Amos 5:25-27 - Homiletics

Trusting in idols that cannot save.

In these words, God's case against Israel just announced is strengthened. Their services now were hollow and insincere; their sacrifices formal acts in which the heart had no part. This, in itself, was ground of punishment even to destruction. But it is only a portion of the iniquity chargeable against them. In the wilderness the course had been already entered on. Appointed ordinances had been neglected. Idolatrous ordinances had been introduced. As now they were going on, so they had long ago begun. There was a diuturnity in their wrong doing which made the fall of destroying judgments a foregone conclusion. We see here—

I. ISRAEL 'S PRESENT JUDGED IN THE LIGHT OF ITS PAST . What Israel in Amos's time was and should receive was affected by what Israel had been and done in the desert of sin. This is according to principles universally received.

1 . Every nation is held responsible for its own entire past. The England of today not only owns responsibility for, but is striving nobly to make compensation for, errors of the England of thrice hundred years ago. The prophet-killing Israel of our Lord's time are declared responsible for all the martyr blood shed from that of Abel down ( Matthew 23:35 ). The logic of this is unassailable. The national identity remains unbroken. The national policy remains unchanged. The national life maintains its continuity. And so among its heirlooms is the inherited responsibility for the sins of other days.

2 . A nation is further responsible for its past, in that the present takes its tone from it. A certain proportion of almost every evil is hereditary. From the past generations we inherit evil qualities and learn evil ways. The father's vices reappear in the child. The present is the child of the past, begotten in its likeness, and liable as such for the evil it has taken up and perpetuates.

3 . The life of a nation, like that of an individual, can be judged of only as a whole. If a nation from its birth to its death be one thing, so is a nation's life. Now, the glory of God's dealing is its perfect equity, arising out of its exhaustive induction of facts. He leaves nothing out of account, no smallest word, no slightest desire, no most trifling act. His verdict in each case is based on the entire life of the party in court. The method is fair. No other method would be fair. Each part is modified by its relation to all the others, and cannot be fairly judged unless in connection with them.

II. THAT PAST PERSISTENTLY UNFAITHFUL . The interrogative form of verse 25 is equivalent to a strong negation.

1 . They had neglected sacrifice in the wilderness. "Have ye offered me sacrifices and gifts in the desert forty years?" Typifying the atonement of Christ, through which men draw near to God, sacrifice was the fundamental exercise of Old Testament worship. This was not abandoned by the priests ( Numbers 16:46 ), but it was, like circumcision ( Joshua 5:5 ), neglected by the people, and superseded by sacrifices to idols ( Deuteronomy 32:17 ; Ezekiel 20:16 ). In this neglect or perversion were included the voluntary gifts (offerings) as well as the prescribed sacrifices. Thus early adopted, and long persisted in, was Israel's rebellions way. Emphasizing the pronoun, God says in effect of the whole run of Jewish national history, "Ye either offered no sacrifice at all, or none to me."

2 . They were at palm to make, and carry, idolatrous appliances with them. "But ye have berne the tabernacle of your Moloch." Divinely appointed sacrifice they found too burdensome to be followed. Of Divine worship in each of its ordinances they said, "What a weariness is it!" But they thought it no trouble to make and carry about portable shrines and pedestals for use in the worship of heathen idols. A man will do for his idol what he will not do for God. Be it idol lust, or habit, or opinion, he loves it more, and is more like it, and so finds its service more congenial. The God of the legalist is not the God of Scripture, but a God of his own devising, and so he serves him laboriously in works of self-righteousness, whilst stubbornly declining the far easier call of the true God to simple faith in Jesus Christ. It was in following his affinities thus that Israel was ever found joined to his idols, and alien to the God of heaven.

3 . This idolatry they had derived from Egypt. "It was no doubt to these Egyptian sun gods that the star god which the Israelites carried about with them belonged" (Keil). They were not seduced into idolatry merely by the nations among whom they passed. They did not wait for that. They tired of Jehovah's service, and sought out false gods for themselves. They were bent on having idols, come whence they would. Failing others, they adopted, in their blind and besotted perverseness, those of Egypt itself Their return to Jehovah for deliverance was desertion, and the lesson learned under idolatrous Egypt's savage oppression was to adopt the idol worship that produced it. This is eloquent of the godlessness of the corrupt heart. Nothing can disgust it with idols, nothing can attach it to God. It hates him always, and embraces, or seeks, or makes occasions of abandoning his worship.

4 . Israel ' s worship of idols involved the serving of them. "The booth of your king." Every man's god is his king. Worship is the highest act of service. When it is rendered, the other and lower acts necessarily follow; when it is abandoned, they logically and actually cease. A new idol in the heart means a new sovereign over the life.

III. THE DIVINE PUNISHMENT TO BE ADJUSTED TO THE SIN . This it always is, but in the present case the correspondence is specially obvious.

1 . They should go into captivity. God often punishes sins against himself by human instrumentality, generally that of the wicked ( 2 Samuel 24:13 ; Psalms 109:6 ). The severity of such punishment is guaranteed by the native cruelty of the human heart. As the conqueror and owner of the vanquished and enslaved, the wicked puts on his worst character, and his treatment becomes punishment corresponding to the worst sin of idolatry.

2 . Their captivity should be among idolaters. The rod of God's anger in this case was to be the Assyrian ( Isaiah 10:5 ). In captivity with him, Israel would find out what kind of masters idolatry makes of its votaries. This would disenchant them, if anything could. The test of the god we worship is the practical one of the character of his service. When our idol lusts become our masters, we know them as they really are. The drunkard has attained to a knowledge of the drink appetite that would be a wholesome revelation to those who are just beginning to indulge.

3 . They should die as slaves in the land out of which their progenitor had at first been called. "I will carry you beyond Damascus." Stephen ( Acts 7:42 , Acts 7:43 ) quotes this "beyond Babylon." In either case the neighbourhood of Ur of the Chaldees would be referred to. This, which had been the cradle of the nation, would be its grave. There, where their godly ancestor had been a prince, the idolatrous nation would be slaves ( Joshua 24:14 , Joshua 24:3 ); his faith, and the promises to it, having been lost together.

IV. GOD 'S THREATS EMPHASIZED BY HIS NAME . This says what he is, and so indicates how he will act.

1 . He is Jehovah, the Self-existent One. "He cannot but be, and he is, the Source of all being; the unchangeable, infinite, eternal Essence." As Jehovah, he originates all things (verse 8; Amos 9:6 ; Jeremiah 33:2 ), controls all things ( Psalms 10:16 ; Psalms 99:1 ), fills and possesses all things, and "nothing is too hard for him "( Jeremiah 32:27 ).

2 . He is Lord of hosts. "The Lord of the heavenly hosts, for whose worship they forsook God; the Lord of the hosts on earth, whose ministry he employs to punish those who rebel against him. All creatures in heaven and earth are, as he says of the holy angels, 'ministers of his that do his pleasure'" (Pusey). "Jehovah," the great First Cause, "God of hosts," the Controller of all second causes whatever, there is that in the Name of God which guarantees the execution, literal and exhaustive, of all his threats.