This is Spoken Gospel.
We’re dedicated to seeing Jesus in all of scripture.
In each episode, we see what’s happening in a Biblical text
and how it sheds light on Jesus and his gospel.
Let’s jump in.
Amos reminds Israel that God rescued her from slavery in Egypt, and that God chose Israel’s
forefather, Abraham, to be the agent through whom all the people of the earth would be blessed.
Israel bears a unique calling to then worship God and love her neighbor—and in doing so bless the world.
But Amos declares that Israel has failed her global calling,
has cursed the world, and will experience the consequences for it.
In a series of four speeches, Amos exposes Israel’s injustice, hypocrisy, idolatry, and coming judgment.
It’s so bad that Amos tells Israel to gather the brutal nations that surround her
and invite them to judge Israel’s violence and crime.
Instead of being sympathetic to Israel’s methods, Amos predicts these evil nations
will be disgusted by what they see and will wipe them off the map.
Amos says that Israel’s women are like cows who feed off the poor and crush the needy under their weight.
Israel’s men lie drunk on beds of ivory and refuse to show compassion, even for their brothers.
Israel has forgotten her calling. She’s replaced worship of God and love of neighbor with love of foreign gods and injustice.
The extent to which Israel worships the gods of sex, power, and war from these nations around her
is the same extent to which she will do violence and oppress those that she is meant to protect.
You see, worship of God and justice toward neighbor go hand-in-hand.
So, Amos begs Israel to seek God alone and to seek good instead of evil.
The Israelites’ failure to do justice is evidence that there is no true love of God, and that their religion is just a sham.
So, Amos begs Israel to let justice roll like waters, and righteousness like a never-failing stream.
If sin has covered the land like a flood, Israel must restore her calling to flood the earth with worship of God and love of each other.
If Israel wants to escape her judgment and fulfill her calling to bless the nations,
God must be her only God, and his abundant and consistent justice must be her only standard.
[music]
Worship and justice go hand-in-hand.
Amos could measure the idolatry of Israel by measuring the inequality among her citizens.
Alternatively, caring for the poor is a sign of sincere and true faith.
Jesus’ brother James said something similar.
He said, “faith without deeds is useless” and that even Abraham’s faith was proven by his actions.
You see, as Christians, we are now a part of Abraham’s family
and a part of Israel’s unique calling to bless the whole world.
Like Israel, we’ve been saved from slavery, and we've been set free!
And as Jesus said, our mission is summed up in the twin commands of loving God and loving one another.
So, as new members of this ancient family, we have inherited a great calling to love and proclaim
the good news of Jesus and to enact the love and justice Amos so longed to see.
And while the poor will always be with us and while we wait for a day when Jesus, Abraham’s greatest son, will return and
make justice roll like water and flood the world with righteousness, we are still left with a warning.
And it's this: Worship of God and true justice go hand-in-hand.
And when it doesn’t, as Amos preached, you can be sure whatever is being loved is not God.
But in this warning, there's also good news.
Warnings are just that in fact, and they imply that justice can rule and reign on the earth if we listen.
Injustice is preventable, sincere worship of God is possible, and soon Jesus will return to destroy all injustice.
He will flood the world with his blessing.
So, I pray that the Holy Spirit would open your eyes to see the God who hates injustice.
And may you see Jesus as the son of Abraham who includes us in his family to bring blessing to the entire world.