Amos Rails against Injustice
God Is Not Fooled
Amos 5:7-13 The Message
Raw Truth Is Never Popular
7-9 Woe to you who turn justice to vinegar
and stomp righteousness into the mud.
Do you realize where you are? You’re in a cosmos
star-flung with constellations by God,
A world God wakes up each morning
and puts to bed each night.
God dips water from the ocean
and gives the land a drink.
God, God-revealed, does all this.
And he can destroy it as easily as make it.
He can turn this vast wonder into total waste.
and stomp righteousness into the mud.
Do you realize where you are? You’re in a cosmos
star-flung with constellations by God,
A world God wakes up each morning
and puts to bed each night.
God dips water from the ocean
and gives the land a drink.
God, God-revealed, does all this.
And he can destroy it as easily as make it.
He can turn this vast wonder into total waste.
10-12 People hate this kind of talk.
Raw truth is never popular.
But here it is, bluntly spoken:
Because you run roughshod over the poor
and take the bread right out of their mouths,
You’re never going to move into
the luxury homes you have built.
You’re never going to drink wine
from the expensive vineyards you’ve planted.
I know precisely the extent of your violations,
the enormity of your sins. Appalling!
You bully right-living people,
taking bribes right and left and kicking the poor when they’re down.
Raw truth is never popular.
But here it is, bluntly spoken:
Because you run roughshod over the poor
and take the bread right out of their mouths,
You’re never going to move into
the luxury homes you have built.
You’re never going to drink wine
from the expensive vineyards you’ve planted.
I know precisely the extent of your violations,
the enormity of your sins. Appalling!
You bully right-living people,
taking bribes right and left and kicking the poor when they’re down.
13 Justice is a lost cause. Evil is epidemic.
Decent people throw up their hands.
Protest and rebuke are useless,
a waste of breath.
Decent people throw up their hands.
Protest and rebuke are useless,
a waste of breath.
For Reflection
Yes,
raw truth is never popular. If these passages of God taking
retribution on sinners justifies your faith in God or makes you feel
good that the sinners are getting their just rewards, you have missed
the point!
Yes, God is speaking about those who commit gross injustices. But, God is also speaking a warning to you and me. If you see yourself as decent, favored by God and better than others who are evil and favored by Satan, you are also committing a grievous sin, the sin of arrogance, the sin of elevating yourself above others while ignoring the sins you have committed.
In God's eye, justice is not a lost cause and protest and rebuke of injustice is never a waste of breath. Losing God's gift of hope for a just and compassionate world is tantamount to losing faith in the God of justice.
Pray
Yes, God is speaking about those who commit gross injustices. But, God is also speaking a warning to you and me. If you see yourself as decent, favored by God and better than others who are evil and favored by Satan, you are also committing a grievous sin, the sin of arrogance, the sin of elevating yourself above others while ignoring the sins you have committed.
In God's eye, justice is not a lost cause and protest and rebuke of injustice is never a waste of breath. Losing God's gift of hope for a just and compassionate world is tantamount to losing faith in the God of justice.
Pray
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