Explore the Bible: Seek God

The Explore the Bible lesson for Sept. 18 focuses on Amos 5:4-15.

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  • The Explore the Bible lesson for Sept. 18 focuses on Amos 5:4-15.

“This is what the Lord says to Israel: ‘Seek me and live …’ (5:4). Seek the Lord and live. God told Israel his name (5:8, 27). They were in covenant relationship with God. He knew them, and they were to know God. Knowing God means seeking him. This is not a work to find a hidden God. No, God is already graciously revealed to us. This is a way of life with the God who gives life.

God calls Israel to seek him. So, God also calls them to not seek those things not of God. There are a couple things in particular he tells them to not seek.

Israel is told to not seek Bethel, Gilgal and Beersheba. Each of these places held religious significance for Israel. Momentous events between God and key leaders in Israel’s past occurred at these sites. Yet, while they once were the places of such significant events, they each became places steeped in the worship of other gods. Corrupt leaders had turned sacred places into idolatrous ones. Places where God had given life had become ones where God hardly was welcomed.

Maybe it was nostalgia that was Israel’s temptation to return to these sacred sites. Maybe the feelings associated had the potential to hold power over a people called to seek God not places. What Israel needed to remember is that while places may have significance for their faith, they only have such significance because of what God did there. It was God who made these places full of meaning, not the places themselves. The goodness God’s people experienced in those ancient sites was because God met them there and gave them life.

The temptation to idolize (or worse divinize) the sacred and special places and times in our past is strong. The churches, conferences and seasons of our lives where we felt the presence and power of God so greatly need to be remembered properly. It is not that those times and places hold any sort of specialness or sacredness on their own. Rather, their meaning is from what God did. God was the one who gave life, because God is the giver of all life.

 God calls Israel to not seek these places but to seek him. He also tells them to “seek good, not evil that you may live” (5:14). There is a parallel between seeking the Lord and seeking good. What is of the Lord is good, and what is good is of the Lord. “Every good and perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of the heavenly lights, who does not change like shifting shadows” (James 1:17).

Spoken to a people guilty of systemic injustice, “seek good and live” would have life-giving effects ripple out to others. Being people who “seek good” was what God intended for his people. It also was the sort of society God intended Israel to be. If justice was to be the ethos of conduct in Israel, each person had to seek good.

Seeking good results in life for us and life for others. When we seek good as leaders in our churches and communities, those under our leadership also reap the benefits. The same is said of the reverse. When we seek evil as leaders, others suffer for it. Seeking good is seeking the ways of God, and the ways of God are ways of life.

An additional way to seek good is to hate evil. “Hate evil, love good” (5:15a). The question of what (who) we are seeking is also the question of what we love and what we hate. Loving goodness will result in acting in the just ways of God. Hating evil will result in ways that reflect the righteous, gracious and life-giving ways of God.


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God knows us. He knows what we seek (5:12). Our seeking after that which is not God is no surprise to God.

We can either seek that which is not God, or can return to the God who already knows it all and still calls. God’s knowledge of our lack of faithfulness does not turn God away from us. What grace! We need not live with the fear that God is going to find us out and no longer love us. The God who knows all is the God who calls.

God tells us his name: “the Lord is his name” (5:8). God reveals to us that he is the creator of all life (5:8). He can give and take away (Job 1:21), but I believe the Lord always seek to give. The Lord desires life for his people.

God calls us back and gives life. To turn from the things of not-life and to God results in life, “life to the full” (John 10:10). Nostalgia won’t last. We may even begin to resent the places that no longer give life like we thought they did before. Seeking evil instead of good does harm to those God loves. Seeking the Lord results in life. That was the message all along. Seeking good is seeking God and so results in life. God creates and sustains all life (5:8-9). Seek him.

Maddie Rarick is pastor of Meadow Oaks Baptist Church in Temple, Texas.


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