الكتاب المقدس

Expositor's Bible Commentary Amos 8:1 Thus hath the Lord GOD shewed unto me: and behold a basket of summer fruit. 7 5. THE PROPHET AND HIS MINISTRY Amos 7:1-17 - Amos 8:1-4 We have seen the preparation of the Man for the Word; we have sought to trace to its source the Word which came to the Man. It now remains for us to follow the Prophet, Man and Word combined, upon his Ministry to the people. For reasons given in a previous chapter, there must always be some doubt as to the actual course of the ministry of Amos before his appearance at Bethel. Most authorities, however, agree that the visions recounted in the beginning of the seventh chapter form the substance of his address at Bethel, which was interrupted by the priest Amaziah. These visions furnish a probable summary of the prophet’s experience up to that point. While they follow the same course, which we trace in the two series of oracles that now precede them in the book, the ideas in them are less elaborate. At the same time it is evident that Amos must have already spoken upon other points than those which he puts into the first three visions. For instance, Amaziah reports to the king that Amos had explicitly predicted the exile of the whole people { Amos 7:11 } -a conviction which, as we have seen, the prophet reached only after some length of experience. It is equally certain that Amos must have already exposed the sins of the people in the light of the Divine righteousness. Some of the sections of the book which deal with this subject appear to have been originally spoken; and it is unnatural to suppose that the prophet announced the chastisements of God without having previously justified these to the consciences of men. If this view be correct, Amos, having preached for some time to Israel concerning the evil state of society, appeared at a great religious festival in Bethel, determined to bring matters to a crisis, and to announce the doom which his preaching threatened and the people’s continued impenitence made inevitable Mark his choice of place and of audience. It was no mere king he aimed at. Nathan had dealt with David, Gad with Solomon, Elijah with Ahab and Jezebel. But Amos sought the people, them with whom resided the real forces and responsibilities of life: the wealth, the social fashions, the treatment of the poor, the spirit of worship, the ideals of religion. And Amos sought the people upon what was not only a great popular occasion, but one on which was arrayed, in all pomp and lavishness, the very system he essayed to overthrow The religion of his time-religion as mere ritual and sacrifice-was what God had sent him to beat down, and he faced it at its headquarters, and upon one of its high days, in the royal and popular sanctuary where it enjoyed at once the patronage of the crown, the lavish gifts of the rich, and the thronged devotion of the multitude. As Savonarola at the Duomo in Florence, as Luther at the Diet of Worms, as our Lord Himself at the feast in Jerusalem, so was Amos at the feast in Bethel. Perhaps he was still more lonely. He speaks nowhere of having made a disciple, and in the sea of faces which turned on him when he spoke, it is probable that he could not welcome a single ally. They were officials, or interested traders, or devotees; he was a foreigner and a wild man, with a word that spared the popular dogma as little as the royal prerogative. Well for him was it that over all those serried ranks of authority, those fanatic crowds, that lavish splendor, another vision commanded his eyes. "I saw the Lord standing over the altar, and He said, Smite." Amos told the pilgrims at Bethel that the first events of his time in which he felt a purpose of God in harmony with his convictions about Israel’s need of punishment were certain calamities of a physical kind. Of these, which in chapter 4 he describes as successively drought, blasting, locusts, pestilence, and earthquake, he selected at Bethel only two-locusts and drought-and he began with the locusts. It may have been either the same visitation as he specifies in chapter 4, or a previous one; for of all the plagues of Palestine locusts have been the most frequent, occurring every six or seven years. "Thus the Lord Jehovah caused me to see: and, behold, a brood of locusts at the beginning of the coming up of the spring crops." In the Syrian year there are practically two tides of verdure: one which starts after the early rains of October and continues through the winter, checked by the cold; and one which comes away with greater force under the influence of the latter rains and more genial airs of spring. Of these it was the later and richer which the locusts had attacked. "And, behold, it was after the king’s mowings." These seem to have been a tribute which the kings of Israel levied on the spring herbage, and which the Roman governors of Syria used annually to impose in the month Nisan. "After the king’s mowings" would be a phrase to mark the time when everybody else might turn to reap their green stuff. It was thus the very crisis of the year when the locusts appeared; the April crops devoured, there was no hope of further fodder till December. Still, the calamity had happened before, and had been survived; a nation so vigorous and wealthy as Israel was under Jeroboam II need not have been frightened to death. But Amos felt it with a conscience. To him it was the beginning of that destruction of his people which the spirit within him knew that their sin had earned. So "it came to pass when" the locusts "had made an end of devouring the verdure of the earth, that I said, Remit, I pray Thee," or "pardon"-a proof that there already weighed on the prophet’s spirit something more awful than loss of grass-"how shall Jacob rise again? for he is little." The prayer was heard. "Jehovah repented for this: It shall not be, said Jehovah." The unnameable "it" must be the same as in the frequent phrase of the first chapter: "I will not turn it back" namely, the final execution of doom on the people’s sin. The reserve with which this is mentioned, both while there is still chance for the people to repent and after it has become irrevocable, is very impressive. The next example which Amos gave at Bethel of his permitted insight into God’s purpose was a great drought. "Thus the Lord Jehovah made. me to see: and, behold, the Lord Jehovah was calling fire irate the quarrel." There was, then, already a quarrel between Jehovah and His people-another sign that the prophet’s moral conviction of Israel’s sin preceded the rise of the events in which he recognized its punishment. "And" the fire "devoureth the Great Deep, yea, it was about to devour the land." Severe drought in Palestine might well be described as fire, even when it was not accompanied by the flame and smoke of those forest and prairie fires which Joel describes as its consequences. { Amos 1:1-15 } But to have the full fear of such a drought, we should need to feel beneath us the curious world which the men of those days felt. To them the earth rested in a great deep, from whose stores all her springs and fountains burst. When these failed it meant that the unfathomed floods below were burnt up. But how fierce the flame that could effect this! And how certainly able to devour next the solid land which rested above the deep-the very "Portion" assigned by God to His people. Again Amos interceded: "Lord Jehovah, I pray Thee forbear: how shall Jacob rise? for he is little." And for the second time Jacob was reprieved. "Jehovah repented for this: It also shall not come to pass, said the Lord Jehovah." We have treated these visions, not as the imagination or prospect of possible disasters, but as insight into the meaning of actual plagues. Such a treatment is justified, not only by the invariable habit of Amos to deal with real facts, but also by the occurrence of these same plagues among the series by which, as we are told, God had already sought to move the people to repentance. The general question of sympathy between such purely physical disasters and the moral evil of a people we may postpone to another chapter, confining ourselves here to the part played in the events by the prophet himself. Surely there is something wonderful in the attitude of this shepherd to the fires and plagues that Nature sweeps upon his land. He is ready for them. And he is ready not only by the general feeling of his time that such things happen of the wrath of God. His sovereign and predictive conscience recognizes them as her