Christ Church

A Famine of the Word
Christ Church on October 13, 2019
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Our Culture, What Remains of It (State of the Church 2018 #1)

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Introduction

Instead of a stand-alone “state of the church” message this year, as has been our custom, I want to spend a number of weeks on the topic. Lord willing, I intend to drill down into the subject, and I trust that the reasons for doing so will become increasingly apparent as we work through the series. The point of these messages will be to help you, as members of Christ Church, to better understand the crisis of our times, along with the demeanor we as Christians are called to cultivate in the course of such a crisis.

We also must address an explication of the basic strategy that we have been using here in our community for a number of decades now. This is because we have been greatly blessed in our community, and so we need to equip ourselves in two areas. We must educate the immigrants, and we must educate the next generation. If we do not do this, then we will be faced with two disasters. The first is what might be called “Californians moving to Texas, but continuing to vote like Californians.” The second is the son of a billionaire growing up without ever breaking a sweat, or knowing what having calluses might be like.

As If There Were No Text

As you know, at this place on the outline, it is our practice to quote the text that the message is designed to unfold and apply. There is no text here today, not because we will not be bringing Scripture to bear shortly, but rather to illustrate the fundamental disease of our time. As a people, we have pretended to ourselves that a secular order is even possible. We have pretended that a people can exist without a transcendent Word. The deeper we descend into this folly the higher our impudence grows. To be without God is to be without hope in the world (Eph. 2:12).

In the spirit of having no text, here is a text: “Behold, the days come, saith the Lord God, That I will send a famine in the land, Not a famine of bread, nor a thirst for water, but of hearing the words of the Lord: And they shall wander from sea to sea, and from the north even to the east, they shall run to and fro to seek the word of the Lord, and shall not find it” (Amos 8:11–12).

A Minister’s Task

The message a minister is appointed to proclaim is the basic gospel message—the life, death, burial and resurrection of Jesus (1 Cor. 15:1-4)—oriented, as it necessarily must be, to the whole counsel of God (Acts 20:27). But the wisdom of God is not placed in our trust so that we may speak it into a void. The preacher is not supposed to learn what he is supposed to say the same way a parrot does, or an answering machine, and then say that, regardless of the circumstances.

No. Preachers of the gospel must also be students of the culture they are sent to. A minister must be a student of the Word, but he must also be a student of men. He must study them—not just men generally, but the men of his own era, the men to whom he is charged to bring the gospel. When the Lord speaks to each of the angels of the seven churches of Asia, the message for each church is different. Same gospel, different sins, different message applying that gospel.

And men are not to be studied so that the minister might best know how to flatter them. “For we never came with words of flattery, as you know, nor with a pretext for greed—God is witness” (1 Thess. 2:5, ESV). Rather, they must be studied because their sins are different, their blind spots vary, and this is why their fortifications against the Spirit of God must be attacked differently.

“For though we walk in the flesh, we do not war after the flesh: (For the weapons of our warfare are not carnal, but mighty through God to the pulling down of strong holds;) Casting down imaginations, and every high thing that exalteth itself against the knowledge of God, and bringing into captivity every thought to the obedience of Christ” (2 Cor. 10:3–5).

A man who is charged with pulling down strongholds must be a student, therefore, of two things. He must be a student of the gear he is using, and he must be a student of the tower he is toppling. He must know the gospel, and the Scripture that houses it, and he must also know the state of the current imaginations. He needs to know where to attach the ropes.

Our Culture, What Remains of It

We are in the midst of a massive religious/political/cultural transformation. But we cannot assume that this is all downside. God shakes what can be shaken so that what cannot be shaken may remain. In the meantime, speaking of traditions, there are no pacifist traditions left. All traditions must be militant in order to survive this time of upheaval.

In such a time, Christians must be conservative when it comes to everything that the Spirit has accomplished in the history of our civilization. And we must be progressive with regard to all the things He has yet to do.

The Sinful Symptoms

It is difficult to make it through the evening news without encountering multiple examples of our contemporary follies—the blood guilt of abortion on demand, the insanity of transgenderism, the idea that more government can save us from the weather, the acceptance of socialist collectivism, the indulgence of snowflakes, the incompetence of modern educators, the epidemic of food guilt, and more. The disease lies within, but the splotches on the skin are pretty ugly.

