Thoughts on Amos 4

Today’s reading: Amos 3-4; Mark 7

Amos 4 is a perfect and explicit callout of what we have talked about so much on here, that God does not want to judge His people, and His goal in bringing judgement on them is not to destroy them, but is to capture their attention and call them back to Himself.

Step by step, God lists out all of the minor, but increasingly severe, judgements that He brought upon Israel to try to capture their attention, each time calling out, “Yet you did not return to me.” God declares that He had withheld rain, brought blight and mildew, sent pestilence, and even destroyed some of the people, all to try to get the people to listen. These are the exact judgements that He had declared, through Moses, that He would bring on Israel if they wandered from Him, telling them at that time that if they turned back to Him, He would relent and restore them. As He points out over and over again here in Amos 4 though, no matter what He sent their way, nothing was able to capture their attention.

God’s desire was to bless His people, not harm or destroy them, but He is also true to His word and could not let their rebellion continue unchecked. He didn’t bring a strong hand against them from the start, or send them into exile for creating other gods to worship instead of Him, but in His great mercy, He sent His prophets to warn them, and when they refused to listen to His prophets He brought these judgements upon the people to get them to listen to His words of warning by those prophets. As they continued to harden their hearts, God continued to ramp up the pressure on His people, but again, like we see in our chapter this morning, it was never in retribution, or to “make Israel pay” for their sin, but to stop them in their turning from Him and to try to draw them back to Himself so that He wouldn’t ultimately have to bring greater judgement upon them.

It’s ironic that what people try to use to label God has harsh, overbearing, and unjust in the Old Testament was actually an act of incredible mercy on His part in order to try to not have to bring greater or ultimate judgement on His people.