Amos 5,21-24. Quinquagesima

✠ One Message: Christ crucified and risen for you ✠

The Word of the Lord Endures Forever

Verbum Domini Manet in Aeternum

Amos 5,21-24  1218

Quinquageima  022

Euphrosyne, Virgin, 470 

11. Februar 2018 

1. О Christ, You loved us before we knew You, enlighten our understanding that in Your Light we may behold the greatness of Your love and compassion, so that we may be prompted to render You due thanks.  Amen. (Starck 75) 

2. Therefore thus says the Lord, the God of hosts, the Lord: „I hate, I despise your feasts, and I take no delight in your solemn assemblies. ²²Even 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. ²³Take away from Me the noise of your songs; to the melody of your harps I will not listen. ²⁴But let justice roll down like waters, and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream.“ 

3. Why would the Lord hate and despise Israel’s feasts and solemn assemblies? We must recall Israel history. After Solomon died, his son, Rehoboam was a harsh and unwise king; as a result the 10 tribes in the north rebelled and formed a separate nation, called Israel, leaving the remaining 2 tribes in the south to become Judah. Israel established a capital and a temple in Samaria. One of the first acts by King Jeroboam of Israel was to establish a religion contrary to what Moses had delivered them at Mount Sinai. »So the king took counsel and made two calves of gold. And he said to the people: You have gone up to Jerusalem long enough. Behold your gods, O Israel, who brought you up out of the land of Egypt. And he set one in Bethel, and the other he put in Dan. Then this thing became a sin, for the people went as far as Dan to be before one. He also made temples on high places and appointed priests from among all the people, who were not of the Levites. And Jeroboam appointed a feast on the fifteenth day of the eighth month like the feast that was in Judah, and he offered sacrifices on the altar. So he did in Bethel, sacrificing to the calves that he made. And he placed in Bethel the priests of the high places that he had made. He went up to the altar that he had made in Bethel on the fifteenth day in the eighth month, in the month that he had devised from his own heart. And he instituted a feast for the people of Israel and went up to the altar to make offerings« (1. Kings 12,28-33). 150 years later another King Jeroboam ruled Israel; like the kings before him, he did what was evil in the sight of the Lord; he did not depart from the idolatry that the kings encouraged in Israel, and thus Amos was sent to prophesy against him. 

4. Therefore, the feasts and assemblies the Lord hates are feasts and assemblies that Israel had established contrary to those set forth by the Lord through Moses on Sinai. Their feasts honored idols and their assemblies celebrated false gods. The Lord refuses to accept their religious offerings because they are not the offerings He is looking for. Even the praise of their worship was offensive to His ears. The Lord promised to punish Israel for their generations of idolatry and in punishing them He would also end their worship of false gods (Amos 3,14). His justice will roll down upon Israel like waters and His righteousness will cascade like an ever flowing stream. 

5. Israel’s idolatry at the time of the Prophet Amos were Moloch and Kiyyun; these were Canaanite and Babylonian gods. Amos laments: »But you, O Israel, have carried/lifted up the tabernacle of your Moloch and Kiyyun your star-god your images that you made for yourselves« (Amos 5,26). Moloch was invoked for financial prosperity; he was associated with child sacrifice and his Canaanite idol was a statue with the head of a bull, the torso of a man and his base was a furnace. Sacrifices to him involved burning the firstborn child to death in the statue’s outstretched hands that were heated up by the furnace. Kiyyun was a Babylonian god associated with the planet Saturn; the Babylonians referred to the planets as stars, and Kiyyun was invoked for justice. The Lord’s punishment was to hand Israel over to Assyrian exile. Their devotion to Moloch and his financial prosperity would result in Israel’s poverty and their devotion to Kiyyun’s justice would result in Israel’s injustice. For the Lord’s justice would reign supreme as He cast out idolatrous Israel from His covenant land. 

6. But God also promised righteousness to Israel. The Lord promised: »Behold, the days are arriving when the plowman shall overtake the reaper and the treader of grapes him who sows the seed; the mountains shall drip sweet wine, and all the hills shall flow with it. I will restore the fortunes of My people Israel, and they shall rebuild the ruined cities and inhabit them; they shall plant vineyards and drink their wine, and they shall make gardens and eat their fruit. I will plant them on their land, and they shall never again be uprooted out of the land that I have given them« (Amos 9,13-15). Israel’s restoration occurred when Jesus faithfully fulfilled Israel’s history. Jesus stood in Israel’s place because Israel had failed to remain faithful to the Lord and His covenant with them. The Lord refused to accept Israel’s sacrificial offerings because they also sacrificed to idols and the Lord’s justice rained down upon Israel. The Lord accepted His Son’s sacrificial offering on the cross, and the Lord’s justice and judgment was poured out upon Jesus as our vicarious sacrifice. Jesus’ Passion and death rolls down His righteousness upon us like the waters of an ever-flowing stream. By standing in Israel’s place, Jesus also stands in our place. The Lord promised to bless all the nations of the world through Abraham and his offspring (Genesis 22,18). The Lord has had mercy on everyone through Christ to the Jews first, then also to the Gentiles. Jesus has fulfilled His promise to Abraham and Amos. 

7. Christ brings the righteousness and justification of the reign of God into our midst. At Calvary the gospel is poured out with Jesus’ suffering and death. The gospel is „like an ever-flowing stream. Amos is signifying the power and efficacy of the Word. You see, the Word bursts forth and runs even when the madness of Satan and its foes stand in the gospel’s way. Whether the princes are willing or not, the Word breaks through like a stream. They are unable to hold it back“ (Luther 166). 

8. In Christ, all of our sins are forgiven. We are now righteous and justified in our Heavenly Father’s sight. We cannot break this covenant, and our sinfulness cannot annul this testament, because it is grounded upon Christ and forged upon His death and resurrection. 

9. Christ crucified is the manifestation of God’s love in the flesh. Christ loves you, therefore He suffered to save you. Through the Word and the Sacraments the Holy Spirit now redeems us into the image of the Triune God. The Apostle Paul describes this holy likeness, writing: »Love is patient and kind; love does not envy or boast; it is not arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice at wrongdoing, but rejoices with the truth. Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Love never ends« (1. Corinthians 13,4-8). Each day the Holy Spirit uses the gospel to remake us into a man or woman of faith, a person who fears, loves and trusts in Christ Jesus just as He originally created us. Jesus has promised it, and He will see it through to completion.  Amen. 

10. Let us pray. O Christ Jesus, who accomplished everything written about You by the Prophets, help us to follow You to the cross and the empty tomb so that we behold our everlasting salvation.  Amen. 

To God alone be the Glory 

Soli Deo Gloria

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All Scriptural quotations are translations done by The Rev. Peter A. Bauernfeind using the Biblia Hebraica Stuttgartensia, 4^th Edition © 1990 by the Deutsche Bibelgesellschaft, Stuttgart, and the Novum Testamentum Graece, Nestle-Aland 27^th Edition © 1993 by Deutsch Bibelgesellschaft, Stuttgart.  

All quotations from the Book of Concord are translations done by The Rev. Peter A. Bauernfeind using Die Bekenntnisschriften der evangelisch-lutherischen Kirche, 12. Edition © 1998 by Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht.  

Starck, Johann Friedrich. Starck’s Prayer Book. Copyright © 2009 Concordia Publishing House. 

Luther, Martin. Luther’s Works, Vol. 18 (Minor Prophets I: Hosea-Malachi). Pelikan, Jaroslav Jan, Oswald, Hilton C. and Lehmann, Helmut T., Eds. Copyright © 1975 Concordia Publishing House.