The Disease Within

The root of every rebellion (in every culture) must always be identified as pride, and the lust for autonomy. But this central sin manifests itself in different ways in different times, using different methods, concepts, and techniques. These are the tools that are currently being used on us. Please be aware that there are areas of overlap between these.

• Secularism—the idea that a culture can be religiously neutral;
• Darwinism—the idea that we somehow arrived here by ourselves, and which makes secularism a scientifically respectable concept;
• Egalitarianism—the idea that blessings for others are tantamount to oppression for me;
• Value/Fact Distinction—the idea that “reality” is divisible;
• Admiration of the Cool Kids—the idea that what matters is copping a pose.

Some might worry that I am adding “intellectual” requirements to the simple gospel of Christ. Don’t worry—it is actually the reverse. You generally need a couple years of grad school before you can really buy into any of these mistakes.

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Surveying the Text: Amos

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Introduction

Now let us consider the prophecy of Amos. Apart from what is revealed in the course of his writing here, we know nothing about the man. Among the minor prophets, he occupies the vanguard in this period of Israel’s history, even though he is placed third in the canonical order. He is very much a prophet.

The Text

“The words of Amos, who was among the herdmen of Tekoa, which he saw concerning Israel in the days of Uzziah king of Judah, and in the days of Jeroboam the son of Joash king of Israel, two years before the earthquake. And he said, The LORD will roar from Zion, and utter his voice from Jerusalem; and the habitations of the shepherds shall mourn, and the top of Carmel shall wither” (Amos 1:1-2).

Overview

Tekoa was about ten miles south of Jerusalem, and this small town in Judah is where Amos was from (v. 1). But Amos was a prophet to the northern kingdom of Israel, and so it was that he conducted that ministry as a satiric outsider. He prophesied two years before “the earthquake,” a notable event remembered in Zechariah 14:5. The most likely date for his ministry is between 760 and 755 B.C., right near the end of Jeroboam II’s reign. The earthquake serves as a great metaphor for Amos’ message of impending judgment. As mentioned at the first, Amos was a shepherd, and if there is anything that a shepherd dreads, it is the sound of a lion’s roar (v. 2). The Lord, who had been Israel’s shepherd, had now become Israel’s predator. In the prophecy of Amos, the Lord was roaring. Moreover, He was doing this from Zion, and His voice was from Jerusalem. That was where God had established His name, and yet the northern kingdom had established false worship at Dan and Bethel. As a result of God’s predation, the pastureland of Carmel was going to wither, and the habitations of the shepherds would wither.

A Host of Sevens

Amos is from an obscure place because God loves to rebuke the sleek and fat of this world with those who are little in the eyes of the world (1 Cor. 4: 9). But Amos is far from being some kind of hick or cornpone. This is a book of magnificent poetic force, and the literary abilities exhibited by the prophet are considerable. He is no court flatterer, but his abilities are not at all beneath the task of rebuking a corrupt aristocracy.

One of his favorite literary and structuring devices is that of the organizing power of seven. There are at least twenty-three places where Amos relies on the number seven to organize his material, which you can find throughout the book. He asks seven rhetorical questions (3:3-6), there are seven empty rituals that Israel performs (5:21-23), there are seven plagues (4:6-11), seven verbs of exhortation (5:14-15), and so on. Moreover, the entire book is structured in a seven-fold chiasm.

a Judgment coming toward Israel and her neighboring countries (1:1-2:16)
b Destruction of Israel and Bethel’s cultic worship (3:1-15)
c Condemnation of fat cat women (4:1-13)
d Call to repentance (5:1-17)
c’ Condemnation of fat cat men (5:18-6:14)
b’ Destruction of Bethel’s cultic worship (7:1-8:3)
a’ Judgment coming toward Israel and promised deliverance (8:4-9:15)

The Great Themes

The book of Amos is a book of rebuke and denunciation. According to Amos, the two great sins committed by Israel were, first, compromised and corrupt worship, and second, a resultant abuse of power. The same thing comes up in the book of James, a New Testament book with a strong similarity to the book of Amos. What is pure and undefiled religion? The answer to that question is two-fold, not solitary. The famous part of the answer is to visit widows and orphans in their affliction (1:27). But James also says that pure and undefiled religion keeps itself “unspotted from the world” (v. 27).

