Imagine that one of your close friends has been asked to share brief devotions from the Bible with an esteemed group of well-off individuals. Your friend has invited you to attend, and you excitedly make time in your schedule so that you can show your support.
When the morning arrives, you proudly listen as your friend begins to share: “Hear these words from the Lord…”
You nod in approval, agreeing that it’s important to hear God’s Word.
Then your friend continues: “…You fat cows!”
How would you feel in that moment? Offended? Let down? Wondering what in the world could make your friend insult these people so strongly?
Surprisingly, this is exactly the language Amos the Prophet uses as he addresses the people of Israel. But more significantly, the reason behind why he hurls such a strong phrase at the people is no less a risk for us than it was a reality for them.
How can we avoid becoming “fat cows” in the eyes of God?
We will be reading Amos 4 to find out, and, in an odd way, I’m really looking forward to it!
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Grace Fellowship Church
Jon Stallsmith
Series: True
October 19, 2014
True Justice: Economics by Amos – Part 1
Amos 4
If you have your Bibles, go ahead and open them to the book of Amos. My heart is tender just hearing about all the stuff God is doing in the community and the foster care stuff and the subject we’re going to get into this morning, all of it. I’m tender. That’s a good thing. If you need a Bible, slip up your hand. Our great Bible guys will make sure you get a Bible and a notes sheet. You can follow along with us.
If you have been with us these last few months, you know we’ve been journeying through the words of some of the Minor Prophets, minor not because their words are unimportant, but minor because they wrote shorter books compared to the bigger prophets, the longer ones, Jeremiah, Isaiah, and Ezekiel. We’ve been looking at Hosea, we’ve been looking at Amos, and we will be looking at Micah here in a little while.
If you remember, Hosea really revealed God’s heart of love for his people, how faithfully he continued to pursue his people even when they were unfaithful. Then we started into the book of Amos. The book of Amos is really Amos announcing to that kingdom, about the same time as Hosea prophesying, that the end is coming, that their disobedience will not go unnoticed forever, and that God is going to bring life as they know it in that northern kingdom of Israel to an end.
The reason the end is coming is there is a total lack of justice in the land. You might remember that really famous passage in Amos 5: “But let justice roll down like waters, and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream.” (Amos 5:24) This is Amos’ cry, “Let the justice roll down,” because there wasn’t justice in the land. So just as we looked at with Hosea, what is true love according to God’s Word?
Now with Amos we’re starting to look at…What is true justice? I don’t know what comes to your mind when you hear that word justice. Maybe you think of human rights or civil rights. Maybe you think of a courtroom scene. Maybe you think of police officers enforcing justice. There are a lot of things that come to mind when we hear that word justice. Maybe you think of social justice projects and things like that.
What’s interesting is that for Amos, justice is inextricably linked to money and the way money is obtained, the way money is spent. For Amos, as you read the book of Amos, justice is in many ways an economic issue. The reason I say that is that as I was rereading through the book of Amos again this week… It’s just nine chapters. It doesn’t take too long to get the whole thing in one dose.
As far as I can tell, by my loose count, there are about 16 different accusations where Amos relays the accusation of God to a community or to a culture about their disobedience. Of these 16 different accusations that appear throughout the book, a full 11 of them are directly related to financial issues. Eleven out of the 16 are all about how there’s a lack of justice because of the way money is being abused.
For Amos, injustice is the abuse of power, and he understands that money is power. As we read this book and see the heart of God, what we see is that here injustice is the abuse of money. So we’re going to talk about that a little bit this morning. At Grace, we don’t talk about money that much, but we are committed to teaching through the Bible. So here we are. We’ve gotten to Amos 4. This is a big passage about money. In the next couple of weeks, in Amos 5 and 6, he’s talking about the same stuff.
So we’re going to spend a little time chewing on this, opening up the conversation, because we really want to hear what Amos is saying, how this relates to justice, and how this relates to the heart of God. We’re going to read Amos 4 in two chunks. We’re going to take the first five verses, work on those for a little bit, and then we’ll wrap up with the rest of the chapter toward the end of the sermon. Let’s just dial in to Amos 4, verse 1, and we’ll go through verse 5.
