(by Dave, 20-25 min)
Scripture
Amos 7: 7-13
This is what he showed me: The Lord was standing by a wall that had been built true to plumb, with a plumb line in his hand. And the LORD asked me, “What do you see, Amos?” “A plumb line,” I replied. Then the Lord said, “Look, I am setting a plumb line among my people Israel; I will spare them no longer. “The high places of Isaac will be destroyed, and the sanctuaries of Israel will be ruined; with my sword I will rise against the house of Jeroboam.”
Then Amaziah the priest of Bethel sent a message to Jeroboam king of Israel: “Amos is raising a conspiracy against you in the very heart of Israel. The land cannot bear all his words. For this is what Amos is saying: “ ‘Jeroboam will die by the sword, and Israel will surely go into exile,
Then Amaziah said to Amos, “Get out, you seer! Go back to the land of Judah. Earn your bread there and do your prophesying there. Don’t prophesy anymore at Bethel, because this is the king’s sanctuary and the temple of the kingdom.”
Colossians 2: 6-10
So then, just as you received Christ Jesus as Lord, continue to live your lives in him, rooted and built up in him, strengthened in the faith as you were taught, and overflowing with thankfulness. See to it that no one takes you captive through hollow and deceptive philosophy, which depends on human tradition and the elemental spiritual forces of this world rather than on Christ. For in Christ all the fullness of the Deity lives in bodily form, and in Christ you have been brought to fullness. He is the head over every power and authority.
Times of plenty
At the time of Amos both Israel and Judah were prospering. The kingdoms were experiencing success against their enemies and were gaining in their economic power. Because Elisha predicted this success for Israel decades earlier (2 Kings 13: 15-18), the nation was feeling that God was with them. However, in the midst of these good times the people were walking away from the God who sustained them.
Amos describes that Judah rejected the law of the Lord, did not keep his decrees, and were led astray by false gods (Amos 2:4-5). Israel’s drift from God’s path was that and more. God perceives their worship to be empty (Amos 5:21-24), and their descent into secularism and indulgence as particularly abhorrent. To maintain their opulent lifestyles, Israelis would deny justice to the oppressed (Amos 2:7), sell the innocent for profit (Amos 2:6), bring their corruptly achieved gains into the holy places (Amos 2:8), lie about the poor in court and take bribes (Amos 5:12), and ignore the warnings of the prophets while trying to corrupt them (Amos 2:11-12). All the while reclining in their opulent, ivory-filled homes filled with pride (Amos 6:4-7).
The prophet reminds us that there are great dangers in times of plenty. If Judah and Israel are predictors, good times are commensurate with changing attitudes. Amos describes the hazardous results of this shift, but Exodus graphically illustrates the shift itself:
The rabble within them began to crave other food, and again the Israelites started wailing and said, “if only we had meat to eat! We remember the fish we ate in Egypt at no cost-also the cucumbers, melons, leeks, onions and garlic. But now we have lost our appetite; we never see anything but this mana” (Numbers 11: 4-6).
Fed daily and miraculously by God, the Israeli people wanted more. The attitudinal shift in the time of plenty is from satisfaction with what we have, to longing for what we do not. This is true throughout history and is ongoing today. Recently, I encountered two advertisements for automobiles that exploit the attitudinal shift existing within a country where many have a relatively high standard of living.
The first advertisement was for Buick. A woman drops off a bunch of kids at a soccer game and the coach asks if she brought all of those kids in her Buick. She answers, “yea”. He declares that is “so you”. And she responds, “it is”. When many have a car, we are no longer satisfied with a machine that will get us from one place to another. It must be a machine that is “so you”.
The second has a family driving the advertised car through the countryside (I don’t remember the manufacturer). The narrator says the occupants can be in the middle of everything surrounded by nothing. At first, I wondered what that even means, but I think the appeal is that the car will take you out of the city while leaving no amenity behind. Thus, you are still in the middle of everything you love but are now surrounded by none of the hustle and bustle that usually goes along with being in the city. We don’t just need transportation. We need transportation that will satisfy every desire no matter where we go.
Attitudes reflect morals
Advertising companies are wickedly perceptive. Their employees are perhaps the best in our society at measuring the attitudes of their target audience and concocting a myriad of interesting ways to exploit these attitudes. At the core of their strategies is an awareness of the moral fiber within the society who buys their products. If the advertisers push too hard, people will reject their solicitations as perverse, and the ad will fail. If they reflect a more virtuous public, the depicted attitudes seem archaic and silly. Commercial writers find that sweet spot of where society is when appealing to people who live in the land of plenty.
