Amos Chapter 2

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Amos Chapter 2
Closer to Home«
Please go ahead and read Chapter 2 of Amos
WARNING
 The
Old Testament can be quite earthy  In other words in it we see violence, atrocities, war, and fighting which makes us uncomfortable  My question is, does the Old Testament make us uncomfortable because we are still seeing these things in 2010?
Quick Review
    
We met Amos, a prophet, who also was a farm manager (owned sheep, cattle, and figs) In Chapter 1, we noticed Amos exposing the sins of the nations around Israel As the chapter progresses the nations get closer and closer to Israel It sort of would be like saying Montauk is doing this, Riverhead is doing this, Syosset is doing this, etc Guess who is next????????
Chapter 2 continues this with Moab¶ Moab¶s sins
  
 
Moab is the purple country north of the yellow Kingdom of Edom The Moabites were descended from Moab, Lot¶s son In the Old Testament, there was tension between the Moabites and the folks in Israel and Judah Tensions producing wars and atrocities It is thought that from Amos¶ house in Tekoa he could see Moab across the Dead Sea.
So, what was the sin of Moab?
   

They invaded Edom and captured the grave of an Edomite King. They then exhumed the bones and burned them to ash Why? To prevent the king from resting in peace thereby denying eternal life and desecrating a sacred place. This of course would inflict pain on others
In other words

Imagine if enemies of the US were to exhume one of our presidents and burn his bones to ash and you get an understanding of what the Moabites did
The next country is Judah
Now we are getting closer to home as Judah and Israel were once one Kingdom ruled by kings such as David or Solomon.  As we discuss the sins of Judah, notice that they are against God not humanity like before.

So, what was going on there?
    
The people of Judah have broken the covenant. A covenant is an agreement between two parties, usually a stronger one and weaker one. In this case it is between God and humanity and the covenant was made between Abraham and God in Genesis See Genesis chapter 15 The covenant basically states that God will give to the Jews land and people, but the Jews needed to worship only God
Here is the problem


The Jews in Judah were worshipping other Gods besides the God of Abraham and Isaac and Jacob Many of them were worshipping Baal, a fertility God
To make matters worse«. worse«
 

They also were not following the commandments set forth by God in Exodus and Deuteronomy They were ³being led astray´, the direct translation of the Hebrew suggesting that they were drunk Destruction was coming²Babylon would eventually invade, destroy Judah, and take the people into exile
Finally we get home to Israel
 

Things were REALLY bad in Israel Baalism was gaining ground rapidly to the point that even the Kings worshipped Baal. But there were 2 issues of real concern
Exploiting the poor
Folks in Israel were oppressing the poor  Most likely it was creditors who were bribing judges  With the judges help, they would sell the poor into slavery to pay off their debts  So we have corruption as well as selling the poor into slavery

Recall that we are called to serve the poor
 Luke 4:18  ³The
Spirit of the Lord is upon me because he has anointed me to preach good news to the poor´
The second item was sexual immorality
 Part of
Baal worship was cult prostitutes  It was thought that having sex with these cult prostitutes as a form of worshipping the deity  So, it was likely that a father and a son used the same girl  Baalism had no moral requirements or accountability
Israel, because of its sins will be destroyed

This eventually happened with the invasion of Israel by Assyria
Thought for the day
the increasing amount of consumer debt, are we similar to the situation in Israel?  What do we do about it
 With
If there are questions««. questions««.

Please e-mail them to me