“Hear this word, you cows of Bashan…” Good morning, Grace. “‘…who are on the mountain of Samaria, who oppress the poor, who crush the needy, who say to your husbands, “Bring, that we may drink!” The Lord God has sworn by his holiness that, behold, the days are coming upon you, when they shall take you away with hooks, even the last of you with fishhooks. And you shall go out through the breaches, each one straight ahead; and you shall be cast out into Harmon,’ declares the Lord.
‘Come to Bethel, and transgress; to Gilgal, and multiply transgression; bring your sacrifices every morning, your tithes every three days; offer a sacrifice of thanksgiving of that which is leavened, and proclaim freewill offerings, publish them; for so you love to do, O people of Israel!’ declares the Lord God.” (Amos 4:1-5)
Okay, so let’s talk about this. What’s going on here? The first line is in many ways shocking. He uses this phrase, “You cows of Bashan.” As we’re reading that passage, if you’re paying attention, you can tell this is really Amos leveling a criticism or even an insult at the wealthy women of Samaria.
We’ve talked about this history a little bit, but during the time of Amos and during the time of Hosea, the king in that northern kingdom of Israel was Jeroboam II. He was not a godly king, but he was a very shrewd king, and he led the country to a massive economic expansion. Their territory increased. I mean, the people living in Israel at that time had probably more wealth than any time in their history since the days of Solomon.
So everybody who was in sort of the upper crust of society thought, “Things are awesome. God is blessing us. We have more money than we know what to do with.” Over in Amos, chapter 3, he talks about how they’ve built the summer houses and they’ve built the winter houses, because one house isn’t enough. “We have to have two so we’re in the right climate all the time.”
Now Amos in Amos, chapter 4, is bringing this criticism against, particularly, this family lifestyle and, specifically, the women who are on the mountain of Samaria, which was the capital. So these are the upper crust of society. He uses the phrase cows of Bashan. If you read throughout the rest of the Bible, you can see that Bashan was a region that was very fertile.
We know it was in the northern part of Israel just to the east of the Sea of Galilee, kind of near Golan or the Golan Heights if you’re familiar with modern-day terminology about the country of Israel. It was very lush and green territory. The livestock that was raised in Bashan was like prize livestock. In fact, you can read about it in Deuteronomy 32.
In Ezekiel 39, it talks about the cows of Bashan and says they’re fatlings, which is a funny word. I would not recommend using it in your family, but just in and of itself…fatling. These cows are hefty. It made me think of growing up, because I grew up in Wisconsin. Of course, it is the dairy state, so you see a lot of Wisconsinites wearing cheeseheads, celebrating our excellent dairy and cheese. You can’t go from one town to the next without seeing a billboard or a house or something painted with the black and white of a Holstein cow.
I have here my Wisconsin mug. It’s a cow mug. I actually don’t use this very often because, as a general rule, udders, even porcelain udders, don’t make a good support system, and I’m very prone to spill everything, so I don’t really trust this mug with my coffee. But it is a nice reminder that I grew up in Wisconsin, where there’s this sense of pride. “We have some great cows. We have great dairy cows.”
Amos is sort of tapping into this tradition where everybody says, “Oh yeah, these great big cows,” and he says, “Hear this word from God, you cows of Bashan.” He basically says, “You bunch of fat heifers.” That’s exactly what he says. Why does he call them that? As we read this passage, what we see is the problem with their lifestyle is that they are consuming and consuming and consuming.
They say to their husbands, “Bring, that we may drink.” Their thirst, their appetite for consumption, for possessions, for food and drink, just for stuff, materialism. It is out of control. It’s actually so out of control they have now been fueling this cycle of injustice. You see, these cows of Bashan, their consumption fuels oppression. Their spending is causing all kinds of suffering.
We don’t know exactly what form this took. Perhaps the demands of the needs of the household to maintain this opulent, high-class lifestyle was driving the husbands to cut corners in their businesses, to levy higher taxes, and everything else. Perhaps it was simply a case of, “Everybody is buying into this. We have to have more and more money. We have to feed the machine, feed the house,” and everything like that.
So they’re going out and taking money. They’re extorting. They’re taking bribes. The courtrooms are unjust. Whatever it might be, there’s this spending and spending and spending and it’s fueling oppression, oppression, oppression. Now fortunately, these days we don’t have any problems like this. Nervous laughter.
I was on Instagram a couple of weeks ago, and one of my friends had posted a picture from a magazine, like a little quick snapshot interview of a lady with her dog. I have no idea where this was. I don’t know who this person is or anything like that, but when I was reading this passage this week in Amos 4, I thought back to this.
