Amos 3 & 4

Intro:

Today we will cover what I hope to be the first of two messages covering the bulk of the words, or prophetic utterances that Amos was given to deliver to the northern 10 tribes of Israel. In our last time together we saw the Lord zero in on these people, seeking to arrest their attention by calling out judgement after judgement on the nations around them, the nations that were related to them and finally in a seventh and seemingly last declaration we saw Amos proclaim judgement on their brothers from Judah in the south. This 7th declaration would seem to be the full number as that is what 7 typically signifies and yet Amos shockingly, especially for a hearer in the Jewish context, adds lastly an 8th declaration of Judgement, the most scathing one yet and it is directly squarely at the people of Israel!

These people had broken faith with God, they had turned away from their covenant responsibilities and as we have seen before, failure to be in right relationship with God, the horizontal relationship never fails to also cause failures and brokenness in mankind's relationships with one another, the horizontal. In the case of Israel this was most evident in how, despite their wealth and opulence, they treated the poor amongst them with contempt and often extorted what these poor people had to line their own pockets.

We will see these themes developed even farther today as we cover in chapters 4 and 5 the first of the 2 “Hear this word of the Lord” judgements that make up the rest of Amos’ spoken message to the people. We are going to cover these first two today because they are both a little shorter and I believe we can make it through both, we will then cover the final “Hear” judgement along with its included “woe” statements in chapter 6 in our next time together.

One thing that I want to lean heavily into as we continue on in this book is that it can not be stressed enough how important it is to keep in mind that understanding of the vertical and horizontal relationships that humans have. Amos as we mentioned briefly is probably most famous, not for its place in the Bible or because of any verse that has been made well known through Sunday school memorization programs but because Amos focuses so heavily on the mistreatment of other image bearers of God, other fellow human beings particularly by those of far greater means than those whom they oppress, this is one of the reasons why Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. used Amos chapter 5 verse 24 “Let Justice roll down like waters” in his I Have Dream speech.

Amos continues to float around in various, you might call them social gospel circles, among social justice advocates who see disparity and brokenness in the horizontal relationships between people and seek to fix them or to right wrongs, and end perceived or actual oppression of one human being or group of humans over another. And this seems at the outset like a solid endeavor. However, the problem is that all too often those who seek this kind of social justice have no place for the repairing of the vertical relationship that is the ultimate source of the success or failure of those that play out horizontally. All too often they outright reject their creator and His right to rule in this world and their lives.

Amos’ call is not first or even primarily a call for social justice, Amos uses the brokenness of the horizontal relationships between Israelites to show them that their covenantal relationship with God is broken! Therefore those who would seek to tear Amos’ calls for right treatment of the poor and marginalized by the wealthy and well off in Israel from his call for Israel to return to covenant faithfulness and true heart overflowing worship of YHWH create a movement that is doomed to failure and will only result in more brokenness and oppression.

In our context the gospel is everything, just as it was for Amos though His was a gospel that still looked forward to what Christ would accomplish, but the gospel is everything, entering into right relationship with God and having hearts transformed by His grace is the only thing that will result in true and lasting justice, love, and peace both vertically and horizontally. There are those who would say that we need to do both, they say to look at how indifferent the people of God have been to oppression throughout history and that social justice must be presented as a part of the gospel or of what the gospel requires. However, I would respond by asking them to look at every movement to bring justice and end oppression since the foundation of the church and see just how integral a role true followers of Christ have played in those efforts. People who have been brought to true faith in Christ through the preaching of the true gospel of salvation by grace alone, through faith alone, in Christ alone, though never perfect, will find themselves involved in these things and perhaps what we might term the mainline church has been so lukewarm in its endeavors to see oppression end and justice roll down like waters primarily because the gospel has been reduced from its fullness as the message that takes sinners and makes them right with a Holy God to a mere insurance policy against hell in which men and women are called to pray a prayer so that they don't have to go there.

Men and women with hearts aflame for God seldom live lives of no consequence to the world around them! This is then the call of Amos, that these people come and stand face to face with their God, in fact we will see that very thing in chapter 4!

Lets just take a moment to pray and then dive in.

PRAY

Points for Verses

Chapter 3

Verse 2- The privilege of being God’s people comes with a responsibility to live as such!

Verse 12- A shepherd would seek to find even the pieces left after an attack because they would have been responsible to pay for lost sheep unless a they had been taken by a wild animal and they could prove it. The second clause is hard to translate but the context points toward only a small remnant being delivered.

Chapter 4

Closing:

As we close I think we can take the last few verses as an apt point of admonition. These were people who needed to rightly behold who their God was. A failure to rightly know God, to rightly acknowledge Him for who is is and live their lives in light of that reality had led to all sorts of injustice and unrighteousness.

When we consider the root cause of these things we ought to be motivated in similar ways to what Amos was trying to do for Israel. We need to know God, we must behold Him for who He is, this God of outstanding almost mind blowing providence and impeccable holiness and righteousness. But not only that, you see Satan knows God better than any human being ever has in that Satan yet that knowledge of God causes Satan to hate Him, causes Him likely as it also causes mankind to do as we read in Romans 1 to suppress the truth that we know about God in unrighteousness. The call of Amos is to turn to God and to return to right relationship with God which means to not only know God and acknowledge who He is but to love Him for it.