A
Portrait of the Prophet
And the LORD asked me, “What do you see, Amos?” “A plumb line,” I
replied.
Then the Lord said, “Look, I
am setting a plumb line among my people Israel; I will spare them no
longer
Amos 7:8
Long ago in a land far from here there was a kingdom that once had been
great. Its greatest kings was a kings of legend--a powerful , just and
fair. But over the years the kingdom experienced civil war and had been
split. Now there were two and the kings and their kingdoms were
rivals. The lessons that had been passed on by their greatest kings and
teachers had been forgotten, by all but a few. The new kings and
their nobles were rich and felt comfortable, but it was also a time of
great darkness. Forces of evil were strong and the poor and those who
tried to do right were often imprisoned or killed and their property
taken. Palaces and their places of worship were turned into places of
moral debauchery. The rich and comfortable could not see it but a great
dark cloud of destruction approached with every passing day.
But into the middle of this growing darkness came a small group of men.
They were brave and strong but very kind.
Most of them did not know one another, but together like knights of
Camelot or jedi knights of fiction, they stood alone against evil
kings, upholding the rights of ordinary people.
Unlike knights of fiction, these men really lived and together they
became one of the most potent moral forces the world has ever known.
Their voices thundered with the power of the Almighty and their words
shook kings and kingdoms to their foundations. Almost three thousand
years later, their names and their words still strike fear into the
hearts of evil-doers. But we do not need to fear them. If we get to see
them up close we see a kindness and compassion that is also legendary.
These men were the prophets of Judah
and Israel, and among the greatest and most numerous were the eight
century BC prophets of Israel. They have names like Hosea, Nahum, Micah
and the one we will look at today, Amos whose words still ring clear
and true today:
Away
with the noise of your songs! I will not listen to the music of your
harps.
But let justice roll on like a river,
righteousness like a never-failing stream.
and...
He has showed you, O man, 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
Israel was in the autumn of its years by the time of Amos. It was rich,
felt unthreatened and had fallen into moral decay.
As you read the scriptures you see that from the very beginning,
running through the core of God's word is a strong ethical theme. We
are called to live ethical and moral lives, because this is a
reflection of God's own character. Our moral principals have a
grounding in the character and the commands of our creator. They are
not just arbitrary commandments and prohibitions cobbled together by an
ancient culture. They are the revelation of the character and nature of
the creation and its creator.
What God is weighing in against is not just the idolatry by itself. God
simply ridicules idolatry as absurd.
But when you destroy your moral compass, the descent into corruption is
not far behind.
What God is castigating them over is perversion of justice, violence
against the weak, and total lack of respect for God, all the while
claiming that they are very religious people.
Amos comes to Israel. He is not totally considered a foreigner, but he
is considered an outsider.
Israel is wealthy. Amos is critical of the way they love their
luxuries, living in houses of ivory while the rich oppress the poor.
This is what the LORD says:
"For three sins of Israel, even for four, I will not turn back my
wrath.
They sell the righteous for silver, and the needy for a pair of sandals.
They trample on the heads of the poor as upon the dust of the ground
and deny justice to the oppressed.
Father and son use the same girl and so profane my holy name.
They lie down beside every altar on
garments taken in pledge.
In the house of their god they drink
wine taken as fines. (Amos 2:6-8, NIV)
Israel had become corrupt to the core and it was time for action.
God judged Israel and Judah by a higher standard than the other
nations. This was because God created them as a nation to reflect the
nature and character of God to the rest of the world, to be a beacon of
God's light. But when that light of justice and of mercy and of moral
purity went out, all they had were the formal observances of their
faith without any of its content and God would not not stand for that.
God shows Amos what is about to happen. Syria is growing stronger as is
Babylon and in a few years, first Israel then Judah will be conquered
and taken into exile.
God shows this to Amos in three different pictures:
In the first a swarm of locusts sweeps down and devours all the harvest
just after they pay their first crop as taxes.
Amos is horrified.
This says a lot about who Amos is and why God has chosen him.
Remember Amos is from Judah and there is no love lost between Judah and
Israel. A lesser man would have been thrilled at the prospects of
Israel getting its just deserts. They were the ones who had separated
in the first place.
But not Amos. He shows no inclination to wish the worst on them. He
pleads for them instead.
He says:
Lord,
forgive them. How can they survive?