ministers. They are sent to punish a people whom she has already condemned. Yet, unlike Elijah, Amos does not summon the drought, nor even welcome its arrival. How far has prophecy traveled since the violent Tishbite! With all his conscience of Israel’s sin, Amos yet prays that their doom may be turned. We have here some evidence of the struggle through which these later prophets passed, before they accepted their awful messages to men. Even Amos, desert-bred and living aloof from Israel, shrank from the judgment which it was his call to publish. For two moments-they would appear to be the only two in his ministry-his heart contended with his conscience, and twice he entreated God to forgive. At Bethel he told the people all this, in order to show how unwillingly he took up his duty against them, and how inevitable he found that duty to be. But still more shall we learn from his tale, if we feel in his words about the smallness of Jacob, not pity only, but sympathy. We shall learn that prophets are never made solely by the bare word of God, but that even the most objective and judicial of them has to earn his title to proclaim judgment by suffering with men the agony of the judgment he proclaims. Never to a people came there a true prophet who had not first prayed for them. To have entreated for men, to have represented them in the highest courts of Being, is to have deserved also supreme judicial rights upon them. And thus it is that our Judge at the Last Day shall be none other than our great Advocate who continually maketh intercession for us. It is prayer, let us repeat, which, while it gives us all power with God, endows us at the same time with moral rights over men. Upon his mission of judgment we shall follow Amos with the greater sympathy that he thus comes forth to it from the mercy-seat and the ministry of intercession. The first two visions which Amos told at Bethel were of disasters in the sphere of nature, but his third lay in the sphere of politics. The two former were, in their completeness at least, averted; and the language Amos used of them seems to imply that he had not even then faced the possibility of a final overthrow. He took for granted Jacob was to rise again: he only feared as to how this should be. But the third vision is so final that the prophet does not even try to intercede. Israel is measured, found wanting, and doomed. Assyria is not named, but is obviously intended; and the fact-that the prophet arrives at certainty with regard to the doom of Israel, just when he thus comes within sight of Assyria, is instructive as to the influence exerted on prophecy by the rise of that empire. "Thus He gave me to see: and, behold, the Lord had taken His station"-‘tis a more solemn word than the "stood" of our versions-"upon a city wall" built to "the plummet, and in His hand a plummet. And Jehovah said unto me, What art thou seeing, Amos?" The question surely betrays some astonishment shown by the prophet at the vision or some difficulty he felt in making it out. He evidently does not feel it at once, as the natural result of his own thinking: it is objective and strange to him; he needs time to see into it. "And I said, A plummet. And the Lord said, Behold, I am setting a plummet in the midst of My people Israel. I will not again pass them over." To set a measuring line or a line with weights attached to any building means to devote it to destruction; but here it is uncertain whether the plummet threatens destruction, or means that Jehovah will at last clearly prove to the prophet the insufferable obliquity of the fabric of the nation’s life, originally set straight by Himself-originally "a wall of a plummet." For God’s judgments are never arbitrary: by a standard we men can read He shows us their necessity. Conscience itself is no mere voice of authority: it is a convincing plummet, and plainly lets us see why we should be punished. But whichever interpretation we choose, the result is the same. "The high places of Israel shall be desolate, and the sanctuaries of Isaac laid waste; and I will rise against the house of Jeroboam with the sword." A declaration of war! Israel is to be invaded, her dynasty overthrown. Everyone who heard the prophet would know, though he named them not, that the Assyrians were meant. It was apparently at this point that Amos was interrupted by Amaziah. The priest, who was conscious of no spiritual power with which to oppose the prophet, gladly grasped the opportunity afforded him by the mention of the king, and fell back on the invariable resource of a barren and envious sacerdotalism: "He speaketh against Caesar." { John 19:12 } There follows one of the great scenes of history-the scene which, however fast the ages and the languages, the ideals and the deities may change, repeats itself with the same two actors. Priest and Man face each other-Priest with King behind, Man with God-and wage that debate in which the whole warfare and progress of religion consist. But the story is only typical by being real. Many subtle traits of human nature prove that we have here an exact narrative of fact. Take Amaziah’s report to Jeroboam. He gives to the words of the prophet just that exaggeration and innuendo which betray the wily courtier, who knows how to accentuate a general denunciation till it feels like a personal attack. And yet, like every Caiaphas of his tribe, the priest in his exaggerations expresses a deeper meaning than he is conscious of. "Amos"-note how the mere mention of the name without description proves that the prophet was already known in Israel, perhaps was one on whom the authorities had long kept their eye-"Amos hath conspired against thee"-yet God was his only fellow-conspirator!-"in the midst of the house of Israel"-this royal temple at Bethel. "The land is not able to hold his words"-it must burst; yes, but in another sense than thou meanest, O Caiaphas-Amaziah! "For thus hath Amos said, By the sword shall Jeroboam die"-Amos had spoken only of the dynasty, but the twist which Amaziah lends to the words is calculated-"and Israel going shall go into captivity from off his own land." This was the one unvarnished spot in the report. Having fortified himself, as little men will do, by his duty to the powers that be, Amaziah dares to turn upon the prophet; and he does so, it is amusing to observe, with that tone of intellectual and moral superiority which it is extraordinary to see some men derive from a merely official station or touch with royalty. "Visionary, begone! Get thee off to the land of Judah; and earn thy bread there, and there play the prophet. But at Bethel"-mark the rising accent of the voice-"thou shalt not again prophesy. The King’s Sanctuary it is, and the House of the Kingdom." With the official mind this is more conclusive than that it is the House of God! In fact the speech of Amaziah justifies the hardest terms which Amos uses of the religion of his day. In all this priest says there is no trace of the spiritual-only fear, pride, and privilege. Divine truth is challenged by human law, and the Word of God silenced in the name of the king. We have here a conception of religion, which is not merely due to the unspiritual character of the priest who utters it, but has its roots in the far back origins of Israel’s religion. The Pagan Semite identified absolutely State and Church; and on that identification was based the religious practice of early Israel. It had many healthy results: it kept religion in touch with public life; order, justice, patriotism, self-sacrifice for the common weal, were devoutly held to be matters of religion. So long, therefore, as the system was inspired by truly spiritual ideals, nothing for those times could be better. But we see in it an almost inevitable tendency to harden to the sheerest officialism. That it was more apt to do so in Israel than in Judah, is intelligible from the origin of the Northern Schism, and the erection of the national sanctuaries from motives of mere statecraft. { 1 Kings 12:26-27 } Erastianism could hardly be more flagrant or more ludicrous in its opposition to true religion than at Bethel. And yet how often have the ludicrousness and the flagrancy been repeated, with far less temptation! Ever since Christianity became a state religion, she that needed least to use the weapons of this world has done so again and again in a thoroughly Pagan fashion. The attempts of Churches by law established, to stamp out by law all religious dissent; or where such attempts were no longer possible, the charges