Introduction
Commentator Gordon Keddie tells the story of two men who were discussing the whys and wherefores of the biblical “millennium” mentioned in Revelation 20:4. Which of the three classic interpretations of this period was correct? Was it premillennialism, postmillennialism, or amillennialism?
“Oh,” said the one man, “I have the solution to the problem. I call it ‘panmillennialism.’ ”
His companion was puzzled. “What is ‘panmillennialism’?” he asked.
“It means,” came the reply, “that everything will pan out all right in the end!”
Many people think like this about death and eternity. They think that one way or another that everything will work out okay for them in the end.
People who are atheists—and there are a growing number of atheists today—believe that a person ceases to exist the moment he takes his last breath. All that counts is now and how we live today. So, they don’t concern themselves with anything beyond this life.
There are many major religions, and all are different than Christianity. They each have some view of life after death and how one attains it. In every instance, one attains life after death by good works that are performed in this life. Of course, they are all going to find out that their religion was wrong and people who hold to those religions will find themselves experiencing hell for all eternity.
But what about people who profess to be Christians? There are vast numbers of professing Christians who are involved in religious activity and worship. They will discover that God is not pleased with their worship. Commentator James Montgomery Boice offers the following insight:
It is important to understand two steps in the spiritual decline of nominally religious people. Such people do not live for God, though they think they do. They live for self, and the first stage of their decline is to put off the day of reckoning. At this stage they know what is right and expect to do the right someday. But in the meantime, they want the imagined benefits of a life of sin. The second stage comes when sin has so trapped them and distorted their thinking that they lose sight of what is right or wrong and imagine their sin to be right conduct. At this point, far from putting off the day of reckoning, they actually desire it. They imagine that their deeds will be vindicated and that the people they have wronged will be shown to be deserving of their conduct.
Such is the thinking of vast numbers of professing Christians.
And such also was the thinking of Israel in the time of the Prophet Amos. You recall that Amos went to the northern kingdom of Israel and preached to them a message from God. He preached around 760 BC. Both the northern kingdom of Israel and the southern kingdom of Judah were experiencing relative peace from their surrounding enemies. They were also experiencing great prosperity. So, the people believed that God was blessing them. After all, they were carrying out worship in the northern kingdom of Israel and people were active. Therefore, God must be blessing them.
But along comes the Prophet Amos who shatters their deluded thinking. He insists that nominal religion provides no hope for the present or eternity.
Scripture
Let us read Amos 4:1-5:17:
18 Woe to you who desire the day of the Lord!
Why would you have the day of the Lord?
It is darkness, and not light,
19 as if a man fled from a lion,
and a bear met him,
or went into the house and leaned his hand
against the wall,
and a serpent bit him.
20 Is not the day of the Lord darkness, and not light,
and gloom with no brightness in it?
21 “I hate, I despise your feasts,
and I take no delight in your solemn
assemblies.
22 Even though you offer me your burnt offerings
and grain offerings,
I will not accept them;
and the peace offerings of your fattened animals,
I will not look upon them.
23 Take away from me the noise of your songs;
to the melody of your harps I will not listen.
24 But let justice roll down like waters,
and righteousness like an ever-flowing
stream.
25 “Did you bring to me sacrifices and offerings during the forty years in the wilderness, O house of Israel? 26 You shall take up Sikkuth your king, and Kiyyun your star-god—your images that you made for yourselves, 27 and I will send you into exile beyond Damascus,” says the Lord, whose name is the God of hosts. (Amos 5:17-28)
Lesson
Amos 5:18-27 shows us that nominal religion provides no hope for the present or eternity.
Let’s use the following outline:
1. The Day of the Lord Brings No Hope (5:18-20)
2. Religious Activity Brings No Hope (5:21-24)
3. False Worship Brings No Hope (5:25-27)
I. The Day of the Lord Brings No Hope (5:18-20)
First, the Day of the Lord brings no hope.
