That believers should make the Lord the central focus of their lives, building their lives and society on God's truth. Drawing from Amos 5, the message urges listeners to "seek the Lord" rather than turning to false worship or worldly distractions, highlighting that true help comes only from God. The core lesson is to actively pursue God through diligent seeking, humility, and inconvenience, understanding that He is not lost but desires to be known. The sermon concludes by encouraging the audience to seek good and establish justice, reflecting God's character and finding true security in Him.
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it is to have a place where you can hang your cane. Convenient spot. If you stand beside you on the roster and you kick it over, if you hang it on the pulpit, it rattles and makes noise. If you hold it all the time, then you're prone to go out and hit somebody with it. So it's nice to have a place to hang it. I've said many times that the presence of having a cane does not mean that you are a Canaanite. It does not mean that at all. It just means that you're prepared to visit in the nursing homes. because that's what they understand in the nursing homes as it came. And I have kind of enjoyed mine. I don't enjoy the walker so much. I didn't bring it because I didn't think I'd get through the airport, but it's a kind of a trial, I think. But there are worse things, like having no legs at all.
So I'm glad to be with you this afternoon. And I'm going to read this afternoon in the fifth chapter of the book of Amos, in Amos chapter five. I'm talking about the Word of God and our public performance. I talked a little bit this morning about how it is that the Lord has spoken to us with regard to the requirements as we build our lives. And the thing I tried to emphasize this morning in the book of Micah was that the Lord wants us to build our lives and societal structures, believers, on the truth of God, on God himself and the truth of God. And I'll come back to that several times. And it's because God has made this wonderful salvation that Dan has talked about and given us the practical reality of it that we're able to do that. If God hadn't saved us, we couldn't do anything at all. It may be that you're here today and have never trusted Jesus, your Savior, in a personal way.
You need to trust the Son of God and be born into God's family. But for those of us who have trusted the Son of God, we're given that great solid foundation that our brothers discussed so admirably the last couple of times, and we need to build on that. And the concept is that we go ahead and live our lives with thanks for God. So here's the fifth chapter of Amos. I'll read verses one through fourteen, or fifteen maybe. So you're never sure where to stop. You can read the whole book. That would be better probably. We say back east, when you're reading the scripture, you're really saving everybody's time. Well, Amos five, verse one. Hear ye this word which I take up against you, even a lamentation, O house of Israel. The virgin of Israel has fallen, for she shall no more rise.
She's forsaken upon her land. There's none to raise her up. For thus saith the Lord God, the city that went out by a thousand shall leave a hundred, and that which went forth by a hundred shall leave ten to the house of Israel. For thus saith the Lord unto the house of Israel, seek ye me, and ye shall live. But seek not Bethel, nor enter into Gilgal, Pass not to Beersheba, for Gilgal shall surely go into captivity, and Bethel shall come to nothing. Seek the Lord, and ye shall live, lest he break out like fire in the house of Joseph, and devour it, and there be none to quench it in Bethel. He who turned judgment to wormwood, and leave off righteousness in the earth. Seek him that makeeth the seven stars, and Orion, and turneth the shadow of death into the morning, and makeeth the day dark with night, that calleth for the waters of the sea, and poureth them out upon the face of the earth.
The Lord is his name. That strengthens the spoiled against the strong, so that the spoiled shall come against the fortress. They hate him that rebuketh in the gate, and they have for him that speaketh uprightly. For as much therefore as your treading is upon the poor, and you take from him burdens of wheat, you have built houses of hewn stone, but you shall not dwell in them. You have planted pleasant vineyards, but you shall not drink of them. For I know your manifold transgressions and your mighty sins. They afflict the just, They take a bribe, and they turn aside the poor and the gate from their right. Therefore the prudent shall keep silence in that time, for it's an evil time. Seek good and not evil, that ye may live. And so the Lord, the God of hosts, shall be with you as you have spoken.
Hate the evil and love the good, and establish judgment in the gate. It may be that the Lord God of hosts will be gracious unto the remnant of Joseph. Amos is a book again with a great deal of messianic prophecies in it and a certain amount of end-time prophecies. It touches nicely on the millennium age and a few other things like that. It's written a few years before Micah wrote his book, just a few years. But during the days when Jeroboam II was the king in the northern kingdom at the greatest peak of its power and its wealth and everything else. Amos is from the southern kingdom and his ministry is to go into the northern kingdom and tell him that they're all wrong. It is never a popular way to do things. but that's what his ministry is. And you can go back and read about it in chapter three with great detail where he says, when God speaks, what can you do but prophesy?
