Amos Chapter 1: Judgement on the Nations

Book of Amos is where we're at it's right after Joel we just did the book of Joel last week or finish the book of Joel last week and we're going to get into Amos I'm just going to go straight through the minor prophets and you know one of the one of the issues with going through some of the prophets as the is the fact that many times what we're dealing with is the end of a nation and so that's been the case with the book of Joel it was a case with a book of Hosea and it's going to be the case with the Book of Amos too and anytime that you're dealing with the end of the net and end of a nation and specifically this is the end of the nation of Israel and then later on it's going to Amos is going to be talking about Judah to obviously there's a bunch of judgment in it and so when you're going through your Bible and you run into a book like this it's really important that you keep it all in context and context in your life and in context and in the passage in the Word of God and the reason I'm telling you that is because a lot of times people take everything in the Bible personally right and so everything in the Bible is meant personally but there are some verses that aren't for you at the at the point that you're in necessarily and so you know if you're walking with Jesus and you have a right heart towards him you're in love with him you can you know you were you just have a real walk with them confessing your sins you have it have the joy of the Lord being filled with the Holy Spirit and you just have a right on walk with him then most of the stuff that you're going to run into when you go through the minor prophets specifically and some of the major prophets also they're not going to be for you in the sense that it applies to you right now but it's good stuff and the reason that it's good stuff is because you want to learn from somebody else's bad example you know before I came up to the tri-cities I went in talked to my old pastor and we were having a conversation about coming up and starting a church up here and that that kind of stuff and one of the one of the questions that came up was one of the things he asked me was about how things were going in my life and think things like that and so I talked to him about a few things and some of it had to do with some struggles I that were going on because of issues with certain people in church and in that kind of stuff and basically what he told me was you know what you can learn from good examples or you can learn from bad examples but you still learn and so you know it's absolutely true there there are things that you want to learn by experience so the power of the Holy Spirit I want to have an experience with God where God's powerfully working in my life answers to prayer I want to experience those me you know in a personal way my relationship with god I want to hear from him I want to know that he's there I want to I want to see God do things in my life that that kind of stuff I don't and I want to hear his voice and so all of those things i want to learn by personal experience but all the junk I want to learn from somebody else's personal experience I don't know i don't i don't want to learn by doing when it's all the junk in the judgment and and that kind of stuff and so this is one of the that's one of the things that you can get out of the old testament prophets when we're going through and we're looking at some of the judgment stuff that goes on because there are issues that you come up against when you're going through these kinds of books that speak about how these people got there and so many times Satan in trying to tempt you and trying to get you to turn away from Jesus and try and if you won't turn away from Jesus in trying to wreck your walk he's not going to come up in a black cape and going in and I want to kill you or something he's not he's not going to reveal everything that he's doing but what he will do is come up and try to get you to compromise in all kinds of different areas so that you'll start getting yourself in a position where God can no longer bless you and we're actually and get into a position where you start having an attitude towards God and that kind of thing and compromise is not something that believers are supposed to be doing we don't compromise if God has said something that we need to be doing the things that God says and the reason again that he says those things so that we would have a blessed life and not to wreck our fund that kind of stuff compromise is not a good thing and so I don't want to I don't want to be going to the Word of God and explaining things away that kind of stuff I got a joke about compromisers there's a dude who's out bear hunting and he comes up on this bear and he thinks he's got the drop on him but he goes to he goes to shoot the bear and his gun misfires and the bear rises up and comes walking over to him and the bear is is like what are you doing and the hunter joke goes you know what I just want a fur coat and the bear goes you know what all I want is a good meal let's compromise and so what ended up happening but was the bear walked out of the woods and you ever saw the hunter again and both of them got what they wanted yeah the bear got the meal the hunter got the fur coat and that's what that's what happens when you compromise with the enemy it's what happens when you compromise with the world you ended up you end up getting devoured and that is specifically one of the examples that God uses in the Book of Amos specifically for the for the people of Israel so let's get into it let's pray before we start and just ask the Lord to bless the time father we we just want to come before you and again Lord we thank you that you're a god who not only loves us and blesses us but you give us warnings to and the warnings are there to keep us into place where you can bless us fathers were going through the Book of Amos we we pray that the issues that come up and and the things that specifically the people of Israel did to put themselves in not a place of blessing but in a place where you had to discipline them Laura we just pray that those things would just be plain and straightforward and that we learn from them and we'd never go there where we love you and we want to we want to follow you with a true and a pure heart and so Lord we just pray that you bless the time that we spend in your words speak to us now and we ask that you do this all in Jesus name Amen okay look at Amos the name Amos itself means burden bearer and whenever I go through a book like this I give you some basics on the date I'm not going to dayton in the themes and that kind of stuff I'm not going to spend a lot of times on it time on it but in verse 1 it says the words of Amos who was among the sheep breeders of toccoa which he saw concerning Israel in the days of uzziah king of Judah and in the days of jeroboam the son of joash king of Israel two years before the earthquake now the prophecies that are given here during the time of Uzziah Uzziah rain from 767 of 739 bc and then Jeroboam that's use I as the king of the southern kingdom of Judah and the Jeroboam is a king of the northern kingdom of israel and he reigns from 782 to 753 and so when you're looking at the prophecy of Amos you're looking at somewhere in the mid 750 750 5 to 7 58 bc is when this stuff has taken place do you guys remember when israel goes into captivity remember the date I talk about it all the time nope not 786 that was close that's a mixture 722 BC 722 BC is when Israel gets carted off into captivity it's 586 when when judah gets taken off to Babylon and so this has written about 30 years before israel's going into captivity ok he's from the town of toccoa says in the passage he's one of the sheep breeders of toccoa and tuco as