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Expositor's Bible Commentary Amos 4:1 Hear this word, ye kine of Bashan, that are in the mountain of Samaria, which oppress the poor, which crush the needy, which say to their masters, Bring, and let us drink. 5 CIVILIZATION AND JUDGMENT Amos 3:1-15 - Amos 4:3 WE now enter the Second Section of the Book of Amos: chapters 3-6. It is a collection of various oracles of denunciation, grouped partly by the recurrence of the formula "Hear this word," which stands at the head of our present chapters 3, 4, and 5, which are therefore probably due to it; partly by two cries of "Woe" at Amos 5:18 and Amos 6:1 ; and also by the fact that each of the groups thus started leads up to an emphatic, though not at first detailed, prediction of the nation’s doom. { Amos 3:13-15 ; Amos 4:3 ; Amos 4:12 ; Amos 5:16-17 ; Amos 5:26-27 ; Amos 6:14 } Within these divisions lie a number of short indictments, sentences of judgment, and the like, which have no further logical connection than is supplied by their general sameness of subject, and a perceptible increase of articulateness from beginning to end of the Section. The sins of Israel are more detailed, and the judgment of war, coming from the North, advances gradually till we discern the unmistakable ranks of Assyria. But there are various parentheses and interruptions, which cause the student of the text no little difficulty. Some of these, however, may be only apparent: it will always be a question whether their want of immediate connection with what precedes them is not due to the loss of several words from the text rather than to their own intrusion into it. Of others it is true that they are obviously out of place as they lie; their removal brings together verses which evidently belong to each other. Even such parentheses, however, may be from Amos himself. It is only where a verse, besides interrupting the argument, seems to reflect a historical situation later than the prophet’s day, that we can be sure it is not his own. And in all this textual criticism we must keep in mind that the obscurity of the present text of a verse, so far from being an adequate proof of its subsequent insertion, may be the very token of its antiquity, scribes or translators of later date having been unable to understand it. To reject a verse, only because we do not see the connection, would surely be as arbitrary as the opposite habit of those who, missing a connection, invent one, and then exhibit their artificial joint as evidence of the integrity of the whole passage. In fact we must avoid all headstrong surgery, for to a great extent we work in the dark. The general subject of the Section may be indicated by the title: Religion and Civilization. A vigorous community, wealthy, cultured, and honestly religious, are, at a time of settled peace and growing power, threatened, in the name of the God of justice, with their complete political overthrow. Their civilization is counted for nothing; their religion, on which they base their confidence, is denounced as false and unavailing. These two subjects are not, and could not have been, separated by the prophet in any one of his oracles. But in the first, the briefest, and most summary of these, chapters 3-4:3, it is mainly with the doom of the civil structure of Israel’s life that Amos deals; ‘and it will be more convenient for us to take them first, with all due reference to the echoes of them in later parts of the Section. From Amos 4:4-6 . it is the Religion and its false peace which he assaults; and we shall take that in the next chapter. First, then, Civilization and Judgment ( Amos 3:1-15 ; Amos 4:1-3 ); second, The False Peace of Ritual ( Amos 4:4-6 ). These few brief oracles open upon the same note as that in which the previous Section closed-that the crimes of Israel are greater than those of the heathen; and that the people’s peculiar relation to God means, not their security, but their greater judgment. It is then affirmed that Israel’s wealth and social life are so sapped by luxury and injustice that the nation must perish. And, as in every luxurious community the women deserve especial blame, the last of the group of oracles is reserved for them. { Amos 4:1-3 } "Hear this word, which Jehovah hath spoken against you, O children of Israel, against the whole family which I brought up from the land of Egypt" - Judah as well as North Israel, so that we see the vanity of a criticism which would cast out of the Book of Amos as unauthentic every reference to Judah. "Only you have I known of all the families of the ground"-not world, but "ground," purposely chosen to stamp the meanness and mortality of them all-"therefore will I visit upon you all your iniquities." This famous text has been called by various writers "the keynote," "the license," and "the charter" of prophecy. But the names are too petty for what is not less than the fulmination of an element. It is a peal of thunder we hear. It is, in a moment, the explosion and discharge of the full storm of prophecy. As when from a burst cloud the streams immediately below rise suddenly and all their banks are overflowed, so the prophecies that follow surge and rise clear of the old limits of Israel’s faith by the unconfined, unmeasured flood of heaven’s justice that breaks forth by this single verse. Now, once for all, are submerged the lines of custom and tradition within which the course of religion has hitherto flowed; and, as it were, the surface of the world is altered. It is a crisis which has happened more than once again in history: when helpless man has felt the absolute relentlessness of the moral issues of life; their renunciation of the past, however much they have helped to form it; their sacrifice of every development however costly, and of every hope however pure; their deafness to prayer, their indifference to penitence; when no faith saves a Church, no courage a people, no culture or prestige even the most exalted order of men; but at the bare hands of a judgment, uncouth of voice and often unconscious of a Divine mission, the results of a great civilization are for its sins swept remorselessly away. Before the storm bursts, we learn by its lightnings some truths from the old life that is to be destroyed. "You only have I known of all the families of the ground: therefore will I visit your iniquities upon you." Religion is no insurance against judgment, no mere atonement and escape from consequences. Escape! Religion is only opportunity-the greatest moral opportunity which men have, and which if they violate nothing remains for them but a certain fearful looking forward unto judgment. You only have I known; and because you did not take the moral advantage of My intercourse, because you felt it only as privilege and pride, pardon for the past and security for the future, therefore doom the more inexorable awaits you. Then as if the people had interrupted him with the question, What sign do you give us that this judgment is near?-Amos goes aside into that noble digression ( Amos 3:3-8 ) on the harmony between the prophet’s word and the imminent events of the time, which we have already studied. From this apologia, Amos 3:9 returns to the note of Amos 3:1-2 and develops it. Not only is Israel’s responsibility greater than that of other people’s. Her crimes themselves are more heinous. "Make proclamation over the palaces in Ashdod"-if we are not to read Assyria here, then the name of Ashdod has perhaps been selected from all other heathen names because of its similarity to the Hebrew word for that "violence" with which Amos is charging the people-"and over the palaces of the land of Egypt, and say, Gather upon the Mount of Samaria and see! Confusions manifold in the midst of her; violence to her very core! Yea, they know not how to do uprightness, saith Jehovah, who store up wrong and violence in their palaces." "To their crimes," said the satirist of the Romans, "they owe their gardens, palaces, stables, and fine old plate." And William Langland declared of the rich English of his day:-" For toke thei on trewly they tymbred not so height Ne boughte non burgages be ye full certayne. " "Therefore thus saith the Lord Jehovah: Siege and Blockade of the Land. And they shall bring down from off thee thy fortresses, and plundered shall