God relents.
Then God shows Amos a fire burning up the land. Once again Amos pleads
for them.
Sovereign Lord, I
beg you to stop. They cannot survive this!
Once again, God relents.
Do you ever wonder what God admires in someone?
There are many characteristics, but here is one:
Amos had compassion. He was not someone who gloated over his enemy's
misfortune. In fact he pleads for them to be forgiven.
Jesus says the same thing to us. Pray for your enemies.
How many of us can say that we do that?
Do you forgive and ask God to forgive people who you think really
deserve what they get?
This is what God looks for in us.
Apparently He did not find it in Samaria. What he found were people who
had no compassion for their own poor and innocent let alone for their
enemies.
But He did find it in Amos.
I will also pray that He finds it in us.
Most of us think of the prophets of God as stern faced kill-joys with
nothing but doom and gloom for a message.
Woe to this one and woe to that one.
They were incredibly tough.
They faced down kings and their courts and were generally abused and
often killed for their efforts, but there is another side to them we
often to not see at first.
In all the prophets of God is a deep compassion for people.
Interestingly, it is a deep compassion for people that fires their
anger, and God's anger.
God's anger and theirs is the result of how badly they see the weak
being treated.
But in spite of how evil their kings and rulers had become, Amos plead
for Israel twice and God relented.
In the third vision, God takes a plumb line and places it against a
wall to see if it is straight and true.
This is similar to Abraham pleading for Sodom and Gomorra.
God is going to destroy them, not just because of their sexual sins,
but because of their total disrespect for the rights of others.
But first he says, "I must consult with Abraham". That is because
Abraham has family there-- Lot and his family.
Abraham says, "will you kill the righteous with the wicked? Suppose
there are fifty righteous people?
God says, "for fifty righteous people, I will spare it"
Abraham asks, "how about for forty-five?"
God says, "for forty-five I will spare it."
"How about forty?"
"For forty, I will spare it."
He finally bargains God down to ten.
God says for ten righteous I will spare the city.
But there are not even ten. And ten would have been largely
composed of Lot's family, so Abraham falls silent.
Not even ten.
My uncle once said he thought God would have to intervene with a
country or the world when a new child born into that situation did not
have a chance to grow up righteous. When a nation is that corrupt, God
intervenes.
I think he had a point.
God shows Amos a plumb line and Amos knows what God is saying:
"Amos measure the city and tell me how they measure up."
Amos knows they would fail the test and has no reply.
He knows that Israel would fail the test.
There is a comical story about WC Fields toward the end of his life. He
is in hospital and a friend comes to visit and sees him thumbing
through the Bible. The friend asks what he is doing with a Bible.
Fields replies
"looking for loopholes."
If God's standard is applied to your life, do you pass or fail?, or
like WC Fields are you looking for loopholes?
Do you try to justify your view of yourself and your life by your own
standard or are you willing to have faith in God's standard.
The plumb line of God is God's own character. It is Jesus.
Tested against the standard of Jesus character and life we all fall
short.
We have God's gift of grace that removes the threat of judgment.
If you have ever watched carpenters framing a house there come times
when a wall section is raised into place. Then it is plumbed and
aligned to see if it is in place. The carpenter will have his helpers
secure the wall but not too tightly. Then with a crowbar or some other
tool, the wall section is moved and aligned so that it is plumb and
true. Then it is nailed into place.
Years later when you try to do your wallpapering, you can tell how well
the wall was plumbed and how well it retained its alignment.
Our lives are like that. It is an ongoing process of measuring against
God's standard and truing it up.
That in part is why we need each other. My own perception of myself can
be terribly self serving or terribly distorted.
I need to listen to others and to listen to God's word.
Then I need to cooperate with God's efforts to straighten up my walls.
Are there any rooms in your life that you know haven't been checked in
a while or that you know need some work?
Maintenance is an ongoing process, but the builder is reliable.
God's words through Amos are still a good standard:
He
has showed you, O man, 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.
Prayer: Lord we know our lives
need your scrutiny. Help us to overcome barriers to honesty with you.
Do your work in us we pray. And Lord give us both hearts of courage for
the right and hearts of compassion for those who fail. In Jesus name.
Amen
Preached July 15, 2007
Dr. Harold McNabb
West Shore Presbyterian Church
Victoria, British Columbia
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