AMOS CHAPTER 4

-Cows of Bashan – women who led their husbands and threw lavish parties and sent their husbands to get more, they didn’t care how, just get more
-The fishhooks and hooks in their noses was a barbaric practice to lead those conquered away and introduce them to servitude. It was a way of humiliating them. The Assyrians depicted this practice, and the deal with holes in the wall is pretty significant. The people in that time period drew great security from their walls. That was their main source of protection since their entire city was built inside the walls and if someone was going to attack a city, they would first lay siege to its walls. The fact that they would be taken out through holes in their walls meant that they would be attacked and destroyed. Their walls would be brought down and they would be carried over the rubble of their walls.
-The people were falsely being religious and were “worshipping” in Bethel. Jerusalem was the only place true worshippers of God would worship and really they were not worshipping God at all. They were worshipping Baal and indulging in fornication and drunkenness like crazy. That is pretty terrible, I wonder what Gilgal was like.
-Amos mocks their religious rituals that they still do that are an abomination to a Holy God. The people had the Law of Moses and it was clear that unleavened bread was to be sacrificed, not leavened. They were not following God no matter how much they had convinced themselves that they were. They loved to boast about their good deeds too. How does God tolerate such things in His name? We wonder why bad things happen, I almost wonder how good things still happen.
-God tried to reveal himself to them repeatedly, but they did not see God in the midst of the plagues. Hunger, lack of rain, mildew, locusts, young men killed, destroyed like Sodom and Gomorrah, this sounds to me a lot like Egypt. Those people knew it was the hand of God delivering these things, but only because there was a messenger declaring it all because it happened. It seems that the Israelites would always turn their back on God and then wonder why the bad things were happening. They would not attribute it to God as discipline because that would mean something needed to change.
-Wow! He said prepare to meet your God, Israel. He is hardcore, He knows that His presence is incredible and will cause great distress and destruction when He comes to dwell with His people who do not follow or revere Him as God any longer.

THINGS I LEARNED FROM THIS CHAPTER
This chapter made me wonder about a lot of things. Why don’t we attribute the huge acts of God in nature to His discipline? Why are we so quick to dismiss it as just random chance? What are ways that we “worship God” that are an abomination to Him? How is God trying to get our attention today? What is God’s presence really like? How would I prepare to meet God? Why do people not turn back to God in the midst of the terrible or why do they so easily turn away from the God who wants to give them the best? There is really so much to unpack in this chapter for us today.