Introduction:
“When our Lord and Master Jesus Christ said, ‘Repent’ (Matt. 4:17), he willed the entire life of believers to be one of repentance.”
Do you know who said that? On October 31st, 1517, the Augustinian monk Martin Luther nailed the 95 theses/propositions to the door of the Castle Church in Wittenburg, Germany. The very first of these 95 theses was the proposition that repentance should encompass the entirety of the life of the believer. The document God used to spark the Protestant Reformation and the recovery of the gospel began with the necessity of repentance in the Christian life. What Martin Luther understood is this fundamental biblical truth that we see here in Amos 4, which is this: Belief in God Almighty requires continual repentance.
You’ll remember that Amos is speaking here not to the Southern Tribe of Judah like most of the Major and Minor prophets after him, but he’s speaking to the Northern Ten Tribes of Israel, also called Samaria. And you may recall from last week that Amos has launched into a series of declarations of Israel’s guilt for forsaking faithfulness to God in their worship and tramping on the poor in their society. He tells them that he’s going to judge them beginning in chapter 2:6 and then begins telling them why he’s going to judge them beginning in chapter 3:1. Well, he’s wrapping up that why question in chapter 4:1-5.
Friends, we can learn three truths that will help us live the life God has called us to live: The Reality of Pride, The Necessity of Repentance, and the Lord Almighty.
I. The Danger of Pride
Now, alarmingly, Amos calls the women of Samaria cows. Why does he call them “cows of Bashan”? The cattle of Bashan were known for being well-fed, pampered, and plush. They were an indication of the general spiritual state of Israel at the time: All their attention went to the body and not to the soul. They oppressed and crushed the poor to get here. They lorded over their husbands, and what God vows according to his own character to do is to humble them. Their status will give way to subjugation. They’ll be led away by fishhooks. Why is all this happening?
Well, the reason why is hinted at in vv. 4-5 in what we might call a sarcastic call to worship. “Come to Bethel, and transgress; to Gilgal, and multiply transgression!” At first you’re tempted to think, “What? But I thought God loves sacrifices! I thought God loved to be worshiped! They’re worshiping him, so what’s the problem? Can’t God just accept their worship?” And when you realize what he’s saying in these two verses, you realize that they were worshiping God, but in the way they preferred and not in the way God commanded. I Kings 12 tells us that when the kingdom split in two, Jeroboam I realized that if he didn’t create a place for the Northern Kingdom to worship besides Jerusalem he’d lose his kingdom. People would eventually move south. I Kings 12:28 says, “So the king took counsel and made two calves of gold. And he said to the people, “You have gone up to Jerusalem long enough. Behold your gods, O Israel, who brought you up out of the land of Egypt.” And Amos is standing here in Bethel and saying, “Come, and transgress! Come, and multiply transgression.” You think you know better. Worship is convenient! Look! You don’t have to go to Jerusalem! You can worship your own way, never mind what God has said!
Do you see what’s going on here? All the self-indulgence, all the self-gratification, all the self-aggrandizement, all the focus on ease for one’s self in worship, the uplifting of one’s preferences in worship – at the heart of what’s going on here is pride.
Here’s what this passage is teaching us, friends: Pride indicates not only that we’re not worshiping God, but that we’ve replaced God with ourselves. C.S. Lewis in Mere Christianity says, “A proud man is always looking down on things and people; and, of course, as long as you are looking down, you cannot see something that is above you.” Pride organizes life around the self. Whatever is going to be most comfortable for the self. Whatever is going to enhance the self. Whatever is going to affirm the self. Lewis again from his Screwtape Letters: “Pride is ruthless, sleepless, unsmiling concentration on self.”
Here’s what else this passage teaches us, if you haven’t already caught onto it: God always humbles the proud. Friends, the Bible is not unclear as to the fact that God opposes the proud but gives grace to the humble. (I Peter 5:5). Think of that: He opposes the proud. What the Israelites should’ve taken to heart is Psalm 51:17, “The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit; a broken and contrite heart, O God, you will not despise.” Isaiah ends his book in a very similar way: “This is the one to whom I will look: he who is humble and contrite in spirit and trembles at my word.”
Well, as we see, the Israelites were busy concentrating on themselves. But God was busy too; look at vv. 6-11 and our second point, “The Necessity of Repentance.”
