The Book of Amos (Part 2)

They are known as the minor prophets, but there's nothing minor about their message, especially their message about the character of God. All of them pack a theological punch that one can't, shouldn't, ignore. Listen in on our nine-week journey through seven of these little books and get a major look at the might and majesty of God in the series, Small Books, Big God, The Character of God in the Minor Prophet.

We're going to jump back in to the book of Amos today and see the second part of it. So wherever you're at, get your Bible because that's the most important thing and open it to the book of Amos. Last week, Travis told you that we were going to do like a good cop or bad cop, good cop routine.

I don't need to explain to you what that is. You'll get it. But he kind of mentioned, you know, maybe didn't feel like he's the greatest bad cop.

And if you know him, you're like, yeah, I don't know. Not a great bad cop. If you know me, you're like, yeah, maybe the worst good cop you've ever met.

So there might be moments today where you're like, where's the good part coming? But just bear with me. We're going to get to it. So last week, let's do a little bit of review because this is part two and we're not just aiming to get up here and teach two things that we think.

We want to talk about what the text is saying to us. Let's review a little bit what we learned last week. And it was that God is a God of justice.

And Travis showed us that the point, one of the points of the book of Amos is that the perfect character and justice of God teaches us that God knows and God cares. There's injustice out there in the world. There's injustice in your home, meaning close to you.

And there's injustice in here that you experience and you cause. And God sees all of it and knows all of it and cares about all of it. Because of that, our take home truth last week was that because of God's perfect justice, we need to repent, change, and trust in his provision for our sins, which is Jesus.

We're not going to talk about justice this week, but we're going to pick up right from the end of there and we're going to talk about provision. Because not only does Amos talk to us about the justice of God, he also shows us the generosity of God. Another point of the book of Amos is that he shows us the perfect character and generosity of God, which teaches us not just that God knows and that he cares, but that he provides.

And we're going to see this morning that he knows about injustice, he cares about it, and yet he is so generous that he provides a way for it to be made right. We're going to jump in and we're going to kind of jump around to different passages like we did last week. But before we do that, we need to understand the juxtaposition of what we're going to see.

Last week it was injustice and justice. This week it's going to be generosity and greed. Those are the two things pitted against one another so that the greatness of God's generosity can be even more evident.

Let's get a little definition of greed. Because when we think about greed, our minds go right to what? Money. Thank you.

One person awake. They go to money, right? But at its base form, greed necessarily doesn't have to do with money. It is just this selfish, intense desire for some thing.

It plays out a lot of times in our culture as money, but I think we can also see it plays out as a lot of things. Sexual gratification, the way people are treated, luxury and opulence. So we need to understand that as the base understanding of greed before we start to see the picture of greed in Amos.

And before we jump into it, I want to note one more thing. Because we're seeing greed and generosity pitted against each other, I want to remind you what Jesus said in Matthew 6. He said, you cannot serve two masters. We immediately take that passage and take it to the end when it says, you cannot love God and love money.

But the most basic form of that verse, before it gets to that, it just simply says, you cannot serve two masters. And so as we look at greed and generosity today, you just need to remember, you cannot serve King Me. You cannot be the King of your life and also serve God.

Not possible. So let's jump in. We're going to go right into Amos chapter two.

And you, some of these will seem familiar because there's passages that we talked about last week. We're going to still see themes of injustice. It's all woven together.

So some of these would be like, I think we read that last week and we did, we're just seeing a different part of it. Verse six of chapter two, Amos is talking about Israel's judgment. And he says this in verse six, I will not relent from punishing Israel for three crimes or even four, because they sell a righteous person for silver and a needy person for sandals.

So there's a thing that they want. It kind of feels strange in our culture to think that it's sandals, but let's take here silver. There's something they want.

And a greedy person here, this greed leads to, I'm going to do whatever it takes. I'm going to treat people however I want. Verse seven, they trample the heads of the poor on the dust of the ground and obstruct the path of the needy.

I mean, that's wild to think about. Usually we think of greed as like, I'm just over here gathering for myself, kind of maybe just like, you know, not worried about what's going on over here. This says they obstruct the path of the needy.

