A Warning from the Minor Prophets

For the past three months I have been spending two days a week working through the Minor Prophets. I must admit that as I began I had no idea of what God might teach me from these often forgotten final books in the Old Testament. To be honest, in twenty-six years of preaching ministry I had only preached through four of them: Hosea, Jonah (of course, everyone preaches this book), Habakkuk, and Malachi. And, although I teach Minor Prophets as part of our "Cover-to-Cover" Bible Survey, I still felt uncomfortable with many of these books which had been part of the Old Testament canon for over two millennia.

Because God always honors His Word, my heart began to get both excited and challenged as I read and pondered biblical truth. One of the recurring themes, I found, has tremendous importance for the evangelical world today. That theme: the perils of a false religion.

Now, I know what you will respond: "I go to an evangelical, Bible-teaching church. That is certainly not a false religion." Perhaps you are correct; if so, praise God. But, perhaps your worship has become as routine as that of ancient Israel. Perhaps it is time that we listen to the prophets.

Both Hosea and Amos were prophets in the days of the Northern Kingdom. It was the closing days of the reign of Jeroboam II, a competent king who brought prosperity and peace to his kingdom. If you read carefully the account in Amos 6:4-7 one gets the picture of a people who have too much money, too much idle time, and too little purpose for living.

One of the areas of alarm for these men of God was the watering down of religion. The term used is that of syncretization. It is defined as the union of something false with something true. It was the marrying of paganism with the worship of God Himself. Hosea expresses it this way: "They consult a wooden idol and are answered by a stick of wood. A spirit of prostitution leads them astray; they are unfaithful to their God" (Hosea 4:12). Yet these same people continued the pretense of offering sacrifices to God: "When they go with their flocks and herds to seek the LORD, they will not find him; he has withdrawn himself from them" (Hosea 5:6).

Amos expresses this same truth with even more defined language: "Go to Bethel and sin; go to Gilgal and sin yet more. Bring your sacrifices every morning, your tithes every three years. Burn leavened bread as a thank offering and brag about your freewill offerings - boast of them, you Israelites, for this is what you love to do, declares the Sovereign LORD" (Amos 4:4-5). Bethel was the place where Jeroboam I had built his first altar to the calf-god he appointed to be Israel's god after the division of the kingdom. Gilgal, the place where Joshua led the people in a renewal of their covenant vows to God after crossing the Jordan River, had become a scene of mixed worship. Amos is declaring that the people performed religious rites so that they could boast about them: how wonderful their worship was, how many offerings were given on a particular day; how many people came. I wonder - don't we do something similar today? We meet with other ministry leaders and compare notes: how big is our congregation; what type of worship music do we use; how big is our budget; how many people we have on staff.

But then Amos is particularly clear about how God views this syncretistic, all-inclusive, focus-on-me worship: "I hate, I despise your religious feasts; I cannot stand your assemblies. Even though you bring me burnt offerings and grain offerings, I will not accept them. Though you bring choice fellowship offerings, I will have no regard for them. Away with the noise of your songs! I will not listen to the music of your harps" (Amos 5:21-23). As I read these verses and others from the pens of these ancient spokesmen for God, I began to ponder what Hosea or Amos would say from God about our worship today. How much of what we do on a Sunday morning is mere ritual, done so thoughtlessly? How many of our songs are mere noise to God because we merely sing with our lips instead of from our hearts? How many of our sermons are focused on helping people feel good about themselves, rather than challenging them to become what God would desire them to be?

Friends, I don't have easy answers to these questions. But I am concerned about the direction the Church is going. Michael Horton in his masterful treatise titled, "Christless Christianity," (this is must reading) stated: "Instead of ambassadors, heralds, reporters, and witnesses, pastors become entrepreneurs, managers, coaches, therapists, marketing gurus, and communication specialists. With this transition, the focus necessarily falls on what we do and Jesus' s role is reduced to an example." He continues, "This means that much of our ministry today is law without gospel, exhortation without news, instruction without an announcement, deeds without creeds, with the accent on 'What Would Jesus Do?' rather than "What Has Jesus Done?' None of us is immune to this indictment that we are losing our focus upon, confidence in, and increasingly our knowledge of the greatest story ever told."

So, let us heed the warning from the prophets. Before society can change, the Church needs to change. It needs to rediscover its purpose. It needs to rediscover the Gospel. It needs to redefine its purpose for worship. It needs a new awakening with God!