II. The Necessity of Repentance
Now, we’re tempted to think to think at this point in Amos that there is simply no good news, no hope, just darkness. No uplifting verses we can put on our Pinterest wall. Just gloomy overtones of judgment. And that’s very true. But I think we can look at vv. 6-11 and see a multitude of tender mercies from God here. Look at what troubles we’ve got here: Deficiency (famine & drought), infliction (blight & epidemic), and opposition (war & fire/earthquake). As one commentator says, “All the troubles of life are there in principle.”[1] All this trouble is happening in their lives for what reason? Look at what’s at the end of all these troubles the Lord sent: “‘Yet you did not return to me,’ declares the Lord.” These people claimed to know God, but there was such a concentration on the self that there was no understanding of what God was doing in their lives. Remember what Lewis said? “A proud man is always looking down on things and people; and, of course, as long as you are looking down, you cannot see something that is above you.” You have no idea what God is doing in your life if your concentration is on nothing but yourself and your own comfort.
Do you know what’s missing from the list of their religious rituals that Amos brings against them? The sin offering.[2] The sin offering was where the people came together once a year to have their sins placed ceremonially on a scapegoat. There was a substitute provided for their sins in this sin offering. No mention of it in Amos’s oracles. Alec Motyer in his commentary says, “Self-pleasing, self-satisfaction is the death-knell of repentance; and the absence of repentance is the death-knell of true religion.”[3] What God desired was repentance. That’s the reason for the plagues.
Now, some of you may be thinking to yourselves, “Well, I’ve got troubles. God’s deprived me of some things, inflicted me with some things, he’s brought opposition into my life. I guess I’ve really sinned against him and now he’s trying to call me back to himself.” How do you know if God is calling you to repent of something through the trials he’s sending your way?
May I make a very specific point of application here by way of encouragement? Here’s my encouragement: Bring your pastors into your life and ask them to help you discern that. Your shepherds have been given to you by your Chief Shepherd to help you discern what God is doing in your life. Your pastors want to be a part of your life and help you work through hard questions like these. Don’t be tempted to think, “Oh, he’s busy; he doesn’t have time for me. He doesn’t want to help me think through stuff like this,” because that’s not true. Maybe they’ve got spiritual wisdom you can glean from. Maybe there’s something you haven’t thought of. Maybe the counsel you get will help you make wise decisions and help you discern what God may be doing in your life. So, bring your pastors into your life to help you discern what God’s doing.
Friends, here’s what we can say very confidently regardless of the trials and hardships in our lives: God is determined to bring his elect to continual repentance and faith. What Amos is teaching us here is that “religion without repentance kills; religion centered on repentance makes alive.”[4] Luther was right: [God has] “willed the entire life of believers to be one of repentance.” The New Hampshire Baptist Confession of Faith from 1833 makes the same claim: “We believe that repentance and faith are sacred duties and also inseparable graces, [brought about] in our souls by the regenerating Spirit of God; whereby being deeply convinced of our guilt, danger and helplessness, and of the way of salvation by Christ, we turn to God with [heartfelt] contrition, confession and supplication for mercy…”
Friends, this is the answer to the danger of pride that we just covered. “Repentance,” according to Spurgeon, “is a discovery of the evil of sin, a mourning that we have committed it, a resolution to forsake it. It is, in fact, a change of mind of a very deep and practical character, which makes the man love what once he hated, and hate what once he loved.”
Repentance is the proper response to pride, but pride is also what keeps repentance at bay. You need humility to repent. Without humility you’ll never be able to take criticism, you’ll never be able to hear something’s your fault, you’ll always shift the blame, you’ll never learn anything, and you just won’t listen when sin gets pointed out in your life. Repentance, true and godly repentance, begins with recognizing sin for what it is, which is cosmic treason against God. It involves genuine heart-felt sorrow. It involves confessing it to the Lord without making any excuses. Shame for having done it. Hatred for its presence in your life. And finally, turning from it altogether. Pride keeps all that at bay, but humility in a Christian always leads to repentance (from Watson’s Doctrine of Repentance).
We must truly feel the weight and atrocity of our sin, and that can only come by seeing God for who he truly is. Which leads to our final point, The Lord Almighty.
