Amos Series – The Roar of the Lord

#5 - In God We Trust 

Amos 4:1-13By Rev. John R. Hannem, Calvary Baptist Church, North Sydney, NS – October 1, 2005 

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"In God We Trust"  That phrase is found on coins and currency and in many other places throughout our country. Small retail establishments have signs which say, “In God we trust; all other customers must pay cash.” The Russian novelist, Dostvestky said; When people forget God, then everything is permitted. A belief in God is the foundation of the rule of law.

Friends, tonight we continue our journey through the Old Testament Book of Amos. We are in Amos 4; if you have a Bible, I encourage you to turn there.  Amos was a prophet to the Northern Kingdom of Israel about 750 BC; this happens to be about 30 years before Israel was conquered by the Assyrian army. His message is in many ways a different one from what we as modern Christians are used to hearing; yet, I have found and think many folk here will agree, that God still speaks to us, sometimes in very profound ways, through these ancient words. Pray that He will do that again tonight.

                                  Read  Amos 4:1-13

The first part of Amos chapter 4 (vs. 1-5) gives a couple of specific examples of the corruption within Israel that we saw last week in chapter 3. Verse 1 begins by calling the prominent women of the kingdom a "bunch of fat cows." They take advantage of others, have no compassion for anyone and focus only on their own pleasure as they lead a life of luxury. In many cultures being plump was considered part of beauty, so those women never had to worry about counting carbs or calories. This self indulgence will end according to vs. 2&3 when Israel is conquered and these arrogant women are dragged away with rings in their noses like fish on a stringer.

Next, in verses 4-5, Amos points to the corruption of religion which was happening in Israel. Verse 4 begins, "Go to Bethel and sin." Many students at Bethel Bible College  in Sussex NB have used this verse to justify violating the school's behavior code.  That is not what the verse means. Rather, the Lord is saying that whenever the people of Israel go to church (so to speak), make their sacrifices and give their tithes and offerings, they are just compounding their sin. The NLT reads this way; "Go ahead and offer your sacrifices to the idols at Bethel and Gilgal. Keep on disobeying; your sins are mounting up.” Doing religion had become an occasion for people to (vs. 5) brag and boast. It was hardly something that God found pleasing. The picture Amos gives us of Israel in his day, is a proud, self-centered, self-indulgent, narcissistic culture. I would like to say that any parallels with our society, or our individual lives, are purely coincidental, but when the Lord had Amos write these words over 2700 years ago, He also knew we would be reading them today.

In verses 6-11, the Lord lists all the different ways God sought to use disaster and difficulty to draw His people back to himself. Famine (6), drought (7,8) hoards of locusts and other pestilence, (9) disease and warfare (10,11) were all tools that the Lord used in an effort to get Israel to repent and turn to Him. Yet, five times in this passage the phrase: "Yet you have not returned to me declares the Lord is repeated. This leads to the conclusion in verse 12. “Therefore this is what I will do to you, Israel, and because I will do this to you, prepare to meet your God, oh Israel.”

 That is a warning that the tough times the people have seen are only a shadow of the terrible conquest about to occur. Yet, in these stern words, God's grace is still to be found. "Prepare to meet your God" a phrase which some Christians put on billboards, is not merely a warning, but also an invitation. As was said last week, there's still time. God's judgement is imminent, but has not happened yet. It is in fact 30 years down the road. What the people need to do to prepare to meet God is to repent and turn away from their sin and selfishness. They need to turn to the Lord and put their trust in Him. If they do that, they will find that somehow, even in the midst of judgment, God’s grace is sufficient.

This of course is still true today.  We are not going to take time tonight to figure out exactly how God uses disaster and difficulty in our lives.  Sometimes we must suffer because of wrongs we commit, but often suffering has nothing to do with sin on our part.  Always, however, the Lord desires that when things are tough, we turn to Him for help and comfort.  Whether it is a test that comes back and shows cancer, a spouse who is abusive or unfaithful, a huge stack of bills that cannot be paid, or a car accident that kills someone who is very dear to us—these are times to turn to the Lord.  These are times to place our trust in Him and experience His grace in a fresh way.

Friends, it is good to remember that none of us are going to be here forever.  Unless the Lord returns first, most of us will be dead within 50 years; all of us will die within 100 years.  Dustin Hoffman says he wants his tombstone to read, “I knew it would end this way.”  Most of us know that too.  We all need to be prepared to meet our God.  Again, the way to be prepared is to turn to Him today, stop trusting in ourselves and place our confidence in Him.  Specifically that means receiving Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior.  Rather than thinking our good deeds or our religion make us acceptable to God, we need to recognize that our only hope of salvation is Jesus Christ. This is what He has accomplished for us through His death on the cross and His resurrection from the dead. 

