1 Hear this word that I take up over you in lamentation, O house of Israel: 2 “Fallen, no more to rise, is the virgin Israel; forsaken on her land, with none to raise her up.” 3 For thus says the Lord God: “The city that went out a thousand shall have a hundred left, and that which went out a hundred shall have ten left to the house of Israel.” 4 For thus says the Lord to the house of Israel: “Seek me and live; 5 but do not seek Bethel, and do not enter into Gilgal or cross over to Beersheba; for Gilgal shall surely go into exile, and Bethel shall come to nothing.” 6 Seek the Lord and live, lest he break out like fire in the house of Joseph, and it devour, with none to quench it for Bethel, 7 O you who turn justice to wormwood and cast down righteousness to the earth! 8 He who made the Pleiades and Orion, and turns deep darkness into the morning and darkens the day into night, who calls for the waters of the sea and pours them out on the surface of the earth, the Lord is his name; 9 who makes destruction flash forth against the strong, so that destruction comes upon the fortress. 10 They hate him who reproves in the gate, and they abhor him who speaks the truth. 11 Therefore because you trample on the poor and you exact taxes of grain from him, you have built houses of hewn stone, but you shall not dwell in them; you have planted pleasant vineyards, but you shall not drink their wine. 12 For I know how many are your transgressions and how great are your sins—you who afflict the righteous, who take a bribe, and turn aside the needy in the gate. 13 Therefore he who is prudent will keep silent in such a time, for it is an evil time. 14 Seek good, and not evil, that you may live; and so the Lord, the God of hosts, will be with you, as you have said. 15 Hate evil, and love good, and establish justice in the gate; it may be that the Lord, the God of hosts, will be gracious to the remnant of Joseph. 16 Therefore thus says the Lord, the God of hosts, the Lord: “In all the squares there shall be wailing, and in all the streets they shall say, ‘Alas! Alas!’ They shall call the farmers to mourning and to wailing those who are skilled in lamentation, 17 and in all vineyards there shall be wailing, for I will pass through your midst,” says the Lord.
Os Guinness has passed along a wonderful story about looking for the right thing in the wrong places.
One of the most celebrated personalities of the Middle East is Nasreddin Hodja, the endearing holy-man-cum-scholar of Turkish folklore. His famed wisdom is often threatened by his equally famed stupidity. One day, so a particular story goes, the Hodja dropped his ring inside his house. Not finding it there, he went outside and began to look around the doorway. His neighbor passed and asked him what he was looking for.
“I have lost my ring,” said the Hodja.
“Where did you lose it?” asked the neighbor.
“In my bedroom,” said the Hodja.
“Then why are you looking for it out here?”
“There’s more light out here,” the Hodja said.[1]
If you did not smile at that, I do not know how to help you! What a charming and absurd little story. Everything was wrong with Nasreddin Hodja’s search! His reasoning, his location, his efforts, they were all misguided. So, too, our search for God. We oftentimes do not know how to seek Him, how to search for Him, and we oftentimes look for him in the wrong places.
In the first half of Amos 5, we will find this phrase, or some variation of it, repeated three different times: “Seek me and live.” In order to do this, however, we need to understand what seeking God, what searching for God, entails so that we do not do so foolishly like Nasreddin Hodja. Fortunately, the Lord, speaking through the prophet Amos, directs us in our search.
The search for God must be delocalized.
One of the great themes of Amos is that the search for God must be delocalized. By delocalized, I mean the abandonment of the assumption that God is truly found only in this or that specific location, this or that holy site, this or that sacred object.
We begin, first, with God’s lament over fallen and apostate Israel.
1 Hear this word that I take up over you in lamentation, O house of Israel: 2 “Fallen, no more to rise, is the virgin Israel; forsaken on her land, with none to raise her up.” 3 For thus says the Lord God: “The city that went out a thousand shall have a hundred left, and that which went out a hundred shall have ten left to the house of Israel.”
Here is a lamentation of woe, a proclamation of coming divine discipline. This theme has dominated the book heretofore. But then, a surprising pivot, a most welcome pivot indeed! God offers a glimmer of hope to Israel. He offers at least the possibility that she might live and not perish. He calls on Israel to seek Him, but, in calling Israel to do so, He instructs His people on how not to seek Him foolishly or in a self-defeating manner.
