Calamity Comes from the Lord

March 29, 2020 in Bible - OT - Amos, Coeur d'Alene Issues, Confession, Ecclesiology, Homosexuality, Human Condition, Judgment, Justice, King Jesus, Lord's Day, Meditations, Politics, Providence, Responsibility, Sin, Sovereignty of God, Trials

Amos 3:1–6 (NKJV)

1Hear this word that the Lord has spoken against you, O children of Israel, against the whole family which I brought up from the land of Egypt, saying: 2“You only have I known of all the families of the earth; Therefore I will punish you for all your iniquities.” 3Can two walk together, unless they are agreed? 4Will a lion roar in the forest, when he has no prey? Will a young lion cry out of his den, if he has caught nothing? 5Will a bird fall into a snare on the earth, where there is no trap for it? Will a snare spring up from the earth, if it has caught nothing at all? 6If a trumpet is blown in a city, will not the people be afraid? If there is calamity in a city, will not the Lord have done it?

Amos reminds us that when calamity comes, it comes from the loving hand of the Lord for the benefit of His people. God had rescued Israel from Egypt. But rather than fear and serve the Lord, Israel had rebelled against Him, worshiped idols, and committed iniquity. While God had permitted the nations to wander astray and to pursue their own course in the old covenant, He had chosen Israel as His own peculiar people. Consequently, He refused to let them remain in their sin. Whom the Lord loves, He disciplines, even as a father the son in whom he delights (Prov 3:12).

Therefore, the Lord acted to chastise Israel for her sin and to bring her back to the Lord. The calamity that was striking Israel in Amos’ day was clearly from the hand of God. Amos uses a series of rhetorical questions, the answers to which are patently obvious, to emphasize this. These questions culminate in the final one, “If there is calamity in a city, will not the Lord have done it?” Of course! After all, He is the Sovereign Lord and the Ruler of His people Israel.

Given that this calamity was from the Lord, what ought Israel to do? She ought to acknowledge her sin, return to the Lord, and cry out for His forgiveness. It may be that God would relent of His punishment:

14Seek good and not evil, That you may live; So the Lord God of hosts will be with you, As you have spoken. 15Hate evil, love good; Establish justice in the gate. It may be that the Lord God of hosts Will be gracious to the remnant of Joseph. (Amos 5:14-15)

Amos insists that if the people of Israel repent and return to the Lord, loving His law and seeking His forgiveness, God may relent of the harm that He has brought. He may bless Israel and restore her.

So what does Amos teach us? Whereas in the old covenant, God dealt almost exclusively with the nation of Israel, in the new covenant God is calling all men everywhere, God is summoning all nations, to turn from their sin and to worship Him through His Son Jesus. Even as the Lord summoned Israel to repent by punishing her for her iniquities, so God is summoning us to repent. The calamity that has come upon us is from the Lord. Will we give heed, turn from our sin, and turn in faith to Jesus Christ, crying out for forgiveness and mercy? Or will we harden ourselves in our unbelief and our iniquity?

As the people of God, let us lead the way in seeking the Lord and His favor for our people. Let us confess our sins and the sins of our people to the Lord and seek His forgiving and empowering grace, praying that He would have mercy upon us as a people and draw us back to Him, back to the truth. We will have a time of silent confession followed by the corporate confession found in your bulletin. As we confess our sins to the Lord, let us kneel together as you are able.

