Amos 4:6-13 - Homiletics

Judgment the Divine retort to human sin.

This is the sad history of God's vain contendings with an incorrigible nation. In Amos 3:1-15 . is an account of the mercies by which he at first had tried to draw them. All that had failed utterly. They met privilege with inappreciation, friendship with rebuff, and favour with incredible disregard. Then he had changed his tactics. They would not be drawn, perhaps they might be driven. The experiment was worth the making, and the record of it is in these verses.

I. THE VARIED VISITATIONS OF JEHOVAH . "So then God had but one gift which he could bestow, one only out of the rich storehouse of his mercies, since all besides were abused—chastisement" (Pusey). This he sent:

1 . In diverse forms. He reduced them by famine, which often acts as a moral depletive, by cutting off its supply from, lust. He plagued them with pestilence—a visitation that strikes terror into the boldest hearts. He slew them with the sword of their enemies—a fate which has terrors peculiarly its own. He swallowed them up in earthquakes—the most portentous and awful of earthly phenomena.

2 . In increasing severity. Famine is direful, but it is directed primarily against the means of life. Pestilence is ghastlier, for it is directed against the life itself. The sword is more terrible than either, for it takes the life with circumstances of cruelty, which are an added horror. The earthquake is the most terror-moving of all, for it summons the overwhelming forces of nature to our destruction.

3 . With differentiating circumstances in different cases. There was nothing humdrum in the visitations, no pitching them on the dead level of hackneyism or prescription.

4 . In minute correspondence to prophetic warnings. They were plagued with pestilence "after the manner of Egypt" ( Amos 3:10 ). This Moses had circumstantially announced would be the result of disobeying the Law revealed on Sinai ( Deuteronomy 28:27 , Deuteronomy 28:60 ), whilst immunity from it was promised in connection with fealty and obedience ( Deuteronomy 7:15 ). Then, with blood curdling explicitness ( Amos 3:6 , Amos 3:7 , Amos 3:10 ), famine, pestilence, the sword, and desolation (Le 26:23-33), blasting, mildew, drought, and locusts ( Amos 3:9 ; Deuteronomy 28:21-26 , Deuteronomy 28:38 , Deuteronomy 28:42 ), and, to crown all, destruction and ruin, as of Sodom and Gomorrah ( Deuteronomy 29:22-28 ), are piled ( Amos 3:11 ), Ossa on Pelion, in prophetic intimation to Israel to be "upon thee for a sign and for a wonder, and upon thy seed forever" ( Deuteronomy 28:46 ). In all this the work of identifying national judgments, as from a pledge keeping and sin-avenging Jehovah, is made easy to all but the wilfully blind.

II. THEIR MEAGRE RESULTS . Judgments fell thick and wide in five varieties of terror moving severity and appositeness, and five times the prophet, gleaning vainly after the scythes of God for a grain of good result, can but repeat the sadly reproachful refrain, "Yet ye have not returned unto me, saith the Lord."

1 . The sinner refuses to believe that his affliction is punishment. He attributes it to accident, or bad management, or natural causes, or the malice of others, as the case may be. While unconscious of his sin, he is necessarily blind to the significance of his suffering, and until he sees this he cannot profit by it. If men would "hear the rod and who hath appointed it" they would have realized a primary condition of improvement under it.

2 . Suffering is not in itself purifying. A bad man it often makes worse. He wants to "curse God and die." Even if the hardening stops short of this, he is frequently soured and embittered. Suffering, to be beneficial, must not go alone. It prepares for other measures. It makes men more amenable to moral influence, but if no such influence be brought to bear in connection with it, it is no more fitted of itself to purify the character than ploughing is to fertilize the desert sand. "Bray a fool in a mortar, yet will not his folly depart from him."

3 . The love of sin is stronger than the fear of suffering. Courses, which all observation and experience declare to be ruinous to health and happiness, are entered on deliberately by millions. Even the physical evil consequences of the early steps in sinful indulgence, which are soon felt, do not arrest the evil doer in his way. By the confirmed sinner hell itself is practically, if not consciously, preferred to reformation. Only what weakens the love of sin secures the successful application of suffering for its removal. The operation of one or ocher of these principles, or the concurrence of them all, no doubt accounted for Israel's persistent sinning even in the fire.

III. THE LAST RESORT TO WHICH GOD WILL NOW BETAKE HIMSELF . "Therefore thus will I do unto thee. The terror of these words is in nothing lessened by their vagueness. It is evident rather:

1 . That the thing menaced would in point of severity be an advance upon all that had yet been done. Only thus would there be any use in adopting it. After expostulation the rod, and after the rod a sword—that is the logical order of corrective measures. "Sin no more, lest a worse thing come upon thee," was a foreshadowing of God's consistent policy.

2 . It would involve being brought face to face with God. "Because I will … prepare" ( Amos 3:12 ). The kind or occasion of the meeting with God is not explained. It is, therefore, to be taken to include all modes and occasions, whether in life, at death, or at the final judgment. And the thought of it is one of terror to the ungodly, under whatever circumstances. They can face his judgments; God is not in them, unless in figurative sense. They can face his prophets; God is not in them, unless in a spiritual sense. But to face God literally was, even to a pious Jew, like facing death ( Exodus 33:20 ; 13:22 ); whilst to the impious it must have been the embodiment of all terror. It is from the "presence of the Lord" that the wicked in the judgment call upon the hills to hide them. That, of all things in the universe, is an ordeal they cannot face.

3 . It is left undefined that it may seem the more terrible . We have hers the eloquence of silence. The terror of the threat is enhanced by its vagueness. Familiarity breeds contempt. If a thing, however bad, is exactly defined, we can familiarize ourselves with the thought of it in time, and brace our courage up to meet it. "It doth not yet appear what we shall be," but our idea of it, meantime, has an element of enlargement in its very indefiniteness. God says vaguely "Thus," and stops short, that imagination may fill up the blank. His silence is charged with deeper meaning than any words could carry.

IV. ONE FINAL APPEAL BEFORE THE STROKE FALLS . "Prepare," etc.

1 . Look for a meeting with God. It is inevitable. It is at hand. The fact must be faced. No good, but harm, can come out of the attempt to escape or blink it ( 2 Corinthians 5:10 ; Psalms 139:7-12 ).

2 . Prepare for it. This is a word of hope. Meeting with God is inevitable; but it need not necessarily he injurious. Preparation for it is possible, being enjoined, and would avail something if it were made. "God never in this life bids people or individuals prepare to meet him without a purpose of good to those who do prepare" (Pusey).

3 . Do this because of impending judgments. "Because I will do this unto thee." We might suppose that if God was going to destroy, the preparation to meet him would be too late. But that does not follow. When Nineveh was wicked God expressed his purpose to destroy it, but when it became penitent he spared it. Hezekiah, prayerless in the particular matter, was bidden prepare to die; but Hezekiah, praying for more life, was spared fifteen years ( Isaiah 38:1 , Isaiah 38:5 ). What God will do to us, so far as it comes within our cognizance, is conditioned by what we will do to him. Until the judgment has actually fallen, the threat of it is a message of mercy. A sentence of destruction itself is a call to repentance, and so has woven into it a thread of hope. "Because I will do this unto thee, prepare."