Religion without substance. Let's talk about it on this edition of Key Life. Hello, this is Mike Killer, and that was Steve Brown. Life using the dress rehearsal, and that's why this program Key Life is around. Honest, practical and street smart Bible teaching for the business of living. Thanks, Mike. If you have your Bible open into the book of Amos, Amos is God's fire brand. This is not the book you read for your evening devotions, if you want to sleep at night. In fact, I don't even read the Bible at night. You say, I knew it, you're not even saved. If I read the Bible at night, you know what I do? I start writing a sermon, and then I get wide awake, and I don't ever get to sleep, and the sermon's not that good anyway. So, what I do is I read a mindless book. I can't read a book of theology or a book of sociology or a book of philosophy, because if I start doing that, I'll start making illustration for the sermons, and the sermons not that good anyway. I don't watch public television before I go to sleep at night, because they're always trying to make you think, and a lot of the stuff they make you think about is drivel. But I'll start constructing a sermon about what they said, and it won't be that good of sermon anyway, and then I won't be able to sleep, and it's awful. So, see, I am saved. I just read a mindless book or watch something on television that is totally mindless, situation-comedy, and then I can sleep at night, but it's hard to turn off a mind when you have a little one like mine. At any rate, we are looking at Amos, and we're up to the 5th chapter of Amos, and Amos 5, 18 through 27, are the first of two kinds of people to which Amos directs his wrath. Now, look at the 5th chapter, and I'm going to start reading at the 18th verse as soon as I get my Bible open here. Woe to you who desire the day of the Lord for what good is the day of the Lord to you. It will be darkness and not light. It will be as though a man fled from a lion and a bear met him, or as though he went into the house, leaned his hand against the wall, and a serpent bit him. Oh, that's pleasant. Is not the day of the Lord darkness and not light. It is not very dark with no brightness in it. I hate this, and this is the central thrust of Amos, and it's probably the most quoted passage in all of Amos. I hate. I despise your feast days, and I do not savor your sacred assemblies. Though you offer me burn offerings and your grain offerings, I will not accept them. Nor will I regard your fattened peace offerings take away from me the noise of your songs. For I will not hear the melody of your stringed instruments, but let justice roll down like water, and righteousness like a mighty stream. Did you offer me sacrifices and offerings? In the wilderness forty years, O house of Israel, you also carried your king, your idols, the star of your gods, which you made for yourselves. Now, you need to know that Amos is dealing with religious people. Now, let me give you a couple of areas. There are really four areas that Amos addresses at this point. When I was a young man, I was a disjointed at an ABC station where they did a special on the weekends called Judgment in Israel, and it was the Judgment of Adolf Heichmann, and each week they reported what had happened in his trial. I remember something that he said that absolutely astounded me. He said after he had been condemned to die, he said, after a short time, gentlemen, we shall meet again. I have lived believing in God, and I die believing in God. I want you to know that this is the kind of religion about which Amos is speaking. Spurgeon one time made reference to the ancient Mariner, and Charles Spurgeon is one of the men whose sermons today would still sizzle. In the pulpit, I still use Charles Spurgeon's lectures to my students for my students at the seminary, and I still left up as preaching as a model of great preaching for our time. At any rate, he knew how to use illustrations, and he referred to the ancient Mariner where he saw dead men rising up to man the ship, and then he said, I have seen that too in lots of churches, dead men in the pulpit, and the boards, and in the leadership. Oh, Spurgeon, thou dost sound like Amos. Well, I thought I was going to get into it. I'll get into it a little bit more later on, but let me tell you something, even if you're religious. Even if you're a member of the church, even if you say praise God after every sentence, even if you do mighty works in his name, it is a dangerous thing to fall into the hands of a living God. You think about that? I'm in. I know, I know. I'm sounding like Jonathan Edwards here. Now, remember that I teach grace, and this is talking about a national judgment here. It's not talking about just you. You say, well, I'm convicted. Man, I am so guilty that I think I'm going to jump off a bridge. Don't do it, because Jesus is quite fond of you, and I'm going to emphasize that as we go along. That doesn't mean that God's law and the rendering of his judgments are not relevant to us who are covered by grace. Because if he's loved you that much, if he's shown that much grace to you, then you'll want to please him. And by studying, for