"Listen to me, you who walk on helpless people, you who are trying to destroy the poor people of this country, saying, ‘When will the New Moon festival be over so we can sell grain? When will the Sabbath be over so we can bring out wheat to sell? We can charge them more and give them less, and we can change the scales to cheat the people. We will buy poor people for silver, and needy people for the price of a pair of sandals. We will even sell the wheat that was swept up from the floor.’ The Lord has sworn by His name, the Pride of Jacob, ‘I will never forget everything that these people did.’" (NCV)
Yesterday, I bought a piece of wood. I needed it for a specific project and I needed it a certain size. The piece of wood I selected was advertised as being 4" high, but when I got it home and measured it, it was only 3-1/2" high (too small for the project I was doing). When I contacted the store, they explained to me that common measurements in lumber are now not what is advertised. For example, a 2x4 (which is supposed to be 2" by 4") is now 1-3/4" by 3-3/4". Of course, living in America I can tell you exactly why this has happened. It has happened because they can advertise it as the same product, charge more for it, and get more pieces of lumber out of the same tree because the pieces are now smaller. Companies do it all the time. They make the packaging slightly smaller and then raise the price slightly. It’s all about the profit margin. It’s all about making money.
The problem is that for rich people, it doesn’t matter. Even for those in the upper middle class, it’s still possible to maintain the same basic lifestyle. Just adjust a little. But if you are poor, if you are already doing without and without and without, having to try to figure out how to feed the same number of people with less food for more money is very difficult. And this kind of profit-making angers the Lord! "We can charge them more and give them less." The Lord says, "I will never forget everything that these people did."
There are two important aspects of this passage for believers. The first is that we have poor people around us. It doesn’t matter that they are poor because of bad decisions or poor lifestyles. The fact of the matter is that they are poor. They are having to do without, sometimes, the very basic things of life which can include food and housing. Maybe they are addicts who have embraced trying to hide from the pain of life. Maybe they are divorced and have lost the life they knew in the process of the marriage failure. Maybe they are simply the second or third or fourth generation of welfare recipients who don’t know anything else other than to get pregnant and apply for benefits.
It doesn’t matter!
God never put requirements on His love for us. In fact, "God shows His great love for us in this way: Christ died for us while we were still sinners" (Romans 5:8 NCV). We often repeat this verse, sometimes so easily, and yet we need to understand what it really means. "While we were still sinners." While we were rebelling against God. While we were His enemies! It is at this point that Christ died for us. The Father didn’t require us to clean up our act or even understand how we were supposed to be living. Christ just died and then came to meet us right where we were, in all of our hopelessness and sin. God expects us to reach out to those around us in the same way, right where they are! If they could "clean up," it’s likely they would. But they can’t, so they need us to come alongside and help, to support, to provide, to encourage, to pray. They need us because we are the Hands and Face of Jesus in the world. And we need to do this because these are the precious ones for whom the Lord Jesus died. He died for them! We need to be willing to reach out in love like He did.
The second aspect is that God cares about what we do, not just about what we believe. I’ve heard it said, from a number of people just before they run boldly into sin, that God sees their heart, somehow trying to justify that what they do isn’t nearly as important as what they believe. The fact is, what we do is a direct demonstration of what we believe. What we do comes from the beliefs within our hearts."Out of the heart proceed evil thoughts, murders, adulteries, fornications, thefts, false witness, blasphemies" (Matthew 15:19 NCV). The heart (what we believe) is directly related to our actions. In fact, it is impossible to sin unless that sin begins in our hearts!
So does God know our hearts? Absolutely! He knows that we love sex more than we love Him. He knows that we love pleasure more than we love Him. He knows that we love recreation more than we love Him. He knows that we love money more than we love Him. And anything that stands between us and God is a sin.
Amos clearly describes God’s words as God condemned, not what the Israelites believed (thought their belief structure was obviously skewed), but what they were doing! Our so-called belief structures can never be justification for our choosing sin. Our belief structures actually begin the sin. So if we think that we love God, we need to think again. "For this is the love of God, that we keep His commandments" (1 John 5:3 NCV). Loving God is demonstrated in our choosing to obey Him, rather than embracing sin. We are either loving Him or loving sin. We are either moving toward Him or moving away from Him. There is no middle ground.
© 2014 Robin L. O’Hare. All Rights Reserved.
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