“What’s With the Woes?”
Amos 5:18-24
11/9/08
It seems that today’s O.T. and Epistle lessons
are at odds with each other. They both talk about the Day of the
Lord, and yet the O.T. text refers to it as a day of woe, while the
Epistle text refers to it as a day to look forward to. The latter
even tells us to comfort one another with its words. So, why the
disparity? Why does Amos talk about the Day of the Lord as a
horrible day of judgment, while Paul talks about it as a day of
joy? Some might say we’ve got a contradiction here.
The Lord seems to be speaking out of both sides of His mouth. But
actually both words are true: The Day of the Lord will be a day
of judgment and wrath as well as a day of resurrection, joy, and life
with the Lord forever. Which words apply to you depends on what
kind of Lord you have. If you’ve got a Lord you treat like
an idol, one for whom you just go through all the right religious
motions, one to whom you just throw the right religious bone once in a
while in order to try to keep him happy, then Amos’ words are for
you. If, on the other hand, you’ve got a Lord you trust in
as your Savior, one who has shed His blood for you on the cross, one
under whose grace and mercy you live, doing works of love towards your
neighbors as a way of showing Him your thanks and praise for your
salvation, coming to church to receive His Word and Sacraments because
they are gifts to you from the Lord, then Paul’s words are for
you.
What we don’t do is take some spiritual
thermometer, stick it into our lives, and see how good we’re
doing as Christians. The way to determine whether you fall under
the Lord’s words of woe or His words of mercy is not by checking
off how many good works for your neighbor you’ve been doing
lately, nor by making sure you’ve been doing all the right things
when it comes to worship. That was the way of the Jews in
Amos’ day. The sad thing about them was that if you had
looked at them, they might have appeared very religious, holy, and
righteous, and yet their religiosity was simply a show. They
performed all the right gesticulations, but without faith. They
had lost their first love, as the Apostle John puts it. They no
longer feared, loved, or trusted in the God who had redeemed them for
Himself, and thus their worship of Him and their love for one another
was merely mechanical. They treated God as nothing more than an
idol, one they thought they could control by just rubbing Him the right
way, offering Him the right kinds of sacrifices, and cajoling Him with
the right words and works.
But the Lord does not accept such worship, no matter
how good it appears or how well it conforms to His commands. And
so, the Lord said, “I hate, I despise your feasts, and I take no
delight in your solemn assemblies.” Put in today’s
vernacular and spoken to us here at Our Savior’s Lutheran Church,
the Lord might say, “I hate, I despise your holidays, and I take
no delight in your church services. Even though you offer me your
praise and thanksgiving, I will not accept them; and your so-called
works of love I will not look upon them. Take away from me the
noise of your hymns (whether they be from LW, TLH, or the new LSB); to
the melody of your pianos and organs I will not listen.”
You may look the part of a devout Christian, you may do and say all the
right things, your service and obedience may appear impeccable, but if
you’re treating the Lord like an idol, then you’re under
His words of woe.
“Woe” is a judgment word; when you say
it of yourself you’re saying, “It’s all over for me;
I’m dead!” When God says it of you, He means
you’re under His judgment and wrath, and if something
doesn’t change, you’re going to end up in hell.
Unfortunately, when some hear that they are under the Lord’s woes
they try even harder to look righteous. Hearing the Lord’s
words spoken here by Amos about letting justice roll down like waters
and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream, some people conclude
that if they just do these things (or at least try to do them as best
they can), they’ll prove to the Lord that they don’t
deserve His woes. “I’m trying my hardest to do what
He commands! Doesn’t that make Him happy?”
The fact is, we must all confess that we deserve to
fall under the Lord’s woes, as all of us have and still do treat
God from time to time as an idol. And it shows in our worship and
in our love for one another. Our worship of God is hypocritical
by nature. Many times we come to church only to go through the
required religious motions, because we think we have to, or because
we’re trying to get something from God, or because we’re
trying to impress others. We may be singing, praying, and giving
thanks all right, but our hearts and minds are not in it. Not
only is our worship hypocritical at times, but so is our love.
Sometimes we outright hate one another and do what is unjust and
unrighteous towards them. Other times, it may look like we love
them and do what is just and right towards them, but often that’s
just because it’s our job, or again because we have to, or
because we’re trying to impress God and others. But this
all a big sham which stems from the false ideas we have about
God. And this it was has got to change. We have to stop
seeing Him as some kind of idol that can be manipulated, cajoled, or
pacified by our sincere looking piety, our church attendance, or our
holy living, and start seeing Him for who He is and treating Him as
such. Otherwise, we’ll get from Him nothing but woes.
But the only way both our image of God and the way
we treat Him can be changed is if He changes them. The way He
does this is by revealing Himself to us in His Son, Jesus Christ.
