Christ Church Washington D.C.

Text this morning is Amos chapter 8 starting in verse 4 and continuing through the rest of the book. These are the words of God.
And it shall be cast out and drowned as by the flood of Egypt. And it shall come to pass in that day, saith the Lord God, that I will cause the sun to go down at noon, and I will darken the earth in the clear day. And I will turn your feasts into mourning, and all your songs into lamentation. And I will bring up sackcloth upon all loins, and baldness upon every head. And I will make it as the excellency of Jacob.
And the end thereof as a bitter day. Behold, the day has come, saith the Lord God, that I will send a famine in the land. Not a famine of bread, nor thirst for water, but of hearing the words of the Lord. And they shall wander from sea to sea, and from the north even to the east. They shall run to and fro, and seek the word of the Lord, and shall not find it. In that day shall the fair virgins and the young men faint for thirst. They that swear by the sin of Samaria, and say, Thy God, O Dan, liveth,
and the manner of Beersheba liveth, even they shall fall and never rise up again. I saw the Lord standing upon the altar, and he said, Smite the lintel of the door, that the post may shake, and cut them in the head, all of them, and I will slay the last of them with the sword. He that fleeth of them shall not flee away, and he that escapeth of them shall not be delivered. Though they dig into hell, thence shall mine hand take them. Though they climb up to heaven,
and though they hide themselves in the top of Carmel, I will search, and I take them out thence. And though they be hid from my sight in the bottom of the sea, thence will I command the serpent, and he shall bite them. And though they go into captivity before their enemies, thence will I command the sword, and it shall slay them. And I will set mine eyes upon them for evil and not for good. And the Lord God of hosts is he that toucheth the land, and it shall melt, and all that dwell therein shall mourn, and it shall rise up
as by the flood of Egypt. It is he that buildeth his stories in the heaven and hath founded his troop in the earth, he that calleth for the waters of the earth and poureth them out upon the face of the earth. The Lord is his name. Are ye not as the children of the Ethiopians unto me? O children of Israel, saith the Lord, have not I brought up Israel out of the land of Egypt and the Philistines from Kaphtor and the Syrians from Ker? Behold, the eyes of the Lord God are upon the sinful
kingdom, and I will destroy it from off the face of the earth, saving that I will not utterly destroy the house of Jacob, saith the Lord. For lo, I will command, and I will sift the house of Israel among all nations like as corn is sifted in a sieve, yet shall not the least grain fall upon the earth. All the sinners of my people shall die by the sword, which say the evil shall not overtake nor prevent us. In that day will I raise up the
tabernacle of David that has fallen, and close up the breaches thereof, and I will raise up his ruins, and I will build it as in the days of old, that they may possess the remnant of Edom, and of all the heathen which are called by my name, saith the Lord, that doeth this. Behold, the days come, saith the Lord, that the plowman shall overtake the reaper, and the treader of grapes, him that soweth seed, and the mountains shall drop sweet wine, and all the hills shall melt. And I will bring again the
Israel, and they shall build the waste cities, and inhabit them, and they shall plant vineyards, and drink the wine thereof. They shall also make gardens, and eat the fruit of them. And I will plant them upon their land, and they shall no more be pulled up out of their land, which I have given them, saith the Lord thy God. Let’s pray. Our God and Father, we pray now that by the work of your Spirit, by the power of your Spirit, you would cause us to see marvelous things out of your
words. We pray that you would shock us and surprise us with the glory that is found in this text, the glory of a new tabernacle of David. We thank you for this, your word, and we pray now you would do the miracle of preaching, speak to us, soften our hearts that we might hear clearly what your Spirit says to the church. We pray all of this in the mighty name of Jesus, and amen. You may be seated.
Surprises are the best. Surprises also happen to be the worst. There’s nothing worse than going to your favorite restaurant, ordering your favorite dish, and when it’s delivered to you, and the waiter brings it to you, and you take a bite of it, the eggs were addled, tastes like mold, something was wrong with it. That is an unpleasant surprise. That’s not the sort of surprise you want.
