Amos 1:1-2:16
Amos was a showman. A country boy from the southern hills who had found his way up to the northern kingdom. Maybe he had chased his sheep up there. Maybe he was doing a summer Wandering Minstrel Tour. Maybe he was even headlining at Glastonbethel. However he got there, when he did get there he certainly knew how to draw a crowd. “The LORD roars from Zion” he bellowed and the folks slanted their ears. He pointed to the distant hills and with brilliant and cutting poetry he announced a coming judgement upon the hated neighbours of Israel. As each neighbouring tribe is lambasted I have no doubt that the crowd cheered, high fives were smacked out and torn up paper was thrown in the air. What a show! What a great message! God coming to wreak havoc on these corrupt infidel heathens. Woo ha! And then, the grand finale, the sweetest message yet! Amos turns on his own people, those arrogant stuck-up Judeans, those sanctimonious inhabitants of Jerusalem, those people who the 10 tribes would have resented more than anyone else. Amos turns on Judah and predicts a coming fire. I guess the standing ovation would have lasted a long, long time. People would have loved the show. What a way to present the message of God. And then, as the crowd would have started to disperse, as they would have turned to pick up their jumpers, Amos would have surprised them with an encore. “For three sins of Israel, even for four, I will not turn back my wrath”. No-one’s cheering now. The high-fives are noticeably absent. This is where the word of God starts to bite. Amos points to his audience and unleashes God’s harshest judgements yet. God does not let anyone go unexamined. His justice knows no bounds. He is ultimately not about entertaining us. He demands every one of us to obey.
Romans 2:17-3:8
Wow, having Romans split up like this makes it pretty tricky to bring something uplifting out of these opening sections. I think this passage only really makes proper sense if it is allowed to run up to 3:20 where we finally get the devastating conclusion to the argument that Paul has been making. “No-one is righteous, not even one.... no-one will be declared righteous in his sight by observing the law; rather, through the law we become conscious of sin”. This is a massive claim. Paul is re-writing the rule-book of Judaism. The whole of Exodus 20 through to Leviticus is now suddenly put in a completely different context. The sacrificial and life-style obligations that Moses laid out to the people were never going to get the people right with God. Human actions, even rigorous human obedience to God’s word, will never bring people to the fullness of life God has for them. We are incapable of living right. Our throats can’t help but make us unclean, our feet can’t help but walk us into ruin. What Paul is saying is that the only appropriate and acceptable starting point for faith is on our knees begging for a divine act of mercy. Something supernatural, something entirely beyond any human capability, has to happen to us for us to even begin to live right. Faith has to be defined by fear. Faith has to be birthed in repentance. We need to spend some serious amount of time on our knees.
Proverbs 17:5-14
“A rebuke impresses a man of discernment”. If only I could become more discerning I think I would be very regularly impressed.
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