4 For thus says the Lord to the house of Israel: “Seek me and live; 5 but do not seek Bethel, and do not enter into Gilgal or cross over to Beersheba; for Gilgal shall surely go into exile, and Bethel shall come to nothing.”
These three locations—Bethel, Gilgal, Beersheba—were sites deemed sacred by the northern kingdom of Israel. Bethel had indeed been a sacred place where many sacred things had happened, yet, in the time of Amos, it, and the other locales mentioned, had become a place of pagan futility and corruption. Archaeologists have actually uncovered a horned altar at the Beersheba site that may have been the actual altar that Amos’ audience would have traveled to. Today this altar is a relic, a curiosity piece, but one can look at its reconstructed form and imagine the religious fervency with which the people of Israel would have approached it. It was sacred to them so many years ago. It was one of the places they would go to seek God.
It is telling, then, that God follows the first usage of the “Seek me and live” formula with a specific call for delocalization: “but do not seek Bethel…Gilgal or…Beersheba.”
It is hard for us to appreciate just how surprising this prohibition against going to Bethel, Gilgal, and Beersheba to seek God would have been to Israel. Ralph Smith has observed of this:
The people of Israel thought that Yahweh was to be found at the sanctuary and his word was mediated through a priest or a prophet. But Amos told the people not to seek God at the sanctuaries. Such admonition was diametrically opposed to all that these people had been taught.[2]
Bruce Birch makes the same observation, noting:
The verb “seek” is often associated with going to the sanctuary, particularly in time of trouble or need, as a way of turning to the Lord (see Psalm 24:6; 27:8). The sanctuary was thought of as the place of access to God’s presence…But this is not what Amos had in mind…The context of this chapter suggests that Amos believes the sanctuaries have become ends in themselves, offering life in the name of the Lord that has little to do with the life demanded beyond the sanctuary for those who seek the Lord.[3]
And it is not just these three specific places over which the divine prohibition is voiced. There is a bigger point that is being made. The God of the universe is not held hostage by our sacred sites. Nor is He more present here or there than elsewhere. Nor does our mere physical arrival at a place mean closeness to God! The insufficiency of restricting our encounter with God to specific locations is further heightened by the second usage of the “Seek me and live!” formula in verse 6:
6 Seek the Lord and live, lest he break out like fire in the house of Joseph, and it devour, with none to quench it for Bethel
In other words, you can be faithful in your attendance at Bethel and Gilgal and Beersheba and still miss God. More than that, you can faithfully attend Bethel and Gilgal and Beersheba and have the wrath of God fall upon you if your heart is far from Him. When the holy sites become obstacles to an actual encounter with God, it raises the very really possibility of God burning the holy sites to the ground: “with none to quench it for Bethel.”
For us, we might paraphrase the call like this : “Seek me and live…but do not think that I am stuck in the church building. I am greater than that. You have reduced me to a place, to a square on your calendar, to a street corner in your city. If you do not know me outside of the sanctuary, do not think that the sanctuary will save you!”
This is not, of course, a call to abandon corporate gatherings. It is simply to say that your walk with God must be greater than the ritualistic haunting of this or that place in your search for Him. It must be deeper than geography and broader than architecture. Do you think that this building will save you if your heart is far from God? It will not!
The search for God must be delocalized.
The search for God must be de-externalized.
In a broader sense it must be de-externalized. The focus must shift from the outward rituals to the inward realities. It is telling that the third usage of the “seek” formula in Amos 5 alters the ending. Watch:
14 Seek good, and not evil, that you may live; and so the Lord, the God of hosts, will be with you, as you have said. 15 Hate evil, and love good, and establish justice in the gate; it may be that the Lord, the God of hosts, will be gracious to the remnant of Joseph.
Did you see how the third formula shifted?
“Seek Me and live!”
“Seek the Lord and live!”
“Seek good, and not evil, that you may live!”
Wait a minute! What happened to God in the formula? He is there. Hear the fuller version:
14 Seek good, and not evil, that you may live; and so the Lord, the God of hosts, will be with you, as you have said. 15 Hate evil, and love good, and establish justice in the gate; it may be that the Lord, the God of hosts, will be gracious to the remnant of Joseph.
