Amos 3-6

Two weeks ago we looked at the overall story of the Old Testament through the acronym AMDER—Abraham, Moses, David, Exile, Return from Exile. What we saw throughout the Old Testament was a gracious Creator who lovingly bound himself to a people through the covenant with Abraham. And that covenant relationship between God and Israel is the engine that drives the Old Testament story and sets up the one who would fulfill all the covenant promises—Jesus Christ. So as we dive into the heart of Amos this morning, it shouldn’t surprise us that God’s covenant relationship with his people is behind every aspect of Amos’ prophecies.

I am aware this morning that many of you come into this place with situations at work or home or school that seem worlds apart from Amos 3-6. Maybe there is stagnation in your relationship with God and you know you need some sort of jump-start on your faith. Wherever you are this morning, I want to provide contact points throughout our look at Amos to see how Israel’s covenant relationship with God parallels our experience of being in covenant with God. As I said a few weeks ago, I want us to look at where this portion of scripture fits into the overall story of Old Testament Israel, how that story points to Jesus Christ, and how that bridges over into our experience in 2006.

Amos 3-6 is a unit within the book and its opening words are crucial to understand not only the indictments Amos gives but also how this connects to our lives today. Look with me at verses 1-2 of Amos 3:

“Hear this word that the LORD has spoken against you, O people of Israel, against the whole family that I brought up out of the land of Egypt:
“You only have I known of all the families of the earth;
therefore I will punish you for all your iniquities.””

There are two interconnected relationships here between God and Israel. One is the covenant relationship God formed with Israel. We have talked about that already. But another is the redemptive relationship between God and Israel.
Israel’s Exodus from Egypt was the great redemptive work of God in the Old Testament. It is connected with the covenant as the fulfillment of God’s covenant promises to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. It solidified God’s absolute covenant commitment to his people. It also became the basis of the law, as the Ten Commandments open with the words, “I am the LORD your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery.” Therefore Israel was to live a certain way to reflect her covenant relationship to the God that had redeemed her from Egypt.

So the sinful Israel that Amos preaches to was not any nation doing what everyone knows to be wrong, like Renato covered from chapter 1 last week. Israel was God’s chosen people whom he redeemed and committed himself to in covenant. In other words, it’s not just a woman slapping a man, it’s a wife slapping her husband. And it’s not just a wife slapping her husband, it’s a wife slapping the one who found her on the streets, strung out and homeless, put her through treatment, nursed her to health, married her, and provided everything she ever needed. That’s who Israel was slapping in the face by her atrocities.

Before we look at the specific sins that Israel committed, I want to draw a connection between us in 2006 and Israel in 760 B.C. As I do that, I want to be careful not to equate an Israelite in Amos’ day with a Christian in our day. I don’t want to get bogged down in how the New Covenant that we are a part of is similar or different from the Old Covenant, but suffice it to say that being an Israelite in those days is like growing up in the church or a Christian family in our day. What I mean by that is you may grow up hearing about God and learning stories about Jesus, but it is only when you embrace Jesus’ death and resurrection on your behalf by faith and confess with your mouth, “Jesus is Lord!” that you truly enter into a covenant relationship with God.

So as we think about Israelites who grew up hearing songs about the God’s redemptive act in the Old Testament—the Exodus, ask yourself where you are in relationship to God’s redemptive act in the New Testament—the crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus Christ. First of all, have you believed that Jesus died for your sins and that he rose again to give you life? Have you been connected to him by faith?

If you have, how much does that affect your daily life? Do you walk through each day with awareness that you deserve God’s eternal wrath for your sins against him, but Jesus came to absorb that wrath for you? Is there a consciousness of being redeemed in your daily thoughts? Are you cognizant of your former status as a slave of sin and Satan and the powerful liberation from that slavery that God has wrought in Christ? Are your eyes fixed on the eternal hope and inheritance that you have in Christ because by faith you are connected with his resurrection? Do you look at those lost friends and coworkers and family members and neighbors around you and weep that they are living in spiritual death? Do you rejoice that you experience eternal life today because God’s Spirit dwells in you and has sealed you for the day of redemption?

I ask all this because I believe part of Israel’s departure from God into sinful ways was looking at God’s redemptive work and saying, “Big deal.” And after you do that a few times, you don’t even think about God’s redemptive work at all. This is the common theme we will find throughout Amos, Micah, Habakkuk, Zephaniah, and Joel, whether we are talking about the northern kingdom Israel, like we are today, or the southern kingdom Judah, like we will in the other four books, the heart of the prophets’ indictment is that God’s people’s hearts had departed from their Lord. They were not in tune with their status as a redeemed people. They did not feel the weight of God’s covenant love and faithfulness toward them. They had a heart of stone that was unmoved by the greatness of their redeemer.

