Well, we come now to that part of our service, that blessed time, where we consider God's will for us in His Word. We will very shortly be looking at Amos 5, but before we do, turn with me in the back of your Psalters to page 54. We'd like to read responsibly Lord's Day 42, which deals with and explains the Eighth Commandment. Question 110 and question 111, which is found on the top of page 55. I will read the question if you would respond with the answer. Lord's Day 42. What does God forbid in the Eighth Commandment? He forbids not only outright theft and robbery, punishable by law, But in God's sight, theft also includes cheating and swindling our neighbor by schemes made to appear legitimate, such as inaccurate measurements of weight, size, or volume, fraudulent merchandising, counterfeit money, excessive interest, or any other means forbidden by God. In addition, he forbids all greed and pointless squandering of his gifts. And now question 111. What does God require of you in this commandment? That I do whatever I can for my neighbor's good. That I treat him as I would like others to treat me. And that I work faithfully so that I may share those in need. In the sermon this evening, we'll be focusing mainly on question 111, dealing with what does the Eighth Commandment actually require of us in the positive sense. But we want to turn now to the Word of God. In Amos 5, we find our passage tonight. Amos 5, our passage will be verses 18 to 27. However, I would like to, for context, look at and read verses 11 through 15 as well. Amos 5, Hosea, Joel, Amos, found on 974 in your pew Bibles. I'll begin reading it, verse 11. This is God's holy, inspired and infallible word, His will for our lives. God is speaking to His people and He says to them, Therefore, because you trample on the poor, and you exact taxes of grain from him, you have built houses of hewn stone, but you shall not dwell in them. You have planted pleasant vineyards, but you shall not drink their wine. For I know how many are your transgressions, and how great are your sins. You who afflict the righteous, who take a bribe, and turn aside the needy in the gate. Therefore, he who is prudent will keep silent in such a time, for it is an evil time. Seek good and not evil, that you may live. And so the Lord, the God of hosts, will be with you. As you have said, hate evil and love good and establish justice in the gate. It may be that the Lord, the God of hosts, will be gracious to the remnant of Joseph. And now our passage for tonight, we'll skip down to verse 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. As if a man fled from a lion and a bear met him, or went into his house and leaned his hand against the wall and a serpent bit him. Is not the day of the Lord darkness and not light and gloom with no brightness in it? I hate, I despise your feasts and I take no delight in your solemn assemblies. 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. Take away from me the noise of your songs. To the melody of your harps I will not listen. But let justice roll down like waters. And righteousness like an ever-flowing stream. Did you bring to me sacrifices and offerings during the forty years in the wilderness, O house of Israel? You shall take up Succoth, your king, and Kiyun, your star god, your images that you made for yourselves. And I will send you into exile, beyond Damascus, says the Lord, whose name is the God of hosts. Please keep your Bibles out. We'll be at least referring back and looking back at our passage tonight. Congregation of our Lord Jesus Christ, I assume many of you are familiar with the phrase, looks can be deceiving. Looks can be deceiving. One evening, I needed a break, and I was flipping through the channels on the television set, and I came across a rerun of a popular British talent show. And a young man named Greg happened to be on the talent show that night, and he came up on stage, and everyone realized he was quite an interesting fellow. Greg was a cowboy type. He was clad in worn blue jeans. He had steel-toed boots. He was sporting a stylish goatee, and he had a vibrant shock of spiked red hair on top of his head. And everybody in the audience, including the judges, I assume, anticipated that he would come out and start to sing something along the lines of a country folk song. But much to their surprise, when the music started coming through the auditorium speakers, it was beautiful orchestral music. And when Greg, the cowboy, opened his mouth to sing, what emerged was this extremely beautiful, soprano, operatic voice. And the crowd was shocked. For a moment, they did nothing. And when they finally realized what was going on, how beautiful this voice was of this cowboy, they started cheering wildly. After the performance, one of the judges said that that was the last thing that he had expected. Based on his appearance, he couldn't have guessed that that is the kind of song and the kind of voice he would have chosen. He said, it's like a dog meowing. It just shouldn't do that. Indeed, on that stage