Amos 4:1-15
Amos, the shepherd (or sheep-owner) from Judah, called to prophesy to the Northern Kingdom of Israel (also called Samaria). Amos, faithfully warning the people of God’s judgement. In chapter 1 he focussed on the surrounding nations, warning that people, all people, are made in God’s image and valuable in His sight – and therefore how we treat other people has consequences. Repent! Was his message – which means stop doing what you are doing and turn to God.
Then in chapter 2 we saw him shift his focus from the sinful nations to the sinful people of God. Slavery, oppression, corruption, greed, materialism, sexual mayhem – the people of God are in a mess. They have abandoned the God who saved them, who brought them out of slavery in Egypt. Instead, they have become just like the nations around them – back in a new form of slavery, (and old form of slavery) a slavery to sin and false religion. Repent! Is again his message. Repent and turn back to your God! To know God personally, deeply intimately – why would you throw that away Israel?
And be warned – to scorn (mock) the love of God, to throw his intimacy back in his face and dance down the street like a prostitute being intimate with all sorts of other gods and worldviews- well, that has serious consequences.
Amos uses the picture of a LION to remind us of who we are dealing with: the Sovereign LORD God, the Lord of Heaven’s Armies.
And in tonight’s passage the Lion roars out his warning on the evil women and on Israel’s false, empty religion – and ends the chapter on this frightening note: Prepare to meet your God in judgment, you people of Israel!
1. The evil women of Israel
v1 Listen to me, you fat cows living in Samaria, you women who oppress the poor and crush the needy, and who are always calling to your husbands, “Bring us another drink!”
It’s a brilliantly descriptive picture. Fat, selfish ladies, lying on their couches, belittling their servants, ordering their husbands to bring them a drink. Red in face, unhealthy, out of breath, adorned with jewellery, gossiping, consumed with climbing the social ladder, and they don’t care who they step on to get there. Oppressing the poor and crushing the needy. Evil women. Evil selfish women. Fat cows of Samaria (Northern Kingdom of Israel).
And because they are cows the judgement (in verse 2 and 3) is fitting: they will be treated like cows, lead away like animals with hooks in their noses. As they have treated the people around them like cattle, so will they be treated. In the end they will be thrown from their fortresses, 3:10 Their fortresses are filled with wealth taken by theft and violence.
Warning! The way of life you’re living is leading to disaster!
Fat cows. Indulgence and oppression are two sides of the same coin. These women indulged themselves – they lived for themselves. And so they used (oppressed) other people. If our main concerns are our own comfort and self-importance, then we will soon mistreat others. It becomes all about ME, about MY needs and MY feelings, about what *I* have done and why aren’t you doing as much as ME? Looking out for number ONE. MY job. Even MY church. (It’s Jesus’ church before it’s ours, let’s not forget that!). They lived for themselves and not for others - And when I describe it like that suddenly I see myself and my own attitudes reflected in these women, these fat cows of Samaria. Ouch!
It’s worth also taking a moment to see how these women had totally rejected what they were created to be. Instead of the loving helper Eve was designed to be for Adam, these women are abusing their husband, treating them like servants (bring us a drink) instead of looking for ways to serve them. They have neglected their responsibility in the home, not creating a place suitable to raise children in the instruction of the Lord, or a place which is open and hospitable to guests – but a place of oppression and selfishness.
Being a wife and mother is hard work – actually if you want to do it properly it’s impossible without the grace of the Holy Spirit. Because the heart of being a good mother and wife is the opposite of these fat cows; other-person-centeredness, service, love. And that does not come naturally to us. We need the grace of God.
As I was reading these verses I was reminded of a New Testament story, of someone who had built his life with wealth taken by theft, whose house was a fortress of ill-gotten gain, who lived like a fat cow – and Jesus looked up at him and said “Zacchaeus, come down”. Jesus said that he came not to condemn, but to save the lost. There is hope. And here, there is hope. There is as yet time to repent. Those who have ears to hear, listen!
The hope of the gospel is the hope for fat cows! When we turn to Jesus and cry for help, he comes to us, his Holy Spirit begins to change us from the inside out. We become regenerate. Like Zacchaeus (who you can read about in Luke 19), we start living a new life, with new desires, new actions. He stood up and said “I give back four times what I have stolen”. From his whole life being built on grabbing as much money as he could – to giving it away! His life had a new foundation: Jesus. And a new direction and purpose: self-sacrificial love, just like Jesus.
