Amos 5:7-13 - Homiletics

The contrast presaging the conflict.

Judgment is coming. Warning has been given. Duty, and the prevailing derelictions of it, have been pointed out. Here God's perfections and Israel's iniquities are set in juxtaposition, and the co]location is suggestive. Such incompatibility must lead to collision. It is by God's character and ours that our mutual relations and attitudes are shaped. We see here—

I. GOD REVEALING HIMSELF . ( Amos 5:8 , Amos 5:9 .) God's work is an important revelation of himself. He has written all over it the glorious lineaments of his character. Each part of it reflects some feature, and in the whole we see his face. Here he shows himself:

1 . In the sphere of creation. "He maketh the seven stars and Orion." This is a pregnant thought. Alcyone, one of the seven stars, or Pleiades, is the central orb of the heavens, round which the others move. It is as it were the heart of the material universe; and the Creator of it is by implication the Creator of all. In this fact speak the power and wisdom of the Great Uncaused, who is the Cause not only of all effects, but of all causes as well.

2 . In the sphere of providence. "And turneth the shadow," etc. ( Amos 5:8 , Amos 5:9 ). We have here three classes of operations. The first was illustrated in the miraculous light that shone around Paul at his conversion, is seen daily in the rise of the morning sun, and appears in the turning of the night of adversity into the day of prosperity. The second was seen in the three hours' miraculous darkness at the Crucifixion, is seen in the gathering shades of every night, and in the darkening down into adverse circumstances of many a life day. The third was seen in the Deluge, is seen in every shower of rain, and will be seen in future widespread judgments on the wicked. Amos 5:9 , "Who causeth desolations to flash on the strong," etc. God's judgments are bold, as singling out the strong and the fortress; swift, as coming on them like the lightning's flash; sweeping, as involving them in utter destruction.

3 . In the sphere of redemp tion. God scatters spiritual night. He illuminates the darkness of the soul. He makes men light in the Lord. He gives them the inheritance of the saints in light. He also judicially blinds, by leaving impenitent souls to the natural effects of wrongdoing; and he casts into outer darkness at last. In all these things we behold power—power here as goodness, power there as severity; but power everywhere as resistless and Divine.

II. ISRAEL REVEALING HERSELF . ( Amos 5:12 .) This is a sad apocalypse. In many transgressions and great sins Israel's many-sided and deep corruption comes out. Particulars am:

1 . As unjust. Injustice is a natural form for the sin, which is at bottom selfishness, to take. It was a specially prevalent form, moreover, among the Hebrew people. From Jacob down the sordid race has cheated the strong and imposed on the weak. Action is in a sense the fruit of character, and answers to the tree. God's grace is to convert the thorn into the fir tree, and the briar into the myrtle tree; but man's sin works the converse process, and changes the sweet "tree of righteousness" into bitter wormwood. Casting "righteousness down to earth" is another aspect of the same charge. Righteousness ought to rule. Its proper place is the throne of human life. But Israel had dethroned and cast it down to the earth, and set injustice, a usurper, in its place.

2 . As oppressive. ( Amos 5:11 , Amos 5:12 .) The oppression suffered by Israel had done nothing to produce detestation of the thing. What other nations had inflicted on them in this way, they were only too ready to inflict, with interest, on each other as they had opportunity. Humiliation does not always prepare for exaltation, nor poverty for wealth, nor the endurance of injustice for power. The freed slave will often make the very worst master, and the erewhile victim of wrong the most outrageous inflictor of it ( Proverbs 19:10 ; Proverbs 30:2 , Proverbs 30:23 ).

3 . As venal . "Who take a bribe." They did injustice, not only in their private, but in their public, capacity. They not only plundered the public themselves, but made a profit by helping others to do the same. A dishonest man will make a corrupt magistrate. He will use for his own aggrandizement whatever power he gains.

4 . As impious. ( Amos 5:10 , Amos 5:12 .) As cowardice appeared in oppressing the poor, so did impiety in oppressing the righteous. Much of what the righteous suffer is due to the hatred of righteousness by the wicked. They hate the thing itself, they hate it as a standing rebuke to their own ways, and their antipathy invariably exhibits itself as it has occasion.

III. THEIR FUTURE RELATIONS CLEAR IN THE LIGHT OF BOTH . Given what God is and what Israel is, and the Divine course of treatment may easily be anticipated.

1 . God will disappoint their schemes of self-aggrandizement. ( Amos 5:11 .) Their labour and pains and sin would prove in the end to have been thrown away. Their ill-gotten gains would never be enjoyed. The vineyards and houses, in which they had invested them, would, after having been acquired at great pains, be lost again before they had even begun to be used. Gain gotten by injustice is seldom abiding, and never remunerative. The one condition of getting satisfaction out of earthly good is to acquire it according to the will of God.

2 . He will leave them unrebuked. ( Amos 5:18 .) The prophets and the wise would both be silent. This would be a great calamity. It would be followed by an increase of sin, involving in turn an aggravation of punishment. It would mean abandonment to fate; for when God ceases to strive, a man's doom is sealed. It is the Physician discontinuing his treatment because the hand of death is on the patient. The sinner sins conviction away, and then congratulates himself on the discovery of peace. But it is only God saying, "Ephraim is joined to his idols: let him alone." It is the one spiritual case that is utterly desperate.