With all the problems in our economy these days, we’ve seen a lot of companies file bankruptcy and go out of business and other companies merging with their competitors in order to stay in business. The latest rumor is that FexEx and UPS are considering a merger with the new company to be called Fed Up. Now that’s a company I could believe in because frankly right now I’m pretty well fed up.
• I’m fed up with the people on both sides of the political aisle who can’t refrain from calling each other names and who can’t treat each other with civility and common courtesy.
• I’m fed up with the person who walks their dog in front of our house and fails to clean up the mess their dog leaves behind.
• I’m fed up with all the road construction in Tucson.
• I’m fed up with our constant obsession with celebrities. I’d like to be able to watch the local news without immediately being taken to Entertainment Tonight or Access Hollywood.
• I’m particularly fed up with all the coverage of Michael Jackson. I really don’t care who’s going to take care of his kids, where he’s going to be buried, or what will happen to Neverland Ranch.
In fact, I’m a lot like a friend of mine who many years ago started a chain of donut shops here in Tucson called Bosa Donuts. He finally got fed up with the “hole” business and just gave it up.
But the fact that I’m fed up and the resulting consequences of my frustration are nothing compared to what happens when God gets fed up. And this morning as we continue our study in the book of Amos, we’re going to get a very clear picture of what happens when God gets fed up.
The Book of Amos contains two very distinct sections. The first six chapters contain a sermon, or possibly a series of sermons that Amos spoke to the people of Israel. Last week, we looked at his masterfully crafted sermon in Chapters 1 and 2 that came to a climax with God’s pronouncement of judgment on Israel.
Then in the next four chapters, Amos goes on to describe in more detail the charges that God was bringing against His people that were the reason for His judgment. The primary focus of that section was God’s displeasure with the way the well-to-do were mistreating the poor and needy in order to further their own lavish lifestyle.
Although I’m going to come back to a couple of verses in chapter 5 next week, that particular section doesn’t have much bearing on our study of the Old Testament description of the “Day of the Lord”, so this morning we’re going to skip ahead to the second part of Amos, which begins in Chapter 7.
The second part of Amos contains a series of five visions that God gives to Amos that provide some more insight into the judgment that is going to come upon Israel. Four of the five visions are introduced by the phrase “This is what the Lord God showed me…” and the fifth is introduced with the phrase “I saw the Lord standing beside the altar…” In the midst of these five visions, there is a historical interlude that describes the people’s reaction to Amos prophecy.
This morning, we’re going to examine the first three visions and then the next two weeks, we’ll look at the last two. So take your Bibles and open them to Amos Chapter 7. Since we’re only looking at nine verses this morning, let me go ahead and read them out loud. If you have your ESV Bible, I invite you to read them out loud with me.
[Read Amos 7:1-9]
Just as we saw last week, with Amos’ sermon in Chapters 1 and 2, we must understand the structure of these visions in order to properly understand the message and make proper application of the principles that we find there.
STRUCTURE
1. Vision #1 (vv.1-3)
• The judgment being prepared – locusts
Amos is given a vision of a judgment that God is preparing for His people. The judgment has not yet occurred, so Amos merely gets a picture of what the judgment is going to look life if and when it happens in the future.
The first thing we notice about the judgment is that God is going to carry out His judgment by means of a locust invasion. We’ve already seen in Joel, that locust invasions were quite common in Israel, but once again in this case God makes it clear this is not just some random occurrence, but rather that it is coming from His hand. And when Amos sees this vision, he recognizes right away that this judgment is a direct result of the people failing to obey God’s commands.
As we saw back in our study of Joel, in Deuteronomy 28, God had laid out a number of blessings that would result if His people obeyed Him and a series of curses that would result if they disobeyed him. Among the curses we find this relevant passage:
You shall carry much seed into the field and shall gather in little, for the locust shall consume it.
Deuteronomy 28:38 (ESV)
And this would be a devastating judgment for the people of Israel. When the spring crop came in the first portion of the crop, which is referred to here as the “king’s mowing”, went entirely to the king. In effect it was a tax on the crops. Interestingly enough, when the people of Israel demanded a king from Samuel, this is one of the warnings that God had given to the people through His prophet Samuel:
He will take the tenth of your grain and of your vineyards and give it to his officers and to his servants.
1 Samuel 8:15 (ESV)
The people then had to wait on the second, or what is referred to here in Amos as the “latter growth” to reap a harvest for their own use. If the locusts were to attack before that latter growth was ready to harvest, then the people would have nothing to survive on. It is the picture of that complete devastation that drives Amos to his knees.
