People Who Are Eat Up (Amos #9)

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Text: Amos 3:9-15

Let’s look at verse 12 to begin.  This is where we get the title of the message: People Who Are Eat Up.  You’ve probably heard that phrase before or even used it to say someone was “eat up” with something.  It means that thing had consumed their entire life. Notice about this verse that the people are eat up, completely consumed.  And notice that the people are living in pleasure and comfort. The people who are consumed are not in prison or stricken with poverty or in bad health.  The people who are eat up are on couches and laying around in beds.

Come see the carcass

• Publish in the palaces of Ashdod…
• The Lord calls the heathen to come behold the turmoil in his own people.  Instead of seeing peace and joy in a people who had everything, the people were consumed with greed and covetousness.  God’s people had become like the devil: violent without cause, envious, covetous, greedy, oppressive, hateful, and selfish.  The people did not own their wealth, their wealth owned them. They didn’t possess belongings, the belongings possessed them.
• The record is a warning of what will happen if people follow the same course.
• The only evidence left of the carcass are the stumps and tufts of hair and cartilage that were once ears.  God the Father looks out from Heaven as the devil, as a roaring lion, walking about, seeking whom he may devour, stands over the remains of God’s people.  What are the remains? Come see them.
  • The remains of great tumults.  Tumults – confusion, strife, riots, turbulence, turmoil, unrest.  James 3:14-16 But if ye have bitter envying and strife in your hearts, glory not, and lie not against the truth. 15 This wisdom descendeth not from above, but is earthly, sensual, devilish. 16 For where envying and strife is, there is confusion and every evil work.
  • The remains of oppression.  Micah 2:1-2 Woe to them that devise iniquity, and work evil upon their beds! when the morning is light, they practise it, because it is in the power of their hand. 2 And they covet fields, and take them by violence; and houses, and take them away: so they oppress a man and his house, even a man and his heritage.
  • The remains of unrighteousness.  They know not do right.  Not that they don’t know how to do right.  It’s that their lives are not conducive to doing right.  Their habits and lifestyles are tailored to disobedience.  James 4:1-4, 7-10, 13-17 From whence come wars and fightings among you? come they not hence, even of your lusts that war in your members? 2 Ye lust, and have not: ye kill, and desire to have, and cannot obtain: ye fight and war, yet ye have not, because ye ask not. 3 Ye ask, and receive not, because ye ask amiss, that ye may consume it upon your lusts. 4 Ye adulterers and adulteresses, know ye not that the friendship of the world is enmity with God? whosoever therefore will be a friend of the world is the enemy of God. … 7 Submit yourselves therefore to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you. 8 Draw nigh to God, and he will draw nigh to you. Cleanse your hands, ye sinners; and purify your hearts, ye double minded. 9 Be afflicted, and mourn, and weep: let your laughter be turned to mourning, and your joy to heaviness. 10 Humble yourselves in the sight of the Lord, and he shall lift you up. … 13 Go to now, ye that say, To day or to morrow we will go into such a city, and continue there a year, and buy and sell, and get gain: 14 Whereas ye know not what shall be on the morrow. For what is your life? It is even a vapour, that appeareth for a little time, and then vanisheth away. 15 For that ye ought to say, If the Lord will, we shall live, and do this, or that. 16 But now ye rejoice in your boastings: all such rejoicing is evil. 17 Therefore to him that knoweth to do good, and doeth it not, to him it is sin.
  • The remains of violence
  • The remains of theft
• Satan, as a lion, inflamed the lusts of the people, excited the pleasures, he entertained and played, and promoted their desires.  The people became consumed in their lusts. So much so they would do anything to get what they want.
  • Like Christian Americans they would sit on their couches surrounded by more than they could handle while the TV screen reminded them 24 hours a day of things they needed to make their lives better.
  • And like Christian Americans, they agreed and bankrupted themselves trying to live their lifestyle.  They sacrificed their life and their time and the lives of others for the idols they chased.
• God’s people lost their testimony and lost God’s power to things that didn’t matter.
  • God’s people became good for nothing.  So the Lord says I will at least show the heathen what NOT to do.  Publish in the palaces of Ashdod… Put the word out.  Come see the carcass!
  • 1 Corinthians 10:7, 11 Neither be ye idolaters, as were some of them; as it is written, The people sat down to eat and drink, and rose up to play… 11 Now all these things happened unto them for ensamples: and they are written for our admonition, upon whom the ends of the world are come.