I wanted to share it with you, because it’s kind of interesting. It maybe illustrates the point. Again, I don’t know how this person approaches their money or their wealth or anything else. I don’t know if they’re fueling oppression, but there is this sense as you read that there is maybe a drift into some pretty luxurious living. So here we go. I’ll read the interview to you.
[Online article]
Interviewer: What are you two up to today?
The Chanel-Devoted Housewife: I just got my hair done. This is Chanel. She’s a teacup Maltese and the love of my life.
Interviewer: Chanel!
The Chanel-Devoted Housewife: Yeah, I’m a big Chanel devotee. I’ve worn the clothes for years. When I first got married, my dream was to own a Chanel suit. I’ve accumulated quite a bit. As a matter of fact, Chanel threw me a surprise birthday party at their store. Can you imagine? It was fabulous.
Interviewer: What’s a typical day like for you?
The Chanel-Devoted Housewife: Usually I’ll wake up, stretch, go to the gym, shower, get my hair done, then meet the girls for lunch — Amaranth, Le Bilboquet, Fred’s, wherever — and depending on what the girls want to do, maybe we’ll play canasta at the Friars Club. Then I’ll go home, rest, and get ready to go out to dinner with friends. A very busy life — I love it.
[End of online article]
How busy is your life? Mine is too busy. I did not get to play canasta at the Friars Club last week. Again, I don’t know this woman, and it’s not an attack on her personally in any way. But even as we read, you might catch the smell of extravagance there.
Now here’s the tricky thing about this, because we think to ourselves, “I would never be like that.” You read that article and you kind of go, “I would never be like that.” That’s the interesting thing about materialism, about possessions, about our finances, our resources. It’s the peculiar thing about greed. It’s very hard to see it in ourselves.
Remember Jesus, when he taught on possessions in Matthew, chapter 6, in the Sermon on the Mount (we went over this during the summer)… He was talking about, “Okay, don’t store up for yourselves possessions on earth where moth can destroy and rust will eat it away and thieves can steal it, but instead, put your treasures in heaven, because that’s where they’ll last.” He says, “Where your heart is, that’s where your treasure is going to be also.”
Then he goes into this little statement right after that, and he says, “The eye is the lamp of the whole body. If the eye is good, the whole body is full of light, but if the eye is bad, the whole body is full of darkness. And if the light that you see is darkness, how great will that darkness be.” Then he goes on to finish up the conversation about money. He says, “No man can serve two masters. He will either love the one and hate the other or hate the one and love the other. So a man cannot serve God and money.”
He has this whole big chunk in the middle of the Sermon on the Mount talking about finances and possessions. In the middle of it, he gives this little illustration about eyes. Why? Because greed is a sin of the eyes and because greed, when we have it, blinds us to seeing it. We can hardly recognize it in ourselves.
Tim Keller, who is a great pastor up in New York City… Some of you guys may know him. We’re actually starting on Tuesday morning a new series with Men’s Fraternity at 6:00 a.m., bright and early, with some of Tim Keller’s stuff. It’s really, really good stuff. He loves the Bible and everything else.
He tells a story about how he was going through a sermon series where he was preaching on the seven deadly sins, you know, lust and gluttony and everything. At the end of each sermon they would give an opportunity for people to come and confess if the Lord was working on their hearts in one of those areas. When he got to the sermon on greed, a very interesting thing happened. Nobody came to confess. He said it’s not because people think greed isn’t a problem. They just don’t think it’s their problem.
Greed can be blinding. It’s very hard to recognize in ourselves. How often have you thought, “I am a greedy person. Wow, I am so covetous. I have to take a break from all this materialism”? That’s why we need passages like this. We need passages like Amos 4 sometimes to come into our lives and give us a little bit of a gut check, give us a perspective from God about how we’re relating to these issues. So the big question I’ve had all week is, “How do I avoid becoming a cow of Bashan?”
I do not want to become the kind of person, or we don’t want to have the kind of family who is so consumed with consuming that we consume the poor, that we’re so caught up in spending we end up creating this system that crushes others, crushes the poor. We don’t want to get sucked into this. We don’t want to be blind to our own greed. How do we keep from becoming cows of Bashan? As I’ve been reading Amos here in chapter 4 with this question in mind, I think he gives us a big hint or a couple of big pieces of advice.
