Amos 5:21-27

Tonight I direct you to turn with me to the book of Amos once again, Amos and Chapter 5. I want to look at the last verses of this chapter, beginning with verse 21. Amos, chapter 5, reading from verse 21 through 27. I hate. I despise your feast days. and I will not smell in your solemn assemblies. Though ye offer me burnt offerings, in your meal offerings, I will not accept them. Neither will I regard the peace offerings of your fat beast. Take thou away from me the noise of thy songs, but I will not hear the melody of thy vials. But let judgment run down as waters and righteousness as a mighty stream. Have you offered unto me sacrifices and offerings in the wilderness 40 years of the House of Israel? Did you have borne the tabernacle of your Moloch and Chion your images, the star of your God, which you made to yourselves. Therefore will I cause you to go into captivity beyond Damascus, said the Lord, whose name is the God of hosts. May God bless to us His sacred and holy word this evening. Israel has been putting on quite a religious show. Great pious act. A lot of outward religion is associated here with the Northern Kingdom. They were intensely involved in sacrificing, you know, the finest beast on their altars, bringing many wonderful offerings to their God. And yet while Israel was busy parading their piety, God, God tells us that He is angry. with him, that he is enraged by their behavior. For in all their religious fervor, and all the zeal that they had in their religion, they did not seek after God, as we saw in verses 5 and 6 of this chapter. And we find here it’s time for their lousy religious performance to come to an end. God is going to stop it. This hypocritical show is not going to go on much longer. God says, take it away from me. All this religious foolishness, it makes me sick. And so God is going to toss Israel off the stage of history. They will never return as a nation independently as they had been in the past. they will be gone forever. You find here God declares Israel’s worship unacceptable. In verses 21 through 24. Versus 21 through 23, we find that God despises Israel’s religious activities. I hate, I despise your feast days. I will not smell in your solemn assemblies, though you offer me burnt off and your meat offerings, I will not accept them. Neither will I regard the peace offerings of your fat beast. Take thou away from me the noise of thy songs, for I will not hear the melody of thy vials or thy hearts. Here we find what God thought of their worship. Now, they probably thought everything was fine and dandy. They probably thought this. This is great. Our worship is wonderful. Like many people today, you ask them how church, oh, it was wonderful. We had a wonderful service today and so forth. But the question is not what men think about it. The question is what God thinks about it. And here Amos reveals what God thinks about their worship. And God’s criticism here is devastating. He doesn’t mince any words here. He doesn’t beat around the bush. He comes flat out and tells them that the whole thing. stinks. Now when the Northern Kingdom established its own place of worship, in some ways perhaps it imitated the worship of God in Jerusalem that was established by the Lord, but it’s sort of like a copycat religion, and they certainly deviated in great many ways. The Lord reacted with strong language here. He didn’t say it was lukewarm, you know, like you did did to the church later to see it. Well, you’re lukewarm. He doesn’t say that. He says, I hate it. I despise it, he says. He couldn’t stand the atmosphere at Bethel and Gilgale. There are major religious centers. He didn’t want to see anything about it. He didn’t want to hear anything. He didn’t want to even smell their sacrifices. Their songs and their temple music were but racket in his ears. He was happy when they stopped for a while. To him, it was just noise. Screeching in his ears. The sacrifices of the fatted beasts disgusted him. This phrase, I will not even breathe in the odor of your solemn assemblies here in verse 21. I won’t smell in your solemn assemblies. When you read in scripture, there are times where God says that he smells the sweet aroma or the aroma of the sacrifice, and he accepts it. I think one of the cases when Noah after the flood, when he sacrificed, something like that. Here he’s saying, it’s a stench in my nostrils. I don’t even want to hear it smell the aroma. I hate. I despise. I will not regard. Take it away from me. I will not hear. It’s like a child. There’s spinach. on the plate for dinner. He might eat the meat. He might eat the potatoes, but he pushes aside the spinach and won’t touch that. God says, I don’t want anything to do with this. Discuss me. Now, it’s not that God is against sacrifices. It’s not that God is against music, the singing, the worship. He ordained the temple worship there at Jerusalem. He called for sacrifices to be made and commanded how they were to be done. But the point is he specified in his law the way worship was to be conducted. Certainly the music of David was pleasing in the ears of God. The Psalms were sweet music of praise because God had inspired them. And God had