First Baptist Bible Study 8/24/21

Rebuked for Selfishness

Amos 6:4-14

If we take Amos as our guide, it seems that while Israel’s upper class enjoyed many luxuries, they did so at the expense of the poor, who were in danger of being sold into slavery if they fell into debt (2:6).

“Income inequality” is a phrase we are hearing in this year leading up to the 2020 American presidential election.

And for good reason—many studies show that in the United States, the rich get richer while wage growth stagnates for middle class families. And the gap between rich and poor continues to grow. Just one striking example: In 1965, CEOs made about 20 times more in income than the average production worker in their companies. In 2016, that gap had risen to 271 times more income.1

The inequality is even greater from a global perspective. In 2018, less than one percent of the world’s population owned 45 percent of the world’s wealth.2 This gap between rich and poor is especially apparent in the developing world. One photographer, Johnny Miller, illustrates the vast divide between the wealthy and the poor by taking aerial photographs of cities, primarily in developing countries. In city after city, luxury homes and golf courses are bordered by protective walls that separate them from squalid slums of corrugated tin or wooden huts.3

Such scenes would not be unfamiliar to the prophet Amos. He passes judgment against the luxurious lives of the wealthy upper class in Israel: “I will tear down the winter house as well as the summer house; and the houses of ivory shall perish, and the great houses shall come to an end, says the LORD” (3:15).