that day, appearances were very deceiving. Things were not as they appeared to be. Well, anyone observing the religious life of the people of Israel during the prophecy, the prophetic ministry of Amos, would have noticed a similar phenomenon. They would have noticed that things were not as they seemed to be. By all outward appearances, the people of God seemed to be doing very well. Everything looked good and favorable in Israel. God's people seemed to be living at a very high spiritual level. We read in our passage that they were even looking forward to the day of the Lord. But in reality, the people of God were very far from their covenant Lord. In our passage, God sends His servant Amos to expose and address Israel's lack of heartfelt devotion and obedience. He says to them, your vast array of feasts and festivals and religious observances are sickening to me. Because they don't come from pure and contrite hearts. The worship of God's people had become unacceptable because they had no desire for daily righteousness and justice directed by the Eighth Commandment. And so God teaches Israel and He teaches us this evening that His desire for justice, His desire for righteousness is ultimately met in the provision of Jesus Christ. His desire for justice, His desire for righteousness is ultimately met in the provision of Jesus Christ. You want to look at that teaching of the Lord this evening under three points. You'll see them noted in your bulletin. We want to look, first of all, at the day of the Lord. And then, second of all, the disdain or the hatred of the Lord. And then, finally, the desire of the Lord. Before we look more closely at God's words to Israel, it's always important that we understand what is going on in the nation of Israel when a prophet or a priest speaks from God to his people. Well, scholars generally agree that the prophecy of Amos was given to the people of Israel around the 8th century before Christ. And we learn, looking at history and at the biblical record, that by this time in Israel's history, the nation had become abundantly wealthy and prosperous. God had graciously allowed them to defeat their enemies. And with the threat of war removed, a remarkable thing took place in Israel. A remarkable cultural and social and economic revival took place in the land. Commerce and trade developed and expanded. A rich merchant class developed to share in the wealth. Luxury items of all shapes and sizes and kinds were available in Israel like never before in her history. It was a golden age for Israel. And besides this monetary, this wealth that they experienced, this monetary greatness, the people also seemed to be living at a very high spiritual level. In fact, they'd gained quite a reputation as a religiously devout people. They claimed all of the covenant promises and privileges that God had given to their ancestors. The temple courts in Israel were filled to overflowing with zealous worshippers from Sabbath to Sabbath. The people were faithful to observe all of the three major feasts that the Lord had instituted. They were constantly bringing their offerings to God, which symbolized their dedication to Him and His close relationship to them. By their good outward religious observance, Israel seemed to be very right with God, very close to God, being in intimate communion with their covenant maker. If we were to translate their situation into our modern language, we would say these people were the zealous people in the church. They were the ones who professed their faith and went to church regularly, gave tithes and offerings. They were involved in all the programs of the church. They were zealous by all appearances. And they even looked forward to the day of the Lord. As I said, it was a golden age in Israel by all appearances. For a moment, we need to consider what was this day of the Lord that the people looked forward to? And why did they look forward to it? What was it about this day of the Lord that got them so excited that they were so eager for it? Well, we read about the day of the Lord all throughout the Bible, especially in the prophets and throughout the New Testament as well. If we could boil it down, basically the day of the Lord describes God's visiting of the nations of the earth to perform divine justice. And throughout redemptive history, there have been many temporal expressions of this day of the Lord. Possibly you've read the prophecy of Amos, or excuse me, of Joel. And in Joel, we find that there's a grand locust plague that comes to wreak havoc on the land. This was a temporal manifestation of the day of the Lord, a day when God came to exact His justice and His righteousness. These are singular historical events, but they are part of a larger complex of events that will culminate at the coming of Jesus Christ when he comes to judge the living and the dead and to usher in finally the victorious kingdom of God. So you see, we also look forward to the day of the Lord. But what did Israel anticipate about this day? Well, for Israel, the day of the Lord