A warning against complacency and pride
Text Amos 6 Time 13 02 22 Place Childs Hill Baptist Church
We come this week to Amos 6 and it is more of the same as we have had in Chapters 3-5 - lots about the coming judgement and about the need to repent before that time. In particular, Amos warns us in Chapter 6 against complacency, pride and self-sufficiency. The chapter does not divide in any obvious way but let's take it in three chunks and say
1. Woe to professing believers who are complacent in light of the judgements of God
The chapter begins with a woe. Amos uses a word that the prophets use around 50 times all told and more often than not in a warning sense. Normally, the word woe means something terrible or sad, something that causes grief. When the prophets say woe like this, they most often mean "Watch out! A terrible thing is coming, a judgement." This woe is directed against the complacency of the leading men of the time. So here it is
Woe to you who are complacent in Zion, that is Jerusalem where the Temple was and to you who feel secure on Mount Samaria, the northern kingdom you notable men of the foremost nation, to whom the people of Israel come! In Chapter 4 he had the women in mind but now it is the leading men in Israel and to some extent Judah.
In order to support his statement, Amos recommends that his hearers do some research and go on a tour of places that had in recent times suffered God's wrath. He mentions Kalneh, Hamath and Gath. The first two were probably to the north of Damascus in Syria, one near Aleppo and one north of Homs. Gath is the fifth of the Philistine cities in the west. He says (2) Go to Kalneh and look at it; go from there to great Hamath, and then go down to Gath in Philistia. Are they better off than your two kingdoms? Is their land larger than yours?
We do not know the stories behind what happened in those places but it is clear that Amos is saying "Look! Those cities seemed to be pretty solid and sure and as though they were going to last forever but now they have been overthrown." Perhaps today he might have said "Think of Nagasaki or Hiroshima and how quickly they were wiped out." Or perhaps he would have mentioned Raqqa and Ramadi, overthrown by ISIS not so long ago. What about Kharkiv and Luhansk in Eastern Ukraine? We do not know what might happen there in the next few weeks.
"Do not think that you will last when the Assyrians come" Amos is saying. We also need to realise how fragile our state is by nature. We cannot imagine London being overthrown, I'm sure. Yet only 70 or 80 years ago bombs fell on this city and there was severe damage and heavy casualties. If you look at old pictures of this chapel, you will see a lovely rose window. It does not look like that now because of the war. In the street where I live you will find two houses much more modern than those either side because the houses previously on that site were hit by a bomb. It was even worse over in the docklands area of London. By the war's end, just under 30,000 Londoners had been killed by the bombing, and over 50,000 seriously injured. Tens of thousands of buildings were destroyed, and hundreds of thousands of people were made homeless. Yet it is still hard to imagine. Similarly, we cannot imagine dying, perhaps, but such a thing can happen in a moment. The Day of Judgement will soon be with us.
He then sums up the present attitude of complacency that reigned in Israel. He uses a series of five phrases to describe how it was among the elite and brings out the complacency that existed at the time and the danger that that put them in. He says
3 You put off the day of disaster and bring near a reign of terror. Yes, Amos and other prophets warned them about the day of disaster and what they needed to do but they kept procrastinating and so failing to do what needed to be done. All that their attitude was doing was not to make the danger less likely but simply to bring near the reign of terror when the Assyrians would come and attack. There is the same danger today - the danger of simply ignoring the warnings of preachers.
4a You lie on beds adorned with ivory and lounge on your couches. He describes how they loved the luxuries of their day - beds adorned with ivory and couches on which they loved to lay down. It was not as common then but even in the eighth century BC for a very special banquet they would use couches to lie on and no doubt Amos has that in mind here.
4b You dine on choice lambs and fattened calves. There was plenty of food to eat at these banquets too. They loved to dine like this. There was always some reason for a dinner party with the choicest lambs and with well fattened calves.
5 You strum away on your harps like David and improvise on musical instruments. With the couches and the food, there was music. This time Amos pictures them strumming away on their harps and improvising on various musical instruments. That like David is ironic. They thought that they were in David's tradition with the praise songs that they composed to entertain each other but they were simply just indulging themselves in another form of leisure and luxury. You can see them in your mind's eye composing and practising their songs, which they were so proud of.
6a You drink wine by the bowlful and use the finest lotions. There was also drinking at these feasts and the use of oils or lotions on their bodies - so lots of drinking and only the finest lotions and perfumes. You can picture them at these parties perhaps, drinking copious amounts of wine "by the bowl full" and smelling of the best quality perfume and after shave.
