Sermon Tone Analysis

Introduction

It is one thing to make promises and an entirely other thing to keep them.

Promises may get people to support you and trust you but if you dont keep the promises you lose the trust and no one believes anything you say any more.

We are finishing the book of Amos this morning and we have seen Amos try to get his message to the Israelites through three sermons and four visions - with the fifth one today.

Throughout these messages the main thing being communicated is that the people were in rebellion against God and they would be punished and judged for it.

They deceived themselves into thinking that because they were “God’s people”, that He wouldnt follow through on judgment.

This fifth vision from Amos is meant to drive home the point that God will indeed follow through and keep His promise of judgment against Israel.

What Israel needs to see and what we can see today is that it is because God is a God who keeps His promises - even His promises of judgment that we can have hope in God’s future promises.

Our God is a God who makes and keeps promises!

He is as faithful to His promise of hope and new beginnings as He is to His promise to judge and punish.

It is precisely because of this that we have a solid source for such profound hope.

Hope does not exist in and of itself - authentic hope comes from having a faithful trustworthy God.

True genuine hope is based on God’s nature and His promises.

This final chapter and vision we are called to gaze upon the nature of our God.

He is not to be trifled with, He is inescapable, He is sovereign, He keeps promises and because of that we can trust His promises for our future.

Promised Inescapable Sword

This vision starts different from the others, for Amos saw things and the Lord asked him what he saw.

The Lord would then interpret what it was that Amos was seeing.

Here for the last vision though Amos just begins describing what He saw and speaking what the Lord spoke.

Amos saw the Lord standing beside the altar.

The best choice for what altar is that is must be the false altar probably in Bethel.

God has given an altar to Israel in Jerusalem and it was supposed to be the place where the people claimed their peace in obedience to worship of the One True Living God.

That altar and the temple in Jerusalem was to be the center of life for the nation and the people.

Instead they had rebelled and decided to make an altar for themselves and in their rebellion began to pollute their worship and it spilled over into moral life, economic life, and political life.

Here was the Lord standing beside their false and corrupt altar and the Lord spoke.

With four affirmations the Lord declared the destruction of the altar, the temple and the nation itself.

I will kill

Verse 1a the Lord speaking to Amos said strike the capitals of the pillars (these are the upper supports) so that the thresholds (entryways) shake.

Knock them down on the heads of all the people.

Then I will kill the rest of them with the sword.

I will search

God then makes a promise none of those who flee will get away and no fugitive will ultimately escape.

If they dig down to Sheol - from there my hand will take them.

If they climb up to heaven from there I will bring them down.

If they hide on the top of Mt Carmel from there I will track (search) and seize them.

I will command

If they conceal themselves from my sight at the sea floor, I will command a sea serpent to bite them.

If they are driven from their enemies into captivity - even as captives they will not be safe from judgment - I will command the sword to kill them.

I will keep

Verse 4b - I will keep my eye on them - for harm and not for good.

Escape will be impossible because of the direct involvement of the Lord - He is the one who brings and ensures that this judgment will be carried out.

Wherever they would go God’s eyes would be fixed on them and He has determined to destroy them.

Israel’s apostasy and rebellion has brought the eye of the Lord upon them in judgment.

Similar words would be spoken years later by the prophet Jeremiah.

Jeremiah would be speaking as Amos is these words before the exile of the nation of Judah.

Amos refers to God as the Lord, the God of Armies and describes His awesome power - touches the earth and melts it and all who dwell in it mourn and cause all of it to rise and fall like the Nile river of Egypt.

Surely this awesome God would possess also the power to fulfill His promise to find and seize them from any spot on earth, in the earth or under the earth.

The LORD is His name - Yahweh - the covenant keeping God would keep His promise and judge those who had rebelled and disobeyed Him.

The heart of Israel’s problem was their heart.

They distorted the worship of God.

Everything was wrong because they were not right with God.

Nothing works right when we alter the worship of the altar - Preacher’s Commentary.

It remains true for us today and our churches today.

We must worship as God commands.

Our worship to God IS our obedience to God.