In Amos this heart departure manifested itself both horizontally and vertically. If you’ve lost your place, turn back with me to Amos; we are going to skip around to different sections, first looking at the northern kingdom’s horizontal sins, that is, how they treated one another. Look at 4:1, “Hear this word, you cows of Bashan, who are on the mountain of Samaria, who oppress the poor, who crush the needy, who say to your husbands, ‘Bring, that we may drink!’” Then turn to 5:10-13, “They hate him who reproves in the gate, and they abhor him who speaks the truth. Therefore because you trample on the poor and you exact taxes of grain from him, you have built houses of hewn stone, but you shall not dwell in them; you have planted pleasant vineyards, but you shall not drink their wine. For I know how many are your transgressions and how great are your sins— you who afflict the righteous, who take a bribe, and turn aside the needy in the gate.”

Injustice reigned in Israel. There was a lack of respect for authority, a perversion of the legal system through the giving of bribes, and extortion of the poor. It was one of the most prosperous times the northern kingdom experienced, but the rich were getting richer by walking over the backs of the poor. Amos says, “you trample on the poor and you exact taxes of grain from him.” The rich were starving the poor to build more houses and live in ridiculous extravagance. Look at 6:4-6: “Woe to those who lie on beds of ivory and stretch themselves out on their couches, and eat lambs from the flock and calves from the midst of the stall, who sing idle songs to the sound of the harp and like David invent for themselves instruments of music, who drink wine in bowls and anoint themselves with the finest oils, but are not grieved over the ruin of Joseph!”

Remember what is going on here—this is not merely a social commentary to say that the rich are corrupt and the poor are oppressed and by golly something needs to change around here. Injustice is merely the symptom. The deeper issue is that God had shown his covenant mercy to Israel when they were poor, and they were expected in turn to be merciful to the poor. Remember the promise to Abraham, “I will bless you so that you will be a blessing.” It was even built into the Law of Moses that those who owned fields were not to harvest the corners, so that the poor could glean and survive. But instead of showing mercy to the poor, Israel extorted the poor. Israel, who had been enslaved to Egypt, was now playing the role of taskmasters to their own countrymen. The core sin was that they were abandoning their covenant God by ignoring his mercy and justice. And the call for repentance is captured by Amos 5:14-15: “Seek good, and not evil, that you may live; and so the LORD, the God of hosts, will be with you, as you have said. Hate evil, and love good, and establish justice in the gate; it may be that the LORD, the God of hosts, will be gracious to the remnant of Joseph.”

The amazing thing is that in the midst of this injustice, Israel was still going through the rituals of religion. But God was not impressed by their hollow routine. Look at Amos 4:4-5: “Come to Bethel, and transgress; to Gilgal, and multiply transgression; bring your sacrifices every morning, your tithes every three days; offer a sacrifice of thanksgiving of that which is leavened, and proclaim freewill offerings, publish them; for so you love to do, O people of Israel!” declares the Lord GOD.” Then turn to 5:21-24: “I hate, I despise your feasts, and I take no delight in your solemn assemblies. Even though you offer me your burnt offerings and grain offerings, I will not accept them; and the peace offerings of your fattened animals, I will not look upon them. Take away from me the noise of your songs; to the melody of your harps I will not listen. But let justice roll down like waters, and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream.”

What is even more baffling is that Israel thought that God was on their side because they paid him lip service. There was this expectation is Hebrew thought for the “Day of the Lord”—the day when God would come down in power, vindicate Israel, and crush her enemies. But look at what Amos says about this in 5:18-20: “Woe to you who desire the day of the LORD! Why would you have the day of the LORD? It is darkness, and not light, as if a man fled from a lion, and a bear met him, or went into the house and leaned his hand against the wall, and a serpent bit him. Is not the day of the LORD darkness, and not light, and gloom with no brightness in it?”

In other words, the day of the Lord was bad news for God’s enemies and good news for his faithful people. And Amos was saying, “You are acting like God’s enemies right now, so why do you want him to come down? He will only come in judgment.” And that is the language Amos uses for God’s impending judgment on the northern kingdom. Turn with me to chapter 4. In verses 6-11 God tells Israel of five distinct disasters he had sent to warn them of the coming judgment, but in each case he says, “yet you did not return to me.” Then look at what he says in verses 12: “Therefore thus I will do to you, O Israel; because I will do this to you, prepare to meet your God, O Israel!”

Now turn to 5:16-17: “Therefore thus says the LORD, the God of hosts, the Lord: “In all the squares there shall be wailing, and in all the streets they shall say, ‘Alas! Alas!’ They shall call the farmers to mourning and to wailing those who are skilled in lamentation, and in all vineyards there shall be wailing, for I will pass through your midst,” says the LORD.”

God clarifies this message of “I’m coming down there” to mean that he would raise up a nation to carry Israel off into exile. They would plunder all the wealth that the corrupted rich had amassed, and would take them away from the promised land and away from their fancy houses they had built with their filthy lucre. And since the rich liked to be first in everything, in 6:7 God says, “They shall now be the first of those who go into exile, and the revelry of those who stretch themselves out shall pass away.”

Like all of the prophets to God’s chosen people, Amos ends on a positive, hopeful note, because all of God’s discipline of his people has restoration as its goal. So next week Aaron will have the privilege of sounding that note, but for now we must ask where this morning’s message meets us in 2006.

