God doesn’t exempt his people from his standards. An “us and them” mentality that’s quick to condemn the world and slow to examine our own hearts and see and confess and repent of our own sins invites God’s judgment.  God is a holy God, he judges all.  We need to examine ourselves and check we don’t fall into that. But secondly an “us and them” attitude misses the missional heart of God.  God’s longing is for the sinner to be saved; he’s slow to anger, rich in love, compassionate and gracious. 

Us and them.  That’s how we divide society.  Those who are like us and those who aren’t.  The good guys and the bad guys.  Those who are for us and those who are against us.  Those who think and live like us and those who don’t.  Us and them.  It’s true of sport, of the playground, of the staffroom, of the family, of the neighbourhood, of the country, of the world. The ‘us’ is always right and defines itself against the ‘them’ who is always wrong.  The ‘us’ is good or better, the ‘them’ is bad or lesser.

Have you got some of your ‘us and them’s’ in your head?  The ways you’ve divided society, family, community, and the world.

Amos speaks God’s word into an us and them culture.  ‘Us’ is Israel, they’re God’s people surrounded by nations who are not.  There’s Judah just to the south, the nation they split from, and there’s a different division there, though it’s still an us and them division.  But Israel ‘us’ leads them to be are proud of being God’s people; God is on their side, as opposed to the other nations.  Yet the irony is that Israel is just as riddled with injustice and idolatry; just as riven by ‘us and them’, haves and have nots, oppressor and oppressed as the nations around them.

And so God sends a ‘them’, an outsider, to Israel with his word.  Amos isn’t a priest or a prophet, (1)he’s a shepherd farmer.  He isn’t even from Israel; he’s from Tekoa in Judah their brotherly rival.  Not only is the messenger a shock but so is the message,

“The LORD roars from Zion and thunders from Jerusalem”

and what’s the result of that?

“the pastures of the shepherds dry up, and the top of Carmel withers.”

God’s not tame!  God’s not indifferent!  God’s not weak and anaemic and unable to act!  God sees and like a lion coming out to hunt he roars judgment against his people.

One of the dangers for the church, and for us as disciples, is ‘us and them’ thinking.  It’s looking at the world and condemning it’s sin and missing our own.  We can be like the man Jesus talks of who sees the speck in his friend’s eye and misses the plank in his own.  We look at the world and see all it’s godlessness and idolatry and sin and then look at ourselves and think we’re not too bad.  And we settle for being a nicer shade of good rather than being what God calls us to be, which is his holy people, totally set apart for him with a completely renewed way of thinking and acting.

It’s so easy to slip into that ‘us and them’ way of thinking.  We can even do it within church as we’re listening to a sermon.

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