be thy palaces." Yet this shall be no ordinary, tide of Eastern war, to ebb like the Syrian as it flowed, and leave the nation to rally on their land again. For Assyria devours the peoples. "Thus saith Jehovah: As the shepherd saveth from the mouth of the lion a pair of shinbones or a bit of an ear, so shall the children of Israel be saved-they who sit in Samaria in the corner of the diwan and on a couch." The description, as will be seen from the note below, is obscure. Some think it is intended to satirize a novel and affected fashion of sitting adopted by the rich. Much more probably it means that carnal security in the luxuries of civilization which Amos threatens more than once in similar phrases. The corner of the diwan is in Eastern houses the seat of honor. To this desert shepherd, with only the hard ground to rest on, the couches and ivory-mounted diwans of the rich must have seemed the very symbols of extravagance. But the pampered bodies that loll their lazy lengths upon them shall be left like the crumbs of a lion’s meal-"two shin-bones and the bit of an ear!" Their whole civilization shall perish with them. "Hearken and testify against the house of Israel-oracle of the Lord Jehovah, God of Hosts"-those addressed are still the heathen summoned in Amos 3:14-15 . "For on the day when I visit the crimes of Israel upon him, I shall then make visitation upon the altars of Bethel, and the horns of the altar," which men grasp in their last despair, "shall be smitten and fall to the earth. And I will strike the winter-house upon the summer-house, and the ivory houses Shall perish, yea, swept away shall be houses many-oracle of Jehovah." But the luxury of no civilization can be measured without its women, and to the women of Samaria Amos now turns with the most scornful of all his words. "Hear this word"-this for you-"kine of Bashan that are in the mount of Samaria, that oppress the poor, that crush the needy, that say to their lords, Bring, and let us drink. Sworn hath the Lord Jehovah by His holiness, lo, days are coming when there shall be a taking away of you with hooks, and of the last of you with fish-hooks." They put hooks in the nostrils of unruly cattle, and the figure is often applied to human captives; but so many should these cattle of Samaria be that for the "last of them fish-hooks" must be used. "Yea, by the breaches" in the wall of the stormed city "shall ye go out, every one headlong, and ye shall be cast oracle of Jehovah." It is a cowherd’s rough picture of women: a troop of kine-heavy, heedless animals, trampling in their anxiety for food upon every frail and lowly object in the way. But there is a prophet’s insight into character. Not of Jezebels, or Messalinas, or Lady Macbeths is it spoken, but of the ordinary matrons of Samaria. Thoughtlessness and luxury are able to make brutes out of women of gentle nurture, with homes and a religion. Such are these three or four short oracles of Amos. They are probably among his earliest-the first peremptory challenges of prophecy to, that great stronghold which before forty years she is to see thrown down in obedience to her word. As yet, however, there seems to be nothing to justify the menaces of Amos. Fair and stable rises the structure of Israel’s life. A nation, who know themselves elect; who in politics are prosperous and in religion proof to every doubt, build high their palaces, see the skies above them unclouded, and bask in their pride, heaven’s favorites without an ear. This man, solitary and sudden from his desert, springs upon them in the name of God and their poor. Straighter word never came from Deity: "Jehovah hath spoken, who can but prophesy?" The insight of it, the justice of it, are alike convincing. Yet at first it appears as if it were sped on the personal and very human passion of its herald. For Amos not only uses the desert’s cruelties-the lion’s to the sheep-to figure God’s impending judgment upon His people, but he enforces the latter with all a desert-bred man’s horror of cities and civilization. It is their costly furniture, their lavish and complex building, on which he sees the storm break. We seem to hear again that frequent phrase of the previous section: "the fire shall devour the palaces thereof." The palaces, he says, are simply storehouses of oppression; the palaces will be plundered. Here, as throughout his book, couches and diwans draw forth the scorn of a man accustomed to the simple furniture of the tent. But observe his especial hatred of houses. Four times in one verse he smites them: "winter-house on summer-house and the ivory houses shall perish-yea, houses manifold, saith the Lord." So in another oracle of the same section: "Houses of ashlar ye have built, and ye shall not inhabit them; vineyards of delight have ye planted, and ye shall not drink of their wine." { Amos 5:11 } And in another: "I loathe the pride of Jacob, and his palaces I hate; and I will give up a city and all that is in it For, lo, the Lord is about to command, and He will smite the great house into ruins and the small house into splinters." { Amos 6:8 ; Amos 6:11 } No wonder that such a prophet found war with its breached walls insufficient, and welcomed, as the full ally of his word, the earthquake itself. Yet all this is no mere desert razzia in the name of the Lord, a nomad’s hatred of cities and the culture of settled men. It is not a temper; it is a vision of history. In the only argument which these early oracles contain, Amos claims to have events on the side of his word. "Shall the lion roar and not be catching" something? Neither does the prophet speak till he knows that God is ready to act. History accepted this claim. Amos spoke about 755. In 734 Tiglath-Pileser swept Gilead and Galilee; in 724 Shalmaneser overran the rest of Northern Israel: "siege and blockade of the whole land!" For three years the Mount of Samaria was invested, and then taken; the houses overthrown, the rich and the delicate led away captive. It happened as Amos foretold; for it was not the shepherd’s rage within him that spoke. He had "seen the Lord standing, and He said, Smite." But this assault of a desert nomad upon the structure of a nation’s life raises many echoes in history and some questions in our own minds today. Again and again have civilizations far more powerful than Israel’s been threatened by the desert in the name of God, and in good faith it has been proclaimed by the prophets of Christianity and other religions that God’s kingdom cannot come on earth till the wealth, the culture, the civil order, which men have taken centuries to build, have been swept away by some great political convulsion. Today Christianity herself suffers the same assaults, and is told by many, the high life and honest intention of whom cannot be doubted, that till the civilization which she has so much helped to create is destroyed, there is no hope for the purity or the progress of the race. And Christianity, too, has doubts within herself. What is the world which our Master refused in the Mount of Temptation, and so often and so sternly told us that it must perish?