Have you ever been confronted by someone for something that you did? Someone comes to you and says, “You hurt my feelings…
- …I can’t believe you did x,y or z.”
- …I thought you were my friend.”
- …when you said ___ and that felt like you were attacking me.”
Now, sometimes examples like these are simply misunderstandings. Somebody took something you said the wrong way. Maybe you had good intentions, but things went a bit sideways. And then sometimes we are genuinely in the wrong, and the right thing to do is to own our mistakes, apologize and seek forgiveness.
But, whether we are in the right or the wrong, whenever we are confronted by someone else, for most of us our natural response is to take on a defensive posture. Woah…hang on. Let me set you straight. Let me justify myself to you. Here’s exactly what happened. Or here’s exactly what I said. Or, let me remind you, you did this first and so I did this.
That is all stressful stuff, so most of us avoid it and take on a passive posture. If you hurt me in some way, rather than confronting you about it, we’re going to do nothing and say nothing. Or we’re going to talk about you behind your back, but not to your face or secretly harbor anger towards you. And, one of the reasons we don’t confront other people when they have hurt us is because we know that they are probably going to go on the defensive rather than accepting that they have done something wrong, apologizing and seeking forgiveness.
Last week we saw that the prophet Amos approached the people of Israel with not only one but four significant accusations. And Amos was not saying, “these are things I have against you.” No, as a prophet, he was saying, “Israel, these are things that the Lord has against you.” And, this all came at the end of a series of prophecies where Amos had, sort of, lured Israel into his rhetoric by talking about all these other nations. Let’s talk about the sin of these other people and these other people. And, our sinful hearts love that kind of stuff. We tend to love controversy. We tend to love talking about other people’s failures and shortcomings because when the focus is on them, the focus isn’t on us. And, it helps us to feel better about our own issues.
So, Amos confronted Israel about four primary transgressions, all of which relate to Israel’s treatment of other people, namely those who are the most vulnerable in society. Amos said Israel had:
- Aggressively pursued the debtor
- Oppressed the slave, even sexually
- Broken the law that protected the debtor
- Encouraged sin among the consecrated while silencing the prophets
These are significant accusations, and, as we said, the natural response is to want to defend oneself even when there isn’t really a defense to be made. So, we move from Amos 2 to Amos 3, which isn’t just a list of accusations, but rather, more of a prosecutorial case. The text, as we will see, takes on more of a judicial tone as if Israel is on trial and the prosecution is laying out the facts with the assumption that Israel might try to defend itself. Let’s read:
1 Hear this word that the Lord has spoken against you, O people of Israel, against the whole family that I brought up out of the land of Egypt:
2 “You only have I known
of all the families of the earth;
therefore I will punish you
for all your iniquities.
3 “Do two walk together,
unless they have agreed to meet?
4 Does a lion roar in the forest,
when he has no prey?
Does a young lion cry out from his den,
if he has taken nothing?
5 Does a bird fall in a snare on the earth,
when there is no trap for it?
Does a snare spring up from the ground,
when it has taken nothing?
6 Is a trumpet blown in a city,
and the people are not afraid?
Does disaster come to a city,
unless the Lord has done it?
7 “For the Lord God does nothing
without revealing his secret
to his servants the prophets.
8 The lion has roared;
who will not fear?
The Lord God has spoken;
who can but prophesy?”
9 Proclaim to the strongholds in Ashdod
and to the strongholds in the land of Egypt,
and say, “Assemble yourselves on the mountains of Samaria,
and see the great tumults within her,
and the oppressed in her midst.”
10 “They do not know how to do right,” declares the Lord,
“those who store up violence and robbery in their strongholds.”
11Therefore thus says the Lord God:
“An adversary shall surround the land
and bring down your defenses from you,
and your strongholds shall be plundered.”
Let me ask you this question, how does one love God? That could be an interesting survey to put out there, asking church people how exactly does one love God? My guess is that we would get answers like, go to church or worship him or be a good person or help other people. And, those aren’t necessarily wrong answers so much as they are just not the full picture. No, I would actually make the case that throughout the Bible, God’s desire is that we show love to him by doing what he tells us to do…or, in other words, obedience. This is at the heart of worship, and the common image that is present is a royal image, God as a great king. And, this is somewhat challenging for us to fully grasp because we have not personally experienced a world where absolute monarchies are really a thing. But, in a country where there is an absolute monarchy, the people demonstrate their allegiance to the king by doing what he commands. Anything else would be disloyalty. So, it would be complete hypocrisy to say, “King, I honor you as king, but I will not do what you ask me to do.” No, in that world, if you won’t do what the king commands, then you don’t truly honor him as king.
While I say that kind of thing is somewhat foreign to us, it really isn’t if you consider a marriage covenant. Think about what you commit to when you take marriage vows. Something that is implicit in marriage is that a manifestation of my love for this other person is my willingness to do the things that I’ve committed to do. So, if you’re in a marriage and your spouse gets cancer, God forbid, and you say, “well, I don’t want to have to deal with all this,” and you file for divorce, then you are effectively saying, “I don’t love this person.” Your actions show what you truly believe and how you truly feel. Now, we’re complicated people, so we try to justify our actions by separating affection from action. And, that puts us in this bizarre place where people will try to say something like, “no, I do love my husband even though I cheated on him.” And, what we’re trying to do is separate affection from action. “No, I do feel affection for him even if I have been faithful to him.”
