Empty Worship

Brandon Petras

Amos: Justice and Mercy • Sermon • Submitted 7 months ago • Presented 7 months ago

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Transcript

Intro

Have you ever had the experience where you were looking toward something that you thought was going to be a great experience only to discover that once it happened it wasn’t as good as you had thought it would be?

I have never taken my kids to Disney World but I have heard countless stories of parents who have.

Parents who thought it was going to be the best vacation they ever went on. After all, its supposed to be the greatest place on Earth.

They spend all this money and plan all these fun things to do with their kids only to get there and realize it wasn’t as magical as they thought it would be.

Between the scorching heat, stupid long lines, tired and whiny children, and food that is ridiculously over priced. They discover that the greatest place on Earth wasn’t so great after all.

We are starting to see some presidential debates on TV now as we ramp up for next year’s election.

And like we see every 4 years, there will be many who pick a candidate that they believe will be the one to fix all the problems in our country.

Many will put their hope and give their loyalty to these candidates and get down right nasty with people who disagree with them.

And yet every time a new person is sworn into the office of President, irregardless of what political party they come from, rarely do we see the kind of change we had hoped would come.

Yeah, there may be some executive orders that temporarily change a few things here and there, but there is never any large-scale, long-term, systematic change.

So people are once again let down and what they eagerly anticipated turns out to be the exact opposite of what they had hoped for.

Last week we started a series through the OT book of Amos.

As I shared last week, Amos was a minor prophet who was sent by God to the northern kingdom of Israel to pronounce judgement because of its unrepentant sin and rebellion.

God had been patient enough as he waited for Israel to recognize her sin and turn back to God.

In fact, he waited 200 years from the time of kingdom being after King Solomon’s death to the time of Amos’s prophecy.

The biggest charge against Israel is that they had failed to keep God at the center of their lives, and as a result, they had turned away from him completely.

They stood accused of multiple injustices against the most vulnerable in their society.

They stood accused of perverting their religious festivals

They stood accused of losing sight of the fact they were called to be a holy nation that represented God to the pagan nations around them.

God went as far as to say that they had corrupted, or profaned his name.

And because of this, judgement was coming. At this point, it could not be avoided. Assyria would come and destroy Israel.

We ended on this verse last week.

Amos 3:2 NLT 2 “From among all the families on the earth, I have been intimate with you alone. That is why I must punish you for all your sins.”

Be careful what you ask for

In the 2 chapters that follow where we left off last week we see God continue to highlight the ways in which Israel has sinned against him.

Amos 3:10 NLT 10 “My people have forgotten how to do right,” says the Lord. “Their fortresses are filled with wealth taken by theft and violence.

Amos 5:5 NLT 5 Don’t worship at the pagan altars at Bethel; don’t go to the shrines at Gilgal or Beersheba. For the people of Gilgal will be dragged off into exile, and the people of Bethel will be reduced to nothing.”

Amos 5:7 NLT 7 You twist justice, making it a bitter pill for the oppressed. You treat the righteous like dirt.

Amos 5:12 NLT 12 For I know the vast number of your sins and the depth of your rebellions. You oppress good people by taking bribes and deprive the poor of justice in the courts.

I think you get the point. They had oppressed the poor and perverted justice. Yet, in their hypocrisy they believed since they were God’s chosen people, that they still had his blessing upon them.

In fact, they were eagerly waiting for him to do something. They were anticipating something that they thought would be the greatest day in their lives only to discover that it would be anything but.

Amos 5:18-20 NLT 18 What sorrow awaits you who say, “If only the day of the Lord were here!” You have no idea what you are wishing for. That day will bring darkness, not light.

19 In that day you will be like a man who runs from a lion—only to meet a bear. Escaping from the bear, he leans his hand against a wall in his house—and he’s bitten by a snake. 20 Yes, the day of the Lord will be dark and hopeless, without a ray of joy or hope.

Here we see Amos referencing something known as the day of the LORD. In fact, Amos is the earliest of the prophets to reference such a day.

We see later prophets speak about the day of the LORD, even Jesus quotes some of them.

To the Israelite, the day of the LORD was a day of judgement against the enemies of God. A day when sin would be dealt with forever and God would establish his kingdom.

It was also believed that the Jews, being God’s chosen people would be saved at this time and spared judgement simply because they were descendents of Abraham.

Amos however explains it differently. He tells them hold on a minute. Don’t get too excited. Do you understand what you are asking for?

Don’t you realize that your genetic identity is meaningless if you have abandoned your spiritual one?

Amos is saying, you don’t know what you are asking for.

When that day comes, not even you Israel, will not be able to escape God’s judgment. You will try, but as soon as you escape one calamity, another will be waiting for you.

For the unrepentant sinner, for those who rebel against God, this judgement will be without hope for the time of hope will be over.

To the Christian, we recognize this day to have great significance. Jesus himself connected this day with his second coming.

We understand this day to be a time when Jesus returns to set up his earthly kingdom and judge the nations of the world once and for all.

There are a lot of Christians who are eagerly anticipating this day. But I wonder if we too, like Israel, know what we are asking for.

A great falling away

Amos goes on to say...

Amos 5:21-27 NLT 21 “I hate all your show and pretense—the hypocrisy of your religious festivals and solemn assemblies. 22 I will not accept your burnt offerings and grain offerings. I won’t even notice all your choice peace offerings. 23 Away with your noisy hymns of praise! I will not listen to the music of your harps.

24 Instead, I want to see a mighty flood of justice, an endless river of righteous living. 25 “Was it to me you were bringing sacrifices and offerings during the forty years in the wilderness, Israel? 26 No, you served your pagan gods—Sakkuth your king god and Kaiwan your star god—the images you made for yourselves.

