Why Magufuli administration misses the point on Government splurge

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Amos 1:1-2:16
Harden your feet to help the poor and needy
A soft heart must lead to hard feet, with God’s people prepared to act on behalf of the poor and vulnerable, to fight against injustice and stand up for the oppressed.

This was a time (760–750 BC) of great prosperity for Israel and Judah. But material prosperity is not always a sign of God’s blessing. At this time, it had resulted in complacency, corruption, immorality and terrible injustice.

Amos was a prophet. But he was not a priest or an ordained minister. He stayed in his workplace – a sheep breeder, who was unimpressed by prosperity, power and position. He was a defender of the downtrodden poor and an accuser of the privileged rich who were using God’s name to legitimise injustice and oppression.

Like the apostle Paul, Amos proclaims God’s judgment against both non-religious and religious.

He starts with the non-religious who ‘sin apart from the law’. Israel’s neighbours had committed terrible sins. They are condemned for their excessive cruelty and horrible torture (1:3), for slavery and slave trading (v.6), for ‘stifling all compassion’ (v.11), for ripping open pregnant women (v.13) and for desecrating the dead (2:1). Amos speaks of God’s wrath at such terrible sins (1:3,6,9,11,13).

Amos and Paul (Romans 1:18–20) both argue for a ‘natural law’. Even if they did not have the written law of God, there is a ‘natural law’ – ‘written on their hearts’ (2:15). They know that certain things are wrong. This was effectively the basis upon which the Nazi leaders were condemned at the Nuremberg trials after the Second World War.

Amos, like Paul (2:12), goes on to say that God’s people who have the written law will be judged by an even stricter standard. Amos turns from judgment of the Gentiles to judgment of Judah and Israel because ‘they rejected God’s revelation, refused to keep my commands’ (Amos 2:4, MSG).

Although God had acted on their behalf – ‘I was always on your side’ (v.9, MSG) – they failed to keep his laws. In particular, the issue that matters to God is their attitude to the poor and needy. Their hearts had become hard. ‘People for them are only things – ways of making money. They’d sell a poor man for a pair of shoes. They’d sell their own grandmother! They grind the penniless into the dirt, shove the luckless into the ditch’ (vv.6c–7b, MSG). They are also guilty of slavery and sexual sin (v.7c).

While all this is going on, ‘stuff they’ve extorted from the poor is piled up at the shrine of their god, while they sit around drinking wine they’ve conned from their victims’ (v.8, MSG).

The sins of God’s people are not as horrific as those of the non-religious. Yet the judgment against them is as severe (vv.13,16) because God has blessed them so richly (vv.10–11). We are not to congratulate ourselves that our sins are less than others. Our sins may be less obvious, but they may be as great in God’s sight. Thank God for the forgiveness and grace that we receive through Jesus.

Lord, give us soft hearts of compassion and love for the issues of extreme poverty and injustice in our world – and hard feet and courage to go out and do something about it.

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Lovely
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Everytime a ruler carve our laws to shield himself against criminal prosecutions I just lol him for his folly is passim. If you can enact and assent law just be smart enough to remember another man may come and revoke your laws and sooner than later you may find yourself a fugitive running for your dear life confirming what we already knew that folly is your middle name....
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