Sermons

Beside the altar the command goes out: strike the tops of the pillars so that the thresholds shake. So fierce is God’s anger that he would pursue Israel to the very end and kill them, and the judgment begins with God himself tearing down the temple he had cherished.

He brought it down not because judgment was his aim but because he hated sin. That he waited until Israel’s sin had reached its full measure, and that even in judgment he did not utterly destroy the house of Jacob, both show the heart of a parent who cannot abandon a child. Through the remnant left in this way he promised to raise up again the fallen tent of David, and that promise was fulfilled in Jesus Christ, who came from the line of David.

Israel, once carried off into captivity, returned to the homeland by the decree of Cyrus, rebuilt their towns and ate the fruit of what they themselves had planted and gathered. Just as he promised to plant them in their own land, never again to be uprooted, so those who are in Christ are secure. Now it falls to us, who received the gospel through the devotion of the Jewish people, to carry it to the ends of the earth.

God shows Amos a basket of summer fruit, left too long and now overripe. It is a sign that Israel has let the time for repentance pass. The priest Amaziah heard Amos’s warning, yet went to the king to turn him against the prophet, and Israel would not take hold of even its last chance.

This was what they truly were: they cheated the poor with false scales and sold people into slavery for the price of a pair of sandals. God swore judgment by the pride of Jacob, and that judgment came to pass just as he had spoken, with the sun going dark at midday. The songs of the palace turned to wailing, and when at last they called on the name of the Lord, God was silent.

Famine comes not from a lack of bread but from not hearing the words of the Lord. God’s people must listen to the word while it can still be heard, and each one needs to examine where their faith stands today. When God says he will no longer pardon Israel, he does not mean he will cast them away; it is his earnest longing that they turn back, even now.

Faced with visions of locusts stripping the land of every blade of grass and of a great fire devouring the earth, Amos pleads with God to hold back his judgment for the sake of a poor and helpless people. But in the third vision, when a plumb line is set in the midst of Israel, God declares that this time he will not forgive. Amaziah, the priest of Bethel, threatens Amos for calling the nation to repentance, ordering him to go back to Judah and prophesy no more.

Amos, once a shepherd, answers boldly that he was never trained as a prophet; it was God himself who called him and set him in his place. Amaziah measured Amos by worldly power and rank and scorned him, yet the one he was truly mocking was the God who had called him. To weigh with human eyes someone whom God has raised up, and to stand in that person’s way, is not mere obstruction; it is to set oneself against God.

Judgment fell on Amaziah’s house in all its misery: his wife became a prostitute and his children fell by the sword, and the word Amos had spoken came to pass exactly as he had said. However humble someone may appear, if God has called them they must not be judged rashly but helped. Like Amos, who proclaimed the word with honesty, God’s people must cherish life and give themselves quietly and faithfully to his service.

Leaders living in plenty drink wine from the vessels of the temple and anoint themselves with precious oils. They claim to make instruments as David did, yet theirs is the drunken humming of men who all but mock God, nothing like the faith of David, who praised him with his whole heart.

They had no fear of judgment because they thought their own power formidable. Forgetting that their prosperity had been the grace of God, they grew proud, as though they had won it by their own merit; they went on to serve foreign gods and gave no thought even to the peril facing the nation. Even the poor envied such a life and followed after it, until the whole people had fallen into corruption together.

Before pouring out his wrath, God first told them to go and see the downfall of other cities and learn from it, but they would not listen, and in the end they were brought down by an earthquake and the Assyrian invasion. The peace enjoyed today is likewise not the fruit of one’s own strength but the grace of God, and the moment this is forgotten and the credit claimed for oneself, the hedge of protection is taken away. The promise that whoever seeks God, and keeps on seeking him, will live still stands; it must be held fast through upright living and sincere faith.

The world looks on a mansion and a thatched cottage very differently. God, however, does not regard the size the eye can see but the faith that dwells within. Israel was a beloved people, yet they served idols, and God raised his hand in judgment.

