Amos 9:5-6 - Homiletics

The image of the Deity in great nature's open eye.

God's wrath "is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness." And it is terrible as it is great. Impotent anger is ridiculous, but the wrath of Omnipotence overwhelms. Whatever, therefore, illustrates the power of God adds terror to his threat. And such is the effect of this passage. The stern purport of the previous commination is emphasized by the moving picture it presents of the Divine majesty and resistless might. Omnipotent resources will push forward to full accomplishment the purposes of Omniscience against doomed and abandoned Israel. We have here—

I. GOD 'S NAME REVEALING HIS CHARACTER . This is the object of a name. It distingnishes the bearer from others, and this by expressing some leading characteristic.

1 . The Lord . This is the word invariably substituted by the Jews for Jehovah in the reading of the Hebrew Scriptures. It is a name of authority, and means "the supreme Lord." The Lord is over all. He is Governor and Judge in one. He does as it pleases him. He disposes of all matters, and settles all interests without appeal. He reckons with none, and none can call him to account.

2 . Jehovah . This is a verb, third person, signifying "he is," and another form of the name "I am," by which God revealed himself to Moses. Its root idea is that of "underived existence;" then, as arising out of this, "independent action;" and then, as the corollary of both, "eternity and unchangeableness" (see Fairbairn). It is thus the proper name of God to man; self-existent himself, the Author of existence to all persons and things, and manifesting his existence to those capable of knowing it. Jehovah is the concrete and historical name of God. As revealed by it, he exists by his own energy, and makes to be all things that are. Absolute and undetermined, he determines absolutely all things outside himself. Unseen and invisible, he comes forth—concretes himself, as it were—in the works which his hands have made.

3 . Jehovah of hosts. This title appears first in 1 Samuel 1:3 , and, as has been remarked, "simultaneously with the foundation of the Jewish monarchy." It may mean Lord of (Israel's) armies ( Psalms 44:9 ), or of celestial beings ( Psalms 148:2 ), or of the heavenly bodies ( Isaiah 40:26 ), or, more probably, of all three. In this wide sense we "see in the title a proclamation of the universal sovereignty of Jehovah, needed within the nation, lest that invisible sovereignty should be forgotten in the visible majesty of the king; and outside the nation, lest Jehovah should be supposed to be merely a national deity" (Kirkpatrick, on 1 Samuel). This is the God whose eye is for evil on Israel—God supreme, God absolute, and God in special relation to the hosts of Israel who had forsaken him, to the heavenly bodies which they worshipped, and to the angel hosts, the ministers to do his will on those whom he would visit in wrath.

II. GOD 'S OPERATIONS REVEALING HIS WAY . What God does is a criterion of what he can do. His all-pervading activity will include in its sweep the accomplishment of the destiny again and again announced.

1 . He occupies the sky . "Who buildeth his stories," etc. There were, according to a rabbinical theory, seven heavens, the seventh containing the throne of the Eternal, symbolized by Solomon's throne of ivory and gold, the six steps leading up to which symbolized in turn the six celestial regions below the highest heaven ( 1 Kings 10:18-20 ). In terms of this mystic theory is the expression, "stories of the heaven." Heaven is conceived of as a giddy height, approached by aerial steps or stages, all of them the handiwork of God. He stands on the "cloud-capped towers." He dwells in the "airy palaces." He walks on the "fleece-like floors." He makes the different levels of the firmament steps between his throne and the earth below.

2 . He metamorphoses the earth. ( 1 Samuel 1:5 .) God's word brought order out of chaos at first. "He spake, and it was done," etc. By the same word, turning order into chaos again, shall all things be dissolved ( 2 Peter 3:10 , 2 Peter 3:11 ). It is little for the word that makes and unmakes, that created and will dissolve the frame of nature, to move in earthquake upheaval the solid crust of earth till it mimicks the roll of the sea, or "Nile's proud flood" in its rise and fall.

3 . He distributes the waters of the sea. The sea is the most stupendous natural object. There is majesty in all its moods, and awe in its very presence. Hence in the mythology a god was allocated to it, brother to Zeus, the god of heaven and earth, and second only to him in power. And God's "way is in the sea." He rules its waves. He regulates its myriad currents and restless tides. Its great throbbing pulse beats but at his will. He holds its waters in the hollow of his hand, and concentrates or disperses them as it pleases him. He is a God, then, "whose wrath is terrible." Every force of nature he not alone controls, but wields an instrument of his will. In Amos 5:8 the same fact is plod as an inducement to seek his favour, which here appears as a reason to dread his wrath. As the same locomotive will drive the train before it or draw it after it at the engineer's will, so the fact of the omnipresent energy of God is fitted alike to alarm and to attract, but in either case to bring the sinner to his feet.

III. PHYSICAL CONVULSIONS THE COUNTERPARTS OF MORAL CONVULSION . Events in the two worlds happen according to similar if not identical laws. To a discriminating eye, the one set rises up in the likeness of the other, created so by God. "He daily buildeth his stories in the heavens when he raiseth up his saints from things below to heavenly places, presiding over them, ascending in them" (Pusey). "He toucheth the earth, and it melteth;" when he stretches out his hand in wrath on its inhabitants, and men's hearts fail them for fear. "He calleth to the waters of the sea, and poureth them out over the earth," when he makes the wicked the rod of his anger to overrun and vex society ( Psalms 93:3 , Psalms 93:4 ). Verily the God who makes the heavens his throne, the earth his footstool, the elements his playthings, and men and angels his ministers, is a Being in whose favour is life and whose power is terrible.