• Amos’ intercession – forgive
As soon as the vision comes to its completion, Amos immediately gets on His knees and intercedes on behalf of Israel with this prayer:
“O Lord God, please forgive! How can Jacob stand? He is so small!”
There are several interesting aspects to this prayer:
o Amos immediately recognizes that this judgment is coming as a result of the sins of Israel. There is no doubt in my mind that the vision of the locust invasion had immediately brought to mind the words we looked at just a moment ago from the book of Deuteronomy. And so the appropriate prayer was to pray that God would forgive Israel for her sins and relent from His judgment.
This is certainly consistent with what we saw in the Book of Joel where Joel instructed the people to mourn over their sin and repent.
o Amos uses the name Jacob to describe Israel here. You’ll remember that God changed Jacob’s name to Israel, but Amos, as well as many of the other prophets often uses the name Jacob rather than Israel, especially when they are speaking of God’s judgment on Israel due to her disobedience to God.
And what is really shocking here is the way Amos describes Israel – “so small”. Although Israel was relatively small compared to some of the surrounding world powers of the time, under Jeroboam, the kingdom of Israel had been expanded to nearly the same extent it had occupied during the glory days of King Solomon. Politically and economically, Israel was booming. Spiritually, she was on life support
But when Amos saw the massive destruction that was about to be unleashed on Israel, he realized just how helpless they were to stop that judgment. They were certainly not as big in God’s eyes as they were in their own eyes. Their only hope was to call on God’s grace and ask Him to forgive their sins.
o It is also interesting that Amos, who is from Judah, feels compelled to pray for Israel, who was in many ways a bitter enemy, even though they were related. That certainly brings to mind the words of Jesus:
But I say to you, Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you…
Matthew 5:44 (ESV)
• God’s response – relented
In response to Amos’ prayer, God relented from His judgment. This is one of those cases where I’m really glad we’re using the ESV translations, because some other translations uses words and phrases other than “relented” that can mislead us about what is going on here.
For instance, the KJV translates that same word “repented”. The problem with that translation is that the way we normally use the word repent in our English language today and the way it is used throughout Scripture primarily deals with sin and the need to recognize it as sin, confess it and then change our conduct. Certainly God does not sin or need to change His conduct because it is sinful.
The NASB translates this same word “changed His mind”. In my opinion that is even worse than repented because it completely mischaracterizes the nature of God. It implies that God is just like man and therefore subject to changing His mind. But that certainly flies in the face of this and other Scriptures that show that God is unchanging:
God is not man, that he should lie, or a son of man, that he should change his mind.
Numbers 23:19 (ESV)
This passage raises a question that we couldn’t even begin to answer in the short amount of time we have available to us this morning – Does prayer change God? If we took Amos’ prayer here and take it out of context, it would be easy for us to look at this one prayer and answer “yes”. But, as we’ve already seen, God does not change, so that just can’t be the case.
R.C Sproul, in his article “The Purpose of Prayer”, provides us with some wise insight into this issue:
When God hangs his sword of judgment over people’s heads and they repent and he then withholds his judgment, has he really changed his mind, like a chameleon?
The mind of God does not change; God is not a thing. Things change, and they change according to his sovereign will, which he exercises through secondary means and secondary activities. The prayer of his people is one of the means he uses to bring things to pass in this world. So if you ask me if prayer changes things, I answer with an unhesitating "Yes!"
In other words, God chooses, in His sovereign will, to use the prayers of His people as an avenue to bring about the fulfillment of that will. God relented in this case because He had already determined that He would relent as a result of Amos’ prayer.
So we don’t pray to change God’s mind or His will. That just isn’t possible. No matter how many of us pray and how hard we pray, we can’t change the fact that no one can come to God except through His Son, Jesus, because that is His determined will. No matter how many of us pray and how hard we pray, we can’t keep Jesus from returning to this earth as Judge one day, because that is His determined will.
But we do pray and intercede on behalf of others because God wants to give us the privilege of participating in the process of carrying out His sovereign will in our lives and in the lives of others. That is why Amos prayed for Israel.
2. Vision #2 (vv. 4-6)
Amos’ second vision follows the same pattern as the first one, although there are some differences in the details:
• The judgment being prepared – fire
The next judgment that God shows Amos is a judgment of fire. We didn’t have time to look at this last week, but if you go back to Amos 1 and 2, you will find that the judgment that God was going to bring on all the surrounding nations, including Judah, was a fire that would devour their strongholds. But when it came to Israel, the judgment was described as pressure, which as we saw on Thursday night, is directly related to the idea of tribulation.
