Continuing the Rebuke
Amos 6:1
Woe to you who are complacent in Zion,
and to you who feel secure on Mount Samaria,
you notable men of the foremost nation,
to whom the people of Israel come!
Amos 6:4-7
4 You lie on beds adorned with ivory and lounge on your couches.
You dine on choice lambs
and fattened calves. 5 You strum away on your harps like David
and improvise on musical instruments. 6 You drink wine by the bowlful
and use the finest lotions,
but you do not grieve over the ruin of Joseph. 7 Therefore you will be among the first to go into exile;
your feasting and lounging will end.
God is not getting onto them because of what they have. He is furious with them
because they are so full of themselves, that they don’t even see the rampant destruction of the sin around them. They’re living their lives for monotony, instead of learning and worshipping the heart of God.
Amos 6:12
you have turned justice into poison
and the fruit of righteousness into bitterness—
God is telling them that they've missed the point of all of this, and become so obsessed with the blessings, that you’ve forgotten why He blessed them in the first place.
Amos 6:8
“I abhor the pride of Jacob
and detest his fortresses;
I will deliver up the city
and everything in it.”
God WANTS them to come back to Him, and He’s waiting there with open arms… But God is righteous and He can’t simply ignore the way his people are living.
The same God that decided to pour out his wrath on the Jewish people who has betrayed him, is the same God we answer to today! He has just as much wrath, just as much power, and just as much hatred for sin, bu He literally blocks Himself from doing anything to us, because of the goodness of Jesus, and the fact that Jesus already paid the price for us!
Amos’ Visions
Amos 7:1-3
This is what the Sovereign Lord showed me: He was preparing swarms of locusts after the king’s share had been harvested and just as the late crops were coming up. 2 When they had stripped the land clean, I cried out, “Sovereign Lord, forgive! How can Jacob survive? He is so small!”
3 So the Lord relented.
“This will not happen,” the Lord said.
Amos 7:4-6
4 This is what the Sovereign Lord showed me: The Sovereign Lord was calling for judgment by fire; it dried up the great deep and devoured the land. 5 Then I cried out, “Sovereign Lord, I beg you, stop! How can Jacob survive? He is so small!”
6 So the Lord relented.
“This will not happen either,” the Sovereign Lord said.
Imagine what it would be like to be Amos and have God come to you and say, "Indianapolis out of control, I should BURN IT DOWN!”
- Would you land in the camp of King Jeroboam II, and just keep your head buried in your toys?
- Or would you agree with God and say, “yeah, this place has really gone to Hell?”
- Or would you be like Amos, and BEG GOD to save our people?
God is utterly disgusted with the sinful actions of his people for the first 5 chapters of Amos, but the straw that broke the camels back was apathy. The people of God stopped being disgusted with the sin around them. We cannot get to a place where we stop being disgusted with the sin around us, and in us.
God's Judgement
Amos 8:7
The Lord has sworn by himself, the Pride of Jacob: “I will never forget anything they have done.
Amos 8:10
I will turn your religious festivals into mourning
and all your singing into weeping.
Amos 8:11
I will send a famine through the land—
not a famine of food or a thirst for water,
but a famine of hearing the words of the Lord
Amos 9:1
Strike the tops of the pillars
so that the thresholds shake.
Bring them down on the heads of all the people;
those who are left I will kill with the sword.
Not one will get away,
none will escape.
Amos 9:7-10
7 “Are not you Israelites
the same to me as the Cushites?”
declares the Lord.
“Did I not bring Israel up from Egypt,
the Philistines from Caphtor
and the Arameans from Kir?
8 “Surely the eyes of the Sovereign Lord
are on the sinful kingdom.
I will destroy it
from the face of the earth.
Yet I will not totally destroy
the descendants of Jacob,”
declares the Lord.
9 “For I will give the command,
and I will shake the people of Israel
among all the nations
as grain is shaken in a sieve,
and not a pebble will reach the ground.
10 All the sinners among my people
will die by the sword,
all those who say,
‘Disaster will not overtake or meet us.’
This is a promise, that even though the people of God will go through decades of horrendous stuff, God decides to spare his people.
