Amos 5:14-20 Weal or Woe?

It is interesting that three times in the midst of his proclamation of certain judgment (woe), Amos includes the admonition to seek God or seek good, promising the outcome of life (weal) (Amos 5:4,6,14-15). This incites the question: Was it possible for anyone to still seek God amidst the inevitable death of the nation of Israel ? Commentators are divided in their answer to this question. Some see 5:14-15 as a parallel to the free offer of the Gospel – an invitation to life, even amidst apostasy. On the other hand, J. A. Motyer (The Message of Amos © 1974 from IVP’s “The Bible Speaks Today” series) believes that Amos is probing people that are entrenched in a hopeless position. He writes:

“[Amos] does not batter; he seeks to insert a ‘may be,’ in the hope that it will grow into a ‘cannot be.’ If this conflicts with a traditional picture of Amos, incessantly roaring like one of his own lion metaphors, it just goes to show how much of our impression of the Bible men is dependent on the tone of voice in which we read their words. Certainly Amos was the prophet who feared no man; but this does not mean that he went round shaking his fist in people’s faces or behaving in a needlessly provocative manner.”

We have found Amos to be a man who is not bound to a particular preaching technique. First, he has gained his audience’s favor by revealing the sins of the surrounding nations (ch. 1); then he dealt directly with the specific sins of God’s people (ch. 2); he uses the reason of a lawyer, asking a series of pointed rhetorical questions (ch. 3); he uses sarcasm (4:1-5), earnest warning (4:6-12), weeping (ch. 5), and as Motyer points out, he holds out an ‘unattainable hope;’ all in order that he might pierce the hardened and self-assured (but wrongly assured) hearts of the people of God.

Amos did not fit into anyone’s box; he was different from every notion of what a prophet ought to be. Just when he gained his audience’s approval by preaching against their enemies, he turns against his audience; when they got used to his provocative questions, he turned to sarcasm. In the midst of emboldened preaching, he begins to weep; the only thing sure about the style of Amos’ preaching, was that his approach could not be figured out; he was a perplexing figure. While Amos was not bound to technique, one thing was consistent – he preached the truth of God. Amos would have rejoiced to see God’s people repent and turn to Him, but though they did not, it did not discourage him. If anyone felt the resistance of his hearers to his message, it was Amos. Godon Keddie observes, “certainly if he had tied his encouragement and persistence in the ministry to statistical success, he might soon have joined the ranks of ‘burnt out’ ministers, who can take the frustration of an apparent lack of positive response no longer!” (The LORD is His Name: The message of Amos EP © 1986). Amos’ passion for God’s glory and hope of seeing the purpose of His grace fulfilled, were not diminished despite the collective unwillingness of his audience to listen, an audience that had been feeding itself on false hope and false religion.

Read this entire oracle of Amos (chapter 5). Take note of how the words flow from misery to hope and back again. Notice the repetition of the name of God in verses 14-16. What do you think the purpose of the Holy Spirit is in this oracle? Does it present a genuine hope or is the prospect it presents for life foreboding? Find the final, “therefore,” and ask, what is it there for? What picture does this paint for Israel ? What is the God of host’s final verdict?

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Galatians 2:17-21 The Life I Live

“It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me.” (Gal. 2: 20). Paul is saying something like this: “I no longer have a life of my own, the only life I have is the life that God puts into me through Christ.” It would be hard to imagine a text more antithetical to our contemporary culture. Consider these words from the actress Shirley Maclaine: “The most pleasurable journey you take is through yourself, the only sustaining love involvement is with yourself, when you look back on your life and try to figure out where you’ve been and where you are going, when you look at your work, your love affairs, your marriages, your children, your pain, your happiness—when you examine all that closely, what you really find out is that the only person you really go to bed with is yourself. The only person you really dress is yourself. The only thing you have working to the consummation of your identity.”

Philip Ryken writes, “Maclaine’s words capture the spirit of the spirit of this selfish age. Moderns and post-moderns alike are obsessed with themselves. Self-esteem, self-improvement, self-fulfillment, self-indulgence, whatever you want, as long as it begins with your “self.” In these self-absorbed times, the Bible announces the death of the self: “it is no longer I who live.” The world no longer revolves around me. I am no longer dominated by thoughts of my own pleasure and prestige. If I have a life at all, it is only the life that Christ lives in me. This does not mean that becoming a Christian is a kind of suicide. We still have a normal physical existence, of course, what Paul calls, “the life I now live in the flesh.” Since it is the life I live, I even have a self, but the only self I have is the one united to Christ by faith. My life is the life that Christ lives in me, the life “I live by faith in the Son of God.”

This week identify areas in which you are living your life, as opposed to Christ living His life through you. Some examples are: job, marriage, children, finances, church life. We have no self, except the self that we have in Him. To have a “healthy self-image” then, is to see ourselves as we are in Christ. Study and meditate on Romans 6.

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Amos 5:8 The Transforming God

Seek him that maketh the seven stars and Orion, and turneth the shadow of death into the morning, and maketh the day dark with night: that calleth for the waters of the sea, and poureth them out upon the face of the earth: The LORD is his name:

God visited Jacob in a dream at Bethel (Genesis 28:10-17). When he arose, Jacob was convinced that, “the Lord is in this place,” (vs. 16) and “this is none other but the house of God, and this is the gate of heaven” (vs. 17). So Jacob renamed the city Bethel, meaning house of God and left his stone pillow there as a memorial. Bethel however, was more than a mere memorial to Jacob – it was not just a geographic location – Bethel was where God changed Jacob’s life, giving him a promise for a hopeful future. It was where God met with Jacob, changed his affections, and later in Genesis 35:9-13, changed his very name. Bethel was where the old life and the old man became new.