instance, the book of Amos, you find out what pleases him, and you'll please him more if you had that as a goal. And when you don't, he'll love you more, and he will be glorified. Okay, enough of that. By the way, if you're listening from prison or from jail, we have a dynamite Bible study program for you, and it's free. It's called the Crossroads Bible Institute, or at least that's where it's from. And if you'll write or email or call us, and you can't have this unless you're in jail or prison, we'll get some information out to you. And I'm going to give you the numbers and the addresses in just a moment. And as I've said often, if you're in jail, you have only one call. You call your lawyer, and you write the address is key life. Post office box 5,000, Madeleine Florida, 32794, our key life Canada, post office box 32150, Cambridge, Ontario, in 3H5M3. You can email us at Steve at keylife.org, or you can call us 24 hours a day, 1-800 key life. And we'll get out the Crossroads Bible Institute Bible study application. It's absolutely free, and you're going to absolutely love it. And we love to get your questions too. You can use the same addresses, but not the phone number. The phone number, you can order products free, you can get tapes free, the magazine free. You can make a contribution, but you've got to write your question down. And let's get to some of these questions. My pastor Pete will be on Friday, and we'll deal with some more of them. But now let's see if we can catch up on some of these. This is an email. Why is it wrong to cut and use curse words? Is it a sin? Yeah. This next question is from Florida, and Eric is looking at me funny and saying, you're not going to say anything more about that? Well, you need to know first that the Bible is a lot more earthy than you think it is. I mean, sometimes we translate into English something that sounds nice, which in the original Greek and Hebrew was not very nice. Now, if you mean that a person never uses earthy language, no. I think that many people in the Bible use earthy language. The apostle Paul did that. Curse words are often changing within generations. Gosh used to be an awful word that nobody who was proper in Christian would ever use, but now that word can be used, and it doesn't have any power to it. Now, I don't believe that any Christian ought to be marked by cursing, but I think every Christian understands what it's like to be angry when you hit your thumb. With a hammer. Now, listen, and I do that. I'm not exactly good with tools. I worked with a hacksaw not too long ago and couldn't get it to work. Now, you think anybody should be able with the brains of a peanut to work a hacksaw. And I couldn't get it to work until my friend came along and said, Steve, you've got to turn it around so that the teeth are on the outside or it's not going to work. So, I regularly mess it up. And if you hit your thumb with a hammer and you say, mercy t-cups, you're a better man than I am. Now, that's not approved. And a Christian person ought to be careful about his or her language, but that doesn't mean that you have to be sweet and nice all the time. This is from Florida. How can I deal with and accept the silence of God? Isn't it awful? Don't you hate it? Me? Me too. And sometimes it seems that God has gone away on vacation somewhere. You plead with him and he's not listening. Nothing changes. Nothing. Remember Jesus talked about that. He said, persevere. Keep on going. And then he talked about an evil man who will answer the knock at the door that perseveres, not because the evil person likes the person who keeps knocking on the door, but just to keep the person from knocking on the door. And then you use a said and then implied later on, if you've been being evil, how much more your father in heaven so, the first thing you do, is that in the silence you keep on praying. You keep on asking. You keep on telling God, honestly, what you're feeling. Lord, I'm not even sure you're here, but a preacher with a weak voice says you are. And I don't want to doubt in the dark what you taught me in the light, so I'm going to keep on doing this and I may be just talking to the walls. And then secondly, recognize that even the silence of God is the way that he prepares and loves you. Thomas A. Kempis has said this, sometimes doubt us with draw by self. And he's talking about the feeling of God. Sometimes doubt us with draw by self that we might know the sweetness of thy presence. Have you ever... You know one of the best feelings in the world. I'm talking about feelings. It's after you've been struggling with God as with an angel, God has gone away, it's dead, nothing's happening, and that all of a sudden there's a breakthrough. And God is there and you think, wow, that is so great. Keep at it, and he'll break through. And remember thirdly, the promises of God. It's not what you feel. That could be your indricant plans. It's what he's promised. God is faithful. He always fulfills his promises. Well, I'm out of time, so I'm out of here. Listen, whenever you write a call, be sure to give us the call letters of this great station. 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