-how much of our wealth, of our culture, of our politics, of the whole fabric of our society? No thoughtful and religious man, when confronted with civilization, not in its ideal, but in one of those forms which give it its very name, the life of a large city, can fail to ask, How much of this deserves the judgment of God? How much must be overthrown, before His will is done on earth? All these questions rise in the ears and the heart of a generation, which more than any other has been brought face to face with the ruins of empires and civilizations, which have endured longer, and in their day seemed more stable, than her own. In face of the confused thinking and fanatic speech which have risen on all such topics, it seems to me that the Hebrew prophets supply us with four cardinal rules. First, of course, they insist that it is the moral question upon which the fate of a civilization is, decided. By what means has the system grown? Is justice observed in essence as well as form? Is there freedom, or is the prophet silenced? Does luxury or self-denial prevail? Do the rich make life hard for the poor? Is childhood sheltered and is innocence respected? By these, claim the prophets, a nation stands or falls; and history has proved the claim on wider worlds than they dreamt of. But by themselves moral reasons are never enough to justify a prediction of speedy doom upon any system or society. None of the prophets began to foretell the fall of Israel till they read, with keener eyes than their contemporaries, the signs of it in current history. And this, I take it, was the point which made a notable difference between them, and one who like them scourged the social wrongs of his civilization, yet never spoke a word of its fall. Juvenal nowhere calls down judgments, except upon individuals. In his time there were no signs of the decline of the empire, even though, as he marks, there was a flight from the capital of the virtue which was to keep the empire alive. But the prophets had political proof of the nearness of God’s judgment, and they spoke in the power of its coincidence with the moral corruption of their people. Again, if conscience and history (both of them, to the prophets, being witnesses of God) thus combine to announce the early doom of a civilization, neither the religion that may-have helped to build it, nor any remnant virtue in it, nor its ancient value to God, can avail to save. We are tempted to judge that the long and costly development of ages is cruelly thrown away by the convulsion and collapse of an empire; it feels impious to think that the patience, the providence, the millennial discipline of the Almighty are to be in a moment abandoned to some rude and savage force. But we are wrong. "You only have I known of all the families of the ground," yet I must "visit upon you your iniquities." Nothing is too costly for justice. And God finds some other way of conserving the real results of the past. Again, it is a corollary of all this, that the sentence upon civilization must often seem to come by voices that are insane, and its execution by means that are criminal. Of course, when civilization is arraigned as a whole, and its overthrow demanded, there may be nothing behind the attack but jealousy or greed, the fanaticism of ignorant men or the madness of disordered lives. But this is not necessarily the case. For God has often in history chosen the outsider as the herald of doom, and sent the barbarian as its instrument. By the statesmen and patriots of Israel, Amos must have been regarded as a mere savage, with a savage’s hate of civilization. But we know what he answered when Amaziah called him rebel. And it was not only for its suddenness that the apostles said the "day of the Lord should come as a thief," but also because of its methods. For over and over again has doom been pronounced, and pronounced truly, by men who in the eyes of civilization were criminals and monsters. Now apply these four principles to the question of ourselves. It will scarcely be denied that our civilization tolerates, and in part lives by, the existence of vices which, as we all admit, ruined the ancient empires. Are the political possibilities of overthrow also present? That there exist among us means of new historic convulsions is a thing hard for us to admit. But the signs cannot be hid. When we see the jealousies of the Christian peoples, and their enormous preparations for battle; the arsenals of Europe which a few sparks, may blow up; the millions of soldiers one man’s word may mobilize; when we imagine the opportunities which a general war would furnish to the discontented masses of the European proletariat-we must surely acknowledge the existence of forces capable of inflicting calamities, so severe as to affect not merely this nationality or that type of culture, but the very vigor and progress of civilization herself; and all this without our looking beyond Christendom, or taking into account the rise of the yellow races to a consciousness of their approach to equality with ourselves. If, then, in the eyes of the Divine justice Christendom merits judgment, -if life continue to be left so hard to the poor; if innocence be still an impossibility for so much of the childhood of the Christian nations; if with so many of the leaders of civilization prurience be lifted to the level of an art, and licentiousness followed as a cult; if we continue to pour the evils of our civilization upon the barbarian, and "the vices of our young nobles," to paraphrase Juvenal, "are aped in" Hindustan, -then let us know that the means of a judgment more awful than any which has yet scourged a delinquent civilization are extant and actual among us. And if one should reply, that our Christianity makes all the difference, that God cannot undo the development of nineteen centuries, or cannot overthrow the peoples of His Son, -let us remember that God does justice at whatever cost; that as He did not spare Israel at the hands of Assyria, so He did not spare Christianity in the East when the barbarians of the desert found her careless and corrupt. "You only have I known of all the families of the ground, therefore will I visit upon you all your iniquities." THE PROBLEM THAT AMOS LEFT AMOS was a preacher of righteousness almost wholly in its judicial and punitive offices. Exposing the moral conditions of society in his day, emphasizing on the one hand its obduracy and on the other the intolerableness of it, he asserted that nothing could avert the inevitable doom-neither Israel’s devotion to Jehovah nor Jehovah’s interest in Israel. "You alone have I known of all the families of the ground: therefore will I visit upon you all your iniquities." The visitation was to take place in war and in the captivity of the people. This is practically the whole message of the prophet Amos. That he added to it the promise of restoration which now closes his book, we have seen to be extremely improbable. Yet even if that promise is his own, Amos does not tell us how the restoration is to be brought about. With Wonderful insight and patience he has traced the captivity of Israel to moral causes. But he does not show what moral change in the exiles is to justify their restoration, or by what means such a moral change is to be effected. We are left to infer the conditions and the means of redemption from the principles which Amos enforced while there yet seemed time to pray for the doomed people: "Seek the Lord and ye shall live." ( Amos 5:4 ) According to this, the moral renewal of Israel must precede their restoration; but the prophet seems to make no great effort to effect the renewal. In short Amos illustrates the easily-forgotten truth that a preacher to the conscience is not necessarily a preacher of repentance. Of the great antitheses between which religion moves, Law and Love, Amos had therefore been the prophet of Law. But we must not imagine that the association of Love with the Deity was strange to him. This could not be to any Israelite who remembered the past of his people-the romance of their origins and early struggles for freedom. Israel had always felt the grace of their God; and unless we be wrong about the date of the great poem in the end of Deuteronomy, they had lately celebrated that grace in lines of exquisite beauty and tenderness:- "He found him in a desert land, In a waste and a howling wilderness. He compassed him about, cared for him, Kept him as the apple of His eye. As an eagle stirreth up his nest, Fluttereth over his young, Spreadeth his wings, taketh them, Beareth them up on his pinions-So Jehovah alone led him." The patience of the Lord with their waywardness and their stubbornness had been the ethical influence on Israel’s life at a time when they had probably neither code of law nor system of doctrine. "Thy gentleness," as an early Psalmist says for his people, "Thy gentleness hath made me great." { Psalm 18:1-50 } Amos is not unaware of this ancient grace of Jehovah. But he speaks of it in a fashion which shows that he feels it to be exhausted and without hope for his generation "I brought you up out of the land of Egypt, and led you forty years in the wilderness, to possess the land of the Amorites. And I raised up of your sons for prophets and of your young men for Nazarites." { Amos 2:10 } But this can now only fill the cup of the nation’s sin. "You alone have I known of all the families of the earth: therefore will I visit upon you all your iniquities." { Amos 3:2 } Jehovah’s ancient Love but