Our text in Amos 5:8 speaks of a God who changes the seasons, the days, the seas and land, and human history. An encounter with such a God leaves that which He encounters completely and utterly changed. And where there is no change, it is implicit that there has been no genuine encounter. It was the sad experience of the Israelites in Amos’ time that they came to and left from Bethel unchanged. They went, they sang their songs, they gave their tithes, made their offerings, took comfort in covenant promises, but they left unaffected. The fault for the failure of the religion of Bethel lied not in the place, nor its promise, nor its God, but in the stubborn willfulness of the people who came week after week, unwilling to lay down their lawless transgression and unbelief.

2 Corinthians 5:17 speaks emphatically and absolutely that if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; old things have passed away; behold, all things have become new. True Christianity has no middle ground. In saving His children, God literally delivered us from one kingdom into another, so that all things have become new. The old has died! The new man loves Christ and has an affection for His Word; he desires to be governed by truth. The evidence of a genuine encounter with this transforming God, is that the new man desires to have his life changed according to the precepts and principles of His Word. Nevertheless, it is the testimony of so many professing Christians that they go to church, yet continue to live unchanged lives, as if the old has not passed away.

Psalms 66:18 states that, “If I regard iniquity in my heart, the Lord will not hear.” And the New Testament makes it very clear that God expects His church to deal with their personal sin, rather than carry them into their religious place of worship (see Matt 5:23-24, I Cor 11: 27-34). True religion which springs from a true encounter with God and union with Christ reveals its authenticity in a repentant lifestyle demonstrated in a love of and submission to truth. This week seek the Lord, putting your own faith and life to the test. What attitudes and behaviors are more suggestive of the old man than the new? What lingering sinful attitudes have you never repented of? Seek the transforming God who is able to keep you from stumbling, and to present you faultless before the presence of His glory with exceeding joy. To God our Savior, who alone is wise, be glory and majesty, dominion and power, both now and forever. Amen.

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Amos 5:1-7 Is There Any Hope?

Hear this word which I take up against you, a lamentation, O house of Israel:

The virgin of Israel has fallen; she will rise no more. She lies forsaken on her land; there is no one to raise her up.

For thus says the Lord GOD:

“The city that goes out by a thousand shall have a hundred left, and that which goes out by a hundred shall have ten left to the house of Israel.”

For thus says the LORD to the house of Israel:

“Seek Me and live; but do not seek Bethel, nor enter Gilgal, nor pass over to Beersheba; for Gilgal shall surely go into captivity, and Bethel shall come to nothing.

Seek the LORD and live, lest He break out like fire in the house of Joseph, and devour it,

With no one to quench it in Bethel — You who turn justice to wormwood, and lay righteousness to rest in the earth!”

Imagine you wake up one morning, pour yourself a cup of coffee and pick up the newspaper. You feel fine, in fact you feel better than you have in a long time, yet as you turn the pages of your newspaper you come to the obituary section and find your own death reported. Substance for an episode of the Twilight Zone perhaps, but this is what is happening in the prophecy of Amos in chapter 5, as the prophet chants a funeral dirge proclaiming the death of the prosperous nation of Israel.

The poetic meter in the Hebrew of verse 2 is typical of the ancient Jewish funeral marches. Its structure demonstrates the prophets own grief over the funeral of virgin Israel which he must preach. …Fallen, she shall no more to rise, articulates death where there should have been life. … Forsaken upon her land, speaks of abandonment where there should have been communion. … None to raise her up, tells of hopelessness and dispossession where there should have been inheritance. Though painting a very dismal picture of Israel’s future, Amos’ words proved true indeed, as the final 20 years of Israel’s history found its domestic policies in ruins, a rapid turnover in leadership, as one political coup followed another, and finally in 722 BC Sargon II or Assyria put an end to the kingdom of Israel forever.

But reading the first three verses of Amos chapter 5, one may ask, is there any hope? The answer to this question was certainly not going to be found in their houses of worship. Amos specifically warns Israel against trusting in the human establishment of religion typified in Bethel, Gilgal, and Beer-sheba. In verse 5 he warns, but seek not Bethel, nor enter into Gilgal, and pass not to Beer-sheba: for Gilgal shall surely go into captivity, and Bethel shall come to naught. Contrast the hopelessness of this lamentation to the only place where true hope may be found in verse 6, seek the LORD, and ye shall live.

Bethel, Gilgal and Beer-sheba were three cities which became enshrined because of encounters which the patriarchs, Abraham, Isaac and Jacob had with God. Read about the encounter of God with Jacob at Bethel in Genesis 28:10-22 and later in Genesis 35:1-15. What does the text of Scripture reveal to be the meaning of Bethel? Read about the promises of God given at Beer-sheba to Abraham in Genesis 21:22-33, Isaac in Genesis 26:23-24, and the elderly Jacob in Genesis 46:1-4. What is common to the experience of the three? What is the meaning of Beer-sheba? Gilgal was the shrine which declared Israel’s inheritance and right to possess the land. It was the site of their first encampment (Josh 4:19-20) and confirmation of the covenant (Josh 5:2-12); it was the headquarters of their expansion, and the place where their first king was crowned (1 Sam 11:14-15). Gilgal became synonymous with Israel’s freedom and sovereignty as a nation. Imagine their shock to hear Amos assert, Gilgal shall surely go into captivity!

If Bethel, Gilgal, and Beer-sheba reveal anything to us, it is that the people of God can end up trusting in the things of God while neglecting God Himself. Meditate upon what you are trusting in where it concerns your eternal salvation. Ask God to reveal to you what Bethels, Gilgals, or Beer-shebas you may be relying upon. Then repent, seek the Lord alone, and you shall live.

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