commanded them to be sung. But what God saw in Israel’s worship was a perversion of the true worship, man-made ideas, and it spoiled it all. It was a stench to him. And so God despises Israel’s religious activities here. And we also see that God delights here in justice and righteousness. Verse 24 of Chapter 5 of Amos. He says, but let judgment run down as rivers and righteousness as a mighty stream. You find this very prevalent, you see this in Isaiah chapter 1, the same idea. It wasn’t that they weren’t engaged in worship, but what they were doing the rest of their time was evil in the eyes of God. They weren’t behaving according to what God had commanded them to do as far as their everyday dealings with their neighbor. So they had their religion, but they weren’t acting as those who were God’s people. And so we find here God is saying that Israel’s justice and righteousness, the word judgment here, I think it has the idea of justice, justice and righteousness, should pour forth like a river from their hearts. In other words, it should be something that is constant, consistent, consistent. in their lives, in their behavior toward others. Now, there are two kinds of streams or rivers that we find mentioned in Scripture. There are those where the water flowed only during the winter season, the rainy season, if you would. The water was there during that period of time. Remember Elijah’s Brooke, Cherath? a period of time he had water but then it dried up and that’s what happens with those some of those streams and so forth. They’re not consistent. They dry up. Whereas there are others rivers and streams and so forth that are consistent like Jordan. Seems like that’s always flowing, maybe higher at certain points at other times, but the water keeps continually flowing through that river. The winter streams certainly contain water only when all the other streams of water had it as well. The during the summer, when it’s hot, and it’s dry, and the travelers are looking for water and they get to the water areas, and it’s a dry bed. There’s nothing, there’s no water for them. What should have been constantly flowing, and they counted on, disappear. Now, Amos’s point here is this, let your just, and your righteousness continually flow in your life. This is something that shouldn’t be done in spurts, where sometimes you are and sometimes you’re not, it should be consistent about this. Let justice be administered rightly by your magistrates, your rulers, your judges. Don’t sometimes do it, but other times you just take a bribe, it doesn’t matter. If you can get money in your pocket, Or maybe there’s favoritism you show toward your friend, or you have ill will towards someone, and you decide I’m going to make sure I pass this judgment against this person. Israel was charged here with turning justice into wormwood here in verse 7 of this chapter. Something bitter. Somebody went to the court to get justice. They didn’t get justice. They left bitter. disappointed. He says, this must change. I’ll turn a few pages over to Zachariah, if you would, chapter 7 and verses 8 through 10. Zachariah chapter 7 and verses 8 through 10. Here’s what God says to the prophet Zachari, to his people through Zacharii, really. And the word of the Lord came unto Zachariahe saying, Thus speaketh the Lord of Hose. Execute true judgment. Show mercy and compassion every man to his brother. And oppress not the widow, nor the fatherless, the stranger, nor the poor. Let none of you imagine evil against his brother in your heart. This is the way he says, you ought to behave. You ought to be living. So God desires them to be obedient. That’s better than all the sacrifices they were offered. Remember when King Saul was told by God to utterly destroy all that the Amalekites had. Destroy their city, destroy them, kill them all. But the people were told, kept back the best of the sheep and the oxen and so forth, which they said, at least Ahab did, a way of justification to Samuel. Oh, we decided we were to say this for a sacrifice under war. And remember what Samuel said. To obey is better than sacrifice. It would have been better for them to have justice and right righteousness in their lives, right behavior. Then they go through all these motions of bringing these sacrifices that God wasn’t going to accept anyhow. So God delights in justice and righteousness. You find God declares Israel’s worship here is unacceptable. Secondly, tonight, you find God’s judgment comes in the form of exile. Verse 25, he gives us a little history lesson back in Amos chapter 5. Have you offered unto me sacrifices? offerings in the wilderness 40 years, O house of Israel. Amos is going to take them back. He’s going to take them back in time to that glorious time when God delivered them from Egyptian slavery. And they’re going through the wilderness. And they’re headed for the promised land. And he asked here, what they’re forefathers. Did you at that time offer sacrifices unto me? Now, Israel was probably. of their history. They had a great heritage. They probably looked back on this. We sure did offer sacrifices to you. But it doesn’t seem to be the answer that God accepts. Not that they didn’t