Grace Bible Church
Pastor-Teacher
Robert R. McLaughlin
Thursday
October 24, 2019
Pastor Rick Kabrick
Remember what the LORD has done for us, and that gratitude we should have towards HIM. Book of Amos Part 2. Pastor Rick Kabrick.
The overall theme of Amos is that everyone sins and all have fallen short of the glory of the LORD. But the good news of Amos and the LORD is that the LORD waits for us to return to HIM, through repentance and returning to the LORD’s way.
HE provides warning, knocking, warning always precedes judgement. But at some point non-repentant man…the hard hearted who will not come to the LORD or return to the LORD will see punishment and are punished.
Amos means burden or the bearer of burden. And his message from GOD to the people of Israel was one that dealt with burden. Not unlike many of the other prophets.
Amos’s prophecy was issued primarily at Beth-el, the seat of idolatry in the Northern kingdom. He attacks Satan’s stronghold, Bethel (which ironically means the house of GOD).
Amos will eventually address Israel’s two primary sins”
1) An absence of true worship, and
2) A lack of justice.
Think of it in terms of us, most people love to hear of the wrong things that others are doing, especially those who don’t like us.
There is a great attraction to it because of the OSN. But we certainly don’t like it when someone tells us of our wrongdoings.
PHI 2:12, Therefore, my dear friends, as you have always obeyed – not only in my presence, but now much more in my absence – continue to work out your salvation with fear and trembling,
Massive corruption, sexual immorality, also some believe it refers to captive girls being passed around the males in the family for their sexual pleasure. They were having sex after getting drunk on the wine that they bought with the money they extorted from the people.
Whether or not a nation believes in the One true GOD or not, that One true GOD will not be mocked.
So the expression is not meant to imply a specific number of sins (3-4), but rather to communicate that there is an excess of sin that has led to GOD’s judgment, and remember it was because they were un-repentant.
PHI 2:12, Therefore, my dear friends, as you have always obeyed – not only in my presence, but now much more in my absence – continue to work out your salvation with fear and trembling,
It is a reminder to us as well, to remember what the LORD has done for us, and that gratitude we should have towards HIM.
Many times people, instead of getting convicted, get condemned and run away from GOD, or they get angry and defensive and run away from GOD. Of course they should be running to GOD.
- Flight will perish from the swift.
2. The loyal warrior will lose his strength.
3. The mighty man will fail.
4. He who grasps the bow will not stand his ground,
5. The swift of foot will not escape,
6. He who rides the horse save his life.
7. The bravest among the warriors will flee naked in that day”
2KI 18:13, Now in the fourteenth year of king Hezekiah Sennacherib king of Assyria came up against all the fenced cities of Judah, and took them.
2KI 19:32-37, Therefore thus says the LORD concerning the king of Assyria, “He will not come to this city or shoot an arrow there; and he will not come before it with a shield or throw up a siege ramp against it.
“By the way that he came, by the same he will return, and he shall not come to this city,”’ declares the LORD.
2KI 18:28, “Hear the word of the great king, the king of Assyria! Do not let Hezekiah deceive you. He cannot deliver you from my hand. Do not let Hezekiah persuade you to trust in the LORD. “Do not listen to Hezekiah. The king of Assyria says Make peace with me and come out to me. Then every one of you will eat from his own vine and fig tree and drink water from his own cistern, until I come and take you to a land like your own, a land of grain and new wine, a land of bread and vineyards, a land of olive trees and honey. Choose life and not death!”
You know no matter who anyone is in the human realm, powerful or not, rich or not, King or president or PM you cannot think more highly of yourself than you ought to.
You must have true humility.
Sometimes, for whatever reason, we find ourselves at the end of ourselves, at the end of our own human resources,
where few, if any, can understand the personal despair and fear of the choices that must be made.
Hezekiah received that warning from the messenger and read it.
Then he went up to the temple of the LORD and spread it out before the LORD. The King said look LORD what this person is threatening your people with, and your anointed and you LORD.
2KI 19:15-19, “O LORD , God of Israel, enthroned between the cherubim, you alone are God over all the kingdoms of the earth. You have made heaven and earth. Hear me, O LORD, open your eyes, O LORD, and see; listen to the words Sennacherib has sent to insult the living God. “It is true, O LORD, that the Assyrian kings have laid waste these nations and their lands. They have thrown their gods into the fire and destroyed them, for they were not gods but only wood and stone, fashioned by men’s hands. Now, O’LORD our God, deliver us from his hand, so that all kingdoms on earth may know that you alone, O LORD, are God’s.
We can take a lesson from this. To depend on one’s self or the things we possess, is an action in futility.
We must depend upon the GOD who created us.
COL 3:2, Set your attention, your energy on things above, not on things on the earth.
Amos employs a sight he probably saw as a shepherd; the parts of a mutilated sheep killed by a lion, to describe Israel’s coming destruction.
Point was and is that GOD was and is their only true help. Even the heathen would have condemned some of the terrible things they had been doing.
The Israelites had lost the perception of what is right and what is wrong, In some cases they know, but they do not care. It is the awful state of utter moral decay.
The robbery and injustice they were doing they did not see, because they turned away from seeing. Sound familiar?
The LORD gives a vivid description of the small remnant left in Israel after the Assyrian invasion. That is what is intended by finding a leg or an ear left in the lion’s mouth, vivid indeed.