May the Grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Love of God, and the Fellowship
of the Holy Spirit be with you all. Amen.
Amos 7:4-15 4 “Thus the Lord GOD showed me, and behold, the Lord GOD was calling to contend with them by fire, and it consumed the great deep and began to consume the farm land. {5} Then I said, ‘Lord GOD, please stop! How can Jacob stand, for he is small?’ {6} The LORD changed His mind about this. ‘This too shall not be,’ said the Lord GOD. {7} Thus He showed me, and behold, the Lord was standing by a vertical wall, with a plumb line in His hand. {8} And the LORD said to me, ‘What do you see, Amos?’ And I said, ‘A plumb line.’ Then the Lord said, ‘Behold I am about to put a plumb line In the midst of My people Israel. I will spare them no longer. {9} The high places of Isaac will be desolated And the sanctuaries of Israel laid waste. Then shall I rise up against the house of Jeroboam with the sword.’ {10} Then Amaziah, the priest of Bethel, sent word to Jeroboam, king of Israel, saying, ‘Amos has conspired against you in the midst of the house of Israel; the land is unable to endure all his words. {11} For thus Amos says, ‘Jeroboam will die by the sword and Israel will certainly go from its land into exile.’ {12} Then Amaziah said to Amos, ‘Go, you seer, flee away to the land of Judah, and there eat bread and there do your prophesying! {13} But no longer prophesy at Bethel, for it is a sanctuary of the king and a royal residence.’ {14} Then Amos answered and said to Amaziah, ‘I am not a prophet, nor am I the son of a prophet; for I am a herdsman and a grower of sycamore figs. {15} But the LORD took me from following the flock and the LORD said to me, ‘Go prophesy to My people Israel.’” (NASB)
The year was about 760 B.C. Yahweh, the God of Israel, the God who is God called Amos to be His prophet and sent him to one of the sanctuaries of Northern Israel in the city of Bethel about ten miles north of Jerusalem.
When Solomon died, the northern ten tribes separated. The north “seceded from the union.” Even though they broke apart from the two southern tribes, all twelve tribes were children of the promise. They were all descendants of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. While they could change the political landscape by seceding, but they could not change history. They were descendants of the promises.
When God’s children lost their way, God sent prophets to call them back to the path of righteousness. To the Southern Kingdom He called and sent the likes of Isaiah, Jeremiah, and Ezekiel.
He sent prophets to the Northern Kingdom too. In 760 B.C. the Northern Kingdom was still in tact. It didn’t fall until 722 B.C. Prior to its fall God sent prophets like Elijah, Elisha, and Amos to proclaim His Word and call the people to repentance.
The message of the prophets was basically the same. Amos (1) announced the judgment of God and coming disaster against rebellious sinners; (2) called them to repent and “seek Yahweh and live” (5:4–6, 14–15); and (3) he told them of the coming great reversal (9:11–15).
God sent Amos to Bethel where the people had come to the sanctuary to worship. They were suppose to worship in the temple in Jerusalem, but Jerusalem was the capital of the Southern Kingdom. They weren’t going to go there. So they set up two of their own sanctuaries. One was at Dan in the far north. The other at Bethel at the southern end of the Northern Kingdom.
At the time of Amos, Jeroboam II was the king of the Northern Kingdom. He was one of the many unfaithful kings. He reigned over a very prosperous nation. Prosperous for some anyway, but not for most. The poor remained poor and the ruling class grew all the more wealthy. To make matters worse, the already wealthy were selling their poorer Jewish neighbors into slavery for gain.
All of that wasn’t enough, King Jeroboam wanted more land and more power so he waged war against his neighbors. He was good at it and kept extending Israel’s borders. The king and the ruling class believed that their increased prosperity, power, and expanding nation as a sign of God’s favor.
To the contrary. Amos wrote of his call, “Thus He showed me, and behold, the Lord was standing by a vertical wall, with a plumb line in His hand. {8} And the LORD said to me, ‘What do you see, Amos?’ And I said, ‘A plumb line.’ Then the Lord said, ‘Behold I am about to put a plumb line In the midst of My people Israel. I will spare them no longer.”
A plumb line is a string with a weight tied to one end. The weight usually is cylindrical in shape that comes to a point at the bottom. A plumb line always finds the vertical axis pointing to the center of gravity. The use of the plumb makes sure that a vertical wall is vertical, straight up and down. But here is what the plumb line really does. The plumb line enables us to see the vertical line between the hanging point and the center of the earth.
Amos was given a vision of the Lord God holding a plumb line, which in this case was His Word, which is the center of everything especially for the people of the covenant.
King Jeroboam II and his high priest Amaziah had no use for the Lord’s plumb line. They didn’t care about the Torah. They didn’t govern and carry out their duties as faithful children of god. They used a different plumb line. One that was untrue. As far as they were concerned, things were going very well. They were becoming richer. They were becoming the dominate military power in the region. They were growing in political influence. They falsely concluded that their success meant that God was pleased with all their efforts. No one was going to tell them differently, especially a sheepherder like Amos.
It’s a familiar scenario. Stock market is going great. Over time our economy has been trending up and up and up. Our country has been the dominate military, political, and economic power in the world for a 100 years. Our people have a pretty good life compared to most of the world. Pleasure and personal convenience is the plumb line of our day and as long as money keeps rolling in the plumb line of ourselves is fine by us. Our plumb line is whatever gets us what we desire and whatever makes us feel good in the moment.
