If you have your Bibles, I would love for you to join me in Amos chapter 6. First time visitor, you say, did he say Amos? Yep, he said Amos. You say, I'm already uncomfortable and that made it worse. It's a lot of Old Testament tease in Amos chapter 6. It's undeniable. It is inescapable. The fact is you're going to hear of some villages or fortified cities that you've never heard of before and geographically they mean absolutely nothing to you. You are going to hear some archaic religious references towards ceremony and even the term fat beasts is going to make its way into this message. But I believe that this is intensely practical and tremendously relevant for the modern-day believer and the modern-day church. I have already warned you this is week three of four in Amos, and by the time we get through four, we're going to be ready to pivot away from messages of coming destruction and get back into the New Testament, and we will. But there is great value contained in this prophecy. Remember that Amos was a shepherd. Amos was from the southern kingdom of Judah. At this point, the nation of Israel had divided. Ten tribes in the north maintained the name Israel. He was a shepherd from the village of Tekoa, south of the city of Jerusalem, and he leaves to go up to the northern tribes and deliver this prophetic message from God. The fact is, he will deliver this message about 50 years before the nation of Israel is carried away in bondage by the Assyrians. What we deduce from that is this. They, like a lot of you, did not listen to His message like you don't want to listen to mine. and rather than pivot and repent based on the veracity of his message, rather they continue on in sin and the Assyrians come and take captive the nation of Israel. I believe their refusal to hear the message of Amos is symptomatic of the disease that ailed them, and it is a disease that greatly ails, pervades, it's systemic within the modern church, and that is that of complacency. Complacency is defined in this way. It is self-satisfaction, especially when accompanied by unawareness of actual dangers or deficiencies. That is spot on what ailed the northern tribes, the nation of Israel at this point in time. They had become addicted to luxury. They had become worshipers of comfort and indifferent to the presence of sin. In fact, when the nation of Israel was settling in the promised land, God gave them an explicit warning in the book of Deuteronomy. And this is their failure. Here's what God said to them in Deuteronomy 8, verse 17. Here's a danger, nation of Israel, that you would say in thine heart, my power, and the might of mine hand hath gotten me this wealth. But thou shalt remember the Lord thy God, for it is He that giveth thee power to get wealth, that He may establish His covenant, which He sware unto thy fathers, as it is this day." Verse 19, here's the explicit warning. And it shall be, if thou do at all forget the Lord thy God, and walk after other gods, and serve them, and worship them, I testify against you this day, that ye shall surely perish. Nation of Israel, as you have wandered the wilderness, you have been utterly and completely dependent upon Me. You have lived aware of My daily provision with the manna. But now you are going to go in and the conquest of the promised land will be successful. You are going to live in houses that you did not build. You are going to harvest from fields and vineyards that you did not plant. And over time, here's what is dangerous and could happen, is you will begin to trust that the houses, and the vineyards, and the fields, and your prosperity, and your wealth, and your comfort has been gained by your own acumen, and skill, and behavior, and you will forget that it was ultimately me and for my name. And that's why Amos is preaching this message. That's precisely what is going on. In fact, you can hear the explicit sin in verse 13 of chapter 6. Amos says, Ye which rejoice in a thing of naught. Which say, have we not taken to us horns by our own strength? Now that's our introduction into some Old Testamentese. They have taken horns by their own strength. Let me summarize it by saying, in that last phrase, by our own strength, you can hear the very thing that they were warned about by God has come to pass. They have attained comfort, and wealth, and luxury, and ease, and they are taking credit for it. God had allowed them to prosper, and it is their response to that prosperity that will ultimately lead to their destruction. They have fallen in love with something other than God. They now love luxury, and they boast in their own strength. Verse 8 of chapter 6. Here's God's response to this. The Lord God hath sworn by Himself, and remember He testified this in Deuteronomy, saith the Lord the God of hosts, I abhor the excellency, that's pride or arrogance