Meditating on 9/11

September 12, 2016 in Bible - OT - Amos, Coeur d'Alene Issues, Judgment, Meditations, Politics, Providence
Amos 3:6 (NKJV)
6 If a trumpet is blown in a city, will not the people be afraid? If there is calamity in a city, will not the LORD have done it?
Amos reminds us today that as certainly as a trumpet gains the attention of those who hear it, so calamity that strikes a people comes from the hand of Yahweh, the Sovereign Lord. Providentially we find ourselves worshiping today on September 11th – the 15th anniversary of the attacks on the World Trade Center. It is appropriate, therefore, to remember that events such as these are not random or haphazard. They don’t come because of chance or random mutation.
Calamities such as this are the result of two quite different wills – the will of sinful man and the will of Almighty God. On the one hand, the attack on the World Trade Centers was the result of cowardly and sinful Islamic terrorists whose conception of justice and service for Allah is perverse and damnable. Their willingness to strike civilian targets highlights their barbaric cruelty, a cruelty which mimics that of Simeon and Levi against the inhabitants of Shechem, a cruelty which will end in judgment and destruction.
Alongside this sinful and criminal will of the terrorists is the holy and righteous will of God. God struck America. God used the wicked and inexcusable actions of sinful men to accomplish His holy and righteous purposes. Even as God long ago used the nation of Assyria to strike His people Israel for their wickedness (cf. Is 10:5ff), so He has used these terrorists to strike us. So why has He done so? What are His purposes? Calamities of this sort are sent by God to remind us of our collective sin, to warn us of the inevitability of judgment when we turn away from Him, and to call us to repentance and the practice of righteousness.
So in the last fifteen years have we given heed to God’s warning, to God’s call? Not at all. We have continued in our headstrong way, despising God, despising His law, sanctioning wickedness. In the last fifteen years we have continued to worship other gods; we have continued to practice no-fault divorce; we have continued to slaughter our unborn; we have continued to permit and even celebrate sexual perversity. We slander our neighbors, give heed to the proud and the haugty, and have candidates for the highest office in the land who are both known for their deceitfulness. Rather than destroying all the wicked of the land, we have begun officially leading boys and girls astray by saying that male and female are malleable. Many of our states and even our own city have extended public protections to perverse behaviors and our federal government has imposed same sex unions upon us. In the last fifteen years, we have doubled down in rebellion against God, calling good evil and evil good.

So what ought we to do as the people of God? We ought to cry out, “Lord, have mercy!” We ought to humble ourselves under the mighty hand of God, confess our own sins and the sins of our people, plead with Him to forgive our sins through the shed blood of Jesus Christ, and petition Him to deliver us from our rebellion by the power of His Spirit. As we come into the presence of God this morning, therefore, let us begin by kneeling and confessing our sins to the Lord. We’ll have a time of silent confession followed by the corporate confession found in your bulletin.