Through Jesus God shows us that He is no idol like the pagan gods, who
can be controlled and manipulated by us, but the Maker of heaven and
earth who has done everything for us out of pure love towards us, so
that we might not fall under His woes, but under His mercy.
Instead of abandoning us to the woes of God, God in the flesh took
those woes upon Himself. Jesus has saved us from the wrath that
we rightly deserve from God. This He did on the cross, where that
wrath was poured out on Him instead of us. As Isaiah puts it,
“Surely He has borne our griefs and carried our sorrows; yet we
esteemed Him stricken, smitten by God, and afflicted.” The
woes that God threatened through Amos, the God-Man has taken away, so
that we might now look forward to the Day of the Lord with hope and
joy, rather than in fear and anxiety.
In Jesus, God shows you not only that He is no idol
whom you can control, but also that He is not a god who tries to
control you. “Control” is a Law word, a woe
word. It’s end is hell. Those under the Lord’s
control are forced, coerced, and threatened to do what He
commands. “Gift,” however, is a Gospel word, and God
is all about giving gifts, the end of which is heaven and eternal
life. God gave you the gift of Himself in His Son, Jesus
Christ. Being on the receiving end of God and His gifts we
don’t have to try to control or manipulate Him like an idol with
our pious works and worship in order to get His gifts; we already have
them. Free as we are now from working for His gifts, our worship,
sacrifice, and works of love towards our neighbors are all done in
response to the gifts He has given us. Prayer, too, is not a way
in which we try to soften God up, so that He’ll grant us what we
ask. Rather, prayer is a gift to us from God, the privilege of
asking God to give us the gifts He has already promised and given us in
His Son, even before we’ve asked Him. When the Lord teaches
us to pray, “Give us this day our daily bread,” it’s
not that God doesn’t give us His gifts until we ask Him to or
until we’ve sufficiently begged, pleaded, or made deals with Him;
He gives us His gifts even without our prayer. He gives His gifts
of forgiveness, life, and salvation through His Word, our Baptism, and
His Holy Supper daily, even when we forget about such gifts, even apart
from our asking. But the Lord teaches us to ask Him for our daily
bread in order to remind us to receive such gifts with thanksgiving,
which is a way of confessing that gifts don’t come by accident,
nor are they earned or deserved. Instead, they are given by a
loving heavenly Father, who gives above and beyond all that we could
ever ask or think. Whereas idols must be bribed and coaxed into
giving us what we want, God gives us everything we need all out of His
fatherly divine goodness and mercy, apart from any merit or worthiness
in us.
And He gives it all to us in Jesus Christ.
Where we failed to give to God the worship and work that we owed Him,
Jesus has given it for us, through His perfect life and His sacrificial
death. From Him justice has rolled down like waters and
righteousness like an overflowing stream. David writes,
“The LORD works righteousness and justice for all who are
oppressed.” Oppressed as we were under the woes of the
Lord, Jesus came and delivered us from that oppression through His
works of righteousness and justice. Those works of righteousness
and justice were given to you at your Baptism, and now it’s as if
you were as righteous and just as Christ is, because that’s how
you stand now before God in Jesus.
Clothed with the righteousness and justice of
Christ, you have now been delivered from the woes of God. The Day
of the Lord will no longer be a terror for you, but it will be what St.
Paul now refers to as a day when Christ will return for us, when He
will raise from the dead those who have fallen asleep in Him, and when
He takes us who are alive and remain along with them to be with Him
forever.
The woes of God, then, which are given through the
prophet Amos today, are given to lead us to repentance. They are
meant to reveal to us the terrifying state we are in on account of our
sin, so that we might confess our sins and look to Jesus Christ for
forgiveness. God does not pronounce His woes, because
that’s what He wants for you, nor does He want His words of woe
to be His final words to you. His woes are meant to drive you to
your Savior, Jesus, so that you might hear His words of comfort.
And those words of comfort are that Jesus took God’s woes upon
Himself away from you, and in place of your sin gave you His justice
and righteousness, so that you might stand in the day of the
Lord. That is the kind of God you have, a God who loved you in
this way: that He sent His only-begotten Son into this world to
give His life on the cross as the sacrifice for your sins, so that
through faith in Him you might not perish but have eternal life.
Live under that love. Live under this God and His mercy towards
you in Jesus, receiving the gifts He gives you through His Word and
Sacraments, and He will change both your worship of Him and your love
towards one another. Your offerings will be acceptable to Him,
and His justice and righteousness which He has poured into you from
Jesus will flow out to your neighbors and will show the world that you
are children of the Light, looking forward to the coming of the Lord
with hope and joy. Amen.