of Jacob, and hate his palaces. Therefore will I deliver up the city with all that is therein. You are destined for destruction because you have begun to trust in the wealth that you have amassed and the fortifications that you have built and you have ceased to trust in me. You have shifted the focus of your love. One wrote this, when God ceases to be the treasure of your heart, more than likely your heart will fasten itself on the pleasures and comforts of this life. And God abhors this. We become complacent because we place our trust in what we can see and hold and have. In fact, we live in a day where as long as there is calm, and as long as there is plenty in my house, and as long as there is calm and plenty for those that I love, then it's all good. But a serious study of Amos chapter 6 will cause us to rethink this. In fact, the very first word of the chapter is a strong one. It is a three-letter word, woe. Whenever woe is used in the Bible, it is telling you calamity and destruction is on the way. This is a strong message. This is a savage message being delivered. He says this in verse 1. Woe to them that are at ease in Zion. trust in the mountain of Samaria, which are named chief of the nations to whom the house of Israel came." Three verses later, he'll say this. He's continuing to describe their condition. Verse 4, "...that lie upon beds of ivory, and stretch themselves upon their couches, and eat the lambs out of the flock, and the calves out of the midst of the stall." Two verses later, verse 6, that drink wine in bowls and anoint themselves with the chief ointments, but they are not grieved for the affliction of Joseph." Now again, I'm ready to agree with you that there is some imagery in there that I do not understand. It doesn't really correlate with my modern mind and view of the world, but I will tell you, this is much like our modern world. He has just described the nation of Israel and He's telling them, you have boiled life down to living for comfort alone. You are no longer grieving about the condition of those around you. You could say to the church, you live for what works for you and for me, but we do not grieve ourselves over the lost that are in this world. In fact, in this day, people have become experts at loving themselves, but have no thought, scripturally speaking, about how to actually love their neighbor as Jesus told us to. We have taken our eyes off of God, off of the cause of Christ, and off of others, and we have begun to worship things that God has gifted to us. Pride. The writer of Proverbs 16, 18 says, and I know you are familiar, Pride goeth before destruction, and an haughty spirit before a fall. Amos is preaching a hard message. It's not one that is well received. I reference that his name literally means burden. I think it intimates that whenever he showed up and began to speak, people thought, here comes the pain in the neck. Here comes that burden to listen to, because he's going to tell us stuff that we don't want to hear. This is Amos arriving on the scene and telling them, because of your pride, you think you are invulnerable. Because of your pride, you think that destruction will never arrive at your door, but I'm here to tell you it's imminent. The object of your faith has shifted away from God and has come to the things that God has provided. Jesus taught us this in the New Testament on the Sermon on the Mount in Matthew 6. Take no thought saying this. What shall we eat? Or what shall we drink? Or wherewithal shall we be clothed? For after all these things do the Gentiles seek. All these things the world seeks after. Your heavenly Father knoweth that ye have need of all these things, but you, believers, followers of Jesus, seek ye first the kingdom of God and His righteousness, and all these things shall be added unto you. Whenever we shift our faith focus off of God, and we begin to worship the prosperity that we enjoy, or the peace that we long for, or all the things of comfort and wealth that we have amassed, however minimal those may be, it causes misperception. We begin to think that we are impregnable, we are untouchable. I didn't drag you through these verses, but he said in verse two, as he specifically mentions these cities, Kalna and Hamath and Gath. I wanted to do an in-depth study in all three of those villages, but I knew you'd doze off, so I skipped it. The nation of Israel looked out and Calna and Hamath and Gath were villages that were around them. Each of them were strongly fortified villages, each of them had armed men inhabiting them, and each of them had capitulated, had been overrun, and had been destroyed. And Amos in his message is trying to shake the complacency off of the nation of Israel and he's saying to them, you look around at these other places and you imagine that you are better than