Prepare to Meet Your God

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We are in Amos tonight, if you want to open up your Bibles to Amos chapter 4.
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Did everybody get a sheet there? The title of tonight's lesson is, Are You Ready to Meet God? And you'll see later why that particular question has reference and relevance to the text for this evening.
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Those of us who have children understand what it is like to plead with our children, especially in regard to things that we would rather them not do.
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Especially as they get older.
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Even though we're in a position of authority and we could easily command them not do whatever it is and possibly even discipline them out of it.
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Often times we begin by simply offering a plea that they not do that.
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We call them to repentance or we call them to better judgment.
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We call them to a better direction.
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And sometimes we do offer penalties when they do wrong, but we understand that in those penalties we're not seeking to punish them simply to give ourselves satisfaction in punishing them.
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We're seeking to punish them with the hopes that they will recognize the error of their way and go a different direction.
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A father may look at his son and say, Son, if you would obey the rules you would not now be being punished.
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And in the future if you'll avoid this behavior you won't be punished this way again.
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And I don't know, maybe your children are perfect and you don't have to do that.
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Some of you have adult children and maybe they made it all the way through adolescence without you having to plead with them over their good behavior.
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But if you need some stories, I've got a few.
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Well, I have four and one on the way, so it's not just all about you, honey.
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But in the fourth chapter of Amos, we see the Lord demonstrating how He has pleaded with Israel.
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Now we don't often think of God as pleading because God is sovereign and God commands because He has the authority to command.
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But God is also revealing Himself as a Father to His children.
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And He has in a lot of ways demonstrated in Israel's history a fatherly type of love to that nation.
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And He said in Amos 3, 2, You have I loved, or you have I known of all the nations of the world.
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I have a relationship with you, a fatherly relationship that I don't have with other people.
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And so we see that He pleads with Israel to not go the way of the idols, to not go into debauchery and into sin, very similar to the way a father might plead with his son.
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And tonight as we get to chapter 4, we're going to see some of the pleas that God has made and how all of those have gone unheeded.
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And now as a result of His pleas being unheeded, God's judgment stands at the door.
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So, just a real quick recap, because this is our third week of study, I want to just remind you, in the first two chapters, Amos 1 and 2, what we see is God demonstrating that while Israel's neighbors stood condemned, and remember He talked about Damascus, and He talked about all of these other areas surrounding Israel, but He pointed at Israel, and what did He say to them? He said, Because you are the ones who are My people, you will receive even more discipline.
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They are God's people, and thus they are worthy of His discipline.
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So chapters 1 and 2 focus on God's discipline of His people.
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God's discipline of His people, Israel.
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And then in chapter 3, we see the first of three oracles.
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The first of three oracles of judgment.
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And if you remember last week, we talked about how the oracle of judgment in chapter 3 comes in the expression of the cause and effect.
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You remember He talked about the fact that two people walking together won't walk together unless they both agree to where they're going.
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There's a cause and there's an effect.
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He talked about how in different ways that there's going to be a cause and there's going to be an effect.
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And He says ultimately what He was pointing to is that the Lord will bring judgment, and when judgment comes, you can know that it came from Him.
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And so now chapter 4 is the second oracle, giving us a more specific reference to how Israel has ignored her warnings and has brought about God's judgment.
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So we're going to read the whole chapter.
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It's relatively short, only 13 verses, and begin our study.
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It says, Remember I told you last time this is how chapter 3, 4, and 5 all begin.
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Hear this word.
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That opening.
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Three-word opening.
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Hear this word, you cows of Bashan who are on the mountain of Samaria who oppress the poor, who crush the needy, who say to your husbands, bring that we may drink.
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The Lord God has sworn by His holiness that behold, the days are coming upon you when they shall take you away with hooks, even the last of you with fish hooks, and you shall go out through the breaches, each one straight ahead, and you shall be cast out into harmon, declares the Lord.
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Come to Bethel and transgress, to Gilgal, and multiply transgression.
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Bring your sacrifices every morning, your tithes every three days.
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Offer a sacrifice of thanksgiving of that which is leavened, and proclaim freewill offerings.
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Publish them for so you love to do, O people of Israel, declares the Lord God.
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I gave you cleanness of teeth in all your cities and lack of bread in all your places, yet you did not return to me, declares the Lord.
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I also withheld the rain from when there were yet three months to the harvest.