a place about 12 miles south of Jerusalem and in this passage right here he describes himself as a herdsman and over in Chapter seven he says it that he also has a part-time job picking sycamore fruit which is wild figs basically and so this guy is a farmer this guy's a rancher he's not somebody who was born into a Prophet's family he's not somebody that chose the calling himself he was called by God there was a school of prophets in Israel at the time and Amos wasn't one of the guys that was from the school of prophets he was somebody that was just a we would call him blue-collar worker and he was just out doing the things that he was doing to earn his keep that kind of stuff and it was probably a family business that he had and he probably had no thought of becoming or even being recognized as a prophet as many who today kind of select that you know that job for a career you know I don't really have a problem with people who want to be teachers or people who want to be pastors and and that kind of thing but frankly I it was never something that I picked myself it would never you know I've told you my story before it would never be something that I would pick public speaking I you know I'm just like anybody else public speaking was my major fear and so when I was when I was in high school FFA my freshman year they made me do a speech and I still remember it to this day I remember the faces of the kids that were in that classroom I remember sitting there with my stupid three-by-five cards that I had practiced over and over at home I supposed to give a ten minute speech you know how long it was yeah I was less than three minutes it was like boom boom boom boom boom boom and then I've said there and this is for a grade and you got trying to I realize want to get to the end that that I'm going I'm going to lose it as far as time goes and you know I'm trying to just kind of make stuff up as it goes and just sweating like crazy and everybody knows that I'm scared to death and I was not a public speaker and same thing later on when i became a christian we had a home bible study that me and about four or five other guys were involved in and I proved to everybody in the room that I did not have the gift of teaching by what I thought we took turns and when it came up to my turn I just remember like two weeks out because we had we had chosen up you know times that we were going to do this stuff and two weeks out I knew that my time was coming and it was one of those things where I where I was just overwhelmed couldn't sleep at night trying to figure out what God wanted me to say all this kind of stuff and and frankly I just didn't want to do it but I was going to do it because they asked me to and so I got there and I I did it and it was wrong I didn't even have the doctrine down rounds i was reading I was using something out of Romans and everybody actually a day before my buddy Gill had said hey what's going to teach on and I go will this passage right here and he goes what are you going to say and I tell him what I'm gonna say and he's like I don't think that's what that means I'm like shut up you don't know any more than me yeah and I go there there was a guy who there who was way older in the Lord he'd been a Christian for five years and and he was really nice and he told me that's not what that means and so we decided from that point on that he should be the teacher and I was the guy that that cemented that whole idea that certain people are not chosen to be teachers right and that was the case with me but then they're obviously came a time where God changed that whole thing and so I know that the gift of teaching is something that was a gift that was literally given to me I know the day it was given and after God gave it to me then all of a sudden I had a desire to share the word with people in in the first place I had a desire for it and when I did people got blessed by it and people came up and you know told me that they got blessed by it and it wasn't something that I just came up with on my own same thing with with Amos you know when God calls you to something he's the one who's going to enable you to do it and the the stuff that we do as Christians is not like the stuff that we do in the world in the sense of going and applying for a job and that kind of thing way too many people treat ministry like you know like a job application or something what I what what I'm supposed to be doing is what God built me for and that's what I'm supposed to be doing in life in general and hopefully if you got if you guys have kids that's what you're trying to point your kids forward to trying to figure out you know what what God has gifted them in and that kind of stuff train up a child in the way he should go not in the way that you want him to go and the way that he should go the Bible says and we need to be paying attention to that kind of stuff but it's the same thing for us too and so what we need what we need is to be looking at what God wants for us God where do you want me to be what do you want me to be doing and it's not always you know I want you to be this huge missionary you know have this huge missionary ministry to you know the Congo you know so many people default to that I think that God sending media to Africa you know who God sent to places to start churches in the first century the very best that's who he sent and so when you're when you're when you're talking about guys who went out and started to start at churches you're talking about Barnabas he was an awesome guy and you're talking about Paul the Apostle he was an awesome guy and so when you when you think about stuff that God wants you to do it's really important to have in mind that it needs to be God who's doing the calling because I don't have any business taken off to you know some place out in in the remote outskirts of the world to try to bring the gospel to people unless God's I'm inflicting myself on people do you guys think that about yourself that's what I think about me i inflict myself on you oh and it's like you know I I appreciate that you know sometimes you guys get blessed by it and that kind of that kind of stuff but I don't I don't have any I am just not deceived about Who I am you know and and so it's like the stuff that God doesn't me it's God doing it in me and I just want to be where Jesus wants me to be you know amen yeah and so it's the same thing for everybody we just need to be where Jesus wants us to be and if what Jesus wants me to be as a construction worker for the rest of my life you know just witnessing the guys on the job I'm cool with that I'm good with that and if what Jesus wants me to do you know be is a businessman I'm good with that and if what Jesus wants me to be as somebody who you know works in a in a retail store and I just witness to my friends there I'm good with that that's what I felt my life was going to be I thought I was going to work at a job for the for the rest of my life and then kind of shared the gospel with people maybe do some Bible studies on the side and that kind of stuff I never I never planned for this and what you have with Amos is exactly the same thing part of the point that I'm making here is that God wants to use you and he will use you he does this all the time he takes people who have no inkling that he wants to use them in a certain area and many times he's using them outside of the the their own abilities in in a sense of their own talents they I didn't have a talent for public speaking and I didn't have a talent for teaching that's that's not how we started this whole thing and what happened was God called me and then he enabled me it gave me the ability which lets you know that it doesn't matter what your ability level is right now what the issue is is where does God want you and when you figure