Ugly Religion

You are listening to a message from Thrive Community Church, a church located in Southwest Florida. For more info, visit us at thrive-fl.org. Welcome to Thrive. It's good to have you here. We're in our second week of our series called An Ugly Christmas, and I'm wearing the new ugly sweater today, brought to you by Marsha Mecham. Thank you, Marsha. And you can tell it doesn't have all the bells on it, but it definitely, on me, a little ugly. Maybe on you it looked beautiful, but I don't know. If you've got an ugly sweater, I'll wear it. Just get it to me. Now, we've been going through an ugly year here in 2020. I don't know if you feel that way or not, but it seems to me we've had the ugly pandemic and ugly politics and ugly public discourse and an ugly economy. And you might feel the juxtaposition of 2020 and Christmas don't seem to jive, but I dare say to you today that this year might be the best year you've ever had in celebrating the real Christmas. Because stripped of all the tinsel and all the hype and all the commercialism, we may just see how God actually came to this ugly world with all of its real issues and downright even disgusting behavior among human beings, and that's the world he came for. He didn't come for a different one, a beautiful world. He came because of the ugliness of this world. So today, we're looking at two prophecies from the Old Testament that aren't typically read at this time of the year, in this season that we often call Advent, which is this period right before Christmas. We don't usually read these, but everything they say really has to do with why Jesus came and what Jesus is about. Because what these passages do in Isaiah and Amos are talking about how you can replace and how God wanted to replace human cultural religion with true life and a true relationship with God. So we're looking at what I'm calling ugly religion today, and I am being a bit provocative with that title. I realize some people say, wait a minute, but isn't the Bible all about religion? And you'd be surprised. You might be surprised that time and time again, the Bible, it has a negative assessment of religion itself. So the question is why? Well, we'll see today. And then what's the alternative if we're not supposed to be, quote, religious? Well, we're going to find that out too. Would you please pray with me, Lord God, this day, as we study your word, as we see what the prophets did in critiquing a very difficult time and an ugly time in Israel, how today it's much the same. We're in our day and age, and the words that they speak are very relative and very significant for today too. We pray, Lord God, that you'd be working by your spirit in our hearts and our lives right now. You know how ugly this year has been, but the saddest part, the despairing part for many of us is not that we've gone through some tough times, but how we have treated one another in the process. Lord God, we pray, as Jesus is the Prince of Peace, that he would start with his people, his church, that we would become peacemakers, that we would show the beauty of living with him to the world around us, that we would learn of him, and that we would be able to spread the good news of this season, Lord, to this world right now in so desperate need of it. We do lift up to you, O Lord, all of our health care workers, all of our teaching teachers, all of our first responders who are at the front line of these things right now, and we pray, Lord, that you keep them safe and protect them. We also lift up to you, O Lord, all those who are hurting economically right now, all those who are struggling, all those who are facing so much despair and anxiety over the condition of this world. We pray, Lord, that moves them to trust you, to trust you fully and completely. We pray, Lord God, that you would do a work in their lives as well during this time. And Lord God, we pray that you would use the message today to instill in us hope and peace and joy and love, the original reason you came. All this we pray in Jesus' name, amen. All right, today we are looking at two prophecies that aren't typically read, like I said, at the Christmas time period. And talk about ugly. Right now I think we're getting what, a silver alert, a amber alert, okay? Right now in the middle of it, it's kind of like the warning signs are going off, and I think that's what the case is. The warning signs are going off in these two texts that we're going to read, Amos chapter five and Isaiah chapter 29, as typical of what the prophets thought about religion, and they basically called it what it was. So Amos five, I hate, I despise your feasts, and I take no delight in your solemn assemblies. Even though you offer me your burnt offerings and grain offerings, I will not accept them. And the peace offerings of your fattened animals, I will not look upon them. Take away from me the noise of your songs to the melody of the harps, I will not listen. But let justice roll down like wa...