We need to get back the American fighting spirit we once had, stop letting politicians tell us how to worship God. We must stand up and tell the truth to our nation.
Last week we looked specifically at Matthew 6:6 and the Sermon on the Mount. When we considered this verse, we found the correlation to verse five is not an admonition to pray in private, but to pray privately to God. Considering verse 5, we found hypocrites as the subject. Looking at verse six and specifically the words “enter” and “closet” we found a representation of a quiet, secluded place inside of each one of you. Here the “thou” is emphatic, meaning each individual. This led us to the conclusion that there is a secret place inside each one of us that God commands we enter. The only place that each person carries with them is the soul, the inner most heart. No one else can enter there. No one else can interfere. No one else knows your heart’s secrets besides you and God. That is where you need to be. We are told to enter there and connect with God on a heart level. The Apostle John tells us to worship God in the spirit because He is spirit (Jn 4:24). When we pray, we should endeavor to do this and connect with God on the spiritual level, therefore bearing our whole soul and opening our entire heart to Him for inspection, for communion, and fellowship. We should lose ourselves in prayer with God such that all distractions around us fade away.
Today we take another step outside of our normal study. This time for no particular reason other than my heart was stricken with the need to convey the truth about our nation. As the days of January come to a close, we will undoubtedly hear the Annual State of the Union address from our President, Barack Hussein Obama. I was praying and pondering this the other day, and it occurred to me – will any president in modern history really tell the truth at one of these grandiose events? It further occurred to me what a very honest “State of the Union” address might look like.
Amos chapter eight is our text for today. We begin in verse four, however we should go back to verse 1 for context. Amos was a simple shepherd from Tekoa. He was given a great task by God – to preach prophecy, warning, and doom to king Uzziah of Judah and Jeroboam of Israel. This was two years before the great earthquake in Israel or some time before 750 BC. Let us see what Amos would reveal about our nation as a whole were he tasked with revealing our condition to the President.
How refreshing it would be if our President told the truth at the next State of the union address. It would do my heart good to hear the following from him.
Ladies and gentlemen, the State of our Union is very weak. Your national leaders have forsaken God and encouraged our people as a whole to do the same. We have deviated from our original direction and intended founding, and have begun down a path that will lead to destruction. As our moral fabric continues to disintegrate, we appear increasingly like the sexually deviant and oriented Rome of the first century. They suffered entitlement addiction. It eventually caused their demise. Our nation currently celebrates murdering babies by paying the industry billions of dollars annually. We pay people not to work and give them amenities that the wealthy in some nations do not have; therefore we discourage productivity and prosperity.
We have the “change” promised us. Our family identities are in question more now than ever before. Literally, children’s lives are more in danger now than in the past, and from their own parents. Child development, accomplishment, and productivity levels are at an all time low. The productivity of our nation is at a 35 year low. Our once great national fabric based in the family unit is tearing and deteriorating at a rate that has never been seen before. Our poor are getting poorer. Our rich are getting richer. Our children suffer between these two selfish despots. Our elderly fear for their stability. Our national orientation is devolving to survivalism, communism, or socialism at best and tending toward charismatic dictatorship at worst. In short, the United States of America are continually being divided among themselves, and within their own individual borders.
Family units are continually threatened by a progressivism that removes their rights to develop their children as they are consciously led to. Home schooling is becoming increasingly persecuted and demeaned even when home school students excel above most private schools and every public school institution. Family stability is continually under fire from sexual deviants who care only for their own personal acceptance.
Consequently, our children are taught that respect and honor are taken, not earned. Public schools and other progressive change pundits regularly tell our children they do not have to submit to parental authority. The result – the U.S. has the highest teen pregnancy rate in the world, and it is rising. Fully one third of all girls are pregnant before age 20. STD’s and infanticide (abortion) rates are equally rising in corresponding numbers. These atrocities are borne from sex education that teaches sex to youth who are unprepared to receive or manage it.
Our national leadership is ego driven. It thinks the nation’s wealth resulted from their brilliance. Yet, they regularly undermine real success through regulation and taxation. Entitlements and regulation reduce the desire to work for, support, and therefore build a moral family structure. We now see unemployment at a 35 year high and rising. The logical question is, why work hard on a family if the federal government is going to undermine all efforts? Why work if the government is going to subsidize my life (namely, through food stamps, special unemployment programs, and free healthcare for the individual) from cradle to grave? That is if you are not murdered as an infant and actually make it into the cradle; or if there is no unfavorable decision concerning your societal productivity before natural death.