Like the ad agencies, the rebuke from Amos to Israel and Judah pegs the level of morality within their prospering society. If Amos was an advertiser, he would exploit what he sees rather than rebuke it and show an ad of a clever person cheating a fool to get ahead. It would succeed because the society accepted that cleverly cheating people was laudatory. How a society gets to this place is rooted in the attitudinal change we saw in Exodus. When we are no longer satisfied with what we have, we long for something new and will increasingly broaden the actions we are willing to take and what is morally acceptable to satiate our new yearnings.
You can never go back?
The story of Amos shows that the way back from the land plenty is a difficult one indeed. The prophet catalogs the rot he sees within society and issues a dire warning. God will measure you against a plumb line of his straight and true path the way a wall would be assessed for being true. Because the society is not straight and true, everything will be destroyed including the current King, Jeroboam.
What do societies in the land of plenty do when a fellow like Amos shows up? They do exactly what Israel and Judah did. Attack and ignore the critic. Amaziah provides a fine demonstration speaking to Amos. You are not from this area so go home. Moreover, I’m going to tell the king on you, so you better stop or else.
What do you think Buick would do if I called them up and said their ad was corrosive and exhorted people to focus too much on themselves when any transportation would do? What would happen if I called the other car company and told them that their ad was disgusting because it promotes pampered self-indulgence even when you are driving in nature? Perhaps more poignantly, what would friends do if I were to tell them they were focusing too much on acquiring money and should be satisfied with what they have?
We all know the answer and know it so well we don’t, or only rarely, do these things. Like Amos, we would be a pariah. We keep our mouths shut so that we are not considered self-righteous. So did the people of Israel and Judah and all societies that came before us and will come after. It seems there is no way back from the land of plenty, but Amos says there most certainly is.
We have two pathways forward
His recommended pathway is to restore morality and act accordingly: “Seek good, not evil, that you may live. Then the LORD God Almighty will be with you, just as you say he is. Hate evil, love good; maintain justice in the courts. Perhaps the LORD God Almighty will have mercy on the remnant of Joseph.” (Amos 5:14-15). Although the rest of his book reveals little hope that his countrymen will do this, it remains a possibility.
The second way out of the land of the plenty is for it to collapse. Because God cared deeply about his chosen people and they ignored the correcting voices of his prophets, He delivered this remedy. Israel and Judah were removed from their prospering land as Amos predicted and were cast into exile.
This pathway forward most definitely ends the siren call of the land of plenty and works very well to change attitudes. That Israel and Judah kept the writings of Amos and other prophets who were originally ignored indicates that removing prosperity produces a correcting attitudinal shift. Removed from their flourishing lands, the Jewish people want to remember so that good times do not destroy them again.
Similarly in my advertising scenarios, if all transportation was taken away, no one would care if transportation was “so you” or carried the amenities of wealth out into nature. Instead, people would delight with anything that would get them back and forth to work. Folks from the Great Depression behaved this way long after it ended suggesting that losing everything has a lasting impact in our times as well. The second remedy is exceedingly painful, but it works.
Is it inevitable?
Is it inevitable that people living in good times will lose their way? Maybe so. History testifies to this in Judah, Israel, Greece, Rome, Persia and Macedonia to name some of the most noteworthy empires that fell as corruption of all types seized them at the height of their wealth and prosperity. Although it may be inevitable that the land of plenty corrupts, reform is possible or God would not have sent Amos and the other prophets to warn the Jewish people. Why, then, do people living in the land of plenty refuse to reform when God and history suggest that failing to do so will put an end to their society?
I believe there are three reasons. People raised in a culture like it and don’t want to give it up. Amaziah does not want to hear about God’s plumb line. That plumb line is not his life, and he has no intentions of giving up what he likes. Similarly, the many wealthy people of Amos’s day wanted nothing to do with giving up the wealth they largely abused people to get, and more importantly the culture that made their abuse accepted. If God’s plumb line says cheating the poor, lying about them in court and taking bribes is wrong, then it must be rejected or the lifestyle and culture the wealthy enjoyed would go away.
Lest we get comfortable thinking it’s only the abusing wealthy in the land of plenty who are reticent to give up their culture, Amos also addresses what prosperity produced in the land of Judah and it has nothing to do with wealth and abuse:
This is what the LORD says: “For three sins of Judah, even for four, I will not relent. Because they have rejected the law of the LORD and have not kept his decrees, because they have been led astray by false gods, the gods their ancestors followed, I will send fire on Judah that will consume the fortresses of Jerusalem.(Amos 2:4-5).