Then as God’s Spirit enables, we need to entrust our lives to the Lord Jesus.  If you are not doing that, I encourage you to do so today while there’s still time.  If you are not sure you are doing that, or if you are not sure what I mean by all this, I encourage you to talk to me after the service.  Trusting in the Lord Jesus Christ is the only way any of us can be prepared to meet God.  Amos concludes this chapter with verse 13, “He who forms the mountains, creates the wind, and reveals his thoughts to man, he who turns dawn to darkness and treads the high places of the earth—the Lord God Almighty is His name.  Amos reminds the people who it is that issues this dreadful warning.  It is not just any God; it is not just some idol that they may have been worshiping; it is the true and living God, the Lord God Almighty.

Friends, it is here that I think Amos has an especially important message for us.  Rather than trust in some generic God, which many people think of when they say the words, “In God We Trust,” rather than placing our confidence in one of the false god’s which are out there, our faith needs to be in the true God, the one whose name is the Lord God Almighty.

The people of Amos’ day worshiped many different gods.  In the OT we read about gods such as Dagon, the god of the Philistines, and Baal, which was the deity worshiped by many of the people surrounding Israel and at times by many within Israel.  To distinguish himself from these false gods, the true God revealed Himself through a name.  So when someone asks, which god do you love and serve, you could answer, not Dagon, not Baal, but “the Lord”  At least that is His name in many of our English Bibles, including this version, the New International Version.  In Hebrew, the language which the people of Israel spoke, still speak and which the OT is written, the Divine Name, God’s name is spelled YHWH.

In Hebrew it is just consonants;( they had not bought any vowels yet.)  In English we say Jehovah or Yahweh, though we cannot be certain of the right pronunciation.  A further complication is that many of the Jews themselves never spoke the name out loud.  They wanted to avoid using the Lord’s name in vain, as the 10 commandments forbids…so, they concluded that the best thing would be just not say it.  Whenever they were reading the OT and came to the name, YHWH, they simply said “Adonai”, which means “Lord.”  The NIV and other translations will translate YWHW as “LORD” in all capital letters and “Adonai” as Lord in small letters.  To make it even a little more complicated, whenever God is referred to as Adonai YHWH, or Lord YHWH, they translate it as sovereign Lord, which we have in vs. 2-5 of this chapter. 

   Now I share these things not to confuse you or to amuse your curiosity, but to emphasize Amos’ point: The God who will judge His people, the God who is speaking, is a very specific God.  It is not a generic god or any other god; it is the true and living God.  He is a God who is Holy, Almighty and Sovereign. In other words, He is distinct or separate from anyone or anything else because of His purity and perfection.  That is a big part of what it means to be holy.  Almighty refers to the fact He can do and accomplish whatever He pleases.  There is nothing He cannot do, except that which is contrary to His nature, such as lie or sin.

When God asks Abraham, Gen. 18:14, “Is anything too hard for the Lord?”  The obvious answer is, “No, not for the God Almighty.”  He is the one who brought the entire universe into being simply by speaking the word.  He did not just make the world, head off on vacation and let things run their course.  He is the sovereign God who rules with total authority over all which exists.  Jesus tells us (Mt 10:29) that not even a sparrow will fall to the ground apart from God’s will.  Eph. 1:11 says, He “works out everything according to His own will.”  As Amos 3:6 and lots of other passages remind us, He is the ultimate cause of both our prosperity and our adversity.  Romans 8:28 tells us He will use all things, including both good and bad, to accomplish His purpose, which always includes His glory and our good.  This is the specific God of whom Amos and the rest of biblical writers speak.  The Holy, Almighty, Sovereign God, that is the God whom we as Christians worship, love, serve and trust today.

   Though it is not popular to say so in our politically correct day, this is not the same god as Allah, whom the Muslims worship, or Shiva the chief Hindu god or the great Spirit, the god of traditional Native religion.  Now, these all have much in common with the Lord, the God of the Bible, but there are some significant differences, and whenever anyone, Muslim, Hindu or Christian, including those of us in this room, views God in a way which is significantly different than how He reveals Himself in the Bible, there is a big problem.  Because friends, we can never really experience God and have a good relationship with Him without knowing who He is and what He is like.  Our knowledge of God, gained, as He speaks to us through His Word and by His Spirit, is the foundation on which He builds a relationship with us and on which we experience His presence.  When we have a significant misunderstanding of who God is and what He is like, it hurts that relationship big time.  If the misunderstanding is big enough, it may mean that we are not relating to the real God, but only to one we have created in our mind, who is really not a god at all.

