Life: God’s Version of Take Your Child to Work’ Day
Week 8 – The Job Isn’t Done, yet
Amos 8:4-7

 † In Jesus Name †

May the grace and mercy of God our Father and our Lord Jesus Christ sustain you, until the work God began in you is completed as Jesus returns!

How do you know the work is over?

As we talk about going to work with God, today we are going to look at the great moment when the job is done.

Or more precisely, how do we know when the job is done?

When we are kids, I don’t think we understand this all that clearly. We might finish a small task and go, “Dad, we’re done!” and think it high time we go and celebrate!

Until Dad lets us know that the little task we had completed was just the first of many!

“But Dad, I filled the wheelbarrow liked you asked, can’t we go now?”

“No son, now we make the concrete with the sand and the cement mix, then we get the rocks and make the wall….”

“but Dad, that will take for—-ever, and I am hungry now…”

“Be patient, there is more hard work to do…. “

So I’ve got a question for you…

As we work with God in this life, are you ready and willing to keep working with Him?

Are you sure? What if the work is hard?

What if the work isn’t just trying to save the world, but you are the object of the work? What if you are the one God is finishing what He started to recreate?

Or we could you hear yourself telling Him, Lord, we finished the work?

The Law ( Oh and is there law!)

The passage from Amos describes God’s message to His people, as He continues to do the work while He walks with them. You see, they messed up the job a little, and caused some delays, and God must…work on them a little.

The passage is brutal, getting right to the point as God points out their sin. God goes right after how they treat their neighbor, taking advantage of them the moment, they walk out the door of church,

“so you can get back to cheating the helpless. You measure out grain with dishonest measures and cheat the buyer with dishonest scales. ⁶  And you mix the grain you sell with chaff swept from the floor. Then you enslave poor people for one piece of silver or a pair of sandals”

Now, all these sins are against one’s neighbor, but you may be going, whew, those aren’t my sins. I mean when was the last time Nancy mixed chaff with the wheat she was selling                    someone? Or the last time you used that scale that you knew was off… in a business transaction.

Wait, does lying to the doctor count here?

Or do you “own” some people who went into debt with you?

Or is there something deeper at work here?

The Real Sin, Behind the Sin

One of the problems with Amos is that we don’t recognize the primary sin here, and there fore we can’t recognize the gospel in the passage that deals with the sin.

We look at what we consider the big sins, the ones committed against other people.

Did anyone notice I missed the big sin in the passage?

You can’t wait for the Sabbath day to be over and the religious festivals to end…

Here is the issue—what leads us into deeper sin is our rush to end our time with God and get back to “real life.” The second commandment – to treasure the sabbath day and keep it holy – they couldn’t waste their time finding rest and restoration by knowing God’s love, and instead they wanted to get back to …whatever they thought was more valuable than worship and prayer, than hearing  God’s word and communing with Him.

I’ll be honest, there are times when I’ve been distracted by life, and wanted to get moving past some pastor’s conference worship session or end a Bible Study. Sometimes the reasons sound good, other times

And it is that attitude towards God, that point where time with Him doesn’t matter compared to something else, that we begin to act and believe like others don’t matter either.

That is where sin begins, where neglect of our relationship with God

That is what James is talking about, when he writes about God’s law not being a bunch of different sins that are ranked, but rather, “⁸  Yes indeed, it is good when you obey the royal law as found in the Scriptures: “Love your neighbor as yourself.” ⁹  But if you favor some people over others, you are committing a sin. You are guilty of breaking the law. ¹⁰  For the person who keeps all of the laws except one is as guilty as a person who has broken all of God’s laws.  James 2:8-10 (NLT2)

So if God’s going to do the work, on us, with us, wouldn’t it be beneficial if we aware of the work?

Did anyone see it in the passage from Amos?

It’s there!

The Grace, Where We Didn’t See Grace

It’s a challenging discussion, enough so that I wrote several other pastors and Jim and Bob to see if they saw it. Didn’t even sleep on Sunday night, as I could not see the gospel in these verses, something that would give us hope, because of the death, burial and resurrection.

And then I saw it, right there in verse 7,

⁷  Now the LORD has sworn this oath by his own name, the Pride of Israel: “I will never forget the wicked things you have done!  Amos 8:7 (NLT2)

God’s not going to forget our sins! That’s incredible news! In those words, we find the gospel, and it is amazing!

It doesn’t sound like good news, it doesn’t sound like the gospel! That sounds like condemnation! That sounds like every sin is going to be remembered and God will crush us for them….

And if God remembers every time we neglect Him, every time we sin by not loving our neighbor as ourselves, we are in deep doo doo.

But the Hebrew there means that He won’t forget to deal with the sin. It doesn’t say He won’t deal with it, or that He will just right off the one committing the sin.  God won’t forget our sin, means He won’t forget to deal with it.

Amos and the people of God didn’t know how God would deal with such sin, they had no idea of Grace. They only knew that sin would get punished…they never saw Jesus taking the punishment we deserve

They didn’t know of the cross.

They didn’t apply Ezekiel 37 and God putting His spirit into the bodies He created from the dead dry bones in the Valley. They didn’t believe he couldn’t save us, and bring back to life that which was dead in sin.

They didn’t realize what we testify to..

Alleluia! Christ is Risen!
(He is risen indeed! Alleluia)
and therefore
(We are risen indeed! Alleluia!)

God indeed will never forget our sin, and He will never forget He dealt with that sin at the cross!

We have to understand this job, God doesn’t do it half way, He completes it, He doesn’t forget our sin, nor will He ever forget He did something.

Which is the point of the prophetic message, to help us realize the promise of Christ, and God not forgetting, but dealing with our sin, at the cross.  And because of that death and resurrection, He will never forget He dealt with that sin.

When we know that, the peace of God, which passes all understanding, yet in which we are safe, our hearts and minds, by Christ Jesus.