That's it. In effect, he says, don't look at me and say, what are you doing? Because he said when God speaks, you can't do anything but prophesy. If the lion roars, he said you're going to be scared. And if God speaks, you'd better prophesy. So that's what he says he's doing. And his ministry is a positive one and a negative one too, if you take those terms in a broader sense. Because he speaks about Israel's sin and God's condemnation. And he offers to them as well the relief help that they need in so many particular ways. Amos is a book that deals on several levels of life. And for particular, he's concerned that Israel develop and Judah develop a degree of spiritual health that would be right for them. So the point in this particular book is that the writer tells us about how a life should be built upon God.
And I will continue with that general theme in a practical way, I hope this afternoon, with that particular emphasis. Make the Lord the focus of your living. That comes the point of it. You have to know salvation first. You have to understand the fullness of that salvation, as Dan spoke to us a little while ago. When you get the fact that you're really saved and that the Lord has dealt not only with the sins but the root of all those things, then you have a basis for living strongly. And at that point, your focus has to be on spiritual things, on God and on His Word. So as I said this morning, let the society and your life be built according to God's truth and God's word. Now the emphasis I'll make this afternoon is keep your focus on the Lord. In terms of society and where you are and what the fellowship is, keep your vision on him, keep your focus on him.
I'm not saying you just stare yourself blind, but you'll never come to a point as a believer where you forget the greatness and the goodness of God. You don't lose the joy of his work or the hope of his calling or the promise of Christ coming. You keep those things central in what you're doing. The concept is to make your focus upon God. And this particular book deals with that great. Because Amos starts out in the first two chapters talking about all the judgments God's going to visit on different people, Jews and non-Jews alike. And he does that so that they will know that there's a God who holds all people accountable to him. It wasn't just Jude and Israel. Edom is accountable. Moab is accountable. Damascus is accountable. They all are accountable to God in his justice and in his right.
And then Amos says, I've just got a message I have to give you. And that message is, that if you don't look for God and keep your attention on him, you will have nothing else that really means very much. Well, years ago, I got carried away on a tangent one night. Preachers do it. I try. I get carried away and don't realize it until I have to carry me back. I rarely get to the point where I forget where I was, but once in a while, that's happened. Even once in a while, I've got tired of listening to myself and almost fallen asleep in the middle of my own message. So if you get weary, I can understand it. Just don't fall off and get hurt because we have no insurance against people collapsing during the meeting in a thing like this. So the chair breaks, maybe you can sue the forage. But if you die of your own free will, kind of on your own.
See I'm on a small tangent there. See how easy it is? But I got carried on a small tangent because I'd heard about forty-two testimonies of people saying, I found the Lord, I found the Lord. There's nothing wrong with that except I just got on a tangent. And I said, you know, you'd think the Lord was the one that was lost. I said, I know what people mean, but I wish they wouldn't say it that way. You'd think the Lord was the one who was lost, but the Lord is not the one who was lost. And I said, the truth of the matter is, is that he was out finding you a long time before you thought about finding him. I believe that's right. But there was a simple brother there. It's nice to have these guys around. He was not offended, not irritated, and not argumentative. But after the service, he said, Tom, he said, can I ask you something?
He was much younger than I. That's okay. I'm not a defensive person. I said, sure. He said, he said, He said, I understand what you're saying, but he said, just look at these verses. He had copied out about fifteen verses that said, seek the Lord. He said, if the Lord says, seek me, he said, is there anything wrong with doing it? So I put my hand on his shoulder and I said, no, and thank you very much. I said, thank you. So I haven't been that tangent since. It is true the Lord was looking for you before you look for him. That is true. But when the writer says, seek the Lord, he's not making some game for us. He's saying, that's right. And the Hebrew word for seek in this case, I don't like to say much about those words, but it's to get down your hands and knees and look for it hard.
There are a number of words for seek in the Old Testament. But this is the one that means you really look for it like a man who's looking for a cufflink. I almost said, I almost said, what did I almost say? A cufflink, a cufflink. Nobody wears them anymore. It's almost like a man who's looking for a cufflink. I never owned any of those things. I did have to wear him for one or two fancy functions, dropping and couldn't find him. So you get down your hands and knees and crawl around and look. So that's the kind of thing it's like. Look, he says. If the Lord says, seek me, why should I not do it? And I haven't been in that tangent sentence except when I want to give an illustration of how poor we can be sometimes when we get carried away with things.
