Dr. M.J. du Plessis Gereformeerde Kerk Bellville Datum: 30 Maart 2003 (oggenddiens).

REFORMED CHURCH, BELLVILLE: SUNDAY 30 DECEMBER 2001: MORNING SERVICE

Our help is in the Name of the Lord,
Who made heaven and earth.
Beloved, grace and peace be to you from God our Father, and the Lord Jesus Christ, through the mighty working of God the Holy Spirit.
AMEN.

Psalm of praise: 84:1,2.

Nicene Creed

I believe in one God, the Father Almighty, Maker of heaven and earth, and of all things visible and invisible.

And in one Lord Jesus Christ, the only-begotten Son of God, begotten of the Father before all the worlds; God of God, Light of Light, very God of very God; begotten, not made, being of one substance with the Father, by whom all things were made.

Who, for us men and for our salvation, came down from heaven, and was incarnate by the Holy Spirit of the virgin Mary, and was made man; and was crucified also for us under Pontius Pilate; He suffered and was buried; and the third day He rose again, according to the Scriptures; and ascended into heaven, and sitteth on the right hand of the Father; and He shall come again, with glory, to judge the living and the dead; whose kingdom shall have no end.

And I believe in the Holy Spirit, the Lord and Giver of life; who proceedeth from the Father and the Son; who with the Father and the Son together is worshipped and glorified; who spake by the prophets.

And I believe one holy catholic and apostolic Church. I acknowledge one baptism for the remission of sins; and I look for the resurrection of the dead, and the life of the world to come. AMEN

The Law : Ex. 20:1-17

Psalm 40:4.

Prayer

Psalm 119:63.

Scripture reading: Amos 4

Text: Amos 4:12

"Therefore thus will I do to you, O Israel;
Because I will do this to you,
Prepare to meet your God, O Israel."

At the end of the year - and at the beginning of a new year - it is fitting that we examine critically our faith and consider whatever shortcomings might come to light.

The intention of this sermon is by no means to try to frighten our congregation and to lead you to believe that our sins are so terrible that the Lord is waiting to annihilate us.
The intention is merely to consider deeply our situation.

Let us see what went wrong between Israel and the Lord just before the Lord let Samaria fall to the enemy and had Israel carried off into exile.

We will apply this to our own situation, because nobody can build a future if he does not avoid the errors of the past. Repeated sins will, of course, summon us to appear before the throne of God!

In this portion of Scripture there is a clear dichotomy which we must consider in the exposition of the passage:

1.    Social and religious sins
2.    The Lord's punishment of His people.

1.    Social and religious sins

Various groups within the people of Israel are addressed by the Lord on account of their sins. In the final event there is nobody who has not been included in the proclamation of judgement.

The first verse is directed against the worthy women of Samaria.

With very little respect they are called "cows of Bashan".

Bashan was situated in the northern region of Israel across the Jordan.
The region was known as an area with very fertile pasturage.
For that reason, this region was granted to the tribes which had the largest number of cattle (Num. 32:1ff; Deut. 32:14; Ezek. 39:18; Psalm 22:12ff).
"Cows of Bashan" therefore means "well fed cows".

The expression therefore suggests that these women lived in luxury and had abundance of everything - and especially that they indulged in the unbridled pursuit of pleasure and gluttony.
The prophet then narrated (with a certain degree of displeasure) the sins of these women.

They oppressed the poor and in their conduct they were harsh towards those who were not of their social level.

The Bible also tells how they did this. They told their husbands to see to it that there were banquets fit for the rich.

This meant that their husbands could not keep up with their demands, owing to mounting expenses.
The Bible then tells of the sins of the wealthy men, who could not cope with their wives' demands.
In their turn they went out and extorted the means they needed from the poor.

The judgement of the Lord had to come as a result of this. Therefore the Lord took an oath. God swore by Himself - by His holiness. In the Old Testament the holiness of the Lord is equivalent to His Godhead itself. It is a very, very serious matter when the Lord takes an oath (Hebrews 6:13).

In the holiness of the Lord His majesty is foremost, as well as His revulsion from sin, and thereby already the principle of punishment.

The punishment will be upon all, but the Bible describes especially how the wives of the wealthy will experience it. They are representative of the people as a whole.
They will be drawn away with hooks. This is a image from fishing. Just as a fish is drawn out of the water, so these women will be dragged violently away from their abundance and their orgies.
Verse 3 describes how they will then be led into exile. They will be driven out through the breaches in the walls of Samaria. The words "...each one straight before her..." depicts the wretchedness and dismay with which these women will be driven towards the mountains of Harmon. That is, of course, towards the north, towards Assyria.

After that, the prophet redirects his attacks from the people of the upper strata to the people in general.

The Bible reveals here that we should not have a wrong kind of sympathy with the poor and common folk: Even if they were oppressed by the wealthy women, their own lives were also unrighteous before the Lord.
The people sinned because they practised the sinful cultic worship at Bethel and Gilgal (Amos 3:14; Hosea 4:15).
The amount of detail with which Amos refers to this festival indicates that the people were possibly at that time preparing for such a great sacrificial festival. In ironical vein the prophet encourages the people to proceed with the festival and to sin even more.

Amos emphatically condemned the cultic practices at Bethel and Gilgal (Amos 5:5; Hosea 4:15, 9:5). To Amos the temple was the dwelling place of the Lord (Amos 1:2). For that reason he had nothing against the offerings themselves, but against the people who brought the sacrifices, because they committed many immoral, unspiritual and heathen acts during these sacrificial festivals.

