21 Jan

7/15/18     AMOS 7:7-17   “WHO IS YOUR PLUMB LINE?”

One of the things that we like to do is covet what others have.  And don’t try to tell me that you have never done this.  We all have.  I used to be so bad that I compared myself to all my friends, my neighbors and people I didn’t even know.  Can you imagine that?  I compared myself to Joe Blow from down the street who I had never met.  How ridiculous is that!  I found out the hard way that I had to quit this because no matter what I did, everyone around me did better.  I could never get ahead.  Moving on you may have noticed by now that I love to preach from the Old Testament.  It is so relevant.  Well here I go again as today’s sermon is from Amos who never wanted to be a prophet but obeyed anyway.  He tells us of the good standard that we should always compare ourselves.  Let’s see how we do.

I don’t know if you have ever thought about standards.  We have them all about us and we probably need them so that we can have better lives.  When I started to work at the Post Office many years ago, we had a standard of 98% for our on time delivery rate.  By the time that I had retired from there we had machines doing all of the sorting as it was a lot cheaper than having people do it.  However, our delivery rate had dropped to 95-96%.  That is not much of a drop unless you consider the millions of pieces of mail that goes through the system every day.  We had a couple of million of pieces of mail that didn’t get delivered on time every day.

Or take a look at some of the statistics that Natalie Gabal found.  If businesses operated at 99.9% efficiency, 2 million documents would be lost every year at the IRS, 12 babies would be given to the wrong parents, 291 operations would be performed incorrectly, and 114,000 shoes would be mismatched each year.

We could look at this a little differently as Wayne Field did.  Would it be ok if your car started once in every three tries?  Would you be a reliable employee if you only showed up for work a couple of times a month?  Would your hot water heater be reliable if it provided cold water every now and then?  Do you think that the power company would mind if you just skipped your monthly payments every once in a while?  And would you consider yourself to be a faithful Christian if you only came to worship one or two Sundays a month?  I set you up for that one.

Anyway, these are some of the things that we should be thinking about when we read our passage from Amos today.  God is speaking through Amos to the king as he is addressing some important issues both in the Old Testament and now.

I think that before we start today, we should know something about what has been going on before this.  This takes place in Israel which was the northern kingdom.  If you remember the kingdom had been split after King Solomon.  This was 750 years before Christ and it was before the exile but as we will see that it was also a time that will lead to the exile.  Jerusalem was in the southern kingdom and the northerners don’t want to travel all the way south to Jerusalem to the Temple where they could worship.

So the obvious answer to King Jeroboam was to build temples and shrines in the north.  The problem with this was that they started to worship false gods and soon found themselves in idolatry.  This upset God greatly.  But that wasn’t all.

The nation of the north was doing real well in all of its commerce.  They weren’t in a depression, they were in a boom.  And with this came crooked business practices.  They would measure grain on one scale and the money on another.  The poor people were being greatly oppressed.  And there was adultery and immoral acts everywhere you looked.  God had rewarded them with prosperity and they were in the process of squandering it.  This sounds like our country today.

As we pick up the story, Amos has just given them two warnings that God had sent to him in a dream.  This was the third warning, the warning of the plumb line.  He was saying what prophets said in those days, “If you don’t repent of your sins and change your ways to the ways of God, then the wrath of God will be upon you.”  This isn’t much different than what God tells us today and we don’t listen either.  These people understood a plumb line and by using this illustration, God is showing them that His way is the standard.  We are not to measure ourselves by what the world does but by what God does.  It is what we strive for even today.

And speaking of today, how do we receive the message from Amos?  I think that for the most part we would be willing to talk the talk but not walk the walk.  If Amos came here today and held up a plumb line from God and told us that if we were not true plumb with God, then we would be going to hell, I think that we would reject him just like the people from Israel did.  We have churches today that have done this.

After all, we live in a world that is politically correct and we have to bend over backwards so that no one person will feel bad about anything.  We can’t be having someone telling us that most of us are going to Hell because we don’t measure up to God’s standard.  Well, I’m here today to tell you that God does not give a rip about what is politically correct or not.  He is correct and He alone is correct.

When I was at school a few years ago, I got to listen to a church service with Bishop Palmer from Iowa giving the sermon.  He was good.  He told us in his fiery way, that we have to be careful not to listen to the politically correct junk that comes not only from our society but also from our churches.  Most of the things that the church argues about are not important at all.  We have forgotten, as a church and a people, the great commission that Jesus gave us.  We are to help spread the Good News of Jesus Christ and love our neighbor as ourselves.  This is not rocket science or computer science.  It is not that important whether or not I refer to God as a he or she or in a neutral sense.  That isn’t what we are all about, but if we are not careful, it will be.  And then God will be holding the plumb line up to us.

We are like the northern kingdom in another way.  We, like the Israelites of the time, are very prosperous.  And we are squandering our blessing from God in the same way these ancient people did.  Our business practices promote deceit, lying and stealing.  It is all ok if we don’t get caught.  I’ve talked about our Satan driven movie and television industries.  Our personal lives are no better when we look at our divorce rates, crime rates, drug abuse rates and so on.  I don’t know about you but I have one question to ask.  How long will God put up with this garbage before He does something about it?  If that is not a scary thought, then it should be- because God is in charge of everything.

