SEEK THE LORD, AND YE SHALL LIVE.
Amos 5:6-7; Amos 5:10-15.
Amos is already lamenting the doom of the northern kingdom of Israel (Amos 5:1), bewailing the fact that she will ‘no more rise’ because ‘there is none to raise her up’ (Amos 5:2); but he immediately hints that there may yet be a remnant (Amos 5:3; Amos 5:15).
The LORD says to these already doomed people, ‘Seek ye Me, and ye shall live’ (Amos 5:4). It is not ‘seek the Church’ - whether at Bethel or Gilgal or Beersheba or wherever (Amos 5:5), but “Seek the LORD, and ye shall live” (Amos 5:6).
This is both an imperative, and a threat in Amos 5:6-7. “Lest He (the LORD) break out like fire” against a religion that is hypocritical, and that does not translate itself into justice and righteousness in everyday life.
Other prophets add a promise (e.g. Isaiah 55:6-7; Jeremiah 29:12-13). Jesus tells us to ‘Seek first the kingdom of God, and His righteousness, and all these things shall be added unto you’ (Matthew 6:33). ‘Ask, and you shall receive; seek and ye shall find; knock and the door shall be opened unto you’ (Matthew 7:7).
Amos 5:8-9 informs us just Whom we must seek. Don’t look to the stars, or to Orion, look to the One who made them: ‘the LORD is His name, that strengthens the spoiled against the strong, so that the spoiled come against the fortress.’
The indictment against those whose religion is hypocritical, and yet whom God is still calling from death to life, is that they hate those who exercise right judgment, and abhor those who speak the truth (Amos 5:10). Second, they oppress the poor (Amos 5:11a). For this they will suffer loss (Amos 5:11b).
God knows their hearts (Amos 5:12a). He also knows the outworking of the “transgressions and mighty sins” that may reside there. “They afflict the just, they take a bribe, they turn aside the poor” from justice (Amos 5:12b).
It was “an evil time”, when those who wanted to get on in life hardly dare rock the boat by speaking out against what was going on. Sometimes, we might think, it is “prudent” to “keep silence” in such a time (Amos 5:13). But the earlier ‘Seek ye Me, and ye shall live’ (Amos 5:4), and “Seek the LORD, and ye shall live” (Amos 5:6) must now manifest themselves outwardly: “Seek good, and not evil, that ye may live” (Amos 5:14a).
‘Religious’ people presume that ‘God’ is with them. However, James the brother of our Lord suggests that ‘Pure religion and undefiled before God and the Father is this: To visit the fatherless and widows in their affliction, (and) to keep himself unspotted from the world’ (James 1:27).
Are we really “seeking the LORD” (Amos 5:6)? If we are genuinely “seeking good and not evil, that we may live” (Amos 5:14a), then we will “hate evil, and love the good, and establish justice” where we have influence (Amos 5:15a; cf. Psalm 34:14). “And so the LORD (Yahweh), the God of hosts shall be with you, as ye have spoken” (Amos 5:14b).” Thus we set ourselves up for a fresh infusion of His grace (Amos 5:15b).
The resolution of all this comes in the Person of Jesus, who has said that everyone who believes on Him ‘may have everlasting LIFE: and I will raise him up at the last day’ (John 6:40). Again He says, ‘Whoever eats my flesh, and drinks my blood HAS eternal LIFE; and I will raise him up at the last day’ (John 6:54).
