Amos 3:9-12 - Homiletics

The prophet gets his heavy commission.

It is Jehovah that speaks. He addresses the prophets (Keil), or the heathen (Lange), or the heathen through the prophets. The passage is a summons to the nations to appear as witnesses of Israel's flagrant sin, and her dreadful punishment. There are many articles in her predicted woe. Not least of these is condemnation by the heathen, who for less heinous sins were to be themselves destroyed. When a professed follower of God apostatizes in such a fashion that even God's enemies cry shame, and endures a corresponding punishment in their sight, the cup of his iniquity and of his retribution are both full.

I. THE CRIME CHANCED . There are many counts in this grave indictment.

1 . The confusion of sordid money seeking. "See the great confusions in the midst thereof." The restlessness of greed, the fever of speculation, the wrangling of barter, and the tumult of audacious extortion are all included here. The mingling of excitement, disorder, and noise in a struggle for money, suggest a scene in which little is left to fancy with one who has been "on 'Change."

2 . The oppression of power without principle. "And the oppressed in the heart thereof." From fraud to oppression is but a single step, and a short one. It is simply a question of power. The swindler would steal if he could. The thief would rob with violence if he dare. When dishonesty, moreover, prevails in private life, a system of public plunder is only a question of opportunity.

3 . Wrong doing till the way to do right had been forgotten. "They know not to do right." "In the nature of things every sin against light draws blood on the spiritual retina" (Joseph Cook). Men are both hardened and blinded by a course of sin. Evil actions repeated become habits, and evil habits indulged in work themselves into the very texture of the soul. The wrong of ill-doing soon ceases to be felt, which naturally leads to its ceasing to be seen ( Jeremiah 4:22 ; cf. Romans 16:19 ). When we can sin without conscience, we are very near to sinning without consciousness, The way to preserve a good conscience, a conscience that knows evil and condemns it, is to respect its least dictate. "Sow an act, and you reap a habit; sow a habit, and you reap a character; sew a character, and you reap a destiny."

4 . Putting by plunder in More. "Who store up violence and devastation in their palaces." Plunder has not even the poor excuse of need. It is practised gratuitously, as without limit. The poor were fleeced and impoverished, that the sordid rich might heap up enormous and superfluous stores. And by the terms there was stored up not only the spoil of violence, but violence itself, Pari passu , with the accumulation of ill-gotten gain was the heaping up of the sin of their unrighteous getting, whilst in heaping up sin they were necessarily treasuring up wrath ( Romans 2:5 ).

II. THE WITNESSES SUMMONED . "Assemble upon the mountains," etc. A reference to the topography of Samaria brings out the graphic fitness of the language here. The city was built on a hill, surrounded and overlooked by mountains higher than itself, and from the tops of which the nations could look down into the very streets, and observe the daily doings of the inhabitants. As regards these we notice:

1 . Abandonment in sin is a sight for a man ' s worst enemy to see. The certainty, severity, and nearness of avenging judgment makes sin, from even the low utilitarian standpoint, the greatest possible evil. The enemy, who rejoices in our ill, can find no such occasion of malignant joy as our giving ourselves up to sin. After the fact that it offends God, the strongest argument against sin is the fact, the obverse of the other, that it pleases the devil and wicked men.

2 . When men lose the sense of sin, God appeals to their sense of shame. It is strange that the sense of shame should survive the sense of sin, but so it is. We fear men more than God. We are not ashamed to do what we would be very much ashamed to acknowledge. The poet's sarcasm is just, that in the matter of sin our care is "not to leave undone, but keep unknown." The bitterness of punishment is greatly aggravated by its being inflicted in the presence of an exulting enemy. Philistia and Egypt were, moreover, the enemies whose cognizance of their way and end Israel would most feel and fear ( 2 Samuel 1:20 ). To this last shred of feeling on which a motive could lay hold Jehovah here appeals. They would be a gazing stock to their bitterest enemies. "Like the woman set in the midst amid one encircling sea of accusing, insulting faces, with none to pity, none to intercede, none to show mercy to them who had showed no mercy. Faint image of the shame of that day when not men's deeds only, but the secrets of all hearts, shall be revealed, and they shall begin 'to say to the mountains, Fall on us, and to the hills, Cover us'" (Pusey).

3 . The pupil in the art of ill-doing often outdoes the master . It is assumed that even Egypt and Philistia would be shocked at the sight of the wrong doing of apostate Israel, and so become witnesses against them. Yet Egypt had taught them "oppression," and Philistia had given them many a lesson in "violence and devastation." The art of wrong doing advances with rapid strides as it is handed on. The son of the "smart" trader is a swindler, the son of the swindler is the burglar, the son of the burglar is the robber assassin. The pupil of the religious liberal is the rationalist, and the pupil of the rationalist is the atheist. Begin by imitating wicked men, and you will end by outstripping them in sin.

III. THE SENTENCE PRONOUNCED . This is at once heavy in its nature and explicit in its details. We see here that:

1 . When God ' s judgments come against a man they surround him. ( Amos 3:11 , "An enemy, and that round about the land.") The impossibility of escaping when God attacks is axiomatic. Punishment is in such a way interwoven with sin that they cannot be dissociated. When we sin against God we sin against the nature of things. Physical, mental, and social law jump each with moral law, are broken in the breach of it, and so are each of them a channel to guide to us the full flood of retribution. "Though hand join in hand, yet shall not the wicked go unpunished."

2 . When God strikes a sinner he strikes him on the seat of his sin . "And he shall bring down," etc. ( Amos 3:11 ); "That dwell in Samaria," etc. ( Amos 3:12 ). The strong had oppressed and pillaged the weak, and God's hand would fall on their strength. In the palaces the spoil of violence had been heaped up, and the palaces should be the special prey of the plunderer. The beds and couches which had ministered to their sinful indulgence would be carried away to the last stick. It is so always. The punishment of drunkenness, uncleanness, pride, theft, lying, comes in many ways, but in every case pre-eminently through the lust or appetite involved. This is according to natural laws, but is none the less the arrangement of God. He lure put latent in every power a mystic spark, which, if the power be abused, becomes a retributive fire to burn the breaker of his Law.

3 . When sin is adequately punished the sinner ' s well being is practically destroyed. "Delivers out of the mouth of the lion two shin bones and an ear lappet," etc. ( Amos 3:12 ). These are paltry leavings, not worth the rescue. And such, and so insignificant, would be the surviving good of Israel, when God's controversy was settled. Where the scythe of God's judgment has passed there is little left for the gleaner. The detected thief, the broken down sensualist, the besotted drunkard, what is each but a human wreck? The kernel of life is wasted, and only a husk remains. No wallflower of good can ever grow to cover these wrecks of time.