This idea that knowledge and understanding of the Bible is the foundation of a good relationship is not something foreign to us.  We know that to be true with other people.  It is true in our closest relationships, like marriage.  I used this illustration a few weeks ago, but at least one person said they found it helpful, so I’ll try it again.  Merri-Sue and I have been married for 27 years.  She knows me pretty well.  Now, she doesn’t know everything about me.  I’m a guy, so sometimes she finds it’s like pulling teeth to get me to talk about certain things.  But she knows me pretty well.  Yet, what if many of the things Merri-Sue thinks she knows about me simply are not true.  What if I am really a really a terrorist spy.  Getting married, raising a family, going to seminary, pastoring a church, pretending to be a conscientious Christian, are all just my cover as a spy, to aid me in my goal of helping the terrorist take over the world.  When I get up early in the morning and turn on the computer, I’m not working on my sermon as I tell her, but I’m really sending emails to other secret agents.

   Now I know that sounds far fetched and again I assure you that is not true.  I hope you can see though, if it was true, any relationship my wife thought she had with me would be an illusion. There are true stories about men who have 2,3 even more wives and families in different places.  They each thought they were the only one.  Because that was not true, the relationship they thought they had was a sham; it was not real.

   Friends, this all means that there is little value in trusting God “As whoever we may conceive Him or Her to be.”  That is a popular phrase these days, but it’s very dangerous.  Rather our trust needs to be in the Lord, the one true living God who has revealed Himself in the Bible.  He is the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob and the father of our Lord Jesus Christ.  He is the triune God—Father, Son and Holy Spirit.  That is the only God worthy of our faith.  Trusting in a God has little value; our confidence must be in the true God.  A generic god will not do.  We need to make sure it is in the Lord, not some other god who isn’t really god that we put our trust in.

   There are a couple of very practical implications, which flow out of this truth. 

1.     First, we need to tell others to trust in the Lord.  All around us there are people who think they are spiritually ok; they’re going to heaven because “they believe in God”, meaning a god who is often not the true god, but merely a figment of their imagination.  If their trust is not in the Lord, the real God, they are in big trouble in this life and much bigger trouble in the next. 

   Only the Lord can help us now and save us in the future.  Most of us know that and believe that; yet sometimes we seem content with the fact that a friend, a family member or a neighbor “believes in God.”  That’s not good enough.  People need to believe in the Lord, in the true God, the God of the Bible, and they need to place their trust in Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior.  If I say I care about someone, but am content that this individual merely believes in a generic god, I’m not telling the truth.  I don’t really care about that person; if I did, I would want to do whatever I could to help him/her find the help and salvation, which only the Lord can bring.

   Maybe you are thinking, Pastor I’m not a preacher like you.  Telling other people to trust in the Lord is just not something I am good at doing.  Friends, you don’t have to be a preacher.  You don’t have to know everything about the Bible.  You don’t have to be able to answer every question that someone might ask.  The Lord just wants us to care enough about other people to tell them the truth.  He, the Lord, is the one whom we need to trust.  I believe that during the next week almost every one of us in this room is going to have opportunity to share that fact with someone who is not trusting in the Lord.  I encourage you to pray and ask God to help you so you recognize that opportunity and so you know when and how to communicate the truth that the Lord is one we need to trust.

2.                  If we know the Lord is the one we need to trust, we better make sure we are trusting Him.  We’ve spent a lot of time tonight talking about how the Lord needs to be the object of our faith.  Yet, we also need to make sure our faith, our trust is real.  It is one thing to say we trust in the Lord; it is another to actually do it.

That means that rather than just saying we are trusting in Jesus Christ as our Lord and Savior, we actually need to do so.  We need to make sure we are.  It also means that when times get tough, when things happen in our lives or things happen around us that we don’t like, we need to trust the Lord.  It is not good enough for me just to say I trust the Lord; I need to do it.  It may be a health concern, a family conflict, a financial problem, the loss of someone we really care about or something else which we find really difficult.  Those are times when we really need to trust the Lord.  Those are times that rather than panic we need to pray, times when instead of being discouraged, we need to have hope.  These are times when our faith in Jesus Christ needs to impact, not just what we say, but how we feel and how we live and how we act and what we do!.

Friends, one of the things I’ve learned as Pastor over the past 20 years is this:  “When we come together Sunday after Sunday, most of us, the majority of us have at least one thing that really bothers us.  There is one thing that is happening in our life, or happening around us, that is really eating at our soul.  It doesn’t matter if this is your first time in this church, if you have been a member here for decades or if you are standing in this pulpit preaching a sermon.  We often come with burdens on our hearts.  I brought a few with me into this room today.  At least part of the message the Lord has for me and for each of us who feel an emotional burden of any type tonight is this: TRUST ME.  PRAY, HAVE HOPE AND DON’T LET THOSE BURDENS ROB YOU OF THE JOY WHICH BELONGS TO PEOPLE WHO KNOW THE LORD AND WHO REALLY TRUST IN HIM.

     May “In the Lord We Trust” be our motto as a church and your motto as a follower of Jesus Christ today and in the days ahead.