands on the edge of the Judean desert. It was a rugged place, not a major metropolitan city. Amos is from the country. He is sent by God to prophesy to the northern kingdom.

Undoubtedly that is a source of conflict. Imagine our response if somebody from somewhere else—say Mexico—comes to our country and starts telling us what we ought to do. It probably wouldn’t be very warmly received. And that is exactly what happened to Amos.

It says that it was during the time when Uzziah was king of Judah and Jeroboam was king of Israel. This is Jeroboam II, not the Jeroboam who was the founding king of the northern kingdom. This places Amos at about the middle of the eighth century BC. The date that is often given is 750 BC.

These were good times in Israel and Judah. There was great material prosperity. There was political and military success—under Uzziah and Jeroboam II Judah and Israel had extended their borders back to where they had been under David and Solomon. They were rich, and comfortable, and powerful. Times were good.

And yet, the nation was morally, religiously and politically corrupt. I came across this description in The Bible Handbook:

"The people of Israel were now at the summit of worldly prosperity, but were rapidly filling up the measure of their sins. The mission of Amos was, therefore, rather to threaten than to console.  He rebukes, among other things, the corruption of their manners, which kept pace with their prosperity; he charges the great men with partiality as judges, and violence towards the poor; and he foretells, as a punishment from God, the captivity of the ten tribes in a foreign country..." - The Bible Handbook, Angus and Green

This is a rough book. We know we’re in for trouble in the very next verse as Amos introduces the theme of his message:

²He said: "The LORD roars from Zion and thunders from Jerusalem; the pastures of the shepherds dry up, and the top of Carmel withers."

We saw God speaking to Elijah in a gentle whisper last week, but God can roar, too. The book of Amos is almost all roar. The major part of the book is the declaration of God’s judgment on his sinning people. There is a small section of future hope in the last five verses, but the book is, overall, about judgment. He is the text book “Prophet of Doom.”

Before we get into our passages for this morning, I want to give an idea of the preaching of Amos. Chapters 1 & 2 contain oracles of judgement against eight nations.

He begins with Damascus (vss. 3-4):

For three sins of Damascus,
    even for four, I will not relent.
Because she threshed Gilead
    with sledges having iron teeth,
⁴ I will send fire on the house of Hazael
    that will consume the fortresses of Ben-Hadad.

Damascus is the capital of Syria, traditional enemies of Israel. You can almost hear the audience saying, “Amen, Amos! Preach it, brother!”

He moves on to Gaza. Gaza was a city of the Philistines, again traditional enemies of God’s people.

“For three sins of Gaza,
    even for four, I will not relent.
Because she took captive whole communities
    and sold them to Edom,
⁷ I will send fire on the walls of Gaza
    that will consume her fortresses.
⁸ I will destroy the king of Ashdod
    and the one who holds the scepter in Ashkelon.
I will turn my hand against Ekron,
    till the last of the Philistines are dead,”
says the Sovereign Lord.

Again, you can imagine the people, “You tell ‘em, preacher. That’s the kind of preaching we like!”

Then he denounces Tyre—the city of Phoenicia (vss. 9-10), who were, you guessed it, traditional enemies of Israel.

The list goes on—Edom (vss. 11-12), Ammon (vss. 13-15), Moab (2:1-3). All of them, from time immemorial, enemies of Israel. The people are with him, “You tell them, God will judge those idol-worshipping foreigners.” Then he says:

For three sins of Judah,
    even for four, I will not relent (2:4).

Well, that’s hitting a little close to home. After all, Judah is our sister kingdom. But . . . they are really are a bunch of self-righteous snobs and have looked down their spiritual noses at us for years . . . so sure, go get ‘em, God!

And, now that he has them eating out of the palm of his hand, the prophet springs his trap:

For three sins of Israel,
    even for four, I will not relent (2:6).

“Yeah! Amen! . . . Wait . . . what did he just say?

For three sins of Israel,
    even for four, I will not relent.

They sell the innocent for silver,
    and the needy for a pair of sandals.
⁷ They trample on the heads of the poor
    as on the dust of the ground
    and deny justice to the oppressed.
Father and son use the same girl
    and so profane my holy name.
⁸ They lie down beside every altar
    on garments taken in pledge.
In the house of their god
    they drink wine taken as fines (2:6-8).

You see, despite their great religiosity, there was corruption, financially, morally, politically and religiously. And there is more, many more passages in the book that detail the sins of Israel.

Our next passage is in chapter five.

¹⁴Seek good, not evil, that you may live. Then the LORD God Almighty will be with you, just as you say he is. ¹⁵Hate evil, love good; maintain justice in the courts. Perhaps the LORD God Almighty will have mercy on the remnant of Joseph (5:14-15).