And then that final line (6b) but you do not grieve over the ruin of Joseph.
They are something like the people dining in first class and hearing the orchestra playing on the Titanic before it went down. They are like Belshazzar and the guests at his feast before the writing on the wall stunned them all into silence.
What a warning for us in our affluent age. How easy to fail to grieve over the needs of God's people and to be so caught up in a whirl of food and drink and music and pleasure that we have no time to consider our true position.
2. Realise that judgement is coming on the proud and self-sufficient
And so we come secondly to the words of judgement found from verse 7 onwards. In verse 7 Amos says Therefore you will be among the first to go into exile; your feasting and lounging will end. The thought is that because the people he addresses have failed to grieve over the ruin of Joseph and have instead lounged on couches and spent their time in partying and self-indulgence, when the Assyrians do attack, which they certainly will, these leading men will be among the first to go into exile and so their feasting and lounging will come to an abrupt end.
In verse 8 it says very solemnly The Sovereign LORD has sworn by himself - the LORD God Almighty declares: It is important to be reminded from time to time just who is speaking here. "I abhor the pride of Jacob and detest his fortresses; I will deliver up the city and everything in it." God has never hated his people as such but he does hate their sins. It is the pride of the people that the LORD hates, their self-security. This is why he is going to deliver up the city and everything in it by the hand of the Assyrians.
Then in verses 9 and 10 we have one of those little sort of cameos, if that is the right word, a little bit like that scene in Chapter 5 where the man runs from the bear only to be met by a lion and when he tries to hide in a house he puts out his hand and is bitten by a snake. This time it is an even more real scene.
Verse 9 says, speaking of the time when the Assyrians invade - If ten people are left in one house, a home perhaps where a large or extended family live, they too will die. And then comes along the relative who comes to carry the bodies out of the house to burn them burial was the norm but in extreme cases like this, such as when there had been a battle cremation would sometimes be used. If this relative asks anyone who might still be hiding there, "Is anyone else with you?" and he is told "No," no there is no-one still alive in the house then he will go on to say, "Hush! We must not mention the name of the LORD." The instinct might be to ask why the LORD has done this or to complain of it but no. Amos has made perfectly clear what was going to happen and when a person finds himself in such a position he will know it is exactly as was prophesied. It will be too late to pray then For the LORD has given the command, and he will smash the great house into pieces and the small house into bits. They are all going to be smashed - the house that holds ten and the house that holds just two. And so now is the time to pray and to repent before the LORD. Do not leave it to some later time.
3. Judgement is coming on the proud and the unjust
In the last verses of the chapter (12-14) Amos begins by referring to two things. There is some argument about what exactly he says but the niv is probably right with
Do horses run on the rocky crags? Does one plough the sea with oxen?
When people race horses they usually race them on turf or on a dirt track or an artificial track that mimics those surfaces. They do not run them on rocky crags. The going may be hard, good, soft or heavy but if it is like rock, as when it freezes over they do not run the horses.
Similarly, you plough a field not rocky crags or the sea. Before you plant seed you turn over the soil to prepare it to receive the seed.
Amos highlights these practices in order to emphasise how incongruous it was that God's people had turned justice into poison and the fruit of righteousness into bitterness. But you have turned justice into poison and the fruit of righteousness into bitterness. They had acted in the strangest and most unacceptable manner with their injustices and lack of righteousness.
Further, they were very proud and self-sufficient failing to see that the Assyrians would easily overcome them in the future. Under Jeroboam II there had been expansion and he had won victories for Israel. In verse 13 Amos notes how they rejoiced in these victories, in the conquest of Lo Debar and and over Karnaim so that they said to one another "Did we not take Karnaim by our own strength?" There is a little word play here perhaps as he actually refers to Lo Debar in a form that sounds like no-thing or nothing and because Karnaim means horns or strength it may be they were saying something like "Didn't we get horns for ourselves when we took karnaim?". They were very proud of those victories up in the north east near Galilee and in Bashan.
But here is the bottom line (verse 14) For the LORD God Almighty declares, "I will stir up a nation against you, Israel, that will oppress you all the way from Lebo Hamath to the valley of the Arabah." from the very north to the very south. As we have said it is the Assyrians who he has in mind and who would invade Israel and carry people off into exile in 722 BC, only 30 or 40 years later.
Certain things can puff us up and we can get quite self-confident. We think we can face anything. Rather, we should realise that we need to get ready for the coming judgement as unless we are trusting in Jesus Christ on that day we will be without hope.
