Amo 6:4-6 | KingComments | STEP | The voice of Amos scourges over the elite of society. He describes a lifestyle related to the life attitude of the previous verse. You see it in front of you: indolent and self-satisfied by their prosperity they lie there on their showy beds. It is not a rest after work has been done. Lazily they hang around. Pure boredom radiates from them. Today we do talk about ‘hanging youngsters’ and by that we mean young people who have nothing to do and are hanging out at ‘hanging places’. And woe to you when you come near such a group. They are always looking for a victim to enjoy themselves senselessly. They do not lack money. They all have smartphones. It allows them to keep each other up to date when there is something going on again. They are in the power of prosperity. Their mentality is based on it. This is the mentality of everyone who is in the power of prosperity, as is the mentality of the top layer of Samaria. They are also in a kind of religious hurray mood. The judgments are for the heathens, the blessings for us. Therefore they make greedy and voracious use of it. Only the best is good enough. The tender lamb meat and the meat of the fattest calves glide down their throats. You hardly have to chew it, you suck it up. Also eating it must not take any effort. They live exclusively for the sake of bodily pleasure. Their god is the stomach, they bow down to what satisfies their needs.

‏ Amos 6:4-6

Recline, Sprawl and Swallow

The voice of Amos scourges over the elite of society. He describes a lifestyle related to the life attitude of the previous verse. You see it in front of you: indolent and self-satisfied by their prosperity they lie there on their showy beds. It is not a rest after work has been done. Lazily they hang around. Pure boredom radiates from them. Today we do talk about ‘hanging youngsters’ and by that we mean young people who have nothing to do and are hanging out at ‘hanging places’.

And woe to you when you come near such a group. They are always looking for a victim to enjoy themselves senselessly. They do not lack money. They all have smartphones. It allows them to keep each other up to date when there is something going on again. They are in the power of prosperity. Their mentality is based on it. This is the mentality of everyone who is in the power of prosperity, as is the mentality of the top layer of Samaria.

They are also in a kind of religious hurray mood. The judgments are for the heathens, the blessings for us. Therefore they make greedy and voracious use of it. Only the best is good enough. The tender lamb meat and the meat of the fattest calves glide down their throats. You hardly have to chew it, you suck it up. Also eating it must not take any effort. They live exclusively for the sake of bodily pleasure. Their god is the stomach, they bow down to what satisfies their needs.

Expressions of Joy

The music, which is used to liven up their meals, is reminiscent of David, but is used to brag. There is no thought in their minds that the music of David was for the glory of God. They use the instruments in the way they were conceived by Jubal (Gen 4:21) and whose spirit they possess. In this way they have returned to the principles that guide the world and that is to make life pleasant without God.

The name of David is connected with it in order to work according to their own insights under a cover of religiosity. David invented them to honor God with it; they invented them to entertain themselves. Nor are they the instruments of David. The old instruments cannot satisfy their longing for ever newer and ever more. If you are tired of the old, you want something new.

That is how it is today. Songs in which the glory of the Father and the Son is sung and in which the work of the Lord Jesus is represented, songs that are a joy to the heart of God, are considered old-fashioned. They are judged as melancholic and originating from a time in which that was possible, but which is now over. They do not meet the requirements of the time in which we live and in which it is all about the feeling I have with something. There have to be songs that appeal more to our feelings, that reflect more what I experience. And so the accent is shifted from what God longs for to what we desire.

Wine, Oil and Ruin

The tableware they use is meant to be used for drink offerings in the sanctuary. That sanctuary may be their own, but they say they serve the God of Israel there. The delicacies of the previous verse are washed away with large quantities of wine flowing down their throats. You can rightly say of them that they are “heroes in drinking wine” (Isa 5:22). They also use the holy anointing oil, which may only be used for the service of the LORD (Exo 30:22-33), to make themselves beautiful. The most excellent oil belongs to God (Exo 23:19a; Deu 18:4), but His rights are not taken into account at all.

It is a depiction of the way Christianity celebrates, for example around and during Christmas. One indulges in luxury and excess and dances to the atmospheric Christmas music of the band playing at Christmas dinner. At the same time, the Christmas Child, He Who became poor to make poor sinners rich, has been replaced by Santa Claus with ever larger gifts. It resembles what Belsazar has done (Dan 5:1-4).

But who still grieves “over the ruin of Joseph”? We can think of the pit into which Joseph was thrown, while his brothers are settling down to eat (Gen 37:23-25). They do not care about “the distress of his soul” and which they see (Gen 42:21).

While Israel sighs under the consequences of sin, its inhabitants surrender to carelessness, pleasure, and laziness. They use all the gifts God has given them for themselves. The pursuit of their own pleasure pushes the state of emergency of God’s people into the background. Israel is in distress, where the greatest distress is that the people do not see their distress. It laughs and dances towards its ruin.

The fact that the unity of the people has already perished does not bother them. They are also blind to the breaches, the fragmentation, that have arisen in the people because of their selfish behavior and as a result of which they will soon collapse. Only “a cord of three [strands] is not quickly torn apart” (Ecc 4:12). People living among themselves who are dependent on each other alone will not be able to develop a lasting bond. Only when God is involved as the third and binding ‘factor’ in the bond, will it be preserved from breaking.

Even today, many remain indifferent to the fact that the whole church has been crumbled into countless pieces. Even terms such as ‘the varicoloredness of God’, which would be seen in the division, are used to justify it. Pursuing our own convenience makes us insensitive to the decay in the church and the divisions that exist.