Minor Prophets 3: Amos

Sermon Outline

Amos Wants to Jolt God’s People Out of Compla­cency and Turn Us Away from Sin, Back to God’s Law and Promise.

I. He uses a plumb line to picture how we measure up to God’s perfect, utterly straight Law.

II. He uses a sword to demonstrate what we deserve for our many sins.

III. He uses figs to illustrate the two possibilities for the harvest.

Sermon

Seek good, and not evil, that you may live; and so the Lord, the God of hosts, will be with you, as you have said. Hate evil, and love good, and establish justice in the gate; it may be that the Lord, the God of hosts, will be gracious to the remnant of Joseph. (Amos 5:14–15)

After reading through Amos for the second time in a week, I literally sat back in my chair and went, “Whew!” It reminded me of the sensation I get after popping an Altoid into my mouth. Altoids have been around in one form or another since 1780. They’re famous for their motto, “Curiously strong mints.” They momentarily take your breath away. [Altoids is a registered trademark of Wm. Wrigley Jr. Company.]

That’s exactly the impression Amos wants us to have when we finish his book and put it down.

Amos Wants to Jolt God’s People Out of Complacency and Turn Us Away from Sin, Back to God’s Law and Promise.

If we don’t turn, we can expect God’s breathtaking wrath.

Amos did his work in the mid-ninth century BC. By occupation, he was a shepherd and tender of sycamore-fig trees. But that doesn’t mean he was ignorant. He writes some of the finest Hebrew poetry in the Bible. I’ve tried to find something tangible, something we can organize Amos’s words around. Three items from everyday life show up in his book that perhaps can help us get a handle on his message. Here’s what I found: a plumb line, a sword, and figs.

I.

The plumb line shows up in Amos 7:7–8. It follows two incidents of God sparing Israel from disaster after Amos had fervently prayed for the people. The first incident is a locust plague, perhaps the same one Joel wrote about. Amos prayed that God would forgive Israel and spare the nation from the locusts, and he did. The second incident is a terrible fire that ravaged the land. Yet again, Amos begged God to spare the people so that they would survive. And he did.

But despite God’s mercy in stopping locusts and fire, Israel had not turned back to him. The nation continued in its idolatrous and self-indulgent ways and ignored the needs of the poor. So, after hundreds of years of Israel disregarding God, his covenant, and his Law, God decides to measure and judge them by that perfect, utterly straight standard, his Law.

This is what [the Lord] showed me: behold, the Lord was standing by a wall built with a plumb line, with a plumb line in his hand. And the Lord said to me, “Amos, what do you see?” And I said, “A plumb line.” Then the Lord said, “Behold, I am setting a plumb line in the midst of my people Israel; I will never again pass by them.” (Amos 7:7–8)

Measured against the plumb line of God’s Law, Israel was crooked beyond words. Therefore, God is no longer going to spare Israel in answer to the prayers of Amos. He is going to bring a sword. “I will rise against the house of Jeroboam with the sword,” says Yahweh (Amos 7:9).

Which Jeroboam? The Jeroboam who split off from Judah two hundred years earlier? Or the current Jeroboam, Jeroboam II? Probably the latter, but it doesn’t really make any difference. The whole kingdom is rotten, always has been, and has to go.

II.

So the second item that helps us organize and understand the prophecy of Amos is God’s sword. And my, how he swings it! The whole first chapter is how the sword of God’s judgment is coming on Israel’s neighbors:

Damascus in the northeast gets the sword because of its brutal invasion of Israel.

Gaza and the ancient Philistine cities in the southwest get the sword for enslaving whole communities and selling the people to Edom.

Tyre (modern-day Lebanon) gets the sword for the same thing, selling Israelite slaves to Edom.

And Edom gets the sword for going to war against their Israelite cousins.

That’s not all. Ammon gets the sword for brutally ripping open pregnant Israelite women in Gilead.

Then, finally, Moab—that’s where King David’s grand­mother Ruth came from—gets the sword for desecrating the tomb of Edom’s king.

Those are just the neighbors of Judah and Israel. But Judah and Israel have also both departed from the plumb line of God’s Law, so they aren’t spared either. Judah and the holy city, Jerusalem, get the sword because they have turned to the false gods of their neighbors.

