Wednesday, October 8, 2014
Amos 6:1 Woe to you who are complacent ...
REAL WEALTH IS ...
A short message from a short book ... the prophet Amos.
He was a shepherd who hailed from Tekoa, a village 12 miles southeast of Bethlehem. Amos was not a prophet's son or a man of noble birth, yet the LORD God chose and called him to serve as His voice in the days when King Uzziah (or Azariah) ruled in Judah and Jeroboam II ruled in Israel.
Amos spoke the word that Jehovah put in his mouth at a time when there was great prosperity and wealth in both Judah and Israel. While neither nation was in need of the necessities of life, spiritually speaking, both nations were internally rotten. Many had made their wealth their god, and others worshipped the false gods of the surrounding nations. So the LORD God sent Amos.
Amos means burden, and his was a fitting name, not because Amos bore a physical burden, but because the LORD laid upon him the responsibility of foretelling the impending judgment of the Living God.
"Well, good pastor, it's always nice to have a little Old Testament history review now and then, but what does all of this have to do with us? We are not an unbelieving people. We have not rejected the LORD. The burden of judgment that Amos spoke against the people of Syria, Philistia, Tyre, Edom, Ammon and Moab don't apply to us."
True -- unless we are unbelieving -- those words of Judgment should cause us no fright, provided we don't forsake the Triune God inwardly or outwardly. However, the words that the LORD had for Judah and Israel, and the circumstances under which they lived should give us pause and should make us think about the world in which we live and the spiritual dangers that surround us today.
The Prophet Amos lived in a time of great prosperity and so do we. Amos warned the people of God about the consequences of rejecting and replacing the LORD and we should be warned. Amos also comforted the penitent by promising a day when the Christ would arise and deliver the people of God.
May God the Holy Spirit keep us in faith, through Word and Sacrament, ready for the Day of Christ's coming -- both warned about continuing in sin and comforted with the message of forgiveness and access to God in Christ. Amen.