There's a lot of nonprofits started to help people meet needs, make pathways for those needs to be met, whether it, you know, is some type of housing or food or clothing. And those are great. Imagine you start one to do the opposite.

That's what we're talking about here. Obstructing the ability of people who are needy to get their needs met. My nonprofit is I go to all the food banks and I gather up all the food and I throw out the trash.

I'm obstructing their ability to even get help. That's wild. The level of greed is insane.

And look where physical material greed leads you. A man and his father go in to the same girl profaning my holy name. It doesn't just stop at, well, I want these possessions or these things.

It's, I want to do whatever I want to feel good. I don't care. I don't care what it takes.

They stretch out beside every altar on garments taken as collateral and in the house of their God, they drink wine obtained through fines. So we've, it's physical, it's relational, and now it's spiritual. It's affected their worship.

Their worship has become all about what they want to do, what makes them feel good. It's a pattern of the way that we see greed taking over every aspect of life. Jump down to verse one of chapter four.

We're going to keep going. He says, listen to this message, you cows of Bashan, who are on the hill of Samaria, women who oppressed the poor and crushed the needy, who say to their husbands, bring us something to drink. See it there again, physical and relational.

I want this thing. These women, they were so desirous of what they had to have that they pushed their husbands to great injustice so that they could get it. And this doesn't really mean anything to us when we hear cows of Bashan, but Bashan was an area in Israel known, well-known for extremely fat cattle.

And that's a, that is a luxurious and good thing for cattle. That shows that there's rich farmland. So I don't need to explain it to you what he's saying to them here.

He's calling them fat cows. It's a serious thing. It is kind of funny, but it's serious.

He's trying to get their attention. One commentator said it this way, these women may not have been directly involved in the mistreatment of the poor, but their incessant demand for luxury drove their husbands to greater and greater injustice. That's scary because a lot of us, we might not be directly involved in the mistreatment of someone else, but what demands do we put on the people in our life for the things that we think we have to have that cause the mistreatment of others? That's pure greed.

Verse two and three, he talks about the response, the justified response. Verse four, we're going to see the pattern pick up again. Look at how it speaks about their spiritual life.

Come to Bethel and rebel, rebel even more at Gilgal. Bring your sacrifices every morning, your tents or your tithes every three days. Offer leavened bread as a Thanksgiving sacrifice and loudly proclaim your freewill offerings for that is what you Israelites love to do.

Now on the surface, that kind of seems like a positive thing. Like he's instructing them what they need to do, but this is completely sarcastic. God had instructed them to worship in one place and they didn't want to do that because it was a journey.

So they built their own temples at Bethel and Gilgal. So that's why it says come to those temples and rebel even more. Bring your sacrifices every morning.

Sacrifices were, atonement sacrifices were once a year. He's saying they're doing it every morning. Their tithe was in some instances a three year thing.

They're bringing it every three days here. They're loudly proclaiming their freewill offerings, but none of this is looked upon as genuine worship of God. When he says here, this is what you Israelites love to do.

What that means in the original is this is your worship that you love. This is not worship of God that pleases him. It's the ultimate form of greed.

Not only do I have to have these things and have to do what I want to feel the way that I want to feel, I just worship whatever I want, however I want. I think you can just turn on the TV for five minutes and see that that is running rampant all around us. I want you to go over to chapter five.

It doesn't feel, you feeling me? You're like, where's the good cop? Verse 10, they hate the one who convicts the guilty at the city gate, and they despise the one who speaks with integrity. Therefore, because you trample on the poor and exact a grain tax from him, you will never live in the house of cut stone you have built, and you will never drink from the wine, drink the wine from the lush vineyards you have planted. Houses cut in stone, planted vineyards, that's a picture of luxury.

What he's saying is because of the way that you treat people, all these things that you think you've gathered for yourself, you won't even get to experience them. For I know your crimes are many and your sins are innumerable. They oppress the righteous, take a bribe, and deprive the poor of justice at the city gates.