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I would send rain on one city and send no rain on another city.
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One field would have rain, and the field on which it did not rain would wither, so two or three cities would wander to another city to drink water and would not be satisfied.
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Yet you did not return to me, declares the Lord.
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I struck you with blight and mildew, your many gardens and your vineyards, your fig trees and your olive trees and locusts devoured, yet you did not return to me, declares the Lord.
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I sent among you a pestilence after the manor of Egypt.
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I killed your young men with the sword and carried away your horses, and I made the stench of your camp go up in your nostrils, yet you did not return to me, declares the Lord.
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I overthrew some of you as when God overthrew Sodom and Gomorrah, and you were a bran plucked out of the burning, yet you did not return to me, declares the Lord.
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Therefore, thus I will do to you, O Israel, because I will do this to you, to prepare to meet your God, O Israel.
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For behold, He who forms the mountains and creates the wind and declares to man his thought, who makes the morning darkness and treads on the heights of the earth, the Lord, the God of hosts, is His name.
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May God add His blessing to the reading and to the hearing of His inspired Word.
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You should have noticed, and I'm certain that you did, the repetition in that passage.
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Yet you did not return to me, declares the Lord.
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Over and over and over again.
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And that's what I was pointing to when I gave my introduction about the pleading.
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I did this, yet you did not return.
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I did that, yet you did not return.
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And I did the other, and still you did not return.
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This is again like the father pleading with his child, saying, look at all that I have done, and yet you continued.
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Yet you would not give up your unrighteousness.
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Well, your outline tonight is threefold.
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It's a very simple outline.
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We're going to see injustice and worship condemned.
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We're going to see discipline and warnings ignored.
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And we're going to see visitation and sovereignty declared.
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So let's look first at injustice and worship condemned.
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And really it's two parts.
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It's Israel's injustice is castigated and Israel's worship is condemned.
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And then what's really...
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Yeah, it's those two parts.
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Looking at verse 1.
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Hear this word, you cows of Bashan, who are on the mountains of Samaria, who oppress the poor, who crush the needy, who say to your husbands, bring that we may drink.
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Bashan, as it is being referenced here, is a rich pasture land.
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It's a place where cattle were able to graze and become very healthy.
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But the cows who are mentioned in verse 1 are not cattle.
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The cows who are mentioned in verse 1 are the wives of the Israelite rich men.
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Now, I want to say this about that.
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I did post this on social media this week.
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I said, saying that the prophet calling the wives of the rich cows is not a compliment.
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It's somewhat of an understatement.
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I don't think that there's a woman alive who would like to be compared to a cow.
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But that is what we see if we look at the passage very clearly.
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Because if you look at the end of verse 1, it says, who say to your husbands.
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So the cows that are being referenced here, what we see, this is a metaphor in language.
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Some people don't like to look at the Bible and ever see metaphor.
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But the Bible does use metaphor, especially in prophetic literature.
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In prophetic literature, it talks a lot about things that have to be interpreted in light of the context.
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And in light of this context, the prophet is not condemning the cows that graze in Bashan.
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He's condemning the women who say to their husbands, bring me of the spoils of the poor.
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Because it says here, bring that we may drink.
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And you'll note that earlier in Amos, he referenced the robbing of the poor for their wine.
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The robbing of the poor for their wine is part of how the rich were oppressing those who were under them.
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And so, referencing women in this passage, is referencing the fact that even the wives of the rich and oppressive had themselves become oppressive.
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Now I want to make mention of something.
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I do believe that referencing women is notable to show the extent of the injustice that Amos is decrying.
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Whether the world wants to admit it or not, men and women are different.
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And we're becoming more and more and more a society that's unwilling to admit that men and women are different.
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And there's this strong push to separate the idea that men and women are different from polite society.
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And we should always say everyone is always equal.
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But I want to say this.
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And I hope that you would agree, but if you don't, we can talk later.
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But in general, women show more maternal love and more affection than men.
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In fact, that's what the term maternal love comes from.
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We talk about paternity and maternity.
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Paternity referencing the father.
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Maternity referencing the mother.
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And in general, the maternal nature of the female is in reference to the fact that she is the caregiver of the children and tends to be the softer of the two in the relationship.
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In fact, the Apostle Peter called women the weaker vessel.
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And some people take great offense to the fact that it calls women the weaker vessel.
