Saturday, July 7, 2018
City calamity
Amos 3:6
If a trumpet is blown in a city, will not the people be afraid? If there is calamity in a city, will not the Lord have done it?
Just over half of the world’s population lives on 1% of all the earth’s land, in cities. When I was born in the 60s, the percentage of the world’s population living in cities was lower by about half. We live in cities because it is more efficient but at the same time, cities have problems. Living costs are higher in cities, air quality is poorer in cities, also in cities the surroundings tend to be crowded, and because people are packed in diseases are more easily spread.
Cities are efficient and attractive, but they are ripe for great calamity. Like we said already when someone sneezes in the city the bulk of the population gets a cold. When the earth quakes below the city large numbers are put at risk and so on.
These days, when calamity comes upon a city, there is great debate about the cause. Technical experts and scientists look at geographic and other evidence and the collected data to try and explain what happened. More importantly, they try to put all of that into models that may help us predict the next event and avoid a calamity.
While these scientific and engineering types are doing this work, the religious types are having their own arguments about what could have caused the calamity. A good example was the earthquake in Haiti in 2010. It was open season for every theory and doctrine. One very significant evangelical Christian leader, who had previously said that “God was punishing Americans with Hurricane Katrina,” said about Haiti that God was punishing them for a “pact to the devil.” Not every Christian agreed.
Nevertheless, the biggest problem in our cities in this regard is that we, as a church, have become so distracted by so many other pursuits of the contemporary church that we have lost our prophetic voice in the city.
For example, in our cities we have overcrowded prisons, staggering crime rates, staggering murder rates, and staggering rates of domestic violence and sexual violence. We have early ages of initiation into alcohol use, substance abuse, and sex. This is just the list of the more popular ills but there are many more. The church is largely silent on these issues.
The key verse today gives us so much more to think about. A good initial guide though is to not just think of calamity in natural disaster terms. Today there are operational, environmental, medical, social and cultural calamities in our cities, just to name some.
Amos, the prophet from whose writing we read our text was a shepherd and farmer in the countryside in Israel in a place called Tekoa who became the first of the writing prophets. Although he was just a shepherd and farmer from the country he marched up to Bethel in Israel to declare the word of God with a burning sense of the need for moral righteousness and social justice.
As an aside here, in all my work with men’s ministries we are always looking for what will attract the men, some believe that food would, others that games would, and yet others that masculine things like DIY would. Never have we come to a place, in my experience, where a sense of moral outrage at what is taking place in our society has served as a means to mobilize men to do right! Never in my experience has the presence of social injustice mobilized men to come together to do right.
There is a passion in the keeper of sheep from Tekoa, there is a conviction in the farmer from among the sycamore trees. Things were not going right in the city; the city influences the country and if things weren’t put to right the judgement of God was going to come upon it. Never mind that we are enjoying good days with many seeing prosperity, remember that the poor are still oppressed, and morality is at an all-time low. Calamity is upon us and God would have caused it.
The church is largely silent in the prophetic sense, and we must wonder why. In the passage Amos 3:1-8, the prophet explains why he is declaring these things, “The Lord God has spoken! Who can but prophesy?”
When God speaks the men of God must prophesy. Where ever the men of God are they must prophesy. If they are in the countryside farming and tending animals they must prophesy, and if they are in the city they must prophesy. We must speak to our community; our city; our nation in order to turn back this calamity that is upon us for God has already spoken.
You may ask me how I know that God has already spoken and what prophesy do we men have to declare. Look at verse 7 – “Surely the Lord God does nothing, unless He reveals His secret to His servants the prophets.”
According to Amos God will share with us men the information about what is going to happen before it happens. Like Amos, we will know about the calamity before it happens. That is a heavy burden to carry, both to the hear the voice of God for the city and then to prophesy.
No point in saying that we will ignore it and let the wicked face the judgment. When calamity comes upon the city it takes the just and the unjust.
We have to live righteously in our own homes and families, then that must be demonstrated in the community, and it must affect and infect the cities. If we don’t recover the prophetic voice to the cities then a lot of our preaching and shouting is just noise.
Think on these things:
- How do you think about natural disasters and other calamities in the cites in the context of God’s judgement on men?
- What do you think is the Christian’s role in ministry to the city?
- Does your church have an active programme to reach the city in which it is located?
Prayer focus:
Let us pray today for the good of the city where we live.
In His Grace
Pastor Alex