I don't think it can really, can really get any more clear. Trampling on the poor because of greed that causes you to treat others harshly and wrongly no matter what you've gained, it won't matter. And last week we saw that God gave his response to his people, to their actions, to their deeds, injustice.

And that response is all over the book of Amos, and it's rightly terrifying. Unrepentant people living lives of greed, and how God was going to respond to that. But there is another response in the book of Amos that I think we need to look at, and it is a great response.

And that is the response of God's generosity to his people. And so in the same way we got a definition for greed, let's get a definition for generosity. Because if greed is on one end of the spectrum, I do whatever it takes so that I get what I want, then generosity is the readiness to do more than what's deserved so that you can be blessed.

The opposite of greed, showing a readiness to give more of something, more money, more time, more of something than is deserved. That's the basis of generosity. So we're going to go back to some of those same chapters.

We know the deeds of the people, and now we're going to see God's generous response. Go back to chapter two. This is the same section where he was describing people being sold, and some, a man and his son doing some things at the temple with the women of the night that were ungodly.

And this is his response right after that. Look at verse nine. Yet, one of the best words in the whole Bible.

Yet, in spite of what you did, yet I destroyed the Amorite, or their enemy, as Israel advanced. His height was like the cedars, and he was as sturdy as the oaks. I destroyed his fruit above and his roots beneath.

In spite of the way that you were, I still went before you and provided you victory. Verse 10. I'm sorry.

Yeah, verse 10. I brought you from the land of Egypt. In spite of how you were, I provided a way for you to escape oppression and led you, when you were lost 40 years in the wilderness, in order to give you a land that you didn't deserve, in spite of the way that you are and were.

Verse 11. I raised up some of your sons as prophets and some of your young men as Nazarites, or men consecrated to God. In spite of how you were and your greed, I even used some of your people for my purposes, in service to me.

Is this not the case? It's another kind of rhetorical question. In spite of all that they had done, he's like, have I not still provided to you, for you, generously, beyond what you deserve? Now go to chapter 5. Same chapter where he talks about them and how they won't get to experience the luxury that they have unrighteously gained. He says this in verse 5 and in verse 6. It's very simple.

Seek me and live. That's not how we want to respond, is it? If there's a laundry list of injustice and selfish, greedy living, and someone needs to get right, we would like the response to be like, okay, here's the list of the way that you can get back. And the list here that God gives them to get back, in right living with Him, is one thing.

Seek me. Live the way that I'm asking you to live. And live.

Seek me and live. That's it. I mean, that is a generous God who would not make you atone for every single thing that you've done, but would just say, seek me and live.

And then the best one is chapter 9. Turn over there. If you read the first half of chapter 9, it's pretty heavy justice material. And then all of a sudden, in verse 11, it just flips like that.

Very, very sudden. And it says this, in that day, that day of judgment and justice, I will restore the fallen shelter of David and I will repair its gaps, restore its ruins, and rebuild it as in the days of old, so that they may possess the remnant of Edom and all the nations that bear my name. This is the declaration of the Lord.

He will do this. These two verses right here is God's salvific work in history. I will restore the fallen shelter of David.

Some translations say house of David. Some translations say tabernacle of David. What he's saying is I will, through this broken royalty, bring about someone who will make right and give away for everything that's wrong to be made right.

And not just that, I will do it so that they may possess the remnant of Edom, all the nations that bear my name. Some translations say all the Gentiles. That verse right there, that's me and you.

Even all the way back in Amos, God's saying, in that day, I'm so generous that I'm going to make a way that what was broken can be made right, and people of all the nations will be in my family. And if he stopped right there, if the chapter ended at verse 12, that would be generous. A generous God treating us as we don't deserve, just to reach down and save us in our greed.

And the amazing thing is that it doesn't stop there. Verse 13, 14, and 15 talk about how he restores the abundance to the nation. Look at 13.

The days are coming when the plowman will overtake the reaper, and the one who treads grapes will overtake the sower of seed. The person who's gathering, harvesting, treading the grapes, turning the crop into product, there is so much abundance that they can't even finish the job before the guy needs to come through and put down more seed. The mountains will drip with sweet wine, and the hills will overflow with it.

