AMOS 5 (SUBSTANCE OF A READING)
[p. 430] AMOS 5 (SUBSTANCE OF A READING)
The very fact that God sent a prophet to Israel showed that He had not given them up. There is a remnant spoken of in verse 15, “Hate evil, and love good, and establish judgment in the gate: it may be that Jehovah, the God of hosts, will be gracious unto the remnant of Joseph”. The main burden of this prophet is that the people should seek Jehovah; and so now the great thing is that the Lord should be sought; He can be sought, though as we were seeing, He is glorified in heaven. We carry about with us what God says cannot be subject (Romans 8: 7), and so we must always judge it.
“Woe unto you that desire the day of Jehovah! To what end is the day of Jehovah for you?” (verse 18). The people had not offered sacrifices for forty years but were carrying idolatrous gods (verses 25 - 27). The whole professing body today professes to want the kingdom of God to come when they have not the slightest intention of giving up their own wills. “To what end is the day of Jehovah for you?” The Scriptures anticipate everything that men are likely to say or to do. “Therefore the prudent shall keep silence in this time; for it is an evil time” (verse 13). It shows that there is power in silence sometimes, that we are not always to be denouncing what is evil; it is better sometimes to be silent as to what is wrong. We should be exponents of what is right, and that is the most powerful rebuke of what is wrong; God has pleasure in what is right, “Let judgment roll down as waters, and righteousness as an ever-flowing stream” (verse 24). The offerings of Israel were accompanied by a moral state that made them offensive to God. They were imitating the choicest period in the time of David, but they did not feel the condition Godward. It is an exercise for us all to be genuine in all that we take up as service. Going on with God will preserve us. We ought to have as clear a judgment as Amos had, of the evil in [p. 431] the christian profession before the judgment comes. A plentiful supply of judgment and righteousness should mark the people of God. We should feel much more than we do the state of the church — it is not grieved at; how few there are to mourn over the state of the church. Those who are near to Christ must do so. You cannot appreciate what the ruin is until you get out of it. The remnant is spoken of as “the remnant of Joseph” (verse 15) because he has the ten tribes largely in view. They had set up idolatry as a system of worship and it was their destruction. And so it is today, and it is not felt as being contrary to God, as contrary to what was set up in the power of the Spirit at the beginning. “That say ... Come to Bethel, and transgress; at Gilgal multiply transgression” (chapter 4: 4). If we took it to heart we should cleave more to the Lord and value more what is spiritual.
Chapter 7 is very important as showing how the Lord acted with His servant so that Amos might be in accord with His own thoughts.