Like putting on an old pair of jeans, reaching in the pocket and finding, hey, there’s a $20 bill in here. Surprises are the best, and surprises are the worst. It really does depend, though, on the nature of what the surprise is. What the unexpected turn of events is. Whether the surprise is a delightful one or a despairing one. Whether the surprise is one that you give thanks for or one that causes you great misery.
You’ve waited for many years to have a child. And the news comes that your wife has fallen pregnant. That’s how my wife, she’s from South Africa, that’s how she would say it. Fallen pregnant. That’s a very British way to say it. And you wait unexpectedly for this gift and along it comes. That’s a wonderful surprise. But there’s nothing like a diagnosis of cancer. Or an unexpected bill in the mail.
Or your boss emailing you at 4 p.m. on Friday saying, can I see you in my office? Surprises are the best and surprises are the worst. The farm boy from Tekoa, Amos, comes to the conclusion of his prophetic word for the prosperous and proud Israelites.
Redneck from southern Judah. As surprising as it is, this hick from southern Judah would come up and rebuke the elite of northern Israel, the prosperous tribes of northern Israel, which were living in great luxury and prosperity. This southern farm boy has come up to northern Israel to rebuke them. As surprising as that is, this book, these prophetic words of Amos come to a conclusion here.
The prophetic words for Israel. Now, my usual manner of working through a book is to go one chapter at a time. So imagine my surprise when Rigney emailed me and said, all right, you’re going to do basically chapter eight and nine of Amos. And I said, both chapters? So admittedly, this is going to be 30,000 foot view. And if you have issue with that, you can emotionally sabotage Rigney the next time he’s here. But from what I understand, he’s impervious to it.
So again, this is much more 30,000 foot level looking at these two chapters as the conclusion of Amos’ prophecy to northern Israel, to the northern tribes of Israel. And Amos has some particular surprises in store for us here. So let’s look at these two chapters, again, from a 30,000 foot view. And then we’ll go into a few areas of application of these truths.
As you’ve been working through the book of Amos, I hope you’ve come away with seeing some of the particular sins that the Israelites had given themselves over to. One in particular that’s highlighted here is that the Israelites had come to view the festivals and Sabbath feasts as a burden. They’re in verse 5. They’re saying, when can we get the new moons and the Sabbaths over so we can get back to, they wanted to get them over with, so they could get back to their sins, to their exploitation of the poor,
and the trampling of the needy, there in verse 4 and 6. So they had come to view the new moons, the Sabbaths, the festivals that God had given them through Moses as a burden and something to yawn at and get past so they can get back to business as usual, which happened to be, as we’ve seen in Amos, happened to be running roughshod over the poor, the needy, the weak.
It’s like, if you view these feasts as burdensome, here’s what’s coming for you, lights out, judgment, devastation. The jubilant feast which God had blessed them with, think of the Feast of Tabernacles, the Feast of Booths, the Feast of Unleavened Bread, the Passover, the Day of Atonement, all these wonderful feasts and celebrations and holy days that God had given them to remind them of his covenant relationship with them.
They just wanted to get past them.
The offering that the Israelites would give was a feast between the worshiper and God. God had filled the calendar with feasting. And here we learn that God is saying, I’m going to turn that around and it’s going to go from feasting to funerals. There in verse 10, you see, I will turn your feasts into mourning, into a funeral, your songs into lamentation. I’ll bring up sackcloth upon all loins, as the King James puts it wonderfully and memorably.
Moreover, the feasts and the Sabbaths, which they had begrudged, were to be replaced by a famine, and we’re told of a particular kind of famine. It’s a famine of not hearing the word of the Lord. Verse 11. Now think about the most important passage in the Old Testament for the Jews. Was what? Deuteronomy 6.4, the Shema, right? The covenant word is what? Hear, O Israel.
God is one Lord. The covenant word here would be heard no more. Though it would be sought for, it wouldn’t be found there in verse 12. And this is a weighty implication. Famine instead of feasts. Roaming instead of rest. God is annulling the covenant promises of Deuteronomy. You can also look at Deuteronomy 4.29, which spell out these promises.
