The church of Christ is God’s favorite institution. It is not the oldest institution; the family is the oldest. But the church of Christ is God’s favorite institution. Jesus shed His blood for the church of Christ (Acts 20:28). Every spiritual blessing is found in the church of Christ (Eph. 1:3). Salvation is found in the church of Christ (2 Tim. 2:10). It will be the church of Christ which Jesus hands over to the Father for eternal, safe keeping (1 Cor. 15:24). We cannot over-emphasize the importance of the church of Christ to God the Father.
The church is so important that several prophets talked about the coming of the church hundreds of years before it was established. We have had two studies on Amos earlier this year and we covered the first six chapters. Let us finish our study of Amos as the prophet leads us, 700 years before Jesus came, to anticipate the establishment of a new people of God, the church of His Son, Jesus Christ…
THE MESSENGER – 7:10-17:
In 7:10-13, a priest from Bethel named Amaziah does not like Amos. Amaziah is a false prophet. He wants to court favor with the king and the people, so he tells them what they want to hear. There is no record of Amos predicting the king’s death but there is a record of Amos predicting the exile.
Apparently, King Jeroboam II did not believe Amaziah because in verse 12, Amaziah changes his tactic. He tries to intimidate Amos into leaving Israel and fleeing south, to the land of Judah. Amaziah says, “Go, preach there! Don’t preach in Bethel! It’s the city of the king!”
Amos responds in verses 14-17. In verse 17, Amos tells Amaziah that his wife would become a prostitute in the city because she could not make any money doing anything else. Amaziah’s children would die by the sword, probably when Assyria invades. Amaziah’s land would be divided up and given to other people. And Amaziah himself would die on “unclean soil,” that is, in a foreign land. In the land of Assyria. And, to emphasize his overall message, Amos reiterates at the end of verse 17 that God’s people were going to be going into exile!
THE MESSAGE – 8:11-14:
I want to draw your attention to Amos’s message in verses 11-14. God had already sent famines of bread and water to try to motivate Israel to repent, but they refused. So, what does God decide to do? He’s going to stop communicating with them! He is not going to “waste His breath” anymore in trying to get Israel to repent. He’s going to wash His hands of them!
Can you imagine what life would be like if the Bible were not respected as well as it is in our country? Can you imagine what life would be like if nobody tried to live as Jesus tells us to live? Can you imagine a country in which the “golden rule” does not have any influence whatsoever? Because we are ignorant of history, we don’t know what life was like without any influence of Christianity at all – but you just have to look at Muslim countries and Communist countries and atheist countries like North Korea to see what life is like without any message from God!
THE MYSTERY – 9:11-12:
God is going to weed out those who are faithless to Him, those who are disobedient and who don’t trust God to do what God commands to be done. He’s going to shake them in a sieve (ver. 9) and He will weed out, filter out, those who are not faithful to Him.
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Then, with the remnant, God will re-establish His people and here’s the most important (perhaps) note in Amos’s preaching, verses 11-12. In that day that God filters the people through the sieve, with the faithful, God will raise up the “fallen booth” of David and wall up its breaches. He will raise up its ruins and rebuild it as in the days of old. God had not forgotten the promise He made to David in 2 Samuel 7. God would send the Messiah and He would rebuild the people of God…
But then there is some surprising news, some confusing news in verse 12: the new people of God would posses Edom and “all the nations who are called by My name,” declares the Lord who does this.” In other words, this new nation, this rebuilt nation would not be like before – it’s going to be a universal kingdom!
The Mystery Revealed – Let’s pull back the curtain of history and see how this prophecy was fulfilled, how the mystery was revealed. After the church was established, there were issues with the non-Jews coming into the church because they had not been circumcised as the Law of Moses required.
That problem became so intense – the idea that non-Jews had to follow the Law of Moses to be saved, along with obeying Christ – that the apostles of Christ called a large gathering of Christians in the city of Jerusalem, recorded in Acts 15.
The brother of Jesus, James, stood up and quotes this text in Amos 9:11-12 and he says that this passage is fulfilled in the church of Christ. We are the “fallen tabernacle of David,” which was rebuilt by the Messiah, the Lord Jesus Christ.
CONCLUSION:
That’s why the church is so important. Church is not just a place where you come to get away from the world for an hour. It’s not a place where you punch your spiritual “time clock” and then go away and forget about it for the next six days!
The church is the body of people who worships God together and assembles to pray together and enjoy life together. We commune at the Lord’s Table together but we also eat potluck meals together. And we share the message of Christ, with each other, and with the lost who need to hear and obey it.
We are the people of God! Amos would have loved to have been a part of this body of people. Let’s love and respect the church of Christ as the Lord intended.
Paul Holland