These conditions force the poor to remain tethered to the government, gradually enslaving them. This in turn reduces national economic productivity, forcing unemployment up. In their enslavement and dependence, people see no chance to excel, no challenge for life, no escape, suffer greater depression, and, as a result, suicide rates are increasing across our nation.
Because we have the “change” we asked for, and we are not able to face our own prideful and self-centered decisions, our nation continually bickers. Our national leaders have taught us well how to be divided under the false assumption that we can be both Irish and American, both African and American, or both Native and American. No one is simply an American fighting for freedom in the country. We are now all individuals fighting for our own freedom in our homes. Further, we are fighting one another when we should be fighting the bureaucrat.
Our national leaders give us confusing and conflicting information. One prominent Senator from Maryland tells us that government funded abortion is a moral thing, a proper thing. Then these same leaders call the prosecution of a terrorist for the murder of a child in the womb of the murdered mother. Is the murder of the unborn condoned or not?
The nation is at arms against terrorists. Our nation declared war on terror. Yet, the political leaders regularly rein in military commanders in the prosecution of their campaigns. Our leaders either threaten reduction in resources, or use national and international politics that embolden the enemy against our military men and women. They elongate conflicts and cost us more precious American lives by frustrating our military efforts, then complain of the delay in completing the mission. These leaders act like a child with a dime in a candy store throwing a temper tantrum because both the jawbreaker and the gum cost 10 cents.
Our elected officials lack any real identification with the people, true bold leadership, and any commonsense understanding of the people and their existence. How life functions outside of their own aristocratic fantasy is alien to them. They concentrate on forcing the desires of less than two percent of the nation population on the 90% that do not need nor want their help. As the politician’s bank account swells with his ego, the American people pay more for services they neither need, nor request.
The root problem is their worldview. It does not include God, His righteousness, His accountability, or His desires. If it did, they would have courage and humility, and they have none of either.
You may not know what to think about this opening. Simply put, our nation is in great peril and well on its way to severe judgment. The point is that regardless what people, and politicians in general think, the scriptures clearly discuss what they are doing today. If you read scripture and apply it to your life, one thing you find is that there is something in there for everyone and every occasion. Today we look at Amos chapter 8 and see what you should hear from the President and how to correct the problems in our society today.
I. Misunderstood Success (4)
In verses 1-3 the basket of summer fruit is a mockery of success and comfort. The leaders of Israel had no concern for those whom they ruled, only for their own success. They felt untouchable. They had the character of the unjust judge in Luke 18:2. They delighted in being the chosen of Israel and thought far too much of themselves. Such delight in their superstitions of prosperity displeased God. In Amos, we find this cowardly attitude in those who take advantage of the needy in order to quiet the humble. This is what welfare and government handouts do. Humble folks want to help and our government takes from them. playing on their emotions to give to the poor. Calvin noted that “the unbelieving are wont to misconstrue both the hatred and the favor of God by the present appearance of things.”[1] When the people enjoy prosperity, they boast that God is supporting them. In bad times they naturally ascribe to God as well. At no time does the worldly look to improve their spiritual condition before God through dedicated service to God. Since the worldly politician fears public, not godly reprisal, they cower all the more being concerned more with constituent response than what is righteous, just, godly, or truly good for the nation.
In our country today we see great ignorance of God and His righteousness. This ignorance has inspired overall lawlessness, callousness, and dissention among the people. Though this scripture tells of this very activity in the nation of Israel, and the root is with the leadership, the problem exists among the people as well. Just as the Israelites were guilty, the people of our nation are just as guilty as our chieftains. The state of the people of America, just as it was in Israel, is so corrupt that nothing except degeneration exists in their hearts.
In his book, “Essential Virtues” Berg talks about permissive parents wanting to be more friends with their children, instead of the parents they need to be. He says,
“The permissiveness of the culture has badly infected the church with the inevitable consequence of producing cowardly believers ruled by the fear of man and by their own lusts.”[2]
He’s right, worldliness breeds cowardliness. A Christian, one who is truly born again in Christ, grows in courage as he moves away from the world. Christians develop courage to oppose “evil in himself and others regardless of risk to himself.”[3] We see cowardliness in operation all across our nation today. From the politician who is unwilling to tell the people why socialistic policies are wrong, to the parent who is afraid to confront their child for fear of angering them, there is rampant cowardliness in all so-called leadership in our nation.