For a very long time politicians, masters of industry, and even churches (lay people and preachers alike) have ignored and avoided the 800 lbs gorilla in the room; namely the moral and cultural rot that’s been emptying churches, destroying the family, dividing our communities, producing unrest in the streets, fostering a disregard for duly established authority, forsaking time tested truths, good traditions, and civic decency, and creating new cultural religions with the force of government and industry behind them.
“Amos, what do you see?” God asked in the vision. Amos responds “a plumb line.” “Behold, [the Lord God said] I am about to put a plumb line in the midst of My people Israel. I will spare them no longer.” The Lord God was going to take action. He is going to bring the full weight of His words, His Law and Gospel, His full covenant down in the midst of His people and measure them against it. We know what the result of such a measuring is.
Solomon’s father King David wrote in Psalm 130 “Lord, hear my voice! Let Your ears be attentive To the sound of my pleadings. 3 If You, Lord, were to keep account of guilty deeds, Lord, who could stand? 4 But there is forgiveness with You, So that You may be revered.”
Isaiah would say and write to the Southern Kingdom, “All of us, like sheep, have gone astray, Each of us has turned to his own way…” (Isaiah 53:6)
Jeroboam II and Amaziah (and many others) did not think they had gone astray. They didn’t think there was much to account for.
The Lord God said through Amos, {9} “The high places of Isaac will be desolated And the sanctuaries of Israel laid waste. Then shall I rise up against the house of Jeroboam with the sword.”
God began His rebuilding project with a demolition project. All that the Israelites knew and took pride in was going to be torn down. All they loved and had fashioned into idols would be taken away. After destroying the two sanctuaries God would put Jeroboam to the sword and the ten tribes would be lost.
In the Old Testament when a true prophet spoke what God had given him to speak, what was spoken comes to past. God sent Amos to tell Israel that God had had enough.
Prophesying bad things against the king’s enemies was permissible and a prophet could earn a good living by saying what the king wanted to hear. But it was regarded as an act of subversion and treason to speak against the king. When Amos said, “Jeroboam will die by the sword and Israel will certainly go from its land into exile,” he was speaking treason.
Amaziah didn’t like it one bit. He sent word to Jeroboam, “Amos has conspired against you in the midst of the house of Israel; the land is unable to endure all his words.” Bringing bad news to a bunch of people who think they deserve good news is dangerous business.
We are just starting to get a taste of that in our own country. You know it’s true. You are constantly evaluating what you can and cannot say or do at work, in the various groups , increasingly applying a cost benefit analysis to determine whether it is worth the risk to speak common sense and decency, let alone something actually Christian.
The Lord God had done and given everything they needed. They were of people of His own creation. He provided for the forgiveness of their sins. He gave them the Torah, His Law and Gospel. He instructed them in the building of the Temple. He gave order and form to their worship life so that what they did was tied to the sacrifice of the promised Messiah – Jesus Christ. He freed them. He fed them. He gave them the promised land. He protected them.
What He did for them, the Lord God has also done and is doing for us. We have the Torah, the Law and Gospel. His Son dwells in our church services in the Word and Sacrament ministry (that is the liturgy, the water and Word, and in His body and blood in the Lord’s Supper).
The Lord God set the plumb line of His Word in the person and mouth of Amos and God did what He gave Amos to speak. In the 700s B.C. God raised up the Assyrians. They invaded and destroyed the Northern Kingdom and a good portion of the Southern Kingdom. A century later, God raised up the Babylonians to destroy what was left of the Southern Kingdom and Jerusalem and take most of the Hebrews into captivity.
What God says is truth. What God says comes to pass. The fall of both kingdoms came to pass, but that was not the end of the story. He destroyed so that He could build anew. He destroyed with the Law so that He could set His plumb line in the midst of His people and it would become the measure of all who believe and the center of everything for them.
In Amos 9:11–15 God promised that He would raise up the Davidic kingship that was about to fall. There will be a new and greater Davidic king. In the fullness of time, this prophetic promise was fulfilled by God—fulfilled in all blessedness, holiness, and righteousness. The Word would be made flesh. The plumb line would point to Christ and Christ Jesus to the plumb line of His Word. Jesus of Nazareth is the new and greater Davidic King, not only like David, but also David’s Lord.
Jesus came as the new and greater Prophet, Priest, and King, and like the prophets of old, He too was rejected. God set His plumb line of flesh and blood in the midst of His people and they nailed Him to the cross.
Jesus was the embodied Israel and went through death just like Israel of old. Only He died a more severe death by suffering the just punishment of God against Israel and against all sinners. “All of us, like sheep, have gone astray, Each of us has turned to his own way; But the LORD has caused the wrongdoing of us all To fall on Him. The God of Israel laid upon him the iniquity of us all.” (Isaiah 53:6)
“Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places in Christ, just as He chose us in Him before the foundation of the world, that we would be holy and blameless before Him. In love He predestined us to adoption as sons and daughters through Jesus Christ to Himself, according to the good pleasure of His will . . . In Him we have redemption through His blood, the forgiveness of our wrongdoings, according to the riches of His grace.” (Ephesians 1:3-7)
God promised through Amos saying “I will raise up the booth of David” (9:11). In Amos’s day the plumb line brought destruction. But the new plumb line God raised up and highly exalted Him above all and built for Himself a church, a people holy and righteous in His sight. That is you.
AMEN.
May the peace that surpasses all understanding keep our minds and hearts in Christ Jesus. Amen.