As I began reading the scripture for today’s study, Chapter 9, verse 1 “I saw the Lord standing upon the altar: and He said, Smite the lintel of the door, that the posts may shake: and cut them in the head, all of them; and I will slay the last of them with the sword: he that fleeth of them shall not flee away, and he that escapeth of them shall not be delivered.” I immediately thought of a picture from my childhood (from Children’s Bible Picture Book) from the life of Samson. The context is different and the situation is different, but the image is the same, the building will begin to crumble from the tops of the lintels and fall on those who are inside.
The fact that the Israelites are “inside” tells us that it was a cultic or pagan type of worship because worship at the temple of God took place in the courtyard of the temple. Only certain priests were allowed inside the tabernacle or temple. One commentator (Preachers Commentary) said, “Nothing works right when we alter (a-l-t-e-r) the worship of the altar (a-l-t-a-r).”
As I’ve listened to R. C. Sproul on the radio and read his books, I’ve often heard him say (or read) that as a new Christian he read through the Bible in a matter of weeks because of his hunger to know what God had to say, but he said that the one thing that kept resonating with him was that this was a God who “played for keeps”. God is a Holy God who says, “You shall have no other gods before Me!” And what happens when you do? You die! And we say, “Isn’t that a little bit harsh? I mean, can’t we find some common ground here?” And the answer is, “No, because God is a Holy God.”
And when we alter the worship of the altar, things may look like they are going right, and the church is prospering – but eventually (as we’ve seen in the book of Amos) the walls will come tumbling down – and no one will escape.
Verses 2-3 paint a picture of one trying to flee from God. There are two scriptures that this may bring to mind when we read it. A comforting thought may come from Romans 8 where in verse 35 Paul asks the question, “Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall tribulation or distress or persecution or famine or nakedness or peril or sword?” And his reply in verse 38 states that “neither death, nor life, or angels, nor principalities, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor any other created thing shall be able to separate us from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.” And these words bring us great comfort… if we are in Christ. But if we are not – no amount of quoting promises or scripture will save us.
Another scripture that may come to mind, and the one I thought of first is Psalm 139. Our writer will briefly touch on this scripture, but I want us to look at this Psalm a little deeper. Psalm 139 is in my top 10, if not my top 5 of favorite Psalms. It covers everything from our movements to our motivations. It speaks to the past, the present and the future; to us personally and to life in general; and from our birth to our death. Read the whole Psalm, but especially listen to these words from verses 7-12.
“Where can I go from Your Spirit? Or where can I flee from Your presence? If I ascend to heaven, You are there; If I make my bed in Sheol, behold, You are there. If I take the wings of the dawn, If I dwell in the remotest part of the sea, Even there Your hand will lead me, And Your right hand will lay hold of me. If I say, ‘Surely the darkness will overwhelm me, And the light around me will be night,’ Even the darkness is not dark to You, And the night is as bright as the day. Darkness and light are alike to You.”
This covers heaven and hell, east and west, day and night – there is literally NO place where God is not present.
And this is my prayer of Psalm 139
“There is no greater place to be
than in the presence of the Lord.
There is no more fearful place to be
than in the presence of the Lord.
There is no more comforting place to be
than in the presence of the Lord.
And because I know
That God never changes
the difference has to be
In me.
O God! What do I bring
when I come into Your presence?”
“When we lose accountability to God, we lose a sense of hope.” (Preacher’s Commentary) You may not realize it, but the one major thing that the book of Amos brings to us is hope. We may think that we don’t find hope until we come to the last 5 verses of the book, but really, hope and God’s faithfulness is found through out the book. Amos teaches us that we serve a God who keeps His promises – both promises of judgment and of grace.
Don’t you just hate to hear parents continually threaten their children and never carry through? We hear it all the time – Wal-Mart or wherever – “If you don’t come right now, I’m going to leave you here…” (The child probably wishes they would!) One thing I tried very hard to do with our boys was to be “disciplined in my discipline”. In other words I never threatened anything that I was not willing to carry through with (and believe me – that is hard!)
But, that’s what God does – consistently. Over and over we read:
Exodus 15:26 “If you will diligently hearken to the voice of the Lord your God and will do what is right in His sight, and will listen to and obey His commandments and keep all His statutes, then I will…”
Leviticus 26:3 “If you walk in My statutes and keep My commandments and do them, then I will…”
Deuteronomy 11:13 “And it shall come to pass, if ye shall hearken diligently unto my commandments which I command you this day, to love the LORD your God, and to serve him with all your heart and with all your soul, then I will…”
Deuteronomy 28:1 “And it shall come to pass, if thou shalt hearken diligently unto the voice of the LORD thy God, to observe and to do all his commandments which I command thee this day, that the LORD thy God will set thee on high above all nations of the earth…”
The Israelites knew these promises, and knew that they came also with a set of “but if you don’t hearken diligently unto the voice of the LORD your God…” promises. Would we still count God as faithful if He did not do all that His word said? In our study of chapters 1-2 we said that God’s judgment always comes with a “because”, but we have to study the whole Word to know that.
If you noted the number of times God said “I will” in this chapter, you found that in the last part of verse 4 God says, “And I will set My eyes against them for evil and not for good”. This is almost the opposite of Jeremiah 29:11, which we hear quoted all the time,
“For I know the plans I have for you,” says the LORD. “They are plans for good and not for disaster, to give you a future and a hope.” But the whole context of that promise is found in the verses before and after, beginning in verse 10, “This is what the LORD says: ‘You will be in Babylon for seventy years. But then I will come and do for you all the good things I have promised, and I will bring you home again. For I know the plans I have for you,’ says the LORD. ‘They are plans for good and not for disaster, to give you a future and a hope. In those days when you pray, I will listen. If you look for Me wholeheartedly, you will find Me. I will be found by you,’ says the LORD. ‘I will end your captivity and restore your fortunes. I will gather you out of the nations where I sent you and will bring you home again to your own land.’”
Please, I beg you, when you hear someone teaching or speaking about the promises of God, if they are not teaching the context, PLEASE jot the verses down and read them in their context. Sometimes they don’t say what you might think they are saying, and sometimes they are saying so much more! We’ve got to know the scriptures in context.
The Judahites would also go into captivity, but they would return. The Israelites would not, as far as we have a record of in scripture. God’s promise to that in Amos is found in verse 11 as God promised to rebuild the booth or tent of David. There had never been a king from the line of David on the throne in the northern kingdom of Israel.
Sometime back, I don’t have a date on it, but I was reading this book of Amos one morning, and as I was reading all this judgment and destruction that we’ve talked about, when I came to verse 13, ‘“Behold the days are coming’, declares the LORD ‘when the plowman will overtake the reaper, and the treader of grapes him who sows seed; when the mountains will drip sweet wine and the hills will be dissolved…’ and suddenly, as if right on cue, I heard the birds outside start singing, as if they were praising God for this promise. And I continued to read, ‘Also I will restore the captivity of My people Israel, and they will rebuild the ruined cities and live in them, they will also plant vineyards and drink their wine, and make gardens and eat their fruit. I will also plant them on their land, and they will not again be rooted out from their land which I have given them,” Says the LORD your God…”
God has promised to restore ALL of Israel to Israel. “In that day” the crops will be so productive that they will still be harvesting when it’s time to plow and sow again! All of their cities will be rebuilt and they will not be rooted out ever again! It has not happened yet, but God has kept every other promise He has made, do we dare doubt this one?
This is God’s promise – and He will do it. Amen.
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