out where God wants you then he enables you I'm stealing that from Paul he talked about that in Timothy so God's calling is God's enabling that's what God does with Amos in this passage and he probably figured that he was just going to be a sheep herder for the rest of his life but God had bigger plans for him and so Amos is kind of like David life in the fields a lot of alone time with God and in the you know God God is just working in his heart and God comes along at a certain point he begins Fanning the fuel into flame and the Herdmans the herdsmen becomes a radical spirit-filled profit and when God calls them to it there's no bargaining there's no questioning there's no inquiry about financial support he just goes off and does it and again I think that that's what believers should be doing I don't need this whole group of people supporting me to get the things done that God calls me to do I just need to go and get it done and that's kind of all the you know that that's kind of the way that it's always been I came up here when we when we came up to start the church up here we had nine people that came up with us and I really appreciated that we had a year-long prayer meeting before we came up you know why because over that year long prayer meeting I wanted the nine people to either have it really cemented in their mind that God wanted him to come or I wanted them to bail because I was an interested in coming with people who weren't interested in sticking you know sticking it out I was going to be here no matter what because this is where this is where God called me and so it was cool having those people here with me and that that was great and it was good support and stuff like that but I could have cared less if they came with me in the sense of not that I didn't care about them because I did but I could have cared less if they came with me because what whether they came with me or not this is where i was going to come and this is what i was going to do and so many times God may call you to something and then all of a sudden you stopped looking at the Lord and you start looking around for your support group and you know support groups are great but you don't need it you got the ultimate support group the Father Son and the Holy Spirit you know how do you need besides them and so again that's what happened with Amos in passage you just go so at that point years of solitude and prayer are brought to fruition and God starts using the guy there's a structure to the whole book and the first division is in chapters one and two and there are eight separate prophecies address to Damascus gap Gaza tired Edom am on or excuse me Ammon Moab Judah and Israel and in the second division is in chapters three through six and those are addressed to Israel the Northern Kingdom and the third division is chapter seven through nine and that's a personal history of Amos and again judgments the theme but you know what judgment prepares the way for glory and as we're going through the book we're going to be talking a lot about some of the things that guts has issues with with Judah and Israel but the book ends with five promises specifically for Israel's restored glory and so many times the reason that God is bringing judgment into a person's life it is because he wants to bless them in the end and that's what he wants to do with the people of Israel and so there again there's a there's a structure to these pronouncements and well let's let's get into it first it goes again the words of Amos who was among the sheep breeders of toccoa which he saw concerning Israel in the days of uzziah king of Judah and in the days of jeroboam the son of joash king of Israel two years before the earthquake by the way that earthquake is mentioned in the book of Isaiah it's mentioned the book of Joel it's mentioned in the book of Zechariah and it happened during the time of Jews I of the king and apparently was it was a pretty big one because a lot of people moved out of the area at that point in any case it goes on and says the Lord roars from Zion and utters his voice from Jerusalem the pastures of the Shepherd's morn on the top of Carmel withers and you know when when God starts off he starts off here with a with the voice of a lion basically and later on God's going to use that whole illustration of being a lion in chapter 3 when he's talking to Israel but it specifically says that he roars from Zion and editors his voice from Jerusalem and then it says the top of Carmel withers caramel is in the northern part of Israel and right below caramel is the valley of Jezreel and that's what we call the valley of Armageddon and one of the things that we ran into in the book of Joel and also in in other places in Old Testament prophecy is this whole thing with what Jesus is going to be doing when he comes back at the second coming and so the Bible specifically in Isaiah 63 says that when he comes back he's coming from Edom to Jerusalem and so Edom is in the southeast of Israel basically its southeast of Israel and there's a reason that he's coming from Edom and the reason is because that is an area that the Bible in the book of Revelation speaks about Israel being protected and it's not only in Revelation but it's about in some other passages in the book of Isaiah and even in well there's there's a few passages where it speaks about that and so God protects a lot of his people during the tribulation in the wilderness if when he comes from Edom to Jerusalem the Bible says that he's got a splatter on his robes and it's the splatter of blood and specifically the Prophet asks where the blood came from because he looked like he'd been trampling grapes and that's a theme that you have in the Old Testament and again that you have in the book of Revelation and when God's judgment it's going to comes it's going to be like you know God coming in trampling grapes and so what God says is these are my enemies and I've trampled them and so apparently he's taken some people out need him and there is a passage in revelation chapter 12 that talks about Satan pictures amazed a dragon spewing out a flood trying to get Israel in the wilderness and the flood a flood throughout the prophets as a symbolic of armies and so it looks like like right at the end that their armies sent out in the wilderness to take out a bunch of jews and what what the Lord does is it comes back in time to take out the armies then he lands in Jerusalem takes out armies that are dealing that are that are attacking people in the city of Jerusalem this is in Zechariah chapter 14 and then it talks about him going north to the valley of Armageddon and taking out a whole slew of armies there and so carmell is it overlooks the valley of Armageddon in this passage it says the top of Carmel withers I don't know if this if that all has to do with that but later on The Book of Amos we're going to get into some last day stuff in the day of the Lord and that kind of thing that may be pointing specifically to that in any case it goes on in verse 3 and he says thus says the Lord for three transgressions of Damascus and 44 I will not turn away its punishment because they have thrush Gilead with implements of iron but I will send a fire into the house of Hosea which shall devour the palaces of Ben hey Dad I will also break the gate bar of Damascus and cut off the inhabitant from the valley of oven and the one who holds the scepter from beth eaten the people of Syria shall go captive to cure says the Lord now there is this structure all the way through chapter 1 and into chapter 2 and what he's going to say is for three transgressions and 44 and it's a really familiar idiom or sentence structure that you have in the Bible it's it's seen a number of places I'll give you an example proverbs 30 verses 15 through 16 says this the leech