Who, Me? - Amos 3:1-6

As we left off last time, I asked us to look at how we, individually, pursue worship. We have a personal call to a personal relationship and we have an individual responsibility to respond. I want to lead off today's post about Chapter 3 of Amos with a section from The Expositor's Bible Commentary.

" A summons to hear the 'word of the Lord' introduces this oracle. The summons is directed against the 'whole family I brought up out of Egypt' and thus seems to include Judah as well as Israel....."
...."The pronouncement of judgment, addressed primarily to the northern kingdom, warned Judah and Israel that their election by Yahweh in itself was insufficient ground for thinking they were nationally secure; for God demanded personal obedience as well."

When God, through Amos, says to His people "you only have I chosen" Amos uses the word yada which is a word which connotes not a general knowing, but an intimate foreknowledge or purposing. God had set Israel aside for His purpose, to glorify Him, and it was not just on a national level - it was on a personal level as well, just as He "knew" and consecrated Jeremiah, He also knows and consecrates us to His purpose. He did that to the people of Israel, not just the nation. Their punishment was due to their failure to live up to the consecration and privilege in the world. With great privilege comes great responsibility. It was Israel's responsibility to live into their divine purpose. They failed to do so, no matter that God had repeatedly come to their aid and provided ways out of the messes that they had gotten themselves into. The people of Israel were to point the world toward their God - to glorify Him through their praise and their actions. Isaiah 29:13 (echoed in Matthew 15:8 by Jesus) says:

'The Lord says: "These people come near to me with their mouth and honor me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me. Their worship of me is made up only of rules taught by men."

As we saw in the last blog, the people had learned how to dot the i's and cross the t's of worship, but it was empty and not reflected in their lives. There is an individual responsibility to the worship of God. We have to give up our hearts, to become a new life, to agree to walk completely with the Lord. In another book I am reading right now, it speaks of the internal change that has to happen before we become the new birth. We must live out our worship, and not because we are following the rules, but because we have chosen to accept the divine purpose and responsibility that comes with the blessing of being sons and daughters of the King. Many people hesitate to make that choice because they are afraid of what God will ask of them. Well, he will ask you to step into what He had in mind in His 'yada' - His knowledge of us, His purpose, His design. We will find a better fit in this than in anything else we can come up with! The consequences of accepting His promise and then refusing to walk in it will end in disaster for us. There is cause and effect written here. "Do two walk together unless they have agreed to do so? Does a bird just randomly stumble into a trap if there is no bait? Does a trap spring if there is nothing there to trip it? (paraphrase vs 3-5) If we agree to walk with God and then fail to do so, there will be consequences, whether from God or just the logical outcome of poor decisions. Here, however, we are dealing strictly with the result of choosing image over relationship. I believe that it cost Israel their status as the chosen nation. (Matt. 22: 1-8, Luke 14:16-24)

We have the same opportunity. When we come to Christ and covenant with Him, we are agreeing to walk in His way, not ours. This may be difficult, even more so when we try to hold on to our old self, listening to the lies of the enemy, keeping us from walking in the blessing. We have to take personal stock of how we see our walk. Do we choose to walk with Him, or are we doing so out of societal norms, or because that's the way we were raised, or we are doing it for our kids? It is of critical importance that we choose covenant, that we choose the walk. We don't get the privilege because we belong to a nation - if that was not true of Israel then, why would it be true of us today? We are called into God's blessing, set apart to be holy people, to live a life that glorifies Him, to walk in relationship with Christ. But we have a personal responsibility to walk in obedience to His purpose, understanding that His intimate knowledge of us, and our obedient relationship with Him on a daily basis will allow us to live out our lives as His chosen people.