Promised Sifting

God promised an inescapable sword but also a promised sifting.

Amos still speaking for the Lord says Israelites are you not like the Cushites to Me? Cushites are Ethiopians.

The Lord declares - I Am - I brought Israel from the land of Egypt, but I also brought the Philistines from Caphtor (Kaptor) or Crete and the Arameans (Syrians) from Kir. God is speaking directly to the false assumption that because they were God’s people they had a special pass to do as they pleased and not have to worry about consequences and judgment.

God reminds Israel - Yes I brought you out of Egypt, but I brought the Philistines from Caphtor and the Arameans/Syrians from Kir. Don’t be proud and presumptuous of your exodus from Egypt.

Your enemies each had one also.

What a shock to them that God had been involved in the history of two nations they regarded as enemies.

The next three verses are the final statements of judgment from Amos Though they vow an impartial and certain death to sinners, they also point to final section and a future promise of the Lord.

Look the eyes of the Lord God are on the sinful kingdom and I will obliterate it from the face of the earth.

The eyes of the Lord were watching the sinful nation to bring judgment.

He purposed and promised to destroy it from the face of the earth.

God is fulfilling the covenant curses

Notice that God says the sinful kingdom.

The judgment is against the rule of the kingdom of Israel and not the people of Israel as God’s people.

To confirm this look at what God says next - HOWEVER - I will NOT totally destroy the house of Jacob - this is the Lord’s declaration!

The earlier possibility of a remnant was now made certain.

God would have mercy on those who repented!

For I am about to give the command - and I will shake the house of Israel among all the nations as one shakes a sieve.

God is going to shake Israel as one shakes a sieve for the purpose of sifting, to separate whats good from what is waste or impure.

but not a pebble will fall to the ground.

Two ways to see this sifting a fine meshed sieve lets chaff and dust go through but catches good grain, so God would screen out and save any righteous among His people.

Others suggest the sieve in view is a coarse meshed sieve used at the beginning of the sifting process to screen out stones and dirt-clods letting smaller grain fall through.

Refers to a sinner who would not escape the screen of God’s judgment.

Either interpretation works because the point God’s impartial sifting will separate the righteous from the sinners.

God is coming after the sinners who do not humble themselves and who say disaster is never going to come and overtake us.

Those will die by the sword.

Promise To Restore

God promised an inescapable sword for Israel and promised to sift Israel and in 732 B.C. we know that Israel was conquered and exiled by Assyria.

The importance of these promises being fulfilled is because God made another promise to Israel through Amos a promise of restoration.

It is because the promise of judgment came that Israel could hope in the promise that God will restore.

God says in that day I will restore the fallen shelter of David; I will repair its gaps, restore its ruins and rebuild it as in the days of old.

Notice here the similarities - God promised judgment saying “I WILL” and here God promises restoration saying “I WILL”.

The promise of judgment and restoration are both kept by the power of the Lord.

Since 732 B.C. even to this very day, there has been no Davidic king ruling in Jerusalem.

Though in 1948 the nation has been restored they have no king, priest, temple or sacrifice.

The Lord has promised that in that day (a day of darkness and destruction but once the ordeal is over) - that promised day He will restore, repair and rebuild the dynasty of David and establish the kingdom He promised.

In the fulfillment of the restoration of the dynasty of David God promises to restore the national purpose for Israel as well.

They may possess the remnant of Edom (brother of Jacob whose judgment is the next we will look at in the book of Obadiah).

Edom is a nation perpetually hostile to Israel and represents all of Israels enemies.

The kingdom will be united under its Davidic King and then become the source of blessing for all Gentile nations as well.

All the peoples - all the nations

God’s plan from the beginning has been to provide salvation for Gentile nations.

God has continually affirmed a united rule under the Davidic King - the Messiah.

When God restores the kingdom in the Millennium under David’s Son - Jesus the Messiah both Jew and Gentiles will bear the name of the Lord.

The Apostle James at the Council of Jersualem quotes Amos 9:11-12 to demonstrate that God has promised to reach the Gentiles and bring them into His Kingdom under Messiah not Israel.