Amos 9
1 I saw the Lord standing beside the altar, and he said: “Strike the capitals until the thresholds shake, and shatter them on the heads of all the people; and those who are left of them I will kill with the sword; not one of them shall flee away; not one of them shall escape. 2 “If they dig into Sheol, from there shall my hand take them; if they climb up to heaven, from there I will bring them down. 3 If they hide themselves on the top of Carmel, from there I will search them out and take them; and if they hide from my sight at the bottom of the sea, there I will command the serpent, and it shall bite them. 4 And if they go into captivity before their enemies, there I will command the sword, and it shall kill them; and I will fix my eyes upon them for evil and not for good.” 5 The Lord God of hosts, he who touches the earth and it melts, and all who dwell in it mourn, and all of it rises like the Nile, and sinks again, like the Nile of Egypt; 6 who builds his upper chambers in the heavens and founds his vault upon the earth; who calls for the waters of the sea and pours them out upon the surface of the earth—the Lord is his name. 7 “Are you not like the Cushites to me, O people of Israel?” declares the Lord. “Did I not bring up Israel from the land of Egypt, and the Philistines from Caphtor and the Syrians from Kir? 8 Behold, the eyes of the Lord God are upon the sinful kingdom, and I will destroy it from the surface of the ground, except that I will not utterly destroy the house of Jacob,” declares the Lord. 9 “For behold, I will command, and shake the house of Israel among all the nations as one shakes with a sieve, but no pebble shall fall to the earth. 10 All the sinners of my people shall die by the sword, who say, ‘Disaster shall not overtake or meet us.’ 11 “In that day I will raise up the booth of David that is fallen and repair its breaches, and raise up its ruins and rebuild it as in the days of old, 12 that they may possess the remnant of Edom and all the nations who are called by my name,” declares the Lord who does this. 13 “Behold, the days are coming,” declares the Lord, “when the plowman shall overtake the reaper and the treader of grapes him who sows the seed; the mountains shall drip sweet wine, and all the hills shall flow with it. 14 I will restore the fortunes of my people Israel, and they shall rebuild the ruined cities and inhabit them; they shall plant vineyards and drink their wine, and they shall make gardens and eat their fruit. 15 I will plant them on their land, and they shall never again be uprooted out of the land that I have given them,” says the Lord your God.
Charles Spurgeon, that great preacher of yesteryear, once envisioned himself walking inside of a prison. Hear what he says:
I feel as if I were walking along a corridor, and I see a number of cells of the condemned. As I listen at the keyhole, I can hear those inside weeping in doleful, dolorous dirges. “There is no hope, no hope, no hope.” I can see the warden at the other end, smiling calmly to himself, as he knows that none of the prisoners can come out as long as they say there is no hope. It is a sign that their manacles are not broken and that the bolts of their cells are not removed.[1]
Imprisoned…by a lack of hope.
Amos is a book that is heavy on judgment. I do not say this as a criticism of the prophet. He was a faithful conveyor of God’s word and I certainly am not critical of God! If you think the Lord’s words have been too severe, go back to the beginning of the book and consider again the shocking severity of Israel’s sin! God was merciful to warn them at all. He did not have to. They were begging for judgment.
Yes, the book is a heavy book, a book of judgment, a book of woe. One is tempted to give up hope when one hears the searing, jarring, unrelenting words of judgment on its pages. After all, does our sin not deserve the same severity?
But as we conclude this book, I would like to address those of you here this morning who, like Spurgeon’s despondent prisoners, have no hope.
I would like to address the hopeless.
I would like to address the “I have done too much damage!”
I would like to address the “My family would be better off without me!”
I would like to address the “If they knew how I have messed up, they would never forgive me!”
I would like to address the “Hell awaits me, and I have no hope of heaven!”
I would like to address the “Maybe I will just end it all.”
I would like to address the fearful.
The condemned.
The “I have got it coming!”
The “God must hate me!”
The “I hate myself!”
And I would like to say this to you, on the basis of Amos 9 and on the basis of the whole of scripture and on the basis of the cross: In the darkest night of your own doom, there is yet hope! There is still hope! That tiny little flicker is there if you will look for it: that is hope! It is not over yet! Hell need not be your destination! God’s love is still offered to you! There is hope!
Three little words. Three little words in Amos 9 that dare to give us hope. In the midst of all these words of judgment, three words call to us to hope!