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But basic biology tells us that in general, women are weaker physically than men.
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This is why in the military and other places, typically there is two standards for women and men in PT and things like that, because it's simply the nature of physicality.
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This is why things like allowing boys to play women's sports up until very recently was unheard of because they would not be a fair attempt at the sport.
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Recently, a transgender man who is portraying himself as a woman went into the ultimate fighting arena and beat up a woman.
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And soundly so.
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And I'm over here going, yeah, well he's a guy.
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No kidding.
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There is a difference between men and women.
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And I'm not a nut.
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It's nutty that I should have to compare myself to a nut.
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That this is nutty to discuss.
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I'm no anti-woman person.
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I love women.
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My wife especially.
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And I put my wife above anyone as far as value.
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And when Peter tells me that I am to treat my wife as a weaker vessel, what that means is not that I am to push her down like in certain cultures where women are pushed under the feet of men.
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But what it means is I'm to treat her as a precious thing.
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Consider if I had two vases in my house.
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If I had a Ming vase and I had a steel vase.
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Well, the Ming vase is weaker but much more valuable.
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It would be a vase.
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A vase, it would, wouldn't it? It would be a Ming vase.
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And a steel urn.
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If the steel urn can take a licking and keep on ticking, it's made different.
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This is the point I'm trying to make.
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I've digressed a little.
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When a...
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In Scripture, and I'm going to show you another example of this.
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When a society is being castigated by the Lord and there's a point trying to be made about the depth of her depravity, often times the point will be made that the women of the society have given over to decadence because they are less likely to fall into such depravity as men.
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They're less likely to go so far.
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And I wanted to just give you, say, where is another example of this? In Romans chapter 1, when the Apostle Paul is talking about the society that has demonstrated its depravity, he says, what's the first thing? Women give up the natural affection for the man and they burn with lust for other women.
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Why does he mention women at all? Because that is the expression of a society that has really given itself over to sinfulness, is when the women have thrown away their maternal instinct and given that maternal instinct up to the desire for self-fulfillment in whatever way.
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I mean, what do we see all around us today? We see the absolute denial of what real feminism is, which is a woman being exalted as a woman.
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And it's been replaced with socialistic feminism, which says women have no difference than men, and that's a false feminism.
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And so, anyway, I just point to this.
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If you want to write a scripture reference, Romans 1.26 talks about when a society has gone down, one of the first things that you'll see is women giving up the natural affections that they have and turning aside those affections.
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And I think that that's the point that Amos is here making.
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He's condemning the cows of passion.
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He's condemning the wives as being just as bad as their husbands.
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In fact, they're behind their husbands saying, go and do it and bring back this ill-gotten gain.
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And this oppression will bring about Israel's captivity.
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And this is what we see in verse 2.
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The Lord has sworn by His holiness that, behold, the days are coming upon you when they shall take you away with hooks, even the last of you with fish hooks, and you shall go out through the breaches, each one straight ahead, and you shall be cast into Harmon.
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Now, that could be metaphoric because it says they're going to take you away with hooks.
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And the picture is that we know what's going to happen in 722.
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This is written prior to 722.
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But in 722, Assyria is going to come into Israel, is going to destroy Israel, and is going to take her people captive.
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That's what this is a prophecy of.
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It's one of the reasons why we believe the Bible is true.
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It talks about things well before they happen.
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These words are written several years before these events take place.
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And He tells them what's going to come.
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You're going to be led away as if it were with fish hooks.
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Like a fish is caught on a hook and ripped out of the water, the Assyrians are going to come in and they're going to take you away.
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And when I said it could be metaphoric, I said it might also not be metaphoric because according to certain archaeological sources, there were hooks used.
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Hooks in the mouth, hooks in the nose, hooks in the ear with ropes.
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And that's how slaves were brought along.
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So it could be a very visual picture of what's going to happen.
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These people are going to be taken away by force.
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And when it says pull them through the breaches, they're literally going to reach into the walls and rip them out.
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So it's a picture of judgment that's coming.
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You who have oppressed the poor, you who have oppressed are about to be yourselves ripped from your comfort as a fish is ripped out of the water.
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And so we see that in verse 2.
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In verse 3 rather.
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But then in verse 4, verse 4, we see worship is the focus.
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Worship is condemned in verses 4 and 5.
