To listen to the full unabridged audio listen here: Chosen: On Empty Worship and the God Who Loves Too Much to Let Us Stay A reflection on Amos 3–4
There’s something unsettling about hearing God say, “I have something against you.”
That’s exactly where Amos 3 begins. “Hear this word, people of Israel, the word the Lord has spoken against you — against the whole family I brought up out of Egypt” (Amos 3:1). If the Creator God of the universe looks at you and says those words, you should be trembling. And as we continue working our way through Amos, it is going to stay uncomfortable — because Israel and the American Church have so many parallels that we might feel like some of this hits awfully close to home.
But before the accusation lands, something beautiful appears in verse 2: “You only have I chosen of all the families of the earth.”
What “Chosen” Actually Means
Those of us in the Reformed and Presbyterian tradition tend to hear the word chosen and immediately think predestination, sovereignty, the grand theological architecture of election. But the Hebrew word here communicates something far more intimate than doctrinal category. It’s not primarily a decision — it’s a knowing. A deep, tender, relational knowing.
This is the word a husband says to his wife. I chose you. It’s the word that carries the weight of marriage and covenant and intimacy. God opens his case against Israel not with cold legal language but with the language of love: You are mine. I know you. I love you deeply.
That context changes everything. What follows in Amos isn’t a wrathful God throwing lightning bolts from his throne. It’s a God who says, I love you too much to let you stay in this mess. The punishment is not despite the love — it’s because of it.
Think about raising children. When my son Ethan was about seven or eight months old, just learning to crawl, he became utterly fascinated with the fake plant in our living room — the only plant we have ever managed to keep alive (going on 29 years this August, and we are proud of this). We’d tell him no. He didn’t like that. One day he started crawling toward the plant, turned his little head, gave us a big smile, and then crawled faster. He got a little timeout. He really didn’t like that either.
But we loved him. And because we loved him, we couldn’t just let him do whatever he wanted.
That’s what God is doing in Amos. “I will punish you for all your sins” — not out of rage, not out of caprice, but out of love. The discipline is an act of the covenant.
The Prophet Who Had to Speak
Amos wasn’t born into the prophetic guild. He didn’t inherit a ministry or graduate from a school of prophecy. He was a shepherd — and a shepherd of shepherds, a man of modest social standing — who also worked as an agriculturalist, pruning fig trees just right so they wouldn’t catch disease and die. He was, as much as anyone could be, one of us.
And then the Spirit of God stepped in, and he couldn’t stay quiet.
Verses 3–8 build a series of rhetorical questions: Does a lion roar when it has no prey? Does a bird swoop down when there’s no bait? Does a trap spring when nothing has triggered it? The answer is always no — and the logic culminates here: “Surely the Sovereign Lord does nothing without revealing his plan to his servants the prophets. The lion has roared — who will not fear? The Sovereign Lord has spoken — who can but prophesy?”
This is the calling of the prophet. When the Spirit reveals what God is doing, the prophet must speak. Amos couldn’t help it. Neither, he seems to suggest, should we.
When Religion Becomes Performance
Now we get to the heart of it.
Israel in Amos’s day was booming. Economically prosperous. Politically stable. Religiously active. The wealthy had summer homes and winter homes. Women of means could lounge and call out to their husbands, “Bring me another drink.” And on top of all this comfort, they were going to church — constantly. Sacrifices every morning. Tithes regularly. Free will offerings, loudly announced. They were, by every visible metric, deeply religious.
But God says: Go ahead then. Go to Bethel and sin. Go to Gilgal and sin yet more.
The worship was empty — not because of the frequency or the generosity, but because of the location. God’s people were worshiping at Bethel and Gilgal, places the northern kingdom had set up so Israelites wouldn’t have to travel south to Jerusalem. It was worship on their own terms, at their own convenience, disconnected from the place God had ordained.
And they loved it. They loved how good it looked. They loved announcing their offerings. They loved the performance of being religious.
It’s not so different from putting a “I ❤️ My Church” sign in the front yard while living a life that contradicts everything you claim to believe. The sign is real. The worship is empty.
When Jesus sat by a well in Samaria — the very region Amos was preaching to — a woman asked him the same old question: Where’s the right place to worship? Your mountain or ours? The argument was still live, centuries later. And Jesus answered: The hour is coming, and now is, when true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and in truth.
Spirit and truth. That’s what Amos is after. Worship that is honest. Worship that transforms. Worship backed up by how you live.
Where Is Jesus?
There’s a story I’ve thought about often. A group of pastors from China’s underground church were brought to the United States to speak at a church-planting conference. Leaders took them on a tour — the massive buildings, the state-of-the-art AV, the cameras, the lights, the fog machines, the bands. At the end of the day, one of the Chinese pastors said quietly:
“You have shown us so much. My question is this: Where is Jesus?”
That is Amos’s question too.
Israel was crushing the poor and ignoring the needy. Their religion was rich and their neighbor was invisible. And God says: This is not me. This is not what I called you to.
Jesus moves toward the edges. He goes to the people on the margins, the ones who make comfortable, middle-class, Midwestern people like us deeply uncomfortable. The question Amos puts to Israel, he puts to us: Are we following him there? Or are we satisfied with singing the songs, writing the checks, patting ourselves on the back for showing up?
We live in the most prosperous moment in human history. The poor in the United States are, statistically, in the top quarter of global wealth. We have extraordinary resources. The question isn’t whether we have enough to give. The question is whether grace has actually transformed us — whether we walk out the doors of worship on Sunday and the world can tell the difference.
The God Who Can Pull You Through
Amos ends chapter 4 with the hammer of judgment — but also with this:
“He who forms the mountains, who creates the wind, and who reveals his thoughts to mankind, who turns dawn to darkness, and treads on the heights of the earth — the Lord God Almighty is his name.”
The same God who opened the chapter saying “I chose you” closes it reminding us who he is. He is not a God whose love is a sentiment. He is the sovereign Creator. He has the power to do what he says he will do — and that includes pulling his people through the very mess they’ve made.
That’s the invitation underneath all the discomfort in Amos. Not just judgment, but hope. Not just accountability, but love. The God who knows you intimately, who chose you with the language of covenant, is not finished with you. He is the God Almighty. You can trust him to walk with you through this.
This post is drawn from a recent sermon at Peace Presbyterian Church on Amos 3–4. We’re working through the book of Amos together on Sunday mornings.