When we finished yesterday's study session we found the Lord reminding the Israel that He uprooted the heathen nations who lived in Canaan before them and planted Israel in their place. Yet His people are behaving as if they've forgotten He rescued them from Egypt and settled them in a bountiful land. They are behaving as if His reason for removing the previous inhabitants of the land wasn't due to idolatry, for now they are worshiping the false gods of those very cultures the Lord judged. He warned them long ago, in the book of Deuteronomy, that if they fell into idolatry He would uproot them from the land just as He uprooted those who were there before them.
It's not as if He brought them into the promised land and provided no guidebook for godly living. During the wilderness years between their captivity in Egypt and their glorious freedom in the promised land, He gave them the commandments and the law. And as if those weren't enough to live by, He called prophets to minister to them to guide them in the ways they should go. He says, "'I also raised up prophets from among your children and Nazirites from among your youth. Is this not true, people of Israel?' declares the Lord." (Amos 2:11)
The Lord could say something similar to us, for He has made His holy word accessible to us in a way it has never been accessible before. The Scriptures are at our fingertips at any time of the day or night. If we do not know what they say, it is because we did not consult them; it is not because the Lord didn't provide them to us. Likewise, the people of Amos' day had no excuse for not knowing what the Lord expected of them. They had the commandments. They had the law. Even those among them who were unable to read had the opportunity to hear the word of God read to them by the priests and proclaimed to them by the prophets.
But many didn't avail themselves of the opportunity to read the word of God or to listen to the priests and prophets. Instead they scorned the word of God and enticed the Nazirites, who lived by a very strict code, into sin. One of the things a Nazirite was forbidden to do was to ingest any products made from grapes (the whole list of regulations can be found in Numbers 6:1-21), but those who went astray from the Lord wanted to drag the Nazirites down with them and this is what they did: "But you made the Nazirites drink wine and commanded the prophets not to prophesy." (Amos 2:12)
Not only did they interfere with the vows the Nazirites made to the Lord, but they also ordered the prophets to be silent. Breaking this order of silence likely meant a harsh penalty such as imprisonment or death. You'll recall how King Ahab's wife, Jezebel, ordered the prophets of the Lord killed and was successful in executing a number of them. I am sure there were many others who were arrested, beaten, imprisoned, and killed throughout the history of the prophets in Israel.
The Lord Jesus made mention of just such a thing in Matthew 23:30 when He talked about how the prophets of old were put to death by the ancestors of the Pharisees and teachers of His own time. He also went on to say that the Pharisees and teachers of His day (who He accused of being self-righteous hypocrites) would soon do the same things their ancestors did, even though they considered themselves better than their ancestors. About the prophets and teachers He was going to call, He said: "Some of them you will kill and crucify; others you will flog in your synagogues and pursue from town to town." (Matthew 23:34b) All these things came true just as He said, both on the pages of the New Testament and during the centuries since.
The Lord gave the people He called out of Egypt everything they needed to be spiritually successful in the promised land. But by Amos' time many of them didn't want to hear the word of God. They didn't want to obey the word of God and they took steps to derail the lives of those who still were obeying the word of God. They tried to prevent others from hearing the word of God, preferring instead to bring up the new generations in pagan religions. The Lord is not going to allow such crimes to go unpunished. It's bad enough that anyone would reject light for darkness, but the people of Amos' day were trying to keep their children in the darkness too. For this the Lord vows to bring destruction upon the nation.
"'Now then, I will crush you as a cart crushes when loaded with grain. The swift will not escape, the strong will not muster their strength, and the warrior will not save his life. The archer will not stand his ground, the fleet-footed soldier will not get away, and the horseman will not save his life. Even the bravest warriors will flee naked on that day,' says the Lord." (Amos 2:13-16) Because the majority of the nation's citizens have embraced spiritual darkness, a day of national and political darkness is on its way. Defeat is coming. Shame will cover the faces of everyone who has rejected the one true God in favor of serving useless idols. Lest we make the same mistake as the Pharisees and teachers of Jesus' era and think that we are any better than sinners in the past, we must keep in mind that the idols of our generation may not look the same as they did during the generation spoken of in the book of Amos. We don't have to bow down before a golden image in order to be idolaters. Anyone or anything we value more than the Lord is an idol. In our day that might be money, or a relationship, or a substance, or a hobby, or a habit. But if our heart belongs to anything more than it belongs to God, we are committing idolatry and there is no glory in idolatry---not for us and not for the Creator who loves us and who wants to help us.
The only glory mankind will ever experience is in sharing in the glory of the Creator. We have no glory in ourselves. We have no honor in ourselves. The only way we can ever be what we were created to be is by submitting ourselves to our Creator. There are many passages in the Bible that use the word "shame" but in all of those passages it's clear that shame was never intended for anyone but the enemies of God and the enemies God's children. Shame is never intended for the believer; rather, the Lord promises to reward those who trust in Him. On one of the many occasions upon which the Lord delivered David from his enemies, David penned these true and trustworthy words about our God: "Those who look to Him are radiant; their faces are never covered with shame." (Psalm 34:5)
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