Why some yearn for a close encounter with Heaven, while others fear (Amos 2–3)

Judah: Like father, like nation

Thus says the LORD, “For three transgressions of Israel and for four I will not revoke its punishment, Because they sell the righteous for money And the needy for a pair of sandals. These who pant after the very dust of the earth on the head of the helpless Also turn aside the way of the humble; And a man and his father resort to the same girl In order to profane My holy name. On garments taken as pledges they stretch out beside every altar, And in the house of their God they drink the wine of those who have been fined.”

Amos 2:6–8 NASB

This warning to pre-exile Yehudah (Judah) and the one before it (Amos 2:4–5) are connected. The same temptation that lead the man Judah down the wrong path — consorting with a temple prostitute and worshipping idols, as recorded in the Torah reading וַיֵּשֶׁב Vayeshev (Genesis 37–40) — is the same sin that his descendants — the ancient nation of Judah, aka the southern kingdom of Israel — to struggle with and consort with temple prostitutes and worship idols.

Just as Judah himself was humiliated and publicly shamed for his sin, God also shames and humiliates Judah’s descendants for their sins.

Why the ‘slippery slope’ of moral degradation isn’t slippery logic

Surely the Lord GOD does nothing unless He reveals His secret counsel To His servants the prophets.

Amos 3:7 NASB

Another touchpoint between the haftarah and Vayeshev is this passage that hints at the overtones of Yosef’s Heavenly gift of interpreting dreams (Genesis 40), one role of a prophet.

So when a prophet calls out a people for their sins, the consequences of those sins are not an incredible mystery. They are revealing things that should be obvious to anyone who is paying attention that where these things lead.

When one points to one behavior or practice leading to another in a downward trajectory, a common retort is that this is the “slippery slope” logical fallacy.

But it can be pointed out that this slope acts like the law of physics in which an object in motion remains in motion until a superior force acts upon it to stop it. Left to its own devices, an object going downhill will gain speed and continue to go downhill at a faster speed until something acts upon it with sufficient force to stop it.

Sin acts similarly. A move away from the ways of Heaven makes the next move away easier. If one doesn’t stop this progression, the result will be a move of one’s way of life far from that of Heaven.

When Joseph continually refused Mrs. Potiphar’s advances (Genesis 39), that commitment to the Way of Heaven was the stop sign preventing him from sliding into sin. Judah ignored the signs of his slide into sin eventually cavorting with his daughter-in-law, nothing was acting on him to stop him or two slow down his slide.

‘Only you have I chosen.’ ‘Can’t You choose someone else?’

You only have I chosen among all the families of the earth; Therefore I will punish you for all your iniquities.

Amos 3:2 NASB

Remember when Tevya in “Fiddler on the Roof” asks HaShem, “I know we are your chosen people, but once in a while, can’t you choose someone else?”

Tevya’s conversations with God and his misquotes from “the Good Book” are adorable in some says. You don’t have to be a Biblical scholar to be observant of Heaven’s instructions and notice the trajectory of the Holy One’s work in the world around you.

But one of the things about being “chosen” comes from the Hebrew word it’s translated from: יָדַע yada (Strong’s lexicon No. H3045). What Heaven seems to be saying in Amos 3:2 is that Israel is the only nation He has known and revealed to most transparently.

“Punish” in the NASB translation comes from פָּקַד paqad (H6485), which largely means “’making a visitation’ and points to action that produces a great change in the position of a subordinate either for good or for ill.”¹Hamilton, Victor P. Harris, R. Laird, Gleason L. Archer, and Bruce K. Waltke, eds. Theological Wordbook of the Old Testament. Chicago: Moody Press, 1980.

Israel is the only nation that He has visited in this way. The last time we read in Torah where God visited someone, was it an easy thing or a hard thing? God’s visitation on the Twin Cities of Infamy — Sodom and Gomorrah — was a hard thing. For Lot, the righteous, God’s visit was a good thing, but His visit was a bad thing for those who lived in the flesh.

What happened to Sodom and Gomorrah is a foretaste of the Day of the LORD, when those who have rejected God by their thoughts and actions run into the mountains to try to hide from God. So the arrival of the Lord’s presence is not a great thing. For those who live by the flesh, who live the way that Judah did before he woke up to see what was going on.

Yosef, preview of the Messiah

When Yeshua haMashiakh²Hebrew for Jesus the Christ visited the earth, His people rejected Him, just as Joseph had been rejected by his brothers. Joseph’s rejection was just a foretaste of the rejection Yeshua received. For both of them, their connection to God through dreams and prophesies was a source of mockery and derision by their brothers.

