Amos 7:7-9 - Homiletics

Righteousness to the plumb line.

here has been reprieve after reprieve. The enemy of God's wrath has been met in the breach by intercessory prayer, and, for the time, turned back. Once and again the hounds of vengeance have been cried off. But respite is not escape. There is a certain limit beyond which the system of Divine reprieves cannot go. And that limit has now been reached. The locust has been disappointed of his meal. The fire has been beaten back from the tinder. But the criminal is obdurate, and now the plumb line is applied to the bowing wall, and the word goes forth to overturn and destroy utterly. In this graphic delineation we notice—

I. THE WALL . This figure for Israel ( Amos 7:8 ) suggests:

1 . Something built. Other nations grow up as it may happen, shaped by the circumstances in which they arise. The nation of Israel was not a natural growth, but a Divine creation. "This people have I formed for myself." So with the Church. It is not a voluntary association. It is not a human institution. It is a vineyard of God's husbandry, a house of God's building ( Matthew 16:18 ). Every stone in it is quarried and chiselled and laid by the Divine hand.

2 . Something strong. A wall has substance, stability, resisting power, and is in Scripture emblematic of these things ( Ezekiel 4:3 ; Isaiah 25:4 ; Zechariah 2:5 ). In regal! to these qualities Israel is a wall. God is "known within her palaces lot a Refuge." Salvation is to her for walls and bulwarks. In these things is her strength; and fortified thus, she "shall not be moved" ( Psalms 46:5 ).

3 . Something upright. "Made by a plumb line." God "made man upright." And he made Israel upright. Whatever comes out of his hands comes out of them free of any moral twist. It is made according to righteousness. Formed into a nation by God, Israel had a constitution, laws, and administration theoretically faultless The uprightness of this God-built wall was a main condition of its strength. In the perfection of the one was the perfection of the other. The loss of one would be the loss of both. The wall that leans is about to fall.

II. THE PLUMB LINE . This is the regulating appliance, and the testing instrument with which the building must tally.

1 . It is righteousness. Righteousness in the moral world answers to straightness in the world of matter. It is the moral rectilineal, or line of "oughtness"—the line along which moral beings ought to move. This is manifestly the plumb line by which to adjust the wall Israel to the perpendicular. Exemplified in the character, this righteousness is uprightness. Exemplified in the conduct, it is justice. In either case it is the ideal of rightness.

2 . It is righteousness as it exists in God . God is universal Perfection—"Light," "Love," "Truth," "the Holy One," "the righteous God," and all in ideal form. He is, in fact, the typical moral Being. Each grace exists in him in its highest form. His righteousness is unspotted righteousness, and the realized ideal of all that righteousness ought to be.

3 . It is this righteousness as it is revealed in Scripture. Scripture is the rule of man, just as being the revelation of God. What he is is our Model. What he does is our Exemplar. What he is and does and requires is the burden of Scripture—a formulation of his whole will "To the Law and to the testimony," etc. By the Law must Israel be tried, its true character revealed, and its fitting destiny settled. "Those that have sinned in the Law shall be judged by the Law." The Law is the unerring plumb line, exposing every deviation from the moral perpendicular.

III. THE TESTING . "Behold, I will set," etc. ( Amos 7:8 ). This is to apply the plumb line to the wall, so as to reveal irregularity if it exists.

1 . This is no longer to be put off. "I shall pass by it no more." The limit of Divine forbearance was now reached. No more passing by, no longer indulgence, no further forgiveness, no more postponement of the vengeance vowed. There is a last word of God to every man, and after it nothing can come but the blow.

2 . The wall is to be tried by the rule it was built by. ( Amos 7:7 .) "He destroys it by that same rule of right wherewith he had built it. By that law, that right, those providential leadings, that grace which we have received, by the same we are judged" (Pusey). God has only one standard, and he uses it always. Things ought to be as he made them, and he tries them to discover if they are so. The measure of divergence from original righteousness, whether in men or Churches, is the measure of guilt in the diverging party. Comparison with its own pure ideal would bring out Israel's corruption in the strongest light.

3 . The testing is to be one of the entire nation. "The wall is not the emblem of Samaria, or of any one city. It is the strength and defence of the whole people" (Pusey). There was general deflection, sad to discover this there will be a general plumbing. All the wall must be tested before it can be all destroyed.

IV. THE DEMOLITION . The wall is found to have bowed, and the word is given to pull it down. In this destruction would be involved:

1 . The idolatrous places. "The sacrificial heights of Isaac," all the high places at Dan, Bethel, and Gilgal, where idol worship was carried on. In the wasting of these would appear, on the one hand, the vanity of idol worship, and, on the other, God's special wrath against it—matters which it was necessary to emphasize in the mind of idol loving Israel.

2 . Idolatrous objects. "The holy things of Israel" ( Amos 7:9 ) are the objects and adjuncts of their idolatrous worship. Dan and Bethel, as rivals of Jerusalem, having been desolated, Baal, Ashtaroth, etc; as rivals of Jehovah, would be destroyed. Broken idols and levelled shrines would alone remain, a commentary on the impotence of the "lying vanities" to which blinded Israel persistently turned.

3 . The Hebrew monarchy. "The house of Jeroboam" was the reigning family. It was the last dynasty of the Israelitish monarchy. In it and with it was to perish ( Hosea 1:4 ), and did perish, "the kingdom of the house of Israel." The royal house was so identified with the national idol worship as of necessity to be involved in whatever destruction this provoked. It was specially fitting, moreover, that the family of the arch-idolater should be the one to sink in the burning grave of the idolatry he set up.