It is not the case that good deeds stand alone. Good deeds cannot justify a sinner, as we all know (Eph. 2:8-9). But good deeds cannot even justify themselves. All true living flows from true worship. Any one who worships at Dan and Bethel will inevitably grind the poor. And any one who tries to implement a syncretistic alliance between Zion and Bethel will do the same. Wisdom says that all who hate her love death (Prov. 8:36).

This is why the great order of the day today is reformation of the Church, and restoration of true worship. This is not because we want to bottle true worship up to hide it from the world, but rather because we want unspotted religion to be what visits the widow and the orphan. To skip over the question of right worship, discarding the question of immoralities and heresies, for the sake of the poor and oppressed, is extremely short- sighted. To say, as one evangelical leader (Jim Wallis) has done, that we should not be that concerned about sodomy in the church because we mustn’t get distracted by secondary issues when the question of global poverty is so pressing, is to fly in the face of the message of Amos. To argue this way is to assume that Amos would agree that so long as we quit grinding the poor, worship at Dan and Bethel would be fine with God. It is to assume that it would be fine with James to be corrupted by the world so long as we visited widows and orphans. But not only is it not fine, we need to flip this around. So long as you worship at Dan and Bethel, no matter what you say, or how eloquently you say it, the poor are going to catch it in the neck. False worshippers always stand up for the poor . . . the way that Judas did.

The Engine and Drive Train

To say that worship is the center of everything, is not to say that worship is everything. In our worship of God, we have our names and identities established. Once we are named by God, we are then commissioned to go out into the world, and to represent Him there. One of the central tasks that God has assigned to the Church in this regard is the task of mercy ministry—which in recent years we have been doing more and more. But this is just like everything else we do. We worship God on the Lord’s Day. Everything else we do—art, literature, education, business, politics, economics, and mercy ministry—must be connected to this worship. The drive train has to be connected to the engine, which is true and faithful worship.

Promise Fulfilled

Amos is a fierce and biting book, and our generation needs to hear and heed its message. We need to be ready to be convicted, prodded, encouraged, and rebuked. But the book drives inexorably toward a glorious conclusion, one where the promised salvation of God does come into the world. As we allow the unbending righteousness of God to speak to us, we must constantly fix our eyes on the promise fulfilled in Christ.

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Amos for Americans 2 (Amos 3:10)

Christ Church on

Introduction
We have made the distinction between direct and indirect obedience. In the realms of indirect obedience, we noted the importance of starting close to home, and starting with the obvious. As God gives more grace, we may move out from the center. We will be able to see to do this because the beam is now out of our eyes, and because, as George MacDonald put it, obedience is the great opener of eyes.

The Text
“For they know not to do right, saith the LORD, who store up violence and robbery in their palaces” (Amos 3:10).

Remembering Who and Where We Are
In the unfolding of God’s redemptive plan for this sorry world, we are privileged to be living two thousand years into the expansion of the fallen tabernacle of David. In other words, we are closer to the plowman catching up with the harvester than we are to the smoking ruin of Samaria. We are part of the wonderful work that God has done in the world through Christ. This does not mean that there are no applications for us from Amos; it means rather that there are indirect applications for us. Please note that “indirect” does not mean “less authoritative,” or “optional.” Pressing the authority of God’s Word into every nook and cranny of the heart is one of the ways that God is bringing great blessing about.

Keep It SImple
In order to follow what I am urging here, we will run the risk of being written off as fundamentalists. But that’s all right—worse things could happen. We are living in a time of rapid globalization, and this process has its giddy, cute cheerleaders (all of them perky and blonde) and its hysterical, weeping critics (all of them with brown eyes and weak chins). How are we supposed to sort all this out? The former tell us about how Halliburton has rebuilt Iraq to the great rejoicing of pretty much everybody there on the ground. The latter tell us lurid stories of rapine, laughter, and heartlessness. Are we in the Church supposed to jump in there and sort it all out? If we are to be engaged with the culture, then yes. But how?

