Post 59-Thoughts on Amos

                                  

John wrote:

HI Dana

            In Amos, there is so much. If you want to try, take anything. But what caught my eye this morning was the reoccurring line, "’Yet you have not returned to me,’ declares the Lord.” He said that in Chapter 4 verses 6, 8, 9, and 10 (NASB). It’s almost as if He is stuttering in disbelief that His people aren’t listening—won’t listen—to Him. Then in verse 11 he says, "Prepare to meet your God, O Israel."

            Yikes.

            I've been called in for tomorrow and after work I'll be working at Carol's office for several hours. More later.

            I'm glad the harvest is in. Now what?

John

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Dana replied:

Hi John,

     Yes the harvest is in, and we’re all done in.  Last winter it never got cold enough to shut the vines down properly, consequently when winter pruning commenced in January, the vines bled with each cut, as if we had pruned in May.  The sap should have been down, but it wasn’t.  As a result when the buds popped in April, the vines were at the stage they normally would have been in in May or June.

     Our first grapes came in the first week in August, and that was the earliest harvest I have ever seen in NC.  What normally transpires in three months was completed in two.  That’s nice in that rarely do I get to enjoy October, as we’re busy harvesting the red grapes.  This year all white and red grapes were in house before the end of September. 

     I’m thankful for the opportunity of seeing the leaves change colors here, but on the other hand, we’re almost too tired to enjoy them fully.  Usually I miss October due to work; now I’m afraid I’ll miss it because of the need to sleep. 

     Oh well…I shouldn’t complain, especially when I think of what my colleagues in California are experiencing right now with the fires. Lord please send them some rain.  I lost sleep; they are losing everything.  It’s all a matter of perspective, isn’t it?  How their catastrophe (along with all the hurricane damage in the States and southern territories) will impact the industry (and the economy in general) is yet to be calculated, but we’d all better buckle our seat belts, because the ride might get bumpy.

Dana

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Hello again Dana

            In the Introduction to Amos in The Message Bible, Eugene Peterson (the author) wrote “More people are exploited and abused in the cause of religion than in any other way. Sex, money, and power all take a back seat to religion as a source of evil....The biblical prophets are in the front line of those doing something about it.” He goes on to write, “Among these prophets, Amos towers as a defender of the downtrodden poor and accuser of the powerful rich who used God’s name to legitimize their sin.”

            Isn’t it interesting that Amos had no intention of being God’s mouthpiece. He was a farmer.

 

7:^14-15 But Amos stood up to Amaziah: “I never set up to be a preacher, never had plans to be a preacher. I raised cattle and I pruned trees. Then God took me off the farm and said, ‘Go preach to my people Israel.’ (MSG)

 

            But in spite of having his career cut short, he, apparently, didn’t lack the courage to say what needed to be said. No political correctness for him. No concern for job security. Perhaps some men today who claim to be God’s men could take a lesson?

 

7:^16-17 “So listen to God’s Word. You tell me, ‘Don’t preach to Israel. Don’t say anything against the family of Isaac.’ But here’s what God is telling you:

...Your land will be auctioned off.
You will die homeless and friendless.
And Israel will be hauled off to exile, far from home.” (MSG)

 

            There are some portions of the book that people should be familiar with, but what good is being familiar with something if we don’t let it sink into our souls and make the changes God is hoping to see?

            More later.

John

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Dana continued

 

     So John, you’re into Amos right now.  “The Lord roars from Zion….” (Amos 1:2A ESV)  

     What an entrance! My son has a deep and abiding love and respect for big cats.  When he was younger, he and I made an excursion to the Yucatan Peninsula, to the Petén Jungle near the border between Mexico and Guatemala.

     One day our host asked if we would like to see a live jaguar.  We walked down a secluded little path to a pen, perhaps 20 feet by 20 feet and covered in three layers of chicken wire top and sides.  In the pen was a full grown jaguar that had been captured, and was awaiting transfer to a biosphere preserve, where he would be loosed in a protected and natural environment.  But in the interim, he was in the big cat jail, and let me tell you I have thanked God incessantly for the quality of Mexican chicken wire.  The jaguar was solid muscle, and all business.

     Upon approaching the cage, the beast roared and lunged at the fence, hitting it head on.  Had the fence not held, my son and I would have ended up the soup de jour. We were told that the jaguar kills by being able to distend its jaw, thereby enabling it to completely take in the entire head of its prey into its mouth, thus crushing it.  It was comforting to know that if the chicken wire hadn’t held, at least the end would have been quick.

     While we were there, one of the men guarding the pen opened a door in the top, and dropped in a live chicken.  In one lightning pounce, the jaguar took the entire bird into its mouth, and ate it with the ease you would eat a small cookie.  Crunch crunch, and the chicken ceased to be…feathers, bones and all. Now jaguars, as impressive as they may be, are not lions.  Somehow I think I’d want more than three layers of chicken wire between a lion and myself.

      Amos’ opening drawing a parallel between a lion roaring and God’s displeasure with Israel’s Northern kingdom is striking.  Amos 1: 2A is about as “in your face” as it gets.  It is hard (for me) to imagine, having witnessed a big cat up close and personal, that Israel could ignore Amos, which we know they did, as eventually God sent the Assyrians to capture and punish them. 