them. You imagine that your fortifications are stronger. You imagine that you are more prestigious than them. Rather than seeing their destruction and taking note and learning a lesson, you are puffed up yet with more pride. That can happen to the modern church. That can happen to believers just like you and me. We can begin to think that we are better than those that are around us and that our sin doesn't stink as much as their sin stinks. When the fact is, your sin and my sin is as rotten as anyone's sin. We can misperceive that we are safe, we are invulnerable, that we will never meet any consequence for our sin because after all, look at us. We've gathered together in this place on a Sunday. God will be more lenient because of what we're doing. That's where the nation of Israel was living. They were thinking if judgment were ever to arrive, certainly it's way, way down the line in verse three. He says of them, you put far away the evil day. You don't imagine that there's a nation on earth that could threaten your peace and security. You don't imagine that your sin will ever have to be confronted or dealt with. You know what I have found more often in my life than not? It is not the things that I hate that can destroy me as much as it is the things that I love. There's nothing inherently wrong with having all of the things that the nation of Israel had. They had summer houses and winter houses, big houses and little houses. They had wine by the sacred bowl full. They played musical instruments. They stretched on their couches of ivory. They had good things, all things that they could have described as blessings from God because they were. Good things. Yet those good things are what destroyed them. And they were convinced, because they were involved in the ceremonies of God, that God was pleased. I love what one wrote. He said this. They treated the ceremonies as an end in themselves. done in and for the inherent automatic benefits achieved by the ceremonial act. And they divorced them from their God-intended context in a life of moral obedience, righteous principle, and just conduct. Thus, sincerity overrode theology. For example, The interests of what they would like God to be modified the teaching of what He in fact actually is, and ceremony obscured ethics. Their religion was devoid of creed and conduct. It did not arise from what God is, nor did it take to account what man is. It lived alone by the principle of being self-pleasing." You say, you're going to go back and clarify that, right? Yep. What the nation of Israel had begun to do was to comfort themselves with the mere fact that they were showing up at Bethel and Beersheba and Gilgal. The immediate benefits of being there superseded the whole point of being there in the first place. They became satisfied with attendance at the ceremonies. No conduct ever came of it. It is just like people like us who can arrive in a worship service and begin to worship in a way that satiates some void that exists within us, silences some scream on the inside of us. After all, God, take a look that I am here. Don't know if you noticed, I brought my Bible and I'm actually open to Amos 6. Which God isn't really easy to find? Extra credit. I've got my white shirt on. God, you see this. Do you not see this? Are you taking note of this God? See God, my sin's not as stinky because I try harder. And I wonder sometimes if we are blinded to sincerely worshiping God because in some perverted and twisted way we have become so self-focused that we are actually chasing the means rather than the end. And we believe that merely by doing, God is satisfied with what is done when it is devoid of true worship at its core. That's the nation of Israel. That's how insidious this sin is. It's self-serving pride and God hates it. Why? Because pride leads to all other sins. C.S. Lewis wrote this, pride leads to every other vice. It is the complete anti-God state of mind. The scripture is harsh on pride. In fact, in James 4, we read, God resisteth the proud, but giveth grace to the humble. The psalmist said in Psalm 31, 23, for the Lord preserveth the faithful and plentifully rewardeth the proud doer. And that's not a reward that you want. But he plentifully rewards them. They had come to believe that they were good. Inherently, because of their ceremony, they had come to believe that they were better than others that were around them, and their complacency is going to be challenged, because God was about to remove from them the things that they had begun to worship. In fact, we'll see these woes pronounced. Woe to the complacent. He says this back a chapter. To you that are at ease, in verse 15 of chapter 3, I will smite the winter house with the summer house. The houses of ivory shall perish, the great houses shall have an end, saith the Lord. Everything