Amos -- Prepare to Meet Your God (4)
4 This is what the Lord says: “For three sins of Judah, even for four, I will not relent. Because they have rejected the law of the Lord and have not kept his decrees, because they have been led astray by false gods, the gods their ancestors followed, 5 I will send fire on Judah that will consume the fortresses of Jerusalem.”
The US claims to be a Christian nation that trusts in God. His commandment was to love our neighbor as ourselves. Torture, violating treaties, hunting down and killing women and children, selling communities to the highest bidder, and cursing man made in the image of God are all examples of rejecting that law. Money and power are false gods that have led this nation astray.
Judgment on Israel 6 This is what the Lord says: “For three sins of Israel, even for four, I will not relent. They sell the innocent for silver, and the needy for a pair of sandals.
Where was your phone made? How about your slippers? You want to blame covid on China, a poor country eating bats and living in crowded conditions, yet you don’t blame the sweatshops that you buy from for creating these conditions.
7 They trample on the heads of the poor as on the dust of the ground and deny justice to the oppressed.
Build the wall. Not so that we can keep illegal immigrants out because if we did that who would do all the menial tasks we don’t want to do. No, we build the wall so that we can deny justice to the oppressed. You don’t like the oppression, fine, we’ll send you back to the other side of the wall.
Father and son use the same girl and so profane my holy name.
Is this true? Some things I am glad I don’t know about.
8 They lie down beside every altar on garments taken in pledge.
The law in the OT said you had to give the pledge of a garment to the poor at night so they could sleep and not be cold. The Lord is saying that they put the poor out into the cold and take their pledge, their downpayment. This is precisely what happened during the Mortgage crisis. People paid for their house for a couple of years, then a balloon mortgage kicked in, they couldn’t pay, the bank took back their house, keeping the money they had paid for about 5 years as well as their downpayment.
In the house of their god they drink wine taken as fines.
I worked for a bank and learned that the overdraft fees and other “fines” were their bread and butter. I once saw a person who had written ten small checks for a total of about $100. If the checks had been paid out in the order they were received one would have bounced, but by paying the big one first, and then bouncing the next biggest one, they were able to cause the other nine checks to bounce because of the fees. This person had to pay $75 in bounced check fees because of the clever way in which they paid out the checks. Sadly the money to cover these checks had been deposited, it just hadn’t cleared yet. Cheers!
4 This is what the Lord says: “For three sins of Judah, even for four, I will not relent. Because they have rejected the law of the Lord and have not kept his decrees, because they have been led astray by false gods, the gods their ancestors followed, 5 I will send fire on Judah that will consume the fortresses of Jerusalem.”
The US claims to be a Christian nation that trusts in God. His commandment was to love our neighbor as ourselves. Torture, violating treaties, hunting down and killing women and children, selling communities to the highest bidder, and cursing man made in the image of God are all examples of rejecting that law. Money and power are false gods that have led this nation astray.
Judgment on Israel 6 This is what the Lord says: “For three sins of Israel, even for four, I will not relent. They sell the innocent for silver, and the needy for a pair of sandals.
Where was your phone made? How about your slippers? You want to blame covid on China, a poor country eating bats and living in crowded conditions, yet you don’t blame the sweatshops that you buy from for creating these conditions.
7 They trample on the heads of the poor as on the dust of the ground and deny justice to the oppressed.
Build the wall. Not so that we can keep illegal immigrants out because if we did that who would do all the menial tasks we don’t want to do. No, we build the wall so that we can deny justice to the oppressed. You don’t like the oppression, fine, we’ll send you back to the other side of the wall.
Father and son use the same girl and so profane my holy name.
Is this true? Some things I am glad I don’t know about.
8 They lie down beside every altar on garments taken in pledge.
The law in the OT said you had to give the pledge of a garment to the poor at night so they could sleep and not be cold. The Lord is saying that they put the poor out into the cold and take their pledge, their downpayment. This is precisely what happened during the Mortgage crisis. People paid for their house for a couple of years, then a balloon mortgage kicked in, they couldn’t pay, the bank took back their house, keeping the money they had paid for about 5 years as well as their downpayment.
In the house of their god they drink wine taken as fines.
I worked for a bank and learned that the overdraft fees and other “fines” were their bread and butter. I once saw a person who had written ten small checks for a total of about $100. If the checks had been paid out in the order they were received one would have bounced, but by paying the big one first, and then bouncing the next biggest one, they were able to cause the other nine checks to bounce because of the fees. This person had to pay $75 in bounced check fees because of the clever way in which they paid out the checks. Sadly the money to cover these checks had been deposited, it just hadn’t cleared yet. Cheers!