Turning the Clock Back

March 19, 2012 in Bible - OT - Amos, Meditations

Amos 2:6–8 (NKJV)
6 Thus says the Lord: “For three transgressions of Israel, and for four, I will not turn away its punishment, Because they sell the righteous for silver, And the poor for a pair of sandals. 7 They pant after the dust of the earth which is on the head of the poor, And pervert the way of the humble. A man and his father go in to the same girl, To defile My holy name. 8 They lie down by every altar on clothes taken in pledge, And drink the wine of the condemned in the house of their god.
Amos was a prophet to Israel. Thus far in his list of judgments, however, Amos has addressed the nations that surrounded Israel and we can imagine the Israelites cheering at each full stop. “Yes, judge those Moabites, judge those Philistines, judge those Ammonites and Edomite and Judahites. They deserve it.” But the Lord of all, the Lion who has roared forth from Jerusalem, has simply been circling his prey. The real object of his attention is Israel.
What were Israel’s transgressions? It is instructive to note that whereas Amos only mentions the central transgression of the other nations, Israel’s transgressions are explained at length. Rather than seeking to protect the poor and the weak, they are exploiting and abusing them. Rather than honoring the sacredness of the sexual act, they are profaning and prostituting it. Rather than giving thanks for the gift of wine, they are corrupting it. Such are their sins. Israel is a society in moral decline and disarray.
Lilian, Jose, and I are reading C.S. Lewis’ The Voyage of the Dawn Treader. Early in the voyage, King Caspian pays an unexpected visit to part of his domain, the Lone Islands. The Governor of the Lone Islands, Governor Gumpas, is a practical man, a man who looks at charts and figures and statistics and rules and laws but who has little use for a king or for ideals. Consequently, Gumpas has permitted the slave trade to grow up in the islands.
When Caspian arrives, he confronts Gumpas for allowing such a filthy trade to be practiced in the islands that had always been forbidden. Gumpas replies that the trade is absolutely essential for the present prosperity of the islands; an essential export. Caspian declares that whether it is essential or not, it must stop.
You see Caspian was a man of principle who understood that whether certain activities are economically viable or not they are wrong and therefore to be opposed. He knew that there is One who rules over the affairs of men and nations. Caspian was a servant of the Great Lion Aslan and understood that he held his post in trust. He knew that the slave trade not only debased these men and women who were made in the image of God but also angered the true Ruler of the Lone Islands who would demand an account. So it must stop.
But Gumpas was a practical man. He was a politician, one who, like former Missouri Senator John Danforth, insists that the essence of political discourse is compromise. So he responds to Caspian’s demand with disbelief – and listen to the words that Lewis so fittingly puts into his mouth – “But that would be putting the clock back! Have you no idea of progress, of development?”
Such a question was of course a distraction, a straw man. For progress can only be defined if we have some object toward which we are heading. Gumpas’ object was revenue – so anything that increases revenue is progress, the slave trade is progress. Caspian’s object was honor and virtue. Consequently, the slave trade was not progress but regress.
We find ourselves in the midst of a cultural slide; a slide, as Robert Bork once wrote, toward Sodom and Gomorrrah. When we oppose this slide, we often hear the words of Gumpas, “But that would be putting the clock back! Have you no idea of progress, of development?” Those who define progress as simple economic growth or as moving closer to unbridled license will inevitably express shock and disbelief when others come and oppose them. But this is our calling. We are to stand against immorality, impurity, and tyranny that parades itself as progress. We are to keep ourselves unstained from the world. For one day the Lord of all will act and will judge all those societies that degenerate into filth and decay even as he judged the nation of Israel.
So reminded that true progress means becoming more like the Lord of all, more like the King who rules and reigns over us, let us kneel and confess that rather than progressing we have regressed. We will have a time of private confession followed by the public confession found in your bulletin.

