Amos 2:6-8 - Israel!

2:6a

Now it is Israel (and in Amos “Israel” means the northern kingdom) who is in the line of fire, and Amos, or rather the Lord, has a lot more to say about Israel than any other nation received. The introductory formula is the same as for the other nations.

Judah’s condemnation were a rather general “they have rejected the Law”, the sins of Israel are very specific. In all the oracles Amos says “I will not revoke the punishment”. There is a penalty for wrongdoing, and it must be paid. So how are we saved? Why are we not punished? It is because   Christ took our punishment upon Himself (Is 53:5). At the time of writing (Jan 28, 2018) I have just finished reading Tom Wright’s book, The Day the Revolution Began, and published a series of blogs on the book. There he seemed to be denying the punishment aspect of the cross. This is a very foolish and unbiblical thing to do.

2:6b-8

The first crime is selling the poor into slavery. So again note that God does not like people being sold as slaves, and the Bible does condemn this! It is wrong in any sense to treat people as objects to be used. Next is the neglect of the poor. This is something we need to be wary of. If we are doing OK it is very easy to look down on others. Then there are wrong sexual practices. It should be noted that when sexual morals collapse it is women and children who suffer the most. More positively, one of the reasons the gospel spread in the Roman Empire, and was particularly attractive to women, was that it’s sexual morality placed a high value on women, unlike the culture of the day. The fourth sin is exploiting the poor, in particular those who had had to borrow money, sometimes to pay some imposed fine. Again, we can find situations in our society where similar things happen. Note that we see the mistreatment of people and exploitation of the poor, and sexual morality, in the same oracle. So often we want to separate them. In American terms, liberals will focus on the economic injustice, but see nothing wrong with sexual immorality, while conservatives will focus on the sexual immorality while overlooking economic ills. This is, of course, very much a generalisation, but we need to take on board the whole word of God.