1. Grace, mercy, and peace to you from God our Heavenly Father and from our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Amen. The message for the 24th Sunday after Pentecost is entitled, “How to Escape from God,” and it’s taken from Amos 5:18-24. Dear brothers and sisters in Christ.
2. How many of you know what an apex predator is? An animal at the top of the food chain with no natural enemies. In the ocean, it’s the killer whale—not the great white shark. In North America, the grizzly or the cougar. In Wisconsin, don’t argue with a mama bear. In ancient Israel, it was the lion. Nothing hunted the lion. When the lion roared, everything else went quiet.
3. The Old Testament Prophet Amos puts a different face on that picture: “The lion has roared; who will not fear? The Lord God has spoken; who can but prophesy?” (Amos 3:8). Through Amos, The Lord God describes himself as the lion. The Lord is the apex predator, and on this third-last Sunday of the church year he roars at his own people. Israel had forgotten who sat at the top of the food chain. They treated the Lord as if he could be ignored or managed. And so do we. If God is your problem, only God can be your solution.
4. Look at Amos’s day. Jeroboam II was on the throne; times were good—for some. Business boomed, offerings were full, feasts were loud. Meanwhile the widow, the orphan, and the poor were trampled at the gate. Israel read the prosperity as God’s approval. They figured they had the Lord in their pocket, offering sacrifices the way you’d send a gift basket to a landlord, hoping he’d stay out of your business.
5. So they longed for “the day of the Lord,” thinking it would squash their enemies. Amos answers: “Woe to you who desire the day of the Lord! … It is darkness, and not light” (5:18). That “woe” is the sound of a funeral. Israel is not the lion’s friend; Israel is the lion’s next meal. “I will be to them like a lion… I will tear and go away; I will carry off, and no one shall rescue” (Hos 5:14).
6. This was no sudden ambush. The Lord had sent famine, drought, blight, and plague, and after each one the refrain returned: “yet you did not return to me” (4:6–12). Then the sentence: “Prepare to meet your God, O Israel!” (4:12). Do we act any differently? We say we believe in God, yet we trust our own judgment, the market, the experts, the next election. We want a domesticated God who serves our comfort, not a God who is God. A god we can manage is a god we will not fear—and that is why our worship can feel so half-hearted.
7. The Prophet Amos says there is no escape. “It is as if a man fled from a lion, and a bear met him, or went into the house and leaned his hand against the wall, and a serpent bit him” (5:19). You cannot outrun the Lord. Even repentance does not put him in your debt. “Hate evil, and love good… it may be that the Lord… will be gracious” (5:15). It may be. The Lord is free. He owes us nothing. That is exactly why grace is grace.
8. The darkness in verses 18 and 20 is the darkness of the ninth plague, the darkness before “Let there be light.” Sin disorders what God ordered. At the end stands the darkness of death. The Lord still says, “Prepare to meet your God.” Israel had a God-size problem. Do we?
9. And yet look at this strange lion. What kind of predator warns his prey? What kind of predator says, “Turn back, turn back, why will you die?” (Ezek 33:11) and “Seek me and live” (Amos 5:4)? He roars, but the roar is a warning. Everything about this hunt is backwards.
10. Because this lion is not a predator by nature. “God is love” (1 Jn 4:8). He is “merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love” (Ex 34:6). He takes no pleasure in the death of the wicked, but that they turn and live. The same book of Amos ends with a promise: “In that day I will raise up the booth of David that is fallen” (Amos 9:11). The Lord does not want to devour; he wants to restore. Yet “he will by no means clear the guilty” (Ex 34:7). Because he is holy, sin is not small to him. The deepest problem for Israel—and for us—is the Lord himself.
11. Wrath is God’s strange work, his alien work (Is 28:21). It is not what he loves to do; it prepares the way for mercy. God’s wrath is his mercy delayed—the stern voice of a Father who will not let his child run into traffic. Scripture also says the devil prowls like a roaring lion (1 Pet 5:8). Both roar, but for opposite reasons. The Lord roars to turn you back to Jesus. Satan roars to scare you away from him. Learn to tell them apart.
12. Which brings us to the verse many know by heart: “But let justice roll down like waters, and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream” (5:24). As Law it is clear: the Lord commands justice—care for the widow, the orphan, the unborn, the elderly, the stranger. “I hate, I despise your feasts…” (5:21). Faithful worship leads to faithful living. If you don’t live it, you probably don’t believe it.
13. Who among us can make justice roll down like a river? Not me. Not you. Our justice is a trickle. But the verb in Hebrew means it expects to be fulfilled, like “Let there be light.” This is more than a demand; it is a promise from the God to whom justice belongs. “The Lord is our righteousness” (Jer 23:6).
14. That river flows from a hill outside Jerusalem. At the cross the lion who roared in judgment bore his own judgment. The Lamb of God took the wrath aimed at you. God put forward Christ “as a propitiation by his blood… so that he might be just and the justifier of the one who has faith in Jesus” (Rom 3:25–26). Justice was done. All the wrath was poured out—not on you, but on the Son. And on Easter that Son rose “for our justification” (Rom 4:25).
15. That is why Revelation can say, “Weep no more; behold, the Lion of the tribe of Judah… has conquered” (Rev 5:5). When John turns to look at the Lion, he sees a Lamb standing as though slain (5:6). Because of Christ, your sins are forgiven—the greed, the grudges, the half-hearted worship, the neighbor you passed by—every one nailed to that cross. You are justified. On the Last Day you will not be prey. You will be a child.
16. Faith is trusting the Lord when he seems to be your enemy. Where do you flee from the lion? Only to the lion. You run into the arms of the One who has the right to destroy you and find that he has already carried your sin to the cross. You will never find a worse enemy than the God you despise, nor a better friend than the God who loved you and gave himself for you. He is more than a friend; he is your Father, who “did not spare his own Son but gave him up for us all” (Rom 8:32). So when the lion roars, do not run from him. Run to him—to the cross where he was torn for you. If God is your problem, only God can be your solution. And in Christ, he is. Now may the peace of God that passes all understanding, guard your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus, until life everlasting. Amen.
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