As you can tell, Amos is really animated, really agitated. Nothing stops him once he gets going. All I’ve just said about the sword comes from the first two chapters! The rest of the book, the second half of chapter 2 all the way through most of chapter 9, deals with the swordworthy sins of Amos’s prime target: the Northern Kingdom, Israel. What’s so wrong with Israel? Amos provides us a list of their sins:

They sell the righteous for silver.

They trample on the rights of the poor.

They deny justice to the oppressed.

They commit adultery.

They profane God’s holy name.

They get drunk in the house of God.

They make godly people break their vows.

They feast and drink wine on ivory couches while they oppress the poor.

They have winter houses and summer houses while they ignore the needy.

And while they live this way, they continue to practice their feast days and attend their solemn assemblies and bring grain offerings and sing their religious songs. What does the Lord think about all this? He despises their feasts, he will not accept their offerings, and he finds their songs to be just noise to his ears.

What does God want instead of all this religious display? He says, “Let justice roll down like waters, and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream” (Amos 5:24). Oh, how he wants Israel to be “grieved over the ruin of Joseph” (Amos 6:6), or, in other words, how he wants Israel to repent! What would that look like? It would be the opposite of all that Israel is currently doing wrong. For Israel, repentance would be going back to the plumb line and living according to the spirit of God’s Law. That would be

being compassionate and generous toward the poor;

being sexually pure;

honoring the name of God in words and behavior;

respecting God’s house;

keeping godly vows and encouraging others to do the same;

living frugally so that there is something to share with the needy;

seeing that others have a decent place to live; and

ridding one’s life of idolatry.

Of course, this doesn’t relate only to people who lived 2,800 years ago. This also relates to God’s people today. Amos is telling us is that God is deeply concerned that people who belong to him live according to his plumb line, his Law and values.

What I see over and over is God’s great love for the poor and helpless, a love that he expects his people to share. Just how each of us is to express that love isn’t detailed here. For Christians, that’s where the Holy Spirit comes in. The Spirit moves our hearts when there’s something God wants us to do, and we just do it.

III.

The final item that helps us organize and understand the prophecy of Amos is figs. They’re mentioned a couple of times. I learned in preparing this sermon that there are hundreds of varieties of figs. The kind Amos raised and tended grew on tall trees that provided not only a sweet fruit but also abundant shade. They were common from Egypt to Lebanon in his day. When figs were ripe, they were ready for harvest.

Israel, like ripe figs, was ready for harvest. But in what way? Would they be harvested as unrepentant victims of the sword? Or would they be harvested as repentant children of God who are gathered back into his family?

Actually, both were to happen, and the harvest continues to happen in both ways to this very day. Some people hear God’s Word and refuse to repent. They ignore his plumb line. They refuse to change their minds about sin. They reject the sweet figs of God’s offer of forgiveness. And so someday they feel the wrath of God’s judgment.

On the other hand, some compare their hearts and lives to the plumb line of God’s Law and find themselves lacking. But then they hear that everything that was out of plumb in their lives was laid on God’s Son—and the sword they deserved instead pierced Christ in the form of nails driven into a cross—they sincerely repent and embrace the sweet figs of the Gospel, the Good News of God’s gifts of forgiveness and righteousness in Christ. For all who receive these gifts by faith, there is the joy of rebirth and redemption.

After nearly nine full chapters of plumb line and sword, Amos closes with a basket of figs:

In that day I will raise up the booth of David that is fallen and repair its breaches, and raise up its ruins and rebuild it as in the days of old, that they may possess the remnant of Edom and all the nations who are called by my name, declares the Lord who does this. (Amos 9:11–12)

Put another way, all who repent and return to the Lord, all who come to him through faith in his Son, Jesus Christ, all who put on his gift of righteousness, are welcomed into the Church, the great bastion of forgiveness where what is broken is restored, what is torn down is rebuilt, and what is a remnant is made whole.

May this be our prayer: Holy God, grant me a repentant heart that returns to you through faith in your Son, Jesus Christ. Forgive my sins, welcome me into your strong shelter, restore what is broken in my life, rebuild what has been torn down, and make me whole again. Amen.