The first thing he is challenging us and challenging these people in northern Israel and Samaria to do is to follow the money, to pay attention to your money. Sometimes it’s easy to become lax in this area. We remember Jesus says, “Don’t worry about what you’re going to eat, what you’re going to drink, what you’re going to wear. Don’t worry about it.” That’s good. It’s a big command.
But there’s a huge difference between not worrying about something and not thinking about something, between not being caught up in concern for something and not paying attention to something. Jesus never says, “Hey, don’t pay any attention at all to where your finances are going.” He says, “Don’t let them consume you. Don’t let them create anxiety within you.”
Elsewhere, he talks a lot about money, paying attention. The parable of the talents, that money. What are you doing with it? How are you investing it? He says, “Count the cost before you build a tower.” Over and over again Jesus challenges us, encourages us, to pay attention to our resources, to follow the money.
As we follow the money, here’s something that’s really important. In the Bible, the amount of money is almost never the issue. The Bible is not that concerned with how much money you have. There are examples of really righteous rich people, and there are also examples of really unrighteous rich people. In the same way, you have in the Bible really righteous poor people and really unrighteous poor people.
The Bible does not make a comment like, “Hey, if you’re wealthy, you’re definitely wicked,” or “If you’re poor, you’re definitely righteous.” That’s not it. What the Bible is interested in is how you get your money and what you do with it once you have it. That’s what the Scripture is really concerned with.
As we follow the money, these are the things Amos is paying attention to. These are the things Amos is challenging us to think about. How are we earning our money? How are we gaining our money? Where does it come from and where is it going? How are we spending it? How are we giving it?
The first example with the cows of Bashan is an example about spending. What he’s challenging these cows of Bashan to do is to recognize that their lifestyle, the way they’re spending simply to meet their needs and, even beyond their needs, meeting their wants, just every desire… “Bring, that we may drink. Build me this other house. We need that and that and that, and I need to buy that and that and that.” He said, “Pay attention. Follow that money, because the way you’re spending is crushing the needy. It’s creating incredible poverty.”
For us, if we follow the money in our own lives, in our own spending habits, there are some important questions we should ask. How do we make decisions about what to buy? How do we in our families decide where to spend? A lot of times we have pretty significant needs in the day-to-day lives of our families. A lot of times at the end of the month there’s not a lot of margin for anything except for just meeting the needs. Sometimes at the end of the month it’s not quite meeting the needs, and you feel like you’re going into the red at the end of the month.
But if we take a quick close look at how we’re spending, how do we work that out? How do we make those decisions? Once again, this is sort of a slippery area in our lives, because we live in a culture that is absolutely consumed with consuming. We live in a place that is just totally awash in materialism.
If we’re making our decisions about how we spend our money based on the way the people around us spend their money, there’s a pretty good guarantee we’re not lining up with Scripture. We need the Bible to be our anchor in these areas, not just what everybody else is doing. You’re like, “Well, I don’t spend as much as those people.” That wouldn’t cut it with Amos. He’d say, “No, where is your money going?” because it matters to God.
Some of these statistics came out of a documentary that was released right around the turn of the millennium. The video came out in ’97. There was a book to follow up in 2001. The name of the documentary and the book was Affluenza, you know, influenza combined with affluence. It was tracking the gross excess of materialism in American culture, specifically. These go back to 1997, so these statistics aren’t that relevant or up-to-date, but they still give us a little snapshot of at least how things were about 15 to 18 years ago.
The first thing was they found the average American spends about 6 hours a week shopping, but, at the same time, the average American spends only 40 minutes a week playing with their kids. That’s a problem. By the age of 20, the average TV viewer in the United States has seen one million commercials. Can you believe that? A lot of their jingles are still stuck in my head.
In 90 percent of divorce cases, arguments about money played a prominent role, and in 2001, two-thirds of the $11 trillion US economy at that time was spent on consumer goods. We live in a culture that is totally consumed with consuming. Yet Amos now is challenging us. He’s saying, “Hey, pay attention. How is your money going? Where is it being spent?”
A lot of times, we can become caught up in spending to the point where we don’t even recognize there are huge percentages of our community that are very poor. The most recent census, the 2010 census, studied Gwinnett County and also the state of Georgia relative to the rest of the United States. Georgia is the third worst state in the union for poverty rate. It’s just under 18 percent. In Gwinnett County, right where we live specifically, just under 14 percent of all people live in poverty.
