"Seek good and not evil, that you may live; so the Lord God of hosts will be with you, as you have spoken. Hate evil, love good; establish justice in the gate. It may be that the Lord God of hosts will be gracious to the remnant of Joseph." (NKJV)
"Seek good and not evil."
There is an active sense in the word "seek." You can’t seek by randomly just walking along, hoping that whatever you seek will fall into your path. You have to diligently search for what it is, looking carefully, persevering until you find it. Amos isn’t telling the people to do good when it’s convenient or easy. He’s telling them to make doing good their lifestyle.
There is also a sense of the covenant relationship with God in this Hebrew word, darash:
"This word is often used to describe the ‘seeking of’ the Lord in the sense of entering into covenantal relationship with Him. The prophets often used darash as they called on the people to make an about-face in living and instead "seek ye the Lord while he may be found …" (Isa. 55:6)" (Vine’s).
Seeking good is then a specific and deliberate act. For Christians, seeking good should become a way of life every moment of every day. The prophet Isaiah wrote:
"Cease to do evil, learn to do good; seek justice, rebuke the oppressor; defend the fatherless, plead for the widow" (1:16b-17 NKJV).
"Learn to do good." Doing good is both something we choose and something we can learn how to do. We aren’t born good. Babies are innocent in the sense that they are not yet responsible for their sins, but we are all born sinful. We are ego-centric from birth, wanting to rebel against God and against every authority. But once we are saved, we are given the ability to choose whether or not we want to obey God, whether or not we want to do good. We can learn to do good, we can choose to do good, we can seek to do good rather than evil.
"It may be that the Lord God of hosts will be gracious . . . "
God never stops being gracious or loving toward us. He never stops wanting for each person to be saved.
"The Lord is not slack concerning His promise, as some count slackness, but is longsuffering toward us, not willing that any should perish but that all should come to repentance" (2 Peter 3:9 NKJV).
But there is a point—the point of judgment—when God will judge justly and there will no longer be salvation, not because God doesn’t want to extend it, but because the person will have so hardened his heart toward God that he will refuse to accept it:
"You are storing up terrible punishment for yourself because of your stubbornness in refusing to turn from your sin. For there is going to come a day of judgment when God, the just judge of all the world, will judge all people according to what they have done. He will give eternal life to those who persist in doing what is good, seeking after the glory and honor and immortality that God offers. But he will pour out his anger and wrath on those who live for themselves, who refuse to obey the truth and practice evil deeds" (Romans 2:5b-8 NLT).
One of the first things that the American Church "gave up," back in the mid 1950s was an active understanding of hell and eternal judgment. Preachers previously had actively preached about hell and folks who didn’t want to repent got tired of hearing it. So preachers changed their message to one of love. The problem is this. It isn’t that God doesn’t love each of us; He does. We saw that in 2 Peter 3:9. It’s that God doesn’t love us in a way that allows Him to tolerate sin. God can’t tolerate sin because sin is basically anti-God. (If you’re a sci fi buff, think of the concept of matter and anti-matter. The two can’t exist; they cancel each other out. It’s the same with God and sin except that God is all powerful and sin is rebellion against Him.)
Don’t be deceived. There will be a day of judgment for every soul who has ever lived and if that soul isn’t trusting on the mercy of God, then the judgment will be terrible and final and eternal. I’ve read a lot of articles from nonbelievers who joke about and even say they welcome being in hell. They won’t once they are there, but it will be the only choice for them because their hatred of God will be so complete, so final that they will eternally continue to refuse to bow down to Him in worship, even if it meant releasing them from the punishment they are suffering. Hell is worse than anything we can image, worse than anything anyone has ever experienced. But the only time to make a conscious choice of where we will spend eternity is now! Now is the time to seek to do good. Now is the time to put away evil. Now is the time to throw ourselves on the mercy of our loving Father.
© 2014 Robin L. O’Hare. All Rights Reserved.
For permission to copy, please contact servinggodalone@yahoo.com
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