As you turn to Amos 6 tonight, I want to tell you about the first word of our text. That word is Woe. Everybody experiences grief in different ways. Some people keep it inside. Some people cry. But there are some people who really break down. We’ve all seen pictures of the professional mourners in the middle east. How they wail and scream and cry. Well, that’s what this word WOE means. It is a wailing cry of anguish and grief over the loss of a loved one. It’s a funeral cry. And that’s what God is doing over His people, Israel. As we read, notice God’s cry of grief over the coming death of Israel.
AMOS 6:1-7
My wife and I love to go out to eat. A couple of weeks ago, we sat down and tried to figure out all the things we wanted to do while we were on vacation. After a few minutes of working on our list, I think all we had on it was different places we wanted to eat. We’ve kind of gotten away from it, but I used to really like going to buffets. Sometimes we’ll still go to Ryan’s or CiCi’s, but we do better to avoid them. See, I have a bad habit of thinking I need to get my money’s worth. The thing about buffets is you can get only the things that you like. You don’t have to worry with getting salads and fruits and vegetables. You can get pizza and steak and fried chicken. You can even drown them all in gravy if you like. We went to one buffet a few years ago called Fantail. Fantail deep-fried everything. Fish, shrimp, oysters, okra. They even deep-fried pickles. You’d leave that place looking for nothing but Rolaids and a pillow. Most buffets lay out quite a spread. When you look at the last verse of our passage tonight, God pictures Israel as being lazily stretched out at a banquet. They’re complacent and lazy because they’ve gorged themselves at an all-you-can-eat buffet. They were at ease. They were comfortable. They were lazy. Their bellies were full and they were content. But like so often happens at the all-you-can-eat buffet, they had filled up on junk. Tonight, I want us to be aware of the junk food that causes complacency. I want us to wake up and push away from the banquet table of the complacent before God does it for us. In order to do that, we’re going to look at five plates on the banquet table of the complacent. The first plate is the plate of power. Look with me at verses 1-2:
AMOS 6:1-2
Remember where we are in the history of Israel. Since the days of Solomon, they had never been more powerful. Their military was the strongest it had been for as long as the people could remember. They had peace through their strength. Their capital city was Samaria. The reason God talks about the mountain of Samaria is because that’s where it was located. It was located high on a hill with steep sides. It was also protected by almost impenetrable walls. The only way for an enemy to attack Samaria was by way of a long, winding road. That road made it up one side of the mountain and entered the city. But only after passing through a series of fortifications along the way. Samaria was a very strong city. The people thought it was impenetrable. As they sat down at the buffet, the plate of power made them safe. It made them secure. It made them complacent. In verse 2, God reminds them of other equally secure places they knew of that had been overthrown in recent years. Calneh, Hamath, and Gath were at one time equally powerful cities that had been destroyed. Why did Israel think they were any better? We like our power in this country, don’t we? We take great pride in the strength of our military. Since the end of the Cold War, we say that we’re the only superpower left in the world. We look at our aircraft carriers and our smart bombs and F-22s and stretch ourselves before the banquet plate of power. We’re comfortable. We’re at ease. But have you noticed something? We haven’t really completely won a war since World War 2. Without question, America is the most powerful nation in the world. So was Rome. So was Greece. So was Medo-Persia. So was Assyria. So was Babylon. Could God be asking us, “What makes you any better than those kingdoms, or their border greater than your border?” The first plate on the buffet table of the comfortable is the plate of power. The second plate is the plate of progress. Look with me in verse 3.
