Years ago, I heard a preacher introduce his message by stating his intention was, “To comfort the afflicted and to afflict the comfortable.”
The Old Testament Prophet Amos would have liked that!
I often turn to Amos because of the strong relationship between the day in which he lived and prophesied and our day. The message he declared is particularly relevant to the people of our nation, in that, both in Amos’ time and in ours, there is a great emphasis upon materialism, the accumulation of wealth, the promotion of pleasure, and the desire for enhanced leisure and recreation.
Also, like our day, Amos contended with the forces of social injustice and the rage of rampant, yet seemingly ignored, violence. While Amos declared a message of impending judgment upon a Nation that professed to know God, the people stopped their ears and put that threatening word far from them.
As in our day, the nation was filled with a religious formalism that was being passed off as a true relationship with God. Empty form and ritual were being substituted for a healthy fear and faith in God.
In the 6th Chapter of his prophecy, Amos addresses the indifference of the people, along with their lack of concern for their spiritual condition and the welfare of their nation. He opens with a chilling word of accusation: “Woe to you who are at ease in Zion!” (Amos 6:1).
Coming out of the gate, Amos strikes a strong and sound warning against the dangers of complacency, self-satisfaction, self-indulgence, and negligence of spiritual duty. The rebuke comes against those who were “at ease” in the day and hour when the land was facing a severe spiritual crisis. Unrighteousness and ungodliness were abounding on every front. Oppression and injustice were the stock-in-trade of the day. Yet, all the while, the people who claimed to serve the Lord lavished themselves in their abundant wealth, remaining aloof and indifferent to the obvious disintegration of the society around them.
Again, the parallel to our day is valid. One of the tragedies of modern American Christianity is the state of unwarranted spiritual satisfaction. We are comfortable, and we like it! We want to stay as we are and not be disturbed.
We might term this condition “Spiritual Inertia.”
Inertia is defined as a lack of movement or activity, especially when movement or activity is wanted or needed. Moreover, a feeling of not having the energy or desire that is needed to move or change.
In physics, inertia is a property of matter by which something that is not moving remains still.
Newton’s First Law of Motion states that a body at rest will remain at rest, unless an outside force acts on it.
Notice again, Amos’ accusation. It is not directed only at those who are “at ease,” but rather, to those who are “at ease in Zion!” Zion, of course, refers to the very City of God! Jerusalem, graced by God’s Temple and His Manifest Presence. The Place where God is to be worshipped. Above all, Zion is synonymous with the residence of the Messiah’s Throne, the point of tremendous heritage and privilege.
It was the people of Zion who were at ease! The professing people of God. The visible Church had assumed a posture of complacency, half-heartedness, and mediocrity.
The Old Testament People of Zion have not been the only ones to battle Spiritual Inertia. It seems that throughout the entire two millennia of Church Life, Christians have had to face this same foe. History shows that churches and denominations can continue to live institutionally long after they have died spiritually. The machinery is in place, and it can keep running long after the presence of God has lifted, and Ichabod has been written over the door (1 Sam. 4:21-22).
Void of the Spirit, movements become monuments. Sanctuaries become mortuaries where you go to get embalmed with the formaldehyde of dead religion. Denominations that were born under a genuine move of God and had been mightily used to bring the message of the Gospel to society are now, in some cases, nothing more than an empty shell.
But again, this is not a new phenomenon. Historian Edward Gibbon, commenting on the Greek Church Fathers of the 10th Century who handled the literature of Early Christianity, says, “they held in their lifeless hands the riches of their fathers without inheriting the Spirit which had created that sacred patrimony. They read, they praised, they compiled, but their languid souls seemed incapable of thought or action.”
We witness this Spiritual Inertia not only in our day, or the Tenth Century, but we discover it in the First Century as well! Speaking to the Church at Sardis in Revelation 3:1, Jesus announces, “I know your works, that you have a name that you are alive, but you are dead!” Again, paralleling today, many within the Church World are satisfied to have attained a certain level of spirituality and are content to simply stay there and vegetate. They have a reputation for life before men, but Jesus has checked their vital signs and has announced their time of death.
How is it that this state of Spiritual Inertia can come upon the people of God? What is its root? What’s its cause? At the core, it results from our being too preoccupied with ourselves instead of being supremely occupied with the person of Christ. There has crept into our society, and sadly into the American Church, an undue love for ease and self-gratification. We have left (not lost) our first love (Rev. 2:4), replacing Him with the prioritizing and pursuit of our own agendas (Luke 14:16-20).
Let me ask you: What is it that dominates your thoughts? Your dreams? Your ambitions? Your finances? Your time? The Scriptures declare, “in all things He (Jesus) is to have the preeminence” (Col. 1:18). How does that verse square with where you have invested your life this past week, where you’ve been putting the strokes and pouring the gasoline?
You see, far too many believers will sit in Churches across our country tomorrow morning:
· They will listen to the Word of God preached.
· They will admire it.
· They will acknowledge it.
Ø But they have no intention of responding!
As with every Sunday, the soil of their hearts has been trampled hard, so the Word cannot penetrate. Sadly, there will be no tears, and no tears for their lack of tears. Instead, the Preacher will be regarded as “Just another Amos to be ignored.”
In direct opposition to this level of darkened thinking, the Lord quickened a verse of Scripture to my heart this week in prayer. It’s found in Isaiah 64:7a where the Prophet bemoans the fact: “And there is no one who calls on Your name, who stirs himself up to take hold of You!”
Few in our day are willing to shake off their self-indulgent ways to lay hold of Almighty God. Some will go to Church. Others may say a prayer or sing a song. But overall, people are reluctant to stir themselves up to take hold of God.
Sadly, Spiritual Inertia results in the inability to realize the glorious possibilities of the Christian Life. Beloved, Jesus didn’t only come to prepare us to die; He came to prepare us to live! Don’t be deceived into believing that you’ve tapped all the resources of Christian living or that you’ve reached the pinnacle of the Christian life. Oh, how heaven must moan the mediocre. God desires that every believer experience a real, living, vibrant, abundant, triumphant life in Jesus Christ. But friend, it won’t happen if you’re taking your ease in Zion. You can’t drift into the presence of God; You press in! You stir yourself up to take hold of God.
I want to see God glorified, and I know do as well. The challenge before us is to break out of the mold. To ask God to set us free from the chains of the status quo. It’s time to pray that the Holy Spirit’s power and blessing will fall upon us all, and that He will lead us to vibrantly know Jesus in the power of His resurrection and the fellowship of His sufferings (Php. 3:10). It is then, that we’ll be infused with divine love and invigorated with a vision to see the whole earth flooded with the glory of God!
The heart of God is calling today for the emergence of a passionate Church, a ravenous lover of Christ who is willing to smash through the comfort zones, and who is willing to give, not only out of its abundance and its overflow, but also out of its need.
God will always have a Church. God will always have a People. That is not the question. The real question, the only question, is will you and I be part of it? Oh Lord Jesus, may it be so!
Grace and peace,
Jim