27 So I will send you into exile, to a land east of Damascus,” says the Lord, whose name is the God of Heaven’s Armies.

In other words. Your worship Israel is meaningless. It is nothing but noise. How can you live in complete rebellion of the truth and then think that your worship is authentic and real.

Their worship had become empty and hollow. Rather than blessing God through their worship and in turn, being blessed. They were sowing judgement over themselves.

What Amos is describing here is an apostate Israel. Apostate meaning to fall away.

The Israelites who knew the truth, had fallen away from God. They had allowed the religious and moral beliefs of the pagan nations around them to infiltrate and influence their own beliefs and actions.

As a result of their apostacy, judgement was coming.

In the NT we see warnings of a time when the Church will likewise enter into a time of great apostacy.

Pauls when speaking about the day of Jesus’s return or the day of the LORD says...

2 Thessalonians 2:3 NLT For that day will not come until there is a great rebellion[apostacy, falling away] against God

We can sit here and point out all kinds of things that are going on in the Church that are examples of this apostacy.

In his letter to Timothy Paul says...

1 Timothy 4:1-2 NLT Now the Holy Spirit tells us clearly that in the last times some will turn away from the true faith; they will follow deceptive spirits and teachings that come from demons. 2 These people are hypocrites and liars, and their consciences are dead.

There are overt examples of Churches who have turned away from sound doctrine and perverted their theology to match whatever their seared consciences want it to be.

Perverted marriage by not only recognizing, but actually officiating gay marriage in the Church.

Perverted true social justice, the kind that God endorses in scripture where the poor, orphaned, and widowed are cared for and created a false social gospel.

Perverted God’s promises of provision and blessing and caused people to lose everything in their pursuit of blessing through the prosperity gospel. A gospel that says that God isn’t really our provider, but we are by the amount of faith we have.

We have seen entire denominations like the United Methodists, United Church of Christ, the Episcopal Church, and the Presbyterian Church (USA) take a pro-choice stance on abortion; giving a mother’s right to choose priority over the right of the unborn child to live.

Our seminaries are filled with liberal teachings that deny the most basic tenets of orthodoxy such as the deity of of Jesus, the inherency of scripture, they even question the legitimacy of the resurrection of Christ.

And yet these same organizations will gather this morning like we are, and sing songs of praise and lift up prayers, and think they are blessing God like Israel while at the same time sowing judgment.

But before we get all high and mighty and say, good thing that isn’t us.

You need to understand that apostacy isn’t just the adoption of bad doctrine. A person can have good doctrine but still fall away.

This is an apostacy of life, not theology. Like the religious leaders of Isaiah’s day, there are Christians today who...

Isaiah 29:13 NLT come near to me with their mouth and honor me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me.

This is worse than bad theology because it produces a false sense of security. As long as I believe correctly, how I live doesn’t matter.

God says, that is foolishness. Like Israel, if we go on thinking and living this way we will find that the day of the LORD, rather than being a day of rejoicing, will be a day of terror.

Hebrews 10:26-27 NLT 26 Dear friends, if we deliberately continue sinning after we have received knowledge of the truth, there is no longer any sacrifice that will cover these sins. 27 There is only the terrible expectation of God’s judgment and the raging fire that will consume his enemies.

Amos wanted his hearers, and by extension, us today to understand that judgement is inevitable. In Israel’s case, Assyria would come and destroy them. But this was just a foreshadowing of an even greater judgement that would come on the day of the LORD.

Application/Closing

We don’t talk about this day often in Church. I mean we talk about the good stuff. But what about the reality for those who have rejected Christ? For those who have turned away?

You won’t hear this read on most Sunday mornings. But look at the description of this day in...

Zephaniah 1:14-18 NLT 14 “That terrible day of the Lord is near. Swiftly it comes—a day of bitter tears, a day when even strong men will cry out. 15 It will be a day when the Lord’s anger is poured out—a day of terrible distress and anguish, a day of ruin and desolation, a day of darkness and gloom, a day of clouds and blackness,

16 a day of trumpet calls and battle cries. Down go the walled cities and the strongest battlements! 17 “Because you have sinned against the Lord, I will make you grope around like the blind. Your blood will be poured into the dust, and your bodies will lie rotting on the ground.”

18 Your silver and gold will not save you on that day of the Lord’s anger. For the whole land will be devoured by the fire of his jealousy. He will make a terrifying end of all the people on earth.

Friends, God isn’t interested in empty worship. In meaningless songs of praise. They are nothing but white noise.

This isn’t what God wants. He wants real authentic worship. He was followers who are completely committed to him.

In his grace and mercy he is giving us time to come to him before it is too late.

After 9/11 you may remember that in the weeks that followed, Church attendance doubled, even tripled in some cases.

Everyone in their fear turned to God. However, this surge only lasted about 3 weeks. Why, because as a whole, life went back to normal.

I don’t know what it will take to turn people back to the Lord. What I do know is that the time to do so is running out.

And for those in the Church who think they can have it both ways. Those who like Israel in Amos’s day can claim to believe one thing, while at the same time live in direct rebellion to God, I say be careful.

More than I repeat the words of the prophet Zephaniah.

Zephaniah 2:1-3 NLT 1 Gather together—yes, gather together, you shameless nation. 2 Gather before judgment begins, before your time to repent is blown away like chaff. Act now, before the fierce fury of the Lord falls and the terrible day of the Lord’s anger begins.

3 Seek the Lord, all who are humble, and follow his commands. Seek to do what is right and to live humbly. Perhaps even yet the Lord will protect you—protect you from his anger on that day of destruction.

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