It is true, as Calvin puts it, “more guilt belongs always to leaders… (because) they who govern, pervert what is just and right, and then become the originators of all kinds of licentiousness.”[4] Our nation’s leadership has perverted itself to desire the things of the world over the things of God. They have decidedly departed from the founding principles of our nation. They know it, and now can only submit to the whims of the misguided masses. They lack any fortitude to stand for the true foundations of our nation – family, morality, Christianity, and freedom. They hide behind false freedom abusing our Constitution for their own selfish devices. Our national leadership greatly misunderstands any success. America is blessed only to elicit gratitude which is greatly wanting in our national fabric today.
II. Misplaced Ambition (5)
Such carnal and overbearing evil has prevailed in almost all ages. However, in verse five a special evil is noted. Israel complained about worship, as though to mock God, “When will the new moon be over, so that we may sell grain…” (NASB). They would rather conduct business, make money, and profit in the world than worship God. Amos goes further though. The businessmen of Israel were planning to cheat people to make up the difference in the loss for not working the Sabbath day. Their true heart is revealed. It hates God and what God requires and it does not trust or have any faith in God and His promises. This is the attitude that kept Israel from the Promised Land in the first place.
Our whole nation works on Sunday as a regularity. Not just missing worship in one service, but forgoing all worship for worldly avarice. Very few businesses close for Sunday today. This is wrought with failure. Some of those here work on Sunday, many of you hunt on Sunday, some will do anything and everything except worship God on Sunday thinking you need to do it to get ahead. If you only have a few days a week to hunt or do “what you want to do” and one of them is Sunday, you rationalize worship away. If you think this way, you do not trust God to provide for you.
You should get brave and trust God instead of your own understanding. That very mistake has caused the mess this nation is in right now. If you think this way, you are making the mess worse, not better. Get back to God and trust Him.
III. Misplaced wealth (6)
As a nation, we are some of the most generous people on the face of the globe. However, Amos tells of generosity misplaced. When we give to those who merely want to take, we do nothing. Some folks are miserable in their failures. When you feed this discontent instead of making people face things, pull up their own bootstraps, and get back on their feet, you reduce them to want. Leadership shows people how they can succeed, encourages them to succeed, and helps them succeed. It does not involve giving wantonly.
This is nothing less than bribery. Our nation bribes people regularly. They bribe people to buy ethanol instead of gas. They bribe people to purchase an electric car over a gas or diesel vehicle. They bribe people to give to one organization over another. They bribe people to give to their political aspirations most of all. People bribe our leaders with votes. They bribe through program support and advertisement. The whole nation operates on bribery, deception, and greed.
In this construct, the poor stay wanting, as they have no voice. The rich bribe the rich who support the rich. Our government gives billions to banks who have frittered away billions irresponsibly and fret away the billions given to them in the same irresponsible fashion. The rich make the poor subject to themselves, reducing the helpless to slavery. However, other more tragic things take place than gradual enslavement.
We spoke of the Sabbath, the Lord’s Day. We also spoke of deceitful balances. Consider that our government’s programs promise prosperity, but can only give the crumbs of failure. This is another kind of fraud. Amos describes selling the refuse of wheat. This wheat was without nutritional value. The people could afford nothing more, but they got nothing for their money. Great hunger of any kind causes intense emotions in people. Another sad aspect is that those who deal this dishonestly know that others have no means for recourse. This is evil in its utmost. We are shackled in a society that slowly moves us to enslavement and our leaders continually pass laws that do not apply to them individually, or escape prosecution for laws they do violate. We are being sold refuse wheat, we have no recourse, and they know it.
The sad part is that people see this activity and actually believe that these leaders are doing real good for the nation as a whole. Because the people are just as corrupt and worldly as the leaders today, they follow blindly like sheep to the slaughter, blind to the destructive path they travel.