would be a day when God would come in vengeance to defend his people's honor, to vindicate their cause and crush their enemies. It was going to be a day of vindication, of blessing, when all of the people's good works and religious observance would be recognized and rewarded. As I said, it seems to be a golden age in Israel. They're even looking forward to the day of the Lord when their honor will be vindicated. But what does Amos say when he comes to his people? He says, under God's direction, woe to you who desire the day of the Lord. Why do you desire the day of the Lord? You see, Amos reverses popular expression by proclaiming that in the case of Israel, the day of the Lord would not be a day of light or victory. It would be a day of pitch, dark gloom. The nations would certainly be judged by God, but to the people's surprise, Israel's at the center of the target. She's going to receive, on that temporal day of the Lord at its upcoming, the brunt of God's impending judgment. What a shock Amos' sermon must have been to a people who were so secure in their own righteous observance. They thought that they could rest easy. But Amos goes on to describe just how fearsome this day of the Lord is going to be for them. He describes it by telling a story. And he compares Israel to a man who's been frantically fleeing for his life from a ferocious lion. And after he has just barely escaped the ferocious lion, he runs into a hungry bear. He finally escapes from the jaws of these two beasts. But even then, he can't enjoy comfort. He stops inside a house for only a moment to catch his breath. But little does he know, there's a deadly serpent on the wall nearby. And as he rests his hand on the wall, the serpent bites him, dealing that final and deathly blow. Just when they thought they were safe. Tragedy would strike. And the judgment would be fierce. It would be inescapable. It would be terrible. That's the message of Amos to the people. And they must have asked him, but Amos, why? We are looking forward to the day of the Lord. It ought to be a day of blessing and vindication, victory. But Amos is perplexed at their anticipation of that day. And he says, is not the day of the Lord darkness and not light, gloom? With no brightness in it. We would expect, wouldn't we, for the Lord to commend His people, to praise His people for their religious practice and what appears to be religious devotion and obedience and faithfulness and zeal for His truth. But contrary to what we might expect, the Lord says something very blunt in verse 21. He says, I hate, I despise your feasts, I take no delight at all in your solemn assemblies. The Lord announces to His people that He disdains their outward display of religious devotion because He sees far deeper than the outward veneer. He sees far deeper than the outer sheen of their religious observance. He sees to the heart. He knows, He sees the faithlessness and the idolatrous motive behind the sacrifices and assemblies being offered to Him by His people. There's something I had not told you yet when I shared with you the history of Israel during this time. I shared with you that Israel was apparently in a golden age. They were wealthy. They appeared to be religiously devout. But what I did not tell you was that their newfound wealth had also come with a cost. The people of Israel became lovers of money rather than lovers of God. And their prosperity soon led to social corruption and moral decay. Spiritual corruption set in as the people turned not to their God, but to Canaanite Baal worship. Civil society began to crumble in Israel from the corruption of justice as upper-class citizens made it their habit of separating themselves from the poor and the needy in the land. I read verses 11 to 15. And in verses 10 to 12, we learn that the poor among Israel were being trampled by unjust taxes. The needy, the truly needy, were being turned aside. Bribes and unjust business practices were rampant. All kinds of wicked tricks and devices were being used to gain wealth at the expense of one's neighbor. In other words, Israel's conception of the Eighth Commandment was in complete disarray. You see that even while the people were presenting offerings of all kinds to God in worship, They were at the same time cheating the poor, coveting wealth, abusing God's good gifts, and they lived in unrestrained materialism and self-indulgence. In all of this, brothers and sisters, they were stealing from the Lord. And they were stealing from those who were truly in need among their neighbors. Their burnt offerings, mentioned in our passage, were supposed to symbolize dedication. But the people were living a lie. The meat offerings that they were giving to God should have symbolized thanksgiving. But Israel's lack of obedience and devotion to God revealed that they weren't thankful at all. The peace offerings that they gave should have symbolized communion with God. But the fact that they were preoccupied with false, idolatrous worship reveals that they were very, very far from the God who they