Clean up the mess

• Therefore, thus saith the Lord…  (vss 11-12) The Lord looked at the situation: the remains of his people in between the teeth of Satan with his bloody beard, unintimidated eyes, and victorious growl.  And the Lord said, Send a shepherd in to clean this mess up. This one is devoured – eat up.
• James 5:5 Ye have lived in pleasure on the earth, and been wanton; ye have nourished your hearts, as in a day of slaughter.
• 1 Timothy 5:6 But she that liveth in pleasure is dead while she liveth.
• 2 Timothy 3:1-2, 4 This know also, that in the last days perilous times shall come.  For men shall be…4 …lovers of pleasures more than lovers of God;
• An adversary… as the shepherd… The shepherd will be your enemy.  You’ll be afraid of him, but you won’t be able to fight him.  He’s just there on my behalf gathering up the pieces.
• …he shall bring down thy strength… (vs 11) Whatever strength you thought you had will be dismantled and whatever riches you trusted in will be taken away.  The things you built your lives on will prove to be useless and vain.

Caution Jacob against false altars

• Hear ye and testify in the house of Jacob… (vs 13)
• How would you feel if the thing you thought made you right with God turned out to be a lie?  Before God you stood condemned. Your thoughts go to whatever altar you bowed at wondering why it didn’t “work.”
  • But I prayed a prayer.  But our family was a part of the church.  But I did good. But my brother is a deacon.
  • Like Israel saying to God, But we came to the altar in Bethel.  Doesn’t that count for anything?!
• This is the thing; Matthew 7:21-23 Not every one that saith unto me, Lord, Lord, shall enter into the kingdom of heaven; but he that doeth the will of my Father which is in heaven. 22 Many will say to me in that day, Lord, Lord, have we not prophesied in thy name? and in thy name have cast out devils? and in thy name done many wonderful works? 23 And then will I profess unto them, I never knew you: depart from me, ye that work iniquity.
• God wants the southern tribes and Jerusalem to be on notice.  The Lord says while you’re gathering the scraps up, destroy the lion’s den too.
  • Amos 3:13-14 Hear ye, and testify in the house of Jacob, saith the Lord GOD, the God of hosts, 14 That in the day that I shall visit the transgressions of Israel upon him I will also visit the altars of Bethel: and the horns of the altar shall be cut off, and fall to the ground.
• While you’re at it, tear down the Vatican.  While you’re at it, knock down the Dome of the Rock.  While you’re at it, demolish the temple in Salt Lake City.  While you’re at it, turn the Buddha statue on its head.
• Israel created their own religion, their own altars and they ignored the altar defined by God.
• Godless altar in your life
  • If you take God’s description of a believer and make a list on this side.  Then you take God’s description of an unbeliever and make a list on this side.
  • And you start checking off the description that applies to you.
    • Believers: Fruitful.  Led by the Spirit of God.  Calling on God. Becoming more like Jesus Christ.
    • Unbelievers: consumed with fighting, lusting, wanting, and the inability to be of any good to God.
  • Now you look at those lists and say the only thing you can say on the believer side is I prayed a prayer one time.  Other than that, I’ve never had victory over sin, I’ve never taught faith in the Lord Jesus Christ to anyone,, I live satisfying my wants.  I live paying for my wants. I don’t even know what led by the Spirit looks like. My life is consumed with what I want to do.
  • So now you ask yourself, if nothing else in my life resembles how GOD defines a believer; did I pray a prayer on an altar I created?
• The catastrophe is when you finally meet God who you’ve ignored while playing games in religion, when you finally meet God, it is the end.
  • You won’t go to the summer house to avoid destruction or the winter house to avoid the heat.  You won’t go to the beach house or the ranch house. You won’t go to the RV and drive away. God says you’ll find the enemy has completely surrounded your life because this is what the end looks like.

Are you eat up with this world?  Do you have anything God would define as faithful going on in your life?  Is there any fruit or your life barren? Can you pass on anything of Jesus Christ to someone else or is all you can pass on a godless altar?