IV. Misplaced loyalty (7)
The people of Israel thought that this was the way things ran. Leaders where dishonest, but they at least gave you what you needed to survive. Leaders were out for great wealth, but you could work to gain business yourself and get ahead. Leaders were corrupt, but you can ignore all that if your business went well and life was generally good. These folks were ignorant of the corrupt influence this ungodly leadership had on them. We in America are equally as naïve if we think our corrupt and godless government has no effect upon us. What the people of Israel as well as the people of our nation do not see is that God will judge everyone on the same plane regardless. Since the populace has rejected Him, they too will suffer His wrath. Therefore, the people are willing accomplices because it is too hard to promote real morality and godliness. We cannot take the ridicule. We do not want to be seen as bigots. We do not want to create tensions.
God is the judge and avenger. The leaders of this nation can only reprove and prosecute based upon earthly temporal laws. Laws that they make that please and encourage their own desires. God’s judgment is greater and has eternal consequences. His laws are set in scripture and you always know where you stand. Loyalties should not be focused upon fear. Loyalty is earned through trust, faith and love. Only God has consistently provided any of these.
Trust God, not the cowardly of our world who run from Him. Your only hope is to trust in His Son for your salvation, for your care, for your life, and for all eternity.
Eventually, the people of the world begin to notice things, events, happenstances that challenge their world view, or world in general. When they begin seeing these things, they normally attribute them to some naturally occurring thing, or blame humankind in some way. They still do not see the truth for they still think only of themselves as the cause, and solution.
V. Misunderstood events (8-10)
In verse 8, the question is emphatic. There is a double affirmation. How they could remain in safety, who had so perverted every thing right and just, who had violated all equity, who were influenced by no feelings of humanity, must be beyond them. All the inhabitants of the entire nation will feel the effects of this decrepit, deceitful, evil, and wholly ungodly activity that the leaders and people engage in. We will experience an overflowing of all calamities like the Nile flooding. We have seen these types of events of late with massive flooding in Texas and Missouri as well as other states. Places oriented toward wickedness such as New Orleans, and the Indian Ocean Tsunami that struck the coast of India where estimates of one million people died. The largest single terrorist attack in modern times, possibly of all time, on our own soil in 2001 is another example. Some were brave enough to point out the possible judgment associated with these events. As soon as they spoke out, they were decried as irresponsible and foolish religious zealots. When asked to explain why, these people could hardly get the word “abortion,” “corruption” or “homosexuality” out before they were silenced. These rebukes fall on intentionally and selectively deaf ears.
Verse 9 speaks metaphorically of the punishments being prophesied to the people of Israel. These punishments came about in short order beginning with earth quakes and domination by a pagan nation (Assyria) in 732. Just as prosperity and success deceived the Israelites, our nation too thinks itself untouchable. Amos uses words our leaders should heed. God will control night and day, turn light to darkness and turn wealth into poverty. Ironically, our national leaders do not even boast for their own affluence, but they confiscate what others produce and boast as though they earned the wage. This trusting in others’ prosperity, thinking themselves able to unabashedly relieve others of hard earned wealth, will cease. They are not beyond danger, they preach and teach disrespect, disobedience, and rebellion and they too will receive it in turn. The wrath of God will visit them at length for their perverse ideals and contempt of God. There is no reason for the infidel to gloat or be prideful in our affluence. God invites all to repentance through His manifold goodness and love toward us. He in fact does this with His Son on the cross. Unfortunately, man is short on appreciation and long on pride.
Verse 10 denounces vengeance more openly. In some ways, the natural unbelieving man of today will fair much worse in God’s vengeance. Israel was pretending to worship God and enjoying festivals and feasts on the day of worship instead of solemn consideration for their true estate. As Jeremiah says, ceremonies are to hypocrites the dens of robbers (Jer 7:11). The nation will fall into great calamity and for an elongated period due to our perversions. They will mourn as though they lost the only son ever given to them. In response to “a bitter day,” Clark simply says, “A time of grievous calamity.”[5]
Our nation’s capitol parties all the time. Dignitaries are fed and stimulated. There are grand balls and huge festivals for celebrations. All this affluence and grandiose pleasure will cease. All the singing will turn into a dirge. All will turn from joy and playful happiness, to sudden sadness and repentance. Like the Israelites at the foot of Sinai when they made the golden calf – when God “shows up,” all attitudes change. The mischievous children gleefully lighting matches in the corner suddenly realize their plight as their life flashes before them in one dread filled horrid moment.