For most of us, keep it simple. Does Halliburton believe in Jesus? Remember, every knee will bow. Remember, here is no neutrality anywhere. There is no place where men can go that will obtain them a “release” from getting from the authority of the gospel. If this applies to all kings and presidents, and it does, we need to keep in mind that a number of our multinational corporations are bigger and richer than many nations. Why would it not apply to CEOs as well? This “cut to the chase” approach is for most of us. Some—who are providentially placed on the scene or who have the time and ability to get three PhDs in the subject—have the responsibility to speak the Word of God into the details of that circumstance.

Six Applications
In our treatment of chapter three in Amos, we saw six areas where the Church in America is failing to do what Israel also failed to do. The fact that this is an analogous failure does not remove the need for repentance.

First, our churches are very wealthy, the wealthiest in the history of the world. Do we use this wealth to establish robust, orthodox worship? Or do we decorate various kinds of “altars at Bethel”? And do works of charity flow out of our orthodox worship like a mighty river?

Second, like Israel we are ungrateful for our biblical heritage. Israel refused to acknowledge who it was who brought them up out of the land of Egypt, establishing them in the land. Today, even Christian writers and theologians take the lead in affirming that America never was Christian, and furthermore, ought not to be Christian in the future. The former claim is historically false, and the latter assertion is simply disobedience. For the latter, if Jesus told us to disciple all nations, “no” is not an appropriate response. Insistence that obedience never existed in the past is nothing but an excuse to keep it from happening in the future.

Third, we have forgotten that Jesus is the Lord of history. This means that He is Lord of kingdoms as they rise and empires as they fall. Benjamin Franklin, far more deistic than most of the other Founders, said this, “If a sparrow cannot fall without His notice, how can an empire rise without His aid?” The irony is that Franklin the deist had a more explicitly Christian view of history at this point than many contemporary “worldview” Christians. In the course of history, good and bad things both happen. This means blessings and chastisements, both of which we must learn how to read. Israel in Amos refused to read history rightly.

Fourth, like Israel we like to grade on a curve. We think that because we are “better,” then it means that we have somehow attained to the standard God has set for us. For example, Americans are far more generous than any other nation. We give close to 300 billion annually. But we cannot pretend that we are automatically vindicated because others are worse. We must not compare how generous we are compared to how generous others aren’t. If all the kids in the class flunked the test, this does not mean the top score of 48 came from the honors student. We must compare how generous we are to others compared with how generous God has been with us. That is the standard.

Fifth, Amos notes the presence of “tumults,” the “oppressed,” “violence,” and “robbery,” and all within Israel’s own midst. We have stark problems in our midst as well. Remember, start with the near and clear. Don’t fix all the problems you don’t understand. The problems that we do understand are sufficient for now.

Sixth, if Mammon has become a god, as it has, men who worship at that shrine will always glory in their god’s “majesty.” The indirect problems with greed as idolatry will become direct soon enough. As long as idolatry is a metaphor, people can shrug off the warnings because “they don’t see it.” But when it comes out into the open, and every can see it, then can now shrug off your objections because “everyone is doing it.”

Kirk Shire
The book of Amos belongs to the faithful Church. If the shire is to be a kindly place, it must be a kirk shire.It is part of our covenant heritage. We must not allow it to be co-opted by those who would disregard the heart of the prophet’s message. What should we take away from this book? We want to live in parish, in the shire, establishing a corner of Christendom. At the center of the shire must stand the faithful worship of God in the kirk. If the shire is to be a kindly place, it must be a kirk shire.

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Amos for Americans 1 (Amos 3:10)

Christ Church on

Introduction
We have spent a good bit of time considering the applications of the prophet’s words to his original audience, to the Israelites in the northern kingdom of Israel. Lord willing, we will spend two weeks considering how those words may legitimately be applied to us as Americans. This is not a topical sermon so much as it as a topical application.

The Text
“For they know not to do right, saith the LORD, who store up violence and robbery in their palaces” (Amos 3:10).

Themes of the Book
Not to beat the point to death, but remember that false worship produces false living, and false living always results in cruelty and inhumanity, always. Israel was indicted for two great problems—false worship at Bethel and Dan, and hardheartedness to the downtrodden.