that you have pride in, Everything that you have begun to worship, I am going to take from you. Because all of those things have caused you to be complacent. Not only the complacent, woe to the proud. Those of you that trust in your defenses and your fortifications. Those of you that trust in your soldiers and your horses rather than in me. Those of you that trust in all the things that you have amassed. Them that trust in the mountain and assume their strength is secure in verse 8 of chapter 6. The Lord God hath sworn by Himself. Saith the Lord, the God of hosts, I abhor the excellency of Jacob, hate his palaces, therefore I will deliver up the city with all that is therein. Six verses later, verse 14, but behold, I will raise up against you a nation, O house of Israel, saith the Lord, the God of hosts, and they shall afflict you from the entering in of Hemath, under the river of the wilderness, and you are not gonna escape. You imagine that your defenses are impregnable, and I will raise up a nation that is stronger than your defenses. At this moment in time, they could not fathom that the Assyrians were going to arrive and eradicate their cities and take their children off into bondage. And I'm not saying your children are going to be taken or your city is going to be blown up, but I am saying God does not reward the complacent or the proud. Woe to the indifferent. I think this strikes me. You, He is saying to them, live in great houses and small houses, winter houses and summer houses. Have couches of ivory that you're stretched out on. You drink wine from the sacred bowls and lather yourselves in fragrant ointments. And you have no concern for the poor that are around you. You are so self-absorbed, you are not grieved for Joseph. Now that's intentional language that he would use in chapter 6. Why? Because the brothers of Joseph, the forefathers of the nation of Israel, took their brother and cast him into a pit. An open, dry cistern. And the Bible tells us Joseph was begging them for help. He was calling out for them to be merciful to him, to help him out of the pit. And rather than respond to his pleas and his needs with mercy, the Bible tells us the brothers crassly and coldly sat near the pit with an earshot of his cries and ate dinner. That's why Amos says, you are living sumptuously while there are others around you begging for a crumb of bread. You are living fat and happy, spiritually speaking, when there are others that are absolutely destitute of the truth. No exposure. And you feed yourself while they are there, desperately crying out, woe to the indifferent. Here's what he says in chapter 5 verse 11, For as much therefore as your treading is upon the poor, and ye take from him burdens of wheat, ye have built houses of hewn stone, but ye shall not dwell in them. Ye have planted pleasant vineyards, but ye shall not drink wine of them. For I know your manifold transgressions and your mighty sins. They afflict the just, they take a bride, and they turn aside a poor in the gate from their right." The people of the Northern Kingdom should have been grieving with those who were being robbed of justice in the court system, but they were too self-absorbed. The people of the Northern Kingdom should have at least used some of their money and some of their time to ease the needs of those that were struggling, but they were indifferent to them. They should have been seeking justice for all people, seeking righteousness with all people, but they were indifferent to the cries of their brothers around them. They were utterly blinded, and that's why I say this sounds more and more like the modern world. You're complacent. Woe to you that are at ease. Woe to you that are trusting in your fortifications and perceive yourselves to be good and better than others. Sin comes knocking at your door and so do consequences. Your sin's just as stinky as the worst sins you can imagine. and your sin of indifference. While you sit in a smarmy fashion, enjoying your worship, there are people desperately in need of the truth, starving for doctrine all around you, and you don't do anything about it. Woe to the indifferent. Every once in a while, a speaker can lose his audience. You say, is this first-hand experience? Oh yeah. I'm not saying right now, but I've definitely done it. And you can lose your audience by being an unclear, inarticulate speaker. And sometimes when we read scripture, we are left to wonder, what is it that God is actually saying here? I want you to grasp in this last woe, woe to the complacent, woe to the proud, woe to the indifferent, and woe to the religious, you are not going to be confused by what God actually thinks. There's no mixed message here. Amos 5. Verse 21, here's God speaking, I hate... I despise your feast days, and I will not smell in your solemn