claim to serve. And so we read here of God's intense anger and His intense hatred. He utterly hates and disdains the people's hypocritical assemblies and feasts. Their music and their offerings and their songs are completely detestable because they flow from hearts lacking in a desire for the justice and the righteousness fitting for the people of God who are part of the kingdom of God. The people thought that because they had been blessed so richly by the covenant provisions of God that they were safe to do all kinds of detestable things before the very face of God. But they're deathly mistaken. The reality is that Israel is not safe at all. And the day of the Lord would not come first to vindicate their honor, But it would come to vindicate the honor and the righteousness and the justice of God. The God in whom they had so presumptuously trusted. The God that they had replaced with a convenient deity who winked at their sin and massaged their ego. The true God would come in a fearsome way with anger towards their sin. The lesson of Amos, brothers and sisters in the Lord, is a very sobering one for us as Christians. Because we too may sin by becoming so attached to our reputable religious system that we begin to place our trust in it rather than in our God who calls us to be His faithful children because we belong to Him in Christ. We can find ourselves resting apathetically and complacently in the fact that we have grown up in a Christian home. That we've been raised in the church. That we've gone to Christian day school and are familiar with the creeds and the professions of faith. We can often fall into that. And we ought to enjoy these things. We ought to enjoy this blessed context in which God has placed us. But we must never use this blessed covenant context as an excuse to avoid the obligations that God has given us. We may not use the comfort and the safety of God's house to harbor all kinds of sin. And that certainly includes the sin of theft. Why does God call us away from that? Because He has made us His children. He's appointed us to be priests. And as his priests, we are to bear witness to God's eternal covenant of truth and righteousness. We are to witness and model for our watching world the truth and the righteousness, the purity of God and his kingdom. And so we aren't to think, we aren't to act according to this present evil age, which would mean to abuse and to waste and to steal the good gifts that God has given to us. We are called, rather, to witness to the righteousness of God by furthering our neighbor's good, by loving others as we would have them love us, by doing good work with integrity, faithfully, helping those who are truly in need. When we do these things, as we promote justice and truth and righteousness, not only appearing to do so Sunday by Sunday, But day by day, every day of our lives, promoting justice, truth, and righteousness, we stand then as a token of the righteousness of the kingdom that is to come. It's a very high calling. But God promises to strengthen us in that. But we have to admit tonight that our holiness in this way, Our holiness in witnessing to the truth and the justice and the righteousness of God's kingdom. Our pursuit, our quest of holiness in this way is often lacking, isn't it? It's often lacking. And J.I. Packer in one of his books asks this very important question. Why has this quest for holiness in the church sometimes petered out? Why has a quest for holiness in the way of loving God and showing care for our neighbor faded away, even while at the same time we hold on to our reputable religious system? Why is that the case? And Packer points out a few reasons. One of them is this, that perhaps we haven't thought as carefully about the fact that God actually hates our sin. That's what our passage says. He says he utterly hates, he despises, he disdains the hypocrisy of his people. Do we think enough about God's hatred for our sin? Packer says, though we in our churches often will focus, at least partially, on the wrath of God against our sin, while also talking about the grace of Christ, the blood of Christ that covers our sin, We don't think as readily about the hatred of God for the sin of His family, of His church. We don't tremble at His Word as much as we ought. Our habit, he says, is to regard our God as somehow sub-holy. Somehow less than holy, so that when we come across those moments in our life, when we are sub-Christian, less than Christian, If God's less than holy, then when we are less than Christian, it doesn't matter all that much. We don't notice it all that much. We're not in tune sometimes with the biblical perception of our sin as pollution, as dirt, as something that God truly hates. And so when we come across a passage like Amos 5, where God says, I hate your theft and your idolatry and your wasting of my good gifts, we tend to think, oh, he's exaggerating. It's just imaginative exaggeration. Is it any wonder then, if that's the way we view God's hatred toward our sin, if we don't consider it enough, seriously