epcblog

Devotional thoughts (Monday through Thursday mornings) from the pastor of Exeter Presbyterian Church in Exeter, NH // Sunday Worship 10:30am // 73 Winter Street

Friday, September 12, 2008

Amos 3

God has a special love for Israel. Therefore He intends to punish her. There is something about that kind of thinking that is very surprising to us. We expect that God would treat a beloved people by overlooking their faults. That certainly is true as well. The Lord is slow to anger. He does not always deal with His people as their sins deserve. Yet it is also the case that love must eventually lead to correction when the beloved is stuck in great transgression and will not repent. We need to accept the fact that judgment begins with the household of God, and receive the Lord’s correction of us as evidence of his special love for us.

There is a reason that disaster is coming upon Israel. God’s providence with His special people is not just a chance encounter of friends along a road. There was a clear understanding based on the Lord’s speech, and now Israel’s sin is about to meet up with the Lord’s judgment by a divine appointment. God is a holy Lion who has found His prey. Israel cannot pretend to be surprised by what is happening here. She is a bird that has stepped into a snare. Are we now thinking that the snare will not spring up from the ground, though it has been set with the purpose of capturing the bird, and the bird has set it off? There is a God who is in charge of the affairs of men and nations. He raises up strong powers, and moves them according to his appointed purposes. The coming of the Assyrians is not a random blowing of the winds of fortune. The Lord has done it.

This has all been revealed through the prophets for many centuries. Israel cannot claim to be uninformed. Even now the Lord has raised up Amos to speak His message. Will the people not fear and repent? The events that are coming should not be thought of as surprising. Nor will they be hidden from the enemies all around Israel. The Lord’s discipline of His people will be accomplished in the full view of the surrounding nations. They have become a people that do not know how to do right, and who are full of violence and robbery. They will face a powerful enemy, and the Egyptians and the Philistines will witness the demise of the northern kingdom.

The trouble that Israel will face will not be small. There is something fatal that Amos refers to hear, like a sheep that has been attacked by a lion so that only small pieces of the body remain. Yet a small number of the people of Israel shall actually be rescued. This is a good thing. There will be a remnant that remains, though the few that live to serve God on the earth may seem to have so little left to them.

God will punish Israel for her transgressions. They had put their hopes in false worship. They would not follow the Lord’s instruction to gather together in Jerusalem to meet with Him. They allowed their conflict with their brothers to the south to be more important to them than the Word of the Lord which commanded them to travel south for the temple worship that God had appointed. Their false altars have not helped them. Nor have their great riches and possessions saved them from the Assyrians. When the Lord determines to discipline His people, no amount of false worship or worldly riches can protect us from His loving chastisement.

We do not get to choose the Lord’s plans for our lives or for His church. We might imagine another way of relating with Him. This is not ours to invent. The Israelites thought that they could worship God their way, and they imagined that they could serve Him though they ignored His statutes. The assault of the Assyrian empire against them stood as a powerful answer from God concerning these false theories of life. The people of Israel ran into the unchanging fact of the living sovereign God. He will not change Himself to accommodate our ideas of what ought to be. We must take His Word seriously and listen to His servants while there is yet time.

The plan of God for our rescue has been well established in the Scriptures. We are not without a clear testimony to us in the written Word. All around the world the words of the Bible are being translated into every known tongue. There are those who are dedicating their lives to seeing that this great special revelation is known by everyone everywhere. It has always been the case that man is without excuse. Surely those who have heard the Lord’s Word are especially without excuse.

The Lord has made a provision for us that is our only way out of eternal condemnation in the life and death of His Son Jesus Christ. If disaster comes upon us now or in the age to come, can we blame God for it? We know the way of faith as the only pathway of life. We know about the cross and the resurrection. We know about the life of love that we are called to live. If we choose instead our own ways of self-salvation and amusement, why would we think that everything is alright with God?

We need much grace, and the Lord will supply it. The devastating and public atonement for us has come in the cross so many years ago. How will we stand if we ignore such a great salvation? If Israel had no excuse to ignore the Word of the Lord, surely we have no excuse when God has spoken so plainly and wonderfully for us through the gift of His Son. If we need to be disciplined through the events of our lives in order for us to see these things more clearly, that is surely an expression of God’s loving-kindness toward His beloved people.

posted by Pastor Magee @ 6:00 AM

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