Made in the Image of God

March 5, 2012 in Bible - OT - Amos, Human Condition, Meditations

Amos 2:1–3 (NKJV)
1 Thus says the Lord: “For three transgressions of Moab, and for four, I will not turn away its punishment, Because he burned the bones of the king of Edom to lime. 2 But I will send a fire upon Moab, And it shall devour the palaces of Kerioth; Moab shall die with tumult, With shouting and trumpet sound. 3 And I will cut off the judge from its midst, And slay all its princes with him,” Says the Lord.
In our text today the prophet Amos pronounces the Lord’s judgment upon the kingdom of Moab. Moab was situated just opposite the Dead Sea from Israel and just north of the kingdom of Edom. Between Moab and Edom there was frequent strife and warfare.
In 2 Kings chapter 3 we are informed of one particular battle between these two kingdoms that occurred some years prior to Amos’ prophecy. The battle went against the Moabites. So, in great extremity, the king of Moab endeavored to break through the army of Edom and slay their king. He failed. And when he saw that all was nearly lost and that his kindgom was likely to be destroyed, the king of Moab made the shocking decision to sacrifice his eldest son to implore the help of his god. The sacrifice worked – the Edomites and their allies retreated in disarray.
However, from this day forth, the king of Moab nursed a grudge against the king of Edom, longing for revenge for the death of his son. And some time later either he himself or one of his descendants took his revenge by burning the king of Edom’s bones to lime. As Matthew Henry remarks, the king of Moab “seized him alive and burnt him to ashes, or slew him and burnt his body, or dug up the bones of their dead king…and, in token of his rage and fury, burnt them to lime, and perhaps made use of the powder of his bones for the white-washing of the walls and ceilings of his palace, that he might please himself with the sight of that monument of his revenge.”
The actions of the king of Moab are condemned in the harshest terms by God. Even as the king of Moab burned the king of Edom, God will burn down the king of Moab’s kingdom. And the very fact that God condemns the Moabites for an offense against the Edomites illustrates that God is not only concerned for how men treat His elect people but for how they treat one another. Man’s inhumanity to man is an affront to the God in whose image we are created as human beings.
Amos’ words remind us that as human beings we bear the very image of our Creator and that we must, therefore, treat fellow human beings – even those who are our enemies – with honor and respect. Revenge is forbidden; cruelty is forbidden; inhumanity is forbidden.
The Apostle James chastises his readers for misusing their tongue simultaneously to “bless our God and Father, and [to] curse men, who have been made in the [image] of God. Out of the same mouth proceed blessing and cursing. My brethren, these things ought not to be so.” (Jas 3:8-11) And if it is offensive to God when we defame the image of God in our neighbor with our words then how much more when we debase image of God with such extreme inhumanity as is charged against the king of Moab.
Calvin writes:
“The Lord commands all men without exception ‘to do good’ [to everyone even though] the great part of them are most unworthy if they be judged by their own merit. But here Scripture helps in the best way when it teaches that we are not to consider [what] men merit of themselves but to look upon the image of God in all men, to which we owe all honor and love…”
After some examples Calvin concludes:
“Assuredly there is but one way in which to achieve what is not merely difficult but utterly against human nature: [namely], to love those who hate us, to repay their evil deeds with benefits, to return blessings for reproaches. It is that we remember not to consider men’s evil intention but to look upon the image of God in them, which cancels and effaces their transgressions, and with its beauty and dignity allures us to love and embrace them.”
The king of Edom had been made in the image of God and should have been treated with reverence by the king of Moab – instead he was debased and desecrated.
So what of us? Murder is not limited to the actions – Jesus traces it to the heart. So are we reverencing the image of God in our children? The image of God in our employees? The image of God in our neighbors? The image of God in our enemies? This is our calling.
Reminded that we often overlook the majesty of the men and women and children with whom we interact, let us kneel and confess our sins to the Lord. We will have a time of private confession followed by the public confession found in your bulletin.

The Sin of Abortion

March 1, 2012 in Abortion, Bible - OT - Amos, Meditations

Amos 1:13–15 (NKJV)
13 Thus says the Lord: “For three transgressions of the people of Ammon, and for four, I will not turn away its punishment, Because they ripped open the women with child in Gilead, That they might enlarge their territory. 14 But I will kindle a fire in the wall of Rabbah, And it shall devour its palaces, Amid shouting in the day of battle, And a tempest in the day of the whirlwind. 15 Their king shall go into captivity, He and his princes together,” Says the Lord.
This last Wednesday marked the beginning of a roughly 40 day period that has since the 10th century been called Lent. This period calls us to anticipate and prepare for the celebration of the great feast of Easter – that most momentous of holy days when we commemorate the resurrection of our Lord Jesus from the dead. But the very fact that we celebrate His resurrection reminds us that Jesus died – died for our sin and rebellion, died for our transgressions. And Jesus’ death reminds us that we are called to die to sin, to die to the old Adam, the way of life that despises God and His law and substitutes human wisdom in its stead. And so Lent is appropriately  a time to focus upon specific sins that call for public confession and repentance.
In our congregation the specific issue that we have tied to this period of time is that of abortion. This is the greatest blot on our much blotted national character. Since 1973 we have slaughtered approximately 50 million children, 50 million children who will rise up and condemn this generation in the day of judgment.
Just this week Secretary of State Clinton called the actions of Russia and China “despicable” – that was her word – because they failed to authorize UN sanctions against Syria. In the last several months Syrian President Assad has used increasing force to suppress a rebellion in his country and several thousand individuals have lost their lives as a result.
Regardless of the Syrian question in itself, let me remind us all that this Hilary Clinton who declared the failure of Russia and China to stand against the death of a few thousand individuals in Syria “despicable” is the same Clinton whose hands are red with the blood of innocent children here within our own borders. This is the same Hilary Clinton whose husband while President and whose current President countenance the slaughter of millions of children while still in the womb. And she has the gall to declare the actions of Russia and China despicable? How dare we Americans condemn Syria for deaths in the thousands when each year we slaughter over a million of our own children within our very borders? Will not the Lord hold us accountable for such shameful hypocrisy? Indeed he will.
And it is this that our text from Amos declares to us today. The people of Ammon are condemned for ripping open the pregnant women of Gilead in order to expand their own borders. In other words, the people of Ammon slaughtered these children for their own advantage. They wanted greater power, greater welath, greater prestige, greater influence, greater control – and these children stood in the way of all that. And so Ammon slaughtered the infants of Gilead.
And is this not the driving force behind abortion? Selfish convenience? I want to avoid the shame of having conceived a child out of wedlock, so I slaughter my child. I want to have more disposable income, so I slaughter my child. I want to avoid the inconvenience of raising a child, so I slaughter my child. And what is God’s attitude toward such selfishness; nay, more than selfishness, evil? He detests and abhors it – and promises that His hand of judgment will fall on Ammon and bring her to the ground. 
And so reminded of our sin, reminded that like Ammon we have made war on those children yet in the womb, let us kneel and confess our sins to the Lord. We will have a time of private confession followed by the public confession found in your bulletin.