In verse 13 of chapter 8, we see that the young men and fair virgins would be weak and faint, which is precisely the opposite of the attendant blessings which were to be poured out upon faithful Israel. If you want to, turn over to Psalm 144. And we have one of those wonderful psalms describing the fruitfulness and blessing that God had intended for Israel. Psalm 144, verses 12 and 13.
This is the description for what God’s blessing resting upon Israel was to look like. That our sons may be as plants grown up in their youth. And that our daughters may be as cornerstones polished after the similitude of a palace. That our garners, our barns may be full, affording all manner of store. That our sheep may bring forth thousands and ten thousands in our streets. Amos is saying that psalm is turned inside out. Your young men, your fair virgins are going to be weak and faint.
Withered vines. The blessings of God’s feast will be turned inside out. Scattering instead of gathering. Deafness instead of hearing. Infertility instead of children upon children. Famine instead of feast. Now, we learn in verse 14 that it’s idolatry that’s really at the root of their indifference and their injustice. Notice in verse 14 of chapter 8, they swear by the sin of Samaria.
Thy God, O Dan, that verse there is describing the two golden calves that Jeroboam had put up when the kingdom split. And they’re swearing by these golden calves now. God, of course, had sworn to Israel. God, of course, had made promises to Israel to not forget the covenant he had made with Israel’s fathers. But now Israel has sworn by the gods of the nations, by her false gods.
And worship the two golden calves in Dan and Bethel. You can read about that in 1 Kings 12, 28-29. So then, as we turn to chapter 9, we see God standing upon the altar. And remember how the book of Amos opens. It’s just wonderfully, like all the little boys in the room should love Amos 1-1. Because God shows up, Amos comes into northern Israel, and has a message from God for you. God is like a lion roaring.
Right? That’s a little boy’s life verse right there. God is a roaring lion. We see here in chapter 9, he picks back up on this theme of God as the hunter on the prowl. He has a roaring lion. When God begins the hunt, his prey will be unable to escape. Verses 1-4 of chapter 9. I hope you noticed that vivid imagery. If they dig into hell, or if they climb up to heaven, or if they go into the sea, or wherever they try to hide, the hunter
will find his prey. The once verdant land, the promised land flowing with milk and honey, will melt into a devastating flood, like the imagery here is that of Noah’s flood, the overwhelming catastrophe and destruction and cleansing of the corruption in Noah’s day. And there in verse five, we see this language of the promised land that ought to have been the dwelling place for God’s people to rest under the blessings of God.
Suddenly it’s turned into the imagery of Noah’s flood deluging the earth, wiping away all corruption. The hills are going to melt. The land is going to turn into a sea. It’s quite vivid imagery that Amos gives us. And there in verse six through ten, we’re left with no question that God Almighty is behind all this judgment upon the sinful nation. None would escape. Now all that’s pretty severe.
All that is a little bit like, a little hot under the collar there, Amos. That’s some intense stuff there. But the prophecies of Amos come to a close with an inconceivably glorious surprise at the end of the chapter. We’ll pick that up at the end. Now I want to make one particular application of this to begin with. It is a dangerous financial strategy to get a low balance notification.
Your phone dings with a low balance notification. And then to keep spending like nothing is wrong. If you get a low balance notification, you probably should cover your bases and make sure you’ve got funds available before you go out on your next shopping spree. A low balance notification, you shouldn’t keep spending like nothing is wrong. But enough about Congress trying to pass a spending bill.
So likewise, it’s foolish to notice the check engine on your dashboard and keep driving. If the oil low light is flashing at you, digging at you, you should stop. You shouldn’t keep driving. If the low oil light is flashing, if the alarms are going off on your car, stop. Don’t do what I did when I was fresh out of high school and thought, oh, the low oil light is sort of like the low gas thing and you can keep going from Denver to Fort Collins.
