This morning we're reading from Amos chapter 4. Amos chapter 4 and the first five verses of the chapter continuing our study in the prophecy of Amos. Amos chapter 4 and verse 1. Hear this word, ye kind of Bashan, that are in the mountains of Samaria, which oppress the poor, which crush the needy, which say to their masters, bring and let us drink. The Lord God hath sworn by his holiness that lo, the day shall come upon you that he will take you away with hooks, and your posterity with fish hooks. And ye shall go out at the breeches, every cow at that which is before her, and ye shall cast him into the palace, saith the Lord. Come to Bethel and transgress. At Gilgal, multiply transgression, and bring your sacrifices every morning, and your tithes after three years, and offer a sacrifice of thanksgiving with leaven, and proclaim and publish the free offerings. For this is like you, O ye children of Israel, saith the Lord God. Amen. And God will bless the reading from this portion of his inspired word. In the last verses of the previous chapter, Amos was telling Israel that because of their persistent continued sin, there will be a specific time, a day of judgment And when that happens, Amos was telling them, their false sham worship will be over. And their prosperity and pomposity will also be over. The last verse in chapter 3, verse 15 is talking about the financially prosperous of Israel. Of course it is. And Amos is continuing this theme. in the first five verses of chapter four. Now, we this morning are going to notice as we go through the verses that the people here are not being condemned for being well off. It's not because they're prosperous. It is certain things about these people that God is condemning through Amos. Being rich is not the sin. The sin is something that the rich Israelites were doing. And God in chapter 4 verses 1 to 5 is condemning basically two things. Number one, oppression by upper class women. And number two, outward upper class religion. So that's going to be the two points. We'll have these two points this morning. Number one, we'll consider it first. The problem was oppression by upper class women. Verses one to three, hear this word, a kind of passion that are in the mountain of Samaria, which oppress the poor, which crush the needy. which say to their masters bring and let us drink the Lord God has sworn in his holiness that lo the day shall come upon you that he will take you away with hooks and your posterity with fish hooks and you shall go out at the breeches every cow at that which is before her oppression by upper-class women the word kind the Hebrew word that you find in verse one means cows the word bashing That is referring to the Golan Heights part of Israel, the hills of Samaria, a very rich and prosperous area of land at this time. And by the way, it was the hills of Samaria, that's where they had their summer houses that are referred to in chapter 3 and verse 15, up in the cool hills, the mountain air for their summer homes, up in the hills of Samaria. Amos is saying here, or God, I should say, is saying through Amos, hear this word ye cane of fashion, you cows of fashion. The cows of fashion were the very, very best cows in Israel. And Amos is calling the upper class women of Israel thoroughbred cows. Now, even though they were the best, I'm sure that they weren't overly enamored, the women, with being called that name. Amos's farming background here is being used by God to make a point. And why? Why is this point being made? And why are these women being condemned? Well, it tells us that they oppress the poor and crush the needy. That's why. The word oppress means they press down upon, they defraud and they violate the poor. And they crush, they bruise and break the needy. The needy and the poor. These upper class women in Israel were taking advantage of poor needy people and squeezing all they could get out of them. You can imagine it, it's like they go to their holiday home in the hills and there's poor people that live there also and they treat them like dirt. They grind the poor, another meaning of the word, they grind the poor into the dust to get what they can out of them. Gordon Keady, one of the commentators, says the husbands may do the actual exploiting, and they would have done, while it was the wives, that's why God's putting his finger on the women here, it was the wives that plotted and planned and promoted the whole sorry business from behind the scenes. These wives, as the commentators say, were the power behind the throne. They schemed and they planned and they plotted all sorts of moves. And their foolish husbands carried it all out in practice. And that leads on to the next thing. They were bossy drinkers, verse 1, which say to their masters, bring and let us drink. The word masters is the same word as husband. They say to their husbands, bring and let us drink. And what we have here is a picture of these women lying around on couches at home and commanding their husbands to bring them wine. Bring and let us drink in the Hebrew word means let us imbibe until we are drunk. And what stands out here when you see the subtle plotting and schemes of these women and the ordering of their husbands around, what sticks out when you look at it generally is there's a strong feministic streak, isn't there? This manipulating, scheming, self-assertion