Let us then return to Amos chapter 5. Our text will be found in the verses from verse 14 to the end. So Amos chapter 5. Verses 14 to the end will be our text this evening. We did look at this two weeks ago, but there is a lot in this chapter to consider. But we did notice three things the last time we looked at it. We looked at these things under the heading, how to escape, and there was three things to note. Hear God's word, seek the Lord, and seek the good. Well, we don't wish to repeat what we said, but we do want to concentrate on the verses that I've mentioned from verse 14 to verse 27 of this chapter. And the title I'd like to give to our meditation tonight is The way of the Lord, the way of the Lord. Now, this is not an easy chapter for us. There are a number of things in it that are quite difficult, but verse one would really set the scene for us. Hear ye this word which I take up against you, even a lamentation, O house of Israel. The prophet Amos has many things to say to the people of Israel. They're not pleasant things, and he takes these things up against them. But he's not against them, if you follow me. He's not an enemy of them. He's not in any sense, because he is speaking here as one who's full of tears. It's a lamentation. He sees the direness of the situation that they're in, and he's lamenting it, but he has to highlight the things that have caused the problem, and that is not easy for him to do. And it is with tears that he addresses the people, although he has some very, very difficult things to say to them. Well, we have four things that I'd like to highlight from the verses that I've mentioned, from verse 14 to verse 27, under the title, The Way of the Lord. First thing we would notice from verses 14 to 17 is the counsel of the Lord. The counsel of the Lord. And this is what the Lord is speaking to them through the prophet. What is he telling them? Well, he's telling them to seek good and not evil. In other words, this is the way the Lord wants his people to live. Amos is prophesying dire judgment that's going to fall upon them. God is putting before them here grace. There is a way in which they can avoid it. And the way is to seek good and not evil. They are to be active in doing good and they are to shun evil. that ye might live." And basically, we would say that they are to live as believers should live. They are to behave themselves according to the word of God, according to the word that God has revealed in his word for his people. They are to be different. They are to be set apart. It is to be clear and evident that there is something different about his people. They profess to know the Lord God of hosts. They profess that Jehovah is their God. They are the ones who say they have a covenant relationship with the one true and living God. Therefore, they are to be different, indeed, from their neighbors round about them. And they are to practice good and not evil. There's something they have to perform, that is, live righteously, and there is something that they have to shun. They are to cast their backs upon evil. And so the Lord, the God of hosts, shall be with you as ye have spoken." This is a boast that they have made. They are saying that the Lord is with us. And throughout this section, Amos is challenging that. He is challenging them in the sense, well, you say, as he says, you have spoken that the Lord is with you. Well, is he really with you? That's what he's saying in these verses. Is that so? You say the Lord is with you? You say the Lord is your God? You say the Lord is the one that you believe in? Well, what about your life? Do you seek good and do you shun evil? This is one test. And not only this, he says, hate the evil and love the good. One commentator highlights a distinction. To seek good and to shun evil, that is action. That's practical action. That's practical daily believing, living in the Lord their God. That's what they're to do. This is an action. But hate the evil and love the good, that's an emotion. That's something within them. And this is what they are to practice also. Hate the evil. and love the good. Sometimes people put these things the other way around. They say, well, we hate the evil, we have that emotion, we hate the evil and love the good. Then, if that be the case, then we act. But Amos has got it differently here. He is telling them their actions, their actions is what they should perform first. Seek good, do it. What am I trying to say? Well, what I'm trying to say here is some people will never do anything good unless they feel led. Some people are inclined to be guided by their feelings and by their emotions. Oh, I was led to do this. Oh, I saw a need and I was led to do this. Well, Amos is saying something different. We are to do good regardless of how we feel. We're not to be led by our feelings. We see someone in need. We're not to wait until we feel something about this to do something about it. We are to be active now. That's what he's saying here. Seek the good and not evil. Hate the evil and love the good. And establish judgment in the gate. It may be that the Lord God of hosts will be gracious unto the remnant of Joseph. And then in the next verse, what does he say? Therefore the Lord, the God of hosts. And you notice, friends, in these three verses, 14, 15, and 16, he talks about God in very, very high manner. the Lord, the God of hosts, the Lord God of hosts, the Lord the God of hosts. What's he saying when he's using these words over and over again in these three verses? Well again he's going back to this, you say you know the Lord, do you really know the Lord God of hosts? Is this the one you know? Is he not trying to impress upon them something of the glory and of the majesty and the power and of the dominion of the Lord their God that they seek or that they say they know? This is what he's saying to them here. by this repetition. Is it really this God that you know? Well, if it's this God that you know, the great God of heaven, the one who's in charge of all the armies of heaven, if that's the one you know, then you are to live according to that, or you are to live in the light of that. And he goes on in verse 16, wailing shall be in all streets. And they shall say in all the highways, Alas, alas! And they shall call the husbandmen to mourning, and such as are skillful of