The question that looms before us based on Amos’ message to Israel is the question of mercy. Do we feel the weight of the mercy God has shown to us in Christ? Do we understand or at least attempt to plumb the depths of the covenant, steadfast love and faithfulness that God displayed in the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ? Do we shake our heads in astonishment that Jesus died for my sins and was raised again to give me eternal, resurrection life? Do we taste the sweetness of being united with Christ by faith? Do we labor to understand all of the riches that we have in Christ—right standing with God, reconciliation with God, adoption into the family of God, and the down payment of the Spirit that transforms us into the image of Christ? Do we strive not to say “Big deal” about the gospel, but rather to maintain deep sense of wonder that we are saved by grace?

These are the heart issues that we must nail down. But one way to ask ourselves these questions is to examine our horizontal relationships to see whether or not mercy is filtering out into those relationships. Am I so bathed in God’s patience with me that I am freed to be patient with my roommate or spouse or child? Young people, ask yourself this: do I really believe that God deeply loves me, and has given me the body I have and the family I’m in and the school I attend for a purpose? Am I deeply satisfied in who I am in Christ so that I can sit with the unpopular kid in the cafeteria, or for that matter, sit with the popular kids and tell them about how good God has been to me?

How do we approach Amos’ condemnation of the injustice against the poor? Certainly there are direct applications that businessmen and women can take to heart: am I building my business on unfair wages or do our company policies disadvantage a particular group of people? And there may be broader structural issues in our society to be concerned with: am I in any way supporting the person who would try to sell Renato a mortgage at 35% interest? Am I a part of any structure that advantages me because of my ethnic or economic status and disadvantages someone else based on theirs?

But deeper than all of these is the question, if God blessed me, am I seeking to be a blessing? Or do I have a “what can I take” attitude toward those who might be vulnerable or have no voice? Do I have a “what can I take” attitude toward those with great wealth or physical attraction or good connections? Does God’s boundless mercy toward me strike so deeply in my soul that I ask, “how can I bless? How can I be a channel of God’s loving kindness to that person?”

Finally, we look at our vertical relationship to ask if our worship of God reflects his great worth. Do we count it a privilege to meet with God in the morning to saturate in his Word until our hearts are happy in him? When we drive by the billboard trying to sell us the next whatever, do we counteract with a sweet confession of the sufficiency of God? When we sing congregationally, do our minds and hearts connect with the words being sung? Is God the Treasure of our lives?

Intro to the Minor Prophets

Last Sunday we walked down the Emmaus Road with Jesus and two of the disciples as Jesus, “beginning with Moses and all the Prophets…interpreted to them in all the Scriptures the things concerning himself” (Luke 24:27). In one of the most significant conversations in the New Testament, Jesus showed these followers that the story of redemption—the story God had been telling for thousands of years—culminated in Jesus of Nazareth.

So as we stand on the brink of 12 weeks in Amos, Micah, Habakkuk, Zephaniah, and Joel, I want to spend our time this morning not simply talking about dates and other historical facts, but telling the story of Israel and seeing where we are in their history. I don’t know if you have this problem, but since the Old Testament starts with Genesis—which really is the beginning—I always assumed that everything rolled out chronologically like Zander and PJ rolling out the walkway for the wedding party. While it is true that Malachi is last book of the Old Testament both in order and chronology, the middle sections don’t work that easily. Needless to say, it surprised me when I was reading in Chronicles and lo and behold, Isaiah shows up! It’s like they leapfrogged over Job and Proverbs!

So where are we in the story when the Minor Prophets come on the scene? Before I answer that question, let me make a quick clarification about the name “Minor Prophets.” We use the word “minor” in a negative sense, like, “Oh, that ballplayer isn’t good enough to be in the major leagues so he’s in the minor leagues.” That isn’t what is going on here. It’s not as if Joel tried and tried to be a Major Prophet but just couldn’t make it. No, the descriptors “major” and “minor” relate to the length of the book, not the caliber of the prophet. So Isaiah, which is 66 chapters long, and Jeremiah, which is 52 chapters long, have major length while Amos, Obadiah, and Zechariah have minor length. That’s how we can get through 5 books in 12 weeks.

Now back to our question. Where do the Minor Prophets fit into the redemption story of the Old Testament? Well, the answer is “toward the end,” but that doesn’t help much if you’re not familiar with the story. So I want to give us five highlights of Israel’s story to put everything in context. I wish they created a really cool acronym, but all it spells is AMDER, so we’ll go with that, though I doubt it will spark any Christian merchandising campaigns. Don’t expect AMDER T-shirts or wristbands anytime soon.

So here are the big points, our AMDER points—Abraham, Moses, David, Exile, Return from Exile. That covers about 1,500 years of history and includes all of the Old Testament except the first 11 chapters of Genesis, which set everything up. And for all this history, for all that is written about it, the one thing I want to emphasize is the relationship God established with his people. This is not merely the story of the rise and fall of a nation. It is the story of God Almighty establishing a relationship with a nation. We can only understand the ministry of the Prophets in terms of God’s relationship with his people.