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He says, come to Bethel and transgress, to Gilgal and multiply transgression.
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You probably wouldn't know it right off, but there's sarcasm here.
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One of the things we need to remember is that prophets were known for sarcasm.
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Think about the story of Elijah when he was on Mount Carmel.
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Remember the prophets of Baal were there? And the prophets were calling down their God to come and work for them? And what did Elijah do? Yeah, he mocked them.
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He says, maybe your God is asleep.
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Or maybe He is relieving Himself.
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As we look it up, 1 Kings 18, 25-27.
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He says, maybe He's asleep, maybe He's in the bathroom.
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But He ain't listening.
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So the prophets had a way of being a bit brash to make a point.
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Well, in verses 4 and 5 of Amos 4, he is being somewhat sarcastic because he's calling the people to Bethel and Gilgal.
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And if you didn't know anything about Bethel and Gilgal, you might not notice the sarcasm here.
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But the reason why he's calling them, he's saying, come to Bethel and transgress.
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Basically he's saying, come to Bethel and sin.
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That's what transgress means.
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Come to Gilgal and multiply transgression.
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Come there and really sin.
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Well, why is he mentioning those two places? Well, remember we talked about Jeroboam I? Jeroboam I was the king of Israel who came out after Solomon and he divided the kingdom.
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He was the king in the north and Rehoboam was the king in the south, right? Jeroboam I, because he didn't want his people to make a pilgrimage to the southern kingdom.
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He didn't want his people to go to Jerusalem.
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He set up places of worship for them where they wouldn't have to go to Jerusalem on their pilgrimages.
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And one of them was Bethel, also known as the house of God.
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And another place was called Gilgal.
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And these two places he set up places to worship with golden calves.
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Idols to worship.
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So when the prophet said, go to Bethel and transgress, go to Gilgal and multiply transgression, this is a mock on them.
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You know, because the prophets call us to worship God.
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He's calling them to worship because he goes on to say, and if you look at the end of verse 5, it says, for so you love to do.
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He's calling them to what they want to do.
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You love to worship idols.
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Well, do it.
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Know that this is from where your punishment is birthed.
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And he says, bring your sacrifices every morning, your tithes every three days.
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That is simply a reference to the fact that they were very committed to their idolatry.
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In fact, bringing an offering every morning and a tithe every three days was more than what God required.
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It's more than what the law had required.
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But they were so invested in their idolatry that they were willing to do more for their idol than they were called to do for the living God.
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And that's just a powerful thought, the fact that they were willing to overdo for the idol.
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And later it says, and offer a sacrifice at Thanksgiving which is leavened.
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And you'll remember the sacrifices are supposed to be unleavened.
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And so he's again calling to the point that their sacrifices are not only being done more and more, but they're not being done even correct for the idol.
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They're being done the way they want to do it and in an ungodly way.
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And as I said, he goes on to say, for so you loved to do.
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That is a direct attack against the willing idolatry of Israel.
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Her religion had become a sham.
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Her religion had become inward focused.
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There is a very popular belief and it is so absolutely pervasive that people don't even question it anymore.
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And the belief is this.
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It doesn't matter how you worship as long as you are sincere.
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You've heard people say that.
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These people were sincere.
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These people were really sincere.
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It reminds me of a lot of the false teachers' prayers.
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Trump tried to show that he was spiritual by having nothing but false teachers pray.
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And they prayed fervently.
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But they're praying to a god of their own making in most instances.
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It's sincerely wrong.
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The most sincere worship in the world matters not if it is pointed at an idol.
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Hear that again.
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The most sincere worship in the world matters not if it is pointed at an idol.
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You won't meet a more religious person than a Mormon.
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You won't meet a more dedicated person than a devout Muslim.
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Am I saying that their gods are not true gods? Yes.
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If you want to have that conversation, we can have it later.
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But yes.
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According to the scripture, they are worshiping false gods.
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And outside of God's will, you need to understand this.
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Outside of God's will, all religion is rebellion.
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Outside of God's will, all religion is rebellion.
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It doesn't matter how sincere.
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In fact, the other day, I told you I did a few funerals this week.
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And I'm thankful to God for the opportunity to preach the gospel because again, some of these people would never hear it otherwise.
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And as I was waiting on the funeral, I was listening to two men.
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I did not engage them because I didn't know them.
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And it was an awkward situation that I was in.