III. The Lord Almighty
God says through the prophet Amos, “Therefore, thus I will do to you, O Israel; because I will do this to you, prepare to meet your God, O Israel!” Perhaps a clearer way of translating it would sound like this: “Thus I will do to you, O Israel; because I have been doing this to you…” What’s at the beginning of all these troubles in vv. 6-11 is the word I. God has been doing this. God is the one who sovereignly controls the heavens. Who tells the wind and the waves to be still. Who but wills it and Sodom and Gomorrah are consumed by fire. And as if to leave no room for doubt, God says, “For behold, he who forms the mountains and creates the wind, and declares to man what is his thought, who makes the morning darkness, and treads on the heights of the earth – the Lord, the God of Hosts is his name.” This is an all-inclusive statement of the sovereignty of God. All that can be seen, such as mountains, and all that is hidden from our eyes, like the wind – God controls down to the tiniest details. He declares to man what is his thought – either that refers to divine revelation (God disclosing his own thoughts), or more likely, God is omniscient and knows every thought that man has ever had in his brain. He controls the laws of nature and knows every square inch of the peaks of the Andes Mountains.
The point that Amos is drawing us to at the end of the chapter is this: There is a God who rules with perfection and absolute precision every molecule in the cosmos. “I form the light and create darkness; I make well-being and create calamity; I am the Lord, who does all these things” (Is. 45:7). “Are not two sparrows sold for a penny? And not one of them will fall to the ground apart from your Father” (Matt. 10:29). “For from him and through him and to him are all things. To him be glory forever. Amen” (Rom. 11:36).
1689, 5.1: “God the good Creator of all things, in his infinite power and wisdom doth uphold, direct, dispose, and govern all creatures and things, from the greatest even to the least, by his most wise and holy providence, to the end for the which they were created, according unto his infallible foreknowledge, and the free and immutable counsel of his own will; to the praise of the glory of his wisdom, power, justice, infinite goodness, and mercy.”
Christian, whatever God is doing in your life, here’s what makes his sovereignty and power and providence a comfort to you: Christ went into every storm you’ve ever been through. He went through the ultimate storm, ultimate trouble. He was deprived, he was inflicted, he was opposed at every turn. He was faithful to the Lord his God in every way, perfectly obedient to God’s law, and he was nailed to a cross, which was just as ordained by God as everything we’ve read about in Amos. He was more prepared to meet his God than anyone else ever could be, and he was met with the wrath of God on the cross. Do you know why? So that when we meet our God we will stand before him as brands plucked from the burning. He bore the penalty for your sin so that you might justified by the righteous works of Another.
You see, without justification, every trial is a double trial. Every storm is a double storm. Because not only are you dealing with the pain of what God has brought into your life, but you’re wondering if he even loves you. But because Jesus became your substitute and died in your place, because he justified you when you least deserved it by his love on the cross, because God did not spare his own Son but delivered him up for you, then you know he loves you. I’ve quoted this idea before: Christ was deprived, afflicted, and opposed not so that you would never have to go through those things. He went through every storm you will ever go through so that when you go through the storms of life, you will become like him.
Do you see? That’s where pride is destroyed, and that’s where true repentance comes from. When you see an infinitely holy God who had every right to punish you punish his only Begotten Son in your stead, you hate your sin and you love your Savior. Repentance and faith come from gazing upon the grandeur of the Lord God Almighty in the person and work of Jesus Christ. Because of Christ you can look into the very teeth of the storm and discern the Father’s sovereignty and his love.
Non-Christian, I wonder if God has brought something into your life that you need to see as his sovereign voice calling you to repentance and faith. I wonder if you can really explain all that’s happened in your life as simply coincidence. I’m here to tell you that there’s no such thing as coincidence or chance. It’s by no chance that you’re here this morning, but only by God’s sovereign grace. Here’s our message to you as Christians: Turn to God in faith and be saved. Place your faith in the righteousness of Christ, check your pride at the door, give up any hopes of being accepted by him by your own good works. Turn to Christ, cast yourself on his mercy, and confess him as your Lord. Repent and believe.
[1] Motyer, 97.
[2] Such an insightful comment provided by Motyer (98).
[3] Ibid.
[4] Motyer, 99.
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