assemblies. Though ye offer me burnt offerings and your meat offerings, I will not accept them. Neither will I regard the peace offerings of your fat beasts. Take thou away from me the noise of thy songs, for I will not hear the melody of thy vials. Stop the empty ceremony and actually get right and do right. God is not mixing his message here. I hate, I despise your feasts. I will not smell in your solemn assemblies. You say, that's probably good for late August, right? Here's what he's saying. Keep going in and lighting the censer. Light that incense, which is an image of the smoke going up, imagery of your prayers. Keep lighting it. I won't even smell that smell. Keep offering up your burnt, I am not accepting them. Keep shouting those words up in your songs. I'm not hearing them. Keep hittin' all the notes on your violin. I'm not taking it in. I'm completely oblivious. Further, I'm averse. I hate, I despise all of that emptiness. I want some good conduct. I want your heart. That's what God is begging for. Woe to the religious. Man, this strikes at the core. Now hold on. Maybe they weren't hittin' the right notes on the violin. Maybe they plugged it into an amp. God forbid. They plugged the violin into an amp. God said, I will not hear the notes of your violin. No, he says the one that is playing the violin and carefully trying to hit every note is not sincerely worshiping me. They're satiating some hole that they have in their soul. They're silencing some voice. They're merely there for the immediate benefit of the act of playing the violin. I don't even hear it. Shout your notes up. Sing it out. God says my ears are stopped. I don't even hear it. But wait, maybe they were singing the wrong songs. Maybe it wasn't right. No, he says, I blow right through that. I'm looking right here. Keep singing the words. There's nothing on the inside. It's just noise. You are so impressed with what you're doing and God isn't even hearing it. I have lit that sensor so many times. I'm watching the smoke get up. And he says, just stop. I hate, I despise the sacrifice. I'm not even smelling that incense as it comes up because there's no good conduct coming out of it. And we have convinced ourselves. Again, because we are after the means and not the end, we have convinced ourselves that merely by being here, we're doing a good thing. And honestly, we are trying harder than a lot of people. Listen, this is the second time I've gone to church already. It's not even noon yet. You can't try harder than that. I've gone to church twice. I have been nice to people. You know how hard that is for me? Real hard. I have performed baptism, sacred rites of the ordained institution that is the body of Christ, the local church. I've done that. My Bible's open. My notes are highlighted. My tie's choking me to death. My dress shoes are squeaking with sweat. You can't try harder than this. I'm doing everything. God, you see this, right? I see this, there are so many people who are merely slaves to religiosity and have no sincerity on the inside and somehow have puffed themselves up to imagine that they're actually more righteous than everybody on the outside and a whole lot of people on the inside because after all, look at them and God says, woe to you who have shifted your focus off of me and begun to focus only on the ceremony. I'm over that. You're complacent. You're proud. You're indifferent. You are merely religious. Stop. What good is it if we come here and do not leave here and go do good? If we don't leave here and go do good, then it was no good that we ever came here because nothing was ever truly accomplished. Creed and conduct go hand in hand, man. It's not one or the other. Whenever you see this consumerism creep in, take note. The church becomes impotent when Christians become dominated by complacency, indifference, pride, and mere religious activity. And when consumerism creeps in, I need it to feel right for me. I need it to be fashioned after how I see God wants it. Yeah, Cain was the same way. When Cain brought his offering, he didn't bring the worst, he brought the very best that he could. And he said, here God, here's the very best. And God said, yeah, I see that, but that's not what I asked you for. When that consumerism creeps in and self-service becomes the hallmark of the church, the gospel message is dampened. In fact, one of the marks of the last days is that people will become lovers of pleasure more than lovers of God. It's no wonder Jesus said to his followers, take heed to yourselves, lest at any time your hearts be overcharged with surfeiting and drunkenness and cares of this life, and so that day of judgment may come upon you unawares. What's the fix? It's difficult today to find people who are burdened for, and I'm gonna use some big words, rampant carnality, the pervasive