The exhortation and call to this freewill sacrificial festival already illustrate the unlawfulness of the festival.

The call to participate in the festival was necessary precisely because there was a departure from the normal festivals and sacrifices as had been prescribed by the Lord.
Verse 5 emphasises the unlawfulness of the sacrificial practices.

See, for instance, how they changed the thank offering. According to Leviticus 7:11-15 the people were required to sacrifice an animal for the thank offering.
These people amended the requirements, making it an offering of grain (leavened/unleavened offering).
It is true that there was traditionally an additional item to the thank offering in the form of a meal offering, but this was never placed on the altar, as was now done.

The most serious offence was that these festivals were in honour of the images of calves which Jeroboam had established. (He instituted this idolatry to ensure that the people did not go to Jerusalem for the sacrificial festivals.)

These were not sacrificial festivals in honour of the Lord, even though many of the practices were the same as had been performed for the Lord, such as the tithes and the morning sacrifices.
It is typical of Satan to ape the worship of the Lord with all manner of things which to some extent correspond with what the Lord instituted, in order that believers who perform these modified services might fall into sin.

The people did not object to these voluntary festivals. They greatly enjoyed them and supported them enthusiastically. The message Amos now proclaimed was:

Go ahead and do as you like, and multiply your sins.

2. The Lord's punishment of His people.

After that, a number of national disasters are described. These are prophetic, because when Amos preached, Israel was still enjoying prosperity (cf. Isaiah 9:7 - 10:4).

In verses 6-11 it is prophesied that the Lord will bring a series of disasters upon Israel in order to bring them to repentance. Without success.
Each of these prophecies is accompanied by the sad comment that the people could not be moved to repentance by what happened.
The impression given by this repeated refrain is that the Lord would have terminated His punishments, if the people had been prepared to repent (see verses 6,8,9,10,11).

It is of interest that the Lord describes all these punishments in the past tense.

This is not because they happened in the time of Amos.
It is because the Lord took the people prophetically beyond His judgement and let them look back upon the bit of history which they would undergo between Amos' prophecy and the fall of Samaria.

On the face of it, these punishments look like ordinary natural disasters.

The things that happened were famine, drought, bad harvests accompanied by swarms of locusts,
plague accompanied by a bloody defeat at war,
and eventually the total destruction of the land.

The Lord, however, expected of them that they would, as believers, see beyond the surface of things - because they had been forewarned by the prophets - and recognise the hand of the Lord in the signs of the times.

Because the Lord knew that the people were stubborn by nature, and because they would continue committing all their sins, they were given a final warning:

Because I will do this to you,
Prepare to meet your God, O Israel."

These words are no longer a call to repent. They announce the final prophecy that, as a result of their sins, there is no longer any possibility that they will escape the judgement of the Lord. The Lord will come to fulfil His prophecy and the people must be ready to meet Him.

Come, let us look deeply into our inner selves: Are we less stubborn than Israel?

We all know that the answer is a clear and honest "No".
We read the signs of the times just as badly as those people.
Just like them, we also cannot recognise and understand the hand of the Lord in everything that happens to us.

And, precisely like them, we shall also meet God. There is no person and no nation which will able to avoid this meeting. Those of us who are to meet the Lord while we persist in our unbelief, will have a hard time of it, because such people will encounter the judgement of the Lord to their final detriment.

What will become of us when we meet God?

By the grace of God it will be otherwise with believers than with the unbelievers.
Someone Else met God on behalf of the believers.
On behalf of all of them He stood before God, bearing all their sins.
It was not an amicable meeting, because Jesus stood in the full judgement of God. He was then subjected to God's punishment.
This punishment was terrible. It was not as easy a punishment as that which Israel experienced, when the women clambered over the ruins of their city walls, wretched, but still alive.
Jesus was forsaken by God, and He had to give His life as ransom so that we might live.

When we go to meet God, we will also stand there bearing the full pollution of our sins, but we will not be destroyed, because Jesus has already borne the punishment for our sins.

But this is precisely what demands that we consider much more responsibly how we live.

We must not, like the women of Samaria, fall into worldliness and neglect the honour of the Lord even in our eating and drinking.
We must also see to it that the kingly image of God is maintained in all marital relationships.
We must not take out our frustration upon those more defenceless than we, like the wealthy men of Samaria.

Positively, we should ensure in respect of true worship that our worship is always sincere, and that it is attended by due gladness in the joy of being alive.

But we must always ensure that this worship of ours is what the Lord requires.
Israel's own inventions in respect of their religious practices (which to a certain extent resembled what the Bible required) were so abhorrent to the Lord that He began to punish the people with all kinds of disasters to urge them to repentance.

We must always remember one thing clearly: the future is not tomorrow or the next five or ten years.

The future is from tomorrow until the furthest eternity - after all time and history and the earth have passed away.
For the greatest part of it we shall live on the new earth where the presence of the Lord will always be with us.
Come, let us set our sights on that day, and let us await our meeting with God. That is a supremely important moment, because it will be the moment when the Lord Jesus grants us admission to His eternal kingdom.

AMEN.

Closing prayer.

Closing Hymn: 10:1,2,5,6.

The Lord bless you and keep you;
The Lord make His face shine on you,
And be gracious to you;
The Lord lift up His countenance on you,
And give you peace.
AMEN.

Rev. Dr.M.J. du Plessis
Reformed Church, Bellville
30 December 2001
Scripture quoted from NASB.