Now that’s the government measure before any sort of social services, Medicaid, food stamps, or anything like that, but those numbers should give us pause for a moment and maybe make us ask, “Okay, is the way I am earning my money and spending my money bringing greater shalom, greater peace, greater prosperity to the community, or am I in any way spending and earning in such a way that increases the plight of the poor?”
Eighteen percent of the children in our county live in poverty. If you go to some of these schools where we’re doing Good News Clubs and check out the percentages of kids who are on reduced lunch or free lunch because they can’t afford it at home, it’s really high. It’s easy for some of us to just go about our merry way, spending, spending, spending, without even paying attention. How are we getting our money? How are we spending our money? What’s happening there?
On the flip side, some of us are in that place where we would count ourselves among the poor. We’d be in that 14 percent, that 18 percent. We’re not making ends meet. Sometimes it feels like you’re living in an environment, in a community, in a society, where it’s impossible to make it up to that next notch in life, and you feel like you’re destined, doomed, to be poor forever. What Amos is doing here is just challenging. He’s saying, “Hey, pay attention. Follow the money. How do you give? How do you spend it? What’s happening?”
Beyond just the local perspective, you have the global perspective, and this is where things get a little bit more complex. For example, clothing is an easy one to think about. In 2012, 97 percent of the clothing sold in the United States, according to the American Apparel and Footwear Association, was made overseas. So it’s almost all imported. Do you know where your clothes come from? Do you know how they were made? Do you know the conditions under which they were made?
I started looking at my shirt tags, and this shirt was made in Malaysia. I don’t know anything about that, but as I did a little bit of cursory research… Obviously, the Internet is not the best place to find facts constantly. We probably rely on the Internet a little too much for our facts. But even as I started to think about this, I started looking things up and seeing some of the companies whose products I own and wear and some of the accusations against them and some of the abuses that have happened overseas in their factories and the way people are abused over there.
I couldn’t help but think, “My goodness, is the way I am spending money, my consumption simply for clothing, fueling a cycle of oppression somewhere else in the world?” Sometimes we think Fair Trade coffee or that label, “Fair Trade…” We kind of think, “Oh yeah, cool. Nice initiative.” But that matters to God. He cares about this stuff. He cares about how we spend our money.
If we’re asking, “God, how can I keep from becoming a cow of Bashan?” Amos would say, “Follow the money. Where are you spending it? Pay attention to how you spend.” He also says, “Follow the money. Pay attention to how you give.” Not just buying things, but giving. How do you give? That’s what he gets into here with verses 4-5.
It’s interesting, because it sounds like a traditional call to worship. He says, “Come to Bethel, and transgress; to Gilgal, and multiply transgression…” The invitation sounds like a priest calling them to worship, but Amos is saying, “No, come and transgress. Practice your injustice. Come to Bethel…” Where they had the golden calf. “…to Gilgal…” One of the ancient sites of worship where the people had renewed the covenant after coming into the land over the Jordan River.
Then he says, “Bring your sacrifices every morning, your tithes, a sacrifice of thanksgiving. Proclaim freewill offerings.” Here Amos is tapping into the law and some of the Old Testament commands from God about giving. He mentions tithes and offerings. What’s going on there? What are these things? If we get our heads around tithes and offerings, it helps us understand a little bit of Amos’ irony, his satire, his sort of call to worship, to transgress.
The tithe in the Old Testament… The word itself literally means 10 percent. Sometimes you hear people say, “Yeah, I tithe 15 percent.” Well, technically, you can’t really do that. A tithe itself means 10 percent, so it’d be like you were saying, “I 10 percent 15 percent.” It just doesn’t sound right. But whatever. I’m a word guy, so I pay attention to that stuff. It literally means 10 percent.
A lot of times we think, “Oh yeah, in the Old Testament the people had to give 10 percent,” and it was a firstfruit offering, meaning the first of your harvest, right off the top. The heart behind it was that God wanted his people to remember that everything came from him. So essentially, you take the first 10 percent, give it back to God, and then you get to keep the other 90 percent. But that 10 percent is symbolic. It’s a reminder. “Hey, this all came from you. This all belongs to you. I’m just a steward of all this stuff.”
