Plumbing the Depths (Amos 7:1-9)

Good morning, it is a pleasure to be speaking to you today! I have been so blessed by the chance to look into the passage that we will be diving into today. God has touched my heart and I pray He will do the same for you, that each of you would leave her transformed in some way by the Holy Spirit. Let’s open with a word of prayer, please bow your heads with me.

Jesus, thank you so much for the chance to be together today and to study Your Word. Plant Your Word within our hearts and help it take root within us. Give me the words to say that you want me to say and bless our time together. Amen.

My family and I travelled to Germany when I was in grade 12 to visit my mom’s extended family that still lives there. While we were there, we attended a church on a Sunday and the service was entirely in German. I did not catch much of it, unsurprisingly, but one line did stand out to me. The pastor kept repeating it and so at an event that we were attending later that evening, I plucked up my courage and asked him about it. It turns out, the phrase was saying that without a level (or a plumbline), a builder is in trouble. Well, this was a disappointing discovery for me, as I had hoped I had somehow picked up on the thesis of his sermon only to discover it was about builders… at most it was potentially one of his points. As I was reading this passage today, however, it brought that phrase back to mind. Hopefully, by the end of our time together, you will understand why Amos 7:1-9 made me think of that pastor’s point. So, without further adieu, let’s turn to Amos 7:1-9 and start our exploration of God’s Word.

“This is what the Lord [a]God showed me, and behold, He was forming a swarm of locusts [b]when the spring crop began to sprout. And behold, the spring crop was after the king’s mowing. 2 And it came about, [c]when it had finished eating the vegetation of the land, that I said,

“Lord God, please pardon! How can Jacob stand? For he is small.” 3 The Lord relented of this. “It shall not be,” said the Lord.

4 So the Lord God showed me, and behold, the Lord God was calling to contend with them by fire, and it consumed the great deep and began to consume the [d]farmland. 5 Then I said,

“Lord God, please stop! How can Jacob stand? For he is small.” 6 The Lord relented of this. “This too shall not be,” said the Lord God.

7 So He showed me, and behold, the Lord was standing [e]by a [f]vertical wall with a plumb line in His hand. 8 And the Lord said to me, “What do you see, Amos?” And I said, “A plumb line.” Then the Lord said,

“Behold I am about to put a plumb line In the midst of My people Israel. I will not [g]spare them any longer. 9 The high places of Isaac will become deserted, And the sanctuaries of Israel will be in ruins. Then I will rise up against the house of Jeroboam with the sword.””

In this passage both the Lord’s mercy and justice are evident. We see more than this, however, if we look at the passage carefully. We see also that the Lord’s mercy and justice reveal the high price of sin. How? Well, there are 3 parts of this passage that lead us to a better understanding of the cost of sin. The first part is the Lord’s mercy.

Point #1: The Lord’s Mercy

The opening scene of this prophecy is full of tension and danger, which would be enough to draw anyone in, especially those whose nation is at stake like Israel. Amos, a prophet from the humble origins of shepherding and vine dressing brings messages from God to the nation of Israel. This is before Judah was taken into Exile and before the nation of Israel was exiled, with many of Amos’ prophecies pointing to the eventual destruction of the nation of Israel as judgement for their corruption. This is what brings us to this passage and sets the stage for the judgements against Israel that Amos is showed.

The Lord shows Amos a scene of a judgement that could be visited upon Israel, it is a possible outcome, it has not happened yet. Amos sees a swarm of locusts descending upon their crops and devouring the vegetation entirely. Can you picture it? In 2019, swarms of locusts began to plague Africa and the story took a top place on news broadcasts for quite some time. BBC, in an article about this occurrence, described the effects of locusts in this way:

“Swarms form when locusts’ numbers increase and they become crowded. This causes a switch from a relatively harmless solitary phase, to a gregarious, sociable phase. In this phase, the insects are able to multiply 20-fold in three months and reach densities of 80 million per square kilometre. Each can consume 2g of vegetation every day – combined, a swarm of 80 million can consume food equivalent to that eaten by 35,000 people a day.” (Njagi, 2020, para #3).