lamentation to wailing. Well, he's describing a terrible scene here. This is really going back to the lamentation in verse one. He has seen devastation. He has seen death. He has seen the judgment come upon them. And he's seen all people wailing. He talks here about the husbandmen wailing. That would be the farmers. That would be the manual workers. That would be the people who knew life to be hard. And these people would be quite used to death, relatively speaking, more so than the well-off. But here, all of them, the husbandmen, the farmers, the bricklayers, the joiners, the plumbers, the hard-working manual workers, they're all wailing. Why? Because the judgment has affected all sections of society. And what do we find? And such as are skillful of lamentation to wailing, the professional mourners are there as well. Such is the devastation that was going to come upon them. And Amos saw it. And they were lamenting there, and he was lamenting, bringing this message to them, that they might indeed grasp this portion of grace and that they might amend their ways before this terrible time was going to come upon them." Well, friends, that was the counsel of the Lord to them. Amend your ways, change your lives, begin to seek good and hate evil and love the good. Their actions and their emotions were all to be in unison serving the Lord their God. And again, he goes on, secondly, we notice in verses 18 to 20, under the day of the Lord, he begins in verse 18, woe unto you that desire the day of the Lord. To what end is it for you? The day of the Lord is darkness and not light, and so on. The Day of the Lord. This is the first time this expression comes upon us in the scriptures. The Day of the Lord, ultimately, in New Testament times and in the age that we live in, the Day of the Lord is actually the day when the Lord Jesus Christ returns on Judgment Day. That is the ultimate manifestation of the Day of the Lord. But in Old Testament times, it would refer to a day of God's visitation. And God would come and vindicate his people and deal with his enemies. That would be a great day of the Lord for the people of Israel. They would rejoice. God has come into their midst, and God has fought for them. And God has somewhat defeated their enemies. And they would be able to rejoice. And these people were looking forward to that day of the Lord. What does Amos say? What does he say? To what end is it for you? The day of the Lord is darkness and not light. In other words, they've got all this all wrong. Yes, the day of the Lord was going to come. The day of the Lord indeed would come. But it wouldn't be a day of deliverance. It wouldn't be a day of light. It wouldn't be a day of happiness. It would be a day of darkness for them. That's what he's telling them. That's why they would need to amend their ways. You see, they professed faith. And they went to church. They gave tithes and offerings. And as Amos revealed, they even look forward to the day of the Lord. But, and here is the but that's so important, when they were doing all these religious things and when they were delighting in all that they were doing for the Lord, all the while, they cheated the poor and lived lives of unrestrained materialism and debauchery. This is the problem with the professing people of God in that day. And friends, we would not be far off the mark if we said, this is the problem with the church today in Great Britain. This is the problem with the professing Christian church today. There will be many people who will be looking forward to the ultimate day of the Lord. and they will think that they have an interest in the day of the Lord, and they think that that day will be a day of light and a day of deliverance for them, when in actual fact it won't. It won't be at all. As it was for them, the day of the Lord was going to come, but it was not going to be a day of deliverance. What is our hope, friends? The Christian hope is built upon the fact that Jesus Christ has come and suffered and died in our room and in our place. That's the gospel message. And for us to truly benefit from it. We are to put our faith and our hope and our trust upon Jesus Christ. We are to go to him in repentance, acknowledging our sin, acknowledging that we are not what we should be, and we are to have faith in him, we are to recognize that he is God's answer to our greatest need, he is the one who has died in a room and place of sinners, and we are to cast our lot upon him and to trust upon him for our salvation. And as a result of that, We are to live according to the way that God has laid down for us in his word. We are not to be worldly. We are not to be taken up with the things of time. We have to have our minds set upon eternity. And we are not to live like the rabble out there. There's got to be a difference. There's got to be holiness. There's got to be the love of righteousness. There's got to be an escaping from the world. There's got to be a difference in the life of the Christian. There was no difference in the life of the professing believer in the days of Amos compared with those nations round about Israel. There was no difference. And he goes on when he talks about the day of the Lord. He talks about the inevitableness of this judgment. He goes on and he illustrates, if a man did flee from a lion and a bear met him. A man's out for some reason and he flees from a lion. What happens? And a bear meets him. He cannot get away from this judgment that's coming. Or he went into the house and leaned his hand on the wall and a serpent bit him. What's he talking about there? Well, he's talking about there is the man has managed to escape from the lion, and when the bear came, he's managed to escape from the bear, and he's managed to get into his house, and he's managed to shut the door, and what's happened? He's relieved, and he puts his hand on the wall, and out of the wall comes a snake that bites him. And he's bitten, and he's dead. He cannot escape. And that's why he says, the day of the Lord is darkness and not light. It sure is a wake-up call to the professing Christian. We must walk like a Christian. We cannot just rely upon Religious activities, no. The heart has got to be involved in this. These people were living in sin. Christian salvation is to be delivered, not just from the guilt of sin, but from the power