Yet you did not return to me

Posted on by Pam Larson

    “I gave you cleanness of teeth in all your cities,
        and lack of bread in all your places,
    yet you did not return to me,”
    declares the LORD.
    “I also withheld the rain from you
        when there were yet three months to the harvest;
    I would send rain on one city,
        and send no rain on another city;
    one field would have rain,
        and the field on which it did not rain would wither;
    so two or three cities would wander to another city
        to drink water, and would not be satisfied;
    yet you did not return to me,”
    declares the LORD.
    “I struck you with blight and mildew;
        your many gardens and your vineyards,
        your fig trees and your olive trees the locust devoured;
    yet you did not return to me,”
    declares the LORD.
    “I sent among you a pestilence after the manner of Egypt;
        I killed your young men with the sword,
    and carried away your horses,
        and I made the stench of your camp go up into your nostrils;
    yet you did not return to me,”
    declares the LORD.
    “I overthrew some of you,
        as when God overthrew Sodom and Gomorrah,
        and you were as a brand plucked out of the burning;
    yet you did not return to me,”
    declares the LORD.
    “Therefore thus I will do to you, O Israel;
        because I will do this to you,
        prepare to meet your God, O Israel!”
(Amos 4:6-12 ESV)

John Piper, in a sermon from Amos 4:4-13, “Prepare to Meet Your God”

RoadblockWhat was God doing here? He was blocking Israel again and again in search for happiness without the true God. Hosea (whose ministry may have overlapped with Amos’) described it like this. God says to his wayward wife Israel,

I will hedge up her way with thorns; and I will build a wall against her, so that she cannot find her paths. She shall pursue her lovers, but not overtake them; and she shall seek them, but shall not find them. Then she shall say, “I will go and return to my first husband, for it was better with me then than now.” (Hosea 2:6–7)

That’s what God was doing with Israel. Five times he blocked her. Again and again he cut her off on her downward path to destruction. He shouted in her ear that there is no hope while running from God.