Too Late
Amos 5:21, “wI hate, I despise your feast days, And xI will not ||smell in your ysolemn assemblies. 22 wThough ye offer me burnt offerings and your meat offerings, zI will not accept them: wNeither will I regard the ||apeace offerings of your fat beasts.” [1]
I. Repulsed
A. Detest
B. Despise
II. Removed
A. Detached
B. Dreary
III. Rejected
A. Donations
B. Dense
Introduction: There is the forever argument between God’s sovereignty and man’s free will. Denominations have split over which is the dominant reason for things. A man who I hold in high esteem explained it this way in attempt to put the argument to rest. Dr. Scott Thompson said “Because God is sovereign, man has free will.”
We are in a time now when many people have left church. Once this nation was predominantly Christian and the majority of the population admitted to attending church. Little by little the church roles are lowering. Now the majority of the congregation still admits to being Christian yet church attendance is lower than it has been in many years. People watch from a distance.
The question is, have the people taken themselves away from church or has God taken the church away from Christians. There was a push towards the mega-church where thousands of people could crowd into a building that looks nothing like a church. Many of these sprang up in old shopping centers and athletic arenas that could seat hundreds and thousands of people.
This is OK until somebody wants to get married in a chapel or heaven forbid somebody dies and the family needs a sanctuary for the funeral/memorial service. What now? The preacher has no time for family visitation. He/she has a staff that is busy preparing messages for the many satellite locations that televise the sermons. There is no time for congregational commitment. This was the so-called new normal. Orchestras replaced choirs. Screens replaced hymnals. Who took the local church away? Now what do we do to find sanctuary?
Once we sought to find safety from the crowd. That is the definition of sanctuary. For a time it seemed that people sought a place to hide in the crowd. They felt entertained and emotionally stirred by the music and the mayhem. Since the so-called pandemic the paranoia has changed the need to hide in a crowd to the want to hide from the crowd.
People now want to stay away from each other unless a rebellious riot breaks out. Everything seems to make us want to separate ourselves from human contact until something personally affects us. Now what do we do? Where do we go to feel? For that matter what does it feel like to feel the need to have someone close in your life that you can trust?
So there is the question again. Did God’s sovereignty allow us to not have sanctuary or did man’s free will cause all this? God loves us right? Surely He will not leave us and forsake us to be at the whim of someone who hates us! Will He? Can He?
What do you do when you need a friend? Listen to these lyrics. You might be surprised who wrote them… “When you're down and troubled and you need a helping hand and nothing, oh, nothing is going right. Close your eyes and think of me and soon I will be there to brighten up even your darkest nights. You just call out my name and you know wherever I am I'll come running, oh, yeah, to see you again. Winter, spring, summer or fall all you've got to do is call and I'll be there, yeah, You've got a friend.”
Scripture: Today’s focal text is Amos 5:21-22.
Prayer: Let us pray. Be seated.
Message: Follow as we learn about what was going on with this prophet Amos. Amos 1:1, “*The words of Amos, awho was among the herdmen of bTekoa, which he saw concerning Israel cin the days of dUzziah king of Judah, and in the days of e*Jeroboam the son of Joash king of Israel, two years before fthe earthquake.” [2]
We know that Amos was with the herdmen so he must have been a shepherd himself. We know that there were still kings over the two kingdoms of Israel and Judah so this was written between the times that the kingdom was divided, before Israel was exiled to Syrian and Judah was exiled to Babylon. We also know that there was an earthquake after this was written.
God warned the people that He had all that He was going to allow from them and there would be a reckoning. Amos famously uses the phrase, “for three transgressions and for four” as he mentions the sins of the families and tribes. Three is the Hebrew number for completion. They had transgressed against God completely but they took it a step farther.
Today we will only cover these two focal verses with mention of the context around them. Perhaps Amos might be a good study in our evening services later on. To think that God has no limit of what He allows before showing His wrath is to believe that God does not love enough to teach us how to love Him. He will not let His children be overwhelmed by fear of others.
Fear is another word for reverence. If you hold someone or something in reverence that means that you regard it more than most anything in your life. You make decisions based on the things or people you revere. In other words you glorify it. Keep in mind; the only thing that God will not share with us is His glory. If you attempt to glorify anyone or anything over God He might take that which you love too much away from you. He loves us so much that He will not tolerate anything dissuading His chosen people away from Him.
Amos’ prophecy is what happens when God says it’s too late to come back. He is about to give His lesson so that those who come behind will not misunderstand that He will do anything to keep those who want to be His.