Applications, Direct and Indirect
In order to know how to apply this book to our circumstances in this nation, we have to make a distinction between the sin as we see it and the sin as God sees it. God always sees the heart of the matter, but we are not justified in taking the fact of that “heart” and applying it socially. Take the illustation of a husband who looks lustfully at a magazine cover for thirty seconds at the grocery store. Has he been unfaithful in the eyes of God? Yes (Matt. 5:28). Does his wife have grounds for divorce? No, of course not. Apply this distinction to idolatry. Refusing to bow down in religious worship before pictures or statues is direct application of the first two of the Ten Commandments. In many places in the world, these commandments must still be obeyed in this direct fashion. But the apostle Paul also tells us that greed is idolatry (Col. 3:5; Eph. 5:5), in the same way that lust is adultery. Heart idolatry is much harder for us to identify.

In a similar way, the prohibition of cruelty to the poor has a direct application, and it has indirect applications. As before, the indirect applications are harder to get at, although they are still there. For example, for entertainment the Roman emperor Tiberius would have prisoners brought in to be tortured in his presence while having his dinner. The message of Amos would apply to him directly. Frederick William of Prussia was traveling through Potsdam one day and saw one of his subjects darting off. The king ordered him to stop and commandaed him to say why he ran. Because he was afraid, the man replied. “Afraid?! Afraid?! You’re supposed to love me!”The king started beating him with a cane, while yelling, “Love me, scum!” Today when our rulers come out among the peasantry it is usually during a campaign, and so they come around to IHOP to have a waffle with us and ask us our opinions on geopolitics. They can still do vile things—but not openly as in other times. This means applications here will be indirect as well.

Applications for Americans
The evangelical Left is crowded with folks who want us to worship at Bethel—Ron Sider, Jim Wallis, Tony Campolo, Brian McLaren, and all that crowd. The evangelical Right is compromised by her allegiance to Dan— when President Bush summoned everyone to the post-911 worship service at the National Cathedral, many leaders of religious Right were there—including Jerry Falwell, Pat Robertson, and for evangelicals generally, Billy Graham. And when we say this, we have to acknowledge that this sin at Dan was much closer to a direct violation of the law of God. Culture is always driven by cultus (worship), and you can’t get worship wrong and get anything else right long term. The religious Right wants good fruit from a rotten tree. The religious Left wants rotten fruit from a rotten tree.

Near and Clear
Jesus sets down several basic principles for us in His famous statement about the beam in your eye (Matt. 7:3). There are two issues here—the first is the location of the two eyes. The first is yours, and the second is your brother’s. Start at home. Secondly, Jesus says that we are to start with the big and obvious problem (the beam), and that later on we can get to the smaller problem (the mote). Put these two together, and we see that a Christian social conscience begins with the near and clear.

Having a social conscience over things that are far away and murky is a good way to avoid having a social conscience at all. When a motel chain asks you to refrain from having your towels washed so that together you can “save the rain forests,” we ought to see through this right away. This principle is foundational for all Christians who do not want their necessary naivete in certain areas to get in the way of being responsible Christians. As Linus put the reverse one time, “I love mankind; it’s people I can’t stand.” And P.J. O’Rourke said that “everyone wants to save the world, but no one wants to help mom with the dishes.” This same principle is seen (in another application) when John the apostle says, “If a man say, I love God, and hateth his brother, he is a liar: for he that loveth not his brother whom he hath seen, how can he love God whom he hath not seen?” (1 Jn. 4:20). We test distant love by proximate love. And this means that you cannot love your brother whom you have not seen if you are not loving your brother whom you have seen. Your fundamental duties are near and clear.

Some Test Cases
Take an average Christian believer, worshipping God faithfully and regularly, and one who reads his Bible and watches the evening news. How should his social conscience function? Where does it start? The less the application is diluted by distance and complexity, the more we may and must speak with assurance, boldness, and authority. The more it is diluted, the more careful we must be (Prov. 18:17). This is why, for Christians in the culture wars, the negative issues of abortion and homosexuality are touchstone issues. They are near and clear.

This is also why tithes and offerings and other aspects of personal generosity are also a touchstone issue. If we are in arrears with God’s taxes, then we have no right to complain about anyone else’s taxation levels. Put another way, those who are not tithing have no right to be political conservatives. Why? Their sin is near and clear.

Two Step Process
As we seek to make applications from Amos—as we will do more next week—we need to take two steps, asking two basic questions. Is this application direct or indirect? For most of us, it will be indirect. And because obedience will be indirect, we should want to begin our obedience at the near end, with clear duties.

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