http://countrysidechurchofchrist.sermon.net/main/main/21466252
Amos 3:13-15,4:1-5, “Oracle Against House of Jacob”
Consider the lilies of the field… Matt 6:28
Consider the lilies of the field… Matt 6:28
http://countrysidechurchofchrist.sermon.net/main/main/21466252
Amos 3:13-15,4:1-5, “Oracle Against House of Jacob”
thedailylily.com 
The truth of “Who is God” that is making its way around internet on some group sites is asking, “is your God to small? “
One article I read just this week-end was titled, “The Terribly Tiny God of MAGA Christians.” By John Pavlovitz, list many things among these, “They want to stockpile and horde wealth, health insurance, and opportunity—because this is a zero sum game; because the God they claim turned water into wine, and fed thousands with a few fish and some leftover bread—can’t make enough for everyone.
They are obsessed with building a wall and defending a border and turning away refugees—because their God isn’t generous or smart or creative enough to help them figure out how to welcome and care for everyone who requires it.”
Some have said God is love only. And, that is the kind of love that says do what and how you want to satisfy your love. Etc etc
Well, Reggie right up front settles this according to this guy, Amos! Whoa!
Sara, you said, “Well, Reggie right up front settles this according to this guy, Amos! ”
Boy, as I listened to this lesson, he sure does settle it. The Israelites did what they wanted, lived the life of luxury and trusted in what they “thought was a privileged position – they believed they were safe and secure because they were the people of God.” They do sound just like the people that John Pavlovitz describes above.
According to the lesson, the Israelites broke their part of the covenant agreement with God and God “swore by His own Holiness’ that He would punish them for it and there would be a ‘very, very few that would escape this.’
You also wrote, Sara, that “They are obsessed with building a wall and defending a border and turning away refugees”. Interesting that the Israelite woman were the focus group of this lesson who were “guilty of irresponsibility in two social directions: towards the poor and towards their own families.” However, God used the Assyrians to knock down and make breaks in their walls and they drug all the corrupt, depraved women out through those breaches with ropes attached to the rings in their lips and noses just like animals….an exacting payback for the same kind of treatment these women had shown to the poor.
Pastor Reggie gave clear Israelite examples of what he terms ‘hypocritical religion’ yet says this is being practiced by “people today in churches who go through the motions but their heart is not in it and their lives have not been changed at all.” He leaves us with this sobering thought: “… the judgement that is coming will be a terrible judgement and will be based on the way they have treated others and even the way they have treated their own sacrifices.”
Debi, what does “treated their own sacrifices.” mean?
Sara, my understanding from the lesson on this was that they were bringing offerings and sacrifices not out of appreciation and love to God, but to show off as if they were devoted to God. But Pastor Reggie said it was just a ‘sham’ and that some of the produce they were tithing came form the poor people or crops that had been raised on stolen land; or livestock “fattened on fields seized from the poor and used as sacrifices.”
I Had to reread those verses in Amos 4:1-3. NLT: “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!’ The Sovereign Lord has sworn this by his holiness:’The time will come when you will be led away with hooks in your noses. Every last one of you will be dragged away like a fish on a hook! You will be led out through the ruins of the wall; you will be thrown from your fortresses says the Lord.” 🤭🙈😱 I wonder if all those material possessions and “lavished life-styles”really mattered to those women, when this “sentencing” came to pass? Brings a Scripture to my mind….Mark 8:36.
Debi and Tammy, fat cows! Stealing from the poor to make a sacrifice. Plus plus plus.
I guess if I can ask one question, when will this evil end?
Would Matthew 24 give us a start on how to begin to try and answer your question Sara? 🤔 ?????
“when will this evil end?” you asked Sara. As I read through Revelation 21 and 22 it looks like evil will continue…
“And he who does evil, will do evil again; he who is foul, again will be polluted; the righteous again will do righteousness and the holy will again be hallowed.” Rev. 22:11
But it says Jesus is coming back and God will make a new heaven and a new earth. There’s going to be a holy city, the New Jerusalem where, with very different walls than the one Tammy tells us above that the fat cow women will be led out of. This is how evil will be dealt with then according to 21:27.
“Nothing evil will be allowed to enter, nor anyone who practices shameful idolatry and dishonesty—but only those whose names are written in the Lamb’s Book of Life.”
Matthew 24 just dosen’t seem to allow a copy/paste line. I hope many will read and reread as the near future giving in detail is riveting.
Debi, happy day for those who desire and seek eternal glory.
The lesson Pastor Reggie taught this week on Amos and having read all the comments caused me to think about our choices -sin or Jesus ; evil versus GOOD. Thank you God even though you make hearts – your heart never, no never fails to love us and consistently you take the shepherd’s hook to guide us onto the right path again and again.
Reflection
The tree of good and evil in the Garden whence Adam and Eve walked with God seemed good in their eyes. The sprawling root system was deep and reached to the far corners of the earth. Between each root was a rut that Adam and Eve’s families walked. Most thrived in the ruts of opulence, pride, arrogance, thievery, lying, murdering, lust and depravity of all kinds.
A few walked the roads less traveled trying to pull others to the light. Of those few some returned to the rut life, as it is said In 2nd Peter 2: 22 “Of them the proverbs are true, A dog returns to its vomit and a sow that is washed returns to her wallowing in the mud.
In the groove, the people of the rut flaunt their wealth in their self focus – stepping on the poor and powdering themselves with poor man’s dust. (As seen with the Israelites in this week’s lesson.)
The rut people (Hosea 10: 4) “They spoke mere words, with worthless oaths they made covenants: And judgment sprouts like poisoners weeds in the furrows of the field.
Thus two roads to choose from – the rut (without Jesus) or the road less travelled (with Jesus) Which do you choose?
I also thought of a poem by Robert Frost entitled “Road Not Taken”
Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;
Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,
And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.
I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.
Rena’s comments and the poem she shared above about choices brought me thinking back to the beginning of Pastor Reggie’s lesson. He reminded us that “God had established a covenant” with the House of Jacob, with the patriarchs. God kept His part by protecting them and caring for them. They made a choice to break their part of the covenant. In doing so, they forfeited “any right to the promised blessings of that covenant.” And like the poem above ends, “And that has made all the difference.”