Amos 4:11 - Homiletics

Burning, yet not turning.

From Moses to Amos was about seven hundred years. It is a long time with men and the works of men. But it is little in the two eternities through which the purposes of God extend. There were prophecies which it had taken all this period to mature; courses of treatment for the cure of sin pursued through all the interval, and whose last measure had not yet been taken. One of these finds record here. A new event looks out at us in the guise of an ancient prophecy ( Deuteronomy 29:22-24 ). What seven centuries before had been conceived in the womb of time is here "delivered upon the mellowing of occasion."

I. GOD 'S JUDGMENTS A FIRE . "Plucked out of the burning." A commentary on this figure is the association by Isaiah of "the spirit of judgment" and "the spirit of burning" ( Isaiah 4:4 ). Like a fire:

1 . Judgments are painful. The sensation of burning is about the most painful we know. Too severe for capital punishment, too cruel even for prisoners of war, death by burning has been generally reserved for the martyred saints. This intensest form of physical pain is a fitting symbol of the effects of God's inflictions. What he sends is the greatest of its kind. If it be pleasure it is ideal—a pleasure at his right hand forevermore. If it be pain it is phenomenal—a torment whose smoke ascendeth up forever and ever.

2 . They are consuming. What fire feeds on it destroys. Where the flames have passed no organic matter remains. So with God's judgments. They are the mills of God which "grind exceeding small." That on which they must fall "they destroy and consume unto the end." They are nothing if not adequate to their purpose.

3 . They are purifying. By burning out what is inflammable they leave what is incombustible behind, unmixed and pure. This idea of refining is often associated with the fires of judgment ( Zechariah 13:9 ; Ma Zechariah 3:2 , Zechariah 3:3 ). They seize on the dross of evil, and burn it out of the mass. When their work is done there is only the fine gold of a pure nature in the crucible.

4 . They are irresistible. Fuel, in contact with fire, can do nothing but burn. If the flame is to be quenched it must be done by some extra agency. To be as "tow" or "stubble" in the flames ( Isaiah 1:31 ; Nehemiah 1:10 ) is the strongest possible figure for helplessness under the avenging stroke of God. Men cannot prevent it, cannot avoid it, cannot arrest it, cannot in any degree reduce its force. When he works "who shall let it"? When his day burns as an oven, who shall withstand the fire ( Isaiah 43:13 ; Ma Isaiah 4:1 )?

II. SINNERS ARE THE BRANDS ON WHICH IT FEEDS , "Ye were as a firebrand." There are certain steps which lead up to burning, whether literal or figurative. The brand was :

1 . Withered. It is not on the sappy growing branch that the fire seizes. Before, in the natural course, it reaches the flames, a preliminary process has been finished. Its leaf yellows and falls, its bark shrivels, its sap dries up. Then it is mere tinder, and fit for nothing but the fire. So sin withers and kills the branches of the tree of human character. It dries up the sap of spiritual life, and so turns sere the leaf of profession, and destroys the fruit of well doing. In a little no function of life is possible, and all its uses are lost. To cut it down is all the husbandman can do, and to burn it follows in the natural course.

2 . Brought to the flames. There are no prairie fires in God's domain. What is burned is first prepared, and then bound in bundles ( Matthew 13:30 ) and then set fire to. There is no accident anywhere. The man by his ill-doing makes himself tinder, and God in his providence uses him for the only purpose he suits.

3 . Combustible. Fire seeks out and feeds on what is most inflammable. There is an affinity between the two things that does not fail to bring them together. So with God's avenging fires and the fuel they consume. The vultures of his judgments spy out, and alight upon the carrion of the sinner's lusts. Every transgression of the written Law is a transgression also of the unwritten law of the nature of things, and brings punishment on and through the instrument of the sin.

III. THE BURNING THAT SCATHES WITHOUT CONSUMING . "Plucked out of the burning." This language implies:

1 . A narrow escape. The brand had been in the fire, and actually alight. A little while and it would have been inextinguishable. The fires of judgment had been around Israel, and around her close and long. If she had been in them but a little longer she could not have come out alive. The narrowness of her escape was a fact charged with the double influence of fear as to what might have been, and gratitude for what actually was .

2 . An escape with a certain amount of injury. The brand that has been alight has suffered. Its fair surface has been scathed and charred. It can never be its original self again. Such a thing was Israel. "Once it had been green, fresh, fragrant, with leaf or flower; now scorched, charred, blackened, all but consumed. In itself it was fit for nothing but to be cast back into the fire whence it had been rescued. Man would so deal with it, a recreation alone could restore it. Slight emblem of a soul whose freshness sin hath withered, then God's severe judgment had half consumed; in itself meet only for the everlasting fire, from which yet God withdraws it" (Pusey).

3 . An escape managed for an important purpose. God tries all means before going to extremities. He threatens, menaces, sets fire to, and scorches, yet after all delays to consume.

IV. THE NATURE THAT WILL CONSUME BEFORE IT WILL MELT . Israel had not repented, and was not going to repent. Rescued from the flame in unspeakable mercy for a season, the brand would have to be thrust in again and burned. This unconquerable hardness was that:

1 . Of a nature that had strayed. The hardest sinner is the apostate. He sins against light, against favours received, against experience enjoyed, against gracious influences felt. To have beaten down, and sinned in spite of all these deterrents, argues a hardness and determination that the stranger to gracious influences has not had an opportunity of acquiring. Paul tells us that those who have so sinned cannot be "renewed to repentance" ( Hebrews 6:4-6 ).

2 . Of a nature that had been hardened by punishment. There is a degree of induration in the back that has experienced the lash. The brand put into the fire and taken out again is hardened by the process. The criminal often leaves the prison more callous than he entered it. So with the subjects of Divine judgment. If they are not melted by it they are indurated. Hatred to God and love to the sin are intensified, rebelliousness is stirred up, self-will is put on its mettle, and so moral insensibility is increased by the process of resistance.

3 . Of a nature in which sin is supreme. In most natures there is a struggle between good and evil. It is largely a question of circumstances, which will preponderate at any given time. Temptation is resisted sometimes, and sometimes yielded to, according to our mood and the manner in which it is brought to bear, This indicates a state of war between the law in the members and the law in the mind, victory inclining to Israel or to Amalek as the hands of conscience are upheld. But when a man sins invariably, under whatever pressure of temptation, and when there is no temptation at all—sins in spite of all conceivable deterrent circumstances—the case is different. He says to evil, "Be thou my good." His moral nature is inverted. He will not mould into a vessel of mercy now. He is "a vessel of wrath and fitted for destruction"