Amos said in verse 18a, “Woe to you who desire the day of the Lord! Why would you have the day of the Lord?” This is the earliest time in the Bible that we find the use of the expression “the day of the Lord.” Amos did not invent this term. The way Amos used the term shows that it was a common expression at the time that Amos preached to the people of Israel. “Briefly,” explains Boice, “the Day of the Lord was the day in which Jehovah would return in judgment to punish sin and set things right.” The people of God longed for this day. They understood the day of the Lord to be the day when God would execute judgment on Israel’s enemies and bless the people of God. All of the difficulty and suffering that they had experienced would be vindicated at the hand of God.
But Amos went on to explain in verse 18b, “It is darkness, and not light.” Then Amos illustrated in verse 19 with a man who was walking outside and encountered a lion. He turned and ran away as fast as he could from the lion. But just as he turned the corner, he ran into a bear. Having escaped that horror, the man went into his house and leaned his hand against his wall, only to find a serpent biting him.
Therefore, Amos concludes in verse 20, “Is not the day of the Lord darkness, and not light, and gloom with no brightness in it?” The day of the Lord would not be what the people of God expected. It would be a day of darkness and gloom, with no brightness in it. The people of God were counting on the day of the Lord as the time when God would set things right. But, instead, it would be a terrible day for them. Amos wanted the people of God to know that the day of the Lord brings no hope.
This is astonishing. The people of God had the word of God. And yet, the people of God did not follow the word of God in the way in which he wanted to be worshiped.
So, Amos continued his sermon against the people of Israel.
II. Religious Activity Brings No Hope (5:21-24)
Second, religious activity brings no hope.
The people of Israel may have protested and said that they were not irreligious. They were very religious and had lots of different activities. Amos tells the people of God what God thinks about their religious activities.
First, God rejects feasts and solemn assemblies. God said through Amos in verse 21, “I hate, I despise your feasts, and I take no delight in your solemn assemblies.” God uses very strong language in rejecting the religious activity of Israel. He does not say, “I would rather you did not worship me in this way.” Instead, he says, “I hate,” “I despise,” and “I take no delight.” God is not pleased with the worship that is being offered to him. Normally, God delights in the worship that his people bring him. But not now. He takes no delight in their feasts and solemn assemblies. The people of God were celebrating the feasts and holding the assemblies that they were supposed to hold. But how they were being done brought no joy to the Lord.
Second, God rejects offerings. God said through Amos in verse 22, “Even though you offer me your burnt offerings and grain offerings, I will not accept them; and the peace offerings of your fattened animals, I will not look upon them.” Commentator Gary Smith writes, “The burnt offering was totally given to God (Lev. 1:9, 13, 17). The grain offering could be a comprehensive term for any offering given as a gift to God, but the listing of several different specific types of sacrifices suggests that Amos had the ‘grain offering’ in mind. It also was a ‘soothing aroma to the Lord’ (Lev. 2:2, 9, 12). The third sacrifice is the peace offering, the only sacrifice which the worshipers themselves were able to eat (Lev. 3; 7:11–18; 22:29–30).” Amos stated that these offerings will not have their intended result; God will not even look upon them.
But why would God not even look upon the offerings? Smith answers, “This response would be expected only when a person did not follow the sacrificial procedure (Lev. 7:18; 19:7) or when the heart of the offerer was not right with God (Ps. 51:1–19; Isa. 59:1–3).” Amos did not specify which problem was causing the Lord not to look upon their offerings. So, it is likely that they were not following the proper procedure and also that their hearts were not right with God.
Third, God rejects praise. God said through Amos in verse 23, “Take away from me the noise of your songs; to the melody of your harps I will not listen.” The people of God had been singing for centuries. Undoubtedly, the Psalms were well-known and sung at their worship services. But, the singing and the music of their songs at worship were described as “noise.” In fact, God said that he would not even listen to it. Why? Most likely because they were singing hollow words of praise. They were not sincere in what they were saying. They were going through the motions of singing but their hearts were far from God. So God rejects their praise.