That was a very expensive mistake, I’ll let you know. If there’s warning signs, you should stop and heed them and listen to them and correct course. But the gravest danger you can ever be in is to deliberately ignore your own sin and think that you can hide it away in some sealed compartment of your heart without it infecting your whole man.
It won’t affect the rest of you. It’s only my pinky toe that I’m injecting venom into. Surely that won’t harm the rest of me. No, if there’s a warning sign, you should stop and hear the warning. Amos, along with the other prophets of his time, he was a contemporary with Isaiah and Hosea, and so they’re giving their warnings. And then, of course, later on, one of my favorite prophetic, Ezekiel has this wonderful line. He says, have I not hewn them by the prophets?
If you remember from chapter 7, they even told him, they told Amos what? Go away. Move along now. Go back to the south. Go back to the farm, little farm boy.
We don’t want to hear it. We’re done. Stop it. Move along. The prick of conviction you feel when you sin in some way while uncomfortable is not a sign that something is wrong. So when the preacher is talking about gossip or envy or lust or covetousness and he gets really particular, husbands, don’t be harsh with your wives. Wives, submit to your husbands.
Don’t obey your parents. When the preacher is preaching up a storm and he hits that nerve and you go, oh yeah, that’s me. I did that. I said that. Shouldn’t have done that. That prick of conviction isn’t a sign that something has gone wrong. It’s a sign that your ears are still open to hear what the Spirit says to the church. However, what Amos is warning Israel about here is a warning that we all must pause for a moment and think on.
He’s warning them that if they keep stopping their ears, God will make sure they stop hearing. In Romans 1, Paul talks about a judicial blindness falling upon those who know God but suppress the truth in unbelief. There is a judicial blindness that God sends as a judgment upon an individual or people, or in this text we would describe it as a judicial deafness, a deafness to hearing the word of the Lord,
which is a sign of God’s judgment. The most frightful thing would be to coast along dutifully attending church each week and convincing yourself that none of this applies to you. That sermon about envy doesn’t apply to you. You are not envious. That sermon about not coveting, that doesn’t apply to you. That sermon about husbands loving your wives like Christ loved the church, that doesn’t apply to you.
You don’t need to humble yourself. You don’t need to confess anything. You don’t need to make restitution for theft. You don’t need to change anything. You’re swell just the way you are. This is a sign we learn elsewhere in scripture of a sign of God’s judgment when someone has hardened their heart and won’t hear anymore. Lewis says there are two sorts of people.
There are two sorts of people. Those who say to God, thy will be done. I want to serve you, I want to honor you, I want to follow you. And those to whom God says, thy will be done. He gives them over to their lust, as Romans 1 talks about. A good example of this is the argument over abortion. If you’ve ever done evangelism or
any sort of pro-life advocacy, you’ll know that you can have the arguments with people and make all the cases for why a child in the womb is made in the image of God and therefore is deserving of equal protection under the law, should be preserved and guarded, should not be aborted. You can describe all of that and they’ll say, well, yeah, it’s just a fetus. And you say, well, what is, all you Latin scholars out there, what is fetus Latin for? Baby, right?
You can make the whole argument, you can have the compelling case, you can describe it all, and yet at the end of the day, I had this happen just a week ago, described it all, made the case, gave all the scientific evidence, and at the end of the day, this gal I was talking with insisted, no, it’s fine to kill the baby up to birth. And maybe even after. What is that other than judicial deafness?
The cotton swabs of pride in your ear and saying, I’m not going to listen anymore. Their conscience is seared. In other words, there is something worse than the embarrassment and discomfort of humbly confessing your sin and making things right with those you wronged. Now, none of us like the fact that when we realize we did something wrong and we need to make it right, none of us like the humiliation of going and making it right to the person we wronged. That’s uncomfortable.
But there’s something worse than that. God can give you over to delusion. He can send, according to Amos, he can send a famine of hearing his word. He can leave you in your little make-believe world where you think you can ignore all his warning signs, that you’re heading for a cataclysmic crash, and you think you can still pull out of your tailspin before going splat into the ground. In other words, it is a fearful thing when the alarms stop going off.