This relationship began when God came to Abraham and promised to make from him a great nation and give the Promised Land to this nation. God formed a covenant with Abraham, and whereas most covenants, like Greg and Erin’s wedding yesterday, have each party say, “I do,” in this covenant God said, “I do. Period.” And it’s a good thing, because Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and Jacob’s 12 sons could be rascals at times. But it was God who was faithful to his promise, his covenant with Abraham.

So we fast-forward 400 years to the Exodus, when Israel had been enslaved in Egypt and God brought them out with his mighty right arm. God had been faithful to his covenant with Abraham to multiply his offspring, and now he was fulfilling his promise to give them the land. Don’t miss this—it was God’s faithfulness to his covenant that drove the Exodus. Listen to these verses from Exodus 2: “During those many days the king of Egypt died, and the people of Israel groaned because of their slavery and cried out for help. Their cry for rescue from slavery came up to God. And God heard their groaning, and God remembered his covenant with Abraham, with Isaac, and with Jacob. God saw the people of Israel—and God knew.” The story of the Old Testament, the story of Jesus, the story of us, it all goes back to God’s faithfulness to his covenant with Abraham.

So God brings Israel out of Egypt, destroys Pharaoh’s army, then says to his people, “I am the LORD your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery…This is how you are to live in covenant with me.” And he gives the 10 commandments and all the other laws. And as he gives the law, he tells them of all the ways he will bless them if they are faithful to God and all the ways he will curse them if they are not faithful to God and disobey his law. Again, this is crucial for understanding the Minor Prophets. Almost every curse that the Prophets either witnessed or foretold came straight from Deuteronomy 28, where God listed off the ways in which he would curse Israel if they forsook him and his ways.
We’ve looked at Abraham and Moses, and now we need to fly over the taking of the Promised Land and the period of the judges to King David. And I can’t help but throw in one word about seeing how the Old Testament story points to Christ. The book of Judges is a disaster, summed up by the last verse of the book—“In those days there was no king in Israel. Everyone did what was right in his own eyes.” In other words, the book of Judges, and King Saul for that matter, show what happens when there is not a good king over God’s people, and the prosperity under David shows what happens when there is a good king over God’s people. Yet David was by no means perfect, and God promised that he would put one of David’s offspring on the throne forever, and at that point you have a big, neon, flashing arrow pointing toward Jesus Christ.

For our purposes in seeing how the Minor Prophets fit into the big picture of the Old Testament story, we need to look at how we get from the D to the E in AMDER. How did we go from having a great king, David, to God’s people being conquered and carried away by their enemies?

When King David died, his son Solomon took the throne and built a magnificent temple where God’s people could worship. But Solomon strayed further and further from the Lord, in large measure because he disobeyed God and married women of other religions. In fact, the Bible explicitly says, “when Solomon was old his wives turned away his heart after other gods, and his heart was not wholly true to the LORD his God, as was the heart of David his father.” The consequences for this were devastating. Listen to what God says to Solomon in 1 Kings 11:

“And the LORD was angry with Solomon, because his heart had turned away from the LORD, the God of Israel, who had appeared to him twice and had commanded him concerning this thing, that he should not go after other gods. But he did not keep what the LORD commanded. Therefore the LORD said to Solomon, “Since this has been your practice and you have not kept my covenant and my statutes that I have commanded you, I will surely tear the kingdom from you and will give it to your servant. Yet for the sake of David your father I will not do it in your days, but I will tear it out of the hand of your son. However, I will not tear away all the kingdom, but I will give one tribe to your son, for the sake of David my servant and for the sake of Jerusalem that I have chosen.””

And that is exactly what happened. After Solomon died his son Rehoboam took the throne, and it wasn’t long until Rehoboam alienated the 10 tribes in the northern part of Israel, and they set up their own king—Jeroboam. And this is what we call the divided kingdom. From this point on God’s people were divided into two countries—Israel in the north and Judah in the south.

It is during this time—from the splitting of the kingdom to the fall of each kingdom—that the prophets started writing down their words. There had been plenty of prophets in the past—Samuel, Nathan, Elijah, Elisha—but they had never published their work, so to speak, though you can read what they said in Samuel and Kings and Chronicles.

So we have this divided kingdom, and the northern kingdom, Israel, starts out on a bad foot and never recovers. Jeroboam set up idols for Israel to worship, and this trend of mixing idol worship with the worship of YHWH was carried on by every successive king of the northern kingdom. 1 and 2 Kings start sounding like a broken record—and this man became king, and he did what was evil in the sight of the Lord, and did not depart from the sins of Jeroboam, which made Israel to sin. This is where the prophets Amos and Hosea came in, to say, “if you don’t return to the Lord he will destroy you.” And they didn’t listen, so God sent the Assyrians to capture the northern kingdom, Israel, and in many ways the story ends there for the northern kingdom. If you want to read the tragic record of the northern kingdom, you can find it in 2 Kings 17.

