Amos 5:4-6 - Homiletics

The seeking that is life.

This passage contains at once a vindication of the coming destruction on Israel, and a last offer of escape. All past evil had been justly incurred by departure from God. All coming evil might yet be avoided by return to him. "Seek ye me" was the direction on their treatment of which the whole issue turned.

I. EVEN THE FOREDOOMED ARE NOT ABANDONED OF GOD . The antediluvians were preached to for a century after their destruction was denounced. So Jerusalem got a Pentecost, and the ordinances of a Christian Church for forty years after Christ had pronounced her doom ( Matthew 23:37-39 ).

1 . God ' s threatenings are in a certain sense conditional on men ' s conduct. They are addressed to men in their character or circumstances at the time they are uttered. If and when the character or circumstances cease to exist, the threatenings cease to apply. It was so in the case of Hezekiah ( Isaiah 38:1 , Isaiah 38:5 ), and also of Nineveh ( Jonah 3:4 , Jonah 3:10 ). God in such cases does not change, but the circumstances do, and his modes of treatment change accordingly.

2 . They am desinged to turn men, not to plunge them in despair. All life is disciplinary. Each event and experience is fitted, and meant, to exercise a moral influence. Being, moreover, controlled by a holy God, the moral influence of each must be in the direction of right, It is so with blessings and the promise of them ( Romans 2:4 ; Isaiah 1:19 ). It is so also with judgments and the threat of them ( Isaiah 26:9 ; Luke 13:3 , Luke 13:5 ). God takes pleasure in the soul's turning ( Ezekiel 18:23 , Ezekiel 18:32 ), and all his dealings with it aim at and tend to this result. Therefore, until judgment actually falls, the threat of it is kept as a deterrent before the sinner's eyes.

3 . Individuals may turn after national repentance has become hopeless. Language addressed to a nation is really meant for the individuals composing it; and as individuals they would be influenced by it. No general forsaking of sin was probable in Israel. Still, some might turn, as many did in Jerusalem, and were saved after the destruction of the city as a whole was foretold; and, so long as this was possible, the means fitted to turn would not be withdrawn. God's expostulations will go forth to glean in comers even when the prospects of a harvest are blighted.

II. THERE IS A SEEKING IN CONNECTION WITH WHICH IT IS LIFE TO FIND . To Israel here and to all men everywhere the great object of search is God, not mere good ( Psalms 42:2 ); and God for himself, not for his gifts.

1 . This seeking implies previous non-possession . God is neither the property of the wicked nor his possession. Sin made separation between them, and a severing of all previously existing ties. Man abandoned God, and God drove out man. Now he is "without God," is "enmity against God," bids God depart from him, says in his heart, "No God." It is only by the saint, and after seeking, that it can be said, "I have found him whom my soul loveth." "This God is our God forever and ever." Grace it is that knits again the ties broken by sin, and restores man and God to a condition of mutual love and possession and indwelling.

2 . It is a quest with the whole heart and strength. The essence of seeking God is to desire him. And to desire him really is to desire him heartily. Not to desire him with other things. Not to desire him more than other things. Not to desire him weakly. Not even to desire him strongly. But to desire him wholly, supremely, and intensely. Seeking God is heart seeking, or it is nothing. Heart seeking is truly such when it is seeking with the whole heart. Therefore only to such seeking is there a promise of finding ( Jeremiah 29:13 ; Jeremiah 24:7 ). God cannot be had till he is adequately wanted, and to be wanted adequately is to be wanted supremely.

3 . It is synonymous with finding. In God's world everywhere supply meets and measures demand. Plant, animal, and man, each finds on earth, in climate, habitat, covering, and food, exactly the thing it needs. There is no want for which there is not full and fitting provision. So in the spiritual sphere. "Blessed are they that do hunger and thirst," etc. Over against every need of the soul is a Divine supply. That need become conscious, means help waiting; that need expressed, means help already on the way. Spiritual good is obtained on the simple condition of its being truly desired.

4 . To find God is to find all good which inheres in him. God is himself the greatest Good; he is, moreover, the Sum, and therefore the Source, of all good. There is certain good which he unconditionally bestows on all, even the ungodly. But it is good of the lower kinds, and which ministers to the lower needs. All spiritual good, and all temporal good that has any spiritual aspect, God gives only with and in Jesus Christ ( Romans 8:32 ; Matthew 6:33 ). The planets attend the sun and follow where he leads. So on Christ, as God's unspeakable Gift, the other lesser gifts wait. We have them when we grasp him.

5 . This good, summed up in one word, is life. Life is a general term for the highest good ( Psalms 30:5 ; Psalms 133:3 ). It is physical life, the prevention or withdrawal of destroying judgments. It is judicial life, or the reversal of the death sentence on the soul, and the privilege for it of living. It is spiritual life, being quickened once for all out of the death in sin, being made alive and kept alive. It is everlasting life, the out blooming in eternity of the flower of soul life planted on earth.

III. THIS IS NOT THE SEEKING TO WHICH MEN NATURALLY TURN . It was under pretence of greater convenience that Jeroboam's calves were set up in Dan and Bethel. But Beersheba was fifty miles south of Jerusalem, and Gilgal was on the other side of Jordan, and so most inconvenient of access. That Israel preferred them to Jerusalem was proof that they preferred idolatrous rites to the worship of God (see Pusey).

1 . Idols are man ' s own invention, and therefore the egoist ' s choice. There is self-sufficiency verging on self-worship in all sin. Man puts his own opinion and will and work above God's. An idol is his own creation, and for that reason, if for no other, is preferred to God. It is a subtle form of self-worship, and so inevitably preferred to any other.

2 . They are credited with qualities congenial to his nature. A man impresses himself on his work, virtually puts himself into it. It reflects his genius and his moral character. The idol a man makes is thus substantially a repetition of himself, and therefore congenial to him all round. Made by his hand, it is after his heart, which the God of heaven is very far from being.

3 . The fall into idol worship is broken by the retention in it of a flavouring of the worship of God. Bethel and Beersheba, its shrines, were spots where the Divine presence had of old been richly manifested, its rites mimicked, to some extent, the national worship of God. It was added on at first to Divine worship, not substituted for it. Satan lets men down into idolatry by easy stages. It begins in the sanctuary. It appears at first in the likeness of a better thing. Then, when men have become sufficiently familiar with it and degraded by it to bear the sight, it puts on its natural shape, and is idol worship pure and simple.

IV. IN THE SEEKING OF THE NATURAL HEART SUCCESS MUST MEAN DISASTER . By a play upon words, Gilgal, "the Great Rolling," is to be rolled away; and Bethel, styled elsewhere "Bethaven," shall become "aven," or vanity.

1 . An idol is a figment, and the worship of it can only result in deception and loss. It is not a thing, but only the image of a thing, It is the image, moreover, not of a real, but of an imaginary thing. It is, therefore, "nothing," and "a thing of nought" ( 1 Corinthians 8:4 ), and out of nothing nothing can come. To worship it is delusion, to trust it inevitable disappointment.

2 . God ' s infinite power and his wrath are against them that forsake him. The idolater pits idol impotence against Divine omnipotence, with the inevitable result of discomfiture and destruction. There are idols of the heart the service of which is no less ruinous. They group themselves under the heading "world," and the love of them is incompatible with the love of God, and so "Anathema" ( 1 John 2:15 ; 1 Corinthians 16:22 ).