Amos 9:1-10

To those who have been journeying with me each day, my apologies for not having a post yesterday. I pray that you are not reserving for me the words of Amos in my shortcoming. ;)

Admittedly, Amos 9 should be read as one message from God, not in two sections I will be studying them. But there's a lot of meat to this passage, and I don't want to skip over the hard stuff just to get to the beautiful place of restoration. Let's set the stage for Amos 9 a little bit. God is standing by the altar, speaking to Amos. It would be easy to breeze right past this, but when the prophets mention a place, it's good to look at it. The altar is a place of worship. It could be at Bethel, or it could be Amos seeing a vision of God in the Temple in Jerusalem. Either way, it is clear that Amos is picturing worship in this vision. In fact, it could be Bethel, since God clearly has an intention to tear down the shrine at Bethel. In fact, kings of Israel are assessed partially based on whether or not they tear down the altar at Bethel (which they never do). God doesn't like it ("Go to Bethel and sin..." rings through my ears at this point), and God will eventually remove it from the land, destroying this source of oppression and idolatry.

What boggles the mind from this sense that God is going to tear down the idol is what comes in verse 7. This flies in the face of what Israel has been banking on as a nation. They count on the fact that God thinks about them differently than every other nation. And to some extent, there is truth there. God did create this people group with a special relationship. But Israel thinks they corner the market on God. That God is "their God" and no one else has any claim to God. And God starts talking about being the God of the nations- even the Arameans and the Philistines, who are sworn enemies of the Israelites.

I suppose what I take out of this is that God is big. Really big. Israel's attempt to shrink God into an idol was misguided. They neglected the big-ness of God. Let that challenge us when we think we have the corner of the market on God and truth. Jesus told the disciples that there were other sheep in other folds that the disciples did not know about (John 10:16). Therefore, let us be open to the big-ness of God and celebrate a love greater than we could ever imagine. A love that is shown most clearly in Jesus Christ.