Sermon Tone Analysis

Measuring up?

I was happy when they opened up the Harbor Freight store in Somerset.

I jokingly refer to the store as a “candy store.”

I might go in for one thing in particular but always walk out with more than I intended to buy.

I am not any great kind of carpenter, plumber, electrician, or mechanic.

I know just enough to be dangerous.

One thing that I have learned is that if you have the right tools then the job goes much easier.

If you are going to hang a picture on the wall it helps to have a level.

You might try to eye-ball it, but that is not the best way.

We’ve got an antique mirror hanging in the living room.

It is hanging there with a wire stretched across the back of it.

That mirror will not stay level.

It seems like every time that I straighten it out so that it is hanging properly then the next time I walk by it is crooked again.

The thing about tools is that you’ve actually got to use them to derive any benefits from them.

When we think about our relationship with God, He has given us all the tools that we need in order to live a life that is pleasing to Him.

Those tools include Himself, God the Holy Spirit who comes to indwell us and to transform us into the very likeness of Christ.

He has given us the Bible, His written word to instruct us.

He has given us the Church, instituted by Jesus Himself.

We couldn’t ask for anything better.

What more could He give besides Himself?

The problem that we run into is that we often don’t use the resources that God has provided us.

Paul wrote the Fruit of the Spirit in Galatians.

Those fruit are produced by the Holy Spirit who lives within us.

Paul wrote:

Galatians 5:24–25 (CEB)

24 Those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the self with its passions and its desires.

25 If we live by the Spirit, let’s follow the Spirit.

If you truly belong to Jesus then you’ve crucified the flesh, you’ve taken up your cross and you’re following Him.

If you’re still allowing sin to remain in your life then you don’t truly belong to Jesus.

You need to repent and turn to Jesus and turn away from sin.

There is no room for sin in the life of a Christian.

Paul is saying that the normal Christian life is one lived by the Holy Spirit, that’s the expectation, not an exception.

He says that since we live by the Spirit, let us keep in step with the Spirit.

When we keep in step with the Spirit or walk in line with the Spirit we can proclaim as Paul did back in chapter 2 verse 20:

The prophet Amos in our Scripture text points out three visions that God showed to him.

The first two visions are visions of locust devouring the land and fire sweeping through the land.

What is interesting about these two visions is that the people do not repent.

It is God, he changes His mind after Amos pleads with God to not allow those events.

The Israelites had walked away from God.

One commentator wrote:

The moral condition of the nation was clearly revealed by the prophet’s shock at the cruel treatment of the poor by the rich, at the covetousness, injustice, and immorality of the people in power, and at the general contempt for things holy (2:6–8).

Trampling on the poor, taking exactions of wheat (5:11), afflicting the just, taking a bribe, and turning aside from the needy (v.

23) stirred the indignation of the prophet, and gives us insight into the morals of the day.

These people were ready to “swallow up the needy” and “to do away with the poor of the land”—that is, to let them die (8:4).

In political circles there was tumult and oppression, violence and robbery (3:9–10).

People hated any judge who would reprove them or speak uprightly (5:10).

Then suddenly, against this background of prosperity and oppression, a man who knew poverty appeared from Judah.

For a few short months, he denounced the sins of Israel and promised judgment.

Amos was a native of Tekoa, a town about 12 miles south of Jerusalem.

A farmer and herder, he had spent his life caring for sheep and harvesting the sycamore fig, the “food of the poor.”

He was used to hard work and accustomed to a frugal life.

He stood in sharp contrast to the “beautiful people” of Israel.

Shocked by the moral, social, and religious situation in the Northern Kingdom, Amos stood at Bethel (the center of worship established over a century before by Jeroboam I) and denounced the lifestyle of Israel.

In a series of scathing sermons, he confronted the wealthy and ruling classes, exposed their sins, and pronounced in flaming anger the punishment that God was to impose.[1]

That is the culture of Amos’ day.

Those are some of the reasons that God was going to bring judgement on the Israelites.

Both times that God said He was going to bring judgement on them Amos begged God to not do it and both times Amos writes “So the Lord relented.”

God gives Amos a third vision.

The vision of a plumb line.

A plumb line is used in construction like a level as a tool to ensure that something is being built plumb in a vertical manner.

If you were to install a new door or window in your house, you would check to make sure that it is level.

That means that on the horizontal that it is level across.

You also check to make sure that it is plumb on the vertical axis making sure that it is not leaning out or leaning in.

God says there in verse 8:

When God brought the Israelites were brought out of Egypt, He established a covenant with them.

The basis for that covenant begins in Deuteronomy chapter four where Moses says to the people:

In chapter five of Deuteronomy Moses gives the ten commandments to the people.

Those ten commandments provide the boundaries or the fence around them that demonstrate how they are to live different lives than the nations that will surround them.

In chapter six of Deuteronomy we read the great commandment where Moses tells the people:

Over in Leviticus chapter 19 verse 18 we read the Holiness code for the Jews.

In that chapter we find the second greatest commandment:

Do not seek revenge or bear a grudge against anyone among your people, but love your neighbor as yourself.

I am the Lord.

You might be thinking “I really wish the pastor would get to his point” or “that’s nice but what does it have to do with a plumb line?”

I’m glad you’re thinking that because those scriptures that I just pointed out are the very reason that God said that He was setting a plumb line among the people.

God was using the plumb line of His word, His commandments to see how the people were measuring up.

Based on what God says to Amos in verse seven of our text the people didn’t measure up.

God said:

Going back to Leviticus chapter 19, God starts that chapter by saying “Be holy because I, the Lord your God, am holy.”

That is the measure against which everything we do is compared to.

God is holy, that is His very character and He is telling the people that they need to be holy like Him.

If you’ll take time to read that entire chapter and you’re not careful you would quickly think that God is laying out a list of do’s and don’ts.

A careful reading is that the list that is presented there is more than just do’s and don’ts, rather they are more about attitudes and respect for God and others.

Over in another obscure book of the Old Testament, Micah, we read God’s indictment against the Israelites.

God says through the prophet Micah in chapter 6 these words:

He has shown you, O mortal, what is good.

And what does the Lord require of you?

To act justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly with your God.

God doesn’t lay out a list of do’s and don’ts rather He speaks about attitudes of the heart.

When God first created Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden, He created them and us with a free will.

That is the ability to choose to love and serve God or to choose our own way.

That choice doesn’t come from following a list rather it comes from a decision of the heart to either love God or to reject Him.

Adam and Eve choose to reject God and now we live with the consequences of their decision.

Ever since that fateful decision of Adam and Eve, God has been at work seeking to be reconciled with His creation.

God called the Jews to be a special unique people.

They were to be missionary people with a mission to be witnesses of God in the world.

Isaiah for example writes that God said:

I will set a sign among them, and I will send some of those who survive to the nations—to Tarshish, to the Libyans and Lydians (famous as archers), to Tubal and Greece, and to the distant islands that have not heard of my fame or seen my glory.

They will proclaim my glory among the nations.

(Isaiah 66:19)