now of fanaticism and now of sordidness and religious shop keeping, which have been so frequently made against dissent by little men who fancied their state connection, or their higher social position to mean an intellectual and moral superiority: the absurd claims which many a minister of religion makes upon the homes and the souls of a parish, by virtue not of his calling in Christ, but of his position as official priest of the parish, -all these are the sins of Amaziah, priest of Bethel. But they are not confined to an established Church. The Amaziahs of dissent are also very many. Wherever the official masters the spiritual; wherever mere dogma or tradition is made the standard of preaching; wherever new doctrine is silenced, or programs of reform condemned, as of late years in Free Churches they have sometimes been, not by spiritual argument, but by the ipse dixit of the dogmatist, or by ecclesiastical rule or expediency, -there you have the same spirit. The dissenter who checks the Word of God in the name of some denominational law or dogma is as Erastian as the churchman who would crush it, like Amaziah, by invoking the state. These things in all the Churches are the beggarly rudiments of Paganism; and religious reform is achieved, as it was that day at Bethel, by the adjuring of officialism. "But Amos answered and said unto Amaziah, No prophet I, nor prophet’s son. But a herdsman I, and a dresser of sycamores; and Jehovah took me from behind the flock, and Jehovah said unto me, Go, prophesy unto My people Israel." On such words we do not comment; we give them homage. The answer of this shepherd to this priest is no mere claim of personal disinterestedness. It is the protest of a new order of prophecy, the charter of a spiritual religion. As we have seen, the "sons of the prophets" were guilds of men who had taken to prophesying because of certain gifts of temper and natural disposition, and they earned their bread by the exercise of these. Among such abstract craftsmen Amos will not be reckoned. He is a prophet, but not of the kind with which his generation was familiar. An ordinary member of society, he has been suddenly called by Jehovah from his civil occupation for a special purpose and by a call which has not necessarily to do with either gifts or a profession. This was something new, not only in itself, but in its consequences upon the general relations of God to men. What we see in this dialogue at Bethel is, therefore, not merely the triumph of a character, however heroic, but rather a step forward and that one of the greatest and most indispensable-in the history of religion. There follows a denunciation of the man who sought to silence this fresh voice of God. "Now therefore hearken to the word of Jehovah thou that sayest, Prophesy not against Israel, nor let drop thy words against the house of Israel; therefore thus saith Jehovah "Thou hast presumed to say; Hear what God will say." Thou hast dared to set thine office and system against His word and purpose. See how they must be swept away. In defiance of its own rules the grammar flings forward to the beginnings of its clauses, each detail of the priest’s estate along with the scene of its desecration. "Thy wife in the city-shall play the harlot; and thy sons and thy daughters by the sword-shall fall; and thy land by the measuring rope-shall be divided; and thou in an unclean land-shalt die. Do not let us blame the prophet for a coarse cruelty in the first of these details. He did not invent it. With all the rest it formed an ordinary consequence of defeat in the warfare of the times-an inevitable item of that general overthrow which, with bitter emphasis, the prophet describes in Amaziah’s own words: "Israel going shall go into captivity from off his own land." There is added a vision in line with the three which preceded the priest’s interruption. We are therefore justified in supposing that Amos spoke it also on this occasion, and in taking it as the close of his address at Bethel. "Then the Lord Jehovah gave me to see: and, behold, a basket of Kaits," that is, "summer fruit. And He said, What art thou seeing, Amos? And I said, A basket of Kaits. And Jehovah said unto me, The Kets-the End - has come upon My people Israel. I will not again pass them over." This does not carry the prospect beyond the third vision, but it stamps its finality, and there is therefore added a vivid realization of the result. By four disjointed lamentations, "howls" the prophet calls them, we are made to feel the last shocks of the final collapse, and in the utter end an awful silence. "And the songs of the temple shall be changed into howls in that day, saith the Lord Jehovah. Multitude of corpses! In every place! He hath cast out! Hush!" These then were probably the last words which Amos spoke to Israel. If so, they form a curious echo of what was enforced upon himself, and he may have meant them as such. He was "cast out"; he was "silenced." They might almost be the verbal repetition of the priest’s orders. In any case the silence is appropriate. But Amaziah little knew what power he had given to prophecy the day he forbade it to speak. The gagged prophet began to write; and those accents which, humanly speaking, might have died out with the songs of the temple of Bethel were clothed upon with the immortality of literature. Amos silenced wrote a book-first of prophets to do so-and this is the book we have now to study. Amos 8:4 Hear this, O ye that swallow up the needy, even to make the poor of the land to fail, DOOM OR DISCIPLINE? Amos 8:4-9 WE now enter the Third Section of the Book of Amos: chapters 7-9. As we have already treated the first part of it-the group of four visions, which probably formed the prophet’s discourse at Bethel, with the interlude of his adventure there ( Amos 7:1-17 - Amos 8:3 ) -we may pass at once to what remains: from Amos 8:4 to the end of the book. This portion consists of groups of oracles more obscure in their relations to each other than any we have yet studied, and probably containing a number of verses which are not from Amos himself. They open in a denunciation of the rich, which echoes previous oracles, and soon pass to judgments of a kind already threatened, but now with greater relentlessness. Then, just as all is at the darkest, lights break; exceptions are made: the inevitable captivity is described no more as doom, but as discipline; and, with only this preparation for a change, we are swept out on a scene, in which, although the land is strewn with the ruins that have been threatened, the sunshine of a new day floods them; the promise of restoration is given; Nature herself will be regenerated, and the whole life of Israel planted on its own ground again. Whether it was given to Amos himself to behold this day-whether these last verses of the book were his " Nunc Dimittis ," or the hope of a later generation, which found his book intolerably severe, and mingled with its judgments their own new mercies-we shall try to discover further on. Meanwhile there is no doubt that we start with the authentic oracles of the prophet. We know the ring of his voice. To the tyranny of the rich, which he has so often lashed, he now adds the greed and fraud of the traders; and he paints Israel’s doom in those shapes of earthquake, eclipse, and famine with which his own generation had recently become familiar. Note that in this first group Amos employ’s only physical calamities, and says nothing of war and captivity. If the standard which we have already applied to the growth of his doctrine be correct, these ought therefore to be counted among his earlier utterances. War and captivity follow in chapter 9. That is to say, this Third Section follows the same line of development as both the First and the Second. 