Can you picture the horizon darkening with little, flying bodies and the air filling with the hum of thousands of pairs of wings as you stand helplessly by? What weapons would the Israelites have at their disposal to fight off the creatures that were intent on eating the nations’ livelihood? They certainly didn’t have pesticides like we do today, which has proven to be the only effective way to deal with this modern-day swarm. How helpless they would have felt! We have another interesting detail that is included here. The passage says that this judgement would potentially occur for the crop after the king’s mowing. According to some of the commentaries I was reading, the king would take the first harvest of the crop, leaving the people to wait for the second harvest for the food they could keep to eat or sell. This seems like a particularly awful judgement then, as the people would have already watched the king take part of their harvest, they were waiting for the next yield so that they could have food for the winter and make money… and instead, locusts came in hordes and devoured everything.

Amos, as a shepherd and a vine dresser, would have understood even better than some exactly how devastating this blow would be. This passage does not tell us what he was feeling, but I can picture him gasping horror and reeling at the devastation of the image before crying out “Lord God, please pardon!” He pauses to catch his breath before continuing. “How can Jacob stand, for he is small?” There is a pause, a heartbeat of silence, before the NASB translation says “The Lord changed His mind about this” in verse 6. Pause right there, hit rewind for a second.

The Lord changed His mind? When I was reading this, my brain kind of skipped at this line and I ended up having to consult my father (who is a pastor). “How can an unchanging God change His mind?” I asked him. The answer that we arrived at was this: it was “not so much a changing of His mind, but a change of declaration” (personal communication, Sean UnKauf, November 8, 2022). You see, God already knew long before this conversation what Amos was going to say. He knew that Amos would plead for Israel, that he would intercede for them. So why did the Lord even bother with showing Amos these things if He knew that Amos would intercede for Israel and He, the Lord, would relent? This was an invitation for Amos to intercede for God’s covenant people. This was an invitation for Amos to ask for mercy, and just as God knew he would, he did. And so God gave the mercy that Amos asked for, even though His just nature requires consequences be given for sin. And Amos breathed a sigh of relief when the Lord said “It shall not be”.

Just as quickly as that relief washed over him though, the Lord showed him another possible judgement - a consuming fire that devours everything, even the farm land and the great deep. The great deep refers to underground sources of water that feed into springs (so this fire was so intense that it completely destroyed that underground source)… talk about a hot fire! Once again, Amos pleaded, “Lord God, please stop!” He shuddered at the image of the violence of the fire. “How can Jacob stand, for he is small?” And once again, the Lord had mercy on both Amos and Israel and said “This too shall not be.” What He did not say was “I shall not judge them”, and thus we see with Amos the next vision.

There was a wall, standing tall, and next to it was the Lord holding a plumb line. Well, ok. What is a plumb line? It’s a long string with a weight attached to the end. When the plumb is held up by the string, gravity pulls it towards the ground and makes the line straight. This was the old-fashioned version of the levels we use now. A builder would use the plumbline to determine if what he was building was straight. and if it wasn’t then it was a do-over. This was what Amps saw, the Lord held up the plumbline and measured Israel, finding them wanting. This was the reason for the vision - to tell Amos what to warn the people. Judgement was coming.

So, now that we know what’s is going on and we have set the scene a bit, where does God’s mercy come into play? You may have noticed that the judgements that He showed Amos first and second were pretty intense. Crazy bugs that eat everything in their path or a fire that destroys everything to the deepest level… yikes! Yet, when Amos pleads for Israel, the Lord relents, He has mrecy on Israel, and assures Amos that these things will not happen. The Lord knew that Amos would ask Him not to judge Israel in this way, He wanted Amos to intercede for them! This reveals the truth about what Lamentations 3:22-24 says, “The Lord’s lovingkindnesses indeed never cease, For His compassions never fail. They are new every morning; Great is Your faithfulness. “The Lord is my portion,” says my soul, “Therefore I have hope in Him.”” We also know that because Psalm 145:8-9 tell sus that “The Lord is gracious and merciful; Slow to anger and great in lovingkindness. The Lord is good to all, And His mercies are over all His works.” Israel must have been testing His patience for a LONG time in order for Him to get to a point where He will judge them against a standard and spare them no longer.