Vs. 14 “Seek good and not evil, that you may live”

What God expects is behavioral change. There is a choice to be made—a choice with eternal consequences. Earlier in chapter 5, the Lord had put this in personal terms,

⁴This is what the LORD says to Israel: "Seek me and live; ⁵do not seek Bethel, do not go to Gilgal, do not journey to Beersheba. For Gilgal will surely go into exile, and Bethel will be reduced to nothing." ⁶Seek the LORD and live, or he will sweep through the tribes of Joseph like a fire; it will devour them, and Bethel will have no one to quench it (5:4-6).

Bethel, Gilgal and Beersheba were sites of unauthorized worship. Each one of them were places where significant things had happened in the history of Israel. Bethel was associated with Jacob, Gilgal with Joshua and Beersheba with Abraham. They had come to be considered sacred and were places of religious pilgrimage.

We do this, don’t we? We take buildings and places and say, “This is special, this is holy.” We have our churches and our sanctuaries, but what makes them special is that we meet God there. There’s nothing about the building or the materials it is made of that are special. The building is not holy. It is the God who we meet here that is holy. And of course, you can meet God anywhere. Their religion was based on holy places and other superficial things. And God is saying, “Don’t trust in those things. Trust in me.”

Vs. 15— “Hate evil, love good” there is both a positive and a negative command – ‘hate evil, love good’ not just one or the other. We cannot focus just on one or the other. Sometimes, we are good at hating the evil. We’re good at rooting out the sin and pointing out the sin in people’s lives, but we’re not so good at seeking the good. Yes, we must seek to eradicate evil, but we must replace it with something. You can point out what’s wrong with everything, but what suggestions do you have to make things better?

“Maintain justice in the courts” – Justice – (Tzedakah in Hebrew) is more than judicial justice, it includes that, but as we will see, it is so much more. But here we see justice in the context in which we usually think of it—the court system. God is concerned that our legal system be equitable.

This brings up the whole issue of “social justice”. A strange thing has occurred in the church today. The evangelical churches, who place such an emphasis upon the Scriptures, has become greatly concerned (as we ought) with individual righteousness and individual relationship to God, but we aren’t as much concerned with social justice. Subjects such as racial equality and financial equity just don’t preach. But the liberal churches, who are doubtful about the inspiration of the Scriptures, are all about social issues, but they’ve forgotten about the personal relationship with God.

Those two things should never have been divorced. Personal righteousness is the vertical relationship of being right with God, and social justice is the horizontal relationship of love and concern for our neighbor. Amos is saying that if you have the vertical relationship with God straight, then you will get the horizontal relationships straight, too. How you treat other people, and especially people who are less fortunate than you, indicates how good the relationship with the Lord is.

We see it most strongly in our last passage.

²¹"I hate, I despise your religious festivals; your assemblies are a stench to me. ²²Even though you bring me burnt offerings and grain offerings, I will not accept them. Though you bring choice fellowship offerings, I will have no regard for them. ²³Away with the noise of your songs! I will not listen to the music of your harps. ²⁴But let justice roll on like a river, righteousness like a never-failing stream (vss. 21-24)!

Vss. 21-23 are strong words. Is God really opposed to the sacrificial system? No, God established it as a means for sinful humans to be in a relationship with him. What he hates is religion without relationship. Religious observation for its own sake is an abomination.

True religion will affect our daily lives and our treatment of others. “Justice and righteousness” reflect the two dimensions of the Christian life; being right with God—righteousness—and being right with other people—justice. It’s not one or the other, it’s both/and. And the measure of whether we are right with God is how we treat people. This is true in the New Testament as well.

²⁷Religion that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless is this: to look after orphans and widows in their distress and to keep oneself from being polluted by the world (James 1:27).

And Jesus, himself said,

³⁵For I was hungry and you gave me something to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you invited me in, ³⁶I needed clothes and you clothed me, I was sick and you looked after me, I was in prison and you came to visit me (Matthew 25:35-36).'

God cares about those who are in need. He wants us to be his hands to reach out to them. Verse twenty-four tells us what God desires. If he doesn’t want our empty worship, if he doesn’t want our sacrifices without relationship, what does he want?

But let justice roll on like a river, righteousness like a never-failing stream!

There it is again. The vertical relationship with God—righteousness—and the horizontal relationship with our fellow man.

This is a powerful image in a land where water is a limited resource. Hatred, greed and anger in our lives, our communities and nation are like a searing wind—drying up and destroying all live. Justice and righteousness are like water to a thirsty land. As followers of Jesus, we are to be waters of justice and streams of righteousness. These life-giving waters flow from us in our daily interactions with others. Our personal creeks become streams and rivers as we join with others to live generously to meet the needs of those around us.

Waters and streams bring new life. That is our mission.