Amos
13
The date line is around 760 BC The northern kingdom of Israel is facing meltdown. Pampered and indolent, they’d been grinding the penniless into the dirt.
God wants His people to be distinctive and sharply different from the world. The Israelites must stop thinking, because they are His chosen people, they can get away with blue murder. The Lord is the invisible mover and shaker in every nation’s history, not just the God of the Jews. The same divine government operates worldwide. He is the Agent behind every racial migration – not just the Exodus. All are subject, Jew and Gentile, to God’s sovereign decrees.
The Living Bible in chapter 9 verse 7 says: “O people of Israel, are you any more to Me than the Ethiopians are? Have not I, who brought you out of Egypt, done as much for other people too? I brought the Philistines from Caphtor (Crete) and the Syrians out of Kir.”
If the salt has lost its saltiness, if the chosen people lose their distinctiveness from other nations due to their backsliding and lack of faith in Yahweh, is it not time to throw them out to be trampled under foot?
“Surely the eyes of the Sovereign Lord are on the sinful kingdom. I will destroy it from the face of the earth – yet I will not totally destroy the house of Jacob,” declares the Lord. (verse 8)
God-of-the-Angel-Armies does not say from now on Israel has a changed status in His sight – they are still his chosen people – but He does declare that one divine government rules over all and judges all.
“I will not totally destroy the house of Jacob,” means that the covenant given to Abraham is safe. There will always be a remnant according to grace, the Israel within Israel.
The only hope for Northern Israel no longer lies in Northern Israel. It lies in the house of David, in Amos’s own land, the southern kingdom of Judah. Israel is being thrown into a sieve. As a breakaway nation she will cease to exist.
The Message Paraphrase Bible puts verses 9 and 10 like this: “I’m still giving the orders around here. I’m throwing Israel into a sieve among all the nations and shaking them good, shaking out all the sin, all the sinners. No real grain will be lost, but all the sinners will be sifted out and thrown away, the people who say, “Nothing bad will ever happen in our lifetime. It won’t even come close.” The sieve is an instrument of discrimination. It gathers out impurities and leaves intact that which passes the grade. No pebble will remain.
A new day will dawn. Though the bulk of the nation will be wiped out, a tiny remnant shall survive. Their hope lies in Judah in the house of David. When the Assyrian came down like a wolf on the fold in 722 BC mass deportation started and survivors made their way to the southern kingdom.
Verse 11 says, “In that day I will restore David’s fallen tent. I will repair its broken places, restore its ruins and build it as it used to be.” Even the Jewish Talmud regards these verses as messianic. There is hope. God will bring blessing after judgement and will not ultimately annihilate Israel. “That day” remains unexplained and undated in the future. Living late in time we can see that though the southern kingdom fell around 586 BC and they were exiled to Babylon, after 70 years they came back again.
Amos had a worldwide vision, which takes in everything in one sweep. It’s a panoramic view, but the fulfilment unfolds in stages. It’s Israel’s God who commits to raise up the king in His kingdom, restore the fortunes of His people and plant them with eternal security in their inheritance.
In Amos’s time the house of David was like a ruined and broken down hut, but God would raise up a house to dwell in. The kingdom of God was magnificently restored in the church of Jesus Christ where Jews and Gentiles were eligible to enter. In fact that is how James at the Council of Jerusalem interprets Amos’ prophetic words (Acts chapter 15 verses15 to 18).
The future is bright. The days are coming, Amos prophesies, when you won’t be able to keep up. Everything will be happening at once and everywhere you look, blessings.
God’s unalterable promise rings out with new hope at the close of Amos’ prophecy. “I will restore ... I will repair ... I will do these things ... I will bring back my exiled people ... I will plant Israel in their own land.”
A day of colossal fruitfulness is on the horizon “when the reaper will be overtaken by the ploughman and the planter by the one treading grapes. New wine will drip from the mountains and flow from all the hills.” (verse 13)
This little book, which began with “the words of Amos” ends with “I will plant Israel in their own land, never again to be uprooted from the land I have given them”, says the Lord your God. The rejected prophet from the south spoke the very words of God.