May 22

At the very end of chapter 5 the people learn that they will be "sent into exile beyond Damascus." Damascus was Syria. Beyond Syria lay Assyria; brutal, cruel Assyria.

In chapter 5 God tells His people that He despises their feasts, their solemn assemblies, their burnt offerings and grain offerings and their peace offerings, their songs and even the sound of their instruments.

Which is weird, because God, Himself, had told them to do all that stuff. He told them centuries prior how He was to be worshipped; how they were to evidence their awe and dependence on Him.

Bi-vocational Amos was speaking to a bi-hearted people. It wasn't the actions of religion that bothered God; it was the divided hearts of the worshippers. Hence, a theme in Amos is, "Return to Me."

God's people had fallen into and subsequently accepted the notion of "I need God and ___________ to feel safe and secure and prosperous."

For them, it was idols, false gods they made with their own hands. So God tells them, "Grab your little idols and go into exile."

Secondly, God's people didn't like being called out. Amos says, "They hate him who reproves in the gate, and they abhor him who speaks the truth."

We moderns look at them and wonder, "What were they thinking, those primitives?"

Maybe the same thing we sometimes think.

We are quick to help ourselves to some self-help. We're prone to look to our own accomplishments, achievements, education level or advancement trajectory. If we can just manage our output and our own reputations, and convince others of our worth, we will be safe, secure and prosperous.

And if God has a hand in that, all the better.

It's not that we don't regard God - we just ask Him to get in line with the others.

God says to Amos, who conveys it to the people, "Seek Me and live." Meaning, seek Him, and no one/nothing else.

While we want to be synergistic, God is making His claim to exclusivity: "I am God, and there is no other."

Through Amos, God does promise a remnant of people will survive. Not because those remaining would be whole-heartedly devoted, but because God is whole-heartedly faithful to His promises.

It may be that our ongoing sanctification is essentially the process of the extant parts of our hearts being knit into a united whole; where we only have heart capacity to trust and obey one God.

-Mike Rydman, Lead Pastor, Radiant Church | Juneau