offer some sacrifices to him. But you notice here he seems to say he offered sacrifices and offerings to devils, to the golden calf idol, to the host of heaven, but not to me. verse 26 talks about molek and chyelon and so forth. We’ll touch on that in a second. If you look with me at Acts Chapter 7, you have a sacred commentary on this, beginning with verse 35 of Acts 7. This is Stephen’s defense, if you would, or his argumentation. That is teaching. about Christ and how the Jews have rejected the truth all along. And so not fun and not strange that they would do so now. But look with me, beginning with verse 35 and reading through verse 43. This Moses, whom they refused, saying, who may be a ruler and a judge? The same did God send to be ruler and a ruler, and a deliverer by the hand of the angel, which appeared to him in the bush. And he brought them out, after he had showed signs and wonders and signs in the land of Egypt and in the Red Sea, and in the wilderness 40 years, this is that Moses, which said under the children of Israel, a prophet, shall the Lord your God raise up unto you of your brother, like unto me, him shall you hear. This is referring, of course, to Christ. This is he that was in the church, in the wilderness, with the angel which spake to him in the Mount Sinai, Sinai, and which our fathers, who had received the lively oracles to give us, to whom our fathers would not obey, but thrust him from them, and in their hearts turned back again into Egypt, saying unto Aaron, make us gods to go before us. And as for Moses, which brought us out of the land of Egypt, we want not what has become of him. And they made a calf in those days, and offered sacrifice under the idol, and rejoiced in the works of their own hands. Then God turned, and gave them up to worship the host of heaven, as is written in the book of the prophets. O ye house of Israel, have you offered to be slain beasts and sacrifices by the space of 40 years in the wilderness? Yea, you took up the tabernacle of Molek, and the star of your God Renfan, figures which ye made to worship them, and I will carry you away beyond Babylon. law. Here we find that God is stating that wow, sacrifices were really made. The truth of the matter is that the hearts of the people were not in the service of God. Even when they were going through the wilderness, they were carrying their gods with them. And so it would be strange that when they got to the promised land, that they would revert back to worshiping these false gods. that they made. Of course you have the golden calf they made in the wilderness, which he mentions here as well. And what happened to that whole generation of Israelites outside of a few people? Their carcasses fell in the wilderness. Hebrews 4 tells us because of unbelief. They didn’t believe the message of the gospel. That, of course, was given them in the law. And other Old Testament scriptures that Moses wrote for them. But we find that they turned away from the truth. Here, I think Amos is saying, you’re just like your forefathers. You’re imitating, you haven’t changed a bit. You’re offering sacrifices, but not really to me. And you too deserve punishment. And you’ll follow in their footsteps. I punish them and I’ll punish you. Pagan images. have been made for worship here, verse 26, which is really the passage that we just read from Acts as well. Pagan deities were incorporated in the worship of Gilgale and Bethel. Mulek was the god of the Ammonites. And we find that Israel caused their sons and their daughters to pass through the fire. under this idol. They would sacrifice to children. To Molek. The image was carried by them in a shrine or some kind of portable tent. It’s called a tabernacle here in scripture, but they carried it about with them in the wilderness and wherever they were on the way to the promised land. They also worshipped a god named Chai’an. In the Egyptian language, which, remember, Israel was escaping, the word is Remphan, which is the word that we find used in Acts Chapter 7. We’re talking about the same God here. This word is used elsewhere to refer to what the Greeks worshipped under Saturn. When they worshipped Saturn. So he talks about some type of star god or you know, something to do with the heavens that we’re talking about here. Some kind of heavenly star or, you know, something that would shine in the heavens that they would worship. That’s what we’re talking about. And God says, I know all about this. Whatever the exact identification of these gods may be, we don’t have all the information. We used to, they probably had at the time when this was written. but it seems to be these are the names of the gods that were being worshiped. They were idols. They were, of course, a violation of God’s law. So in their hearts, these people, while they were very religious, were light years away from the Lord God. So pagan images have been made for worship. Lastly, captivity awaits Israel. Verse 27. Therefore, I will. will cause you to go into captivity beyond Damascus, saith the Lord, whose name is the Lord of hosts. God says here, if you’re so interested in foreign deities, well, I’ll send you off to a foreign land, and you’ll