has two daughters give and give there are three things that are never satisfied for never say enough see how that goes 3 and yet for okay for never say enough the grave the Barren womb the earth that is not satisfied with water and the fire never says enough so you have that structure all through Scripture and it's used for emphasis and so it's 3 not just three before you know it's kind of a kind of an emphasis thing there but in this case it may just be a poetic way of saying seven speaking of seven and the reason I say that is because when we get to basically what we're going to do is we're going to go through and we're going to talk about Damascus and then we're going to talk about Gaza and then we're going to talk about tire and all these different nations or cities that have come against Israel and it's always three and four three and four three and four all the way through until you get to Israel and then it's seven and it goes through and lists them all uses the same structure but then there are seven sins that are listed and so basically what you what you may have in these passages is a situation where you're not just talking about three or four sins that these guys committed but you're talking about seven and actually with each one of these cities and each one of these groups of people besides Israel there's only one mentioned okay and so the one that's mentioned for Damascus is that they threshed Gilly had with implements of iron that literally that they had no mercy on the people of northern Israel there's only one sin mention and the picture there is that this is the sin that went over the top and now God is done and so if we are talking about seven like that three and four you know equals seven if that's what we're talking about what is seven the number of in the Bible yeah it's a number of completeness and so you have completely sinned you have got you have gone completely in rebellion against me and now you're going to get judgment because of it and now I'm done and so God's done with each one of these groups and so you start off with the sin of Damascus in this passage hear the word sin is literally word that means rebellion or revolt and it's an indication that these nations had violated a covenant with a king it's literally a word that's used for violating a covenant with a king in these passages so who's the game yeah it's God and so when God is talking about what he's going to do to each one of these cities he's speaking at it from the point of view of a king who's coming into a vassal state or a state that's supposed to serve Him that's in rebellion against him and all the things that a king would do so for example it talks about I'm going to take out the you know your gate bar you know when they would close gates that we put the bar cross if you ever watch medieval movies and that kind of stuff that's that's what they're that's what they're talking about God's like I'm going to break the bar of your gate I'm going to bust your gates down and I'm coming in i'm going to taking people out is what i'm going to do and that's what a king would say at that time and so the people of Damascus would understand the language they would get this whole thing the other thing that you have with this is the Covenant thing that that is going on because if it's a sin and if that sin is a rebellion or revolt against God and that sin is the rebellion or revolt against a covenant with God these are not these are not godly nations so Damascus is not a nation that followed Jehovah and so how does God have a covenant with them and you know where the cabinet comes from it's from Genesis chapter 9 when they got off the boat there's a covenant that God made with all of mankind and remember what the sign of the Covenant was there's there's always a sign of a covenant whatever God has a covenant with somebody there's a sign that goes along with it so that every time that you see the sign you remember the Covenant you remember the promises that go with it and so covenant the sign of the covenant with Noah was what a rainbow and the promise of the Covenant was that God was never going to flood the earth again okay so have the has the earth been flooded well sure it has down in Texas there's a big huge flood this last spring right down in Colorado was it this last was it this last spring that there was a huge flood might have been the year before big huge flood in Colorado right there's floods on the Mississippi every single every single year we have floods in the Yakima River just about every year right so have there been floods yeah but they're local aren't they has there been a flood like the flood of Noah ya know there have been there have been earthquakes landslides off the coast of native of different nations there was one off the off the coast of India not too long ago a few years back and remember the tsunamis that came in was that a flood yeah there was an earthquake off the coast of Japan just a few years ago remember did you see the pictures of the tsunamis where they came in just took out whole villages wipe them out stuff like that those those are pretty significant floods right okay and so it has flooded but not like the days of Noah and the point that I'm making there is i'm just throwing so i'm just throwing that out to you because a lot of people try to make Noah's Flood a local flood and if Noah's Flood was a local flood then God didn't keep his promise did he write but what the Bible says is that Noah's Flood was a worldwide flood all the mountains of the of the earth were covered it says for a hundred and fifty days 150 days they were did you know that they were on the boat for over a year that's how long they were on Noah's Ark for over a year so that's not a local flood I'm not going to get into a whole thing on noah's ark but people go well where's all the water then you know how deep the oceans are seven miles you know what would happen if you flatten out the earth took the earth and just made it a big q-ball you know how deep the oceans would be two miles there's plenty of water to cover the earth just a matter of how high the continents are and so you know got all kinds of issues with that and I'm not going to again I'm not going to get into that I just taught on Noah's Flood not too long ago you can get the tapes on that any case it's the it's the promise of God in that covenant that God was not going to flood the earth again and there is another part of the Covenant that he threw in there and the other part of the Covenant guys remember what it was its government and what God says in the passage is that we're not going to do the same thing I'm paraphrasing we're not going to do the same thing that we were doing before the flood where everybody was you know all the thoughts of their hearts were only evil continually and you had all these people doing all this rotten stuff now what's going to happen is we are going to have people restrain people and so if anybody sheds man's blood the Bible says Noah's covenant if anybody sheds man's blood by man his blood will be shed because man was made in the image of who God and that's capital punishment so capital punishment was something that was instituted by God and it was to keep people from murdering other people and when you look at the word murder murder does not include capital punishment capital punishment is something that somebody gets because they have murdered it's not murder itself it is discipline on people who are out of line and that's that's what God has designed and what he says is the reason for that is because we are people who are made in God's image and so nobody has any business going up and for whatever reason that they come up with anger or jealousy or a fit of rage or whatever you don't have any right to take them another man's life and the