1. EARTHQUAKE, ECLIPSE, AND FAMINE Amos 8:4-14 "Hear this, ye who trample the needy, and would put an end to the lowly of the land, saying, When will the New-Moon be over, that we may sell grain, and the Sabbath, that we may open corn (by making small the measure, but large the weight, and falsifying the fraudulent balances; buying the wretched for silver, and the, needy for a pair of shoes!), and that we may sell as grain the refuse of the corn!" The parenthesis puzzles, but is not impossible: in the speed of his scorn, Amos might well interrupt the speech of the merchants by these details of their fraud, flinging these in their teeth as they spoke. The existence at this date of the New-Moon and Sabbath as days of rest from business is interesting; but even more interesting is the peril to which they lie open. As in the case of the Nazarites and the prophets, we see how the religious institutions and opportunities of the people are threatened by worldliness and greed. And, as in every other relevant passage of the Old Testament, we have the interests of the Sabbath bound up in the same cause with the interests of the poor. The Fourth Commandment enforces the day of rest on behalf of the servants and bondsmen. When a later prophet substitutes for religious fasts the ideals of social service, he weds with the latter the security of the Sabbath from all business. So here Amos emphasizes that the Sabbath is threatened by the same worldliness and love of money which tramples on the helpless. The interests of the Sabbath are the interests of the poor: the enemies of the Sabbath are the enemies of the poor. And all this illustrates our Savior’s saying, that "the Sabbath was made for man." But, as in the rest of the book, judgment again follows hard on sin. "Sworn hath Jehovah by the pride of Jacob, Never shall I forget their deeds." It is as before. The chief spring of the prophet’s inspiration is his burning sense of the personal indignation of God against crimes so abominable. God is the God of the poor, and His anger rises, as we see the anger of Christ arise, heavy against their tyrants and oppressors. Such sins are intolerable to Him. But the feeling of their intolerableness is shared by the land ‘itself, the very fabric of nature; the earthquake is the proof of it. "For all this shall not the land tremble and her every inhabitant mourn? and she shall rise like file Nile in mass, and heave and sink like the Nile of Egypt." To the earthquake is added the eclipse: one had happened in 803, and another in 763, the memory of which probably inspired the form of this passage. "And it shall be in that day-‘tis the oracle of the Lord Jehovah-that I shall bring down the sun at noon, and cast darkness on the earth in broad day. And I will turn your festivals into mourning, and all your songs to a dirge. And I will bring up upon all loins sackcloth and on every head baldness, and I will make it like the mourning for an only son, and the end of it as a bitter day." But the terrors of earthquake and eclipse are not sufficient for doom, and famine is drawn upon. "Lo, days are coming-‘tis the oracle of the Lord Jehovah-that I will send famine on the land, not a famine of bread nor a drouth of water, but of hearing the words of Jehovah. And they shall wander from sea to sea, and from the dark North to the Sunrise shall they run to and fro, to seek the word of Jehovah, and they shall not find it who swear by Samaria’s Guilt the golden calf in the house of the kingdom at Bethel-and say, As liveth thy God, O Dan! and, As liveth the way to Beersheba! and they shall fall and not rise anymore." I have omitted Amos 8:13 : "in that day shall the fair maids faint and the youths for thirst"; and I append my reasons in a note. Some part of the received text must go, for while Amos 8:11-12 speak of a spiritual drought, the drought of Amos 8:13 is physical. And Amos 8:14 follows Amos 8:12 better than it follows Amos 8:13 . The oaths mentioned by Bethel, Dan, Beersheba, are not specially those of young men and maidens, but of the whole nation, that run from one end of the land to the other, Dan to Beersheba, seeking for some word of Jehovah. One of the oaths, "As liveth the way to Beersheba," is so curious that some have doubted if the text be correct. But strange ‘as it may appear to us to speak of the life of the lifeless, this often happens among the Semites. Today Arabs "swear wa hyat, ‘ by the life of,’ even of things inanimate; ‘By the life of this fire, or of this coffee."’ And as Amos here tells us that the Israelite pilgrims swore by the way to Beersheba, so do the Moslems affirm their oaths by the sacred way to Mecca. Thus Amos returns to the chief target of his shafts-the senseless, corrupt worship of the national sanctuaries. And this time-perhaps in remembrance of how they had silenced the word of God when he brought it home to them at Bethel-he tells Israel that, with all their running to and fro across the land, to shrine after shrine in search of the word, they shall suffer from a famine and drouth of it. Perhaps this is the most effective contrast in which Amos has yet placed the stupid ritualism of his people. With so many things to swear by; with so many holy places that once were the homes of Vision, Abraham’s Beersheba, Jacob’s Bethel, Joshua’s Gilgal-nay, a whole land over which God’s voice had broken in past ages, lavish as the rain; with, too, all their assiduity of sacrifice and prayer, they should nevertheless starve and pant for that living word of the Lord, which they had silenced in His prophet. Thus, men may be devoted to religion, may be loyal to their sacred traditions and institutions, may haunt the holy associations of the past and be very assiduous with their ritual-and yet, because of their worldliness, pride, and disobedience, never feel that moral inspiration, that clear call to duty, that comfort in pain, that hope in adversity, that good conscience at all times, which spring up in the heart like living water. Where these be not experienced, orthodoxy, zeal, lavish ritual, are all in vain. Amos 8:8 Shall not the land tremble for this, and every one mourn that dwelleth therein? and it shall rise up wholly as a flood; and it shall be cast out and drowned, as by the flood of Egypt. -8 COMMON SENSE AND THE REIGN OF LAW Amos 3:3-8 ; Amos 4:6-13 ; Amos 5:8-9 ; Amos 6:12 ; Amos 8:8 ; Amos 9:5 ; Amos 8:4-6 FOOLS, when they face facts, which is seldom, face them one by one, and, as a consequence, either in ignorant contempt or in panic. With this inordinate folly Amos charged the religion of his day. The superstitious people, careful of every point of ritual and very greedy of omens, would not ponder real facts nor set cause-to effect. Amos recalled them to common life. "Does a bird fall upon a snare, except there be a loop on her? Does the trap itself rise from the ground, except it be catching something"-something alive in it that struggles, and so lifts the trap? "Shall the alarum be blown in a city, and the people not tremble?" Daily life is impossible without putting two and two together. But this is just what Israel will not do with the sacred events of their time. To religion they will not add common-sense. For Amos himself, all things which happen are in sequence and in sympathy. He has seen this in the simple life of the desert; he is sure of it throughout the tangle and hubbub of history. One thing explains another; one makes another inevitable. When he has illustrated the truth in common life, Amos claims it for especially four of the great facts of the time. The sins of society, of which society is careless; the physical calamities, which they survive and forget; the approach of Assyria, which they ignore; the word of the prophet

A basket of summer fruit. Amos 8:1, 2 A basket of summer fruit H. J. Wilmot-Buxton, M. A. : — As God set before Amos a basket of summer fruit, as a sign or parable concerning Israel; so, at harvest-tide God sets before us a basket of summer fruit, to teach us lessons to our soul's health. 