For Three Transgressions, even Four

January 30, 2012 in Bible - OT - Amos, King Jesus, Meditations

Amos 1:3-5
Thus says the LORD: 
    “ For three transgressions of Damascus, and for four,
      I will not turn away its punishment,
      Because they have threshed Gilead with implements of iron.
       4 But I will send a fire into the house of Hazael,
      Which shall devour the palaces of Ben-Hadad.
       5 I will also break the gate bar of Damascus,
      And cut off the inhabitant from the Valley of Aven,
      And the one who holds the scepter from Beth Eden.
      The people of Syria shall go captive to Kir,”
      Says the LORD. 
A couple weeks ago we began a series of exhortations from the prophet Amos. God chose the sheepherder Amos to speak the Word of God to the corrupt people of Israel and Judah. However, before Amos speaks to the people of God, he speaks the Word of God to the nations around Israel. Though God was not in covenant with the nations surrounding Israel, he makes very clear that He is nevertheless their Ruler and Judge. He is Lord of all the nations of the earth.
In our text today God speaks a word of judgment on the nation of Syria with its capital at Damascus. The ancient king of Syria, a man by the name of Hazael, had been chosen by God Himself to rule Syria. Once a servant of the King of Syria, Hazael was sent to the prophet Elisha to discover whether the king would recover from his illness. There Eliasha announced that Hazael would be the next king of Syria. But even as Elisha made the announcement, he wept openly. Hazael, astonished, asked why he wept. And this was Elisha’s reply:
“Because I know the evil that you will do to the children of Israel: Their strongholds you will set on fire, and their young men you will kill with the sword; and you will dash their children, and rip open their women with child.”
It is for these cruelties that Syria is condemned by the prophet Amos:
“For three transgressions of Damascus, and for four,
         I will not turn away its punishment,
         Because they have threshed Gilead [in n. Israel] with implements of iron. 

