Sermons

While Moses kept drawing back before Pharaoh, protesting that he could not do it, Aaron went quietly with him as his spokesman, down a road that might have cost them both their lives. Yet when the people threatened him and demanded a golden calf, he could not overcome his fear and gave way to that sin.

Though he lived as second to Moses, he did not envy him but kept to his place, and God saw that heart. Even the sin of wavering in weak faith when circumstances grew too hard, God forgave. Aaron had sinned, yet the faith running beneath it all held firm, and so God clothed him in the garments of the high priest.

People may never know the service given out of sight, but God knows it. Christians must keep their eyes on God rather than on people. Those who quietly give themselves without any conditions, God repays with blessing.

Leaders living in plenty drink wine from the vessels of the temple and anoint themselves with precious oils. They claim to make instruments as David did, yet theirs is the drunken humming of men who all but mock God, nothing like the faith of David, who praised him with his whole heart.

They had no fear of judgment because they thought their own power formidable. Forgetting that their prosperity had been the grace of God, they grew proud, as though they had won it by their own merit; they went on to serve foreign gods and gave no thought even to the peril facing the nation. Even the poor envied such a life and followed after it, until the whole people had fallen into corruption together.

Before pouring out his wrath, God first told them to go and see the downfall of other cities and learn from it, but they would not listen, and in the end they were brought down by an earthquake and the Assyrian invasion. The peace enjoyed today is likewise not the fruit of one’s own strength but the grace of God, and the moment this is forgotten and the credit claimed for oneself, the hedge of protection is taken away. The promise that whoever seeks God, and keeps on seeking him, will live still stands; it must be held fast through upright living and sincere faith.

The world looks on a mansion and a thatched cottage very differently. God, however, does not regard the size the eye can see but the faith that dwells within. Israel was a beloved people, yet they served idols, and God raised his hand in judgment.

The number of cities brought down speaks plainly of how great that judgment would be. The call to seek God pointed the way to life, yet he told them not to seek out the very places where traces of faith remained. Worship and circumcision that had kept only their outward form could not please him.

However lavish the sacrifice, God does not accept it when the heart is elsewhere. True worship is a life that lets justice flow like water and righteousness like a never-failing stream. Even on the day of judgment, those who seek God in sincerity and pursue what is good will live.

The people of Israel brought their tithes every three days and went up to Bethel each morning to offer sacrifices. Yet all that zeal was a misguided faith, one that sought to use God in order to prosper, and sacrifice offered without a contrite heart only added to their sin.

Like the fat cows of Bashan, Israel had been blessed and still was not satisfied; they oppressed the poor and gave themselves over to luxury and indulgence. God warned them time and again through drought and calamity, but rather than repenting they grew ever more hardened, until at last, like Sodom and Gomorrah, they could no longer escape judgment.

God does not rush to judgment; he always warns first and gives people the chance to turn back. It is those who cast off a merely outward faith and, in true repentance, make ready to meet God who receive his blessing.

Amos proclaims that of all the families of the earth God chose Israel alone. Yet they sold the poor for silver and for a pair of sandals, and lived in luxury, with a palace for summer and another for winter. Their sin in silencing the prophets and making the Nazirites drink wine had risen up before God.

The greater the love, the deeper the pain of betrayal. Like Judas Iscariot and Peter, those who have received grace may still give way to despair or yield to fear, and then the heart passes over into betrayal. Israel’s judgment weighs more heavily than that of the other nations because what God had hoped for from them was so very special.

The purpose of judgment was not suffering but repentance, and so judgment itself was an act of love. Though the winter palace and the summer palace and the palaces of ivory fall, there are still those who cling on in Samaria and Damascus and barely escape with their lives. God’s people must never forget that judgment and Christ’s return are certain, and they need to live each day honestly and faithfully.

Having judged the Gentile nations, God goes on to lay bare, one by one, the sins of Judah and Israel. Those in power sold the righteous for a piece of silver and the poor for the price of a pair of sandals; father and son went in to the same woman, and they committed this immorality without shame. Beside the altar they lay down on garments taken in pledge from the poor and drank wine.

While they were weak, they strove to live by the Word, but once prosperity came, they took up the very sins of the Gentile nations. They credited grace to their own merit and forgot to give thanks; they made the Nazirites drink wine and threatened the prophets, commanding them not to prophesy. This was not the ignorance of the Gentiles. It was a sin that only a people who had received the Law could commit.

God reminded them once more of the grace that had brought them out of Egypt and led them through the wilderness, and he gave them the opportunity to turn back, but Israel would not listen. When judgment comes, pressing down as a cart loaded with sheaves presses the earth, neither the swift nor the strong will find anywhere to flee. Before judgment arrives, God’s people must not leave the place of repentance, for he rejoices at even the first sign of their turning.