But now God is preparing a judgment of fire for Israel. And this is not just any fire. This fire is going to devour the “great deep” as well as eat up the land. So just what is the great deep and what kind of fire would it take to devour it? Let’s go back to the account of Noah, where we find that very same term used:
In the six hundredth year of Noah’s life, in the second month, on the seventeenth day of the month, on that day all the fountains of the great deep burst forth, and the windows of the heavens were opened.
Genesis 7:11 (ESV)
As we’ve seen on Thursday night, that great deep referred to the waters that are stored up deep beneath the surface of the earth. The aquifer beneath Tucson that has been the source of our drinking water for many years would be just a small part of the great deep. And we can imagine what kind of great fire it would take to devour that aquifer and the resulting devastation that would occur when we no longer had a source of safe drinking water.
We’ll certainly see this kind of fire when we get to the Book of Revelation.
Once again the severe nature of the coming judgment drives Amos to his knees.
• Amos’ intercession – cease
Once again Amos intercedes on behalf of Israel, but this time his prayer is different than it was after the first vision. You’ll remember that after the first vision he prayed for God to forgive. He was seeking God’s grace. Implied in that prayer was Amos’ desire to see Israel repent of their sin since repentance is what motivates God to show His grace. Once again that has been one of the foundational principles of our Thursday night study.
But obviously Israel hasn’t repented, which is why God is preparing another, more sever judgment. Once again, this idea of an escalation in the severity of judgment is one that we have already seen consistently both here on Sunday mornings and in our Thursday night study.
Amos knows that the people deserve the judgment, but he just can’t bear to see them endure that suffering, so now he prays for God’s mercy. All he can ask now is for God to cease.
• God’s response – relented
Once again, in response to Amos’ prayer, God relents from His judgment.
But when we get to the third vision, the entire structure of that vision changes. In a sense, Amos’ was viewing the first two visions from his own vantage point and he was reacting to the impending judgment based on his own emotions. He was overwhelmed by the destruction and its impact on the people and so he intercedes on behalf of the people and God relents.
Last week, we saw that the first seven judgments in Amos 1 and 2 were primarily used to set the stage for the eighth and final judgment against Israel. Much the same thing is happening with these three visions. The first two are setting the stage for this third one. The contrasting structure of this third vision tells us that it is the main focus of what God is revealing to Amos.
3. Vision #3 (vv. 7-9)
This third vision contains none of the elements we found in the first two. Now, instead of seeing things from his own perspective, Amos is going to be shown things from God’s perspective.
• Vision of God’s wall
The first thing Amos sees is God standing beside, or more likely, upon a wall. And that wall is perfectly plumb because it is the wall that God Himself has built. That wall was a picture of Israel and there is no mistaking the meaning of that image. God is making the point that when He built the nation of Israel, he did it perfectly.
The previous two visions demonstrated that He had dealt with them perfectly. Even when they deserved it, He withheld His judgment by pouring out His mercy and grace on them.
We’ll see a plumb line used again as we continue our journey through some of the Old Testament prophecies regarding the “Day of the Lord”. And we’ll find that the plumb line also demonstrates that God’s judgment is perfectly in line with His justice.
But God is not yet done with that plumb line. He takes and places it in the midst of His people and there can be no doubt what God is doing:
• God measures His people
The very moment that God placed the plumb line in the midst of Israel, Amos immediately began to see things from God’s perspective. Up to that point, he had pleaded for mercy and grace. Perhaps he had even blamed God or thought that God wasn’t being fair. But now that he saw just how out of plumb the people were from God’s perspective, he no longer interceded on their behalf.
Notice how God measures His people. He doesn’t compare them to the people and nations around them. As we saw last week, the atrocities committed in those surrounding nations seemed far worse than the sins of Israel. But God doesn’t grade on a curve. God isn’t impressed by their wealth and political power either. Nor does he care about their religious piety, as we’ll see even more clearly in a moment.
The plumb line that God used to measure His people was the plumb line of His Word. At Mt. Sinai, Moses called the people before Him and He clearly proclaimed God’s Word. And the people even made a covenant to obey that word:
So Moses came and called the elders of the people and set before them all these words that the Lord had commanded him. All the people answered together and said, “All that the Lord has spoken we will do.” And Moses reported the words of the people to the Lord.
Exodus 19:7, 8 (ESV)
But the people had failed to keep their word and now God was showing Amos just how far they were out of line.
