Thoughts on Amos 8 & Mark 10

Today’s reading: Amos 8-9; Mark 10

Amos 8 and Mark 10 together tell the story of God’s heart in a really wonderful way.

In Amos 8 this morning we see another passage of the same kind of condemnations of Israel that we have talked about over and over again. Once more we see that God is not judging His people for a mis-step in regard to the law somewhere, or for someone struggling with even habitual sin, but for their blatant, unabashed exploitation of the poor and vulnerable. Look at this section:

Hear this, you who trample on the needy

and bring the poor of the land to an end,

saying, "When will the new moon be over,

that we may sell grain?

And the Sabbath,

that we may offer wheat for sale,

that we may make the ephah small and the shekel great

and deal deceitfully with false balances,

that we may buy the poor for silver

and the needy for a pair of sandals

and sell the chaff of the wheat?

Like we saw earlier in the book of Amos, the religious observances are there, but the heart is not. They are correctly not working on the Sabbath or during the new moon festival, in line with the law, but where is their heart in it? They are annoyed at having to stop working and are impatiently waiting for the day to be over so they can get back to scamming their fellow Israelites and taking advantage of the poor. This is what God is judging them for. They think their religious observances endear them to God, but the reality is that they have completely missed the heart of God.

As a contrast to this condemnation in Amos 8 this morning, we also get one of my favorite stories in the gospels in Mark 10, the story of the rich young ruler.

In Mark 10 we see a rich young man come to Jesus, asking Him what he needs to do to inherit eternal life. Jesus lists a few of the Ten Commandments, and the young man replies, "Teacher, all these I have kept from my youth." At this point, Jesus could go on a theological diatribe, similar to the Sermon on the Mount, laying out how, if he really understood those commandments, he wouldn't claim he had always kept them, and how if he has ever even looked at a woman in lust he has committed adultery in his heart, etc., etc., etc., but He doesn't. Instead, Mark tells us, "Jesus, looking at him, loved him, and said to him, 'You lack one thing: go, sell all that you have and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; and come, follow me.'" I love that line so much, "Jesus, looking at him, loved him." 

Here was this man, mistakenly believing he has successfully kept all these commandments, and far from rebuking or admonishing his arrogance, or correcting his theology, Jesus, in love, invites him to follow Him, but under a condition that will really get at the man's heart.

This is so different from how Jesus so often interacted with the religious people of His day who believed themselves to be righteous. What was the difference? The heart.

The scribes and Pharisees, like the people in Amos' day, looked to their adherence to the law as sufficient, regardless of where their hearts truly were before the Lord. This is why they could rebuke Jesus for working on the Sabbath when His "work" was healing, because it wasn't, for them, a matter of the heart, but of the letter of the law. But God is so much more concerned with the heart than with the letter. This is why, when this man comes to Jesus, genuinely and humbly wanting to know what he lacks to inherit eternal life, Jesus doesn't rebuke or correct his thinking about keeping the commandments, because this man understood that, for all his efforts to live faithfully, there was still something missing. He, in and of himself, was not sufficient, and that is the heart God desires His people to have.

Just like we talked about the other day, it's not that keeping the law, or otherwise holding to the instructed religious observances, is unimportant, it's that God is much more concerned with a heart that is right before Him than He is with those observances. A right heart will overflow in those observances, but it does not issue forth from them.