God’s Judgment, God’s Love

I could have enjoyed being a prophet. Prophets go casual, priests have to dress up. Priests wear a breast piece with something called “urim and thummim” on them. It makes even a three-piece suit sound comfortable. Prophets wear loose-fitting robes made of camel skin, or something like that. I could have enjoyed being a prophet.

Except that prophets speak for God. Priests represent the people to God, so they dress up and do all the right rituals. Prophets speak for God. They have visions and dreams and find themselves driven to say, “Thus says the Lord!” Jeremiah may have spoken for more prophets than just himself when he said, “Whenever I speak, I cry out proclaiming violence and destruction. So the word of the Lord has brought me insult and reproach all day long. But if I say, ‘I will not mention his word or speak anymore in his name,’ his word is in my heart like a fire, a fire shut up in my bones. I am weary of holding it in; indeed, I cannot.” (Jeremiah 20:8f)

Amos was also driven to speak. He tells us that he was neither a prophet nor the son of a prophet (7:14). Rather, God gave him visions, and he had to share these visions with God’s people. In our study of the Book of the Twelve, Amos shares these visions from God with us as well.

Background and Message

Jonah, Amos, and Hosea were near contemporaries who all prophesied in the Northern kingdom of Israel. Israel had separated from Judah about 180 years earlier under Jeroboam 1, who tried to take the whole kingdom from Rehoboam, Solomon’s son. Judah and Benjamin stayed with Rehoboam, with their capital at Jerusalem. Jerusalem had Solomon’s Temple and a sense of being the centre of the Land for God’s Chosen People. Israel’s capital was Samaria, and Jeroboam established religious centres at Bethel in the south and Dan in the north (2 Kings 12) to keep the people from going to Jerusalem to worship.

In this account, we can see the beginnings of the Samaritan people we know from the stories of Jesus in the Gospels. When Amos lived, however, the two “kingdoms” were closely related, so that Amos can still refer to the people of the northern kingdom as God’s chosen people (3:2, quoting Exodus 19). We think of “kingdoms” with immigration officials similar to what we know when we enter the USA. Rather we should think of two general areas each under the control of a central authority, but with free movement between the two.

Amos came from Tekoa, a little south of Jerusalem, so it is a bit surprising that God calls him to go to Samaria – a bit like someone from Steinbach prophesying to the West Reserve, or an American telling us God’s word as Canadians. I wonder if there is an undercurrent reminding the people in the northern kingdom that they really belong to a united kingdom under Jerusalem.

When Israel separated from Judah, Israel became the stronger of the two kingdoms, economically and politically. Then both kingdoms came under sustained political pressure from the Arameans and the Assyrians (people to the north and west of them) until Jeroboam 2 came to power in Israel and Uzziah in Judah. During the reign of these two kings, Judah and Samaria both prospered, and Samaria (Israel) extended its borders almost as far as they had been under Solomon (2 Kings 14).

Amos prophesies in a period of prosperity and peace, when it appears that life is good, but his message is full of judgment and warning. What’s going on? Listen to a selection of his warnings throughout the book. These prophecies were spoken in Bethel, at the religious centre that Jeroboam 1 had founded and in the presence of the priest Amaziah, who preside over the ceremonies in Bethel.

·         Amos 2: 6 to 8 (prophecy against Israel, following prophecies against Damascus, Gaza, Tyre, Edom, Ammon, and Moab, and finally against Judah). Immediately the basic themes are evident: God judges Israel for economic oppression and sexual promiscuity and for religious idolatry.

·         Amos 3: 2 to 7. A series of questions with only one possible answer: God will judge Israel.

·         Amos 3: 14 and 15. Judgment announced.

·         Amos 4: 1 to 5. God hates economic oppression and corruption, especially when it is combined with religious observance. 

·         Amos 4: 6 to 13. God’s judgments have one constant purpose: To bring the people back to God.

·         Amos 5: 18 to 20. Those who think “the day of the Lord” will save them may find that “the day of the Lord” is God’s judgment on their sin.

·         Amos 6. You think that your present prosperity is proof of God’s blessing, but God will stir up [the Assyrians] to come and carry you away.