have plenty of deities to worship there. I will vomit you out of the land. I will not let you inherit my heritage. I will cut you off. The consequences of perverting the worship of God would be exile, and it uses that phrase beyond Damascus. Now, during Israel’s battles with Syria, whenever they lost the battle, like in First Kings, or Second Kings 10 or 13, many of the Jews would be carried off. as captive slaves to the capital city of Damascus. What he’s saying here, he’s pointing out how serious this is going to be, it’s not just going to be to a neighboring nation, you’re going to go. Oh no, you’re going to go way off into a some remote place. It’d be like today, if we were in a fight against, let’s say, Canada or something, and they were capturing our men, would they just go to Canada? It’s across the border. But if we’re in fighting against Russia, they may end up in Siberia. That’s pretty far away, halfway around the world. So we have this idea of how far they’re going to be taken away this time. To make this threat more certain, more dreadful, God himself sort of stamps his name at the end here. He says that the Lord, meaning Jehovah, the God of hosts, all the host of heaven, mighty and terrible as he is, is going to enforce this sentence against you, and there’s no way that you can stop it. So God’s judgment comes in the form of Exa. We have a history lesson here, and we have pagan images that they were worshipping, and we have the whole idea of the captivity that they will be sent into. I have two practical thoughts I’d like to draw tonight from this passage of scripture. and one is this. God expects more than seasonable righteousness from you. Your righteousness, your obedience to God’s commands is not like Israel’s streams which are not constant. They come and go, they dry up and disappear. Your obedience is not to be seasonal, intermittent, sporadic. It’s got to flow all the time. God expects regular obedience or righteousness which flows like a mighty stream. Seasonal righteousness can be found in many forms and places. There was a couple that was celebrating its their 25th wedding anniversary and they gave thanks to the Lord, talked about how the Lord had guided them for the last 25 years of their marriage and so forth. And yet they seldom went to church. They forgot all about giving to the Lord. Hadn’t cracked the Bible and who knows how many years. There was another person perhaps who enjoys great success in business. Speaks piously about the Lord’s blessing upon his business. But as soon as he suffers a small setback, he’s ready to blame the Lord as being a cruel master. Harsh. He deserved better than this. Then there are those who put their Sunday face on when they go to church on Sunday. Take it off when they get back home. In church they sing aloud about a burning desire to come to the house of God. Perhaps they sang that song that we sang tonight, 122B. I was glad to hear them saying, to the Lord’s house, let us go. But in their heart they’re thinking about the beach. They’re thinking about perhaps the ball game, a television, what they’re going to have for lunch, something of this nature. They’re a million miles away in their mind from the worship of God. There are those who say to Jesus that they want to follow him wherever he may lead them. But as soon as the road that Christ leads them down becomes hard and rocky, they give up. Well, Christianity is too demanding for them. Conflicts with their lifestyle. You remember in Pilgrim’s Progress when Christian and hopeful found the way, the narrow way they’re supposed to be following, rough, and their feet tender. They decided, well, let’s go on this bypass meadow. Because it’s nice green grass over there, it won’t hurt our feet. It’s a lot easier than falling. the route that God has laid out for us. And we know how that ended up. Disasterous. There are those who are happy to be on board when the church sailboat is being driven by a favorable wind. When those times when you have to row against the tide, when you’ve got to get the wars out and do some work, when there’s persecution, when there’s oppression, when there’s a crisis that comes, when it calls for sacrifice on the part the people to keep the church going, well, they find that too hard because all they want is what’s comfortable and nice. This is the kind of religion that we have many times in our world today. There are many who claim to have the courage when everybody else does. But we find it seasonal. How many can sing praise and trust God when every about them is falling down and people are abandoning the faith. Sometimes there’s only a few of those with overflowing streams of righteousness or obedience in their life that you can always count on with regard to the church and the work of the church and the service of the church. What a joy to meet a believer that overflows. Someone you just know is going to be there, rain or shine. In season, out of season. There are great contrasts in life. Sometimes you’ve got rain, sometimes you have drought. Sometimes you have abundant harvest. Sometimes you have famine. Sometimes there’s health and sometimes there’s sickness. Sometimes you have riches and