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And I knew I was going to get to share the gospel later.
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But I just listened, exercising my pastoral prerogative and eavesdropping.
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But I was listening to them talk.
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And one guy was proclaiming the goodness of a very popular false teacher who I will leave unnamed at this point.
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But he is a very popular false teacher.
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And he was just talking about how great it was to listen to him.
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And I could tell the other guy didn't really dig that guy.
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And he was sort of trying to, well, he's not great, blah, blah, blah.
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And they were kind of going back and forth.
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But the other guy, he says, well, let me tell you about the church I go to.
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I go to a church where the pastor has a mohawk and wears ripped up jeans.
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And man, I tell you, he wears t-shirts.
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And it is fun.
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I've never heard that is a reason to go somewhere, to worship.
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It's fun! No, I ain't saying we should just sit around like a bunch of frozen chosen with our fingers over our eyes and sucking lemons looking miserable.
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But that was how he described his worship experience.
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Was it's all about the show.
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It's all about the theatrics.
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I told the story earlier.
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I was talking to Collier on the phone.
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And we were just talking.
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And I said recently I was invited to another man's church.
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And he was just showing me around.
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And we were talking about church.
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And you know what he was most excited to show me? Their lighting system.
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He was most excited to show me their theatrics.
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Later on.
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Well, but later on, I was talking to him and his wife.
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And I said something about theatrics in church being unnecessary.
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And I forgot about the light show.
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And they just really were taken aback that I would say that.
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That theatrics are unnecessary.
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I said, but we're never going to compete with Hollywood.
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You know, there's a church over across town that had The Grinch as a play.
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I'm not condemning them for that.
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I don't care.
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But they spent thousands and thousands of dollars on a full production of The Grinch play.
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If you ask them why.
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Well, whatever you have to do to get people in the door.
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And you know what I respond? I said, you know, how would Amos respond? If he went to the sitting king, who was Jeroboam II, and said, Jeroboam, you are worshiping idols.
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And he says, well, whatever you got to do to get them to worship.
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I honestly can't think, that guy saying the church was fun.
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I can't think of a better example of this verse where it says about what they love to do.
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It's all about what I want to do.
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And honestly, church has become, and now I'm going to go way, I'm going to try not to go, I go down a rabbit hole.
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Church has become a service industry.
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Church has become a service industry in a lot of areas.
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Because when people come in, they do surveys.
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What do you need us to do for you to get you to keep coming? Because we need people to keep coming.
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So we're going to serve you in whatever way is necessary to cause you to keep coming.
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And we have a concierge, not a greeter.
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And the concierge becomes a service industry professional whose job it is to seat them and to feed them and to clothe them and to water them to ensure that they come back next time.
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And bring their checkbook.
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Can't we just preach the gospel and be confident that God's going to do what He's going to do? But we don't.
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We get so caught up in the mindset of the theatrics.
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So caught up in the mindset of trusting in man's methodologies.
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I've been to church growth seminars and almost everyone, survey your neighborhood and find out what they want and do it.
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Survey an unbeliever, ask him what he wants, and do what he wants.
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Keep on sinning.
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Well, yeah.
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And that's why churches don't preach on sin anymore.
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It's easier to keep people if you don't say things that offend them.
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What's that? Yeah.
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Well, I saw a post recently that said this.
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It said, I honestly believe God is calling His people back to intimacy and worship.
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And while I don't necessarily disagree with the post, I wanted to respond.
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I didn't because I didn't want to start a fight.
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But my thought was, I think for 5,000 years, God has not been calling His people to intimacy and worship.
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For 5,000 years, God has been calling His people to accuracy in worship.
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Because you cannot intimately worship God if you don't accurately worship God.
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If you don't believe me, go to Leviticus 10 and look at Nadab and Abihu who came and offered a strange fire before the Lord, and the Lord took them to their death at that very moment with fire.
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Because they fiddled with the worship of the living God.
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And they fooled with God and His temple.
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God is concerned with accuracy first.
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And then intimacy comes.
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If you're seeking intimacy first, you'll find whatever sensational method it takes to get you there.
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Accuracy before intimacy.
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Hey, that's a shirt.
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That's a slogan.
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Accuracy before intimacy.
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Alright, so next.
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Number 2.
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Oh, and we're way past.
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Okay.
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I took a lot of time on number 1.