Bible makes it clear that there are exceptions to that and so capital punishment is obviously one of the exceptions warfare is one of the exceptions to there are times when God calls the his people to war and Jesus for example commended soldiers did not tell them to change their trade he commended them remember the soldier who sent one of his servants because another servant was sick and Jesus said I have never seen faith like this in Israel and basically that soldier said I'm a man under command and when when when I tell my guys to do something they go and do it and I know that I don't need you in my house all you have to do is speak the word and it'll be done obviously he recognized Jesus's Authority and at that point Jesus turns to the to the Jews who are around him and goes I've never seen anything like this in Israel and it commends the guy same thing with John the Baptist some soldiers came up to him said what should we do and he didn't say quit your job he said just be satisfied with your pay and don't extort anybody and David was a david was a warrior he was a soldier actually each one of the kings of Israel where soldiers you know what I kind of think that presidents should have been in the military I'm kind of done with professional politicians and so in any case God sees that as something that is honorable Bible says that the King does not bear the sword in vain what do you do with a sword they stick people with it and what he said it's out of Romans chapter 13 and what he's talking about is again government controlling people and that control includes capital punishment so but again capital punishment was only laid out because in that passage for murder and so everybody who got off the boat was part of that covenant and so all the families of the earth including Damascus and including Gaza and including tire are under the covenant of Noah right guess what so are we we're under the covenant of Noah and so people who murder are to be judged they're not to be put up in a prison for seven years and then let off that's not what's supposed to be happening in fact the Bible talks about the fact that part of the reason that God took the people of Canaan and threw them out of the land was because the blend the land was soaked with blood and there was no justice you know what we have is a situation where within my lifetime the whole culture has started looking at other people and they they have no they had no inkling who they're dealing with when they're looking at the people who are around them every single one of us is made in the image of God and it's something that is total totally precious and totally valuable to the Lord and what's been happening over the last 40 or 50 years his life has been cheapened on every level that you can even look at you know it's like the the people who are supposed to be the safest like babies are the people who are most in danger of being killed we've killed over 40 million of our population in the time that abortions been going on you know this causes problems and the reason that it causes prop well you know you just don't want to do this stuff and so I you know I I came from a non-christian background and I was totally into abortion on demand before I became a believer I had no clue what I was talking about I thought a baby in the womb was it was a blob of tissue it's what I was told it's a lie it's not it's not true and what happens with that is we get all kinds of repercussions from that have you guys heard about Social Security okay Social Security is this thing where you work all your life you pay into the into a government trust fund they take all the money do what they want with it and spend it okay and then spend more and borrow from China that's the situation that we're in right now and so part of the way that that Social Security is supposed to work is when they put it together back in the 30s they figured that what was going to happen was each successive generation was going to be be larger than the previous one and so literally the generation that's on Social Security right now would be paid be having their Social Security paid for by a generation that was larger than theirs is that what's happening you know why yeah you start killing off huge portions of your population and you're going to have issues in other areas and that's one of the things that's going on cheapening of life and so you look at it in the area of abortion you look at it in the area of elderly people you know one of the things that you have to watch out for when you have your have a loved one in the hospital or have a loved one who's dying in hospice is what these people are doing what's going on with the situation and you know I don't think hospice and all the people that I've seen in hospice in our town have done a really good job and stuff but i do know stories where people have just been given drugs to kill them off and they say you know it's kind of a mercy killing kind of thing why should they go through pain why should they go see through suffering and that kind of stuff and the reason is because they're not a dog you put your dog down you put your horse down you put your cat down you don't put down somebody who's been made in the image of God and there is honor in having having a godly death and sometimes that involves some suffering and you know what we can go through those things and we can do it honorably and God can bless it and he can use it and I'm speaking from experience not from experience obviously with myself but for him seeing this over and over and over again I deal with death more than you guys ever will in your life and I see over and over the things that God does in a person's life when they're about to pass on and either go home to be with the Lord or not and it is awesome the things that God does with people and it is awesome the way that he comes along and he comforts them and he helps them and and that kind of and I'm not somebody who's against drugs but I am against mercy killing the whole idea that you would starve somebody to death because they're dying that's messed up and that's something that's happening within my lifetime and what it is is a cheapening of life and so what ends up happening is you have a whole culture that looks at other people's lives and they don't they don't look at them as being anything at all then you add in evolution and the whole idea that were nothing but a bunch of monkeys who are a little bit further up on the evolutionary scale you're nothing but an animal you know what you tell some kid that he's nothing but an animal long enough and what he's going to do is believe you and that's that's what he's going to act like and then on top of what you started you started doing stuff every every movie that I'm interested in are the shoot'em up movies right you know how that works you go to the movies and you always have this character that you know almost from the get-go is going to be the bad guy and they just they just picture him as this rotten jerk who does evil things to other people so that when he gets it about three quarters of the way through the movie you're going yeah dead all right you know image of God and you know it's just a movie but still what that does is it is it puts this attitude in people's hearts that they can go out and get vengeance and they can do all the all these kinds of things that can actually be really horrific because there are evil people in the world and I think that there are people who need to be taken out I absolutely believe that there's some guys over in Syria and Iraq right now who need to be taken out because the things that they do to people stuff that God is going to take these people out for and I absolutely believe that but the whole idea of cheeping human life is a ridiculous concept and it gets us in places