strengthens now the justice and the impetus of His Law. We perceive, then, the problem which Amos left to prophecy. It was not to discover Love in the Deity whom he had so absolutely identified with Law. The Love of God needed no discovery among a people with the Deliverance, the Exodus, the Wilderness, and the Gift of the Land in their memories. But the problem was to prove in God so great and new a mercy as was capable of matching that Law, which the abuse of His millennial gentleness now only the more fully justified. There was needed a prophet to arise with as keen a conscience of Law as Amos himself, and yet affirm that Love was greater still; to admit that Israel were doomed, and yet promise their redemption by processes as reasonable and as ethical as those by which the doom had been rendered inevitable. The prophet of Conscience had to be followed by the prophet of Repentance. Such a one was found in Hosea, the son of Be’eri, a citizen and probably a priest of Northern Israel, whose very name, Salvation, the synonym of Joshua and of Jesus, breathed the larger hope, which it was his glory to bear to his people. Before we see how for this task Hosea was equipped with the love and sympathy which Amos lacked, let us do two things. Let us appreciate the magnitude of the task itself, set to him first of prophets; and let us remind ourselves that, greatly as he achieved it, the task was not one which could be achieved even by him once for all, but that it presents itself to religion again and again in the course of her development. For the first of these duties, it is enough to recall how much all subsequent prophecy derives from Hosea. We shall not exaggerate if we say that there is no truth uttered by later prophets about the Divine Grace, which we do not find in germ in him. Isaiah of Jerusalem was a greater statesman and a more powerful writer, but he had not Hosea’s tenderness and insight into motive and character. Hosea’s marvelous sympathy both with the people and with God is sufficient to foreshadow every grief, every hope, every gospel, which make the Books of Jeremiah and the great Prophet of the Exile exhaustless in their spiritual value for mankind. These others explored the kingdom of God: it was Hosea who took it by storm. { Matthew 11:12 } He is the first prophet of Grace, Israel’s earliest Evangelist; yet with as keen a sense of law, and of the inevitableness of ethical discipline, as Amos himself. But the task which Hosea accomplished was not one that could be accomplished once for all. The interest of his book is not merely historical. For so often as a generation is shocked out of its old religious ideals, as Amos shocked Israel, by a realism and a discovery of law, which have no respect for ideals, however ancient and however dear to the human heart, but work their own pitiless way to doom inevitable; so often must the Book of Hosea have a practical value for living men. At such a crisis we stand today. The older Evangelical assurance, the older Evangelical ideals have to some extent been rendered impossible by the realism to which the sciences, both physical and historical, have most healthily recalled us, and by their wonderful revelation of Law working through nature and society without respect to our creeds and pious hopes. The question presses: Is it still possible to believe in repentance and conversion, still possible to preach the power of God to save, whether the individual or society, from the forces of heredity and of habit? We can at least learn how Hosea mastered the very similar problem which Amos left to him, and how, with a moral realism no less stern than his predecessor and a moral standard every whit as high, he proclaimed Love to be the ultimate element in religion; not only because it moves man to a repentance and God to a redemption more sovereign than any law; but because if neglected or abused, whether as love of man or love of God, it enforces a doom still more inexorable than that required by violated truth or by outraged justice. Love our Savior, Love our almighty and unfailing Father, but, just because of this, Love our most awful Judge-we turn to the life and the message in which this eternal theme was first unfolded. Amos 4:4 Come to Bethel, and transgress; at Gilgal multiply transgression; and bring your sacrifices every morning, and your tithes after three years: THE FALSE PEACE OF RITUAL Amos 4:4-6 THE next four groups of oracles- Amos 4:4-13 ; Amos 5:1-27 ; Amos 5:6 .-treat of many different details, and each of them has its own emphasis; but all are alike in this, that they vehemently attack the national worship and the sense of political security which it has engendered. Let us at once make clear that this worship is the worship of Jehovah. It is true that it is mixed with idolatry, but, except possibly in one obscure verse Amos 5:26 , Amos does not concern himself with the idols. What he strikes at, what he would sweep away, is his people’s form of devotion to their own God. The cult of the national God, at the national sanctuaries, in the national interest and by the whole body of the people, who practice it with a zeal unparalleled by their forefathers-this is what Amos condemns. And he does so absolutely. He has nothing but scorn for the temples and the feasts. The assiduity of attendance, the liberality of gifts, the employment of wealth and art and patriotism in worship-he tells his generation that God loathes it all. Like Jeremiah, he even seems to imply that God never instituted in Israel any sacrifice or offering. { Amos 5:25 } It is all this which gives these oracles their interest for us; and that interest is not merely historical. It is indeed historical to begin with. When we find, not idolatry, but all religious ceremonial-temples, public worship, tithes, sacrifice, the praise of God by music, in Fact every material form in which mart has ever been wont to express his devotion to God-scorned and condemned with the same uncompromising passion as idolatry itself, we receive a needed lesson in the history of religion. For when one is asked, What is the distinguishing characteristic of heathenism? one is always ready to say, Idolatry, which is not true. The distinguishing characteristic of heathenism is the stress which it lays upon ceremonial. To the pagan religions, both of the ancient and of the modern world, rites were the indispensable element in religion. The gifts of the gods, the abundance of fruits, the security of the state, depended upon the full and accurate performance of ritual. In Greek literature we have innumerable illustrations of this: the "Iliad" itself starts from a god’s anger, roused by an insult to his priest, whose prayers for vengeance he hears because sacrifices have been assiduously offered to him. And so too with the systems of paganism from which the faith of Israel, though at first it had so much in common with them, broke away to its supreme religious distinction. The Semites laid the stress of their obedience to the gods upon traditional ceremonies; and no sin was held so heinous by them as the neglect or infringement of a religious rite. By the side of it offences against one’s fellowmen or one’s own character were deemed mere misdemeanors. In the day of Amos this pagan superstition thoroughly penetrated the religion of Jehovah, and so absorbed the attention of men, that without the indignant and complete repudiation of it prophecy could not have started on her task of identifying morality with religion, and of teaching men more spiritual views of God. But even when we are thus aware of ceremonialism as the characteristic quality of the pagan religions, we have not measured the

