Amos 6:1-14
Already as we have seen, the LORD had put His finger on the hardness of heart, the haughtiness, the selfishness and the love of ease of His wayward people (Amos 2:6; Amos 4:1; Amos 5:11; cf. 1 Corinthians 10:24; 1 John 3:17). Their intelligence was used to further their own pleasure (v. 5). This state of things also speaks to our conscience! Is it not dishonest to use for our own benefit what the Lord has entrusted to us for His service? Besides, the way of our own desires leads us, spiritually, into the Enemy’s bondage (cf. v. 7). Finally, going hand in hand with material prosperity and refined tastes, "they are not grieved for the affliction of Joseph" (v. 6). Amos’s contemporaries were no longer distressed by the division of Israel into two kingdoms. And today the same cause, that is to say the assiduous pursuit of our own comforts and of our own interests, produces the same effect: a blameworthy indifference to the state of ruin in the Church and the divisions between Christians.
V. 8 (JND trans.) confirms God’s abhorrence of pride, the root of all sin. May the Lord teach us to judge it in ourselves, in its most flagrant as well as its most subtle manifestations! Let us keep in mind that He resists the proud, but that He gives grace to the humble (James 4:6).