• Certain judgment
I don’t know any better way to put it than to say that God was fed up. There is no more opportunity for intercession, no more opportunity for repentance. As we’ve seen on Thursdays, there comes a point, one known only to God Himself, where God gets fed up and he pours out His judgment.
We see another clear example of one of those times when God gets fed up in Jeremiah [Have people turn there in their Bibles]:
“As for you, do not pray for this people, or lift up a cry or prayer for them, and do not intercede with me, for I will not hear you. Do you not see what they are doing in the cities of Judah and in the streets of Jerusalem? The children gather wood, the fathers kindle fire, and the women knead dough, to make cakes for the queen of heaven. And they pour out drink offerings to other gods, to provoke me to anger. Is it I whom they provoke? declares the Lord. Is it not themselves, to their own shame? Therefore thus says the Lord God: behold, my anger and my wrath will be poured out on this place, upon man and beast, upon the trees of the field and the fruit of the ground; it will burn and not be quenched.”
Jeremiah 7:16-20 (ESV)
God’s judgment here in Amos is directed against two main targets:
o The religious centers – both the high places and the sanctuaries that had been constructed in Israel – where the people had profaned the worship of the one true God
o The leaders who had allowed this to occur.
We see the near-term fulfillment of this prophecy when Jeroboam’s dynasty comes to an end with the assignation of his son and successor, Zechariah and then when Assyria invades Israel and take the people into captivity in 722 BC.
But there are some aspects of this prophecy which have not yet been fulfilled completely. In particular, God says that He will “never again pass by them”, speaking of Israel. The sense of that declaration is that He will no longer spare His judgment against them. And that did occur in 722 BC. But we also know that there have been times since then where God has indeed spared Israel.
However, there will be a future, final fulfillment of this prophecy where God will bring a final judgment against His people. As we’ve seen on Thursdays, that is, at least in part, an action that is a demonstration of God’s grace as gives His people an opportunity to repent and return to Him. And, as we’ll see in a couple of weeks, there will be a remnant from Israel who will do just that and God will restore them.
That is completely consistent with what we have already discovered in our examination of the Book of Joel, and we will see that same pattern again in our future studies.
Once again, it was really hard to narrow this down to just a few applications, so let me briefly share three of the most significant ones.
APPLICATION
1. God’s only plumb line for our lives is His Word
We use alls kinds of plumb lines in our lives to measure ourselves. Probably the most common one is the plumb line of other people. We look around and compare our lives to others and figure we’re really pretty good. But that was the very same mistake that Israel had made. They were comparing themselves to other surrounding people instead of to God’s Word.
Paul certainly warned of the danger of comparing ourselves to others:
Not that we dare to classify or compare ourselves with some of those who are commending themselves. But when they measure themselves by one another and compare themselves with one another, they are without understanding.
2 Corinthians 10:12 (ESV)
The only standard by which we can accurately measure our lives is the Word of God. Only the Bible properly illuminates our lives and allows us to measure them against God’s standards.
All Scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness, that the man of God may be competent, equipped for every good work.
2 Timothy 3:16, 17 (ESV)
2. Don’t let religion get in the way of our relationship with God
The people of Israel in Amos’ day were very religious. They had all kinds of places of worship and were involved in all kinds of religious rituals, but they had lost sight of their covenant relationship with God. If we’re not careful, the very same thing can happen in our own lives.
Whenever I perform a marriage, one of the things I tell the couple is that the wedding is the easy part; the hard part is the marriage. It’s actually pretty easy to exchange rings and vows, but the difficult part is trying to fulfill those vows daily as we live in a covenant relationship with the other person.
That’s also true with our relationship with God. The “religious stuff” – making a commitment to Jesus, going to church, reading our Bibles, praying – is all relatively easy. Developing a relationship with Jesus takes a lot more effort and time. And our human nature is to gravitate to what is easier and takes less time so we have a tendency to focus on religious things rather than our relationship with God. There is actually nothing wrong with any of those “religious” things I mentioned – going to church, reading your Bible, praying. The key is to make sure that we just view them as tools in building our relationship with God rather than ends in themselves.
3. One righteous person can make a difference
Even though Amos was only one person, he did make a difference. At a minimum, his prayers delayed the judgment of God, at least for a time. And who knows, perhaps that was enough time for at least one person to repent and turn to God.
Sometimes in our walk with God we get worn out and tired and we wonder whether what we’re doing is actually doing any good at all.
The truth is that we never know how God is going to use us in the process of carrying out His sovereign will. But time after time in the Scriptures we find examples of righteous men and women who were available and obedient and who were used mightily by God.