1. In preparing the earth for a harvest crop, and our lives for a crop of holiness, we must expect hard labour, and often sorrow. Whether we cultivate the fields or our souls, we must do it in the sweat of our face, with hard labour. Both the ground and our nature need cultivation, and that implies labour, and frequently sorrow. After the great fire of London, a flower called the Golden Rocket appeared, and beautified places wasted by the flame, though it had never been seen in that district before. The seeds were lying in the ground, but it needed the fire to make them live and grow. Some times we need the fire of affliction to bring out the good in us. It is God's love, not anger, which sends the fire. Our life needs clearing, purging, that it may bring forth new and better fruit. Some of us can only be saved "as by fire." 2. We must plough deep. The man who wants a good crop will not just scratch the surface of the earth, he will drive in the ploughshare deep. So we must drive down the ploughshare of self-examination, we must break up the hard ground of pride and self-righteousness, where no good thing can grow. 3. There must be sowing of seed. What we sow we reap. Our good deeds and our evil deeds bear their fruit here. Your words, your acts, your thoughts are seed; you may cast them forth carelessly, but like seed thoughtlessly dropped in the ground, they will grow, and if it be bad seed, you will be terrified at your harvest. Remember this, — You may not have sown bad seed, but if you have sown nothing for God, you will reap nothing from God. If you have no loving fellowship with God here, you will have none hereafter. Neglect of duty is a great sin. If we neglect our souls they degenerate, our spiritual natures grow weak. Let us learn to thank God, not only for bread which strengthens man's heart, but also for the better bread of holy teaching which the harvest provides, bread to strengthen man's soul. ( H. J. Wilmot-Buxton, M. A. ) A basket of summer fruit T. De Witt Talmage, D. D. Is there any similarity between the Gospel and summer fruit? They both, in the first place, mean health. God every summer doctors the ailments of the world by the orchards and groves. The Gospel means health. It makes a man mighty for work, and strong for contest. It cures spiritual ailments. The analogy is also found in the fact that summer fruit is pleasant to the eye and the taste. So the Gospel, when a man rightly sees it and tastes it, is very pleasant. If summer fruit is not taken immediately, it soon fails. First, the speck; then a multiplication of defects; after a while a softening that is offensive; and then it is all flung out. So all religious advantages perish right speedily if you do not take them. I suppose you have noticed how swiftly the days and the years go by. Every day seems to me like "a basket of summer fruit," the morning sky is vermilion, the. noonday is opaline, the evening cloud is fire-dyed. How soon the days are gone! Notice the perishable nature of all religious surroundings. Christian associations readily fade away from the soul. Every opportunity of salvation seems to be restless until it gets away from us. Going away the sermons; going away the songs; going away the strivings of God's eternal Spirit. The practical question is now; will you miss your chance? The day of grace will soon be past. ( T. De Witt Talmage, D. D. ) Religion in the garden James Menzies. In our great cities one of the most welcome sights of summer is to be found in the baskets of fruit exposed for sale in the shop windows. Reflect on some of the things God would teach us from "a basket of summer fruit." I. FRUIT IS THE END AND REWARD OF LABOUR. Fruit-bearing is the end contemplated in the seed-sowing and cultivation of the husbandman. Jesus said, "My Father is the husbandman." We are thus led to think of God working in us and for us by His grace with a constancy and care like that of the owner of a vineyard. And the end contemplated by that gracious work of God is that we should bear fruit, and thus minister to His delight and glory. We are not left ignorant as to the nature of the fruit that God looks for in man. St. Paul says, "The fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, long-suffering, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, meekness, temperance." These are the results that God works for and waits to see exhibited by those who call themselves by the name of Christ. When our lives bring forth these "fruits of the Spirit," we become, in very truth, gardens of the Lord. II. WHEN THE FRUIT FAILS THERE IS DISAPPOINTMENT AND LOSS. Many things are necessary to bring the work of the garden to a successful issue — good seed and stock, congenial soil and situation, favourable climate and intelligent cultivation. Yet when all has been attended to that wisdom and experience command, there are occasional failures that disappoint and perplex the gardener. Young trees that put forth healthy shoots and vigorous branches, and gave great promise at first, when they have grown are found to be barren and unfruitful. Some trees never blossom at all, some have blossom that never comes to fruit. Whole crops of fruit are sometimes destroyed by the pests of the garden, and are at times stolen by thieves. Over these losses the husbandman sorrows because he has laboured in vain. See the parable of the barren fig-tree. May not some of our lives he equally disappointing to God? He has surrounded us with privileges, opportunities, and helps to the attainment of a holy life, yet the spiritual results may be nowhere visible. There are the leaves of a cold morality, but no blossoms of grace; the flowers of a shallow profession, but none of the fruits of a consistent life. How long shall we continue thus to abuse the blessings of God, and try His patience as cumberers on His holy ground? III. THE GLORY OF THE GARDEN IS CARRIED AWAY IN THE FRUIT BASKET. The garden has a spent and dreary look after its beauty and treasure have been gathered. But this dreariness is only temporary. The husbandman knows well how to repair the waste. Some of us have a like experience. We can think of a time when duty demanded a great sacrifice, or when duty had to be done in the face of great danger and temptation. But then we were spent in the great effort, almost broken by the severe strain. Then God came and called us to come apart and rest a while. In delightful fellowship with Him strength and inspiration gradually returned, and we were even more ready than before when the next call of duty came. ( James Menzies. ) Harvest or summer fruits Homilist. God teaches the world in two ways; by symbols and sayings. By this "basket of summer fruit" He taught Amos that Israel was ripe for judgment. These summer fruits remind us of — I. THE BENEFICENCE OF GOD. In the summer fruit He gives us the useful and the beautiful. In these fruits of the earth pro visions are made for our physical wants. They are beautiful as well as useful. How beautiful are these fruits of the earth! Their exquisite forms, in bound less variety; their lovely tints, their bloom and gorgeous hues, how beautiful! Deep within us all is the love for the beautiful. The God who planted within us the sentiment ministers abundantly to it in these baskets of fruit. God's beneficence in these fruits of the earth is shown to be — (1) Abundant, (2) Unremitting, (3) Undeserved. II. THE MATURING FORCES OF DIVINE GOVERNMENT. This "basket of summer fruit " is the outcome of a very long and complicate process. Snow and ice, showers and dews, clouds and sunshine, storm and calm, bleak winds of winter, genial airs of spring, and the hot breath of summer, the constant care and toil of the labourers in the fields and orchards, have all co-operated in bringing out this result. Antecedently, this result would not have been expected. Suppose a man in the depths of winter being told for the first time that those leafless fruit trees, shivering in the winds, and hung with icicles, should, in a few months, be loaded with clusters of apples, and plums, and pears, and grapes, would he have believed it? The thing to him would have been incredible. Things will ever be occurring in God's universe upon which antecedently no finite being could calculate. Therefore do not argue (1) Against the conversion of the world, or (2) Against the resurrection of the dead. III. THE DESTINED DECADENCE OF ALL ORGANIC LIFE. In that " basket of summer fruit " there is death. In a few short days it will be reduced to utter corruption. So it is with all material life: no sooner is perfection reached than decay begins. ( Homilist. ) A basket of summer fruit C. A. S. Dwight. Fruits always seem fairest, freshest, and finest when they are seasonable — that is, when not forced into being before their proper time of ripening or preserved artificially beyond the period of their natural growth in the gardens. And each of the seasons, unless it be winter, seems to have its own peculiar fauna and flora which lend it beauty and distinction. The prophet Amos, who was a herdsman accustomed to the open air and to the nomad life of the free East, and who uses accordingly many rural figures in his writings, speaks of "a basket of summer fruit." We may figuratively take his words, now, to represent those traits of nature and those moral results which seem to be particularly characteristic of summer. 