What should you do Christian? Be brave. Speak out. Never let your voice be quieted. Stand for the truth that is God and His Word which is truth. Our nation is in a shambles and will remain that way until the people get right with God. Pray that they do, or that God will judge them such that our nation can come back to Him. It takes courage to say, “regardless the effect upon me, my family, my children, my life, O’ God judge this wicked nation and bring them back to you and your salvation.” Nevertheless, say it we should. We must be willing and determined to make the true sacrifices for a nation that desires to make none for and of its own. Your sacrifice may only be public humiliation, but sacrifice we must.
We need to get back the American fighting spirit we once had, stop letting politicians tell us how to worship God. We must stand up and tell the truth to our nation.
Do not entirely get me wrong folks. Our nation provides us wonderful opportunities and I love this nation or I would not be convicted to speak out. Nevertheless, the founding values are disappearing. Satan guides all those ignorant of the spiritual battle. They grow in number and influence daily. God may permit them to completely dominate this country. If that is God’s will, so be it. Our responsibility remains – to speak out for God based in His word at every opportunity.
Jim Berg mentions something else about courage in his book that is important. It is especially important for parents who are rearing children that face far more encouragement to rebel than any previous generation. He says,
“Worldliness destroys courage for Christ by scorning endurance …The world encourages people to bail out when the going gets rough. People are encouraged by their flesh and by the world to abort their babies, divorce their spouses, quit their jobs, drop out of school, hop from one church to another, and change their personal standards – all based upon their personal feelings and social conformity rather than upon biblical principle. Consequently, they never develop endurance. They are not used to saying no to themselves, so they have a hard time saying no to anyone else who wants them to go along (Psalm 1:1; Prov 1:10-19)”[6]
How true. Many adults act like the child alighting from one exciting toy to another without any steady concern for one in particular. Parents do not encourage children to stay focused because they can now blame Attention Deficit Hyper Activity Disorder (ADHD). Our society has become increasingly accustomed to enabling these activities. Our universities, once great institutions of learning, have dropped standards to accommodate students instead of challenging students to reach standards they can achieve. Consequently, many adults treat life that way well into their later years. They have no idea what endurance is, what working for success is, what it is to stick with something, what the real definition of steadfastness is. Accordingly, they cannot contemplate God’s longsuffering, His perfect justice, His unending and all pervasive love. Truly, no one can completely comprehend this, but those without any self-discipline, self-control, and self-denial will never understand why Christ went to the cross instead of just sinning and ending the Roman torture, abuse, and Israelite ridicule.
That explains much of our society today. If you do not like it, dispose of it in whatever way you can and get a new one. Be it wife, relationship, child, job, church, even mother and father. The focus is to get what you want, not accept and seek what you need.
Sometimes we need punishment to bring us back into line. God knows this and He will exact that punishment. Our nation will suffer soon. Where and when is still in question. The “who” is God. He will use any means at His disposal. Realize that anyone in the world, in fact anything in the universe is His switch. He will not ask you to get the switch either. I am not excited about seeing the size of the switch God uses on America, are you?
You are but a simple citizen from Wyoming, but do not let that stop you. Amos was just a shepherd. He was no more than a slave for the most part. He went directly to both kings and told them what God had said to him. You too have a voice. You should be writing letters – not always to your local representatives who, in Wyoming, you know are at least conservative even if they are not Christian. Instead, you should write to the President, Vice President, Secretaries, Speaker of the House and others. Tell them what scripture says about what they are doing. Tell them what God says about their actions. You are but a citizen, but God will use you if for no other reason than to condemn them and convict their heart.
[1] John Calvin, Calvin’s Commentaries, Vol 14 Commentaries on the Twelve Minor Prophets, Baker: Grand Rapids, p362.
[2] Jim Berg, Essential Virtues, Marks of the Christ-Centered Life, BJU Press: Greenville, p162.
[3] Ibid, p164.
[4] Calvin, p364.
[5] Adam Clark, Commentary on the Whole Bible, The Book of the Prophet Amos, Public Domain, Derived from an electronic text from the Christian Classics Ethereal Library, http://www.ccel.org Formatted and corrected by OakTree Software, Inc.Version 1.0, keyed to Amos 8:10.
[6] Berg, p168.
Comments