mindset comes out from the passage. And also these women are utterly materialistic. They have a life of ease and they're living it up. all haughty, taughty. So here in verse one we have a picture of a problem of ruthless, oppressive, upper class, feministic, materialistic women. Let me repeat that because that's what this verse means. The three verses mean that the problem in Israel was ruthless, oppressive, upper class, feministic, materialistic women. And God says, The Lord God has sworn in His holiness that lo, the days will come upon you that He will take you away with hooks and your posterity with fishhooks and you shall go out at the breeches every cow at that which is before her. Their punishment was that they were going to be treated like cows. Hooks ring, nose ring like a bull. Led around like animals. You, God says, and your descendants will be taken away and cast into, verse 3, it says, the palace. That's not a very good translation of that word. That Hebrew word actually means the dunghill, quite the opposite of the palace. Repulsive, isn't it? This early rise of feminism is repulsive in all its forms. See how relevant the Bible is? Feminism didn't rise in the 1900s. One of the causes of judgment upon God's people today, don't think God has changed, is ruthless, oppressive, feministic, materialistic women or men. You get feministic men as well, weaklings. You just have to have a look at the Church of England to see how oppressive feminists can be if they don't get their way and all the scheming and manipulating that they get up to. Nothing's changed. It's happening in Israel as well. In Israel, the first problem was the oppression by upper-class women. Secondly, God here condemns outward, upper class religion. That's verses 4 and 5. Come to Bethel and transgress. At Gilgal, multiply transgression. Bring your sacrifices every morning in your tithes after three years. And offer a sacrifice of thanksgiving with eleven. And proclaim and publish the free offerings. For this is like you. O ye children of Israel, saith the Lord God." God says, come, come on. Come to Bethel and Gilgal, the worship centres of Israel, where they had those golden cows that they worshipped as representations of the true God. If you want to know when they were set up, you read 1 Kings 12, verses 26-33. They set up golden cows through which to worship the true God. I'll give you a quote. Bethel and Gilgal were the sites of Israel's golden calf worship. They perpetuated the sin of Jeroboam. They worshiped God in their terms rather than in his. He said in Jerusalem, they said no. He said no idols. They made golden calves. The new theology ruled and God's Word was set aside at Bethel and Gilgal. Worshipping the way they wanted. Worshipping direct disobedience to God's Word. That's what they were performing. And their worship of the true God using their own methods was sin. Verse 4. Come to Bethel and transgress. Abdelgall multiply your transgression. Their actual worship was sin. Come to battle and transgress, that means apostatize, trespass, disobey. Come to Gilgal and multiply your transgression. Commit sin upon sin in your worship, because their worship was sin. In your worship of the true God by your own methods. You are heaping sins on sins, says John Calvin. Because sin is disobeying God. And when they added their own little improvements to the worship of God, they were disobeying God. It wasn't enough for them to have unleavened bread, Like God commands in Leviticus chapter 2 verse 11 and 7, 12 and 13 on leavened bread, bread without leaven was the only bread that God allowed to be used in the sacrifices. But they didn't want that. Oh no. They wanted leavened bread. Verse 5. Offer a sacrifice of thanksgiving And God adds on the wee word, with laughing. With laughing. Go on, God says to them. Make your wee improvements. Do it your own way. Do your own thing. Disobey God's specific law. And then call it worship. God says it would be just like you. O you children of Israel. Verse 5. I give you another quote. The sacrifices were to be offered only once. 1 Samuel chapter 1, 3, 7 and 21. The tithes were to be given every year. Leviticus 27, 30. Leavened bread may from one point of view be an improvement on unleavened bread. But it is the latter that God had commanded to be used exclusively in the burnt offerings. But what would they care about what God's Word says? They were worshipping in their own way and doing their own thing. We will worship in our way, said the children of Israel. Not in Jerusalem like you say God, Bethel and Gilgal. God had said no graven images, second commandment. They said, oh no, we'll make golden cows. God says unleavened bread only. They said, no, we want leavened bread. We will disobey God and then pretend that we're worshipping him. But then they went right over the top in Israel, you know. The tithes were given once per year. That's what God commands. They gave the tithes every three days. See the Hebrew word in verse 5, it says in my version, three years. That's wrong. Three days. They went right over the top. Instead of once a year, they were bringing their tithes every three days. And they were offering more sacrifices and giving more tithes than what God had asked for in His law. They were going right over the top. Outwardly. Just on the outward. And they were proclaiming and