1. In the first place we may say that there goes into the basket of summer fruits an innocent joyousness of heart. God does not intend that we should live to be happy, but He does desire that we should be happy while we live. Joy is a Christian grace. If any one has the right to be joyful it is the believer, with countless spiritual blessings at his service in this world, and all the bright, brave, beautiful things of the world to come before him. "Rejoice evermore!" is a whole Decalogue in itself. And it seems easier to rejoice in the summer time, when all things take on their brightest look, each day seems a gala day, and nature dons her loveliest garments. And we are then out of doors more, which is a condition conducing to greater health and happiness. All this now is natural and right, if the joy be drawn from the right sources and based upon the right things. 2. Very like in nature to this summer fruit of joyousness is that of gratefulness. For who makes it possible for us to be reasonably happy, innocently gleeful? It is God, who is Himself the source and fount of joy. 3. The summer is a good time to cultivate the grace of worship. The spirit of worship is for the whole year. And at no period of the year should the regular services of the sanctuary be neglected, as the manner of many is. 4. Again, there is the summer fruit of generosity, which certainly it would seem should thrive in the expansive. out-of-door life of that season. When the restrictions of indoor life have given way to the freedom of the fields, the woods, and the hills, a broadening of the sympathies should certainly be experienced. If we breathe a fresher air and more of it our pulses should quicken at the same time with a more abundant fellow-feeling for mankind about us. 5. The basket of summer fruit also makes room for the grace of good humour. Summer is the "cross" season, many think, which will excuse bad temper in themselves and perhaps in others when the thermometer goes up into the nineties. The hot weather certainly tries people's tempers, of what sort they are: and the curious thing is that the individuals who have lost their temper most often seem to have the most temper left. But the summer months should be marked by many little sufferances and patiences, which will come most surely of numerous small prayers and pleadings at the throne of grace. Let us try to be good-humoured and amiable even when circumstances might seem to excuse petulance. 6. And then no basket of summer fruit would be complete without the grace of Christian hopefulness. Hope, we may say, is the joy of the future — that is, the joy which we obtain even now from the anticipation of delights to come. Like faith, it is the "substance," or assured impression, of things that are yet to be. And the summer time may be really a continuous jubilee, one prolonged brightsome poem — a lyric of flowers and fruits and spiritual feasting and trustful uplift of heart, as the soul, like a plant touched by a sun in the heavens and blown upon by breezes from off the eternal hills, opens out constantly into the fuller, freer life of God, and grows toward the ideals of saintly living which shall be realised at last somewhere beyond the skies and stars. We may always have summer in our hearts. There are those who have no summer, to whom it is always arctic night, chilling and drear; but the child of God has the spring-tide in his heart now, and looks hopefully forward to entrance sometime into a land where cold blasts never blow and storms never beat, but where all things are surrounded by an atmosphere of genial godliness, of beatific beauty, and perfect love. ( C. A. S. Dwight. ) Ripeness for judgment Homilist. I. WICKED NATIONS GROW RIPE FOR JUDGMENT. The "basket of summer fruit." This symbol suggests — 1. That Israel's present moral corruption was no hasty production. The ripe fruit in that basket did not spring forth at once, it took many months to produce. Men do not become great sinners at once. The character of a people does not reach its last degree of vileness in a few years, it takes time. The first seed of evil is to be germinated, then it grows, ripens, and multiplies until there is a crop ready for the sickle. 2. That Israel's season for improvement was past and gone. The ripened fruit in that basket had reached a stage in which improvement was impossible. The bloom was passing away, and rottenness was setting in. Nations become incorrigible. 3. That Israel's utter ruin was inevitable. Nothing awaited that " basket of summer fruit" but rottenness. Its decomposition was working, and would soon reduce it to putrescent filth. So it was with Israel. II. TRUE PROPHETS ARE MADE SENSIBLE OF THIS RIPENESS. God gives Amos a vision for the purpose. To every true teacher God says at the outset, "What seest thou?" Hast thou a clear vision of this basket of summer fruit? Hast thou a clear idea of this subject on which thou art about to discourse? Thus He dealt with Moses, Elijah, Daniel, Paul, John. III. ALMIGHTY GOD MAKES HIS PROPHETS SENSIBLE OF THE RIPENESS OF A PEOPLE'S CORRUPTION IN ORDER THAT THEY MAY SOUND THE ALARM. Why was Amos thus Divinely impressed with the wretched moral condition of the people of Israel? Simply that he may be more earnest and emphatical in sounding the alarm. What was the calamity he was to proclaim? I. Universal mourning. "The songs of the temple shall be howlings." The inevitable tendency of sin is to turn songs of gladness into howlings of distress. 2. Universal death. "And there shall be many dead bodies in every place, and they shall cast them forth with silence." ( Homilist. ) Fully ripe Vincent W. Ryan, M. A. 1. The end of the season of trial under the emblem of a basket of summer fruit (vers. 1-3). The emblem meant that a period was approaching when their time of probation would be over, and the result of that would be a great destruction of life, accompanied with gloomy silence on the part of the miserable survivors. The emblem has a general application to all periods of the Church's history. It suggests the idea of a tree which had been tended, planted, watered with the rain and the dew. It had blossomed, budded, brought forth fruit; its work was done; the fruit was gathered; no pains of the gardener, no change in the season, no influence of the sun could now alter the character of the fruit. They were either apples of Sodom, or pleasant to the eye, and good for food. Now was the time, not to cherish their growth, but to try their quality. As there are means of hastening the growth and ripeness of summer fruit, so do privileges and mercies hasten the maturity of the soul. for the inheritance of the saints in light on the one hand, and for the righteous vengeance of God on the other. This consideration shows the fearful character of unrepented sin. Perseverance therein causes ripeness for judgment. It teaches us what our chief aim ought to be; not so much eagerness for outward privilege, as an earnest desire that the heart may be right with God. 2. The close connection between evil imaginations respecting God's service, and unjust dealings towards men (vers. 4-6). Contempt for and abuse of God's ordinances is here shown to be closely connected with doing wrong to the poor. He who forgets his duty towards his Maker, is sure to be wanting in his duty towards those who bear his Maker's image. The best friends of the poor are those who earnestly contend for the rights of God. 3. The universality of Divine knowledge, on the one hand, and the effects of Divine judgments on the other (vers. 7-10). Man, in his hurry to become rich, often does many things unrighteously. But all things are at all times naked and open to the eyes of Him with whom we have to do. No lapse of time, nor change of scene, nor combination of circumstances, nor crowding together of different pursuits, veils for one moment the acts of ungodliness and wrong which men have done. Iniquity is never forgotten till it is forgiven. 