So if you want to say, brother, I found the Lord. It's all right with me. If you know him, praise the Lord. If you think that he was in Asia and you had to go get him, I don't think that's right. But if you know him as Savior, I say praise the Lord. And you can't expect everybody to give testimonies like the fellow I had years ago in school. I asked how he was saved. I said, when were you saved? When were you saved? And he said, Brother Taylor, he said, there's no way I can tell you that. He said, I was in Christ before the world began. But he said, I learned about it three years ago at a gospel meeting. And see, it serves your right. If you're going to be picky with people, it serves your right for them to be picky with you. But see how the Lord says it beautifully in this chapter.
Israel, he said, the problem is you've forgotten me. Make the Lord the focus of your life. And he makes a big emphasis on that. And he does it in a powerful way. First of all, he says, seek the Lord. He says it in chapter five in verse four, seek ye me. And he ties that together in verse six with seek the Lord in a definitive sense. We kind of think that he's speaking throughout. Some people think that the prophet is speaking in verse six. I kind of think the Lord is speaking throughout, and they just address himself in the third person in verse six. But the advice is consistent. Seek me. Get down on your hands and knees and look for me. It isn't that the Lord is lost, but that you want to know him, and you're willing to humble yourself to know him. You're willing to put yourself to inconvenience to know him.
You might even be willing to go to prayer meeting on an inconvenient time to know him. But somehow you're going to be willing to put yourself out that you might know the Lord and know him in a fuller sense. He's revealing himself to us by his word in a wonderful way. But somehow the word doesn't crawl into your head by putting the Bible under your pillow and sleeping on it. It crawls into you as you study and as the Spirit renews it and charges you and enthuses you with what it has to say. Seek me, he says. You'll notice that he mentions several other sources of help in verse five. Don't go to Bethel. You remember what was at Bethel, the golden calf that Jeroboam the first built? He put one there and he put one in Dan. The one in Dan is gone already by this time. But he put one in Bethel.
And because he wanted to rally his worship to himself rather than the God of Judah, he said, these are your gods, O Israel, that brought you out of Egypt. It's kind of interesting to check the golden calf through there and back through Aaron's work back in Exodus and all the way back to the Egyptian pilgrimage. But he made it. And he made it so that the people in the northern kingdom would go to Bethel to worship a golden calf and therefore they'd be detached from the worship in Judah. Don't go there, says the prophet. Don't go there. Don't go to Gilgal, the historic point on the river that had been turned into an idolatrous shrine. Don't go there. You're not going to get help at Bethel or Gilgal. Don't go to Beersheba, a territory which was thoroughly Judean, but had fallen under Philistine and Baalite influences.
Don't go there. You're not going to get help there. Gilgal will go into captivity. Bethel will come to nothing. He doesn't mention Beersheba, but Beersheba will fall under the pact that God brings in these other nations. Don't turn to those places. Rather, verse six, seek the Lord. And if you don't seek the Lord, he may break out like a fire and bring great destruction on this country and on this territory. He may do it. Back in verse three, which I made no comment on, he shows the desolation of will come. But the places where there were great multitudes will be left with few. and places that had previously known great prosperity would be derived of almost everything that was meaningful to them. The only thing to do is to seek the Lord.
In chapter seven, in verse ten of chapter seven, it's not exactly the same reference, but there's a concept there that I've always found interesting. In chapter seven, Amos is prophesying, and in verse ten, Amosiah the false prophet comes to him, And he says, Amos has conspired against thee in the midst of the house of Israel. The land is not able to bear all of his words. And so in verse twelve, Amosiah speaks to him and says, O thou seer, go flee away into the land of Judah. Eat your bread and prophesy there. But don't prophesy again anymore at Bethel because that's the king's court. It's the king's chapel. And that's where the golden calf is too. Don't tell us not to come here because this is where the king wants us to come. The king is a wicked man.
who doesn't know the God of the Bible, although he is a Hebrew and a professed member of the people of God, professed by virtue of his birth. He certainly would not have stood up and said, yeah, I'm a believer too, but professed by what he is and by the title that he bears. No, seek the Lord. Don't seek the place that pleases the king. Don't seek the places where false worship is done. Seek the Lord. And that means get down and look. Not that the Lord is lost, as I've said about six times in a silly sort of way, but that you really want to know what God wants you to do. You really want to know what God wants you to do. I like to go and eat in the Chinese restaurants from time to time. I like to eat in general. It's a good way to stay alive.