How many of you have ever seen a vineyard on a mountainside that doesn't exist? Not a lot, right? It's usually not a lot of vineyards growing on the side of a mountain. It's a picture of abundance. Even in places where you wouldn't expect it to grow, it does.

I will restore the fortunes of my people Israel, and they will rebuild and occupy ruined cities, plant vineyards, drink their wine, make gardens, and eat their produce. I will plant them on their land, and they will never again be uprooted from the land I have given them. The Lord your God has spoken.

There's a lot of imagery here, like we've said in weeks past, that's hard to know. Was this fulfilled at some point in history? Is this yet to be fulfilled? But I just love that in verse 15 and 14, actually this whole section of chapter 9, there is a lot of imagery towards what will one day be in heaven through Jesus. I will plant them on their land, and they will never again be uprooted.

Nothing can take away the work that God has done through Christ in you. So we get this picture of justice and judgment all the way up to the end, and then God says, you know what? I am so generous that I am going to make a way where there seems there is no way. He is just, and He is fair, and He will not let wrong go unpunished.

But He goes beyond that and generously gives a way for injustice to be made right, beyond what we can even imagine. And that's not just for Amos and these people. The same can be true in your life and in mine.

God could have responded to you in fairness, right? And the fairness response from God to you would be, okay, you have done X, I have done X, and the response, the fair justified response for that is to receive Y. And so that's what God will give you. But He doesn't do that. He gives you what you don't deserve.

God is not only a just God, He is a generous God. What does it say in the Psalms? Abounding with love. Psalm 103 that we just sang.

Overflowing. What's the greatest generosity verse in the whole Bible? It doesn't get talked a lot about in generosity messages because it doesn't expressly have to do with money. It's the verse we all know.

Probably the first verse you learn in Awana. Anybody know it? Somebody said it, right? John 3, 16, right? For God so loved the world that He what? That He gave. The basis of God's love for you is His generosity.

What He did was that He gave His first action towards you. That He gave His one and only Son. That whosoever believes in Him shall not perish but have eternal life.

And when it says believes in Him, it means believes in His sacrifice for you on the cross, not just that He existed. That is a picture of a generous God beyond what we can even imagine. Because it's easy to recite John 3, 16 and be like, oh yeah, that's nice.

But think about it. Think about what you deserve. Only you know the darkest parts of your heart.

And God responded to that by giving His Son to die for you. We like to think that He responded to our goodness or our, you know, He saw something in us that, you know, made Him give. He gave His Son for you when He saw the darkest part.

Those things that we saw in Amos, that unbridled greed, God saw that in us and His response was to give. That is a generous God. And so that's why we even have the ability to be generous people because of His generosity to us.

When you see and realize the absolutely mind-blowing generosity of God and how much He gave for you and how much you didn't deserve it, and how much He continues to bless you and sustain you, there is nothing you can do. You cannot help but respond. So the rest of this morning, we're going to talk about those just a couple of responses that we have when that generosity of God is so big to us.

Before we talk about that, I just want to put this into a little graspable take-home truth. Just very similar to a lot of the previous weeks in the Minor Prophets, it's this. Because of God's generous provision for me, I can live a life of genuine generosity.

You can be a generous person because God has been generous to you first. Now, I said a life of genuine generosity because we do see generosity in Amos. It does say that they gave freewill offerings, but it doesn't speak highly of that.

So giving monetarily, willingly, does not necessarily mean you're a generous person. That might be a generous act, but it doesn't guarantee you're a generous person. There has to be a genuineness in here to generosity.

So generosity breaks down in two ways, and this is being a generous person is one of the responses to God's generosity that we see. The first way it breaks down, you can probably guess it, right? Monetary, physical, what we give of our resources, and I'm not going to spend a lot of time here because there are many, many verses in the Bible about generosity, and it would take us weeks to go through them all. Next year, we are actually going to have a series on stewardship that deals with generosity, but I do want to say this.

Generosity is not an amount. The widow in the New Testament is commended. She gave one coin because it was from a generous heart, sacrificial heart, a heart that said, I'm going to go beyond so that you can have.