In other words, hear the warning. When you feel that prick of conviction, act upon it. Don’t sit on your hands. Don’t ignore it. Don’t push it to the corners. Don’t think that you can push that sin to a spot of your heart where it won’t infect other parts of you. No, confess it right away. Amos gives us here in this text a few surprises here at the end.
In the first part of Amos, if you recall from a couple weeks ago, Amos began with some oracles of judgment against the nations. He kind of does this scattershot of the different nations. He begins with Israel’s neighbors, Damascus, Gaza, and Tyre. And he kind of runs through, here’s what they’re doing wrong. And you can imagine the Israelites hearing this message going, yeah, that’s right. They are the worst. That’s right. We don’t like what they’re doing. Yeah.
Amos, let them have it. And then Amos moves on to the sins of Israel’s ancient relatives, the Edomites, the Ammonites, the Moabites. And you can imagine the Israelites nodding along saying, yeah, give it to them. Give it to them hot. Preach about their sins. We’ve all kind of done it when we’ve sharpened our elbow and jab our spouse or the pastors preaching on children not squabbling with one another, siblings not fighting with one another.
And you can see the mom sort of giving the wag of her finger. You’re listening, right, honey? We’ve all thought, oh, so-and-so really should be here to hear this sermon today. Right? I wish those people out there could hear this sermon. And we do wish they could hear this sermon. So Amos goes to Israel’s neighbors, berates their sins, moves on to Israel’s relatives, the Edomites, Ammonites, Moabites,
and then he tells the sins of her sister, the southern kingdom, Judah. And you can imagine, yeah, get them. And then the surprise at the beginning of the book. Amos lumps Israel in with the heathens. Not special, not the covenant people, but you’re like the heathens. He lumps them in with the heathens. That’s the first surprise that Amos gives us.
The second surprise is found here in chapter 8. The verdant blessings of a restored Eden, which was, when you read the description of Moses as he’s approaching the promised land, the imagery there is depicting a restored Eden. It was to be the defining feature of the promised land. But we find here, I hope you picked up on it, it’s de-creation language. It’s all falling apart. It’s going nasty. It’s going sideways. The sun is going black. The moon,
the earth is turning into a flood. The Deuteronomic blessings will decompose into the Deuteronomic curses. The shire will become Mordor. The water will turn dry. The sun will cease to shine. The Lord, who once fought for them as a man of war to deliver them from Egypt, will fight against them, treating them as a new Egypt. Amos’ message is not one initial.
Those are the two surprises that Israel has now lumped in with the heathen. She’s not been a people separate. She’s not been acting like a chosen people.
A people belonging to God, singing forth the praises of him who has called her out of darkness into his marvelous light. That’s the first surprise. The second surprise is that this promised land, this new Eden, is being decreated. Lights out on it. It’s being turned upside down and inside out. That’s shocking and surprising. And yet they don’t hear it. They don’t heed it. They stubbornly continue. And of course, with the Assyrian conquest, this all comes to pass.
It’s surprising and shocking, but rather than drawing the curtains closed on a tragedy, a tragic scene of utter sorrow and devastation, the book of Amos closes as a comedy. Amos has two more stunning reversals, two more stunning surprises. Like a phoenix from the ashes, Amos surprises us with reversals of those first two surprises. The first reversal is that God would rebuild Israel by restoring the tabernacle of David.
And the surprise here is that Edom and all the heathen, there in verse 12, would join Israel in that restoration. Look at verse 12. So remember the first surprise was Israel was lumped in with the heathen. But here, at this turning of the tide, as the curtains of tragedy, we think are closed. It turns to a comedy and glory.
And joy begins to shine forth, for the heathen are brought into this new tabernacle of David, along with Israel. They would join Israel in that restoration. That’s the first glorious surprise, reversing the first devastating one. The second surprise reversal is that by means of this restored Davidic tabernacle, look at how the book ends.