Now that the northern kingdom dropped off the map, the rest of the story follows Judah, the southern kingdom. While Judah had plenty of bad apples for kings, they also had some great kings who sought to lead Judah in pure worship of the Lord. Sadly this was the exception rather than the rule, and about 130 years after Israel was conquered by Assyria, Judah was conquered and exiled by the Babylonians. This is the E in AMDER—Exile. And it was during this time that most of the prophets did their prophesying, warning Judah to turn back to the Lord, lest they be conquered like the northern kingdom. 4 of the 5 prophets we will be studying prophesied during this time. The other one, as I already mentioned, was Amos, who prophesied to Israel before they were conquered.

But even when Judah did not return to the Lord, God used the prophet Jeremiah to promise the people that they would only be in captivity for 70 years, then the Lord would bring them back to their land. And that is what happened. This is the R in AMDER—return from exile. During this time when the people of Judah were trying to rebuild their walls and houses and temple, God used prophets like Haggai and Zechariah to give them a kick in the pants to keep working.

AMDER—Abraham, Moses, David, Exile, and return from Exile. I hope this helps a bit, that the prophets we will be studying are between the D and the E—after king David and before the Babylonians took Judah into exile.

I hope somebody is asking the question, “Why study these prophets? How does this relate to my relationship with God today?” Here is the key. If you zoned out during the history part, please hear this one thing—this is all about a relationship. From Abraham to the return from exile the Old Testament is about God’s covenant relationship with his people. It runs across the AMDER gamut. Abraham was the one with whom God initiated the covenant relationship. Moses is the one through whom God gave the guidelines of how to live in covenant relationship with God. David received a new covenant promise that one of his offspring would rule on the throne forever. The Exile happened because God was punishing his people for breaking covenant and forsaking him. The return from Exile was driven by God’s faithfulness to his covenant despite his people’s sin. It is all about God’s covenant relationship with his people.

And as we saw last week, the ultimate fulfillment of God’s covenant promises is Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ is the fulfillment of God’s promise to Abraham—in you all the families of the peoples will be blessed. Through Jesus Christ, the seed of Abraham, we Gentiles are grafted into the vine, so that we can read of God’s covenant relationship with Israel in the Old Testament and know that we too are part of that relationship.

The Minor Prophets that we will study all have the same message. They were given during different decades with different emphases, but the message was the same. You are in a covenant with God, and you have sinned and forsaken God. So God is going to punish you by allowing one of your enemies to conquer you and carry you out of the Promised Land. But God is faithful to his promise and will restore you. He loves you with an everlasting, steadfast, loyal, covenant love. He is a faithful husband even when you have been an unfaithful wife. He will restore you after he has punished you and you will be his people forever.

COMMUNION MEDITATION

One of the fascinating things about the Old Testament is that it not only told about greater things to come, but it gave types or pictures or foretastes of greater things to come. For instance, the Day of the Lord is one of the common themes in the prophets. And the prophets would point to disasters like the locust plague in Joel or the Babylonians burning down the temple, and use those as springboards to talk about God’s final judgment day. They said, “If you think this is bad, wait until you see God’s final judgment. Repent and turn back to the Lord before it is too late!” They used a little-d “day of the Lord” to point forward to the big-D day of the Lord, which is still in the future.

As we come to the communion table, we experience something bigger and better than they did in the Old Testament. Jesus was very intentional when he initiated the Lord’s Supper on the night of Passover. He tapped into the Jewish experience—the experience of a family raising a spotless lamb and sacrificing it so that lamb’s blood would cover the family and the Angel of Death would not kill their firstborn. Jesus used that experience to point to a greater work of sacrifice and covering: “this is my body…this is my blood of the covenant which is poured out for many for the forgiveness of sins.” This was not the blood of an animal; it was the blood of the spotless God-man, Jesus Christ.

Yet Jesus didn’t leave it there. Just as the sacrifice of the Passover Lamb pointed to something bigger and better—the sacrifice of Jesus on the cross—the Lord’s Supper points to something better—being with God forever in the New Heavens and the New Earth. At the first Lord’s supper Jesus said, “I tell you I will not drink again of this fruit of the vine until that day when I drink it new with you in my Father’s kingdom.” Paul also notes the forward-looking aspect of the table: “For as often as you eat this bread and drink this cup, you proclaim the Lord’s death until he comes.”

The bread and the cup do not point only to the sacrifice of Christ, they point to the fellowship with God that that sacrifice makes possible. Remember, it is all about the relationship. Christ died so that we could be reconciled with God and enjoy him forever!

So if you have never confessed your sins and put your trust in Jesus’ death and resurrection, do that now. As the bread and cup come by, take it and say, “Jesus, I believe that I am a sinner. I believe that you died to take the punishment for my sins and rose again to give me eternal life.” And if you are not at that point yet, please let the plate go by. The body and the blood are for those who believe. So if you are a believer, rejoice and be solemn that the Son of God died for you that you might enjoy him now and anticipate being with him forever. Our communion with God now is only a taste of our eternal fellowship with him in the New Heavens and the New Earth.

