#DailyDevotion How Bad Do You Have To Be To Be God’s Bad Example?
Amos 3 9 Announce it on the palaces in Ashdod and on the palaces in Egypt, and say: “Get together on the hills of Samaria, and see what great confusion is there, what oppression is there. 10 They don’t know how to do what is right,” says the LORD; “what they get by crime and plunder they hoard in their palaces.” 11 That is why the Lord GOD says: “An enemy! He will surround the country, strip you of your strength, and rob your palaces.”
How bad do you have to be to have God invite Ashdod (a Philistine capital) and Egypt come and see. Israel, who was to be a light shining on a hill in the world, who had the LORD’s testimonies and the wisdom of God, utterly failed in her mission to witness the greatness of the LORD to the nations. They lived contrary to the ways of the LORD in every instance. It would seem they were living even further apart from the ways of the LORD than even these two heathen nations.
What is this like? This would be as if the LORD called the strip club, the gay bar, and bordello to come and see how horrible the local church down the street was living apart from the will of God, i.e. they would be worshiping other gods rather than Christ, fornincating, being drunk, committing incest, robbing people-especially the widow, the orphan, the pastor, and the poor among them. They would be oppressing those to whom they should have been showing mercy. It would be a marketplace for drugs and the members would be prostituting their own sons and daughters. Well that is what Israel was like at this time.
So there was great confusion because they did not worship the LORD alone and when they did, they worshiped an idol of Him at Dan and Bethel. They worshiped other gods in the high places and the groves. Their idolatry led to oppression. They cheated the poor with false weights. The widow, the orphan and the foreigner were taken advantage of through “legal” means. Whatever the LORD had told them to do in the Torah, they did the opposite. Instead of making sure there were no poor in the land, they hoarded their wealth in their palaces, when they should have been distributing it to the widow, the orphan, the priests, the foreigners and the poor in the land.
Because of these great sins, the LORD was sending an enemy to rid the earth of these people, just as He rid the land of the Canaanites with the hands of the Israelites. The LORD was sending the Assyrians to run over the land, take all their wealth, kill most of the populace, and whoever survived that was worth any value was going to be exiled to foreign lands never to be a people again.
What should we make of this as the Church, God’s holy people today? Do we condemn others of their sins and not condemn our own? Do we struggle against temptations or do we live like the world and say it only natural? Do we believe and trust in Jesus Christ alone for our life in this age and the next or do we trust wealth, Mammon, politics, and power for this life and give lip service to trusting in Christ for the age to come? Do we hoard our wealth or do we distribute it freely to the poor, the widows, the fatherless, the foreigners and our pastors?
Wherever we have fallen flat in discipleship to Jesus Christ, let us then confess our sins, come to the throne of God grace in Jesus Christ to receive mercy, and then turn from our sins and live lives trusting in Jesus’ promises for this life and the world to come.
Merciful God and Father, You have promised to take care of us in this life and to give us eternal life in Jesus. Give us faith to live out Your life in our daily lives. In Jesus’ name we pray. Amen.