AMOS 6:3
When you look through the course of human history, one thing always happens in times of peace and prosperity. During times of peace and prosperity, people always believe in a thing called progress. Think about it. If you were to ask anybody in America today, they would argue that people today have progressed a long way from the people a hundred years ago. That’s what most of us think, isn’t it? That’s what we think because our culture has placed the plate of progress in front of us and we’ve eaten our fill. Are we really any better? Have we really progressed? Yes, we have running water. Yes, we have toilets that flush. Yes, we have machines that count really fast—that’s all computers really do. But is that progress? If the power went out tomorrow, would our kids even know how to take care of the most basic necessities of life? A few would. Most wouldn’t. When the power goes out, we haven’t really progressed as much as we think we have. As a matter of fact, most of our idea of progress is the same as it was for Israel. It is a sense that we can make the future better. We can create a better world for ourselves. Better living through technology and all that stuff. Subconsciously, we’re looking for the same thing Israel was. We’re looking to hide from the innate sense of coming judgment that God has built into us. We’re closing our eyes to the fact that everything around us is crumbling and pointing to a final day of judgment and destruction. We’re closing our eyes to the deterioration in the world around us and saying that evolution is making everything better and better. And what does God say that causes in verse 3? It causes an increase in violence. Have you noticed that the more advanced we think we are as a nation, the more violent we become? How can people who are as advanced as we claim to be have more child abuse than ever? How can we have more brutal murders than ever? How can we have more rapes and violent crimes than ever? Because we’ve put far away the evil day by stretching ourselves before the plate of progress. The second plate on the buffet table of the comfortable is the plate of progress. The third plate is the plate of materialism. Look in verse 4:
AMOS 6:4
Think about how all this looked to Amos. Remember that he was a dirt-poor shepherd from Tacoa. He was a no-name, nobody from no where. The only things he got to eat was the sycamore fruit that he picked while he was herding sheep. Poor man’s food. And here he looked on all the materialism of Israel. He saw ornate furniture and the elegant way they decorated their houses. He saw the choice food they ate. Not only did they eat meat—which was uncommon in that day. They ate T-bone steaks. Can you imagine what he would have said if he had seen even the poorest American? TVs, computers, video games, cars. Most people we would consider poor in America have those things. Those things that would be considered luxuries in many parts of the world. Now, notice what this verse doesn’t say. It doesn’t say that having ivory beds and couches and high quality food is bad. In and of themselves, having material things isn’t bad. What’s bad is stretching ourselves before them. There is a difference between having material things and materialism. Material things can be a blessing. If they aren’t our focus and we use them for the honor and glory of God. On the other hand, materialism is sin. At its core, materialism is worshipping things. It’s filling our lives so full of things, there is no room for God. Romans 1 says that is worshipping created things over the Creator. It a very real sense, it’s gluttony. It’s gorging ourselves on the things of this world. It’s stretching ourselves before the plate of materialism. The third plate on the buffet table of the comfortable is the plate of materialism. The fourth plate is the plate of emotionalism. Look at verse 5:
AMOS 6:5
Why does God bring David into it here? Wasn’t David a man after God’s own heart? Yes, he was—but he was also a king. God is saying that even the average Joe in Israel was entertaining himself like a king. Like every other prosperous, peaceful nation throughout history, Israel had become obsessed with entertainment. Greece had the theatre. Rome had the Coliseum. We’re no different. The entertainment industry in America is a multi-billion dollar industry. From sports to movies to TV to music, we’re gorging ourselves on entertainment. Why is that? Because at the core of entertainment is emotion. Whether it’s laughing or screaming or crying, we love to have our emotions stirred. Music has always had a way of stirring emotion. When my wife’s mother died, they played Amazing Grace at her funeral. She still gets tears in her eyes when she hears that song. But not as bad as it used to be. Why is that? Because the more she hears it, the less emotional she feels. It’s almost as if you become numb to it. That’s why God talked about the Israelites inventing to themselves instruments of music. They had to keep trying new things to get the same emotional charge. That’s the thing about emotionalism. Your emotions become jaded. So to get the same emotional charge, things have to be bigger and better. Action movies have to be more intense. Scary movies have to be more violent and gorier. Love stories have to have more heartbreak and more sex and more twists and turns. Just like Israel before us, we’re obsessed with entertainment and feeling. We’re stretching ourselves before the plate of emotionalism. The fourth plate on the buffet table of the comfortable is the plate of emotionalism. The final plate is the plate of excess. Look at verse 6:
AMOS 6:6
Some translations like the New American Standard call the bowls in this verse “sacrificial bowls.” Even though the word is the same word that is used for the bowls that contained the blood that cleansed the altar in sacrifice, it only means that in that context. In other words, the word that’s used for bowl here simply means bowl. It doesn’t really have anything to do with the sacrifice in our verse here. It means bowl, but it carries the idea of a big bowl. What God is saying here is that the Israelites went to extremes. A glass of wine wasn’t enough. They had to super-size it. It wouldn’t do for them just to quench their thirst. They had to get loaded—really loaded. They had to drink to extremes. But that wasn’t the only thing they went to extremes with. They went to extremes with their personal hygiene. It wasn’t enough just to use a little cologne. They would only settle for the finest that Bath and Body had to offer. It is a picture of extravagance. Excess in everything. Everything to the extreme. Look at the way things are advertised to our kids today. Everything is extreme. They have extreme sports. Extreme pop. Even extreme breakfast cereal. But it’s not just the kids. Super-size is our extreme word. Why buy a 16 ounce pop when you can buy a 24 ounce thirst buster? Everything is marketed as bigger, better, faster, more luxurious, more powerful, more everything. And why is it marketed that way? Because we love to feed our taste for excess. We love to go to extremes. We stretch ourselves before the plate of excess.
