Seek the Lord and live, lest he break out like fire in the house of Joseph, and it devour, with none to quench it for Bethel, O you who turn justice to wormwood and cast down righteousness to the earth! (Amos 5:6-7)
One day God called a rancher to leave his job to become God’s mouthpiece and prophet to the people of Israel. Amos came as an outsider with warnings of God’s imminent judgment upon the king, politically powerful, wealthy, well-connected, and the religious. It is weird because Amos spoke at a time when Israel seemed to be flourishing. The economy was prospering, at least on paper. There was law and order, albeit skewed to the rich and powerful. Church service attendance at the king’s houses of worship was high. In an instant, the prophet shattered this veneer of prosperity and religiosity– it was all a farce. If you look deeply into this society and system, all God sees is death, not life. The prophet said there was no hope here. Israel was “fallen, no more to rise” (v2).
In our passage this morning, we find Amos insisting that God is still open to welcoming His people if they would offer a heartfelt repentance followed by dramatically changing the ways they’ve been living in accord with that repentance. The people Amos was speaking to thought they had been “seeking the LORD” by attending worship. Clearly, it wasn’t what God wanted.True worship profoundly influences what God’s people do every single moment outside of a worship service. That was not happening in Amos’ day. God was never interested about coming to a worship service at a church. He is looking for doing good for others, especially the poor and vulnerable in the community and the society at large because loving God and loving neighbor are inseparable. You can’t be seeking God if you’re not seeking good. There’s a correlation between seeking good and finding life, and that’s because where there is good, there is God.
Doing good and loving neighbor brings you life from God. Amos’ words speak powerfully and truthfully to us, in our society and globally connected world, wherever the poor are trampled, justice perverted, and undue suffering and bigotry exist. In a world like ours threatened by economic collapse, global warming, and moral evils, the words of Amos bear witness to why we must seek God by seeking good– it’s really the only way we can live.
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