Jesus Christ: Climax of the Bible's Story

During the summer between 7th and 8th grade I attended a conference with my family in the arena where the Atlanta Hawks used to play basketball. During a break my mom pointed toward a huge replica jersey of a former player whose number had been retired, and said, “Chris, who is Hudson? I’ve never heard of him.” I looked to where she was pointing and said, “You can read that?” She said, “You can’t read that?!?” I said, “No, it’s just a big blur to me.” And that’s when I was awarded my first trip to the eye doctor.

We went the next day to get me fitted for glasses, and can you guess what the first thing I said was when I walked outside with my new glasses? “I can see the leaves on the trees!” This was quite a revelation to me. A few weeks later when we went to an Atlanta Braves baseball game, I marveled at the fact that I could see the players on the field—that they weren’t merely white dots on a fuzzy green backdrop.

For the two disciples on the road to Emmaus the encounter with Jesus was that moment when everything they were familiar with came into focus. Obviously it didn’t come together immediately for these guys since their eyes were kept from realizing who this teaching stranger was, but later when our Lord broke the bread in their presence, Luke tell us, “And their eyes were opened, and they recognized him. And he vanished from their sight. They said to each other, “Did not our hearts burn within us while he talked to us on the road, while he opened to us the Scriptures?””

I want to make two simple points this morning. The first is the tree, while the second is the new glasses that allow you to see the details of that tree. The first point is that the Bible is a story. I don’t mean by that that the Bible only contains stories, like Jonah and the big fish, Joseph and his colorful coat, and David and Goliath. I mean that the Bible is a story. All the stories, laws, wise sayings, and characters of the Bible play into this story. It should be no surprise to us that we love stories, whether in books or plays or movies or at the feet of a grandfather or great aunt. We love stories because God is the greatest storyteller of all, and unlike many stories we grow up hearing, his is real and true.

But this was nothing new to the Hebrews of Jesus’ day, including our friends traveling to Emmaus. They knew the story of the Old Testament well. What changed their lives is the second point—the glasses they put on: the fact that the story of the Bible climaxes in Jesus Christ.

The crucial verse here is Luke 24:27, “And beginning with Moses and all the Prophets, he interpreted to them in all the Scriptures the things concerning himself.” This is to say, Jesus went back, told the story again, but this time with glasses on that brought everything into focus; he showed how the story pointed toward himself.

The story God had been telling for thousands of years was the story of redemption. God created a perfect world and created man and woman to bear his image in this world. But Adam and Eve disobeyed God and their sin became the gateway of death and corruption into the good creation. God promised them redemption from sin and Satan, and the rest of the Old Testament is the story of how God began to work through his people Israel to bring about this salvation.

So Jesus goes back through this story on the road to Emmaus and shows how he is the fulfillment of all the buildup, all the cliffhangers, all the loose ends that had been left for hundreds of years. He gave them glasses to see that Messiah was the seed of Eve that God said would crush the serpent’s head. Messiah is the fulfillment of God’s promise to Abram that “In your seed all the families of the peoples will be blessed.” Messiah is the one Moses was talking about when he said, “God will raise up for you a prophet like me from your brothers.” Messiah is the one that fulfilled God’s promise to David to establish one of his offspring as a king forever. Messiah is Isaiah’s Suffering Servant. Messiah is Daniel’s Son of Man. Everything in the Old Testament pointed toward Messiah.

I don’t know how much Jesus could teach on a seven-mile walk, but Luke tells us that he left no stone unturned. He opened up all the Scriptures and showed them the things concerning himself. And afterwards, as the disciples reflected on what happened, they said, “Did not our hearts burn within us while he talked to us on the road, while he opened to us the Scriptures?” In other words, our people have been longing for clarity and focus for hundreds of years, and now it’s here—this Jesus is the Messiah!

So we have two simple points here: the Bible is a story, and the story climaxes with Jesus. He is the hero of the story. He is the king come to take his throne. He is the redeemer come to save his people. He brings the story into focus so we can see that the story is all about Jesus.

It is doubtless that somebody is sitting there scratching your proverbial head, saying, “This is great, but why in the world are you talking about it?” I’m glad you asked. Next week we are starting a series in the Minor Prophets that will run until Palm Sunday. Lord willing, we will preach through Amos, Micah, Habakkuk, Zephaniah, and Joel. We will also be going through most of those books in Sunday School, where we are able to get into more detail, so that will be a valuable hour on Sunday morning.

But I still haven’t told you why this morning’s sermon is about Jesus being the point of the Old Testament story. The reason is simple. The fact that Jesus is the climax of the story of redemption means that we read that story with him in mind. Or to use Luke’s language, the fact that Jesus interpreted in all the Prophets the things concerning himself means that we should not do a study of Amos or Joel without talking about Jesus.

Think of it this way. Say your family sets out for Disneyland for a vacation, and along the way you see all the billboards advertising the theme park. Now, you have been to Disneyland five times, but your kids have never been. So when you look at the billboards promoting the Big Thunder Mountain Railroad or Splash Mountain, you remember the thrill of those rides, whereas your children are only formulating ideas of what it might be like.