Hear this word, ye kine of Bashan, that are in the mountain of Samaria. Amos 4:1-3 God the champion of the oppressed J. Telford, B. A. I. THE CHARACTER OF THESE MEN. "Ye kine of Bashan," etc. The feminine, "kine," marks their effeminacy; the reference to Bashan, where the richest pasture-land of Israel lay, shows that they had grown fat with luxurious living. It is not rare to find such men the most unscrupulous and cruel Here they are seen in characteristic fashion oppressing the poor, crushing the needy ( Amos 2:6, 7 ), and crying out for new gratification of the!r lusts. "Bring, and let us drink." II. THEIR PUNISHMENT. 1. The Certainty of this is assured by an oath. "The Lord hath sworn by His holiness." Such men were a fester in the creation of God, an offence to His love for purity. God had espoused the cause of the poor and taken them under His wing. His holiness forbade Him to keep any truce with such men. 2. The punishment is both complete and ignominious. Every one should seek to escape by the nearest breach in the walls, and as God threatened to do with Sennacherib ( 2 Kings 19:28 ), these luxurious nobles should be taken away with hooks, and their posterity with fish-hooks. The oppressor must reckon with the great Champion of the oppressed. ( J. Telford, B. A. ) Come to Bethel, and transgress; at Gilgal multiply transgression. Amos 4:4, 5 Ill-spent service J. Telford, B. A. I. THE SCENES OF THIS IDOLATRY. "Come to Bethel, and transgress; at Gilgal multiply transgression." Idolatry was flourishing in the seats of their most hallowed memories. "Come," he says, "to Bethel." Here, where everything spoke of God's mercy, they were to transgress. At Bethel the founder of their race, fresh from his home in Haran, had "builded an altar unto the Lord, and called upon the name of the Lord " ( Genesis 12:8 ). Here, on his return from Egypt, he had received the promise that all the land on which he looked should be given to him and his seed for ever ( Genesis 13 .). There was no spot in the land so rich in memories of God's great goodness as Bethel, yet here they transgressed. Think of a man calling the Duke of Wellington a coward at Waterloo, or forgetting Nelson in Trafalgar Bay. Even this is a faint picture of the insults which Israel offered to God in the place of His richest mercy to the nation. At Gilgal too they multiplied transgressions. Hosea ( Hosea 9:15 ) even says "all their wickedness is in Gilgal." It was the spot where Joshua, just installed as leader after the death of Moses, placed the twelve stones which they had taken out of Jordan ( Joshua 4:24 ). Strange and sad is the story of human sin! In Gilgal they were despising their Champion and Deliverer. The city had another memory which might have saved them. They kept their first passover in the land in Gilgal ( Joshua 5:10-12 ). Sin has a short memory. It tries hard to escape from the remembrance of God's mercy, and can transgress without remorse in the places where heaven has multiplied blessings. Learn, if you would escape the misery of grieving God, to recall His mercies. Every step of life's journey is rich in proofs of His mercy. Barrow says in one of his sermons, that as men choose the fairest places in great cities for monuments of national deliverance, so we should erect in our hearts "lively representations of, and lasting memorials, unto the Divine bounty." II. THE SPIRIT OF THEIR IDOLATRY. For once they were whole-hearted in worship. They seem to have been prompt to do everything for their idols, though they refused to do anything for God. Sacrifices every day; tithes of their substance every three years; thank-offerings, even freewill offerings, were readily presented at Bethel and Gilgal. Nothing seems to have been too much for them to do. They withdrew from business and pleasure that they might offer their morning sacrifices, etc. To whom? To the idol calf of Bethel, which was soon to be carried — a curiosity of the plundered land — as a present to king Jareb ( Hosea 10:6 ). For God they would do nothing. Their whole strength and wealth were devoted to idols that were powerless to help them, and to priests who were blinding them to the doom which was near at hand. It is a true picture of many still. They will do nothing for God, they are ready to do anything for sin. III. REASON FOR THIS DETERMINED TRANSGRESSION. "This liketh you, O ye children of Israel, saith the Lord." Their hearts were wrong, therefore they multiplied transgression. There was no call to think in this false worship. The idol priests sought to drown the voice of conscience and to silence any faithful reproof which might have led to reformation of life. Men came from their houses of ivory, which had been built up with oppression, from the palaces where "robbery and violence" were stored up, and there was no Baptist voice to cry as they entered into the idol temple, "Bring forth fruits meet for repentance." The reason for the alacrity which men show in sin is written here: "this liketh you." But let every man of reason consider! Are we children that "like" should rule? ( J. Telford, B. A. ) Worship abounding with abounding sin Homilist. Crimes ran riot among the people at this period, and yet how religious they seemed to be! I. Abounding worship often IMPLIES abounding sin. This is the case when the worship is — 1. Selfish. Men crowd churches, and contribute to religious institutions purely with the idea of avoiding hell and getting to a happier world than this. 2. Formal. Abounding worship is no proof of abounding virtue and abounding godliness. II. Abounding worship often SPRINGS from abounding sin, It may spring from — 1. A desire to conceal sin. Sin is an ugly thing; it is hideous to the eye of conscience. Hence efforts on all hands to conceal. 2. A desire to compensate for evils. Great brewers build churches and endow religious institutions in order to compensate in some measure for the enormous evil connected with their trade. 3. A desire to appear good. The more corrupt a man is, the stronger his desire to appear otherwise. Do not judge the character of a nation by the number of its churches, the multitude of its worshippers. ( Homilist. ) A sinful people resisting the chastisements of God A. Maclaren, D. D. No sterner picture of an utterly rotten social state was ever drawn than this book gives of the luxury, licentiousness, and oppressiveness of the ruling classes. This passage deals with the religious declension underlying the moral filth, and sets forth the self-willed idolatry of the people (vers. 4, 5); their obstinate resistance to God's merciful chastisement (vers. 6-11); and the heavier impending judgment (vers. 12, 13). 1. Indignant irony flashes in that permission or command to persevere in the calf worship. The seeming command is the strongest prohibition. The lessons of this burst of sarcasm are plain. The subtle influence of self creeps in even in worship, and makes it hollow, unreal, and powerless to bless the worshipper. Obedience is better than costly gifts. Men will lavish gifts far more freely in apparent religious service, which is but the worship of their reflected selves, than in true service of God. And the purity of willing offerings is marred when they are given in response to a loud call, or when given, are proclaimed with acclamations. 2. The blaze of indignation changes into wounded tenderness. Mark the sad cadence of the fivefold refrain. "Yet have ye not returned unto Me, saith the Lord." To Amos, famine, drought, blasting, locusts, pestilence, and probably earthquake, were messengers of God, and Amos was taught of God. If we looked deeper we should see more clearly. To the prophet's eye the world is all aflame with a present God. Amos had another principle. God sent physical calamities because of moral delinquencies, and for moral and religious ends. These disasters were meant to bring Israel back to God, and were at once punishments and reformatory methods. Amos's lesson as to the purpose of trials is not antiquated. Amos also teaches the awful power which we have of resisting God's efforts to draw us back. The true tragedy of the world is that God calls and we refuse. 3. Again the mood changes, and the issue of protracted resistance is prophesied (vers. 12, 13). Long-delayed judgments are severe, in proportion as they are slow. The contact of Divine power with human rebellion can only end in one way, and that is too terrible for speech. The certainty of judgment is the basis of a call to repentance, which may avert it. The meeting referred to is not judgment after death, but the impending destruction of the northern kingdom. But Amos's prophetic call is not misapplied when directed to the final day of the Lord. The conditions of meeting the Judge, and being "found of Him in peace," are that we should be "without spot and blameless"; and the conditions of being so spotless and uncensurable axe repentance and trust. Only we have Jesus as the brightness of the Father's glory to trust in, and His all-sufficient work to trust to for pardon and purifying. ( A. Maclaren, D. D. ) Israel often reproved Hinckley G. Mitchell. The Book of Amos is one of the simplest in the Bible. The gist of it is found in Amos 3:2 . This is the prophet's theme. It contains three distinct thoughts: the love of God for Israel; the fate in store for them; and the sins by which they had forfeited the one and merited the other. The rest of the book is largely a series of variations on this theme. 