that are just awful and it gets us gets people in places where they're going to be judged where they're going to be judged in this instance it says for three transgressions of Damascus and / for actually I thought I was going to go through this whole lot faster and 44 I will not turn away its punishment and then look at the this last part because they have thrashed Gilly had with implements of iron and a threshing is something that you did was with something that was called a sledge and the sledge was basically a pair of roughly shaped boards they're kind of bent upward at the front kind of like a sled and they're studded with iron prongs or knives and the prep the reference here as to what you do when you thrash grain and so what you do is you would have an ox that would pull this implement over the top of grain and it would knock the the kernels off and cut up all the chaff and stuff like that then you throw it up and in the air and then you get the grain off of it that's what a thrush was for so it's got all these iron studs and it's got these knives on it they're designed to cut and a chop okay and usually you're doing it with grain what do you think would happen if you ran that over and most likely that's what's being spoken about here because these guys would come in and they would come up with all kinds of just awful ways to kill people off so that they wouldn't still terror in the people who are around them and again you have it going on thousands of years ago you know about 2700 years ago you have this whole thing going on and it's going on right now in our world people are doing this kind of thing cutting people's heads off I just reading about where these guys were taken and put a necklace of explosives of around explosives around a person's neck and then you know blowing him up putting somebody into a cage and then didn't sticking it down in water drowning it like you were drowning him like you would drown some animal that kind of thing and God looks on that and he seizes it sees it as vile and he judges nobody's getting away with this stuff and that's what had happened with these guys he says I'll send a fire into the house of Hosea which shall devour the palace of palaces of Ben hey Dad I will also break the gate bar of Damascus and cut off the inhabitant from the valley of Haven and the one who holds a sucker from beth eden people of Syria shall go captain to cure there's a guy named Elijah that was told to go to Syria and anoint jose el as the successor to Ben hadan and this was in first Kings chapter 18 and the story goes that Elijah had just done the whole thing with the 450 prophets of bail and he'd won that whole thing and he was afraid of what Jezebel had said and what she had said he expected a revival because God had just done this awesome thing where fire came down from heaven and consume the sacrifices you guys know the story right consumed the sacrifice and just awesome stuff and he had turned the people of Israel around they said the Lord he's God and these are people who had gone after false gods and it was a popular thing to do at the time and they all turn and they said the Lord he's got well the next day jezebel the wife of King Ahab hears about it and she goes God do so God do so to me and more if by this time tomorrow Elijah is not like one of those profits and she says I'm going to kill him because he had shown her God to be false and so a lot Elijah packs it up and he takes off ends up down in the area of Mount Sinai in a cave and while he's in the cave doing nothing God comes and speaks to him and says Elijah what are you doing here and he says you know I serve you Lord I've done all the things that you want me to and I and I and I'm the only one left who's doing it and you know now they're seeking to kill me they've killed all your profits now they want to kill me too and God goes to this whole thing with them you know showing him who we what he's liking that kind of stuff and the finally Elijah comes out of the cave and God says to him again Elijah what are you doing here and he repeats the same thing you know that killed all your profits now they're trying to kill me I alone him left and God says I have reserved five thousand men who have not bowed their knee to bail so the first thing he says to him is you're not the only one left Bucky I've still got some other guys got a reserve you're not all that I've got you don't know heavens not dependent upon you and in that kind of thing and then basically what God does with Elijah's gives him a sidekick who was Elijah and then he tells him I want you to go down to Syria and anoint has Al as king of Syria and what ends up happening is in the next book his sidekick goes up and talks to his ale and there's a king named Ben hey Dad who was the King at the time and has Al was a servant and Elijah comes up the guy sick Elijah's coming up there and Ben hey dad sends ha fail to go to Elijah with a gift and ask him am I going to recover from this sickness and what Elijah says to him is you tell him yes he is but I'm telling you that the Lord has shown me that he's going to die and then he locks eyes with the guy and he sits there any stares at him until jose l is absolutely uncomfortable and then Elijah begins weeping and when he's weeping Ozil says why are you weeping and he goes because I see what you're going to do to my people I see what you're going to do to the people of israel says it and basically this is in second Kings 8 10 through 13 at Elijah said to him again go say to him you shall certainly recover however the Lord has shown me that he will really die and then he sets his countenance and a stair until he was ashamed the man of God wept in howell said wise my lord weeping and he answered because I know the evil that you will do to the children of Israel their strongholds you will set on fire their young men you will kill with the sword you will dash their children and rip open their women with child so how's al said but what is your servant a dog that he should do this gross thing and Elijah answered the Lord has shown me that you will become king over Syria and so Elijah is looking into the future and he sees exactly who gazelle is and he begins weeping for the people of Israel and has al doesn't even believe that he can do those things but he can and he did and no God's judging the next day jose el goes to while he goes back to King ben-hadad and he gives him the news and says to Ben hey Dad Ben hey dad says what were the prophets say and he says you're going to recover and then he comes up to him with a cloth soaked in water and puts it over his face and smothers him to death and so what you have is the fulfillment of actually both those things Ben hey Dad was going to recover except for hasta el Haza el comes up and kills him off and so he ends up dying in that manner in any case later on he fights against against the northern part of Israel and he again it says Thresh's Gilead with of iron Syria's armies had raked through Gilead without mercy and although it gone unpunished up to this point it wasn't unnoticed and God gives notice that the time for repayment has come and again each judgment that you have here is a picture it's pictured as a king coming to destroy a vassal city God being the king Beth even means House of wickedness Beth eaten house of pleasure and all this stuff happened under Tiglath pillows are the assyrian king in 732 about 20 years later the the city of Damascus was taken and these guys were taken captive to cure now says the Lord verse 6 43 transgressions of Gaza and 44 I will not turn away its punishment because they took captive the whole captivity to deliver them up to Edom but I will send a fire upon the wall of Gaza see that again it's kind of like Army's coming against Gaza but so that puts the walls to fire