“God’s Care and Judgement IX“
We’ve spent the last several weeks hearing God use his “thus says the Lord” to speak to us about human rights and his concern for human relationships and wellbeing. In Amos 3:11, we now hear God use his “thus says the Lord” to confront and deal with sin: “Therefore thus says the Lord GOD: ‘An adversary shall be all around the land; he shall sap your strength from you, and your palaces shall be plundered’” (NKJV).
Amos 3:11 is the result of Israel’s neglect of God and each other, which the previous verses make clear. In Amos 3:9-10, God calls upon two pagan neighbors, Ashdod (some translations say Assyria) and Egypt, to assemble to Samaria, the capital city of the Northern Kingdom of Israel, to witness her sins. But the sins of which she is grievously guilty are not specifically against God, his worship, or his temple – at least, not yet. What gets God fired up is Israel’s treatment of the disadvantaged and the poor: she has “great tumults in her midst” (verse 9), which is a reference to the amount of violence that is tolerated in Israel; there are many “oppressed” within her borders (verse 9), such that oppression defines the lifestyle of Israel; “they do not know to do right” (verse 10), which is a direct violation of Deuteronomy’s repeated commands to learn how to follow God’s way and walk with him; and they fill their palaces with “violence and robbery” (verse 10), which hints that Israel’s elite were able to acquire palaces due to the violence they committed against the poor, as well as the devastation they caused the most vulnerable in their society by taking their possessions. This is why God speaks so harshly in verse 11: because the actions of Israel were purposefully abusive of the people who were most at risk in their society. Consequently, God would take from wealthy Israel what they took from the poor.
Friends, God wants you to be safe and secure, but not at the expense of someone else’s safety and security. Learn from Israel by valuing peace, contentment, and generosity, rather than violence, oppression, and robbery – because “thus says the Lord.”
God bless,
Pastor Nathaniel Gamble