And I'm not really fussy. I will eat almost anything. I'm not very fond of chicken, although that was a delicious cat roll at lunch. It was delicious. I not only ate my helping, but snitched another spoonful as I walked by later on. It was delicious. I think it was chicken. If it turns out later it was pig and I didn't know it, then you'll see how ignorant I really am. But whatever the case happens to be, we like to go to the, and around home where we live, there are lots of Chinese buffets these days. There are more of them there than there are in Shanghai within a little distance of our house. So we like to go and eat those things. And then at the end of the meal, they bring us a fortune cookie. Well, I hope you won't hate me when I say I always read the fortune in the cookie. I don't believe it. I don't believe it. One said you are good-looking and have a great future.
It's obvious that that wasn't written by it. I don't believe it. But I know people who take their advice from things like fortune cookies and psychics on the radio and all sorts of things like that. I said one of the dumbest things in the world is to wear a rabbit's foot for good luck because it did the rabbit no good at all. And it's really stupid for anybody to think it's going to do them good. You understand that, I think. But the concept is simple. Don't go to those places for advice. And I will add a kind of a further note to it. Don't go to the people that write secular columns in the newspaper for advice either. I'm not saying they couldn't tell you something good, but you've got a mixture of things that have some small elements of truth and an enormous amount of things that don't really complement the truth.
I don't mean to denounce everybody in just five minutes. I'll take six. But I don't mean to denounce everybody. But I'm simply telling you that you look for the Lord, for His Word, for His guidance. You pray, you seek. That's what He says. Keep your focus on the Lord. And the Lord may bring some brother or some sister into your life that will have just the thing you need to know. That's what's often happened with me. When I was indecisive or in difficulty about it and prayed unto God, He's brought somebody into my life. that was able to help me in a powerful way. I don't deny that. That's a great thing to have happen. But when we start looking for the people first and hoping God will endorse what they say second, then we might as well go to Gilgal.
Might as well go to Bethel. I have a friend who's really a good counselor, a good counselor, and people come to him by the droves, and he handles them by the droves. And he said, one of the first things I say to the people is, you remember that I'm not the Holy Spirit. He said, you'd be surprised how many don't seem to know that. He said, I want them to know that any advice I can't give this to you word for word, you know. But in essence, he says, I want them to know that any advice they give them is subject first to the word of God. And if it doesn't agree with the word of God, they should not come back. If it does agree with the word of God, they ought to go. But he said, I want them to know I'm not the Holy Spirit. So I can't lead their lives. They need to get down and read and pray and study and consult God.
And God will help them with the direction they need. Now, he may help them by another counselor. You understand that. He may help them by a circumstance of life that redirects their thinking. But the big thing is to seek him. Seek the Lord. Seek the Lord. And that means patience because the Lord doesn't always just jump up all at once and say, yeah, I know what you want to know. It involves patience. It involves trust. It involves living in the joy of the salvation that we've been thinking about. But the Lord is there. He doesn't leave us. He doesn't forsake us. He doesn't play games with us. He's not like Baal sleeping on the mountain somewhere. He's our God and concerned for us. But seeking him is a matter of the emptying of self and a commitment to him.
Too many of us, when we seek the Lord at some point, have too much of the influence of the old nature working at the same time. It's like the fellow that I've talked about a lot. You can talk safely when nobody knows the people. But he went to the college, the Bible college in Philadelphia, and said to a young lady to whom he was attracted, he said, I've been praying that the Lord will have you marry me. And she said, I've been praying that the Lord won't, and my prayers have been answered. You see, he really wasn't seeking what the Lord wanted. He had his own self-interest in it in a powerful way. And it's very easy to get that way. Very easy to do it. But the writer says, go and seek the Lord.
And if you wonder further about that, you know, you need to go and read the passage in Acts, starting about verse fifteen and read the next four or five verses. I shall read them here, but in Acts seventeen, when the Lord says, he's put the people here and put the nations there and put the places there, that if by some circumstance they might seek after God to know him and be blessed, and then he tells how he's given evidence through faith in Christ that we could seek to know the truth in a saving way, and then in a living faith as well. So let the Lord be the focus of your life, day by day, desire to know him better and to seek him out for all the things that are important in life. By prayer and by the word. I don't mean you should sit down and beat yourself like they did in the monasteries years ago.
