Lessons from Amos: Walking with God
“Can two walk together, except they be agreed?” (Amos:3:3Can two walk together, except they be agreed?
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Amos was a prophet during the reign of Jeroboam II (son of Joash), who ruled the northern 10 tribes of Israel [2] from 825 to 784 BC (2 Kings:14:23In the fifteenth year of Amaziah the son of Joash king of Judah Jeroboam the son of Joash king of Israel began to reign in Samaria, and reigned forty and one years.
See All... [3]). Some 100 years earlier, Jeroboam I (son of Nebat) led a rebellion against the son of Solomon and started the northern nation of Israel [2] (1 Kings 12 [4]). In order to keep his people from returning to Jerusalem, Jeroboam I “made Israel [2] to sin” (1 Kings:12:30And this thing became a sin: for the people went to worship before the one, even unto Dan.
See All... [5]; 16:26; etc.) by developing a “new” religion centered on an image of a golden calf, with idol temples in Bethel and Dan (1 Kings:12:28-29 [28] Whereupon the king took counsel, and made two calves of gold, and said unto them, It is too much for you to go up to Jerusalem: behold thy gods, O Israel, which brought thee up out of the land of Egypt.
[29] And he set the one in Bethel, and the other put he in Dan.
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Those northern tribes never returned to the worship of Jehovah but “sinned against the LORD,” and Israel [2] “feared other gods” (2 Kings:17:7For so it was, that the children of Israel had sinned against the LORD their God, which had brought them up out of the land of Egypt, from under the hand of Pharaoh king of Egypt, and had feared other gods,
See All... [7]). The list of their sins was long and grievous in God’s sight.
- They “did secretly those things that were not right against the LORD” (2 Kings:17:9And the children of Israel did secretly those things that were not right against the LORD their God, and they built them high places in all their cities, from the tower of the watchmen to the fenced city.
See All... [8]). - Israel [2] set up “images and groves in every high hill” (v. 10).
- They “wrought wicked things to provoke the LORD to anger” (v. 11).
- They “worshipped all the host of heaven” (v. 16).
- They “used divination and enchantments, and sold themselves to do evil in the sight of the LORD, to provoke him to anger” (v. 17).
- They “feared the LORD, and served their own gods” (v. 33).
Amos was commissioned in those dark years to openly confront the nation to “walk” in “agreement” with the God they professed to worship. Hypocrisy is at the core of the judgment and warnings recorded for us in the little book of Amos. We must learn the lessons or suffer the same judgment.
