Misplaced Faith

Amos 2:11-16

As you read the book of Amos and you get to the second chapter, verses 11-16, are you willing to receive the message from this farmer called to be a spokesman to the chosen?  This question comes to mind, is this message relevant to 2013, and is God speaking to the United States of America, and to all nations that are substituting, “Thus says the Lord” in an effort to remove the message of Deuteronomy 30:15-18? “See, I have set before you today life and good, death and evil. If you obey the commandments of the LORD your God that I command you today, by loving the LORD your God, by walking in his ways, and by keeping his commandments and his statutes and his rules, then you shall live and multiply, and the LORD your God will bless you in the land that you are entering to take possession of it. But if your heart turns away, and you will not hear, but are drawn away to worship other gods and serve them, I declare to you today, that you shall surely perish.”

My dear friend Carroll Ray Jr. would often ask at a point like this, do you believe that Jesus tells the truth?  At no time in my 70 years of life is that question more pointed, for we are repeating the history that Amos is referring to in these verses in chapter two.  Beginning with this question in verse 11, “And I raised up some of your sons for prophets, and some of your young men for Nazirites.  Is it not indeed so, O people of Israel?” declares the LORD.” 

So what was the purpose of prophets and Nazirites?  The Holman study Bible gives this account on page 1496 in the footnotes: “The prophets, as exponents of God’s will, and the Nazirites, as examples of great devotion to God, came to the Israelites as representatives sent by God to turn the people to righteousness.  The Israelite rejection of both groups represents their rejection of God himself.”  You may want to ask, are we doing that in 2013?  Are our leaders in government, in education, and in the workplace telling our young men and women who have been called to be followers of Christ that they are out of step with such a message?  That a message of redemption belongs only in the four walls of a building we refer to as a church.  It is a clear message that anyone who dares to declare the need to repent of sin and to except the free gift of the blood of Jesus Christ that covers sin will be an outcast in business, in the school system, and government, and its many cohorts will make an example of such a person. 

Do you understand that it was the same way when Amos spoke these words: “Thus says the Lord,” and so history is once more being repeated?  And just a note: “Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever.” (Hebrews 13:8 ESV)  This was God’s word spoken to and from Amos to the people: “But you made the Nazirites drink wine,

and commanded the prophets, saying, ‘You shall not prophesy.” (Amos 2:12 ESV)  And verse 13 implies that God was a little put out with His people.  Ask yourself; if God does not change, and it’s clear that He does not, then is He just a little put out with the U.S.A.?

Most Americans put a lot of faith in our vast military, so did the people in the time of Amos.  God gave them a news flash of what was to come: “Flight shall perish from the swift, and the strong shall not retain his strength, nor shall the mighty save his life; he who handles the bow shall not stand, and he who is swift of foot shall not save himself, nor shall he who rides the horse save his life; and he who is stout of heart among the mighty shall flee away naked in that day,” declares the LORD. (Amos 2:14-16 ESV)

From the Back Porch,

Bob Rice