4. A crowning judgment, which implied the absence of God, the children's food taken from them (vers. 11-14). Among the Jews the absence of prophetical teaching would be a famine of the Word of the Lord. Direction from Him was a part of their peculiar blessedness. The want of that direction left them in a very helpless condition. In a Christian land, where the Word of God is freely circulated, we have the law, the testimony, and direction in all the duties of life. The precepts of the Gospel are so full, and its principles so clear, that we need never be at a loss. And where there is a scriptural ministry, the public mind may be kept as clearly instructed in the will of God as ever the Jews were by the teaching of the prophets. Christian communities, however, have been visited with a famine of the Word of God. Often, in the case of individuals, a famine of the Word of God comes upon the soul. ( Vincent W. Ryan, M. A. ) Ripe for gathering A. Maclaren, D. D. The point of the vision is rather obscured by the rendering "summer fruit." "Ripe fruit" would be better, since the emblem represents the northern kingdom as ripe for the dreadful ingathering of judgment. Just as the mellow ripeness of the fruit fixes the time of gathering it, so there comes a stage in national and individual corruption, when there is nothing to be done but to smite. That period is not reached because God changes, but because men get deeper in sin. Because "the harvest is ripe," the sickle is called for. It is a solemn lesson, applying to each soul as well as to communities. By neglect of God's voice, and persistence in our own evil ways, we can make ourselves such that we are ripe for judgment, and can compel long suffering to strike. The tragedy of that fruit-gathering is described with extraordinary grimness and force in the abrupt language of verse 3. The crimes that ripened men for this terrible harvest are next set forth in verses 4 to 6. The catalogue of sins is left incomplete, as if holy indignation turned for relief to the thought of the certain juugment. Amos heaps image on image to deepen the impression of terror and confusion. Everything is turned to its opposite. these threats were fulfilled in the fall of the kingdom of Israel. But that "day of the Lord" was, in principle, a miniature foreshadowing of the great final judgment. The last section (vers. 11-14) specifies one feature of judgment, the deprivation of the despised Word of the Lord. The truth implied is universal in its application. God's message neglected is withdrawn. Conscience stops if continually unheeded. The Gospel may still sound in a man's ears, but have long ceased to reach further. There comes a time when men shall wish wasted opportunities back, and find that they can no more return than last summer's heat. ( A. Maclaren, D. D. ) Israel's overthrow foretold D. F. Estes. At home the nation of Israel appeared to the eye of its citizens to possess every needed element of stability and prosperity, in a strong government, domestic tranquillity, plentiful harvests, and multiplying riches. And looking abroad, there appeared no occasion for anxiety. But along with apparent political and economic prosperity, sad religious and moral corruption prevailed. Apostasy had accompanied revolution when Israel was founded. Other sins followed in the train of apostasy. To this people, victorious, prosperous, wealthy, avaricious, dishonest, luxurious, corrupt, immoral, irreligious, God sent a messenger with a message. Amos Goes from Tekoa to Bethel, the royal sanctuary and abode of Israel. Here he denounces the sins of the nation, proclaims the displeasure of Jehovah, and threatens destruction. Tradition reports that the fearless preacher was mobbed and beaten, scarce escaping with his life. But he had done his work. He had warned the people. The vision and the voice come down to us to-day. "Behold," Amos says, "a basket of summer fruit." The meaning does not lie on the surface. In Palestine fruit was the last crop to be gathered in. The sight of fruit suggested to Amos that the end of the prosperity of Israel was near. Additional force was given to this suggestion by a play upon words which we can in no way reproduce in English. The word here used for "fruit" was derived from the same root as the word which commonly signified "end." The significance was of course primarily political. No nation could long stand which was so undermined with irreligion, and honeycombed with immorality as was the nation of Israel. Like a summer storm clouding the noon, disaster soon overshadowed the brightness of Israel's day. Less than a hundred years after Amos came to Bethel, and was scorned and hunted thence, Shalmanezer came, and Israel was no more. It is to be remembered that the destruction of the national life of Israel was due to itself, its own faults, its own corruptions. No nation was ever destroyed from without. A people that is fit to live cannot be made to die. The Assyrians only made an end of the fruit that was already rotten as well as ripe. It is a lesson for all lands. Our prosperity is no certain token of our permanence. Size is not certain strength; numbers and riches are not certain strength. The empire of Alexander fell to pieces by its own weight. Spain was ruined by its riches. There is special warning in this chapter against one class of corrupting influences — those which grow out of the greed of gain. The dangers which beset the fabric of society in these days link themselves very largely with the production, accumulation, and distribution of wealth. The denunciations of Amos illuminate with wonderful clearness the unjust and dishonest practices which had become prevalent in that day. Greed, dishonesty, haste to be rich, may destroy, the fabric of our society. If the growth of vast fortunes and estates is regarded with popular and legislative favour, and government and society and Church are deaf to the cries and indifferent to the struggles of honest poverty, sinking deeper into abject and hopeless pauperism; and ostentation, luxury, and extravagance replace our old time simplicity, frugality, and economy; if the craze to be immensely rich fevers the blood of the whole people; if fraud, illegal or legalised, if gambling in lotteries and in futures, if corners and stock-watering, if dishonesty, in short, in all its forms continues to increase; if thus such sins as ruined Israel taint our business and social life ever deeper and deeper, — then the basket of summer fruit will become symbol as apt for us as it was for them: the end cannot be far off. The end may not, however, come in a political catastrophe of subjugation by a foreign conqueror. It came not thus to France a century ago. Learn to distrust even the prosperity which seems the greatest, and carefully to scrutinise its cost and its consequences. To seek first to be right, then to seek to prosper, — not first to prosper, regardless of right, is as important for the soul as for the nation. Let us each lay the corner-stone of our life-work in the fear of God and in Christian faith, and rear the edifice in honesty, morality, kindness, service. Then surely ours shall be "the blessing of the Lord; it maketh rich, and He addeth no sorrow with it." ( D. F. Estes. ) Israel' s overthrow foretold Hinckly G. Mitchell. : — The nation, God's chosen, is doomed. This is the import of the vision. The rest of the chapter is devoted to justification of this decree and description of its execution. 1. God is just. No man ever felt this truth more deeply than Amos. He betrays its hold upon him by the way in which he constructs his prophecies. He could not endure that they should have the slightest excuse for charging God with injustice. They, however, were not concerned about God s justice, though they might pretend to question it. To them, therefore, his habit of speech must have been extremely annoying. He was like a bad conscience. No wonder that they wanted to get rid of him. The passage before us contains an excellent illustration of the point in question. He shows that the question is not, How could God destroy Israel? but, How could He prevent their destruction? A community of self-seekers is an impossibility. 2. The greater part of this passage is predictive. This is not the most essential part of prophecy. A prediction is a picture of the future. Amos saw the kingdom of Israel over thrown by the Assyrians. Probably he did not expect his conventional details would ever be fulfilled. His claim to inspiration is sufficiently vindicated by the fact that the kingdom of Israel was actually overthrown, and the people carried into captivity by a power which, when Amos prophesied, seemed on the verge of extinction. ( Hinckly G. Mitchell. ) A basket of summer fruit H. J. Gamble. 1. The perfection and beauty of summer affords an illustration of the goodness of God. God is the Creator as well as the Redeemer. 2. The beauty and perfection of summer suggest to us some interesting spiritual analogies.(1) They are the result of growth. So is character. As the nature of the fruit is dependent upon the nature of the seed, so does our character depend upon our principles.(2) They are the product of culture. And our nature has need of spiritual culture.(3) The beauty of summer is an emblem of that spiritual transformation which is accomplished in the soul by the grace of God. The same Spirit who renews the face of the earth is able to renew the soul of man.