Morning Coffee With Renae

Amos 4:1 – 3 “Hear this word, you cows of Bashan on Mount Samaria, you women who oppress the poor and crush the needy and say to your husbands, ‘Bring us some drinks!’ The Sovereign Lord has sworn by his holiness: The time will surely come when you will be taken away with hooks, the last of you with fishhooks. You will each go straight out through breaks in the wall, and you will cast out toward Harmon,” declares the Lord.

All I have to say is, “Ouch.”

I mean, really. What woman wants to be called a cow? What an insult!

But before we move on to the meaning of these verses, let’s get a little background information. The people Amos addressed were cattlemen. God had blessed them with the lush, green pastures of Bashan, a territory east of the Jordan River. Their cows were strong, sleek and well-fed. They were also typical cattle; they’d trample the smaller, weaker cows to get to the best grass. They’d even trample over fences, if they saw something  better on the other side. The selfish cows.

Some people think Amos addressed the sleek, well-dressed, well-fed Israelite women here. You know the ones – they nagged and bossed and manipulated their husbands to get them what they wanted, no matter the cost. Others think he addressed all the wealthy Israelites, both men and women. I tend to agree with the second interpretation, but it doesn’t really matter. No matter who Amos referred to, the lesson applies to us all.

The Israelites clung piously to their religious practices, yet they took advantage of the poor and lived pretty much however they wanted. They fed their carnal, selfish desires, and stopped at nothing to satiate their hunger for lavish, excessive living. They looked pretty on the outside, but they were rotten where it counted.

James 1:27 tells us, “Religion that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless is this: to look after orphans and widows in their distress and to keep oneself from being polluted by the world.” In other words, the Israelites were doing the exact opposite of what pleases God. Instead of helping the needy and less fortunate, they ran right over them, leaving them even needier and more less fortunate. Instead of keeping themselves from being polluted by the world, they did nothing to curb their carnal, fleshly desires.

This breaks my heart, for many of our churches are near mirror-images of Amos’s audience. We go to church and cling to our religious rituals. We sing. We doze through the sermon. We have big ‘ol potluck dinners where we stuff ourselves. We have our church bazaars and our Sunday School socials.

But are we really helping the poor? Not just the financially poor, but also the poor in spirit? I mean, are we really getting our hands dirty and helping them? Are we looking into their eyes and listening to their stories and filling up their empty, impoverished souls with the love of God?

Are we keeping ourselves from being polluted by the world? Are our thoughts and desires the same as God’s thoughts and desires, or are we distracted by wanting a bigger house or a fancy pool in our back yard or sleek new clothes and collagen and a facelift and a new car? Are we gossiping and slandering with no thought to how our words wound the spirits of our victims? Are we sneaking around, having affairs or extra-marital sex or viewing pornography?

Friends, have we allowed ourselves to become polluted?

Not that it’s wrong to have a fancy house or a swimming pool or nice clothes. It’s not. What’s wrong is when worldly things occupy our thoughts, when the desire for those things causes us to ignore God’s ways, which are always better. Many times, when God sees that we genuinely want to please Him, He’ll bless us with material things, which is pretty cool.

But when we become like those sleek, fat cows, pushing aside anyone and everyone, demanding food for our carnal cravings, God is not pleased. And when we pretend to want to please Him, when in reality we only want to please ourselves, it makes Him sick. It makes Him very, very angry.

When He blesses us with green pastures, we must be careful stewards of those blessings, and look out for the smaller, weaker among us. And we must never, ever worship the pasture itself, instead of worshiping the One who provided it.

Dear Father, I want to please You. I don’t want to be polluted and dirty. Help me to keep a lookout for people who need Your love, and show me how to best share it with them. Adjust my thoughts and desires away from myself, and onto You.

Amen

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