By prayer and by conciliates and by going on faithfully in what he says, seek the Lord. Secondly, secondly, after verse fourteen, after a lot of sins are denounced, did you see the sins that were denounced? We're told how great God is, how He made the stars and all those things. And then a lot of sins are denounced with regard to people who tread upon the poor and take burdens of Him and do all kinds of wicked things just to get ahead in verse eleven. He says, you won't get ahead by these wicked things. God will not allow it. I know your many transgressions. Prudent people won't have much to say at that time, but I know them. It's a tough time. So seek good. Seek good and not evil that you may live. So first of all, seek the Lord. Keep your focus on Him.
Secondly, seek the right things, not the bad things. Isn't that simple? Too simple, probably. But that's a big thing. Seek the good things. He emphasizes that in a powerful way in verse fifteen. Hate the evil and love the good. Establish truth or judgment in the gate. I will come back to that in a couple minutes, I suppose, or try to anyway. But this is an important point, that you seek what is good. If you go into chapter six of Amos, you'll find a lengthy series in verses three through six. in which he tells us what they were really seeking. They were really seeking things that were not right for them. He says, you think you can put away the evil day and cause the seed of violence to come near. You that lie on beds of ivory, stretch yourself upon couches that eat the lambs out of the flock.
You that chant the sound of the vile. You that invent instruments of music like David. You that drink wine and bowls. You that are afflicted and not bothered by it. No, no, he says. That's That's the way you are in your sin and in your lack of appreciation of what God has done. That's the problem. And you're seeking things that are wrong. That's all. Seeking things that are wrong. There are some things in life in what we call the gray areas. I don't know how to define those things exactly. Some things are clearly wrong. Some things are clearly right. There are some things that it's hard to define. If you think I'm wrong in that, then we can discuss that later. But I will assure you there are. I'll not get off on a tangent here, but there are.
There are. People who see everything as either one side or the other don't see the middle of the whole thing, and it's a big middle. And a lot of times they get irritated when you bring them to the biblical concepts of it. But you'll find concepts of it in Romans, in a number of places like that. But the idea is that there are a lot of things that are just wrong. Just wrong. Not a fellow once who thought that the Lord had told him to leave his wife and marry somebody else. The Lord doesn't tell you that. And it's a sin to blame the Lord for it. And I've known many people who fell into some kind of a sin, who then blamed God for letting them do it. I was on a tension on this last week out in Denver, so I'll try not to get on a tangent again. But if you forget the joy of your salvation and the power of God's grace and yield too much to the old nature and do something stupid, don't blame God for letting you do it.
You don't want a God that's like a policeman running over you all the time. Just suppose you had a God like that and you're ready to eat this piece of pie at lunch and suddenly a hand reached out from the sky and slapped you on the wrist and said you've had enough caribou hybrids for one day. You don't want a God like that. And God is not like that. God is gracious to us and God gives us the freedom in himself. He gives us the freedom in himself to be responsible. And if we're not responsible, we may very well suffer for it. It's just the way God has arranged things. And I shan't go into detail on that except to tell you this. that God gives you with this new life in Christ, the power and the right and the spiritual guidance to hate the evil and to love the good.
But you know there's something monstrously attractive about the evil. I haven't really figured it out yet and probably never will, but there's something monstrously attractive about it. So here you'll see three people going down the street wearing t-shirts with the name of some murderer on the back of them. the society in his favor. We've had a big thing of this in Philadelphia with a man who's been convicted. Now, maybe in fifty years we'll find out he was innocent. I don't know that they've convicted him of really serious crimes a few years ago. It's been a big society for him to go behind him. They sell all kinds of things to raise money for his defense. He's been in death row for fifteen years or sixteen years, and they're doing all kinds of things.
And I don't know if it's right or wrong in that sense, but what I'm saying is for people who know the Lord to suddenly make heroes out of evil people is not good. So don't join the Hitler Society. Don't do it. Don't join the anti-Semitic groups. Don't do it. Those things are evil in the sight of God. Anti-Semite, incidentally, it's not just anti-Jew, it's anti-Arab too. But don't join those societies. Don't have anything to do with those things because they are evil. And I'm not the least bit reluctant to say that they are. It's like forming a club to love the devil. Another writer says there are choices in life and you're responsible to make them. You're to focus yourself on the Lord. And if you focus your eyes on the Lord, you're not going to want to be dabbling with those things that are contrary to him or to the nature of the salvation that he's provided for you.