The Lord’s Justice

The second part of this passage is the Lord’s justice. It is difficult for us as humans to understand how He can balance the mercy and justice parts of His nature. Yet we see it all the time, He desires that none should perish and so He gave us Jesus who took that justice in our place, but those who reject Jesus will receive justice themselves. In this passage, He warns Amos that he will spare Israel no longer, they are being held accountable for their actions. They will face the consequences of all that they have been engaging in, specifically idolatry and corruption to the extreme, as we see in the earlier chapters of Amos. Isaiah 30:18-19 says, “Therefore the Lord longs to be gracious to you, And therefore He waits on high to have compassion on you. For the Lord is a God of justice; How blessed are all those who long for Him. O people in Zion, inhabitant in Jerusalem, you will weep no longer. He will surely be gracious to you at the sound of your cry; when He hears it, He will answer you.” Our God is a God of justice and will not just continue allowing evil to go without consequence. Due to His mercy, He waited and sent prophets to appeal to the people, to give them a chance to turn back, but this is where justice comes into play and suddenly it’s time to face the music. Revelation 20:12 describes the ultimate delivering of justice. “And I saw the dead, the great and the small, standing before the throne, and books were opened; and another book was opened, which is the book of life; and the dead were judged from the things which were written in the books, according to their deeds.” For a Christian, they do not have to worry about Judgement Day. My pastor, Dr. Kienzler, likes to say that Christians don’t have to worry about all the worst parts of their life being played before all creation on Judgement Day. This is because Jesus already bore the price for everything evil we’ve ever done. We’ve received mercy because of His sacrifice for us and justice has been satisfied in His taking our place.

The Price of the Plumbline

Mercy and justice both combine to bring us to the final part, the price of the plumbline. Amos 7:9 demonstrates a price of the plumbline clearly: ““The high places of Isaac will be desolated And the sanctuaries of Israel laid waste. Then I will rise up against the house of Jeroboam with the sword.”” Let’s pause for a second… desolation, waste, the sword… these are the prices that Israel will pay because they do not live up to the standard. That’s pretty serious consequences… Why is that? Well, Romans 6:23 tells us, “For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.” That sounds like it lines up pretty well with what we see in Amos. They sinned, now they face death. They didn’t have Jesus, but they also didn’t accept what chance they had for atonement before Jesus either. Namely, worship of God and the sacrificial system. If they had turned back to Him, He would have forgiven them and covered their sins. They did not, they utterly refused. We see in the verse about Judgement Day that we read earlier from Revelation that there is no discrimination for God’s judgement. All will face the consequences of their sin if they do not turn to God and ask for His mercy through Jesus. And this applies for the Israelites too, though they are God’s chosen people, they rejected Him and faced the consequences.

Conclusion

God is both merciful and just, but there is a price to pay if we do not match the standard of perfection. The only way we can possibly meet that standard is if we accept Jesus’ sacrifice and accept the gift of salvation. Then God sees Jesus’ perfection in us. What a gift! God’s mercy and justice show us the high price of sin, but they also reveal that He gave us a way to have eternal life instead of eternal punishment. What should this change for us? This should give us a better understanding of exactly how high a price Jesus paid on our behalf, but it should also lead us to greater gratitude for that price. Let’s take a moment right now and together thank Him for what He has done for us. Before we do that though, I want to say a word to those who have not accepted that free gift of salvation. Jesus is waiting to have relationship with you, to save you, to welcome you to eternal life in His family. All you have to do is “confess with your mouth Jesus as Lord, and believe in your heart that God raised Him from the dead, you will be saved;” that’s what the Bible says in Romans 10:9. If you want to do this, come find me or any of the rest of the staff after the service and we’d love to talk with you. That being said, let’s pray and thank God for all He has done for us.

Father, we thank you so much for who you are. You are both merciful and just and sometimes that baffles us! We can’t understand how you could be 2 things that seem to contradict each other. But you sent Jesus to do both things, be merciful and fulfill justice. Thank you for that. Jesus, thank you for your sacrifice and all you have done so that we could be in eternity with you. We don’t deserve it but we are so grateful. Help us to remember how high the price is and to life in gratitude for you daily. Amen!