We’ve seen the picture of Israel sprawled out at the all-you-can-ease buffet. Feasting at the banquet of the complacent. And when we’ve seen Israel, we’ve seen ourselves. Laid out in front of the plate of power. The plate of progress. The plate of materialism. The plate of emotionalism. And the plate of excess. And just like when you eat too much at Ryan’s, what do you want to do? Go home and take a nap. That’s what the banquet table of the complacent does too. It makes us lazy. It makes us not care about the things around us. It makes us at ease in Zion. Comfortable with the sin in our lives. Comfortable with the lost world around us. Comfortable with the things that should break our hearts. Comfortable with the things that should motivate us to get to work for the Lord. When we find ourselves in a state like that, there are two things that can happen. The first thing is what happened to Israel. Look at verse 7:
AMOS 6:7
What happened? God forcibly removed them from the banquet table. He closed the buffet. He did it by sending them into captivity. By destroying everything they had placed their trust in. By taking away their power. By destroying their hope in progress. By taking away all of their material possessions. By giving them real reasons to display emotions instead of just from their entertainment. And by taking away their extreme extravagance and placing them in extreme need. Is that what we want for us? Is that what we want for America? Is that what we want for our church? Of course it isn’t. So what’s the solution? What will keep God from forcibly closing our buffet table and pushing us away from it? We can push away from it ourselves. We can push away from it ourselves by waking up from our complacency. And where does it start? Right here. Wake up from complacency by telling people that the only power worth having is the power Paul talks about in Romans 1:16: “For I am not ashamed of the gospel of Christ. For it is the power of God unto salvation to every one that believeth—to the Jew first and also to the Greek.” Tell people that the only true progress is the kind of progress that comes from taking up your cross daily and following Jesus. The kind of progress that John the Baptist talked about when he said that he must decrease that Christ must increase. Tell people that my God owns the cattle on a thousand hills and all the material wealth in the world belongs to Him. In Matthew 16:26, Jesus said, “For what is a man profited if he shall gain the whole world and lose his own soul? Or what shall a man give in exchange for his soul?” Tell people that! Tell people that peace and joy are the only ways to fulfill the emotions—not entertainment. Paul wrote in Philippians 4:4-7, “Rejoice in the Lord alway: and again I say, Rejoice. Let your moderation be known unto all men. The Lord is at hand. Be careful for nothing; but in every thing by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known unto God. And the peace of God, which passeth all understanding, shall keep your hearts and minds through Christ Jesus.” Tell them that! Tell them that the only extreme they need in their life is extreme devotion to Jesus Christ. Because He already showed the most extreme devotion to them. The same devotion He showed to me and the same devotion He showed to you. The kind of devotion talked about in Romans 5:6-9: “For when we were yet without strength, in due time Christ died for the ungodly. For scarcely for a righteous man will one die: yet peradventure for a good man some would even dare to die. But God commendeth his love toward us, in that, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us. Much more then, being now justified by his blood, we shall be saved from wrath through him.” Woe to those who are at ease in Zion. Woe to those who are at ease in America. Woe to those who are at ease in our church. Are you at ease? It’s time to push away from the buffet and get to work.