Because they are absolutely contradictory for us. Seek what is good, he said. Seek what is good. And sometimes what is good is awfully tame and limp. But it's good. Now by good we mean things that please God and things that agrees with His word and things that build us in the faith. Those things are all good. Seek those things. When I was a boy, my mother said, my mother said, mother's gone, but I'll tell you what mother said. Mother said, I always picked the worst boys in school for my friends. Actually, I had so few friends that the only boys that would be that were probably the worst boys in schools. She said, mother said, I remember the flavor of soap, but mother said that I remember the flavor of soap because I would come home from kindergarten, which I hated with a passion, with a lot of bad language.
I hung around a couple guys whose names I can't mention to this day, but I remember them well. They were, well, anyhow, mother said they were the worst kids in the school, and I made them my friend, so I'd get talking like them, and then I would experience the flavor of soap. I can't go any further than that because it would sound like cruelty. But their soap, the soap that I was experiencing a flavor of, was made with lie. I don't recall it was pleasant. It didn't kill me either. I didn't lose my sight or anything like that. But that didn't happen too often. I was smart enough not to repeat some phrases that showed up. I don't know why I did it. I'm not sure it's right. It's what Mother said.
But I can see how it happens. There's something attractive about wickedness that lures us like a flame gets a mullet. And you'll see it in Israel's history again and again. You don't see it so much in the New Testament because the New Testament is a short book covering a very short span. But if you add the history of the Christian church from seventy AD to a hundred and twenty AD, you'll see plenty of it. and you'll see it quickly. Why would the Galatians, who had heard the pure gospel of Christ, why would they suddenly be drawn away to a false gospel? Paul says, I'm amazed how quick this has happened. Why would they do it? I used to say students would say, we really want the New Testament church, Mr. Taylor.
Say, I believe in the New Testament church. They'd say, we really want the New Testament church, Mr. Taylor. I'd say, well, which one would you want? The Corinthian church, is that the one you would want? The Galatian church, is that the one you would want? It was a way to try to get them to think about what they were saying, which may not have worked or may. I don't know. But the Corinthian church is a church full of problems. The Galatian church is full of apostasy. The apostle had hardly left it because there's something in worldly attractiveness that lures us to it like moths the flame. And so First John, too, reminds us not to love the world nor the things that are in it because it's contrary to the love of the Father. But I'll tell you, it shows up awfully easily. In Amos chapter eight and verses four through six, there's a short section where he gives a rebuke.
He rebukes those that take advantage of the poor of the land. And these people, he says, you know, he said they're so anxious to make money that they can't wait until the Sabbath. They sit around wishing for the Sabbath to end so that they can go out and cheat and defraud one another, making the bushel basket small and the shekel very big and falsifying the balances by deceit. He said they can't even wait for Shabbat to end. They've got to take advantage of others so quickly and in such a violent way that they can't even be patient with what God has done. Seek what is good. make it a desire of your life to seek what is good and you're dealing with others and the word of God tells us and areas where you can't really know exactly then learn to look for God's guidance and God's word seek him and seek what is good if those are the goals and that's the focus I think they allow us to maximize the great security we have in Christ in a powerful son you'll find a nice New Testament section on it in first Peter three in verses ten through thirteen first peter three verses ten through thirteen where peter says you know who's going to blame you if you do that which is good that's the evidence of it you say well i did something good and i got blamed yeah peter says i didn't say nobody would but he said
who's going to do it and the implication is that it won't happen very often if you do that which is good and right you won't very often be blamed for it you may if you get into a culture that's so totally pagan they can't stand the truth but here's a funny thing Even those cultures learn to appreciate things that are true. I had a friend in the army who could do nothing right. I didn't do much right. He did less than I did. It's nice to have a friend like that. Not that he wasn't a good soldier, he just couldn't do anything right. He couldn't march right, he couldn't walk right, he couldn't salute right. He was good for either hitting himself in the eye when he saluted or hitting the officer he was saluting. He was just awkward and unjoined in every possible way.