(4) The perfection of summer reminds us of approaching change. The moment the fruits of summer are ripened, they begin to decay. And the greater portion of our lives is gone. Whatever length of days may await you, the most vigorous and active years are spent — years that can never be recalled. Whatever work you have to do must be done at once — whoever talks of delay, you cannot. Finally, remember that all things here are transitory and uncertain. Life's changes admonish us to set our affection on things above. There is a covenant that abides — a Saviour who changes not — a world where death never enters. Have we laid hold on that covenant? have we faith in that Saviour? ( H. J. Gamble. ) A basket of summer fruit Amos was a herdsman, a keeper of cattle, and all through his book you find him continually alluding to his peasant life. He is also called "a gatherer of sycamore fruit," or better, a bruiser, a trainer or preparer of sycamore fruit. It was believed in the East that this fruit would ever ripen except it was a little bruised, and so some person was employed with an iron comb to scratch and wound the skin. Unwounded, the fruit, even when ripe, was too bitter to be eaten; but after it had been wounded, it ripened rapidly, and became sweet and eatable. Here is a basket of summer fruit which is so ripe that it has been gathered; and it is a sort of fruit — summer fruit — which will not keep, will not lay by for the winter, but must be eaten at once. Amos sees that God's purposes were now ripe with regard to His people Israel, and that the nation had become ripe in its sin, so ripe that it must be destroyed, We may learn that there is a ripeness of men, as well as of summer fruit; there is a ripening in holiness till we are gathered by the hand of Jesus for heaven, and a ripening in sin till we are swept away with the rough hand of death, and are cast away into the rottenness of destruction. I. GOD'S PURPOSES MAY HAVE A RIPENESS: God always times His decrees. Many men are wise too late. God proves His wisdom, not only by what He doeth, but by the time when He doeth it. Notice two of God's greatest acts. The First Advent, and the Second Advent of the Lord Jesus Christ. Apply this great truth of the ripeness of God's purposes to your own personal affairs. All God's acts are well-timed. II. NATIONS HAVE THEIR RIPENESS, AND WHEN THEY COME TO THEIR RIPENESS THEY MUST BE DESTROYED. We may see in this basket of summer fruit a picture of them. It was necessary to eat that ripe fruit at once. And there is need when a nation has become ripe in sin that it should be given up to destruction. There are such things as national sins, and there are consequently such things as national punishments. III. HERE IS THE PICTURE OF WHAT SOME OF US ARE, AND ALL OF US MUST BE. 1. With the righteous man there is a time of ripening. The Christian when converted is, as it were, but a bud upon the tree. There is need that he grow unto perfection, and that fruit should become ripe fruit. Believers are ripened by every providence which passes over them. We are daily ripening in knowledge. In spirituality. As he ripens in spirituality, he ripens in savour. 2. There is a ripeness with which the sinful and ungodly are ripening. You are being ripened from within; the depravity of your own heart is developing itself every hour. And Satan is daily busy with you, to try and make you grow in vice. Sinners ripen in knowledge of sin, in love to sin, and in that hardness of heart which enables them to commit sin with impunity. With some sin has attained such a ripeness that they dare to blaspheme God. They have grown so rotten ripe that they will even dare to say there is no God, or think that He is blind, or ignorant, and will not see and punish sin in the sinner. It is an awful sign of nearness to hell when a man begins to think that he can doubt the existence of God. ( C. H. Spurgeon . ) A basket of summer fruit Joseph Parker, D. D. Fruit was the last sign of harvest in Palestine. When the fruit was gathered the harvest was over. What then is the meaning of this vision of a basket of summer fruit? The meaning is that Amos saw the end. Summer fruit had a mournful suggestion about it in Palestinian times and lands. "What seest thou?" The end; the gathered harvest, the upmaking of all things, the year in its results: good or bad, there it is. Can this fruit be changed now? No. Will not the sun work some miracle of ripening upon it? Never more. What it is, that it is. There is an end of ministry, of service, of stewardship, of life. Oh that men were wise, that they understood these things, that they would consider their latter end — the basket of summer fruit, the ingathering of the fields and the vintages. How stands it with us this audit day? ( Joseph Parker, D. D. ) Hear this, O ye that swallow up the needy. Amos 8:4-10 Avarice Homilist. I. IT IS EXECRABLE IN ITS SPIRIT. 1. It is sacrilegious. Bad as Israel was, it still kept up the mere observances of religion, yet these observances they regarded as commercial inconveniences. Avarice in heart has no reverence for religion. 2. It is dishonest. Always over-reaching, always cheating. It makes its fortunes out of the brain and muscles, the sweat and life of the needy. 3. It is cruel. Avarice deadens all social affections. II. It is ABHORRENT TO JEHOVAH. "The Lord hath sworn by the excellency of Jacob, Surely I will never forget any of their works." Some render the "excellency of Jacob" the "pride of Jacob," and suppose the expres

8:1-3 Amos saw a basket of summer fruit gathered, and ready to be eaten; which signified, that the people were ripe for destruction, that the year of God's patience was drawing towards a conclusion. Such summer fruits will not keep till winter, but must be used at once. Yet these judgments shall not draw from them any acknowledgement, either of God's righteousness or their own unrighteousness. Sinners put off repentance from day to day, because they think the Lord thus delays his judgments. 8:4-10 The rich and powerful of the land were the most guilty of oppression, as well as the foremost in idolatry. They were weary of the restraints of the sabbaths and the new moons, and wished them over, because no common work might be done therein. This is the character of many who are called Christians. The sabbath day and sabbath work are a burden to carnal hearts. It will either be profaned or be accounted a dull day. But can we spend our time better than in communion with God? When employed in religious services, they were thinking of marketings. They were weary of holy duties, because their worldly business stood still the while. Those are strangers to God, and enemies to themselves, who love market days better than sabbath days, who would rather be selling corn than worshipping God. They have no regard to man: those who have lost the savour of piety, will not long keep the sense of common honesty. They cheat those they deal with. They take advantage of their neighbour's ignorance or necessity, in a traffic which nearly concerns the labouring poor. Could we witness the fraud and covetousness, which, in such numerous forms, render trading an abomination to the Lord, we should not wonder to see many dealers backward in the service of God. But he who thus despises the poor, reproaches his Maker; as it regards Him, rich and poor meet together. Riches that are got by the ruin of the poor, will bring ruin on those that get them. God will remember their sin against them. This speaks the case of such unjust, unmerciful men, to be miserable indeed, miserable for ever. There shall be terror and desolation every where. It shall come upon them when they little think of it. Thus uncertain are all our creature-comforts and enjoyments, even life itself; in the midst of life we are in death. What will be the wailing in the bitter day which follows sinful and sensual pleasures! 8:11-14 Here was a token of God's highest displeasure. At any time, and most in a time of trouble, a famine of the word of God is the heaviest judgment. To many this is no affliction, yet some will feel it very much, and will travel far to hear a good sermon; they feel the loss of the mercies others foolishly sin away. But when God visits a backsliding church, their own plans and endeavours to find out a way of salvation, will stand them in no stead. And the most amiable and zealous would perish, for want of the water of life, which Christ only can bestow. Let us value our advantages, seek to profit by them, and fear sinning them away.