And God is in charge of this scene in Amos also.  Amos was a simple man and prior to this he was not a prophet but a shepherd.  So the high priest of the land attacks him because he is not credible.  He is not one of them.  He is just a lowly shepherd and nothing more.  He will do anything to get rid of Amos because if he doesn’t, then he may be out a job.  It was his job to lead the people in the false worship of idols.  It was all about dollars and cents to this guy.  Do you think that may sound like anyone you know today?

Anyway, God has told Amos to go and do these things.  And Amos is obedient.  Amos goes and delivers a bunch of messages to Amaziah, the high priest, King Jeroboam, and the people of Israel.  And these messages aren’t very nice.  In today’s world all the nonbelievers would be screaming, “How could a loving God do these things to his people?”

And that is exactly why He is doing this.  He is a loving God.  He loves His people so much that He is trying to get them to change their ways.  God sets the standard and God doesn’t change.  He makes the rules and He runs the world.  If God does anything other than what He says he will do, then He would be a liar.  And by His very definition, God cannot be a liar.  This is the only way that God can try to get his people to quit their very sinful ways.  He has trying to get them to stop for centuries.

The book of Amos is a warning to the people of God as to what will happen soon if they do not change their ways.  If they change their ways then they can fall back into the arms of the grace of God.  This is the grace, the love that the people of these ancient times could have if they would only change their ways.

Now does that sound like anything that you have heard in our modern times?  I know that many of you have already been saved.  Or as John Wesley would put it, you have experienced justifying grace.  And Wesley would be proud of you as you have been living out your life in sanctifying grace.  This is the grace we have after we have been saved when we live out our lives according to Jesus and the Bible.

But, what about the people around you who don’t know Jesus?  Do you think that they should be extended the same love and grace that was given to us?  I think that we can all pretty much agree that we should all get a chance to have God’s grace in us.  But now let me make the question a little harder.  Does the convicted murderer get a chance for grace?  Does the rapist?  Does the terrorist who kills without remorse get a shot at grace?

If we answer these questions with a no, then we are being just like Jonah as he went to Nineveh.  Remember when Jonah went there and he was telling God that he would do what God had asked but God had better not save these people who Jonah hated.  He was grumbling and muttering all the way but he did tell them that they had to repent.  And then God had the nerve, He had the gall to actually save this sinful city.  Jonah had to be crushed.  He had hated all the right people and then God had gone and saved them.  How dare He do that!

And that is one of the things that we have to be careful about.  We are not God and His ways are not our ways.  It is His job to do the forgiving.  It is our job to find the people that need forgiving.  It is our job to find the people who are needy.  And they are all around us.

As I was saying earlier, we have become a nation that is corrupt beyond our imagination.  So it shouldn’t be hard to find people in need or people in need of Jesus.  Years ago when I was serving a church in a small town, I went for a walk to get an ice cream cone.  It was only about 4-5 blocks to the place that sold ice cream so it wasn’t very far.  What I noticed on this walk was how many people lived in this small town that were unchurched.  It think the average for that rural area was 60% of the people were unchurched.  This goes much higher as we come into metropolitan areas.

So my question is this, “If we have so many unchurched people then why are our churches so empty?”  And the answer is that we are too uncomfortable to bring people to church.  We talk the talk but we don’t walk the walk.  It’s the same way with our online service only it’s a lot easier to spread the Word.  There all you have to do is push the ‘share’ button.  If you don’t, then you are the only one to see this message.  Your friends will never see this unless you press share.  It is easy evangelism but effective.

Let’s see if we can become a little more proactive in our witness to others.  Try to make a conscious effort in this.  I have found very few people that will turn me down to such a conversation.  They may not do as I ask but at least they will listen.  And don’t worry if it doesn’t always work.  We just talked last week about how Jesus will give you many chances to do it right.  We can’t always keep the plumb line true so we need to keep coming back to Him.  But you can only do this if you know Him.  And if you don’t, then confess your sins to Him and invite Him to live in your heart.  This is the greatest and best decision you will ever make.  When you do, then Jesus will give you His gifts of peace, joy, love and much more.  These gifts are infinitely better than their worldly counterparts.  And He will then help you in all you do including bringing people to church.

I would like to close with a story from Mark Brunner.  As a joke some engineers from General Electric were assigned the task of frosting the inside of light bulbs.  All of them knew that it was just some sort of impossible joke.  But Marvin Pipkin kept at it until he found an acid that would etch the inside to frost it and make the bulb much stronger.  He revolutionized the industry.  He proved the impossible because he didn’t know it was impossible.

My friends and neighbors in Christ, if you prayerfully ask Jesus to help you to help the needy, and help you to invite the lost, then you will see things happen that seemed impossible.  And by doing this, you will be measuring up to God’s plumb line and that is a very, very good thing.  I praise the Lord for His presence in our lives and thank you Jesus for first loving us.  Let’s pray.