1. "Come to Bethel," cries the prophet. The words are hortatory only in form, for Amos adds in the same breath, "and transgress." It is not very clear why the prophet condemned the worship at Bethel. It is probable that Amos was thinking of the character of the worshippers. They certainly, if they had been only h all a§ bad as he describes them in the second chapter, would have been sadly unfit to appear before a holy God. Amos did not condemn sacrifices and offerings as such. They mean that the man who is impure in his life, or unjust to his neighbour, whatever else he may he or do, is yet in his sins: that if he continues such as he is no amount of zeal in the forms of religion will make him acceptable to God; that in fact the attempt to substitute anything for moral character is an insult to the Holy One of Israel. 2. "Yet have ye not returned unto Me." There is a note of surprise and disappointment in the words by which the second thought is introduced. They indicate that the condition of Israel was not what was to be expected. The words following explain why a different state of things ought to have existed — because God had repeatedly afflicted them. Amos here clearly teaches that the calamities which he describes were sent upon Israel on account of their sins, and for the purpose of turning them to God. It would be interesting to know just what was his idea with reference to what we call "misfortunes." Probably he saw some connection between the afflictions which befell Israel and their moral condition. We are not satisfied with the simple views of God and His relation to the world which once prevailed. We know that, though we cannot explain why, the guiltless as well as the guilty arc sometimes overtaken by misfortune. But Israel did not heed the lesson that God would have taught them. 3. "Therefore thus will I do unto thee" (ver. 12). There is no picture of coming terror. Amos could at most but dimly outline what they were to expect. The summons, "Prepare to meet thy God," is usually misunderstood. The words are not an appeal, but a challenge. Persistence in sin means nothing short of an encounter with the Almighty. We have dwelt upon the goodness of God so much that we have almost lost sight of His severity. There is, however, a severe side to His character. And can a man contend with his Maker? The fate of Israel is an illustration of the fatal consequences of persistent disobedience of God. ( Hinckley G. Mitchell. ) Israel of ten reproved George M. Boynton. This entire prophecy is one of denunciation. Only once or twice is there even hinted the possibility of better things, and only at the very close, like a gleam of sunset glory at the end of a day of gloom, is the full promise given of a restoration of Israel to goodness and to glory. The prophecies against the six enemies of the chosen people and against Judah, with which the book begins, are only preparatory to the full description of the sin of Israel and the punishment which is to come upon its people. Israel, so far as it is like the nations that know not God, is exposed to the same judgments as they. I. THE PROPHECY IS ADDRESSED TO THOSE WHO ABUSE THEIR PRIVILEGES. Israel was the chosen people, having the oracles of God. They knew the spiritual being and holy character of Jehovah. They had entered into covenant with Him. They had been taught both how to worship Him and how to please Him in their lives. And yet they did not walk as children of the light. They sinned even in their worship. The shrines at Bethel and at Gilgal were the centres of a mingled idolatry and Jehovah-worship. Though they brought sacrifices every morning and tithed their increase or possessions every three days, though they offered not only unleavened bread, but the leavened also, though they encouraged one another to multiply their free-will offerings; however much they might increase their devotion to such religious forms as pleased them, all this was only the increase of their sin, according to the taunting exhortation of the prophet. Mere religiousness never will save a people or a person. External forms grow more rigid when the life has gone out of them, and so announce the loss. To worship the Lord and serve our own gods is the height of impiety. The calf-worship was worse than Baal-worship, because it was a mare conscious defiance of Jehovah. Israel was a prospered people. These days of Jeroboam II. were at the very summit of its prosperity. The northern kingdom extended to the limits reached under Solomon. Damascus was taken; Moab was reconquered; Israel was powerful and rich. But Israel, instead of making of this richness a very garden of the Lord, suffered all the weeds to grow out of it which so easily find root in such a soil. The sins which mark prosperity are the sins of the prosperous classes. Those who were high in position and rich in possessions in Israel were indulgent toward themselves and oppressive toward the poor. Nations and men need to be warned in their prosperity. It is not easy to tell the truth to the rich and the high. It takes the sense of a prophetic mission to give one courage so to do. Let us beware! What prophet has a message for us like that of Amos the herdsman from Judah for court and priest and people of Israel? Prophets enough, but how many, alas, with no message from the Lord! Our ears are filled with the teachings of political economists contradicting and confounding one another. The air is strident with the harsh cries of the false prophets of materialism. II. THE PROPHECY IS ADDRESSED TO THOSE WHO NEGLECT THE DISCIPLINE OF ADVERSITY. Israel had had its share of that. Jehovah could not vindicate His Fatherhood unless He corrected the faults of His children by reproof and punishment as well as by the encouragement of prosperity and the stimulus of opportunity. By a famine of food and a famine of water, by a failure of crops, by the scourge of pestilence, by general destruction brought upon them in many ways He had sought to rouse the thoughts of His people and to turn their attention to their evil ways. But it had all been to no purpose. "Yet have ye not returned unto Me, saith the Lord." When all the discipline which the wise father has been able to devise has failed, his heart is sad and disappointed. We have heard a great deal about probation in the pulpits of the past and in the theological discussions of the present. And yet the term and thought are often misused and distorted. We are not set out upon this earthly life that God may put us through its various experiences to see what is in us, as though He were an assayer to whom each human life was brought that He might determine its value and use by an application of the most efficient tests. We are God's children in our Father's house, and He is trying to educate and discipline us for our proper place and part in the home life as we come to our maturity. We must learn self-restraint and submission to others; we must grow into fuller sympathy with His ways and plans. All this is discipline, not probation. It is education, not testing. True, it does all test us, but in no peculiar sense. Everything tests us. Each command and each caress equally, by the response which it elicits, shows our quality and fibre. But you neither kiss your child nor send him on an errand to test him. But there comes a time, where all has been done that love and wisdom can devise, when the father says, and the mother sits by consenting through sorrow too deep for tears and moans, "We have done all that we can for him. He abuses all his privileges and misuses all his opportunities. He profits nothing by the consequences of his evil doing or by the punishments we have inflicted. We are only making him worse by trying to help him. We have done all that we can do, 'yet he has not returned unto