enough, is it any wonder then that our quest for holiness or our promotion of justice in the church and in our world has sometimes petered out? But a second thing follows. That if we do not consider enough the intense hatred that God has for our sin, then we really can't grasp or appreciate the intense love that He has for us in Jesus Christ when we fall short of that quest of holiness. Only when we come face to face with our inability, our failure to love God and our neighbors as we should, Do we realize and come to grips with our intense need for the strength and the provision of Jesus Christ? Brothers and sisters in the Lord, when we sin, when we steal from our brothers and sisters in the Lord, from our neighbors, from our God, to where do we turn? Where do we turn when our lives are somehow less than holy, sub-Christian? Our passage reminds us and teaches us that when our quest for holiness is rather apathetic, we must go to the fountain of justice and righteousness. We go to the fountain of justice and righteousness. And that's the ultimate lesson that the people of God had to learn, didn't they? You see, the people of Israel had been given a task. Their task, their quest, was to glorify God by demonstrating His holiness in the midst of a lost world. They too, like us, were to be a kingdom of priests, a holy nation, by ministering to the poor and the needy in their midst. But as we read, they failed that commission over and over again miserably. They rejected the royal ideal of God's kingdom by showing utter regard for justice and righteousness by their theft and by their oppression of the poor and the needy in their midst. And yet in their sin, the Lord comes to them and tells them that He is the fountain of justice and righteousness. And He makes His desire, finally. He makes His desire known to the people. In our passage, He says, But let justice roll down like waters, and righteousness like ever-flowing streams. That righteousness, that justice, was none other than that which flows from the law of God, which flows from the very nature of God. And when we look at the desire of God for justice and righteousness to flow, a question comes to our minds. When the desire of God is revealed here, when He says, justice, let righteousness flow. What is he calling for? I suppose our immediate reaction would be to say, well, he's calling Israel to be upright. He's calling them to clean up their act and get with it. And to be sure, God does desire righteousness and justice from his people. But as we read, that was Israel's problem. They were perverting justice. They had no righteousness. So that for God to request to desire of His people overflowing and abundant righteousness would have been a strange thing to ask. It would be to ask your newborn baby boy to change his own diaper. If you're a parent, you know that that is not going to happen. They had no righteousness of their own. This is not a simple demand for Israel to pick themselves up and to do better. Rather, the image is of the righteousness and the justice of God flowing down to sweep away sinners. God will see His own honor, His own righteousness defended. Israel couldn't trust in their own righteousness. They didn't have anything to bring. Their righteousness at best was hypocritical. And that's also what the Lord would have them realize in verse 25 when He asks, Did you bring to Me sacrifices and offerings in the wilderness? O house of Israel. And the people who were proud of their religiosity would have said, Yes, God, we brought you many offerings and sacrifices in the desert. We did a pretty good job. But God would have them see something deeper, more important about the significance of their offerings. That it was not the outward sacrifice that he was looking for most of all. He was seeking and desiring their obedience. They ought to have remembered Psalm 51, which says that obedience is better than sacrifice. The problem for Israel is that they had mixed up their sacrifices with sacrificial living. They should have been offering sacrificial lives, but they were simply offering an outward show. They had become virtually pagan. And as a result of their pagan thinking and living and worshiping, we learn in our passage that they would certainly be exiled beyond Damascus. The people certainly understood that Damascus was Assyria. The land of the very enemies whose gods they had loved so much. But this is key, brothers and sisters. The Lord desired obedience from His people. He desires obedience from us. But the Lord had His people see that even their obedience, or lack thereof, would not suffice. It was not enough. They could put no trust in their own righteousness because it couldn't even come close to fulfilling the desire of their holy God. For He says, I desire overflowing, abundant righteousness. Not sacrifices, but satisfaction. Perfect obedience alone will satisfy our holy God. That's why He says, let justice and righteousness roll. God desires righteousness and satisfaction. But it isn't the righteousness of His church in this