Date: November 12, 2023
Festival: 24th Sunday after Pentecost (Proper 27)
Text: Amos 5:18-24
Preaching Occasion: Zion Lutheran Church, Mt. Pleasant, MI, and CTKLC
Appointed Scriptures: Amos 5:18-24; 1 Thessalonians 4:13-18; Matthew 25:1-13
Sermon Hymn: LSB #516 Wake, Awake, for Night Is Flying
Grace and peace to you from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. Amen.
Dear brothers and sisters in Christ, when we pray, “Come, Lord Jesus,” or “Thy kingdom come,” do we really know what we’re praying for? We are praying for more than just the present reality of God’s kingdom and His presence in our personal lives. We are also praying for it eschatologically—that is, we are praying for the Last Day, or the Day of the Lord as it’s also called. But, much like Amos’ hearers, woe to those who say this prayer! “Woe” is a cautionary cry—not w-h-o-a, but w-o-e. It’s like saying, “Be careful what you wish for,” or in this case: Be careful what you pray for, because the Day of the Lord will not be a bright day for millions to billions of people. It will be a day of darkness for the unbelievers. That means our unbelieving friends and family will perish—no exceptions! Are you ready for that? Praying for the Day of the Lord is not only asking for our salvation but also the eternal death of our enemies—of all unbelievers, including those among our friends and family. Just because you believe doesn’t mean they’ll be saved by being in close proximity to you. So, next time you pray, “Come, Lord Jesus,” ask yourself, “Do I really want Him to come and save me by annihilating the enemies of His Church?”
This is a similar warning Amos gives to Israel. Amos 5 follows on the heels of chapters 3 and 4 where God, through Amos, judges Israel for their sins. At the beginning of chapter 3, God reminds them that He called them to an exclusive relationship with Him [3:1-2]. He reminds them that He has revealed everything His people need to know about Him through the Prophets [3:7]. But Israel is filled with sin—He reveals they are filled with violence and theft [3:10], they worship false gods that the Lord shall tear down since they failed to do so [3:13-14], the rich who oppress the poor shall come to ruin [3:15-4:3], and Israel fails to repent of their iniquities [4:6-13]. Then after God laments over Israel and urges them to seek Him [5:1-17], our text begins, “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” [5:18]. Again, “woe” is a cautionary exclamation.
Yes, the Day of the Lord is the day of salvation for His faithful people, but it is also a day of darkness, just as He warned His people a long time ago in Exodus [32:34] when God said to Moses, ” ‘But now go, lead the people to the place about which I have spoken to you; behold, My angel shall go before. Nevertheless, in the day when I visit, I will visit their sin upon them.'” At the time of Amos’ proclamation, that day is nigh for Israel; it will be a day of darkness for the unbelievers in Israel.
Later, Amos prophesies that Assyria will invade Israel like wild locusts and take away the land the Lord had given them [7:1-3]. In today’s reading, Amos depicts it like a horror movie [5:19]. This day of the Lord will make their retreating utterly useless. It will be like retreating from a lion, only to fall into the jaws of a bear, and to narrowly escape the bear’s grip in the shelter of a house, only to be bitten by a deadly snake, sealing your fate. And it’s even worse than this. The Lord rejects their worship [vv. 21-23]. He rejects their festivals, their offerings, even their singing—their songs are just noise, their harps terribly out of tune. Their worship is cacophony to the Lord’s ears because of their spiritual infidelity of worshipping God alongside a pantheon of false gods—a complete abandonment of the 1st Commandment, “You shall have no other gods before Me.” A day of darkness indeed, for the Lord demands justice and righteousness to flow like a perennial stream [v. 24]. Their idols led them to rejecting God, so God rejected them.
All this should bring us to the self-reflection: What idols lay in our hearts? What is an idol? An idol is a violation of the First Commandment—that we should fear, love, and trust in God above all things. All things—no exceptions. An idol, then—a false god—is whatever we fear, love, and trust more than God. All the other Commandments fall under the umbrella of this greatest commandment. So, what might our idols be? Is it sports—keeping our child’s sports game or football Sunday holy rather than the Sabbath because we fear they might not play in the next game, or we fear we’ll miss an awesome play on TV, more than we fear God? Is it pride—trusting in what we believe is right over what God’s Word says? Is it money—trusting in our bank account or our job for security rather than God’s providence of these things? Is it sex—loving pleasure instead of God’s call to chastity in marriage and singleness? Is it politics—fearing this or that policy more than we fear Christ who has all authority over Heaven and Earth? Every idol is a violation of the 1st Commandment, and sometimes more than just that Commandment.
Whatever idol we might have, like Israel, the Lord calls us to repentance. Now, repentance doesn’t just deliver forgiveness to us; as the word literally means, it causes change. That doesn’t mean repentance requires change in order for us to be truly forgiven; rather, it means repentance brings about change. It means the Holy Spirit strengthens us to cast these idols off the altar of our hearts. All these things have their proper place in the world; it’s when we put them in the place of God that they become idols and need to be cast off our hearts.
So, when God forgives us of our pride, we trust Him rather than ourselves. When He forgives us of our materialism, we place our comfort and security in Him rather than our possessions or income. When He forgives us of profaning the Sabbath, we make the Church our holy place of worship rather than the athletic field, or the living room—the Divine Service is our liturgy rather than the cacophonous liturgy of yelling at the referees. When God forgives us of sexual immorality, it means we remain chaste in our marriage by being faithful to our spouse or chaste in our singleness by remaining abstinent and not cohabitating when we’re not married. And so on, because His forgiveness frees us from bondage to those things, not freedom to continue being enslaved to them.
