Today we conclude our Roar of Justice series, as we have taken a three-week dive into the book of Amos.
God chose Amos to go to the kings and religious leaders and give them a simple but specific warning – either repent of their sins and return to God or suffer the consequences.
God gave Amos a burden for his people in his day. He saw their activity as blatant disrespect for God and, in many cases, outright blasphemy, and he knew God would not tolerate their rebellion forever!
We have focused on the warnings for the nations and the leaders, specifically Israel, but today we dive into the 5 Visions that lead to Judgement. The interesting thing is Amos’ reaction to these progressive visions.
When we looked at chapters four through six, we saw that Israel and Judah put their trust in their comfort, security, and riches physically and their worship of God. They blinded themselves from seeing that their wealth and comfort physically did not prove that God was pleased with them and that the fact that they were “worshipping” did not erase the fact that their worship was all about themselves and could not make up for their sin.
So lets go ahead and start looking at the series of visions…
Vision 1 – Locusts | Amos 7:1-3 (ESV)
Amos is shown a swarm of locusts, but this is not good. Locusts destroy the crops, and they come in and wipe out everything. God says that the locusts would come “after the king’s mowing. This is talking about his share of the crops - his tax on the crops.
He gets the first mowing, and the rest of it belongs to the people; When does the locust come? The king has gotten his share, and the people haven’t gotten theirs yet, and the locust will come along and devastate it. When they were about to harvest for themselves, the locust ate the land's vegetation.
That’s what God shows Amos. What does Amos do? He pleads with God. He intercedes on Israel’s behalf. He is concerned about how weak Israel can survive this. This is undoubtedly not what they thought about themselves. They thought they were big and strong. But Amos, knowing better, is concerned. What does Amos do? He pleads with God. He intercedes on Israel’s behalf.
Their only hope for survival is pleading with God that they are so small that they need His mercy. Amos knows that God helps the weak and helpless.
When we ask for help from God, what is our best tactic? To ask for assistance based on how great we are? We need to humble ourselves. Too often, we think we need to prove we deserve it; we need to prove we need it. Instead, we need to depend on God. Don’t try to recite our resume to God; we need help.
God responds to Amos’ request and changes His mind! He decides not to bring the locusts upon Israel!
Vision 2 – Fire | Amos 7:4-6 (ESV)
This time, Amos sees a fire coming to destroy, and fire and locust are kind of in the same genre, and both just destroy everything in their path. Amos once again pleads on behalf of Israel, asking the LORD not to bring this judgment. And what does the LORD do? He once again changes His mind!
Now let’s look at the third vision. This one is a little different.
Vision 3 - A Plumb Line | Amos 7:7-9 (ESV)
This time what does Amos see? A plumb line. A plumb line is a string with a weight on one end. This tool was used to assist builders in judging the straightness of a wall vertically. This was a common Old Testament picture of judgment. The application here is, “How does Israel line up with the standard God has given?” Are they on the straight or narrow, or are they crooked? They are crooked and perverse.
It seems like the reason for this third vision is to remind Amos what kind of people he is praying for. He is praying for stubborn people. God is showing Amos how crooked they are and how they must be punished. Amos stops pleading for mercy because the plumb line shows the need for justice.
And we see in this vision that God will devastate a couple of things.
Their religion…their high places, and sanctuaries
The kingly dynasty - the house of Jeroboam.
Opposition | Amos 7:10-17 (ESV)
Amaziah, the priest of Bethel, hears Amos’ message and goes to King Jeroboam II. He tells Jeroboam, “Amos has conspired against you; the land is unable to endure all his words; we can’t tolerate this; Amos is speaking in treasonous terms.”
Stop and take that in for a moment. Yes, Amos has had these visions, but he has been praying desperately hard against the visions despite the people being crooked and wicked people. Amaziah sees Amos in political terms, not religious terms. He sees Amos as a troublemaker, not thinking about this in terms of the Lord. Amaziah sees Amos as working to undermine the authority of the king.
This is one of the big reasons you hear me speaking biblically and morally but not politically. I would much rather speak from a spot like Amos of God’s will than be presumed I have a political objective. So, Amaziah turns to Amos and tells him to do what, quite possibly giving him a message from Jeroboam. He tells him to leave and return to Judah, but his message is not appreciated in Israel and will be better accepted in Judah.
Amos answers, saying that God took him away from his livelihood as a herdsman and grower of figs and gave him the mission to go and prophesy. That doesn’t leave him with a lot of options. So God said, “go,” he must go. I want you to read Amos’ direct response…
Did Amaziah’s threat intimidate Amos? It doesn’t look like it. Amos was not intimidated at all. He speaks with even more boldness and says some strong stuff! He returns right back to what he was saying even stronger, with no apologies.