passage that's at the forefront. It's the righteousness of God and His provision of the coming Messiah that we need to see here. God is calling for the perfect obedience and righteousness of the coming Messiah to do for His people what they were so incapable of doing for themselves. Only Christ could offer the righteousness that God required and at the same time satisfy the justice of God as a representative for sinners. That's why we need Christ, brothers and sisters in the Lord. That's why we need Christ to be both our advocate and representative by His active and His passive obedience. We needed Christ to actively obey God and abide by His righteous, perfect standard during His entire life to be our Savior. And we needed Jesus Christ to passively obey by going as a lamb to the slaughter of the cross where He bore the overwhelming wave of God's righteous judgment against our sin, where He satisfied the Father's roaring torrent of justice. We need Christ to exhibit the kind of righteousness that we are incapable of doing on our own. And the wonderful comfort of Scripture, the beautiful comfort of the Gospel, is that Christ did this for us. We read in Romans 3, 21 and 26 that we've been made right with God because He revealed His righteousness and He revealed His justice by putting forward His own Son, Our Lord Jesus Christ as a propitiation by his blood. God's righteous wrath against our apathy, our hypocrisy, our failure to further our neighbor's goods, our oppression of the needy, God's wrath against our failure to fully obey the eighth commandment was appeased, put to rest by our righteous Savior. And by this gift of grace, brothers and sisters, we are justified. We are cleansed from sin. We are regarded by God as if we had been as perfectly obedient as Christ was obedient for us. What a beautiful message of the Gospel that even this passage gives us. It's a staunch warning for His people. But it's a beautiful reminder that justice and righteousness did flow down through the work of God at the cross, through the obedience of Christ to save us. If we kept reading in Amos, we would discover that the day of the Lord did come with swift judgment and destruction. And the people of Israel and Judah were taken into exile to enemy nations. But the Lord remained faithful to His promise. He established a kingdom of righteousness and justice and peace by means of preserving a remnant. And the Lord eventually brought His people back from exile so that they could witness to the coming Messiah, so that they could proclaim the coming Messiah who would procure peace and salvation one day, who would relieve suffering and poverty, and ultimately who would judge those who rob and steal the needy and the oppressed. And it's our job, it's our task, it's our joy to also proclaim the day of the Lord when all things will be made right by our righteous and just Savior, Jesus Christ. Brothers and sisters, take comfort in this finally. That though we are prone to wander, though we are inclined toward religious hypocrisy and apathy, The Spirit of God controls your lives. And the blood of Jesus Christ has cleansed you from all of your sins. He has given you peace with God. Don't depend on your own ability. Your own righteousness to be pleasing to your God. Depend upon the provision of Jesus Christ who paved your way, your access to your righteous and just Heavenly Father. by His perfect obedience for us. Depend on God. Depend on Him, on what He has done, on what He is doing, and what He promises to do as He makes you holy. Depending on Him, you can walk on. I can press on, offering genuine lives, genuine hearts in worship and service to glorify God and to profit our neighbors as the Eighth Commandment calls us to do. Amen. Let's pray. Our gracious Heavenly Father, we do realize how slow we are to delight in Your law, to obey any one of Your commandments, but how slow we are to promote justice and righteousness, to promote our neighbor's good, to avoid dishonest practice in business and in all of life. And we, like Israel, can become so accustomed to our covenant context, which is so wonderful in and of itself, but we may sometimes begin to trust in it rather than trust in you. We may show our righteousness merely in an outward way when inwardly we are attempting to live in sin before your face. And for this we ask for your forgiveness. But we claim the promise of Your Word that You, by Your righteousness, by Your justice, provided Christ to be a propitiation by His blood who offered Himself actively and passively to make us right with You, to help us make small beginnings in righteousness and holiness that we would be on a daily basis signposts, signs that point to the righteousness of Your coming kingdom and of the kingdom that has already been inaugurated. Lord, make us faithful. Point our eyes to the Gospel, to our Lord Jesus Christ, through whose power we can obey and delight in service day by day. In Your precious and holy name, in the name of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, we pray, Amen.