That is an imperfect, but hopefully helpful way to think about Jesus and the Old Testament. The stories and characters and laws and prophecies of the Old Testament were giving snapshots of what Messiah would be like, but it wasn’t until Jesus came in the flesh that they all made sense.

So as we enter a study of some of the Minor Prophets, we don’t want to treat them as independent stories that have nothing to do with the rest of the Biblical story. We want to study them in relation to Jesus.

But at this point I want to clarify that it is the story of the Old Testament that points toward Jesus, not necessarily every little detail. Some people get so zealous about Jesus’ presence in the Old Testament that they want to show how every gem on the priest’s breastplate relates to the person of Christ. But the point of the Emmaus road encounter was the story. God had been telling a story of redemption for thousands of years, and finally the hero came—Jesus Christ.

So as we approach the Minor Prophets, which can be rather baffling sometimes, our primary question we ask is this: how does this fit into the Old Testament story that reaches its climax in Christ? We’re not as concerned about how Ezekiel prophesying on his side and cooking his food over cow dung relates to Jesus. But we are concerned about how this and other parts of Ezekiel’s ministry related to the story of redemption—the story that reaches its apex with Jesus the redeemer.

As we close this morning I want to ask this question: does your heart burn when you hear and tell and study God’s story of redemption? Have you ever had that experience of putting on the glasses called Jesus the Messiah and allowing him to draw the Old Testament story into focus? I want to challenge you to read the book of Amos this week and next week. Next Sunday I will give a general introduction to the Minor Prophets and then we will dive into Amos on the 15th. So you have two weeks to soak in the book of Amos before we preach on it. And if you read Amos and haven’t a clue where it fits into the Old Testament story, go read 1 and 2 Kings to see how the kingdom divided after Solomon and how Israel began a fierce dive into idolatry and injustice and forsook the Lord. But as you do all of that, keep your glasses on and continually ask, “How does this fit into God’s story of redemption? How does this point toward Jesus?”

Advent Sermon-John 1:14-18

Last week we saw that what we celebrate today—the Son of God coming into the world as a little baby—was not disconnected in the Bible, but rather a continuation of a story. That is, the Incarnation, the Word made flesh, continued the story of God dwelling with his people. Just as God dwelled with Adam and Eve, just as God dwelled with the wandering Israelites in the tabernacle, just as God dwelled with settled Israelites in the temple, in the same way Jesus Christ was God “tabernacling” among his people. The Word became flesh and pitched his tabernacle in our midst. And just as the glory came down to the ancient dwelling places, God’s glory was evident as John and others saw Jesus.

But why did he come? Why did God the Son put on human flesh and humble himself to be born in a feeding trough? Hopefully the first answer that comes into your mind is, “He came to save us! We were lost in our sins and he came to die on the cross and rise again for us so we could be forgiven and have eternal life!” And that would be a fantastic answer. Only 2 verses before this morning’s text, in John 1:12, we hear that “to all who did receive [Jesus], who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God.” Jesus came to open the way for all God’s enemies to become his children. If you walked into this room as God’s enemy our prayer is that you would confess your sins and believe in Jesus as your Savior and Lord, and you can walk out of this room as God’s child.

So one reason Jesus came is so God’s enemies could become his children, that those relationships could be reconciled through Jesus’ death and resurrection. But what happens after you become a child of God? Do you go on about your life as before? Of course not! God is no longer your enemy—he is your Father now! So how do we get to know our new Father? Do we walk outside and yell to the sky, “Here I am, Daddy; talk to me!?!” Do we sit in our room and clear our minds until God speaks quietly to us? How do we know God? How do we interact with him?

These are the deeper questions that are answered when John tells us why Jesus came. Look with me at verse 18, “No one has ever seen God; the only God, who is at the Father’s side, he has made him known.” No one has ever seen God—that creates a bit of a problem if we want to know God, doesn’t it? The only God—don’t miss that this is Jesus; John is clearly saying, Jesus is God—who is at the Father’s side—the Word was both with God and he was God—he, that is Jesus, has made him, that is the Father, known.

I want to do something a bit unusual and work backward through our text this morning. Verse 18 is the most concise summary of John’s prologue—these 18 verses of chapter 1. And the summary is simple. Jesus came to make God known. He came to show us who God is. He put on skin so that we could understand the divine. But how did he do that? And hadn’t God already made himself known through the prophets in the Old Testament?

Absolutely. Just like verse 14—the Word became flesh and dwelt among us—is part of the bigger story of the Bible of God dwelling with his people, verse 18 is part of the bigger story of God making himself known to his people. We are going to go into more detail about this story next week, so let it suffice for now to say God has been revealing himself to his creation from the beginning, but on this side of heaven his revelation reached its apex in the person of Jesus Christ.

So as we work back to verse 17, we see one of the great prophets of the Old Testament—Moses. It is so appropriate that John is talking about Moses here, because Moses was God’s means of making himself known to Pharaoh and Israel. It was Moses who wrote down Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy. It was Moses who was on the mountain with God and came down with the 10 commandments and blueprint for the tabernacle and other laws for God’s people. He was God’s main man after the Exodus for God making himself known to his people.