But, listen, that does not square with what the Lord wants from us when it comes to loving him. He is not interested in your affection if it is divorced from obedient action.
Both Jesus and the apostle John talk about this. They say things like:
John 14:15 – “If you love me, you will keep my commandments.”
1 John 5:3 – “For this is the love of God, that we keep his commandments. And his commandments are not burdensome.”
Now, there are many, many more Scriptures we could look at saying the same things, but, last week we said that we could sum up all of Israel’s sin in this way, “they had not loved their neighbors as themselves, and, as a result, they had not loved God.” So, they had broken the great commandment or what is called the Shema. And, it is called the Shema, because in Deuteronomy 6, it begins by saying, “hear o Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one,” and the Hebrew word “Shema” is that “hear or listen.” The Shema in ancient Judaism was like the Lord’s Prayer is in Christianity. It would be said daily if not multiple times daily. But, it begins with that call to listen to the words, and not just to take them in, but to do them.
Now, look at our text, notice what the very first word is…”shema.” So, Israel has broken the shema. They have not loved God or their neighbors, so what is the prophet calling them to do, he is calling them to, yet again, listen. But, this time, it is to listen to what the Lord has spoken against you because you did not listen to him. And, then the Lord through Amos presents this case before Israel. The primary tool he employs here is that of the rhetorical question. He asks all these questions, but the answers are evident.
3 “Do two walk together,
unless they have agreed to meet?
4 Does a lion roar in the forest,
when he has no prey?
Does a young lion cry out from his den,
if he has taken nothing?
5 Does a bird fall in a snare on the earth,
when there is no trap for it?
Does a snare spring up from the ground,
when it has taken nothing?
6 Is a trumpet blown in a city,
and the people are not afraid?
Does disaster come to a city,
unless the Lord has done it?
So, Israel, you guys aren’t idiots, you know the answers to these questions.
And, you also know, verse 7
7 “For the Lord God does nothing
without revealing his secret
to his servants the prophets.
We know that, historically, God is not arbitrary and capricious, and that he has always sent words of blessing and warning and curse through the prophets. Now,
8 The lion has roared;
who will not fear?
The Lord God has spoken;
who can but prophesy?”
Oh that’s right, you have stopped the prophets from prophesying because you don’t want to hear. You don’t want to listen. But, the lion is roaring and its prey is in sight. Then, it’s almost like God says, let me gather some witnesses here in verse 9,
9 Proclaim to the strongholds in Ashdod
and to the strongholds in the land of Egypt,
and say, “Assemble yourselves on the mountains of Samaria,
and see the great tumults within her,
and the oppressed in her midst.”
10 “They do not know how to do right,” declares the Lord,
“those who store up violence and robbery in their strongholds.”
But, what about you? Are you listening? Are you genuinely seeking to hear what the Lord has to say? Let me ask you this, what are the accusations that the Lord could make against you?
A question for us is, how does God speak today? And, in today’s world, while there are still prophetic voices, the mode of Old Testament prophecy is no longer needed because the Holy Spirit now dwells within believers, leading and guiding, and the Word of the Lord has been declared through the Scriptures. But, much like Israel silenced the voice of the prophets, we can silence the voice of the Spirit and the Scriptures. One of the primary ways that we silence God today is by not reading His Word or by twisting his Word to suit our own interests. And, we want to do this thing of saying, “I love the Lord but I don’t want to engage with Him through Scripture.” I’m guilty of that. You’re guilty of that. I love the Lord, but I’ve gotten good at not listening to the voice of the Spirit because it is often inconvenient or because it takes me out of my comfort zone.
Jesus said to his disciples, “Why do you call me Lord and not do what I say?” The title of Lord implies complete authority. If you truly see me as the one who has complete and total authority in heaven and on earth, why exactly do you not do what I say? And, the answer is because we are no different than Israel. We are just as in need of a Savior. And, just like them, one of the greatest challenges we face is in not recognizing or appreciating the depths of this need. Not recognizing our complete inability to save ourselves. Not seeing ourselves as hopeless sinners.
Friends, the Lord in his grace, sent his only Son Jesus to die for us so that our fate would not simply be in our own hands. He sent Jesus to take on the punishment that is due to us because, just like Israel, we have also sinned against the Lord and our neighbors. So, let us learn from their example so that we are not a people, not a church, that says “yes and amen” to the message of the gospel, but does not do what the Lord is calling us to do. Let us also “shema.” Let us listen and love those around us, no matter their situation, as we love ourselves because we desire to worship and glorify the Lord our God. And we do all this because we have received the good news that even though we should stand accused and condemned before our holy God, those of us who have faith in Christ have been acquitted forever not through anything we’ve done but through the perfect sacrifice of our Savior Jesus Christ.