So what would be the consequence of Syria’s cruelty toward the people of God? God would hold them accountable. He would bring down the throne of Hazael, destroy his palaces, bring desolation on his land and people, and take many of the Syrians into captivity – words that were fulfilled when the mighty nation of Assyria destroyed Damascus within the next 50 years.
Now if it was true that God was Lord of all the nations of the earth in the Old Covenant, when God was permitting the nations of the world by and large to go their own way, how much more true is it now that Jesus is exalted as the Ruler of all the nations. Jesus rules and reigns among the nations of the earth and calls them to implement justice, righteousness, and purity on the earth. And even as God executed judgment on the nations of the ancient world for three transgressions and for four, so Jesus executes judgment on the nations of the modern world. Why have the governments of Tunisia, Egypt and Libya fallen this year? Why is the modern nation of Syria facing serious unrest? Because Jesus rules and reigns in history and overthrows wickedness and injustice, especially when that injustice is practiced against His people. And so the call to all the nations is, “Kiss the Son lest he become angry and you perish in the way.” Jesus is remarkably patient; he waits for three transgressions, even four before he strikes. But strike he will if we refuse to give heed to Him – especially if we strike out against His people.
And this is a sober reminder; after all our own nation is practicing cruelty. We are threshing the unborn with implements of iron, slaughtering our children in the womb; we are removing ancient boundary stones and meddling in affairs that are not our own; we are corrupting ourselves and others through the perversity and coarseness of our media; for three transgressions and for four Jesus judges – so let us kneel and confess our sins, requesting that God in His mercy would grant us repentance.

Calamity is from the Lord

September 12, 2011 in Bible - OT - Amos, Meditations, Sovereignty of God

Amos 3:6 (NKJV)
6 If a trumpet is blown in a city, will not the people be afraid? If there is calamity in a city, will not the Lord have done it?

Today is the 10th anniversary of the bombing of the World Trade Towers. Numerous remembrances and analyses of the tragedy are being held today and so it is fitting to reflect on this event in the light of Scripture so that we are training ourselves to think rightly about it.

As we see in our text today, the wicked action perpetrated by Islamic terrorists on September 11, 2001 was planned and orchestrated by God Himself. “If there is calamity in a city,” Amos asks rhetorically, “will not the Lord have done it?” Amos expects us to answer yes. The Lord will have done it.

For many, even many Christians, such an answer is hard to swallow. How can we believe that the Lord has done this? But if we are to allow the Word of God to be our guide then we must certainly insist that He did it. God declares through Isaiah, “I form the light and create darkness, I make peace and create calamity, I the Lord do all these things.”

But knowing that the Lord has done it, that the Lord orchestrated the event, does not answer the question, “Why?” We know from the story of Job that not all calamity comes as a judgment, comes as a result of our sin. Sometimes God visits calamity upon us for His own mysterious reasons. However, we also know from Scripture that there are times when God does send calamity as a judgment, sends calamity because we have rebelled against Him and embraced darkness and death. God is not mocked – what a man sows that he also reaps. And when we reap judgment God sends it to call us back from our sin and urge us to worship Him anew.

So what are we to think of the World Trade Center disaster? Why did this happen? I don’t presume to know all the reasons. However, I do know that we Americans are a guilty people fully deserving of such a calamity. While we imagine ourselves upright, we are corrupt. We are fornicators. We congratulate others when they make a “score.” And when the orgasm is over and a child is conceived through our folly, we slaughter the child and have the gall to declare, “God bless America.” Not only are we fornicators, we are covenant breakers. We scorn faithfulness to the marriage bed and then express shock when our spouse commits adultery. Divorce is rampant; lawsuits have multiplied more than frogs in ancient Egypt. We swear to our own hurt and then hire an attorney to make sure that we never have to fulfill our vows. But not only are we fornicators and covenant breakers, we embrace death. Men have turned from the God-given desire for women and burned in their lust for one another, taking that which should give life and putting it in the canal of death; women have forsaken sexual satisfaction with a man and pursued fruitlessness with one another. And the hands of both men and women are dripping with the blood of our children and sometimes our infirm. Brothers and sisters, we are guilty, deserving of judgment.

Is there hope? Yes there is hope. God strikes – but when he strikes in judgment, He does so to remind us to turn from our sin and rebellion and to find shelter in the sacrifice of Jesus Christ. Through Jesus there is forgiveness – forgiveness for fornicators, covenant breakers, homosexuals, and murderers. Through Jesus there is forgiveness – forgiveness for nations that rebel against His law. And so we are reminded to confess our sin and to ask Him to show mercy to us and to not treat us as our sins so richly deserve. Let us kneel together as we do so.