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I won't take as much time on number 2.
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So we get to number 2.
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Starting at verse 6.
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And we see the five disciplinary warnings.
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There's disciplines and warnings that God has given them.
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They're ignored.
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They begin with phrases, I gave, I withheld, I struck.
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This is God telling you, I did these things and you didn't listen.
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I did these things and you didn't heed.
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And you did not return to Me, says the Lord.
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And there are five warnings.
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First is famine.
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He says in verse 6, I gave you cleanness of teeth in all your cities.
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And let me just tell you, that's not orthodontia.
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That's not dentistry.
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When He says I gave you cleanness of teeth, what He meant was I took away your food.
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You had famine.
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A clean mouth was a sign of a mouth that had not eaten anything.
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I gave you cleanness of teeth.
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And then you see the parallelism, which is the next passage, and lack of bread.
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I gave you clean teeth and lack of bread.
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It's the same thing.
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He's saying the same thing twice.
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The next thing we see in verses 7 and 8 is drought.
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He says I withheld rain from you when there were three months to the harvest.
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That's referencing the time of year it was.
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There was a time of year where there would be three months to the harvest and the people would expect rain because that's what would cause the seeds to germinate.
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And God was saying no, I withheld that rain.
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Your seeds didn't come, they didn't germinate, and that resulted in famine.
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Drought leads to famine.
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And it wasn't universal.
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I like the fact that God references the fact that it rained in some places and not in others.
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Showing His sovereignty.
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Showing that this peculiar deprivation of water was to be understood as a sign from Him.
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Then we see verse 9.
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He says I struck you with blight and mildew, your many gardens and your vineyards, your fig trees and your olive trees, the locusts devoured, yet you did not return to Me.
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Again, this is just destruction.
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You experienced destruction and yet you didn't turn to Me.
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Verse 10, we see pestilence and military defeat.
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He says I sent among you pestilence after the manor of Egypt.
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And He's pointing of course to the plagues of Egypt.
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And He said and along with that I killed your young men with a sword, I carried away your horses, I made the stench of your camp go up in the nostrils, yet you did not return to Me.
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You failed in battle and yet you didn't realize and return.
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And verse 11 is kind of interesting because He references Sodom and Gomorrah.
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He says I overthrew some of you as when God overthrew Sodom and Gomorrah and you were as a brand plucked out of burning yet you did not return to Me.
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There were fiery judgments that the people experienced and yet still.
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And you know what this is reminiscent of? Think how many times the Pharaoh and Jack you talked through this in Exodus.
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Think how many times the Pharaoh had judgment after judgment after judgment.
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He didn't respond or he'd respond and then call them back until God brought the final judgment.
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Firstborn of every household.
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And even then He pursued them after He realized His hatred had not been abated.
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He pursued them to the Red Sea where He was crushed under the water of the sea.
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Here it's the same picture.
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The only difference now is that it's not Egypt who is in view but it's Israel who is in view.
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Israel has received famine.
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Israel has received drought.
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Israel has received military defeat.
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Israel has received fiery judgment from heaven and yet she will not repent.
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Where has God brought you in your life to let you know that you need to repent? But on an individual level, yeah, our country too.
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And absolutely.
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We're in a place right now where national repentance is the only thing that can save us.
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And people who are trusting in Donald Trump, please know this, whatever good he does, he can't save us.
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The only thing that can save us is God and repentance is the only thing that would ever cause God to save us.
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There is no salvation in four more years of Republican leadership or a hundred years.
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It's just not there.
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The salvation, the only real change will come first of all when pulpits quit trying to satisfy men and start trying to satisfy God.
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That will be first.
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And until churches repent, you're not going to see the world change.
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The greatest revivals in American history never started in Washington.
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They always started in the pulpits.
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Jonathan Edwards, George Whitefield, men who went out and preached to thousands in a field with no amplification and yet saw hundreds and thousands saved because they were preaching the truth of the gospel unashamedly and the nation saw and changed.
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Now again, we pray for our leaders.
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We pray that they'll make wise and good decisions.
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And we pray that God will lead them to keep us from failing and falling.
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But just look at our city.
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Look what happened just last night in our city with decisions that our 12 people made on a council, a decision which affects our city.
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There is blood that cries out from the ground.
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That's what the Bible talks about.
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And the blood that cries out from the ground in our nation is very, very, very loud.