publishing their free will offerings. You know what that means? They were bragging about their free will offerings. They were showing off. I read this, and when you hear this, what the commentator says, it really makes you think. It was their pleasure to do acts of righteousness before men, to be seen by them. The Lord Jesus, they were the same in Matthew 6, verse 1. Our Lord said that our giving should be in secret. Matthew 6, verse 4. This has not deterred churches in our own day from publishing the givings of their members, presumably with the approval of enough of them to override the scriptural objections from those who take the Lord's word seriously. There are churches that raise money by promising each donor a plaque bearing his or her name will be displayed on that part of the building paid for by the donation. there are many ways of bringing self-glorification into Christian piety. No doubt it stimulates giving to offer to put the donor's names on bricks that their money buys, but like the giving of the cows of Bashan, it all adds up to the rejection of God's way of faithfulness, Matthew 6, 1-18. Secret allows no leeway, either an attitude of heart or an action of hand, Indeed, it is the very readiness to be unseen and unsung that is the touchstone of the life of faith in the heart when it comes to the Christian and good works. Pride always craves recognition. Publicity is pride's lifeblood. Makes you think, doesn't it? They publish their offering. Jesus said, let not your right hand know what your left hand doeth. Oh no, Lord. Carve my name on it, please. Pride always leads to problems. See, these children of Israel, they were keeping up their outward religion with sin, with leaven. And they were proud of it. And every time that they worshipped, they were heaping, they were piling one sin on top of another. Their worship was apostate, their worship contradicted God's Word, their worship was man-made, and it was boastful. Their worship, the Bible says, was sin. So let me summarize before I come to application. God outlines this theme of the rich among God's people. And he points out here two problems in Israel. Number one, there was oppressive upper class women, ruthless, oppressive, feministic, materialistic women. And number two, there was the problem of outward upper class religion. outward religion mixed with sinful human ideas and contradictions of God's Word and mixed also with pride. I did it my way. They sure did. They were just like Frank Sinatra. The I did it my way syndrome. But let me conclude and apply the message by asking a few questions. Do you think there's any problems among God's people in the UK today? Do you think that there's any problems of oppressive, upper-class, feministic women? And do you think there's any problems of outward, upper-class religion? is they're oppressive rights-orientated people whose religion doesn't touch their life and doesn't follow the Bible. They have an outward show of religion mixed up with sinful human traditions that contradict the Bible. And the thing is, they're real proud of it. Is there worship today that is directed towards the true God, like Israel's worship was here, directed towards the true God, but we've made a few improvements. Worship how we want. Worship that is in direct violation of what the Bible says. There is a disobedient churchianity religion that parades itself under the banner of Christian but it is anything but Christian just like Israel way back then. An outward Christianity or churchianity I should call it that blatantly contradicts the Bible and adds on human ideas Now, I'm going to give you an example, and all you have to do is look at the Church of England to see what I'm talking about. Just the same as Bethel. Let me read to you. The Back to Church on Sunday campaign. The 30th of September, that is this year, was the Back to Church Sunday. Some 200,000 invitations were sent out as bishops took to the road and the sky to spread the message. Amen, brother. What message were you spreading? Let me read on. They took to the road and sky to spread the message. Some of the more unusual activities included bishops taking to the skies in airplanes. Some of them trailing banners behind them. Some bishops ascended in hot air balloons. They launched podcasts. Some were riding around the diocese on their motorbikes, unveiling advertising campaigns, and the more usual display of releasing hundreds of balloons and using roadside posters and advertising. The Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr Rowan Williams, has backed the initiative, commenting, millions of people remember and love church, but perhaps they've just drifted away for a while. That sounds like wishful thinking to me, but let me continue. Back to church on Sunday is a chance for church to invite people to come back in and see what they've been missing and to help people to reconnect with God. We have churchy church Sunday boxes, sponsored tradecraft, packed with special invitations, posters, t-shirts. We've been preparing special open day style services, improving our welcome techniques at summer workshops and seminars. Seminars to tell you how to say hello. Seminars to teach people to be civil. Things like the length of service, hymns and songs we sing, even the way we give out the notices, can all have a profound impact on how welcome people