which shall devour its palaces I will cut off the inhabitant from Ashdod and the one who holds a scepter from Ashkelon I will turn my hand against Ekron and the remnant of the Philistine Shall Perish says the Lord God and the reason that God goes after Gaza is because whole villages had been taken by the Philistines in slave raids and sold to Edom and so God says because you sold my people fire and death are going to come to both rulers and commoners and I'm going to take you out you guys know have you ever met a Philistine they don't exist anymore and so God took him out and again one of the things that they have in each one of these judgments is you have suffering and pain you have the suffering and pain of God's people there were actually people who died and went into slavery because of the actions of these unbelievers and so there was bad stuff happening in the lives of good people ok I don't know that they were absolutely good obviously nobody's absolutely good but you know what I mean there are people who are innocent who were taken off into slavery to eat him which was it was not a good thing and there were people in northern Israel that were taken out by hase hail which is not a good thing and many of those people would be going through those things and seeing all this this turmoil all this chaos chaos coming down on them and go where's God and God is there God is there but there are times when he allows certain things to go on in the life of a nation in the life of a group of people because he's turning them or he's using them or he wants to reach people who aren't saved and he's got all kinds of reasons for doing things and he is never unconcerned de bout the things that you're going through never unconcerned you know if you kill me where am I going heavenward if I kill you well actually if someone lets do it this way cuz I don't want to kill you I'm sure you don't want to kill me maybe at times you do but yeah it's like it's like if somebody wants to kill you where do you go to heaven do you believe that and so the worst thing that somebody can do to me is send me right into the presence of God and Jesus said don't be afraid of those who can kill your body gonna be afraid of somebody be afraid of the guy who kill your both your body and your soul in hell fire and so I want to be more worried about what God thinks than what other people are doing and again what God does is he allows certain things to go on in this world he doesn't come in and stop every single injustice that takes place but he does mark it down and he does repay and there there are people who are going to be radically surprised when they die and they stand before the judgment seat of Christ they're going to be radically surprised and you want frankly I I am one of those guys who there there are some people that I look at them and you know i do want them to repent and i do want them to stop and i would like them to have a real relationship with Jesus and be in love with Lord and stuff like that but some of them I'm kind of like it would be good for you to figure this out at the judgment be absolutely I don't mind that at all oh that kind of thing and again God does judge and so Gaza did these things and so God's going to repay verse 9 it says thus says the Lord for three transgressions of yep we're entire now this says Lord for three transgressions of tyre and 44 I will not turn away its punishment because they delivered up the whole captivity to eat them and did not remember the covenant of brotherhood but I will send a fire upon the wall of tyre which shall devour its palaces and so now you have Edom and again whole communities captured and sold into slavery in Edom probably situations that we're taking place when the Assyrians were coming in and so they were they were taking advantage of the fact that God was judging Israel and taking people who were either left in the judgment or people who were refugees trying to escape Israel or maybe they were doing raids themselves that in any case again they were taking the people of Israel and they were selling them to the okay you know where the came from here's this whole family thing that goes on here yeah the come from Esau and so Jacob and Esau so Jacob is the father of the people of Israel and Esau is the father of the people of any Edom and so that whole conflict that took place between Jacob and Esau lasted for hundreds and hundreds of years actually lasted for thousands of years because the last Eden might you read about in the Bible you know who it is it's the Herod's so King Herod king herod the great who tried to kill off Jesus he's an e dimion it's annie's an Edomite is is what's happening there that's the last time there mentioned and God took care of the to have you have you run into an Edomite lately ya know ok so in any case tire is selling people and and the have a slave trade going and these people are going into slavery and so tire is taken out to tire had a covenant with the people of Israel under David and Solomon there's a guy named Hiram who was a king of Tyre who was very impressed with David made a covenant with David and also with Solomon and they were instrumental in the building of the temple and so what God is looking at here is a group of people who traditionally had alliance with the people of Israel there was a covenant between them and these people had violated the Covenant they were lousy friends they were traitors they were people who had a relationship with the people of Israel and then turned their back on him and actually went after him and God watched it and he saw it now it's time for repayment and he's going to repay these guys God punishes Gentiles for the treatment of his people and that's what's happening with tyre there's a passage in 1st chronicles 16 20 through 22 it says this when they went from one nation to another talking about the people of Israel and from one Kingdom to another he permitted no man to do them wrong yes he rebuked Kings for their sakes saying do not touch my anointed ones and do my prophets no harm and he's talking about the people of Israel in the passage there's another passage in Genesis 12 3 that says I will bless those who bless you and I will curse him who curses you and in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed and you know what God does with the people of Israel is he protects them they're his children and you know one of the one of the things that you got with kids is that generally speaking there are only certain people that you want disciplining your kids so generally speaking it's the mom and dad basically and I've got some other friends that I would allow to discipline my kid I would have no problem with them doing it but nobody just gets to come up and discipline my kid you know even like if my kids being a punk even if they're being a brat you don't have any business coming up to them doing stuff to them I'm their dad you're not keep your hands off my kids God's got the same attitude my kids may be brats they may be Punk's but you don't have any business doing things to them is basically how God treats these guys in the same way after the tribulation period the Bible says that Jesus comes back and he takes all the Gentiles and he's talking about gentile nations here and what they've done to the people of Israel he takes all the Gentiles and he gathers them together we talked about this last week and he separates them sheep from the goats and that judgment is all based on what they have done to these my brethren he says to him I was hungry you didn't feed me I was thirsty you gave me nothing to drink I was in prison you didn't come to visit me I was sick you didn't come to visit me and they said Lord when we did did we see you in prison or sick or hungry or thirsty when did we see you like that and he said if