There's no amount that you can give that makes you a generous person. J.D. Greer has a really great article that he's written called the Generosity Matrix. It's linked online on our sermon page under the resources tab for this week, and I want to encourage you to go and read that.

It does a really good job of breaking down and breaking out a lot of the issues that come into play when financial generosity is at stake. There is a million different life situations, and there are also some wisdom and foolishness issues here. There's all kinds of issues that come into play with generosity, more than we could possibly get into today, but I want to challenge you to go and read that.

It's just six questions, and then I want to challenge you to actually evaluate your generosity in light of what you've read. The reason why I want to not spend a lot of time on that is not just because we're going to talk about it next year, but also because I think there is a more important form of generosity that we need to get to, and that is what I'm calling relational generosity. I don't really know if that's a thing, because when I googled it, it wasn't, but it was the only way that I could express what I was thinking.

When I googled it, it said relational generosity is someone who is a great connector of people. Like, oh man, I got some wind damage on my roof, and someone's like, I got a great buddy who's a roofer. Let me connect you.

That's like relational generosity. That's not what I'm talking about. That might be a form that plays into a generous person, but that is not the all-encompassing relational generosity.

What I'm talking about is simply this. Are you generous with giving grace? How about mercy? Do you give a lot of mercy? Are you quick to pour forgiveness on someone? What about compassion? Do you have a lot of that for people? Do you give out compassion readily and in full supply, or are you more concerned with making sure that people get what they deserve? Sadly, I'm going to confess, and I'm probably in the same position as a lot of parents too many times, I'm worried about people getting what they deserve. I told you not to play on that, and you fell, and you scraped your knee.

Well, that's what you deserve. I don't have a compassionate response because you received what you deserve. I'm not a generous person because I'm more worried about people getting what they deserve.

Christians can excuse a lot of lack of generosity in the name of fairness and justice, and you may not like this, but I'm going to stand pretty boldly on it. If you are the kind of person that makes sure that everyone always gets what they deserve, you're not a generous person. When someone hurts you, and they've hurt you many times, and you're like, well, I only have a little bit of forgiveness because that's all you deserve, and don't hear me saying that I'm against boundaries, but there's a lot of people find excuses for generosity and boundaries.

God didn't look at you and say, well, I know you're going to keep messing up, so I'm going to save you a little bit. He gave all that he had when you were nowhere near close to him. How many times do we respond to people relationally in the way that they deserve based on how they acted to us first? Well, you spoke pretty harshly to me, so in turn, I'm going to give you what you deserve and give it right back.

I'm not thinking about a generous response to that person of kindness, even amidst their harshness. You broke my trust, so I'm going to respond in doubt and skepticism until you prove it to me. That's what they deserve, but that's not the heart of a generous person.

I don't care how much money you give and what organizations you give it to. The heart of a generous person, a genuinely generous person, is more about being quick to offer forgiveness and grace when you're wronged than it is about the number on a check, and the reality is that genuine monetary generosity can only flow from that place. Every other form of it eventually will boil down to some form of greed, even if it's not hoarding.

It's still greedy to give a lot so that you feel good, and there's exceptions to every rule, but I've not met a lot of people who are financially generous and relationally exacting, and everyone gets what they deserve. Most of the time, if that's how you treat people, you're not generous with what God's given you, physically, monetarily, resource-wise. You're making sure that justice is always served, not that generosity is taking place.

So let me ask you, are you a generous person? Because when it's out there, justice is nice and easy, and the second it turns in here, well, we want the generosity to flow, don't we? A couple years ago, we renovated a part of our house, and I ordered all the interior doors completely wrong, all opposite, and that was costly, and in that moment, I knew before my wife knew, and boy, I was ready for some generosity. I was like, please, Lord, you know, let, but is it, but it's not as easy for me when I'm dealing with one of my kids. Justice is real easy to send out, but when it turns around, I'm wanting the generosity to come back.

That's not the heart of a generous person, and here's the reality. Nothing is going to see that changed in your life. Nothing will change your generosity until the generosity of God is bigger to you than the justice of God.