Amaziah wanted to kick Amos out of Israel, but Amos said God would kick Amaziah out of Israel… Your family will be destroyed, and you will go into captivity and die on foreign soil. If it is what God told you to do, you don’t back down because it’s God’s message.
Vision 4 - A Basket of Summer Fruit | Amos 8:1-6
In this vision, Amos sees a basket of fruit, and summer fruit symbolizes ripeness, and the nation is ripe for judgment and destruction. Once again, Amos does not ask for mercy for Israel because of the state of the people. Instead, they were trampling on the needy, and their greatest concern was making more money, no matter who was hurt.
The harvest imagery is judgment imagery…about time to pick Israel; God is going to bring a harvest of judgment. The following verses talk about the type of judgment He will bring, a judgment that will clearly show that this is from God.
So the Lord here talks about the judgments He is bringing on Israel. He talks about the earthquake He is getting that was discussed in Amos 1:1. Around the same time, there will be darkness during the day, like what happens during a solar eclipse. The LORD wants them to see that the earthquake is not just a natural disaster, but it is from the LORD.
This time Amos doesn’t ask for a stay of execution
This time Amos accepts the punishment
The harvest time has come; their conduct has made them ripe for judgment
But this is nothing. What gets mentioned in verses 11 and 12 might be the saddest of it all…
God says there will be a famine in the land. It is not a famine for bread but a famine of the word of God. It will get to the point that they will want to know the LORD’s will, and it will be too late for them. They had the preaching of the word NOW. They needed to listen while they still had a chance to repent.
Church, this is going to happen again; it is going to happen in America and worldwide. So this is why we need to know and speak the gospel now. We have an abundance of God’s word and can even read it at any moment on our cell phones, but with such access, it is not something we hunger and thirst for.
God wants us to read it, to be convicted to change to be more like Jesus, and he is being patient with us, hoping we would come to repentance, but we ignore the word. But the time will come when God’s patience will run out. The time will come when we won’t be able to get access to it anymore. So judgment will come while we are putting off doing what is right.
Now, let’s look at the final vision:
Vision 5 - The Destruction of Israel
In this vision, Amos sees the destruction of Israel that God has foreshadowed. God strikes the altar and breaks it. The altar will be useless. It won’t be a refuge for them.
And we have a picture of the temple around the altar falling down on the heads of those within it, and the sword will catch any who escape his judgment. None will escape. No sanctuary, fortress, or religion can save them. God’s wrath will consume them.
As the first half of the chapter plays out, God clearly defines what will happen through Amos.
The Israelites thought they were better than the other nations, but all people were created in the image of God. The Israelites were the people that would bring the Messiah onto the global stage, but Jesus was coming for everyone.
God would allow the Israelites to be treated like the other nations so that he could, in turn, treat the other nations like Israel.
But here is the beautiful thing about this, despite everything the Israel nation had done. God wasn’t done with them yet!
Israel’s Restoration | Amos 9:11-15 (ESV)
This book closes with a glimmer of hope. God will restore the fallen shelter/tabernacle of David. What was David’s role? King Remember the promise to David that his descendants would reign forever..an eternal kingdom;
David’s kingship over the nation had fallen; there was no Davidic king on the throne; He will raise back up the Davidic dynasty…He will bring the kingship of David back to life again….He did that through Jesus
Jesus came from the line of David, who re-establishes God’s throne and dominion. When David’s kingship was restored, it was broader than the original kingship…it was over all people and nations.
God brings life where there is death - light where there is darkness - hope where there is despair. Great blessing and security where there is God’s wrath.
This book ends with this note of future hope. We conclude Amos by looking to blessings in the future. Most of Amos talks about the judgment against Israel’s wickedness.
First, when God releases blessing and restoration, fruit comes abundantly. Typically, the plowman and the reaper work apart, their effort separated by many months. But under these unique seasons of blessing and restoration, those usually separated seasons bump into each other. The crops were so big that the plowman and the reaper didn’t have time to let the others finish their work. Instead, we should pray for such seasons of abundant fruit.
We also see that fruit comes from unexpected places when God releases blessing and restoration. Normally, grapevines don’t grow well on mountains or high hills, but in the days of Israel’s restoration, even the mountains shall drip with sweet wine, and all the hills shall flow with it. We should pray for such seasons of unexpected fruit.
Want to study this message more in-depth? Watch the full sermon here!