He was not wickedly rebellious. He just couldn't do things right. And I was sitting in the orderly room one day typing, real tough military duties, sitting there typing. And the colonel of the battalion was there talking with the captain of my company about something. You don't eavesdrop on the colonel. But once in a while you hear things, and my friend walked by the door. He's carrying a shovel on his shoulder. He's bouncing. He's bouncing like there's a string on him. He's a puppet bouncing up and down. His arms are flopping in every direction you can imagine and all that sort of thing. And the colonel saw him go by, and he said to the captain, he said, will men like that ever make a soldier, do you think? And the captain, who knew this fellow, because he knew us all, and Joe was a really fine Christian man, the captain said, no, he said, he'll never make a soldier.
But he said, if I had to go into battle tomorrow, he said, I'd go with a hundred men like him, as opposed to five hundred of the normal kind. And the colonel said, you would. Yes, he said, I would. He said, because he said, he has his mind fixed on pleasing a deity, he said. and he will give you every ounce of whatever he's got that that deity might be pleased. He said, I'll gladly go into battle with men like that. He said, we may have to give him extra duty because he doesn't march right, but I'm glad to go. And the discussion went on for a little while longer than I can remember. I was the guy who had those troubles too, but I had gotten some help and gained some coordination. I was able to at least walk without falling down. So the case happens to be, first of all, seek the Lord and then seek what is good.
And in the third place, I work out of verse fifteen and I tie verse fifteen to verse twenty four in verse fifteen he already said hate the evil and love good and then he says establish judgment and negate maybe it may be maybe the Lord will be gracious unto the remnant as Joseph you'll find it an interesting study if you like to do that sort of thing to go through chapters like this and see the different ways he refers to people Joseph Israel Jacob and so forth I'm not doing that today but it's a kind of a fruitful study but he says maybe God will be gracious if you establish judgment and negate In verse twenty-four, he says, in verse twenty-three, he says, don't sing me songs. Don't sing me songs. I don't want to hear any more music. I want to see judgment run down like waters and righteousness like a mighty stream.
Don't come in with a bunch of instruments and music when your heart isn't right with me. So the concept is, first, to seek the Lord. Secondly, to seek what is good. And thirdly, to seek justice. To seek truth. To seek justice. So seek that judgment is right and to give your energies to doing those things that are right. So the word seek does not occur in verse twenty four and we have to apply it by shouting and pounding the pulpit in verse fourteen and verse fifteen. That's what you do, you know. If a particular word you need aren't there, you shout them loudly and hit the desk twice and no one will know they're not there. But it would be nice if he put seek in verse fifteen but he hasn't done it. But I think we can easily carry it from verse fourteen.
So the concept is you look for the Lord and you look for that which is good and then you look for things to be done right. Judgment and justice. You set aside the false values that show up in chapter two of Amos. In chapter two in Amos and verses eleven and twelve a whole bunch of false prophet values come up. The prophets who give the wrong prophecies. The people who give the Nazarites wine to drink. The people who tell the true prophets not to prophesy. They become the big heroes in the land. But he says, I want you to seek justice, to seek judgment. Let judgment and justice and truth be the important things. I love music, you know. I'm of Welsh descent and we all love music. We all think we're great singers. Most of us are not, but we think it's just the same.
And we often are not too proud to say it, just after we hit a bad note. But whatever the case happens to be, I love music. And I love instrumental music too. In the last couple of years, we've had more and more of these praise bands in various places. And some of them are really good and some of them are just noisy. But if I'm there very long, If I'm there very long, I whip out my harmonicas and join them. I've learned sometimes it's better to join them to fight. You have to make your own decision on those things. You may not play anything acceptable. But I whip them out and join them. If they turn to be just noisy, then I just kind of play with myself. If they're edifying, then I feel greatly edified and say, praise the Lord. It's a matter of circumstance and how things happen to work.
But I kind of, you know, they don't have a lot of harmonicas in this culture anymore. I thought about playing the comb with them a couple times, but that seemed to be a little bizarre. Then I just whip it out and play too. And I kind of like that, but then I say to myself, the Lord says, I'm really not interested in a lot of music if your heart isn't with me. Can you see that in this passage? He says that in a very good way. Take away the songs. I'm not going to accept your sacrifice in verse twenty-two. I hate your special feasts in verse twenty-one, and I don't want to hear your songs either. What I want to see is that you do things right. that you do things from my word. And if you do things, let judgment run down like rivers. That's what I want to see.
