Amos 6:8-11 - Homiletics

Wrath revealing itself in judgment.

The squaring of a sinner's account with God is of necessity a bitter experience. It is the last fact in a wide induction, and completes our knowledge of what sin really is. The best and only adequate view of this is reached when a man reads it in the light of its punishment. We are enabled to perform this office for Israel's crying and incredible wickedness here.

I. THE WORD THAT CANNOT BE BROKEN . Accommodating himself to our mode of conceiving things, God condescends to give assurance of his faithfulness in three degrees of assertion. The word that cannot be broken is:

1 . What God says . "Thy Word is truth." God can neither err nor lie. He does when he promises ( Numbers 23:19 ). He does as much as he promises. He does exactly the thing he promises, The fact of his truth lies at the foundation of all religion and all knowledge. Because he is true, we not only believe his testimony absolutely, but we believe absolutely the testimony of our own consciousness as being his gift.

2 . What God swears . In itself his word is as good as his oath. But to our apprehension there may be a difference. For God to swear is an act of special condescension. It is making a great concession to our unbelief, and the limitation of our faculties, that God conforms to our human modes of making solemn affirmation, in order if possible to win our implicit credence for his words ( Hebrews 6:17 ). His oath, added to his word in any matter, is for fullness of confirmation and assurance, and is a specially gracious act. What he swears by himself. In default of a greater, God swears by himself ( Hebrews 6:13 ). He is "the true God," and a "God of truth." An oath in his name has the highest sanction possible, and assumes its most solemn form. God's oath in his own name is as sure as his own existence—is, in fact, a putting of his existence in pledge for the word of his mouth.

II. THE ESSENTIAL ANTAGONISM BETWEEN DIVINE HOLINESS AND HUMAN SIN . This is extreme, utter, and necessary.

1 . God does not hate men, but their sin. He is not said to do so here. The statements elsewhere, that he hates the wicked ( Psalms 5:5 ; Romans 9:13 ), must be taken in connection with the clearly revealed fact that he also loves them ( John 3:16 ), and loved his people while they were of them. It cannot be that he loves the wicked and hates them in the same sense. His love has reference to their humanity, his hatred to their sinfulness ( Romans 1:18 ). He hates them as sinners, yet loves them as men; forgives them often, yet takes vengeance on their inventions ( Psalms 99:8 ).

2 . God ' s hatred of sin extends to the occasions of it. "I abhor the pride of Jacob." God's abhorrence of sin extends to everything that tends to produce it. Pride or loftiness, being in itself sinful, and a fruitful occasion of sin, he must hate. Excellence or greatness, whether imaginary or real, is, in so far as it leads to pride, included in the reach of the Divine abhorrence. Sin, like a cesspool, fouls all approaches to it. It is spiritual treason, and attaints its nearest of kin.

3 . It includes even the scenes of it. "And I hate his palaces." The palaces were closely connected with the sin. They were built with the wages of unrighteousness, for luxurious gratification, and as a means to further exaction. Accordingly, as at once an expression of sin and an accessory of it, they were hateful in God's sight. God's attitude in the matter is the model for ours. If we are baptized into his Spirit we shall "hate even the garments spotted by the flesh." Not only is sin hateful, but all that leads to it, all that borders on it, all that has any connection with it. Even the remotest contact with it will be hateful to the spiritually minded.

III. THE SWEEPING JUDGMENTS THAT EXPRESS A HOLY WRATH . These are set forth in various forms and degrees of severity.

1 . The capital would be delivered up. "And give up the city and the fulness thereof." Samaria, the capital, was the strength and pride of Israel. It was the impregnable metropolis, the great storehouse of national wealth, the seat of government, the home of luxury, the social, political, economical, and military centre of the kingdom. To destroy it was like taking the heart out of their kingdom at one fell stroke. Notwithstanding this, or rather perhaps because of this, it would be captured and pillaged. In sin it had set the example, and taken the lead, and in punishment its leading position would be retained.

2 . Not even one out of ten should escape. ( Amos 6:9 .) Such sweeping destruction as this was almost unheard of. Even Sodom and Gomorrah were not more utterly destroyed. This was due ultimately to the almost universal impenitence, and proximately to the length and stubbornness of the fighting. God would not allow the persistently impenitent to escape, and the Assyrian armies, his instruments, would not spare the obstinate defenders of Samaria, who had kept them three years at bay.

3 . The straggling survivors should be in abject fear of the almost universal fate. ( Amos 6:10 .) The solitary survivor is no nearer faith in God than those who have been destroyed. He does not cast himself on his mercy. He does not even in that dreadful hour seek his face. His stupid but thoroughly characteristic impulse is to hide away from his presence. Apart from Divine grace, sin committed drives away from God ( Genesis 3:8 ), and punishment approaching drives further still ( Revelation 6:16 ). In prosperity the wicked will not even fear God; in adversity, if they fear, they still refuse to trust him.

4 . The work of destruction would be carried out systematically and in detail. ( Amos 6:11 .) Neither palace nor cabin should escape. The great house would be broken into great pieces, and the small house into small pieces. God's judgments are nothing if not effective. The greatest cannot defy, nor can the smallest elude them. The destruction of each shall be elaborately and circumstantially complete.

IV. GOD THE AUTHOR OF THE PUNISHMENT PROCURES . "The Lord commandeth," etc.

1 . The sin of man is often a factor in the accomplishment of God ' s purpose . It was so with the transportation of Joseph ( Genesis 45:5 , Genesis 45:8 ; Genesis 1:20 ), with the death of Christ ( Acts 2:23 ; Acts 4:28 ), and with the affliction of Israel by Assyria ( Isaiah 10:5-7 ). The actors are in each case impelled by their own evil motives, aim at their own evil ends, use their own evil means, and act altogether of their own free will; and yet, when they succeed, the result is found to serve some important collateral interest they think nothing of, and so to be part of the infinitely good purpose of God. It is thus that God accomplishes his wilt by the instrumentality of men, without infringing on their perfect freedom, or being implicated in the sin which, in unconscious furtherance of it, they commit. The Assyrian destroying Israel in an unjustifiable war was at once carrying out God's purpose and sinning against him.

2 . God destroys the chosen people, not as " Israel, " but as " Jacob ." "Israel," the covenant name, is given them in connection with promises of covenant treatment. God blesses them as "Israel," and afflicts them as "Israel," and even decimates them as "Israel," all these being elements of a gracious discipline. But destruction is not so. It is the penalty of a covenant already broken, and God marks them out for this by the uncovenanted name of "Jacob."