·         Amos 7: 10 to 17. Amaziah opposes Amos and summarizes his message precisely. Amos announces God’s judgment on Amaziah as well as on Israel. The shrine at Bethel is a basic example of Israel’s sin of idolatry. Worship of Yahweh was combined with worship of Canaanite gods.

·         Amos 8: 9 and 10. Even your efforts to praise God will judge you.

·         Amos 9: 11 to 15. The promise of restoration.

What is Judgment For?

As we see from the first judgment announced on Israel, Amos spoke primarily of three themes in his warnings: Economic corruption, sexual promiscuity, and religious idolatry. These are not so much separate themes as they are one combined charge. We hear them, and we may even approve of Amos’ message, but we struggle to deal with warnings of judgment. It goes against the grain of our ideas about God to think that God may destroy the people so readily. God is love. How can God judge so harshly?

In the passages we read before the sermon, we see God’s desire for Israel. 

1) Let justice roll down like a river and righteousness like and ever-flowing stream. God wants a society in which everyone can benefit from the blessings God has given.

2) God will not destroy Israel completely, but rather will restore them when God has purified them. The end result will be a society in which everyone will prosper.

We see then that God wants God’s people to thrive, physically and spiritually. The same is true for us today.  God wants all people in our world to thrive, to experience God’s blessings fully. The way that Jesus said the same thing is this: “I have come that they [we] might have life, and have it more abundantly.” (John 10:10). This abundant life is one in which we experience God’s good gifts in every area of life. God wants people to thrive, physically and spiritually.

You can hear God’s desire behind the judgments in such passages as Amos 4. For example, verse 6: “I gave you empty stomachs in every city and lack of bread in every town, yet you have not returned to me.” The purpose of judgment was to turn people back to God. We hear this desire in Amos 5: 4-6: “Seek me and live; do not seek Bethel, do not go to Gilgal, do not journey to Beersheba. For Gilgal will surely go into exile, and Bethel will be reduced to nothing. Seek the Lord and live ….”

Some commentators take the closing promise of restoration to be a conventional addition to the message of Amos, relatively unimportant. I suggest rather that the conclusion shows what Amos has been building up to. This is the point of all that has gone before: God wants God’s people to thrive, physically and spiritually.

What Does this Mean for Us Today?

The key question in any sermon is, “So what?” What do we do with this message today? A basic step in answering the question is to listen to Amos as if he were simply speaking to us.

Do we struggle with economic oppression, sexual promiscuity, or religious idolatry? Do we benefit from a system that makes us rich at the expense of other people? Do we indulge ourselves sexually at the expense of other people? Do we use our worship to cover over our unease at the problems of our world, while benefitting from those problems?

Think about our economy. God wants people to thrive economically. We can work hard and yet live in ways that make other people’s lives worse. I think of an example from my own experience. I wanted to buy a car, and I saw one that I liked. The car dealer looked at it, and then looked at me. He told me that he couldn’t sell that car to me in good conscience, because he wasn’t sure that it would run well for me. He talked me out of the car I wanted to buy from him! [He might have accepted a reduced offer in good conscience, but I stopped looking at that car.] He illustrated the way God wants us to live. He could have done the opposite. He could have thought, “I’ve got a sale!” and sold me the car for more than it was worth. Instead, he kept faith with me and with God and let me know that it was not a reliable vehicle.

That car dealer showed us how we should actually live. Act in ways that help other people to thrive, physically and spiritually. In Amos’ context, that meant giving up something so that poor people could have it. In their economy, they did not create wealth so much as share it. If I have more land, it means that you have less land, or perhaps no land at all, so I have to share my land with you for us both to thrive.

In our economy, we can create new wealth. We don’t need a socialist system to get rid of poverty. We do, however, need basic honesty combined with a deep concern for the other person. I think of the way that some of our farmers have taken an interest in the people working for them – a basic concern for the other that should characterize all of our actions.

You notice that I have not named specific examples of economic corruption in our society. I suspect that there are others here who could name these more accurately than I can. I do however think of the way that both Americans and Canadians struggle with taxes. Americans have allowed a tax cut that disproportionately benefits the wealthy. Canadians allow a system in which those who have to live on EI can have their minimal resources clawed back when they take a minimum wage job. My concern is less to provide good economic critique than it is to encourage each of us to live for justice and righteousness that roll down in a mighty cataract like the Niagara Falls.