     Dr. Michael Heiser describes the Assyrians as the “Klingons” of the Old Testament. If you’re a “Star Trek” fan, you’ll know exactly to what I’m referring. One Assyrian king lamented that he had run out of space in his town where he could make another pile of human heads, there were so many already (wouldn’t you hate to have worked for the department of sanitation in that town!). 

     When it comes to sheer viciousness, the Assyrians made even the Nazis look like 80 year old, grandmotherly ladies.  That God would use the most cruel and ruthless people to exist in human history to punish His errant people bespeaks of  just how much emphasis we need to put on “The Lord roars from Zion….” today.   In the wake of Isis, perhaps we, the Church should take note.

     Amos wrote (among scholars he is considered perhaps the first Old Testament Prophet who wrote, not only spoke his prophesies) roughly 800 years before Christ.  Amos writes to a people not totally unlike the Church today. They were a people preoccupied with the future, hence his criticism of their eagerly desiring to see “the day of the Lord.”  They were eschatology buffs, and they had no idea of what they desired.

 “Woe to you who desire the day of the Lord!  Why would you have the day of the Lord? It is darkness, and not light, as if a man fled from a lion, and a bear met him, or went into the house and leaned his hand against the wall, and a serpent bit him. Is not the day of the Lord darkness, and not light, and gloom with no brightness in it?  (Amos 5:18-20 ESV)

      Are we any different today?  Everybody’s looking for the “rapture.”  As if in our bloated, affluent, apathetic, willfully Biblically ignorant condition Jesus is just going to come and rescue us from the hard times to come?  He didn’t come back and “rapture” out His early church followers who were fed to lions, and lit on fire to provide light for Caesar’s garden party orgies, for not denying His name, and we presume to think He’s going to do it for us? 

     The Jews of Amos’ day thought something along the same lines too.  They wanted to see the day of the Lord that which they thought was going to solve all their problems too.  Amos told them in no uncertain terms they’ve got another thing coming.  Should God come to Israel, it’s not going to be pleasant. The lion, bear, snake imagery is absolute literary perfection.  What an illustration!  And, like them, we just can’t wait for Jesus to come back….

     Amos tracks on several themes showing Yahweh’s anger towards Israel.  He condemns them for their idolatry, and that in light of their having gotten religious observances down to a science, and, their neglect or outright oppression of the poor and disenfranchised among them.

     They had “church” down pat.  They could do it right—sing all the right songs, do all the right rituals, just the way they were supposed to, everything externally perfect, much like how we do church today.  Prayer, three songs, an offering, a number from the choir, a sermon, and altar call, a benediction then it’s time to head out to the restaurant. But their hearts were far from their performance, and their actions far from their professions. God reacts to it thusly….

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 your harps I will not listen. (Amos 5: 21-23 ESV)

     It leads one to wonder just how God views our Sunday offerings in the good old US of A in light of His followers, our brothers and sisters in mid-East being slaughtered in almost Assyrian-like fashion by Isis.  Why doesn’t He “rapture” them? Oh yeah, I forgot, He’s waiting so He can “rapture” us.  Yeah, right. How audacious of us to think we’re going to get to escape the hard times to come!   How “spit in their face” insulting is that notion to those on their knees being beheaded for Christ by masked jihadists with dull butcher knives.  Maybe we should send all the prophecy televangelists and pop eschatology preachers over to the mid-East to preach about the “rapture” to them. I’m sure they’d relate.

     The answer God spoke through Amos was simple:

“But let justice roll down like waters, and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream.” (Amos 5: 24 ESV)

     The answer is always simple.  “Repent and believe the good news,” is about as simple as it gets.  Yet Assyria came.  Yet the Anti-Christ will come.  The words of Larry Norman’s song still have a sad, ominous and poignant ring to them, “I wish we’d all been ready.”  When Jesus does return, will the Church in our land, who’s sat idly by and squandered the blessings God gave this country, all while raising their hands and shouting hallelujah, be ready?  “Woe to those who are at ease in Zion…” (Amos 6:1a ESV)

     Oh yeah, I seem to remember something about…uh, who was it, Amos? I think I read it once….

     “The Lord roars from Zion….”

Dana

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John adds a PS

Remember, Dana, that I wrote earlier how there are some sections of Amos that people may be, are probably, familiar with?  What follows is one of those sections.  I know that Jesus said that He came to give us life and that more abundantly, but sometimes I can’t help but see myself as the recipient of some of the woes below. In Chapter 6, am I choosing to not listen when He says,

 

Woe to Those at Ease in Zion (ESV) is the heading in this version.

6 “Woe to those who are at ease in Zion, and to those who feel secure on the mountain of Samaria, the notable men of the first of the nations, to whom the house of Israel comes!
² Pass over to Calneh, and see, and from there go to Hamath the great;then go down to Gath of the Philistines. Are you better than these kingdoms? Or is their territory greater than your territory,
³ O you who put far away the day of disaster and bring near the seat of violence?

⁴ “Woe to those who lie on beds of ivory and stretch themselves out on their couches, and eat lambs from the flock and calves from the midst of the stall,
⁵ who sing idle songs to the sound of the harp and like David invent for themselves instruments of music,
⁶ who drink wine in bowls and anoint themselves with the finest oils but are not grieved over the ruin of Joseph!
⁷ Therefore they shall now be the first of those who go into exile,and the revelry of those who stretch themselves out shall pass away.”

⁸ The Lord God has sworn by himself, declares the Lord, the God of hosts:

“I abhor the pride of Jacob and hate his strongholds,and I will deliver up the city and all that is in it.”