Christ in Amos

Amos opens with a sound rather than a sentence: The LORD will roar from Zion, and utter his voice from Jerusalem (v. 2) - the roar of a lion over its world, and the keynote of the whole book. What follows is a circle of judgment oracles, each falling with the same refrain - For three transgressions of [the nation], and for four, I will not turn away the punishment thereof - against Damascus for threshing Gilead with iron (vv. 3-5), Gaza and Tyre for trafficking whole peopl…

In Amos 2 the circle of judgment that swept the surrounding nations finally closes at home. The refrain falls once more - For three transgressions… and for four, I will not turn away the punishment thereof - on Moab for burning a king’s bones into lime (vv. 1-3), on Judah for despising the law of the LORD (vv. 4-5), and then, longest and hardest, upon Israel itself (vv. 6-16). The charge against God’s own people is not ritual but moral: because they sold the righteo…

Amos 3 opens with a sentence that should make every reader of Scripture tremble: You only have I known of all the families of the earth: therefore I will punish you for all your iniquities (v. 2). To be known by God is the highest privilege there is - and Amos insists it carries weight, not exemption: unto whomsoever much is given, of him shall be much required (Luke 12:48). Then the prophet sets out a chain of plain questions about cause and effect - a lion roars only whe…

Amos 4 shows a God who sends lesser troubles to turn His people before a greater one falls, and who grieves over every refusal. Five times He recounts a chastisement - famine, drought, blight, pestilence and sword, an overthrow as God overthrew Sodom and Gomorrah - and five times He seals it with the same ache: yet have ye not returned unto me, saith the LORD (vv. 6-11). This is the heart that the New Testament names openly: the Lord is longsuffering… not willing th…

Amos 5 sets two of the most piercing words in the prophets side by side, and the Gospel takes up both. The first is a refrain repeated until it cannot be missed: Seek ye me, and ye shall live (v. 4); Seek the LORD, and ye shall live (v. 6); Seek good, and not evil, that ye may live (v. 14). To a people the prophet has just laid out as a corpse - The virgin of Israel is fallen; she shall no more rise (v. 2) - the LORD holds out life on the far side of the funeral song, and…

Amos 6 turns the prophet’s woe from the cruel nations of chapter 1 onto the comfortable leaders of God’s own people, and its peril is one the Gospel will name again and again: the danger of an ease that deadens the soul. Woe to them that are at ease in Zion, and trust in the mountain of Samaria (v. 1) - people who put far away the evil day (v. 3) and lie upon beds of ivory… and eat the lambs out of the flock… that drink wine in bowls, and anoint themselves wi…

Amos 7 sets three things side by side that the New Testament gathers up in Christ. First, the prophet stands in the gap. Shown a swarm and then a fire devouring the land, Amos pleads, O Lord GOD, forgive, I beseech thee: by whom shall Jacob arise? for he is small (v. 2), and the LORD relents - the same intercession Moses made when he stood between the LORD and a guilty people (Exod. 32:11-14) and Abraham made over Sodom (Gen. 18:23-32), all pointing to the One who ever liv…

Amos 8 names a hunger deeper than any other - I will send a famine in the land, not a famine of bread, nor a thirst for water, but of hearing the words of the LORD (v. 11) - and in that scarcity the whole Gospel finds its answer. To be cut off from God’s word is the worst poverty there is, for the Lord Himself taught that man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God (Matt. 4:4; Deut. 8:3). The famine Amos foretells is answere…

Amos has thundered judgment for eight chapters, and the ninth opens with the heaviest vision of all: the LORD standing upon the altar, the sanctuary struck till it crushes the worshippers, and a hand no fugitive can outrun - though they dig into hell… though they climb up to heaven… though they be hid… in the bottom of the sea , He takes them (vv. 1-4). Yet the same hand that judges is the hand that buildeth his stories in the heaven… that calle…