Suddenly we are in a position to hear and understand one of the great points of Amos: We find God not in our religious rituals and customs and observances. We find God in the transformed heart. We find God in a relationship of resurrection in and by which He changes us and transforms us. We find God in that place where we no longer desire evil, but rather good, because God has taken ahold of us and we have not resisted.
This same dynamic of the of de-externalized-seeking of the heart is present elsewhere in the scriptures. Consider Deuteronomy 4:
29 But from there you will seek the Lord your God and you will find him, if you search after him with all your heart and with all your soul.
Seeking God is a matter of searching with the heart and the soul. This is not merely location. Nor is it structure. Nor is it altar. This is resurrection. This is the searching of the heart. This is relationship with the God who has made us!
And again, in Jeremiah 29:
13 You will seek me and find me, when you seek me with all your heart. 14 I will be found by you, declares the Lord, and I will restore your fortunes and gather you from all the nations and all the places where I have driven you, declares the Lord, and I will bring you back to the place from which I sent you into exile.
He is found by us in the inner recesses of our transformed lives.
You can seek Him in this sanctuary, but it is not until you seek Him with your hear that you will find Him. And it is not until you find Him with your heart that you will be changed.
God is confined neither to Bethel nor to Gilgal nor to Central Baptist. He is the Lord of heaven and earth who seeks to meet you at the place of transformation…a place that He makes possible!
The search for God must end at Jesus.
The search for God must be delocalized.
The search for God must be de-externalized.
And the search for God must end at Jesus.
Put another way, when we find Jesus, the search is over. To see Jesus is to see the God we have been seeking. To see Jesus is to reach our resting place, our conclusion, the answer to our questions!
In John 14, Philip asks Jesus to show the disciples God. We have no reason to think Philip was insincere in his question. Yet Philip did not truly understand. Watch how this plays out.
8 Philip said to him, “Lord, show us the Father, and it is enough for us.” 9 Jesus said to him, “Have I been with you so long, and you still do not know me, Philip? Whoever has seen me has seen the Father. How can you say, ‘Show us the Father’?
What a staggering claim.
What a shocking claim.
What a beautiful claim.
We find God not in the building or the altar. We find God in Christ. So our worship must be centered in Christ.
It is telling that this whole scene from Amos 5 shows up in spirit in John 4 in the conversation between Jesus and the Samaritan woman at the well. In the midst of that conversation, the woman shows Jesus that the fixation on location is still paramount in the minds of many.
19 The woman said to him, “Sir, I perceive that you are a prophet. 20 Our fathers worshiped on this mountain, but you say that in Jerusalem is the place where people ought to worship.” 21 Jesus said to her, “Woman, believe me, the hour is coming when neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem will you worship the Father. 22 You worship what you do not know; we worship what we know, for salvation is from the Jews. 23 But the hour is coming, and is now here, when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth, for the Father is seeking such people to worship him. 24 God is spirit, and those who worship him must worship in spirit and truth.” 25 The woman said to him, “I know that Messiah is coming (he who is called Christ). When he comes, he will tell us all things.” 26 Jesus said to her, “I who speak to you am he.”
Here we see the movement of Amos 5 land at the feet of Jesus, the King of kings. Jesus delocalizes worship (“neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem will you worship”). Jesus de-externalizes worship (“the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth.”). Jesus shows that He is the anointed one of God, the promised one, the waited-for one (“I who speak to you am he.”).
Jesus is our temple.
Jesus is our altar.
Jesus is our God.
Worship Him! Worship Him here and now! Worship Him everywhere you are and everywhere you go!
We gather weekly on the Lord’s day not because we believe this sanctuary to be our salvation, but because the Christ we come to worship together in this sanctuary is our salvation. One may walk into this building and be far from God. But one may never be far from God if he or she is in Christ Jesus our Lord.
Worship the Lord in spirit and in truth!
Seek God, church…and find Him in Christ!
[1] Os Guinness, Fit Bodies, Fat Minds, p.132.
[2] Smith, Ralph. “Amos.” The Broadman Bible Commentary. Gen. Ed. Clifton J. Allen. Vol. 7 (1972.), p.108–109.
[3] Birch, Bruce C. Hosea, Joel, and Amos. Westminster Bible Companion. (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 1997), p.213–214.