us.'" That is just the case with the mass of the people, both of Israel and of our time and nation. III. THE PROPHECY IS ADDRESSED TO THOSE WHO HAVE STILL AN OPPORTUNITY TO RETURN. The language of the prophet is stern and severe, and yet it is not an unrelenting severity, nor the sternness of a final sentence. There is this contrast between the threats against the Gentile nations and those spoken to Israel. Nothing is said of a relenting there, but here it is always implied or expressed. The threat against the chosen people is all the more severe by reason of its vagueness: "Thus will I do unto thee, O Israel"; as though could not bear to put into words the terrible things which He foresaw would become necessary. But the threat is relieved by the command which has in it both the elements of terror and of comfort: "Prepare to meet thy God, O Israel!" There could be no escape from that encounter. But there was yet time and opportunity for them to make the needed preparation for that meeting. It could not be a preparation to meet their doom which they were bidden to make. It could only be a making ready by penitence and amendment of their lives to meet their God without fear that they might receive His pardon and be restored to His favour. Indeed, the very announcement of a purpose to punish implies a possibility of averting the threatened wrath. The thunderbolts of God are to arouse the attention of the rebellious ones, and the flashes of His lightning show the path which leads to Him. Yes, one more opportunity is given to every one to whom either the threatening of the law or the invitation of the Gospel comes; to every one to whom at least it has a meaning. Law and grace are but the two hands of love. It behoves the men of the nineteenth century, whether they are in the enjoyment of proud prosperity or in the endurance of humbling discipline, to remember that the purpose of both is to draw or drive them back to God. ( George M. Boynton. ) And I also have given you cleanness of teeth in all your citi es. Amos 4:6-11 Afflictions providential J. M. Sherwood. There is a material difference between what may be called permissive and active providences; and between such as are disciplinary, and such as are strictly punitive. The afflictions enumerated here were sent by the direct visitation of God for disciplinary purposes. Hence the people were responsible to God for the moral effect of His providential visitations upon them. Just so with every man under God's government. A thousand evils may come on me, and I may be personally innocent in relation to them; but God will judge me as to the uses I make of these visitations — the moral effects they produce upon me in the way of chastening and reformation. 1. Consider, then, that God's hand or purpose is in every providential visitation. 2. That God has a specific moral end in every visitation that He lays upon us. 3. That these providences are sure to accomplish their mission upon us, namely, to chasten, soften, reclaim, or else to harden, render obdurate, and ripen for final destruction, as in the case of Pharaoh, ancient Israel, and a multitude of others. 4. Afflictions of every kind should humble us, awaken us to serious reflection and earnest inquiry as to their meaning. They are never sent in vain. A gracious purpose is behind them, or a fatherly rebuke is in them, or the dark cloud is ominous of coming wrath if we haste not to repent. ( J. M. Sherwood. ) God's government of the world a chastising government Homilist. In these verses the Almighty describes the various corrective measures which He had employed for effecting a moral reformation in the character of the Israelites. I. THE CHASTISEMENTS ARE OFTEN OVERWHELMINGLY TERRIFIC. 1. He sometimes employs blind nature, famine, drought, blight, pestilence, sword. 2. He sometimes employs human wickedness. II. THEY ARE DESIGNED FOR MORAL RESTORATION. 1. Men are alienated from God. 2. Their alienation is the cause of all their misery. See the benevolence of all these chastisements. They are to restore souls. III. THE CHASTISEMENTS OFTEN FAIL IN THEIR GRAND DESIGN. "Yet have ye not returned unto Me." This shows — 1. The force of human depravity. 2. The force of human freedom. Almighty goodness does not force us into goodness. He treats us as free agents and responsible beings. ( Homilist. ) Chastisement -- its purpose and failure J. Telford, B. A. I. THE CHARACTER OF THE CHASTISEMENT. 1. It touched them in their temporal comfort, Nothing else would reach such obstinate sinners. To a good man the Divine love and favour is the highest of all blessings: Israel could only be reached by loss of temporal comfort. 2. The chastisement took various forms in order to reach them all. 3. Stroke after stroke fell upon them, that if their hearts were at all softened by the troubles they had just known, the new trouble might lead them to true repentance; and so that every class of the community might be reached and won for God. A glance at the five forms which the visitation took will show how it reached every circle. II. THE PURPOSE OF THEIR SORROWS. God wanted to bring them home to Himself. III. THE FAILURE OF THIS CHASTISEMENT. God had done all that even He could do to make it impressive. Chastisement may fail. "Many meet the gods, but few salute them." Sorrows which might purify are lost upon us because they do not make us acknowledge Him. God can do nothing more, He must leave men to their sin till the blow fall and the ruin irretrievable has come. ( J. Telford, B. A. ) Unavailing chastisements Expository Outlines. I. THE DESIGN OF GOD, IN ALL HIS DISPENSATIONS, IS TO BRING MEN FROM THEIR WANDERINGS BACK AGAIN TO HIMSELF. No truth can be clearer than that we have departed from Him. Being anxious for our restoration, God is pleased to chastise us. He does not afflict willingly, as is evident from — 1. His nature. He is a Being of boundless compassion. 2. The patience He exercises. 3. The warnings He gives. II. THAT THESE DISPENSATIONS FREQUENTLY FAIL TO ANSWER THE END FOR WHICH THEY WERE INTENDED. Happily it is not so in all cases. It is in very many. They are chastised in vain, and the complaint from heaven is heard. "Yet have ye not returned unto Me, saith the Lord." In the visitations here referred to, three things appear. 1. They are fearful in their character. Some light stroke might be unheeded. 2. Frequent in their infliction. If a single trial is unavailing, surely one coming after another would bring them to consider their ways, and turn to Him that smote them. 3. Marked by certain features which showed the hand of God in the clearest manner. "Rained on one city, and not on another." III. WHEN SUCH DISPENSATIONS ARE DISREGARDED THE MOST DISASTROUS CONSEQUENCES ARE LIKELY TO ENSUE. "Therefore, thus will I do unto thee." ( Expository Outlines. ) God varies His instruments of punishment G. Grigg. One day, seeing some men in a field, I went up to them, and found they were cutting up the trunk of an old tree. I said, "That is slow work, why not spilt it asunder with the beetle and wedges?" "Ah, this wood is so cross-grained and stubborn that it requires something sharper than wedges to get it to pieces." "Yes," I replied, "and that is the way God is obliged to deal with obstinate, cross-grained sinners; if they will not yield to one of His instruments, you may depend on it He will make use of another." ( G. Grigg. ) Your young men have I slain with the sword...yet have ye not returned unto Me, saith the Lord. Amos 4:10 God's dealings with us nationally, and their object Edward T. Cardale. While we are in this state of trial and probation God does not punish us, individually or nationally, in the spirit of vindictiveness" or vengeance, but out of love and compassion, and with the view of working in us that which is needful for our temporal prosperity and eternal welfare, and which His good gifts and past mercies have failed to effect. I. THE PARTIES HERE ADDRESSED. Primarily the children of Israel. If we can trace a resemblance between our conduct and theirs, we must undoubtedly consider the words of the. text equally addressed to us. 1. Pride was a striking characteristic of God's people of old. What was the return they made for all the signal blessings bestowed on them? "Jeshurun waxed fat and kicked." Have not we, nationally and individually, acted like them in this particular? How have we requited the good and gracious Benefactor for His great mercies? Have we not been lifted up in pride? Is it not the prevailing sentiment that it is to our own wisdom we owe our constitution, to our own exertions our wealth, and to our superior institutions our freedom from rebellion and revolution? 