“What is it going to take to get your attention?” This is the cry of many exasperated teachers once the disciplinary bag of tricks has been emptied. For some students, writing lines, staying in during recess, having to stay in detention after school, or even not being able to participate on sports teams are insufficient to produce a change in behavior.

Well, like any good parent, God knows what is best for His children. He created us to be in relationship with Him, so it simply isn’t healthy for us to give our devotion to anyone or anything else. Moreover, He calls us to love all other people, made as they are in the same divine image.

And so, when His people “rejected the law of the Lord” (Amos 1:4), when His people were abusive of their neighbors (Amos 1:6-8), God tried to get their attention. First, He removed their prosperity from them – the agricultural produce for which they had given credit to the false fertility gods of the Canaanites (Amos 4:6-9). Then, the Lord took away their health and their security (Amos 4:10). Finally, He sent great catastrophes among them, perhaps at the hand of enemy armies, destroying their cities as completely as when He rained down fire on Sodom and Gomorrah (Amos 4:11, see Genesis 19:24-28).

From each of these calamities, God spared His people in the way a partially burned stick has been pulled out of a fire: they were damaged, but not destroyed. But none of these disciplinary tactics worked. No matter how hard God tried to get His people’s attention, they stubbornly refused to repent, to come back to Him (Amos 4:6, 8, 9, 10, 11).

So, what did God finally decide to do? After giving them the Law through Moses, and after giving them numerous prophets to remind them of how they had broken that Law, God finally did what Amos announced in 4:12 – “Prepare to meet your God, O Israel!” In other words, God showed up, in the Person of Jesus Christ.

And in Christ, God absorbed all the punishment due to His people’s sins. In Christ, God made a way for His people to be changed from the inside out: filling all who trust in Christ with His Holy Spirit. In Christ, God empowered His people not only to repent but to live lives in accordance with the Law of God – not because we have to, but because we want to.

“What is it going to take to get your attention?” It’s going to take God Himself. May He reveal Himself, in all His holiness and righteousness, in all His loving mercy and grace ever more completely to all of us today.

Amos 4:6-13 (NASB)

6 “But I gave you also cleanness of teeth in all your cities And lack of bread in all your places, Yet you have not returned to Me,” declares the LORD.
7 “And furthermore, I withheld the rain from you While there were still three months until harvest. Then I would send rain on one city And on another city I would not send rain; One part would be rained on, While the part not rained on would dry up.
8 “So two or three cities would stagger to another city to drink water, But would not be satisfied; Yet you have not returned to Me,” declares the LORD.
9 “I smote you with scorching wind and mildew; And the caterpillar was devouring Your many gardens and vineyards, fig trees and olive trees; Yet you have not returned to Me,” declares the LORD.
10 “I sent a plague among you after the manner of Egypt; I slew your young men by the sword along with your captured horses, And I made the stench of your camp rise up in your nostrils; Yet you have not returned to Me,” declares the LORD.
11 “I overthrew you as God overthrew Sodom and Gomorrah, And you were like a firebrand snatched from a blaze; Yet you have not returned to Me,” declares the LORD.
12 “Therefore, thus I will do to you, O Israel; Because I shall do this to you, Prepare to meet your God, O Israel.”
13 For behold, He who forms mountains and creates the wind And declares to man what are His thoughts, He who makes dawn into darkness And treads on the high places of the earth, The LORD God of hosts is His name.