you didn't do it to one of the least of these my brethren and he's talking about somebody and it looks like he's talking about Israel if you didn't do it to one of the least of these my brethren you didn't do it to me and so again you have God radically concerned with what people do to the children of Israel guess what he is radically concerned with what people do to you too are you his child yeah is he going to protect you does the Bible flat out say that that he will protect you does the Bible say that judgment is God's he says vengeance is mine says the Lord I will repay and again that's one of the things of the Book of Amos God repays and he may take a long time and he may let people heap up judgment and that kind of stuff to him to themselves but he repays and so he's not looking at the things you're going through and unconcerned with them he's not unconcerned with them he's going to take care of it now I mean I happen in the in the time period that I would like it to happen which is you know about five minutes after the person does something rotten to me okay given five min five minutes to repent Lord and then kill them a lot of times we can have that kind of attitude or I don't want them killed I just want the maint you know or something like that you know did a little judgment God you know that's that's what I want a lot of times God you know obviously God's not like that if he was like that with everybody else guess what he be like with you right so you know it's like I'm good with other people getting judged but me getting judged no thank you grace grace wonderful grace that's like that's what I want and I what I want is is not even judgment I just want justice with everybody else and we got to keep in mind that God although he is just what he's best known for his graciousness he gives people time to repent but then he does judge he does judge and so that is why as Christians we don't have to go around getting back at people I just having a conversation with a guy about this not too long ago and the you know we can get all consumed by the fact that we believe that somebody has done something to us or acted in a certain way towards us when we're all consumed by it and you know it's like we want to do something to them we want to catch them we want to get them we went up you know and restraining orders and me all this all this different stuff we want to go out and do all this stuff and many times what God God is doing is just telling you it is calm down he's going to take care of it for you he's going to take care of it and I'm not saying that there aren't times when that's not appropriate because there are but in any case what God does with tire is he brings a fire upon the wall of Tyre and that's fulfilled and so you have a have a situation where that was accomplished under Alexander the Great he over ran the city 6,000 people were killed outright 2,000 were crucified in 30,000 were sold as slaves and so you enslaved my people guess what i'm going to do with you you know and it's just you know I fry type of stuff and God is just and God is righteous and so again will descend it with with that right there you know when you're when you're looking at some of the things that you go through sometimes it can just be really hard the things that are happening you and you just need to keep in mind that God has it covered it's all coming out in the wash I had it you know I got a story about a you know I had some guys that I worked for down in California and worked with who were contractors and actually it was one of the reasons that I didn't be become a contractor right off the bat because I saw how people treated these guys and these guys were honest and they had integrity and they did the job and they did their best to do it well and not everything worked out perfectly but they tried their best to make it right with people and that kind of stuff they were good guys right and what happened all the time was they got ripped off all the time and and people who had no business ripping them off it was it was like people who had who had plenty of money and you know they had a bank loan that was was was well able to pay for everything and what they were trying to do is just pinch every penny and try to rip these guys off I had a good friend that I'm that I'm talking about right now who got ripped off royally he went in and did some stuff for a guy and he got about half the half his pay for that and then the guy just refused to pay and at that point you can either take him to court or you can do a lien on their property and you do alena on their property well you know I bought my home in 1990 and I still live there and so if somebody had a lien on my property it's you know 2015 now they would never have gotten their money they might be dead by this point that's no part of the problem with that with that whole thing and I've sitting there talking to him this one time I go how do you how do you deal with that it's like the guy you know this guy just took money from away from you away from your family away from your kids you gotta feed your Fanny lith that not have a bad attitude and you go Steve it all comes out on the wash God takes care of me and gods going to take care of them to all comes out in the wash and you know I was a young guy and I looked at that and I went and he wasn't that you know he wasn't the greatest saint or anything he wasn't this you know you know pillar of power and you know on faith in the church or something but he had a good basic walk with God and he loved the Lord and he was willing to trust God with the whole thing and that's what we need to do too I can trust God that he's going to take care of me I can trust God that he's going to deal with all the issues that come up and I don't have to go deal with them myself because he does repay it says here so let's stop right there let you out of here father we come before you again lord thank you God that you're not only a God who loves us and cares about us but you see everything that goes on with us and there's nothing that escapes your attention you've said in your word that every idle word that men speak that they'll give an account of it in the day of the judgment and Lord obviously we need to be living like that's absolutely true we need to be people who are you know this recognize that what we say is something that you're hearing and that we're going to be having a talk with you about hopefully we're having that talk with you almost immediately and we're dealing with things but god you're you're a god who hears it all and you see it all and there are things that are displeasing to you and the Lord we want to be people who live in a way where we just don't or just not displeasing to you we want we want to love you and we want to be open and and straightforward about that and we want it to I don't know we just want our lives to be something that that blesses you want to walk with integrity so the lord help us to do that help us to never be in the place of tire Gaza or Damascus or where there's nothing left but judgment because they've heaped it up on themselves and and so lord that's not happening unless you by your Holy Spirit make it real in our lives and so we just pray that you do how do I thank you for these people pray that your blessing would be on them and Lord as they learn more and more from your word they take those things and apply it and just be different because of it you love you just give you the rest of the night pretty bless us in Jesus name Amen

Channel: Calvary Chapel Tri-Cities

Views: 2,032

Rating: 4.8666668 out of 5

Keywords: Calvary Chapel (Organization), Steve Whinery, The Bible (Religious Text), prophecy, minor prophets, Book Of Amos (Religious Text)

Id: VORT_6euBYA

Length: 67min 41sec (4061 seconds)

Published: Thu Dec 10 2015