By means of this restored Davidic tabernacle, the earth would burst with a fruitfulness of grain and wine. The wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord. Look at the language at the end of this book. He says there’s going to be grain on Mount Everest, as it were, and the harvesters are going to catch up with the sowers.
The harvesters are going to catch them because the growth is happening so rapidly. And the valleys are going to be full of wine and songs will rise and the people will be planted in the land. And this reverses the decreation language of earlier. The wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord. But one last surprise is here.
Now that’s a bit surprising. Now the tabernacle of David, when David became king in Jerusalem, remember the Ark of Covenant had its sojourns. The Philistines had taken it off and it was in a house off in a different village. And when David brings it back into Jerusalem, the tabernacle was in Shiloh at that time. Moses’ tabernacle was in Shiloh.
So what David did when the Ark of Covenant came back into Jerusalem, he built a tabernacle wherein the Ark of Covenant rested in the middle and he set up choirs to sing praise to God day and night without ceasing. These Levitical choirs would sing and the glory of the Lord was there. The tabernacle of David was a house not filled with the smoke of burnt sacrifices, but with the songs of prayer.
James, the apostle James, presiding at the Jerusalem council in Acts 15, declared that the ingathering of the Gentiles because of Paul and Peter’s ministry, James tells us that’s a fulfillment of Amos’ prophecy, that the tabernacle of David was being restored. This tabernacle of, not of smoke and sacrifice, but of
song, was being restored as the Gentiles were being brought in to join the covenant people of God in praise to Jehovah. This is the great surprise of the new covenant. Our worship, our worship here, the worship of the church of Jesus Christ is the fulfillment of Amos’ vision. By Christ’s death and resurrection, this glorious reversal is made possible. Christ is that tabernacle of David.
And this means that the church is that house composed of all nations, tribes, and tongues, made clean by the blood of the everlasting covenant which Christ established. Here in our worship, as we worship God rightly, as our hearts are made clean through the blood of Christ, as we’ve trusted in him, we’ve heard his assurance of the forgiveness of our sins. As we come to him saying, we want to worship you according to your word. And that means we need to humble ourselves and say, it’s not of good that I’ve done.
As we worship God rightly, as we worship God by the blood of Christ, as we confess our sins and turn to him in true evangelical faith, repenting and forsaking our sins, and as we join with God’s people to give God glory and praise in our songs, in sitting under the word, in partaking of the supper together, here in our worship, this is how God is renewing and remaking the world out there.
Our worship, then, is not some quaint, quiet, polite, politically correct thing to do. It’s not just a box to check off. Our worship here is a potent thing.
Our service to God here in the courts of our King by the Spirit is made potent out there. So then, as you work on spreadsheets or try to fold fitted sheets, whether you apply yourself to the homework or to housework, it is undergirded by the covenant word proclaimed, praised, and partaken of here.
This is the great surprise. This is the glorious surprise. This is the best surprise. That God is taking over the world in the most unexpected way. By this. By bread and wine. By gathered saints. Look at us. We’re all different. We’re all from many nations, tribes, and tongues. Across the world right now, there are saints worshiping God according to Scripture, through the blood of Christ, by the power of the Spirit, and God says,
That’s how I’m going to recreate the world. This is the great surprise, that God is overtaking the world in the most unexpected way. A house, the house of David, the tabernacle of David, a house filled with songs, a house where the living word is heard with open ears, a house whose door is cleansing water, a house which hosts a banquet of bread and wine.
Let’s pray. Our good and gracious Father, we thank you that by the worship of the living God, by the blood of the covenant, by the blood of the everlasting covenant, because you sent your Son to lay down his life in our stead and that you’ve regenerated us by the renewing grace of your Holy Spirit, we now come to you to offer our prayers and our praises to sit under your word and we trust and we know that in this worship you are truly
turning over the world, you are recreating the world, you are renewing us and therefore that one day the earth shall be full of the knowledge of the glory of the Lord as waters cover the sea. I pray that you would give us, your saints, grace to worship in this way, to humbly serve you both here in our corporate worship and in our private daily lives that we would offer up our worship to you.