One nation after another is called to account. Damascus crushed Gilead; Gaza and Tyre sold their captives into slavery; Edom trampled his own brother; Ammon killed women who were with child; Moab dug up the bones of a dead king. Last of all come Judah and Israel themselves. They sold the poor for the price of a pair of sandals, their courts took bribes, and father and son went in to the same woman, defiling the temple.

The sins of the foreign nations did not escape judgment, even though they were not committed against Israel, for to trample a human being is in itself rebellion against the One who made that person. Yet Judah and Israel, who had watched those nations sin, went on to repeat the very same sins, though they were the people God had brought out of Egypt and given a temple. Their sin was committed where love had been given most richly, and so the rebuke was the heaviest of all.

Neither the temple nor a long history of being loved can cover sin. God judged the nations first and so gave his people time to repent, but Israel would not listen to the end, and judgment came upon them. The heart that counts itself less sinful than others shows that it has yet to learn what repentance is, and whoever stands in such pride must turn back now.

Jesus said that the poor in spirit, those who mourn, the meek, and those who hunger and thirst for righteousness are blessed. Then, last of all, he declared that great is the reward in heaven for those who are persecuted for righteousness’ sake.

The world hates the light. Because the truth exposes the sins people would rather keep hidden, persecution follows wherever it is proclaimed. While preaching the gospel, the apostle Paul was stoned and beaten until he was taken for dead, yet he responded with compassion for the souls who had not received the Lord. This world is itself the furnace in which God’s people are refined into pure gold, and if they run from its trials, God has no choice but to make their training all the harder.

Only when Isaiah stood before the glory of God did he see that his lips were unclean, and he repented. We too must turn back to an upright life now, while the opportunity to repent remains. God’s people do not face persecution and suffering alone; the Holy Spirit shares the burden with them, and God, seeing their devotion, rewards them with peace and rest.

Jesus said that those who make peace will be sons of God. His commands to love one’s enemies and do good to them, to offer the other cheek when struck, and to give up one’s shirt as well when one’s coat is taken, show what that peace looks like in practice.

To make peace with sinners, God had Jesus, the Word made flesh, nailed to the cross, where all his water and blood were poured out. No one can love an enemy by human strength. Yet whoever first takes the plank out of their own eye, hears the faults of others as a voice calling them to mend their own, and repents, is able to rise to it with the help of the Holy Spirit.

Worship, too, God cannot receive when it is dressed up in human righteousness and devotion, apart from his will, like stones shaped with a chisel; he accepts only a living sacrifice offered as it is, like an altar of earth. To the faithful who take the lowly place, give themselves up, and restore broken relationships, God says, ‘You are my son,’ and grants them the blessing of entering the Kingdom of Heaven.

When cobwebs hang in a house that is falling into ruin, even the finest music sounds like noise. So it is with the human soul: once the cobwebs of worry and greed have gathered there, even grace and wise counsel come to be met with suspicion.

To be pure in heart does not mean having a gentle disposition; it means that faith has grown. Just as a dirty window hides even the loveliest view, only a clean heart can see both the grace of God and its own sin. At Mount Sinai the people could not come up the mountain, yet Moses was called, because he had laid aside his own thoughts and fears and obeyed.

When the flame of the Holy Spirit melts hard hearts and binds them together as one, the church becomes a body that nothing can pull apart. As the heart is washed clean through a life that is quick to listen, slow to speak and does not give way to anger, the pure in heart receive the blessing of seeing God.

Watercourse Church has reached its 20th anniversary. Those who once worshiped on cushions in a single small room have each devoted themselves with the gifts they received and have built the church up firmly.

For 38 years the sick man at the pool of Bethesda waited, having fixed the moment the water stirred as his own time. That is why we pray and still receive no answer: we take no interest in God’s will and ask only for the answer we have already settled on. Until he wrestled with God at the ford of the Jabbok, Jacob too lived a life of running from his fears in his own strength.

The quickest way to obey God is to bring our time into line with God’s time. Just as Jacob’s name was changed and his fear of his brother disappeared when he fought with God and prevailed, we too must seek God’s heart and power with the key of prayer. Just as no one who came to Joseph’s storehouses ever went away empty-handed, no one who comes to Christ goes away empty-handed.

In the Garden of Eden, humanity, grasping at the place that belongs to God, ate from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil and was bound in the chains of death. God the Son had mercy on those sinners; he took on flesh himself and bore the cross, and so delivered them from death.

The priest and the Levite saw the man who had fallen among robbers and passed him by, but the Samaritan took pity on him, bound up his wounds with oil and wine, set him on his own animal and cared for him. If Jerusalem is the church and Jericho the world, then staying within the church and resting secure there is no different from withholding the gospel for want of a merciful heart.

Worship that is mere formality, and a faith that cherishes only its own salvation, cannot come to know the will of God. When believers set out toward Jericho with mercy for souls not yet saved, God sees that small love and fills it with an overflowing love.