Thoughts on Amos 5

Today’s reading: Amos 5; Mark 8

I wish that every Christian church in the West today would hear, listen, and truly consider God’s words to Israel through Amos in Amos 5.

I hate, I despise your feasts,

and I take no delight in your solemn assemblies.

Even though you offer me your burnt offerings and grain offerings,

I will not accept them;

and the peace offerings of your fattened animals,

I will not look upon them.

Take away from me the noise of your songs;

to the melody of your harps I will not listen.

But let justice roll down like waters,

and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream.

Despite all of their syncretistic worship of other gods, Israel had not yet left off the worship of Yahweh by Amos’ day. They continued in their feasts and offerings, but they, as a people, were no different for their association to God, and God makes it abundantly clear how He feels about that. Far from being pleased that they are still at least worshipping Him in line with His instructions to Moses, He says He despises their gatherings, offerings, and songs, calling instead for justice and righteousness. I’m betting it was this very passage that Jesus had in mind when He rebuked the scribes and Pharisees, saying, “Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you tithe mint and dill and cumin, and have neglected the weightier matters of the law: justice and mercy and faithfulness. These you ought to have done, without neglecting the others.”

From the beginning, evidently, there has been this notion that it really doesn’t matter how you live the rest of the time, as long as you are performing your religious duties. If you are showing up to enough services, giving enough to the right institutions or causes, and otherwise associating yourself with the right group, clearly God is pleased with you. What more could He possibly want?

God is significantly less concerned with our religious observances than He is with our heart.

That said, the heart being the greater concern does not mean that the religious observances are meaningless or unimportant. God commanded the very feasts, assemblies, offerings, and sacrifices that He is saying in Amos 5 that He despises. And in the same way, when Jesus was rebuking the scribes and Pharisees, He didn’t tell them to focus on justice, mercy, and faithfulness instead of keeping the minutiae of the law, but that they should have focused on the one without neglecting the other. And for us today, we are told to not forsake meeting together, to sing to one another with psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, to pray for one another, to learn the Word, to celebrate communion, to give generously, etc. We have religious observances that we are instructed and commanded as well, but just as in the past, so too today, those observances are no substitute for a heart of faithfulness to the Lord.

I was just talking to a friend a couple nights ago about this very thing, that so many people will show up to church only on Christmas and Easter, and assume that somehow makes them right (or at least better off) with God. Or others that go further, going to church every week, maybe even giving financially to the church, but whose lives look otherwise identical to the lives of everyone else around them. And yet, what does God say in Amos 5? That He despises such observances! These things are good, and right, and important, when they flow out of a relationship with God and are part of a live given over in faithfulness to Him, but they are less than meaningless when they are divorced from relationship and a desire for faithfulness.

We, as the broader church community, need to get this right. We need to help people understand what God is most interested in and concerned with, and lead people to first give themselves to the Lord, and then pursue what He has called us to as a community in that context, and out of that relationship.