The number of cities brought down speaks plainly of how great that judgment would be. The call to seek God pointed the way to life, yet he told them not to seek out the very places where traces of faith remained. Worship and circumcision that had kept only their outward form could not please him.

However lavish the sacrifice, God does not accept it when the heart is elsewhere. True worship is a life that lets justice flow like water and righteousness like a never-failing stream. Even on the day of judgment, those who seek God in sincerity and pursue what is good will live.

The people of Israel brought their tithes every three days and went up to Bethel each morning to offer sacrifices. Yet all that zeal was a misguided faith, one that sought to use God in order to prosper, and sacrifice offered without a contrite heart only added to their sin.

Like the fat cows of Bashan, Israel had been blessed and still was not satisfied; they oppressed the poor and gave themselves over to luxury and indulgence. God warned them time and again through drought and calamity, but rather than repenting they grew ever more hardened, until at last, like Sodom and Gomorrah, they could no longer escape judgment.

God does not rush to judgment; he always warns first and gives people the chance to turn back. It is those who cast off a merely outward faith and, in true repentance, make ready to meet God who receive his blessing.

Amos proclaims that of all the families of the earth God chose Israel alone. Yet they sold the poor for silver and for a pair of sandals, and lived in luxury, with a palace for summer and another for winter. Their sin in silencing the prophets and making the Nazirites drink wine had risen up before God.

The greater the love, the deeper the pain of betrayal. Like Judas Iscariot and Peter, those who have received grace may still give way to despair or yield to fear, and then the heart passes over into betrayal. Israel’s judgment weighs more heavily than that of the other nations because what God had hoped for from them was so very special.

The purpose of judgment was not suffering but repentance, and so judgment itself was an act of love. Though the winter palace and the summer palace and the palaces of ivory fall, there are still those who cling on in Samaria and Damascus and barely escape with their lives. God’s people must never forget that judgment and Christ’s return are certain, and they need to live each day honestly and faithfully.

Having judged the Gentile nations, God goes on to lay bare, one by one, the sins of Judah and Israel. Those in power sold the righteous for a piece of silver and the poor for the price of a pair of sandals; father and son went in to the same woman, and they committed this immorality without shame. Beside the altar they lay down on garments taken in pledge from the poor and drank wine.

While they were weak, they strove to live by the Word, but once prosperity came, they took up the very sins of the Gentile nations. They credited grace to their own merit and forgot to give thanks; they made the Nazirites drink wine and threatened the prophets, commanding them not to prophesy. This was not the ignorance of the Gentiles. It was a sin that only a people who had received the Law could commit.

God reminded them once more of the grace that had brought them out of Egypt and led them through the wilderness, and he gave them the opportunity to turn back, but Israel would not listen. When judgment comes, pressing down as a cart loaded with sheaves presses the earth, neither the swift nor the strong will find anywhere to flee. Before judgment arrives, God’s people must not leave the place of repentance, for he rejoices at even the first sign of their turning.

One nation after another is called to account. Damascus crushed Gilead; Gaza and Tyre sold their captives into slavery; Edom trampled his own brother; Ammon killed women who were with child; Moab dug up the bones of a dead king. Last of all come Judah and Israel themselves. They sold the poor for the price of a pair of sandals, their courts took bribes, and father and son went in to the same woman, defiling the temple.

The sins of the foreign nations did not escape judgment, even though they were not committed against Israel, for to trample a human being is in itself rebellion against the One who made that person. Yet Judah and Israel, who had watched those nations sin, went on to repeat the very same sins, though they were the people God had brought out of Egypt and given a temple. Their sin was committed where love had been given most richly, and so the rebuke was the heaviest of all.

Neither the temple nor a long history of being loved can cover sin. God judged the nations first and so gave his people time to repent, but Israel would not listen to the end, and judgment came upon them. The heart that counts itself less sinful than others shows that it has yet to learn what repentance is, and whoever stands in such pride must turn back now.