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So, anyhow, we look at these.
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But as I said, getting back to the individual level, God has for so many of us...
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I know for me, I mean, I was 19 years old before I got saved.
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And I can tell you there were moments in my life where I could have easily...
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I could have died in a car wreck.
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I could have easily died of foolishness.
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I could have easily died in so many ways.
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And God spared me for that moment when he was going to save my soul.
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And I remember being pled with through those years.
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I remember people preaching the gospel to me and me hearing the gospel.
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I remember going to...
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There was a church somebody invited me to, and I was standing there cussing like a sailor.
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No offense to sailors.
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You're a Navy man.
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I hope that didn't offend you.
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I'm sorry, I just remembered.
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I'm sorry.
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Cursing like anyone would.
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But I'm sitting there, and everybody's looking at me like I'm a fool.
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But it didn't even occur to me that all these are church folks.
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I didn't even care.
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That's how lost I was.
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They didn't care.
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And like I said, that was a moment of clarity.
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I was like, wow, maybe I shouldn't be doing this.
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But here is God speaking through Amos, saying to the people of Israel, you have had opportunity after opportunity after opportunity of me calling you to repentance, and yet you have not returned.
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And so, verses 12 and 13 really just brings it home because he says what I consider to be one of the most profound statements in Scripture, therefore thus I will do to you, O Israel, because I will do this to you, prepare to meet your God.
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Think about that.
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That's a tough statement, and it's a powerful statement because this is not the meeting that they were hoping for.
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They went and worshipped every day.
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They went and worshipped their idols every day.
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And I got to admit, I think probably some of them were pretty sincere in that worship, as we said earlier.
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But when the prophet says prepare to meet your God, it wasn't the idol that they were looking forward to meeting.
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It was the true and living God.
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And I'll give you this picture.
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Isaiah, the most righteous man in Israel in his day, when he saw God face to face in Isaiah 6, he put his hand over his mouth and said, woe is me.
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Remember, woe is me is not like the common colloquial phrase we now use.
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Oh, woe is me.
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Or like a Yiddish expression, oy vey.
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It's not that.
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He pronounced judgment on himself.
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What did he say? He says, woe is me, for I am a man of unclean lips, and I dwell amongst a people of unclean lips, and mine eyes have seen the Lord.
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And he was stunned with his own wickedness.
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I got to be honest with you.
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I don't think anybody has ever been saved who has not first realized their own wickedness.
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Unless you realize how sinful you are, that God is holy and you are sinful, until you realize that, you cannot be saved.
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Because if you think that God saved you because you are good or noble or worthy of His salvation, you don't understand Him and you don't understand yourself.
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The most righteous man in Israel, when he saw God face to face, fell on his face.
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I hear these false teachers.
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Well, I was called up into Heaven and I was walking around on Hallelujah Boulevard with Jesus and we were eating ice cream.
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And I just say, if you had one glimpse of the holiness of God, you would collapse into a puddle of unrighteous goo.
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God is holy.
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He's holy, holy, holy.
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And when the prophet says, prepare to meet your God, it is not for a hug and a handshake.
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It is a pronouncement of judgment.
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He is coming and the hordes of Assyria are in His wake.
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And he finalizes this chapter with verse 13.
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For behold, He who forms the mountains and creates the wind and declares to man what is his thought, who makes the morning darkness and treads on the heights of the earth, the Lord, the God of hosts.
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By the way, that phrase simply means the God of the armies or the angels, the angelic armies, the hosts.
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The God of hosts is His name.
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This verse 13 is declaring the sovereignty of God.
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It's recalling the sovereignty of God.
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When God declares His power, He often refers to creation as that declaration.
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And look at verse 13.
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He says, for behold, He who forms the mountains and creates the wind and declares, I love this verse, and declares to man what is His thought.
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You realize you couldn't even think? Your heart wouldn't even beat if it were not for the sovereign action of God? And for a moment, He's trying to get them to remember who He is.
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Because this is the God who you're about to meet.
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This is a God with whom you're about to come face to face.
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It reminds me of Job.
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And if you want to just write down a verse for maybe looking at later, Job chapter 40 and 41.
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Just read the whole two chapters.
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In 40 and 41, Job is asking the Lord and he's coming to the Lord.
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And you remember Job, he was a righteous man in the sense of his day.