I don't want a lot of substitute ideas. And too often that's what we try to give God instead of simple obedience and worship and adoration. Too often we try to give him substitute things, our own plans, our own ideas, our own concepts, rather than those which God gives us in his word. Seeking God, of course, in the first place means that we're willing to know Him when He's there. And seeking good means that we're willing to act on it when we know what it is. And seeking judgment means that we want the truth dramatized in every aspect of life as far as we can. Now, the first half of chapter seven of Amos, I shan't read it, I think, but the first half of chapter seven records two or three prayers that Amos gives in behalf of the people.
God says, I'm going to judge this people. I'm going to send a great famine and they're all going to starve. And Amos says, Lord, we can't stand up. The Lord says, well, then I won't do it. And he says, I'm going to send a great drought. And Amos says, we can't stand up. And the Lord says, I won't do it. And then he says, we're going to test them by a judgment of righteousness, the plumb line. And Amos says, that's all right. We can do it that way. But what I've tried to say in that chapter is that Amos looks to God and says, Lord, you're the just God. Burning up the whole nation isn't going to do you any good. starving everybody didn't do you any good but a line of righteous judgment that will do everybody good and there's a just measurement there and that's what we want God and I think that the first two things that he says to Amos are done to make him think along those lines and when he's thought along those lines he says that's right what we want is judgment and justice judgment is not condemnation but we want judgment and justice and we want to see that in every possible way that we can and that's where we need to be today too We're not living in Israel back in the eighth century BC.
We're living in a country which is passing into another millennium. Don't get too excited. Don't buy too many things to store in your basement. I'm close to a tangent again. You need to read a book about how the church reacted on the first millennium. Has anybody done that? You need to do that. There are several books. Well, I know of two. So there are probably more to talk about the things that went through the Christian community at the beginning of the second millennium. you'd be surprised how many people thought the world was going to end and you'd be surprised the things they did either to get ready for it or prevent it whatever the case happens to be it's a really interesting study the Lord Jesus is coming one of these days he hasn't told us when so we'll live ready and an expectation is coming and I'm one of those believers who believes it soon but I'm not going to write any dates on it I'm not going to say before I die I'm feeling weak today you never can tell But I believe he's coming soon, but that's in his hands.
And I have to leave it there. I'm supposed to be faithful until he calls. That's what I'm supposed. And that's what you're supposed to be, too. He's given us this great blessing of life and salvation that we can live and enjoy him and witness for him. And when he comes, praise the Lord, we'll be glad and rejoice. But I'll tell you, if you knew the exact time he was coming right now, it would just give you more time to procrastinate doing the things you ought to do for him today. I will guarantee you that because that's the nature of mankind so Amos takes that up and he says I want you to understand that the Lord is a righteous judge and that's where our interests ought to be too you can pick up ideas from it from Ephesians four twenty eight with the integrity and honesty that are Marcus and things of that sort but I will tell you it's a great concept seek the Lord seek good seek justice make those things the object of life as you focus on him because those things are characteristic of him.
And when we find those things, when we know those things by the word, then we act on them and live them out. And God is blessed and honored, and we're blessed and honored too. Well, it's a hot afternoon. I think we're going to sing a song or so and have some special music before Dan is here, so I'll just tell you to wake up. Stay awake. The singing may do it. The singing may do it. But I was telling the folks the other night that I learned a lesson from David Kirk years ago in a hot afternoon at Greenwood Hills in Pennsylvania when people were actually dying in the middle of the meeting due to the heat and the tabernacle of no breath. Afterwards, when I said, I'm sorry, so many people fell asleep. Mr. Kirk, he said, don't be mad at them, Tom. He said, if people fall asleep in the meeting, he said, remember, they must love the Lord a lot if they would have stayed home and been comfortable, he said.
And I have taken great courage without the ears. But it's nice to be with you today. And actually, Dan, they're a very alert audience. Very alert audience. So we thank God for all those things. But here's the big thing. Make sure that you build your life and society on the truth of God. And as you go on day by day, keep your focus on him. If you don't know Jesus as your Savior, we want you to trust him today. But if you do, keep your focus on him. Let's pray. We thank you, gracious Father, for your blessings and mercies to us today. We thank you for all your love. We thank you for our salvation. It's so complete and wonderful and perfectly hard to know what to say. We thank you.
And this afternoon, we pray, God, you'd help us in our thanksgiving and our rejoicing to keep our attention in mind on the Lord Jesus, on our God, on the will of God. We give you thanks in Jesus' name. Amen.