From a life built on ME to a life built on serving others because Jesus has loved and forgiven me. That’s repentance, that’s grace. That’s how the fat cows should have responded.
The evil women, the fat cows, have been warned.
And Amos’ warnings continue
2. Empty religion
4 “Go ahead and offer sacrifices to the idols at Bethel. Keep on disobeying at Gilgal. Offer sacrifices each morning, and bring your tithes every three days. 5 Present your bread made with yeast as an offering of thanksgiving. Then give your extra voluntary offerings so you can brag about it everywhere! This is the kind of thing you Israelites love to do,” says the Sovereign Lord.
Ah, Amos, our good friend, faithful proclaimer of the words of God. A man with courage! Can you imagine preaching these words? Warning people that their religion is empty, that their lives are a disaster? That they are rebelling against God even in their religion. Their religious devotion is empty because it is not done for God’s glory but their own. And Amos exposes it. How do you think people would have responded to his words?
The truth is sometimes very hard to swallow, and living a lie seems more attractive.
It is the same with the gospel. Jesus is hated, mocked, or ignored – but it’s not because people don’t like him – I mean, who can’t like a guy who goes around doing good, telling us to love each other, and then dying in our place in a HUGE act of love. So why do people hate Jesus? Sometimes it’s because of what we see in this passage – people claiming to follow him, very religious, good church-goers, generous – but full of themselves and their own glory, not God’s glory. They live for themselves – religion is just a way to exalt themselves, be important, save (justify) themselves. That’s what the Israelites were doing.
But the underlying cause is that we want to be God (certainly over our own life) and when Jesus claims to be God, and backs it up by his power and his resurrection – we get offended, we get angry. He’s rubbed our nose in the truth that we are not God and we don’t like it.
We don’t like it when he says “I am the way, the truth and the life. No-one comes to the Father except through me”.
We don’t like it when he says “If anyone wants to follow me, he must pick up his cross daily and follow me.”
He is the master, we are the servants. – and we don’t like it.
So we hide behind our worldview (“I don’t believe in God”) or our issues with God (“I could never believe in a God who…”) or our empty religions (whether that’s the major world religions, or New Age spirituality, or unbiblical “Christianity” (churchism, like in tonight’s passage)). We go through the religious motions, 5 Offer[ing] sacrifices each morning, and bring[ing] tithes every three days. sometimes even beyond the religious requirements 5 Then give your extra voluntary offerings so you can brag about it everywhere!. Who are they doing that for? God? Or themselves? It’s so easy to slip into me-centered Christianity (Me-ianity!)
All too often we go along with Jesus as long as what he’s doing seems good to us – but when his words seem hard, or contradict the “wisdom” of the age…..
Things like our sinfulness (but we’re good), God’s sovereignty (I’m in charge of my life, nobody tells me what to do). Roles of men and women in marriage and the church (but that’s sexist!). Sex (but we’re liberated!) Whatever it is! When we refuse to believe God’s word are we not doing exactly what the Israelites were doing? Worshipping God our way instead of his way. Empty religion.
Are we not the fat cows of chapter 4, entertaining ourselves while ignoring the word of God?
If I am not willing to obey God WHEN HIS WORD CONTRADICTS my own feelings on the matter, then I need to question my standing before God. Am I a Christian if I refuse to repent and believe? Christianity is not just accepting Jesus as Saviour, but also Lord. We will always be challenged by the Bible – how do we respond?
The Israelites’ heard their empty religion being exposed by Amos. And now they hear how God has been judging them, warning them to repent.
3. Repent!
6 “I brought hunger to every city and famine to every town. 7 I kept the rain from falling when your crops needed it the most. I sent rain on one town but withheld it from another. 9 I struck your farms and vineyards with blight and mildew. 10 I sent plagues on you like the plagues I sent on Egypt long ago.
Some of you have been wondering over the past few weeks why I’ve said that Amos’ judgement is a warning (stop! Danger ahead!), and not simply a declaration of a sentence (this will happen). Why is Amos the policeman giving you a warning (don’t do it again!) and not the judge pronouncing a sentence. Well, here we see it. It is so important to read the Bible IN context – both before and after. That’s why much of my preparation is simply reading the book, again and again. Thinking about the passage, thinking about the book. It is so important, because I want to preach to you what GOD THINKS, not what I think! A good definition of preaching is “thinking God’s thoughts aloud”.