2. Israel had drawn down God's judgments for their hypocrisy. They were very zealous in the profession of their religion. But their hearts went after their idols, and their hands were full of blood. Therefore God refused their worthless profession. And, nowadays, there is a vast deal of outward profession of religion, yet but very little real, practical, influential religion. Where is the self-discipline, "the self-denial, the self-sacrifice which our holy religion calls upon us for? 3. Forgetfulness of God, their great Benefactor, was a striking characteristic of the Israelites of old. And do we acknowledge God's hand in the productiveness of our land, or in the failure of our crops? 4. Our sin and rebellion against God fix us with the applicability of these words to ourselves. Who can fathom the demoralisation and wickedness of the dense masses of our great cities, etc.! II. GOD'S DEALINGS WITH THEM IN LIKE CONNECTION WITH HIS DEALINGS WITH US. Unexampled favours demand a higher standard of holiness and devoted obedience, and proportionately increase the heinousness of guilt. Trace the dealings with which God had visited the Israelites, in chastisement for their sins, which are referred to in this chapter. Scarcity, disease, war, etc. III. WHAT IS THE OBJECT OF THESE DEALINGS OF GOD TOWARDS US? His yearning over us is that we should become a people fearing Him, and working righteousness. The nation is made up of individuals; and as far as individual responsibility is concerned, it will be by individual practice, example, and influence that we must severally promote that reformation amongst us which is needful to restore us to the Divine favour. ( Edward T. Cardale. ) Ye were as a firebrand plucked out of the burning. Amos 4:11 The firebrand plucked out of the burning James Parsons. A large portion of the sacred writings sets forth God's exhibitions of kindness towards men as their Protector. Men in every age should study to preserve in their memory the Divine procedure, both in providence and in grace, as being adapted to secure their highest welfare. Here God magnified His mercy by interposing when justice appeared about to consummate its work in their destruction. "I have overthrown some of you, as God overthrew Sodom and Gomorrah, and ye were as a firebrand plucked out of the burning." Those who are the subjects of God's grace under the Gospel may properly be thus addressed. I. HERE IS INDICATED A FEARFUL DANGER. 1. This danger in its nature. It arises under the moral government of God consequent upon the character of man as a sinner. Man in his original state is everywhere under the Divine displeasure, condemned and exposed to punishment. The punishment does not extend merely to the infliction of temporal calamity and sorrow, it extends also to the life which is to come. The punishment incurred through sin is illustrated in the text by the metaphor of fire; the figure being taken from the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah. The Bible representations of future punishment set forth the intensity of that punishment. They are not to be interpreted literally; they are intended to denote most powerful and supreme intensity of mental suffering; the recollections of the past, the consciousness of the present, and the anticipations of the future, being united in one unmitigated torment and agony. 2. Its imminence. It is represented as being on the eve of consummation. The firebrand is spoken of as being close upon the element that is to consume it, nay, as being already seized. There are few metaphorical expressions more adapted to set forth extreme imminence and exposure to danger. All men, without exception, are in imminent danger of the doom appointed as the consequence of sin, because of the fact that their state of sin constitutes a moral fitness and preparation for it; because of the fact that they are condemned in their sinful state already; and because of the fact that their lives — the season of their probation and trial — are evanescent, frail, and uncertain. II. A DELIGHTFUL RESCUE. The source from which the rescue is derived. They are not saved by themselves, or by any finite agency whatever. The only Deliverer of the human soul from the burning is God. And the deliverance is wrought out by a sublime redemptive scheme, the agents being the Divine Son and the Holy Spirit. III. THE CHARACTERISTICS BY WHICH THIS DELIVERANCE IS DISTINGUISHED. 1. Observe the freeness of it. 2. The permanence of it. 3. The blessedness of it. 4. The powerful effect which the contemplation of the rescue from the danger should secure.In this contemplation there will be involved astonishment, gratitude, and compassion for those who are still in the place of burning. ( James Parsons. ) A fast sermon for the fire of London Bishop Stillingfleet. I. THE SEVERITY OF THE JUDGMENT. "I have overthrown some of you, as God overthrew Sodom and Gomorrah." Observe — 1. The nature and kind of it. The suddenness and unexpectedness of it; the force and violence of it; the sad train of circumstances which attend and follow it. 2. Consider it in the series and order of it. It comes in the last place, as a reserve, when nothing else would do any good upon them. 3. The causes moving God to so much severity in His judgment. These are the greatness of the sins committed against Him. But it is not enough in general to declaim against our sins, we must search out particularly those predominant vices which by their boldness and frequency have provoked God thus to punish us. Three sorts of sins are here spoken of. Luxury and intemperance; covetousness and oppression; contempt of God and His laws 4. The Author of the judgment. God challenges the execution of His justice to Himself, not only in the great day, but in His judgment here in the world. When God is pleased to punish men for their sins, the execution of His justice is agreeable to His nature now, as it will be at the end of the world. II. THE MIXTURE OF HIS MERCY IN IT. "Ye were as a firebrand plucked out of the burning." Note — 1. The nearness they were in to the danger. Like a brand, the greatest part of which is already consumed by fire. This shows the great difficulty of their escaping. 2. The unexpectedness of such a deliverance. They are not saved by their own skill and counsel, nor by their strength and industry, hut by Him who, by His mighty hand, did pluck them as firebrands out of the burning. Though we own the justice of God in the calamities of this day, let us not forget His mercy in what He hath unexpectedly rescued from the fury of the flames. Let us then not frustrate the design of so much se

4:1-5 What is got by extortion is commonly used to provide for the flesh, and to fulfil the lusts thereof. What is got by oppression cannot be enjoyed with satisfaction. How miserable are those whose confidence in unscriptural observances only prove that they believe a lie! Let us see to it that our faith, hope, and worship, are warranted by the Divine word. 4:6-13 See the folly of carnal hearts; they wander from one creature to another, seeking for something to satisfy, and labour for that which satisfies not; yet, after all, they will not incline their ear to Him in whom they might find all they can want. Preaching the gospel is as rain, and every thing withers where this rain is wanting. It were well if people were as wise for their souls as they are for their bodies; and, when they have not this rain near, would go and seek it where it is to be had. As the Israelites persisted in rebellion and idolatry, the Lord was coming against them as an adversary. Ere long, we must meet our God in judgment; but we shall not be able to stand before him, if he tries us according to our doings. If we would prepare to meet our God with comfort, at the awful period of his coming, we must now meet him in Christ Jesus, the eternal Son of the Father, who came to save lost sinners. We must seek him while he is to be found.