The word hate is a very hard word. A synonym for hate might be repulsion. To say that you hated something that you cannot tolerate is to say that you are repulsed by it. Is hate the absence of love? Is it how to deal with something that a person cannot tolerate so that it is left alone? I’m sure that you have heard that it is sinful to hate someone. God said through Amos that He hates. Then there is a comma.
The verse doesn’t specifically say what it is that God hates. Prior to the comma it simply says that God hates. It is important that we know the things that God hates. It would be such a freeing thing to know how not to do or how not to be who or what God hates.
After that comma it says that God despised their feast days. We don’t need much of an excuse here to have a dinner and eat in the fellowship hall. The children of the twelve tribes had certain days when they would observe and commemorate events that God worked in their lives. It was like a particular and special praise service. Those events were to be joyful days of praising God yet He was to the point that He despised those days.
The verse goes on to say that God would not smell in their solemn assemblies. The word smell there refers to one of the five senses. It is how we are attach to our surroundings. We have to be near a thing in order to know that dog stinks and needs a bath. God essentially was saying that He would remove Himself far enough away because He was incensed with what they had made of the celebrations that were ordained to give Him praise.
The word there is solemn. The meaning there is dreary. We come to a funeral in solemn homage for the loss we suffer in not having that loved one with us. God wants us to feel the joy of knowing that we are His children. When we come together to celebrate it must be to celebrate what He has done and is doing and will be doing for His glory through us and for us.
Otherwise He will reach that point when He will remove Himself from us. Has He? In verse twenty-two it seems He left them. We know what happened later to the split kingdom. We are studying Daniel in our evening services. Daniel is during the period of exile. God did what He said He would do. They were trying to give God what they wanted to give God and not what God demanded. He will not accept substitutes. He gave His personal best when He sent His Only Begotten Son.
He rejected their futile attempts at peace offerings. Burnt offerings and meat offerings were no more than contributions to any other cause. I will only give the donation that I want to, but not what I know is needed. I have plenty of money. You might say that I’m fat with money in fact. The bank books and accounts are dense in other bank accounts but my roof might leak. You understand right God? I have got to take care of what I have here and now! My sister spoke what God said to me, “When is it enough.” My question to the church is, “When is it too late?”
Prayer:
Invitation: I can tell you about nearly waiting too long to move when the obvious is in front of me. It is easier to tell others that they need to move but sometimes God makes it abundantly clear that your time is now. If you don’t move there is a too late.
He will make you uncomfortable and will keep you there until you decide to finally seek His kingdom and not your own will. There was a TV show that came many years ago called “Will and Grace.” I t sounds like a really nice title. The two main characters were a promiscuous lady named grace and a so-called homosexual man named. You see that is what happens when man imposes his will on others and man’s grace is substituted for God’s grace.
We are living in such a time as this. So were Esther and Mordecai. We are not living in the exile that our offspring will be living in but we are beginning to see that we are not at home here anymore. Is there coming a time that it will be too late for us to return to God? Some seem furious that we want to make America return to God again.
Some Christians already are not able to find a sanctuary where they once felt save to worship God. The writing is on the wall. Daniel watched as kingdom and kings fell while he and his three friends were there to witness. What are we to do now? That was the question asked of this congregation a few weeks ago and it remains. What we are to do now is to honor God by keeping His commands while the world watches living water spring through us as we joyfully go about that which God has for us to do.
Let us return. When is it too late for us? Never! When this life ends we will have only started praising God. Amen? Consider and praise Him as we sing…
w Isai. 1:14. So Mal. 1:10. See Isai. 1:11. & Jer. 7:21.
x Lev. 26:31.
|| Or, smell your holy days.
y See Joel 1:14.
w Isai. 1:14. So Mal. 1:10. See Isai. 1:11. & Jer. 7:21.
z See Hos. 8:13.
w Isai. 1:14. So Mal. 1:10. See Isai. 1:11. & Jer. 7:21.
|| Or, thank offerings. Heb. not as 2 Chr. 29:31.
a So Lev. 3:1, 6, &c.
[1] The Holy Bible: King James Version (Electronic Edition of the 1900 Authorized Version., Am 5:21–22). (2009). Logos Research Systems, Inc.
* B.C. 787.
a 2 Kin. 3:4 (Heb.). So ch. 7:14, 15.
b See 2 Sam. 14:2. Comp. ch. 7:12.
c See Hos. 1:1.
d 2 Kin. 15:1.
e 2 Kin. 14:23. ch. 7:10.
* [B.C. 810–784].
f Zech. 14:5. Comp. Isai. 29:6.
[2] The Holy Bible: King James Version (Electronic Edition of the 1900 Authorized Version., Am 1). (2009). Logos Research Systems, Inc.