sometimes you have poverty. But no matter what it is, it doesn’t destroy their faith. Their faith. faith stays in tact. It’s the diehard Christians that please God whose lives flow all the time with righteousness. So God expects more than seasonal righteousness from you. The second thing I suggest you tonight is this. The gospel music is often noise in the ears of God as we see from verse 23. Sadly, much that passes for Christian music today in worship services is a God’s sight, mere noise that he does not like. He would just as soon they stop it. It may be entertaining to the people. It may make people feel good. But it annoys God. No doubt Israel invented new forms of praise to improve their worship service. just like the amen of the new the golden calves god says take it away i don’t want to hear your foolish lyrics i don’t want to hear the melody of your harps the connection of this passage with gospel music today i think is really inescapable it’s convicting i might even say it’s damning that’s what we thought what is dangerous is all kinds of so-called christian music is filtering into our churches today. And what is allowed in the church is shocking. People are living in a time of spiritual depression. A time when the church has a much greater appetite for what’s trivial and what’s amusing than what’s biblical and searching. A.W. Tozer once said this. It’s scarcely possible in most places. to get anyone to attend a church where the only attraction is God. What a sad commentary years ago that was given regarding these matters. People are bored with the Psalms. Today they say, oh, I want something new. But the language and the message of contemporary Christian music lacks the qualities of the holy reverence, the spiritualness. The exaltation of God that we find in the Psalms that God has given us. You scarcely will find anything about the depravity of man in today’s singing. Nothing like Psalm 51. Oh, we’ve got feelings and emotions that come to the forefront. What about the attributes of God? What about His saving grace? Theology? It’s really what’s missing in today’s contemporary music. You sing these little ditties. It’s empty. It’s without substance. It teaches you nothing. It may make you feel good. What does it teach? What does it edify? I remind you what Paul says in Colossians 316, teaching and admonishing one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs. I’m supposed to learn something, edifying from the Psalms that when we sing them together. That sadly, that doesn’t seem to occur very much today. Christian music is often presented as entertainment. We find that when there are solos in the church, the congregation applauds the singer who finishes the solo, the performance, if you would. Why would anybody applaud during the worship service? a human being. What are we applauding man for? I thought we were there for the glory of God. I thought we were there to worship God. The lyrics need to be carefully examined in many modern gospel songs. I can’t go into detail here tonight. Much of today’s music contains bad theology, if not downright heresy. I remember the song that we used to sing in church that I attended in Texas when I was going to seminary. I didn’t I mentioned as before to you. Open your heart and let him come in. Well, I wrote down some of the lyrics. Here are some of the lyrics for it. The Savior is waiting to enter your heart. Oh, how he wants to come in. Time after time he has waited before to see if you were willing to open the door. Open your heart. Now, we used to sing this at the end of every service. There’s only one thing wrong with it. It’s unbiblical. I mentioned before. The scripture tells us that God opens Lydia’s heart so that she attended to the things that Paul was preaching. That’s how she was converted. Nothing about opening your own heart. There’s nothing about us pleading with man. God is sovereign in the work of salvation. But this is how we have made God so weak, so dependent upon man in salvation today. With this is how we have made God so weak. kind of singing. And the sad thing is these kind of songs end up being in the memory of people. And later on, you know, maybe when they’re thinking about theology and you’re talking about theology, you’re talking about theology, you say, well, I know it says somewhere in there, open your heart, let God let Christ in. When they’re thinking about a song lyric that’s unbiblical to begin with and not what the scripture says. Well, I said my peace. Gospel music is often noise in the ears of God. Well, let us close tonight with prayer. Heavenly Father, we give you thanks. As you give us lessons, Father, even the negative things that you say in your word, hopefully we can turn that around and look at the positive things we ought to be doing. But let us beware, Father, of falling into the, trap of trying to be more appealing to man and not focused on glorifying your name and doing our worship in a manner that’s pleasing in your sight according to the principles of your word. May you brand this in our hearts that we may not forget these things for it’s in the name of Christ Jesus our Lord and Savior we pray these things with Thanksgiving. Amen.