I didn’t realize this, but a lot of people say there are probably three tithes mentioned in the Old Testament. The first tithe was the support for the priests and the Levites. Remember, the priests and the Levites had no land of their own. They were totally dependent on the giving of the people in order to feed their families and to maintain everything necessary for the sacrificial system and for the worship and everything else. So in Numbers 18, it talks about the tithe for the priests and the Levites.
Then you also get to Deuteronomy 12 and Deuteronomy 14, and there was a tithe that was required in order to fund these huge feasts and festivals when all of the people would come together and worship and feast and have festival. They would tithe that as well. But when Deuteronomy talks about that tithe, it’s talking about a tithe you do give so that everyone can celebrate, but you get to be a part of it. It’s not like you just write the check and it goes. You’re actually celebrating even with some of your own tithe and the tithes of others.
Then there’s a third tithe mentioned in Deuteronomy 14 and also in Deuteronomy 26. This tithe was for the support of widows, orphans, and the poor, and it was collected once every three years. If you’re thinking about annually, it’s like 3-1/3 percent. So really, the Old Testament command for the people was that they tithed 23-1/3 percent. That’s a lot of percent.
Their taxation system would have worked differently. They didn’t pay income tax quite the same way we would today, although during the Roman days they would have paid tax to Herod’s kingdom, to Rome, then also the tithe and everything else. So people were pretty well acquainted. The interesting thing about the tithe, in the Old Testament at least, is that it was not optional. It was commanded. Tithing in the Old Testament was not really considered generosity; it was just obedience. That’s what they did.
Now the question comes up for us today…What about in the New Testament? Should we tithe? We’re not the people of Israel. We’re not technically living under the Old Testament law. Jesus came and fulfilled the law, invited us into an age of grace, so are we really required to tithe? And if so, who do we tithe to? Do we need to tithe to our local church? Is that the equivalent of the temple? All of these questions come up.
This is a learning process for Amy and me. Even this week, I’m praying and learning. “Okay, how do we give well? Follow the money. Where do we give? How do we give? How is our generosity growing?” Most people would say the New Testament does not tell us to tithe. Jesus mentions it one time in Matthew 23. It’s almost certain that Jesus himself did tithe, because, of course, he obeyed the law perfectly. Up until the time he was 30 at least, we know he was a carpenter. He was a construction guy. He would have tithed for sure.
As we get farther forward into the New Testament, in terms of the tithe… The way money and possessions are treated in the rest of the New Testament, it’s not that you have to give 10 percent to God but that God has a claim on all of it. So yeah, it never tells us to tithe. It’s actually much worse. Shucks. We see examples of this. We see examples of people like Barnabas selling a piece of land and bringing the money and setting it before the apostles’ feet. We have examples of people selling everything they have and bringing it to the good of the community.
The call, the summons, in the New Testament is not that we be legalistic tithers but that we be insanely generous people, which means it’s a process. Most people I know say the tithe is a great way to start. If you’re cultivating some giving in your own life, then a regular 10 percent gift is a great place to start. But then start asking God, “Okay, Lord. What does it look like? How do I become more generous? Where can I give?”
Amy and I are learning about this. Even this week, I was talking to one of the staff people here at Grace, and she was saying she tithes on her gross income. I was like, “Oh,” because I’ve just been tithing on net, what I bring home month to month. I didn’t think about medical insurance and everything else that goes into my whole package. Now I’m like, “Oh, shucks. Maybe Amy and I have to have a conversation. Do we need to start tithing on gross or net?”
It’s a learning thing. It’s one of these things I really believe the Scriptures invite us into relationship with God about. He wants to be a part of that conversation. How are we handling this? I was talking to another staff person. They were saying, “Yeah, I know. When we were young, we were trying to figure out, ‘Should we tithe on gross or tithe on net?’ and somebody said, ‘Well, do you want God to bless your net or your gross?'” Anyway, something to think about.
This is stuff we’re chewing on, stuff we’re thinking about, and Amos is really clear. Follow the money. How are you giving? How are you being generous? What’s interesting is that in surveys of Christians who go to church, their average giving is at about 2-1/2 percent annually of total income, so nowhere close to a tithe, and 30 to 50 percent of people who come to church don’t give anything at all to any ministry, let alone the local church.
But 2-1/2 percent is about the average for Christians, and the national average, regardless of religious affiliation, if you’re a Christian or not, is 2 percent. So in America, knowing Jesus makes half a percent difference. Amos says, “Follow your giving. Where is it going?” Not just in the tithes, but also in the offerings.