of sin. And as we go through our lives, That power is more and more broken. What does it say? Matthew 1, I think, chapter 1, verse 21, he shall save his people from their sins. It's not he shall save his people in their sins, but from their sins. This is, in essence, what he's saying here, Amos, so many hundreds of years before Christ came to professing believers who, in reality, were no different from those round about them. Well, the third thing we notice is the loathing of the Lord, the loathing of the Lord. Verses 21 to 23, hear these scathing words, I hate, I despise your feast days. Here's the church that the Lord hates. Can we say something like that? Well, here we have it before us. Here's the prophet speaking by the inspiration of God. I hate, I despise, he sees all the religious activity and he will have nothing to do with it. This is religious activity that they have taken upon themselves to undertake. Yes, some of it was in conformity to the law. But other things mentioned here were things that came from their own imaginations. Whatever, it did not please God. Why not? Why not, you might say? Because we know the Bible does require them to offer burnt offerings and meat offerings and peace offerings. All these things were prescribed. But why did God loathe these things? He loathed them because their heart was not in it. They would go to the house of God, they would undertake these things, and then when they went out, they lived like pagans. And this is something that God hates. Feastings, sacrifices, all offensive and not acceptable to the Lord. Verse 23, well, some people here take this as a swipe at people who introduce man-made hymns into the worship of God. Take thou away from me the noise of thy songs, for I will not hear the melody of thy vials." Well, that may be a reference to uninspired materials of praise being used in the worship of God? It may be, it may not be. The likelihood is that they probably did introduce their own musical material. After all, they had their own gods, they had their own idols, so why would they not have their own material of praise? But it may not be the case, but whatever. God was going to have nothing of it. It didn't please them at all. This is a very, very solemn thing. What did we got here on Monday? We had our New Year's Day service. We have our communion services. We have our normal Sabbath services. We have our prayer meetings. We have our days of humiliation and prayer. We have other acts of worship. What does God say about our worship? Does he find it acceptable? Or are we just going through the motions? See, the problem is, it's all formalism. There's no heart in it. This is what the problem was here. No heart, no reverence, no love for the Lord Jesus Christ, no desire for holy living, no desire for obedience. We'll do this, we'll do this, we'll order our services like this, we'll please God by the way that we want to do, but the heart is not in it. Jesus says this to the scribes and the Pharisees. In the New Testament, in Matthew chapter 15, this people draweth nigh unto me with their mouth, and honoreth me with their lips, but their heart is far from me. Professing believer, you have to examine yourself. Where is your heart tonight? Where is your heart when you come to the worship of God? Where is it? Are you truly worshiping him? But in vain they do worship me, teaching for doctrines the commandments of men. That's what they were doing. They had their idols in Bethel, and they were saying, oh, we're worshiping the Lord, but we're using idols. It's a help. It's an aid to our worship. God says, no. I hate, I despise your feast days. Calls for serious self-examination, friends, every one of us. Paul recognized this problem. The problem was around in the New Testament times. Paul reminds Timothy, or warns him, or gives him counsel while he's pastoring the congregations at Ephesus. And he talks about people having a form of godliness, but denying the power thereof. People who have the form, they have the outward shell, but they don't have the heart, reality. From such, he says, turn away. Amos brought this message to the people with tears, with tears. He could see the problem. God had revealed the problem to him. He had a hard message, but he spoke in such a way that it revealed that the message had affected himself also. Well, finally, fourthly, the delight of the Lord. The remaining verses from verse 24 principally, but let judgment run down as waters and righteousness as a mighty stream. This is what was lacking in their lives. The rich were taking advantage of the poor. God wants to see righteousness and true judgment from his people, dominating their lives like a mighty rushing stream. And we've seen a lot of water these days in our nation. We can see the power of water. Well, there's nothing more powerful in the life of a Christian for the Christian to live righteously and to treat people with reverence and with respect. and to give them their due reward and care at all occasions." In other words, what he's talking about here is clearly holy living. And holy living, friends, is a wonderful testimony, and it's a powerful testimony. When people see the people of God living like the people of God should, that speaks better than any sermon. any sermon, a changed life. Well, these people were confident in their relationship with Jehovah God, their great covenant-keeping God. Amos is challenging them about that relationship. That's what he's doing. He is challenging them. He's asking them to really consider, do you really know the Lord God of hosts? Do you really know the great creator God, the one who made heaven and earth? This is the claim that you make. This is the claim that the Christian makes. We know the one true and the living God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Well, if that's true, does your life reflect that? Does your life back up your profession? Let judgment run down as waters, and righteousness as a mighty stream. That's the way of the Lord. That's the way of the Lord to live 800 years before Christ. That's the way of the Lord in the 21st century for the people of the Lord. That's the way they're to live. Their profession is to match, or their life is to match their profession. The way of the Lord. Amen. And may God be pleased to bless his word to us. Let us pray together.