We all love the first part of, we love the part of Amos where we're like, yeah, get him, but we don't want that in here. Do we make sure that we're dealing with one another in a way that we want to be dealt with? Matthew 7 says the standard that you use is going to be used on you. You won't be quick to forgive, generous with compassion, abounding in love and kindness, or loose gripped with your money and resources until you can see the reality of God's generosity to you, both in your salvation and since then, and this has just been honestly just destroying me for the last couple weeks because, like I said earlier, I know the things that I don't want anyone to know, and you know the things in your life that you hope no one ever knows, and those are the things that God saw when he responded to you in generosity, and some of you know how broken your life was, and the pain of that, the pain of living in greed, and what that does to your life and to your soul, and that's where God saw you when he responded to you in generosity, and until, this has been my last two weeks, God just put that like this, and until you're in that place, you won't change.

Until you don't see anything in front of you, except that, the way that God dealt with you, nothing will change, because that is the driving force for your response to other people. Living a life of generosity is our response to God's generosity to us, but it's not the only response. I have been so moved over the last couple weeks by Psalm 103 because it is a response to the generosity of God in David's life.

I'm just going to read that over us, and what I want you to do is I want you to take these lines as they come, and I want you to contextualize them for what you know to be true in your life and your heart. Verse one, my soul bless the Lord, and all that is within me bless his holy name. My soul bless the Lord, and do not forget all his benefits.

The word prosperity gospel has been corrupted because there is prosperity in following the Lord. It might not be financial prosperity, but there is compassion, and grace, and kindness, and redemption. There is prosperity in following God.

Verse three, he forgives all of your iniquity. Think about it. All of the things that you've done that you don't want anyone to know, and the things that you hate that people do know, he's forgiven all of it.

He heals your diseases. Some of you have gotten to experience that here on this earth, but there's no question in this verse whether or not it will happen. Whether it's here, or whether it's in heaven, it's for sure.

He is so generous to you. He heals your diseases. He redeems your life from the pit, and crowns you with faithful love and compassion.

Some of you, 10, 5, 15, 20 years ago, you were extremely broken, and God reached down and crowned you with compassion and faithful love, and your life is significantly different today because of it. He satisfies you with good things. Even beyond all those spiritual realities, he continues to give to you.

I see people sitting here with their families today. He satisfies you with good things. He executes acts of righteousness, justice for all the oppressed, has revealed his ways to Moses and deeds to the people of Israel, compassionate, gracious, slow to anger, abounding in faithful love.

He will not always accuse us or be angry forever. You know, the day he stopped accusing you was the day that you trusted in Christ, sacrificed for your sins, and he justified you through Christ. And here it is, verse 10.

I'm not going to get through the whole chapter, but I do not want to skip verse 10 because this is the encompassing thought of everything we've been talking about today. He has not dealt with us as our sins deserve or repaid us according to our iniquities or our deeds. That's it right there.

Until you see that, until you see that God has not dealt with you as you deserve, nothing will change with your generosity. And when you see that, when the generosity of God is so big to you, the way that he dealt with you is not what you deserve. That will change everything about how you deal with the people in your life, the things that God has given you to manage.

And then ultimately, just like we saw, it's the reversal of what we saw in the pattern of greed. It changes how you deal with your physical, it changes how you deal relationally, and it changes your worship. Because when it is so big to you, you cannot be silent.

There is no way you can see all that God has done for you when you were at your deepest, darkest place, generously giving his son for you, and then continuing to sustain you and bless you even on the days where you are far from faithful. You cannot rightfully see that and sit in silence. And I'm going to challenge you.

We're going to end, I'm going to pray, we're going to observe communion, and we're going to sing that same song. And I don't think if you rightfully see the way that God has been generous to you, that you can do anything but sing. And I know we've got a lot of different personalities all across the room, but when you see God's generosity for you, you will max out the way that God has made you.

It doesn't mean that I do it the same as Greg or as Jay or as Paul, but I'm maxing out the way God's made me, because I can't help it. I can't help but worship when the reality of God's generosity becomes clear to me. Nothing will change with our generosity until the generosity of God becomes so big to us that we can see nothing else.