In the Old Testament, offering really talked about where generosity would kick in. The people were commanded to tithe. Yes, everybody in the Old Testament tithed, but then they would also bring offerings, which would be above and beyond the tithe, gifts that would help with certain building projects. That happened in the book of Chronicles with the construction of the temple. They would give over and above, because they had excess and they were grateful to God. This is sort of spontaneous showing of gratitude to God.
Now what’s interesting is in Amos 4, the people are actually giving. They’re tithing a lot. Their gifts are flourishing. Their offerings are big. It seems like they are awash in giving. So you think, “Okay, great. Their money is all set.” Amos is saying, no, that’s not really the case, because as you read this passage, you see that their tithing, their gifts, their sacrifices, and all the rest are very self-serving.
Even though in practice they’re giving real amounts of money, they’re announcing it. They’re trying to pump up their own fame in the community. Essentially, because they’re so wealthy, these gifts mean nothing to them. “Sure, yeah, take the money. No big deal.” But it has no impact. It’s not really revealing their heart toward God.
Amos now is talking about follow not just your spending, follow your giving, and don’t fall into the trap of thinking just because you give a certain percent or because you do this or because you’re regular with that that you’re really near to God. Is this something where you are, in fact, generous in a way that we are called to be generous? That’s what the Scripture is talking about here. What happens is when we follow our money, when we pay attention to where it goes, we find out who we follow. That’s what Amos is talking about here.
Look at the second half of Amos 4. God says, “I gave you cleanness of teeth in all your cities…” He’s not talking about flossing. “‘…and lack of bread in all your places, yet you did not return to me,’ declares the Lord. ‘I also withheld the rain from you when there were yet three months to the harvest; I would send rain on one city, and send no rain on another city; one field would have rain, and the field on which it did not rain would wither; so two or three cities would wander to another city to drink water, and would not be satisfied; yet you did not return to me,’ declares the Lord.” Pay attention to that phrase.
“‘I struck you with blight and mildew; your many gardens and your vineyards, your fig trees and your olive trees the locust devoured; yet you did not return to me,’ declares the Lord. ‘I sent among you a pestilence after the manner of Egypt; I killed your young men with the sword, and carried away your horses, and I made the stench of your camp go up into your nostrils; yet you did not return to me,’ declares the Lord.
‘I overthrew some of you, as when God overthrew Sodom and Gomorrah, and you were as a brand plucked out of the burning; yet you did not return to me,’ declares the Lord. ‘Therefore thus I will do to you, O Israel; because I will do this to you, prepare to meet your God, O Israel!’ For behold, he who forms the mountains and creates the wind, and declares to man what is his thought, who makes the morning darkness, and treads on the heights of the earth––the Lord, the God of hosts, is his name!” (Amos 4:6-13)
Amos says, “Follow your money, and you’ll find out who you follow.” Here what we see is God trying to draw the people back to himself, even removing the marks of their materialism, the things they would depend on, like their crops and everything else, and yet the people still would not return to God. Why? Because their hearts were given somewhere else. “Where your treasure is,” Jesus says, “there your heart will be also.”
These people are tithing, they’re giving offerings, but it’s not to God. Remember, Bethel was where they had the golden calf. Their hearts are in that. Their spending is in meeting their desires to consume. Their hearts are far from God. It’s really interesting, if you start thinking about the golden calf, that tradition of worshiping the golden calf… When I read that, I always think of idols and things like that, but I don’t really relate to it. I didn’t really connect to it personally until this week as I was reading that story again.
Where is the origin of the golden calf story? Where does it go back to? It’s in the book of Exodus. God leads the people out of slavery in Egypt. They cross the Red Sea. They come to Mount Sinai. God gives the Law through Moses. Then Moses goes back up the mountain after the covenant is made, and he’s there for a while. After a few days, the people are thinking, “Well, Moses is gone. What are we going to do?” and they decide, “We need to worship this golden calf.”
So Aaron, the high priest, comes along and says, “Okay, I will make you a golden calf to worship.” Where does the gold come from? Yeah, it’s Egyptian gold. When God delivered the people, he didn’t just deliver them. He provided treasures for them. The Egyptian people just gave them jewelry, earrings, rings, and all sorts of stuff. So now the people are weighed down. Remember, these are slave people, so they don’t really have anything except what the Egyptians gave them.