feel. It's so critical that churches think through what they have to offer, to offer people who have made the brave step to come back, and I hope that many churches will be setting up informal courses explaining the Christian faith. It says at the bottom of the article It might not be a bad idea if the gospel could be slipped in somewhere, yet somehow one feels this would be a little incongruous, a little awkward in other words. Then there's a little picture here and it says, eagerly awaiting your attendance, the newly ordained clergy outside St. Paul's Cathedral in London. Three men and eleven women. Now, if that's not Bethel, I'd love to know what is. Airplanes, banners, hot air balloons, podcasts, motorbikes, hundreds of balloons, archbishop saying there's millions of people and they just love church and they remember church and they've just drifted away. We want to reconnect them with God. They've never been connected in the first place, sir. Boxes, posters, t-shirts, open day style services, welcome techniques, seminars that tell people how to be civil. Adjusted services, adjusted songs, notice presentations that are making people feel very welcome. It's all so, so critical, isn't it? The marketing principle. of finding what people want and giving it to them in church. That's what they're promoting. What's missing? What's missing from the whole Back to Church campaign they had? Truth. What's missing is a church that actually believes something. That's what's missing. The Church of England is dying. And airplanes and hot air balloons and banners and motorbikes and t-shirts and welcome techniques and adjusted services are all going to save the day, aren't they? But what's missing is God. The builder of the church is missing from her whole campaign. God never even enters the picture. Because man's techniques are going to save the day. Do you not think, Archbishop of Canterbury, that it's got anything to do with your church has got nothing whatsoever to offer? Nothing! Because your church doesn't even believe the Bible anymore. And the world out there has seen right through the gross hypocrisy of this outward religion with no real content. Eleven women ordained at St. Paul's is abundant proof that they do not believe chapter after chapter of Scripture. Oppressive, feminist women. Outward religion mixed up with human ideas that contradict what the Bible plainly says. I'm proud of it! It's just like Bethel! Just like Bethel! The Church of England is just like Bethel. But the truth is, it's wretched, blind and disobedient. And any church like it, and all the worship that's offered because of that, if you look at your Bible, it's all sin. The worship of sin, paucing around in funny hats and miters, stand here, stand there, read this. man-made tradition. Bethel! That's what it is. God is punishing the church and that's why it's dying. It's going to take a lot more than hot air balloons and t-shirts to save the Church of England. Ruled by unbelievers A human monarch as the head of the church. I'm going to say a lot more about that tonight because we're looking at Ephesians. Who is the head of the church? What a travesty of a church. What a Bethel. Bethel. Related disobedience to the Bible. God hates and God destroys Bethel. It all happened. It was all destroyed. permanently. Bethel is ruthless, feministic, oppressive religion. Bethel is outward churchianity mixed up with sinful human ideas that contradict what God says. That's Bethel. I'm proud of it. Proud of it. That's the Bethel of Israel that God destroyed. That's the baffle of the United Kingdom churchianity religion that God is presently in the process of destroying. You would be blind not to see it. Blind. I want to say this as I close. Maybe you're here this morning and you're a religious person, but you're not saved. This passage teaches that you can come to a place of worship faithfully. You can bring sacrifices of praise and prayer faithfully. These people did. You can be diligent in your tithing and giving, the children of Israel were. You can be very faithful in your giving and you can publish your missionary giving. You can do all these things faithfully and it all be sin. Because theirs was. Their whole worship was sin. Their worship was sin. The only way for it to be true worship is to have true religion in your heart. And true religion is not a religion at all, it's found in a person called Jesus Christ. He is true religion. You need to be saved by Jesus and then when you worship it won't be just outward, but it will be an inward worship that works out in your life. That's what the Bethel worshippers didn't have. and still don't have today this inward life, this inward worship that works out. They can have hot air balloons. They can have airplanes and motorbikes. They can have seminars. But not the truth. Not the truth. I want to ask you, do you see your sin on the safe person? Do you see your need of a Saviour? If you do, then I can say to you that the Lord Jesus said, Come unto me, all ye who labour, and are heavy laden. If you see your sin, you're laboring under your sin, you're laden, you're burdened with your sin, then Christ says, Come unto me, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn of me. For I am meek and lowly of heart, and you shall find rest for your souls. Amen, and thank you for your attention this morning.