fleshliness that exists within the church. It's even harder to find believers who are actually burdened for those that are in this world and they're lost. They don't know Jesus and they don't know the truth. They have become so indifferent, but because everything's okay in their house, and because everything is going well for them, they perceive that they're invulnerable, and they assume that they're untouchable, and that God is happy, and they have begun to worship something other than God. The fix arrives in the book of James in the New Testament. Don't panic, it's a fast fix. James writes this in James 4.8. Draw nigh to God, and He will draw nigh to you. Cleanse your hands, ye sinners, and purify your hearts, ye double-minded. Be afflicted, and mourn, and weep. Let your laughter be turned to mourning, and your joy to heaviness. Humble yourselves in the sight of the Lord, and He shall lift you up. James just gave us the roadmap home. If you are indifferent, if you are proud, if you are merely religious, if you are complacent, here's how to fix it and get back home. Number one, draw an eye to God. You might think to yourself, now listen, if God wants to draw an eye to me, he knows where I'm at, and after all, he's God. He could come here to where I am, but James puts the initiative on us as the believer, and he says, you draw an eye to God. It's literally the depiction of the Old Testament priest walking to the altar with the sacrifice. You draw near to God. You know the beautiful imagery behind this is this. Draw an eye to God, and he will draw an eye to you. He is always receptive when we turn and go His direction. Draw nigh to me and I will draw nigh unto you. The initiative is ours. Draw nigh unto God. He's always receptive. Then clean up. The Jewish reader, that was James' audience, would have immediately picked up, this is ceremonial cleansing, this is washing my hands before I partake in this ceremony. Washing the hands, he's saying, clean up your external activity and purify the heart. Change your internal motivations, clean things up, get it right. If you truly desire to draw near to God, then you and I must deal with sin, and it's real. One wrote very practically, you can't approach God with your hands behind your back, holding on to things you shouldn't be holding on to. James is saying, come on, he knows what's in your hands. He knows what's in your heart. He knows who you are. You might be one of his sheep, but you can't pull the wool over his eyes. So when you come and your hands are clutched behind your back, that's why he has the audacity to say, hit the right notes. Sing it really loud. Keep offering it up. He ain't hearing you. Clean up. Mourn. God effectively says, don't deal with your sin as if it isn't serious. Don't brush it off as if it's not a big deal. Be afflicted and mourned. Literally he's saying, be wretched. Isn't that a popular message in 2023? Be wretched. You say, well, nobody has to tell me that. I've got that one figured out. This is the prayer of the Apostle Paul in Romans 7 when he says, oh, wretched man that I am. Do you see your sin as God sees your sin? Are you able to look and confront the wretchedness that is within you or is everything lighter because after all, it's you? Mourn. And then he says, humble yourselves in the sight of God. The word humble yourself literally is the picture of bowing all the way down on your face in the throne room of a royal king. And the imagery here is when you bow yourself all the way down on your face before the King that is Jesus, Jesus gets up, he comes down, and he will lift you up. He stands you back up on your feet. James is simply saying to us, Pride and religiosity and indifference and complacency must be eradicated or the gospel message is dampened. And the way to do it is take the initiative and draw nigh to God. How do I draw nigh to God? Clean up. Take your sins seriously. Mourn. Repent. Confess. Humble yourself. Get over yourself and come back to God. You say, yeah, but things are going well. Things are quiet. I feel like I'm on the right path. The moment you say I feel, you're in trouble. Because we need to rest on what God says. Would you please just for a moment bow your heads with me? Thanks for listening this week to the Graceway Baptist Church podcast. For more information about our church and our ministries, head on over to our website at gracewaycharlotte.org. We are a church located in South Charlotte. We are growing and our ministries are doing big things for Christ. If you're looking for a way to get plugged into what we're doing, email us at info at gracewaycharlotte.org. Also, stay in the loop with everything happening by following us on Facebook and Instagram. Our handle is GracewayCharlotte. Thanks again for listening to the Graceway Charlotte podcast. We'll see you next week.