This rebuke strikes at the very heart of why being in a culture and liking it is such a threat to the reform Amos requests. Judah ultimately became comfortable with leaving their God behind because their culture and lifestyle became their god. As a new generation is born into it, the gods are passed down, and little by little, the true God is supplanted by the culture. Subsequent generations now follow the god of their ancestors and reform like the prophets suggest is more than un-doable; it’s almost unthinkable.
The second reason the first choice of reform is rejected is that all of us still carry the signature of Original Sin. We claim for ourselves the ability to judge right from wrong instead of turning to God (Genesis 3:22). Each person will determine what is right or wrong. No plumb line needed. Consequently, people hate being told what to do and will not tolerate long someone telling them they are living their life incorrectly. We are so recalcitrant in this that Jesus laid out a rare step-by-step plan of how to address correcting others in the community of the church (Matthew 18:15-18).
The third reason why reform is rejected is the attitudinal shift in the time of plenty from satisfaction with what we have to longing for what we do not, and of the moral degradation that enables it. This is the most pernicious because it enables the other two reasons for rejecting reform. In a land where everything is increasingly possible, everything is increasingly sought until a new seeking culture and morality emerges where God is forgotten.
Cars are once again an excellent example. When you don’t have a car, you would like to have one. When you do have one, it would be nice to have a new one that is “so you”. When you have one that is “so you”, you want one that brings all of your amenities with you wherever you go. When you have a car that perpetually surrounds you with your amenities, how about one that does the driving too.
Collapse and exile are not inevitable
Paul’s advice today describes the remedy for living in the time of plenty. First, remember “just as you received Christ Jesus as Lord, continue to live your lives in him.” He doesn’t say live your lives like him but live your lives in him. Paul depicts a reality easily overlooked in the land of plenty. Christ is everything that is good. When you live, you are living in Christ’s good world:
In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was with God in the beginning. Through him all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made. In him was life, and that life was the light of all mankind. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it (John 1:1-5).
The darkness of Satan that creeps so steadfastly in flourishing times cannot overcome the Spirit of God in a believer who is focused on remembering in gratitude that Christ is everything. Nothing exists but for Christ. There would be no world in which to have a time of plenty if there were no Christ who was with God from the beginning. This realization is the foundation for Paul’s next directive that pragmatically tells us how to shift our attitude from craving in the land of plenty to contentment in Christ. “Rooted and built up in him, strengthened in the faith as you were taught, and overflowing with thankfulness”.
Overflowing gratitude defends against being taken “Captive through hollow and deceptive philosophy, which depends on human tradition and the elemental spiritual forces of this world rather than on Christ”. Think for a moment what might happen in our current land of plenty if every person was overflowing with thankfulness. If we climbed into bed at night and listed off the things for which we are grateful because all of it is owned by Christ and granted only on his authority.
What if we thanked God that we can think? That we can move. That we can rise in the morning and have anything to eat. That even if we didn’t have these we can see, hear, touch, feel and perceive God’s presence in our hearts. What if we thanked God for the people who love us every day, and if we have none of these for the people in our community who smile and say hi to us when we go to the grocery store? What if every night we count the things that Christ gave us that day in addition to salvation?
Overflowing with thankfulness pulls us into a refreshing world where the land of plenty, it’s culture, it’s morality and Original Sin lose their grip and we are as Paul says “brought to fullness”. If every person in our society did this, prospering and flourishing would not drag us down. Like iron filings to a magnet, our gratitude would draw us to the plumb line of God.
So, how might our thinking on something as simple as automobiles change? Having a car would be great, but if I had none, I could thank God for the bus I took or for the legs that enabled me to walk or for the fact that I had anywhere to go to begin with. If I had a car, I could thank God for that and who cares whether it is “so you” or indulges me wherever I go. It’s a blessing I have it at all. If it is ruined in a car accident or stained by bird droppings or crushed by a falling limb I could climb into bed at night and thank God that it was not me ruined in the accident, or under the bird or falling limb. More importantly, if I was in the car when it met its demise, I would now be in heaven with Christ because he created all and chose to save me. Yes indeed, thankfulness allows one to live in the land of plenty without being consumed by it.
Poor Amos. If he only knew the revelation from God that was coming in Christ and how it was to play out. Then he could’ve told them everything. Fortunately for us, Christ already lived, died, and rose from the dead so that we know the truth and can thank Paul for articulating it so well. We don’t have to reform the society or destroy it to reverse the attitudinal shift the land of plenty produces. None of us can do that anyhow. We only need do two things: accept Jesus Christ as the Lord and Savior of all and live our lives with overflowing thankfulness for that truth. That’s it. If we all did this, the society would reform itself because the culture would be Christ’s culture and what a sweet place that would be to live.
God bless you this day and every day of your faith journey.
Dave
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