Amos

by David Smith, Ayr, U.K. | Category: What Seest Thou? | May 1983

Amos, whose name means "to bear a burden", was a herdsman of Tekoa and a gatherer of sycamore fruit. God chose him to be His prophet to the ten tribes of the Northern kingdom before they were carried away into captivity.

Solemn indeed is the responsibility to be called of God to bear as a burden His word and testimony in a hostile and depressing world. No less enviable is the task of bearing a word of warning and entreaty to a people who have turned their backs on God and refuse to have Him in their lives. But there is compensation in the assurance that whatever our background His grace is all-sufficient for our every need (2 Cor. 3:4,5) and His strength can carry us through.

To many of His servants God gave His word and demonstrated His

message in open vision, and Amos was one with whom He dealt in that manner. "He shewed me: and, behold, the Lord stood beside a wall made by a plumbline, with a plumbline in His hand. And the LORD said unto me, Amos, what seest thou? and I said, A plumbline" (Amos 7:7,8). What had the prophet seen? What was its significance to him and to us? The plumbline is a tool for testing the perpendicular lines of a building. How does it relate to a people who have departed from God? The departure of the people of Israel from God stems from the crisis which was created by Jeroboam when he set up golden calves at Dan and at Bethel and thus drew away the people from the house of God in Jerusalem, the place of God's Name.

Ever after God speaks of him as the man "who made Israel to sin." Thus began a process which produced a multiplicity of high places and altars, evoking that chilling sentence given to Amos, "Behold, I will set a plumbline in the midst of My people Israel ... and the high places of Isaac shall be desolate, and the sanctuaries of Isr~e1 shall be laid waste" (Amos. 7:8,9). With their high places they had provoked the Lord to anger and moved Him to jealousy (Psalm 78:58; Ezekiel 20:29). Places of worship set up by men to rival the place of God's choice were and are serious sin. Judgement against such a rebellious system would proceed according to the truth of the divine plumbline.

For the systems of men can never line up with the truth of God relating to His house, which in every age is built according to a God-given pattern. This fact is particularly emphasized when the Lord says, "Behold, I lay in Zion for a foundation a stone, a tried stone, a precious corner stone of sure foundation ... and I will make judgement the line, and righteousness the plummet" (Isaiah 28:16,17). Brought into its present perspective verse 16 is quoted in 1 Peter 2:6, for in this age the house of God is not made of wood and stone as in a previous dispensation, but of "living stones." That is, believers who have been quickened and made alive by the Spirit and Word of God have been built up according to the teaching of the apostles and prophets in the New Testament Scriptures to form a "habitation of God in the Spirit" (Eph. 2:21,22; 1 Peter 2:4,5). The corner stone is the Lord Jesus Christ set on the hill of the Zion that is above, and in its construction the house of God is lined up to this precious corner stone with righteousness and judgement. The house of God was designed to be the centre of Israel's worship and service, and the instructions given to them before they ever came in sight of the promised land are pertinent to the present. "Unto the place which the LORD your God shall choose ... to put His Name there, even unto His habitation shall ye seek, and thither thou shalt come" (Deut. 12:5). Today, as in the past, the house of God is of the utmost importance in the life of God's gathered people.

David Smith, Ayr, U.K. | May 1983
What Seest Thou?