The Idea of “Habitus”

This concern brings me to the way that such a lifestyle characterized the early church. Alan Kreider has written a book called The Patient Ferment of the Early Church. He notes that the early church grew at an average rate of about 40% a year for the first 300 years of its life – an amazing rate of growth. At the same time, the early church was not what you might call “seeker friendly”. Only professing Christians were allowed to attend the services. Deacons were responsible to keep out casual seekers and make sure that everyone present was already a believer. With that kind of restriction on attendance (due to the church’s context as a persecuted minority), one wonders how they could grow so rapidly.

Kreider’s answer is that the Christian lifestyle was so distinctive that people came to find out what was behind it. Curiously, the habits of life that the first Christians emphasized sound a lot like Amos. They were careful to worship God in Christ alone (no idolatry). They had strict sexual ethics (no promiscuity). And they were careful to be completely honest and peaceable. Moreover, they practiced these habits of life persistently – with what Kreider calls “patience”.

As people around them saw the patient endurance with which Christians practised the right way to live, a way that enabled others to live better as well, they were attracted to these communities with powerful overwhelming attraction.

To put it another way, they lived on the assumption that God wanted them to thrive physically and spiritually, which meant that they helped each other to thrive. Not only that, but they also helped everyone around them to have a better life. They were unafraid of death, so that when one city was devastated with the plague, it was Christians who treated the sick. Desperate families would put people with the plague out in the street, so that the family would not also get sick, and Christians came along and ran the risk of getting the plague by taking the suffering sick into their homes and treating them. This is the kind of life that God wants.

A Final Thought

A final thought, bringing this kind of lifestyle back into focus by thinking about God’s judgment. God wants us to live so that all of us can thrive, physically and spiritually.  The position of the promise of restoration at the end of the book promises even more. God not only wants us to thrive; God is working in our world so that we know that we will thrive, physically and spiritually. We were made for Eternity, an eternity of bathing in God’s good blessings.

We may be tempted to give up as we work with the problems of our world. Corruption and wrong appear to be stronger than any of our efforts to do what is right. But look again. God is at work all the time. God uses the worst events of our lives to bring about the end of all things in joy and peace and harmony. The end of the story is never in doubt: God wins in the end.

The terrible judgments Amos prophesied came true. Israel was carried away by the Assyrians. The king’s house was overthrown. The priesthood of Amaziah came to an end. The people found themselves in despair. But all of this judgment helped prepare the way for the Messiah, even when the northern kingdom separated from Jerusalem. Samaria became “Samaria” and “Galilee” in the NT. Jesus grew up in Galilee and called his disciples there and exercised a large part of his ministry there. The purification of the people helped to prepare the way for the coming of the Messiah.

Now we wait for Jesus to return, and while we wait, we live for justice and righteousness. We seek the overflowing power and goodness of the Lord, in our own lives, in the structures of our world, and in the lives of the people around us. We do all of this full of confidence in God’s final action to give all of us “abundant life”, life in which we thrive to the full, physically and spiritually. We do all of this, knowing that we are pilgrims in this world, on our way to heaven, our eternal home, where we will live in the full restoration of the reign of God.

Steinbach Mennonite Church
22 April 2018
Texts
Amos 5:21-24

²¹ “I hate, I despise your religious festivals; your assemblies are a stench to me.
²² Even though you bring me burnt offerings and grain offerings, I will not accept them. Though you bring choice fellowship offerings, I will have no regard for them.
²³ Away with the noise of your songs! I will not listen to the music of your harps.
²⁴ But let justice roll on like a river, righteousness like a never-failing stream!

Amos 9:11-15

¹¹ “In that day I will restore David’s fallen shelter—I will repair its broken walls and restore its ruins—and will rebuild it as it used to be, ¹² so that they may possess the remnant of Edom and all the nations that bear my name,” declares the Lord, who will do these things.

¹³ “The days are coming,” declares the Lord, “when the reaper will be overtaken by the plowman and the planter by the one treading grapes. New wine will drip from the mountains and flow from all the hills, ¹⁴ and I will bring my people Israel back from exile. They will rebuild the ruined cities and live in them. They will plant vineyards and drink their wine; they will make gardens and eat their fruit.
^15 “I will plant Israel in their own land, never again to be uprooted from the land I have given them,” says the Lord your God.