MESSAGE NOTES AND INDIVIDUAL/GROUP REFLECTION QUESTIONS, 6/30/24

Seek God by seeking good. This is the command the book of Amos begs   

to understand. Uniquely among the minor prophets, Amos zeros in on Israel’s injustice towards the poor. He indicts them for their failure to be generous as God had been generous to them. As we journey together, we    

want to identify what injustices are occurring in the world around us. Then,  

our hope is to determine what is the justice God wants to bring forth through us. This week, we focus on Amos chapter 4.

Opening Discussion

  1. Who do you believe at the end of the day will be held accountable by God to care for the orphan, widow, immigrant and poor? Why?
  2. Do you think it’s true that the more you have the more you want? Why or why not?

Bible Study

  1. Review the basic concept of social justice. What does it mean to “do justice” and what does it mean to be “righteous” as it’s used in Amos and Proverbs?
  2. Read Amos 4:1. Who are the cows of Bashan? What are they guilty of? How do they oppress and crush the poor?
  3. Who are the cows of Bashan today? Do we struggle with confusion over wants and needs? Why is this so hard to see in our own lives? Do our appetites for more lead to injustice in our social fabric as a community? Why or why not?
  4. Read Amos 4:2, 3. Why do you think the language is so graphic?
  5. Read Amos 4:4, 5. In what ways might Arvada be similar to what was happening in Israel in Amos’ day? Is it possible our churches are filled with religious people who have convinced themselves they are “good religious people” all the while either oppressing people directly in our community or simply turning a blind eye to the injustices around them? How do we make sure those verses don’t describe us?
  6. Read Amos 4:6-13. Basically, God had done everything imaginable to get the people to repent but they did not return to God so He promised to send a storm (war) to deal with them. Is the issue really about whether or not God will do the same to us (in other words must we be threatened to consider change) or realizing this matters a lot to God and we should really take this message seriously?

Application

  1. How serious is God about this issue of social justice? What does that mean to us then?
  2. How do we begin to evaluate our own consumer appetites and process whether we need to make some changes or not? See if you can come up with some helpful suggestions as a group.
  3. In what ways do people take advantage and work the systems today for their own advantage? In what ways is that also doing injustice to a community?

Resources

Opportunities

BACKGROUND INFO 

Question #2

Who are the cows of Bashan? They are the women, specifically the wives—specifically the wives of the movers and shakers, the wives of the elite, the wives of the wealthy who have this insatiable appetite for more. Now in the ancient culture, wives didn’t have a career; they pretty much stayed home. And if you were a wealthy wife, you really stayed home but you didn’t do anything. Your servants did everything. So you sat around and you ate fancy food and you drank expensive wine, and you thought about what you wanted more of. The whole way that these women would get their status is based on what they had. So in order for their husbands to keep their wives happy, they had to satisfy this appetite for more. 

These women lived in incredible—even by today’s standards— incredible luxury. So the wife is saying, “Bring me more wine; bring me more stuff. You know somebody over there got more stuff; I need more stuff. I’ve got to keep up.” The reason for the comparison is that the cows of Bashan were the best of the best. The pastures of Bashan were beautiful pastures, full of water and grass. It was everything a cow could want. And so basically the best of the best were the cows of Bashan. But there’s probably also something to the metaphor that they are still being fattened for slaughter. So Amos is saying that these women who are driving their husbands to produce more and more are, in a sense, like these cows fattened for slaughter and that imagery is going to come up a little later in the text. So what do they do? They oppress the poor; they crush the needy. How do they do that? By saying to your husbands, “Bring now, that we may drink!” 

Now I find this to be a very thought-provoking concept. What God is saying is: when these women have this insatiable appetite for more—more wine, more food, more stuff—they drive their husbands to produce more. “I’ve got to feed the appetite and, to do that, I must oppress the poor; I must crush the needy. I must advantage myself by disadvantaging the community in order to provide more and more and more.

Question #4

Now clearly, by the female pronouns, He is still talking to the cows of Bashan and He is saying, “You have lived lives of luxury to an immoral degree and crushed the poor and afflicted the needy so you’re going to be hauled off.” The images there—like the meat hook—there’s a lot of discussion, “What exactly is that referring to?” It’s possible it’s referring to these big rings or hooks that you would put in the lip or the nose of a cow and then they would tie them all together and they would lead them away that way. 

There’s also some other images that are pretty graphic. Let’s just say it’s a really ugly imagery. The idea of a fish hook is not referring to catching somebody by their shirt and dragging them out of town. It would be more the idea of what we would call a harpoon. If you think of maybe two men walking and there’s a harpoon, shoulder to shoulder, and in between you have fish and they’re harpooned through the gills and they’re hanging off this harpoon. That’s the imagery. It’s very graphic—that these women are going to dangle from the harpoon, like the fish dangle from the harpoon.

Add A Note

Email my notes