But fourth, God accepts justice. God said through Amos in verse 24, “But let justice roll down like waters, and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream.” In contrast to rejecting their religious activity, God says, “But.” God now states what he will accept. Smith writes, “The jussive form of the verb is an admonition to change the central focus of worship from the performance of the ritual to the establishment of justice and righteousness.” God requires just and right living as a prerequisite for all who wish to enter his presence. God wants his people to live in right relationships with one another before they come into his presence to worship him.
Amos uses an image that helps us to understand what God wants. In the dry and desert conditions, there was not much rain. However, when the rain did fall, it caused fast-flowing streams in the desert that quickly dried up. Instead of that kind of water, God wants an “ever-flowing stream.” He wants his people to live in such a way that they are always treating others with justice and righteousness.
The thrust of these verses is that religious activity brings no hope. God’s people must always evaluate their activities to make sure that they are worshiping God in the way that he prescribes. God’s people must worship God in the right way and God’s people must worship God with a right heart.
III. False Worship Brings No Hope (5:25-27)
And third, false worship brings no hope.
God asks the people of God through Amos in verse 25, “Did you bring to me sacrifices and offerings during the forty years in the wilderness, O house of Israel?” This was the time after the people of God had left Egypt but, because of their disobedience, they wandered in the wilderness for forty years. The people likely worshiped God with sacrifices and offerings during the forty years in the wilderness. But that is probably not the answer for which God was looking. The point is that sacrifices and offerings are worthless unless they spring from a heart of obedience. Simply bringing sacrifices and offerings does no one any good on its own. It must be accompanied by heartfelt obedience. As Gordon Keddie says, “Rather it was obedience, in response to the law given at Sinai, that was the central aim of their lives and, indeed, the goal of such sacrifices as were commanded under the law.”
The state of the hearts of the people of God is opened up in verse 26, where God says through Amos, “You shall take up Sikkuth your king, and Kiyyun your star-god—your images that you made for yourselves.” Commentators are not sure about the exact meaning of Sikkuth and Kiyyun. Suffice it to say that the people of God were worshiping false gods. Despite their “God talk” they were virtually pagan. They certainly were not worshiping the true God.
The worst is yet to come for the people of God. Their false worship brings no hope. In fact, God says through Amos in verse 27, “ ‘…and I will send you into exile beyond Damascus,’ says the Lord, whose name is the God of hosts.” Here is God’s promise that he will send the people of God into exile. That prophecy came true about forty years later when the Assyrians conquered Israel and took them into captivity in 722 BC.
Let me say that worship is extremely important. It reveals to God the state of our hearts. So let us always think about our worship and make sure that it conforms to what God has prescribed for us about how we are to worship him.
Conclusion
Therefore, having analyzed religion in Amos 5:18-27, let us examine ourselves to see whether we have a true faith.
I would like to conclude with the following words from James Montgomery Boice, who writes:
If judgment is inevitable, as Amos (and the entire Bible) says it is, then the only logical thing is to flee to the place where it has already been poured out, that is, to the cross of Calvary. Only there may a guilty sinner find shelter. Augustus Toplady knew this secret and expressed it in one of the best-loved hymns in the English language, “Rock of Ages.” Toplady lived in England in the 1700s and wrote this hymn in the first year of the American Revolution, 1776. He was in a field in England when suddenly a storm swept down out of the sky. He was far from a village and had no shelter, but he saw a large rock ahead of him and thought that, if he leaned against it, he might escape some of the storm’s violence. When he got to the rock, he saw that it had been split open. There was a crack into which he could fit. He went in and was sheltered from the storm. While waiting there, he thought of God’s coming judgment and of the fact that Jesus, the Rock of Ages, was broken by God so that sinners like ourselves, who hide in him, might be safe. Struck by this thought, he found a playing card that had been lying at his feet and wrote, “Rock of Ages, cleft for me, let me hide myself in thee.”
Are you hiding in that Rock? There is no other shelter. It is only there where you can safely meet God.