It wouldn’t be until the end of Amos’ prophesying that Israel would hear the Gospel of deliverance, but we as the post-resurrection people of God do hear a glimpse of the Gospel in verse 24, “But let justice roll down like waters, and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream.” These words foreshadow the pierced side of Christ, from which flowed blood and water. God demanded justice and righteousness to flow like a perennial stream in Israel. But they failed miserably, and so do we. So, in Christ, who Himself embodies Israel, justice and righteousness flowed out from His pierced side like a stream, which continues perennially in the Sacraments—God’s justice rolls down like waters through the Holy Spirit in Baptism, and righteousness through the perennial stream of Christ’s blood that we receive in the Supper.
This stream of Christ’s pierced side continues to flow not only because of His crucifixion, but also because of His resurrection. As Amos ends his prophecy, speaking again of the Day of the Lord, God says, ” ‘In that day I will raise up the booth of David that is fallen and repair its breaches, and raise up its ruins and rebuild it as in the days of old'” [9:11]. He is speaking of Christ, for as Christ said, speaking of His body, “Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up” [John 2:19]. Yes, the day of the Lord was when Assyria captured Israel and Babylon captured Judah, yet the Day of the Lord occurred on Good Friday, the true day of darkness, when Christ died for you and me and darkness covered the Earth for three hours; and then again on the first Easter Sunday, when God the Father raised up the booth of David, who has been eternal since before the days of old. One of His final cries was, “My God, My God, why have You forsaken Me?” He was rejected by God so that you and I wouldn’t be. And He was vindicated in His resurrection so that you and I might also rise from the dead.
Today, His pierced side continues to flow justice and righteousness in His water and blood because we know the disciple Thomas placed his finger into the side of Christ’s resurrected body. The stream is perennial because there is only one Baptism, as Paul says [Eph. 4:5], and the blood of Christ always covers our sins. Both work in tandem—the robe put on in Baptism and the blood of Christ—as we read last week and earlier in our service in Revelation [7:14], “They have washed their robes and made them white in the blood of the Lamb.” The word “they” includes you and me.
So then, when the Holy Spirit convicts us in our sin, we can cast the idol off the altar of our hearts and receive Christ’s blood upon this altar, whose blood covers us entirely with His righteousness. To put it another way, when the Holy Spirit convicts us that we need to be made right with God, we can come to Christ at the altar where He will put us in the right through His body and blood. And when the devil accuses us, and when we feel wronged by sin and the world, and desire justice, we can remember our Baptism where God delivered His justice to us. For justice demands death, which Christ took upon Himself when He died on the cross; and as Paul says, in Baptism we died with Christ and rose again to new life [Rom. 6:3-5], not just now but also into eternity. The justice God delivered to us was death row, so to speak—not death to life, but death to death itself, for we know we shall experience a resurrection just like Christ’s.
That’s why God’s Word is such a beautiful treasure because He speaks to us in wonderful verses like 1 Peter 3:21, which says, “Baptism, which corresponds to this, now saves you, not as a removal of dirt from the body but as an appeal to God for a good conscience, through the resurrection of Jesus Christ.” Baptism saves because it is the work of God. In the full context of that verse, Peter connects Baptism to the Great Flood, that just as God shut Noah and his family through the door of the ark [Gen. 7:16], so He shuts us—the baptised family of God—in the ark of Christ’s body through the door of His pierced side, from which poured water and blood. Baptism is not a removal of dirt—it is not mere bathwater that does nothing, which is what people do to Baptism when they say it’s merely a symbol. Rather, as Paul says, it does something real—it unites us with the death and resurrection of Christ and therefore gives us a clear conscience before God through His resurrection.
Therefore, when Satan points us to our sin, we can direct that worthless devil to our Baptism and say, “Begone, you vile basilisk! I am a baptised child of God! What you say may be accurate, but look, I have been washed, justified, and sanctified in the name of Christ [1 Cor. 6:11]. Your lies are a cup of poison. Drink them yourself!” And when the final Day of the Lord does come, we can point to our Baptism before God. People like to entertain the question, “If you stood before the gates of Heaven and God asked you why He should let you in, what would you say?” Most people would point to their good works, but for every good work God can point out a thousand sins.
What you can say is the word spoken to you in your Baptism. You can say, “I have done nothing to earn citizenship in Your kingdom, O God. I deserve Your temporal and eternal punishment. All I know is that I have been baptised into Christ, who has delivered me from darkness into His marvellous light. Any good I expect from You is not because of anything I have done, for even the best of my works are corrupt with evil like filthy rags, but rather because You are my dear Father.”
It is because of this grace wrought by God in our Baptism that we can stand before Him on the Day of the Lord not in uncertainty of where we stand before Him, but with a clear conscience that He has made us pure in Christ—in the words of David from that beloved psalm, that by united us with Christ’s death and resurrection in Baptism, He has blotted out our transgressions, washed us thoroughly from our iniquities, cleansed us from our sin, purged us with hyssop, created in us a clean heart, restored the joy of His salvation, and upheld us with a willing spirit [Psalm 51].
In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
The Lutheran Column 