The brothers reacted angrily to the message of God. God’s message was taken out on the messages by those who didn’t like God’s message and they presume that by filling the messenger, that they will silence the message.

How should we react to Heaven’s visitation? Repentance vs. scorched-earth anger

When people feel like their backs are against the wall, anger and terror can prevail. The “if I can’t have it, neither can you” mentality becomes strong and the irrational anger and terror destroys people.

When faced with a visit from God, do you repent like Judah did? Or do you dig your heels and keep sliding down the slope towards destruction?

We have read in history books of people who faced real persecution and harassment for following God’s laws. We are watching it happen in Europe and even Canada where people are being arrested by SWAT teams, handcuffed in the middle of the street and hauled away just for meeting face to face with their fellow believers to worship the LORD.

We think these things can’t happen here, but these things will certainly happen here if we don’t actively push back against it. If there’s nothing to to stop the slide, things will get worse. They will become more emboldened to continue their harassment.

Well, one of the things that has been noticed by academics who are trying to move the boundaries further away from righteousness and holiness is that children are a barrier. One Canadian academic wrote in 2016 that the innocence of children is an impediment to progress of “queer theory“:

Queer theory is now bursting with debates about the status of the child in relation to futurity, politics, and sexual subjectivity, but the field of Early Childhood Education largely resists learning from and carefully attending to these conversations. There remains a palpable nervousness and discomfort in this field of thought and practice when childhood comes into contact with sexuality.

Dyer, Hannah. “Queer Futurity and Childhood Innocence: Beyond the Injury of Development.” Global Studies of Childhood 7, no. 3 (September 2017): 290–302.

This is why more than a few in the U.S. education system are trying to desensitize our children and take away their innocence. They want our children to grow up as fast as possible. They are purposefully trying to push our children to the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Bad. These “progressive” academics are trying to do an end-run around the parents by mocking and downplaying the authority that parents have over children, by teaching children that their parents are ignorant and backwards.

The public education system is trying to stigmatize parents who push back on the eduction system, by accusing them of being ignorant, uneducated, even defaming them as domestic terrorists. The schools are purposefully putting up as many barriers as possible between parents and children as possible. This is by design.
These people think they are bringing society up, that they are pushing society up the hill towards utopia, but they are actually bringing society down. They are pushing the flow of our children and the rest of society into the gutter.

But sadly, there is this idea that is pervasive in progressive academia, media and politics that you must break everything down for Utopia to spontaneously generate outward. That idea was the driving force of the French Revolution, that one would break everything down and a utopia of “liberty, equality, fraternity” would spontaneously emerge from the rumble of the old society.

What actually came out of that ruble was the Reign of Terror. Because left unrestrained, they lashed out at everybody. And eventually they came right back around on themselves and lashed out at themselves. And these things, repeats, repeats, repeats, repeats.

So then when we see in Israel’s history, we see these things repeating again, and again and again. It’s kind of like what Tevya of “Fiddler on the Roof” faced in Russia.

The chosen are the ones Heaven knows and want to be known

“This is eternal life, that they may know You, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom You have sent.”

John 17:13 NASB

The role of the One Who was sent is to know us and to make known the Father. This is what was foretold in the New Covenant prophecies (Jer. 31:31–34; Ezek. 36:25–26).

The caricature of Heaven is that the Holy One is vindictive, bent on oppression and tyranny. But it is the wish of Heaven that all will know Him and that when He comes to visit, that we welcome Heaven with open arms with a hug, not running and hiding in fear.

It is in Messiah that this is possible. If there is anything that separates us from Heaven, we have a way to repent of that and take that out of our lives and to restore the connection between ourselves and heaven.

Heaven calls us to come back. Heaven wants to forget our sins and remember them no more, but we must repent of them and forget how to commit those sins.

We have to exercise loyalty (faith) and lovingkindness (mercy, favor) toward Heaven and to each other. Even when correction comes to the people of God, there is a remnant that survives, not because the remnant runs and hides but because they understand what God really wants and wanted to meet God.

Heaven wants to heal and restore, but if there are those who want to burn it all down and refuse to connect with God, what can be done? When in this world, we lock up those who don’t want to play by society’s rules. They have to be separated from society until they are willing to live by society’s rules and be a productive member of society.

Summary: Tammy