Thursday, December 15, 2011

1 Oct. 2010 - Amos 6:1-7



Amos 6:1-7
"Woe to the complacent"

In the middle of a whole series of judgments on Israel because of their wickedness and sinfulness, Amos speaks out against the complacency of Israel AND Judah. The Israelites, as a whole were becoming a decadent society (v 4-6) and were paying no to attention to the "ruin of Joseph" (v 6), that is the degradation of the tribe, in this instance, of Ephraim (see also Ezekiel 16:49). Because of their complacency, issues which matter to God, and should have mattered to Israel, were not being attended to and so Israel was indirectly disobeying God by being complacent. God compares Israel's kingdom to that of the sacked cities of the Philistines as a warning of their condition, not necessarily physically, but spiritually and morally (v 2). At the end of this short lament, God pronounces his judgment on Israel because of their complacency (v 7), which is the exile that has been prophesied previously, now with another justification for the judgment.

In a nutshell, complacency is never a good thing, especially when complacent about the things which matter to God.

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