Here we see the reason behind disasters. The reason for the judgement. It’s a warning. It’s a mercy. Do you see it there in v6, v8, v9, v10, v11? But still you would not return to me.
The purpose of God’s judgement was (and is) to drive them to himself. Just like last week – 3:6 Does disaster come to a city unless the Lord has planned it?
This is comforting: this world is not chaotic, out of control. Our Lord controls this world. Like a surgeon cutting into the body to expose a cancerous tumour, suffering in this world exposes the tumour of sin. Watch the news: wars, murders, theft, corruption, evil read the tabloids: gossip, back-biting, jealously, broken relationships, abuse. Sin exposed in all its ugliness.
We have not lived in a paradise. We see our sin leads to problems. We are without excuse. Yet we keep sinning.
We see the world is broken; we feel like we’re made for perfection – but we shrug off that feeling because we don’t give up the illusion that we are in control of our lives.
We have an empty space deep within us, but we ignore it.
The disasters around us, in our own lives, are shouting to us “Turn back! Repent and believe!”
What are we going to do? Will we be stubborn and cold-hearted? Will we be like Israel, like Egypt in the time of the Exodus? 10 I sent plagues on you like the plagues I sent on Egypt long ago.
Did you notice through this chapter how the judgements get worse and worse, like a voice shouting louder and louder. And still the Israelites stop their ears and refuse to repent. Stubborn people. Hard-hearted rebels.
But that’s them. What about us? Are we too not just like Israel, just like Egypt? Unrepentant? What will we do now that we hear the warning of God?
Repent and turn to him before it is too late! Prepare to meet your God in judgement, you people of Israel!
They did. 50 years after these words were spoken the Northern Kingdom of Israel was utterly destroyed.
What about you and me? Will we be prepared to meet our God in judgement?
4. Prepare to meet your God
This is no idle threat. GOD IS GREAT!
12 Prepare to meet your God in judgement, you people of Israel!” 13 For the Lord is the one who shaped the mountains, stirs up the winds, and reveals his thoughts to mankind. He turns the light of dawn into darkness and treads on the heights of the earth. The Lord God of Heaven’s Armies is his name!
That is why our rebellion is so foolish. We are not God. We KNOW. We are without excuse. We know we are rebels. The state of our world tells us that.
But we also don’t know. That’s why need the Bible. We need God’s revelation. He v13 reveals his thoughts to mankind. Last week we read 3:7 the Sovereign LORD never does anything until he reveals his plans to his servants the prophets.”
So that we can KNOW. SO we can repent. There is a way out. That’s why it is the GOOD NEWS of Jesus Christ. Otherwise this suffering world would just be an endless warning siren with no way out. We would know that something’s wrong, but where would we go to be rescued? Where would we go to satisfy that deep longing inside of us. Praise God that he is a God who speaks, who reveals his thoughts to mankind.
But more than that. He did not just reveal his thoughts, but he revealed himself. He stepped into our world, this sinful, messed-up, world under judgement. And then he took that judgement upon himself so that we could see what kind of God he truly is. He is the God who is intimate with us, the father who lays down his life for his family, the husband who gives his life to save his wife, even though she has been unfaithful to him. Love that stretches so much further than sin.
His love swallows up sin, swallows up his own, righteous judgement.
That’s what we celebrate this Easter – that this great God who treads on the heights of the earth, the Lord God of Heaven’s Armies – he is the Saviour, the Man on the Cross, taking our judgement, making clear the path so that when we finally come to our senses and say “God I am sorry, I repent!” he can say “I forgive you”, and not “you are condemned” – which is what he should say!
Rom 8:1 So now there is no condemnation for those who belong to Christ Jesus. Isn’t that amazing?
If you are a Christian today you know your own hearts. I know that I am much more like a fat cow of Samaria than I am like Jesus. My Christianity too often devolves into Me-ianity. I disobey and argue with God’s Word and go along with my own “superior” wisdom so much.
So, if you’re anything like me, you will be rejoicing and singing this Easter. In Christ, we can say not Prepare to meet your God in judgment, you people of Israel! but Prepare to meet your God in salvation, you people of the Cross!”
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