But look carefully with me at verse 17. Look at the verbs John uses to talk about Moses and Jesus. “The law was given through Moses; grace and truth came through Jesus Christ.” Let’s look at these verbs—“the law was given through Moses.” Moses was the messenger. He was God’s representative. He was the delivery guy, the courier. God gave his law to Israel through Moses.

Now look at what it says about Jesus: “grace and truth came through Jesus Christ.” “The law was given through Moses; grace and truth came through Jesus Christ.” I know the difference between these verbs is subtle, but I believe it makes a world of difference. When God wanted to make himself known through Moses, he sent his message with him. When God wanted to make himself known through Jesus, he sent him as the message. In other words, Moses arrives on your doorstep saying, I have a message from God. Jesus arrives on your doorstep saying, I AM the message from God.

This is how John talks about Jesus in this passage. He doesn’t say, “Jesus gave us these messages from God…” though teaching was a huge part of Jesus’ ministry. But look at verse 14. “And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth.” John is telling us, “this Jesus was a spitting image of his Father. He perfectly conveyed God’s glorious grace and truth.” John isn’t merely recording the things Jesus said, he is recording who he was.

This should make sense to us. There is an unusually high number of couples in this church who had long-distance relationships, and we all know the difference between a letter and a loved one, don’t we? We know the difference between getting an e-mail or birthday card or even a phone conversation with the one we love and sitting across the table from the one we love. There are all kinds of nuances and character traits that cannot be known except in person.

So it makes sense that when God wants to give the ultimate picture of who he is, he doesn’t merely send a messenger: he sends himself. Jesus Christ came to show us what God is like, through his reaction to society’s outcasts, through his treatment of children, through his confrontation of the religious leaders, and in his death and resurrection. Jesus himself gave us much more than the words of God—he showed us the character of God. He was God in person.

John likes this word “full” to describe Jesus. In verse 14 he says Jesus was “full of grace and truth,” then in verse 16 he says, “and from his fullness we have all received, grace upon grace.” Jesus came exuding the character of God. He was like a sponge that was full of grace and truth, and when he was squeezed, grace and truth came out. And John is saying, “we were the ones who were blessed enough to receive the overflow—from his fullness we have all received.” When John experienced Jesus, he experienced God.

In talking about this, John describes his receiving from Jesus’ fullness as “grace upon grace.” What does John mean by this? We always want to stay true to the context of the Bible, so look at the words that come after “grace upon grace.” “For, the law was given through Moses; grace and truth came through Jesus Christ.” The word “for” is very important in understanding what an author is saying—it gives us the reason. So what is the reason that makes John describe his experience with Jesus as grace upon grace? “For, the law was given through Moses; grace and truth came through Jesus Christ.”

We already looked at the difference between Moses and Jesus: Moses delivered the message while Jesus was the message. Or to say it another way, it was gracious of God to communicate to his people through Moses. But it was more gracious of God to communicate to his people by coming to them in the person of Jesus Christ. It was grace upon grace.

John has more examples of this later in his gospel. In John 3 Jesus refers to the time when Israel was grumbling in the wilderness and God sent serpents to punish the people. When they repented, God told Moses to make a bronze serpent and put it on a pole, and whoever looked at that serpent would live. That was a gracious thing for God to do through Moses. But in Jesus we have a better grace. He told Nicodemus, “And as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of Man be lifted up, that whoever believes in him may have eternal life.” This is grace upon grace. That is, Jesus replaces God’s grace through Moses with a better grace—himself.

We see the same thing in John 6 after Jesus feeds the 5,000. He talks about how God fed the Israelites with manna during Moses' time. Every day they would wake up with enough of this white stuff to make it through the day. This was a gift! It was gracious. But Jesus said, “The bread of God is he who comes down from heaven and gives life to the world…I am the bread of life; whoever comes to me shall not hunger, and whoever believes in me shall never thirst.” Manna was a grace. But like the serpent, it was only a temporary grace; it was a shadow that pointed toward the greatest grace God has given us—himself! The Word become flesh! Immanuel, God with us! Not a piece of bronze on a pole, but the Son of God hanging on the cross for the sins of his people. Not white dewy stuff on the ground that gets us through the day, but the bread of life that eternally satisfies our spirit. Jesus Christ is the fullness of all that God is, and he is the climax of God’s revelation of who he is. He replaces all the great things about the Old Testament with the substance they were pointing toward—himself!

So we close with the question we opened with—why did Jesus come? He came to show us who God is by being God in skin. Why? So that we might know God. God is the greatest being in the universe, and knowing God, worshipping God, serving God, resting in God, pursuing God, adoring God; all that is entailed with being in relationship with God, this is the greatest experience a human being can have. Jesus Christ came not only to make that relationship possible by his life, death, and resurrection, but he came to show us who this God is that we who believe will know forever.

So let us soak in this book and get to know Jesus as well as possible. Let us live lives with singular focus—to know Jesus Christ, which is to know God. And after the Christmas lights are down let us continue to talk to others about this Jesus who came to show us who God is.