Now they have these treasures that have been provided by God, and very, very quickly, what do they do? They melt down their treasure and put it on the throne. It’s the golden calf they worship. What are these people doing here in the northern kingdom at the time of Amos hundreds of years later? The exact same thing. They worship their treasure. Sure, there are all sorts of religious trappings and idolatry and all the rest, but you know what? At center, on the altar is a golden calf, their treasure melted down and receiving worship.
Amos says, “Follow your money and you find out who you follow.” These people had fallen into the trap of worshiping money. The results were brutal. Injustice all over the land. They had become these cows of Bashan. The prophecy about being a cow of Bashan is brutal. It says they’ve become these consumers and they are going to be led out through the breaches in the burned-down wall by hooks, rings on their noses like cattle. That’s where you end up if you embrace this lifestyle.
It seems like you’re meeting every need, every desire in your life with your money, but in fact, you end up being led away through your burned-down city. It’s a strong and powerful prophecy. How do we relate to this? What do we do with this passage? How should we think about it? It’s important to remember this is a conversation.
This is something, like I mentioned, Amy and I are working through. How do we spend? How do we decide what to buy? How do we give? Where should we give? Should we give to the local church? We give to Grace because we know what happens here with the money pretty well, and we believe in this vision, so yeah, it makes a lot of sense. But we’re not giving specifically to the church. Ultimately, we’re giving to God.
Some people like to give to stuff that happens overseas, to supporting orphan work, to helping with poverty. The important thing is that we’re cultivating generosity in our hearts. But the question is…How? “How, God, are you doing that?” Sometimes it seems complicated, like you’re saying, “I can’t even go to Kohl’s and buy a shirt anymore because it might be fueling child labor in some far away country?” It’s almost overwhelming to try to think through all of those details.
The good news is that God wants to help with this. We can pray. This matters to God. In fact, as we’re reading this passage, there is definitely good news and bad news, and it is the exact same thing. It is that God really cares about how we relate to our resources. God really cares about money.
God really cares about this stuff. If you are poor, if you’re underfoot being trampled, that’s really good news. It’s a promise that God cares, he provides, and he lifts up the heads of the lowly. If you’re a cow of Bashan, it’s bad news, because God cares, and he will not let the injustice go on forever.
Here’s what I want us to do as we wrap up. Last week I didn’t preach. Brian Burchik preached. When I’m not preaching, I usually, like most of you are doing, sit in my chair, and I have my Bible open on one knee and I look down while we’re reading, and then I look up, and then maybe I doodle a little bit, and then I listen some more. I know how it goes. It’s hard to pay attention for 40 minutes.
If you would be so kind, if you have your wallet with you or a checkbook or something like that, just take it out. This is my wallet. It’s a rubber band. I have to replace this wallet somewhat frequently, but it doesn’t cost me much. I’m not asking for money or anything like that. I just want us to think for a minute in some tangible ways. Just take your wallet and put it on one knee. If you have your Bible open or you’re reading on your phone or your iPad or whatever else, put it on the other knee, just so you can see both of them at once in front of you.
I want to pose a couple of questions. These issues are deep-set issues. These are deep in our hearts. Tonight we’re going to spend some time at 5:15… It’s going to be a unique service. We’re going to spend extended worship. We’re going to have ministry teams, prayer stuff. If you feel like you’re in need, if you need prayer for anything, we’re going to have some time tonight at the 5:15 if you just want to worship.
Because at heart, at essence, these issues of finances and money are issues of worship. The golden calf or God. That’s the question. That’s what God is saying. He’s like, “Prepare to meet your God.” It’s the same language he used when he invited the people into covenant. He said, “Prepare to meet with me.” He’s calling us. “Hey, know me. Worship me. Love me.” That’s the question.
So tonight at 5:15, we’re going to have some more time to process that. Maybe if you need to spend some time praying or you just want to worship for a while… Aaron will be back and David and the band. It’s going to be a really sweet time. I want you to know about that. As we’re getting into this conversation, as we’re chewing on this, you have your wallet on one knee and you have your Bible on the other.
Here’s the question. Which one of these two do you consult more often? Which one of these do you check on more often? Does your wallet or does your Bible have more authority in your life? Do you need to check your account before you obey Scripture or do you obey Scripture without checking your account? This is what Amos is talking about. How do these two realities relate to each other? God really cares about what happens with this one, because what happens with this one reflects what’s really going on in our hearts.