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He was righteous in his generations.
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He was faced with a trial on behalf of God and because God had decreed it to be so, he faced a trial.
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And at the end of all of that, he faces the Lord with the question of why.
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And the Lord says, were you there when I formed the mountains? Were you there? Who are you, oh man, to answer back to God? Romans chapter 9.
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Who are you, oh man, to answer back to God? When God declares His sovereignty, He points back at creation.
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I made the world.
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I made you.
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I had a guy recently, he said to me, he says, I just have a hard time worshiping a God who would demand that we obey Him and if we don't, we go to hell.
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And I said, look.
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I said, here's the deal.
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If there's any being in the universe who has the right to make a demand upon you, it is the one who created you.
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Don't take offense that He who created you has given you a responsibility to obey Him.
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He has that right.
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What a fool to say, He who made me has no right over me.
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It's a foolish thing to say.
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He who created me has no right to give me a call to obedience.
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You wouldn't even exist if God had not created you.
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So let's make an application quickly and we'll be done.
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Our application is simple.
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Number one, and this is kind of going back to the earlier part of the chapter.
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Number one, as Christians, we should be concerned about social injustice.
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Just write that down and I'll explain what I mean.
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I am aware, and this is again, I'm hearkening back to earlier in the lesson.
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I am aware that right now there's something called SJWs.
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You know what a SJW is? Social Justice Warrior.
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And that's the people who are out burning Berkeley because they didn't want to hear Milo Yiannopoulos come and speak.
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Those are people who are protesting and barricading cars from getting by because they're trying to make a point.
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Social Justice Warriors is not what we've been called to be.
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Not like that.
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But we would be wrong to say that we are not to be concerned with social injustice.
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Because the scripture tells us that we are to care for the widows and the orphans.
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For that is pure and undefiled religion.
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James chapter 1 and verse 27.
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The church should be involved in caring for the weak.
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The church should be involved in caring for the hurting.
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And I do think that in a lot of ways we have given up that responsibility and given it over to the government which is not what it should be.
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So we should care about social injustice.
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And I think, again, go back to verse 1 of this where he talks about the cows of Bashan and the reason for their condemnation.
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And what has happened is these people have oppressed the poor and not cared.
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And they've gone about worshipping while still oppressing the poor.
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So that's the first thing.
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Number two.
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More dangerous than illicit sin is the willingness to worship falsely.
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I wish I had time to break that down a little more.
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But I'm just going to say it again.
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More dangerous than illicit sin is the willingness to worship falsely.
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I've got to tell you something.
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If somebody comes to me or if I go to people, I tell you, people who are often most willing to receive the Gospel are people who have been broken because of their sin.
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But people who are caught up in false religion are almost unreachable because they are so convinced of their own righteousness.
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And that's why I say what I said.
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And that's what we see here.
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These people aren't caught up in illicit sin so much as they're caught up in false belief.
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And third and finally.
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The creation around us is testimony to the infinite power of God.
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If you ever just want to express to somebody why they know God exists, Romans 1 tells us why they know God exists.
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I don't have a question.
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I'm an a-atheist.
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I don't believe in atheists.
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Because the Bible says that all men know instinctively that God exists.
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And to deny it is to deny what is obvious.
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Discussion question for you to go home with.
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Maybe spend time in your own study.
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What cause do you think the modern church has been weak in addressing? And what ways should the church address the culture? That's a thought for the close.
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Let's pray.
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Father, I thank You for this study.
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I pray that it's been fruitful for everyone here.
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I pray that we will be reminded that though we are broken, though we are sinful, and though we are unholy and wicked, we have a Savior who is perfect.
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We have a Savior who took in Himself the punishment due our sin, and He has offered as the reward of trusting in Him His blessed righteousness.
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So when we stand before You, we stand in the righteousness not of our own, but in the righteousness of Jesus Christ.
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I pray tonight, Lord, that if You've been pursuing any of us, if You've been pleading with us and we have yet to bow the knee to Christ, that tonight would be the night.
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And I pray that You would use this lesson to remind us that Your pleas do not last forever, and it is appointed unto all men once to die.
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And we all have that to look forward to.
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And after that is judgment.
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May we know that we are prepared for that judgment because we have, by Your grace, come into a relationship with Your Son, in whose name we pray.
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Amen.
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Sorry for keeping you a little longer tonight.