Amos - The God Of Justice - Preach The Word

THE GOD OF JUSTICE
David Legge
luxury - you maybe never thought of that as a sin, but you know the English word
'luxury' comes from a Latin word that simply means 'excessive'. Now don't
misunderstand what I'm saying here tonight, it's not a sin to be wealthy. There are
great characters in the word of God who were rich, like Abraham, a very wealthy
farmer; and David the King who had great wealth - but the point was: these wealthy
men used their wealth for the glory of God. The problem comes when luxury is a
superabundance of money, of time, of resources, and we use those things exclusively
on ourselves - or, to put it another way, we expend them purely on aimless leisure
and selfish pleasure.
Do you know that in the eyes of most of the world we in the West are rich? Now I
know some of you are pensioners, and I know some of you would like to be earning
more of a wage, maybe some of you are unemployed and you would not consider
yourself to be wealthy. But what we consider here in the West as essentials for living
are considered in most of the rest of the world as luxuries. Let me give you a couple
of examples: thermostatic controlled heating is a luxury. Air conditioning, though you
don't need it in Portrush, is a luxury. Refrigeration, cars, adequate medical care,
telephones and abundantly available electricity and fossil fuels - these are all things
that the rest of the world considers luxurious, and we enjoy a superabundance of
them. So that means, tonight, Christian, you are rich - maybe not in Western terms,
but in global terms. Now the question that hangs before us tonight in the light of the
prophet Amos is: how are we using our relative riches for the glory of God? That was
Amos' message - his second charge to them was one of affluence. They were guilty of
the sin of luxury, expending their wealth on selfishness.
Now the problem is not owning possessions, we all do. The problem comes when
possessions own you, and I believe this is particularly a sin of Christians. You say:
'Oh, why is that?'. Well, when you're born-again and you're converted, you're
automatically freed from some very expensive vices. What happens is, because
maybe you're not spending money on booze and cigarettes, the bookies, and going to
various other places - I'm not saying that's everything that it means to be a Christian,
far from it - but inevitably you stop doing some of the things that you used to do, not
because necessarily that's the rules, but because you no longer need to; you're
satisfied with Jesus, you've got the Holy Spirit living within you, those things don't do
it for you any more! Because of that you have a few extra pounds in your pocket, and
you accrue more money. Because you accrue more money, you inevitably rise on the
social ladder even a little, and you can become very quickly out of touch with
grassroots society, with the poor, with the working man and woman. Even, perish the
thought, because of Christ's deliverance of sin in our lives, possessions that we can
now buy with this accrued wealth, they can become idols, things we possess can
begin to possess us. The net result is that we get out of touch with God. This is what
happened to Israel - because of their luxury they had now failed to hear the voice of
God. As we heard last night they were no longer walking with God, they were not in
agreement with God.
Francis Schaeffer called it 'The god of personal peace and affluence'. The Lord Jesus
talked about it in His parable of parables, or parable on parables - you know the
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