You Did Not Return to Me

Intro: How often do we live as though God cannot see our actions, hear out thoughts and know our hearts?

Example: Swearing, there are so many people, even genuine Christians who struggle to keep their language honoring to the Lord. The funny thing is, those same people are able to keep their language clean when their at church, talking to their boss or a customer. In other words they somehow manage to regulate their thoughts and tongue when someone important can hear them.

This is just an example. I could list a great many pet sins that so many of us struggle with in private. The point is, what does that reveal about what we actually believe regarding the presence of God?

This is the trap that Israel fell into. As long as we make our sacrifices God doesn’t care how we live the rest of the week.

God can see you, even in the dark. You may know it but so often you don’t believe it.

An Accurate Insult

Target

“Hear this word you cows of Bashan...”

Bashan was a place that was well known for its extremely healthy livestock.

If there is one thing you don’t want your cows to be it is skinny. (Skinny cows in Kenya.) The cows of Basham were nice and fat.

What we have here is not some historical context that gives added meaning to calling someone a cow. Calling someone a cow would have been just as insulting in Amos’ day as it is in ours.

What makes this worse is that Amos is speaking about a group of women.

The word “cows” is in the feminine.

They ask their husbands for drink at the end of the verse.

Who exactly is Amos targeting with this insult?

A bunch of pampered, self-indulgent, self-important and bossy ladies who maintain their opulent lifestyle by oppressing the poor, crushing the needy and making gratuitous demands of their husbands.

No wonder he calls them a bunch of cows.

They probably needed the shock value of Amos’ insult to get them to listen.

This insult serves as introduction to a declaration of judgment.

Amos is surely using these ladies as a representative sample of the people of Israel as a whole.

Basis

“The Lord has sworn by His holiness...”

Is there any greater thing whereby God could make this guarantee?

As one author put it, “through this terminology Amos communicates in the most powerful way possible the unalterable will of God.”

The basis of this oath is the character of God.

It is going to happen.

Means

“The days are coming...”

This phrase may imply an already and not yet element to this prophecy.

The immanent fulfillment is the Assyrian exile that was Micahcoming.

“taken away with hooks, even the last of you with fishhooks.”

Amos may be making an allegory here. That the Assyrians are going to come and hook the Israelites like a bunch of fish and take them away.

It also may be a literal reference to either a type of weapon that the Assyrians used or as some archeological evidence suggests that the Assyrians put rings in the noses of their slaves and hooked them together to transport them.

“And you shall go out through the breaches, each one straight ahead; and you shall be cast out into Harmon,” declares the Lord.”

The walls of Samaria will be broken down.

Some will try to escape through the breaches.

A Sarcastic Comment

Double Down

Bethel

Bethel is an incredibly important city in the Old Testament. Only Jerusalem is mentioned more frequently than Bethel.

The name Bethel means “house of God”, and it became the center of religious worship for the northern tribes of Israel after the kingdom was divided even though it was located on the border.

Bethel was the place where Abram built an altar to the Lord and returned there to worship God.

It is where Jacob had his dream and also built an alter there to honor the Lord.

For a time the ark of the covenant was kept in Bethel, and people went there to seek God in times of trouble.

It was where Elijah spent his final days of ministry.

It appears that Bethel was completely destroyed by the New Testament era.

Gilgal

Gilgal was the place where Joshua set up the 12 stones memorial to the Lord.

It was the place that the Israelites celebrated their first Passover in the Promised Land.

It became a place of worship.

It was where Saul was crowned King, and where Samuel told Saul the kingdom would be taken away from him.

It became known as a place of idol worship.

Amos’ Sarcasm

If you are going to sin, sin big!

Go to your places of worship and commit your sins there.

Then to make up for it bring a sacrifice every morning. Quantity over quality right?

Bring a tithe every three days and God will certainly look the other way.

Offer your leavened bread as a sacrifice of thanksgiving.

But make sure people see you doing it. Proclaim your offerings, publish them!

I know that this is what you love to do.

Wait and See

Do what you think is God’s will by following your plan and lets see how this shakes out for you.

Why is it that we think God can be pacified by our offerings?

We literally treat God as if he were some child that in order to keep quiet we give Him a piece of candy.

The Israelites believed that I can live however I want as long as I make the right sacrifices.

The amount of people today that essentially believe the same is astounding.

A Painful Reminder

Past Judgments

I gave… (v. 6)

Starvation

Yet you did not return to me.

I withheld (v.7,8)

Famine

Yet you did not return to me.

I struck… (v. 9)

Blight and mildew

Yet you did not return to me.

I sent… (v.10)

Pestilence

Yet you did not return to me.

I killed… (v. 10)

Your young men, your mighty men

Yet you did not return to me.

I overthrew… (v. 11)

You as Sodom and Gomorrah

Yet you did not return to me.

Future Judgments (v. 12)

“I will do”

I am going to keep doing these things as long as it takes to bring you back to me.

This has led some to view God as a genocidal maniac. I have questions...

Is comfort, ease, and pleasure the chief end of man?

Is the glory of God a cause worth dying for?

Is the glory of God a cause worth suffering for?

Does God as the creator of the universe possess absolute authority over it?

Has God proven Himself fundamentally good?

After reading that you might think, “God have you ever tried a little positive reinforcement?” The answer is most assuredly yes. If history teaches us anything it is that improving peoples circumstances does not cause them to turn to God.

“We can ignore even pleasure. But pain insists upon being attended to. God whispers to us in our pleasures, speaks in our conscience, but shouts in our pains: it is His megaphone to rouse a deaf world....No doubt pain as God's megaphone is a terrible instrument; it may lead to final and unrepented rebellion. But it gives the only opportunity the bad man can have for amendment. it removes the veil; it plants the flag of truth within the fortress of the rebel soul.” ― C.S. Lewis, The Problem of Pain

Future Audience (v. 12b, 13) - “Prepare to meet your God.”

Standing before the judge.

He who...

Forms mountains

Creates the wind

Reveals His thoughts

Makes the morning dark

Steps over the mountains

He is the Lord God of Hosts!

This is who you offended.