Aligning Our Words With Our Lives

Aligning Our Words With Our Lives

 

Amos 5: 21-24 "I hate all your show and pretense-- the hypocrisy of your religious festivals and solemn assemblies. I will not accept your burnt offerings and grain offerings. I won't even notice all your choice peace offerings. Away with your noisy hymns of praise! I will not listen to the music of your harps. Instead, I want to see a mighty flood of justice, an endless river of righteous living. (NLT)

 

God provides us with His entire counsel throughout the Bible. From the opening pages in Genesis to the prophetic revelation given to John; God gives us His wisdom and an insight into His thinking who He is. Consider the task He had in coordinating this volume. Sixty-six books, forty authors, spanning thousands of years. Yet it all supports itself, confirms itself, and has zero substantive disagreement. It transcends all time and remains relevant throughout all generations. Even snippets from a minor prophet such as Amos reveal to us so many dangers we can face today individually and as the church.

 

Amos was a prophet who lived during the reign of Jeroboam II, approximately 750 years before Jesus walked the earth. Like the prosperity we see throughout America today, Israel and Judah were at their pinnacle of success and riches. Like we feel today that God blesses America, I am sure that Israel and Judah felt the same for their countries at the time of Amos. Unfortunately, the more they prospered the further away from God they drifted; sound familiar? Jesus warned us about this in His teachings:

 

"No one can serve two masters. For you will hate one and love the other; you will be devoted to one and despise the other. You cannot serve both God and money. Matthew 6: 24 (NLT)

 

It is not just money. You could put the word fame there and the concept is the same. Popularity, position, success anything that starts to make you think more of yourself and less of God. Corrie Ten Boom once said that you will only realize that Jesus is all you need when Jesus is all you have. This is not to say that God is saying poverty is desired. It is whether you serve your money/success/prosperity or whether it serves you.

 

Jesus warned us about this not just because as God He was aware of it, but because He knew what had happened in the history of Israel. He knew what had happened in the days of Amos. The Book of Amos is a stark reminder of how off track we can get as a people, a nation, or as a church. As we go through the key verses today, let us reflect as to where our church is in this country in comparison. Are we focused on salvation, regeneration and discipling? Or are we focused on our next mega church, self-help book, or leadership summit. Consider the Apostle Paul. Evangelized the known world, was personally drafted by Jesus Himself, and was shown the third heavens! After any one of his missionary journeys he could have become enamored with his success. He could have begun to think more of what he had done than who he had done it through. But Paul always remembered where God found him. He only focused on one thing:

 

For I decided that while I was with you I would forget everything except Jesus Christ, the one who was crucified. 1Corinthians 2: 2 (NLT)