The Rebuke of the Religious Me (And Others)

Alas, you who are longing for the day of the Lord, for what purpose will the day of the Lord be to you?  It will be darkness and not light;
As when a man flees from a lion and and a bear meets him, or goes home, leans his hand against the wall and a snake bites him.
Will not the day of the Lord be darkness instead of light, even gloom with no brightness in it?

"I hate, I reject your festivals, nor do I delight in your solemn assemblies.
Even though you offer up to Me burnt offerings and your grain offerings, I will not accept them; and I will not even look at the peace offerings of your fatlings.
Take away from Me the the noise of your songs; I will not even listen to the sound of your harps."

"But let justice roll down like waters and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream."

"Did you present Me with sacrifices and grain offerings in the wilderness for forty years, O house of Israel?"

"You also carried along Sikkuth your king and Kiyyun, your images, the star of your gods which you made for yourselves.  Therefore, I will make you go into exile beyond Damascus," says the Lord, whose name is the God of hosts.

Amos 5:18-27


Things that I noticed:

1.  God is talking to a people that He is bringing judgment on that thought they were doing what He wanted.  They are even crying out to Him in the midst of a harsh time and looking forward to "the day of the Lord."  Sounds good, right?  The problem is this is just an image that they have allowed themselves to pull over their own eyes.  They do not realize their own distance from God and His heart.  There is an assumed closeness to Him because they are following the Law, but they did not question and challenge the prevailing evil that existed in their midst.  They did not stand for the heart of their God.  So God does not include them in His remnant and even seems insulted that they would think that they would be spared.  In short, they are vastly deceived about their relationship status with Him.

2.  Even their worship, in the ways that God Himself designed and appointed for them to follow, was offensive to Him.  Six times He says that the worship practices were "yours."  This indicates one thing, their heart was not right.  Even though they were doing the exact things that God commanded His people to do, they did them to try to remove guilt from themselves and maintain insurance for themselves.  He goes so far as to call their worship "noise."  He reminds them two verses later that for forty years of the wilderness they did not consistently offer the right sacrifices, but He was in their midst anyway (cross reference Neh. 9:18-21).   He had their chores, not their hearts.

3.  God desires for His people to be in right relationship with Him in two ways--personally and in ministering to those around us.  Justice=ministering to the poor and the oppressed.  Righteousness=personal consecration and drawing near to Him.  Verse 25 says that He desires for these things to "roll down" and be "ever-flowing."  He expects them to be consistent, every day parts of our lives and in abundance.

4.  In the last two verses, God points out that they also (now remember that these are the same people that are performing all the sacrifices and other acts of worship) carried their idols with them.  Images that they set up for themselves.  The comfort that God offered them was not enough, so they kept other images that they set up with them so that they would feel better.  That's the part that gets me the most considering all that I have shared about my current personal battle.  How could they even possibly think that God would save them from the coming disaster with idols in their pockets, on their mantles and in front of their businesses?

I don't know.  Probably the same way that you and I do, except we carry our idols in our hearts too.

I started studying this passage because I was looking into a phrase in the first verse of the next chapter.  Now I see just how relevant it is to follow this as it talks about those who sit in an assumed place of position with God, but who are too comfortable to actually go out and look beyond their own interests.

"Woe to those who are at ease in Zion!"