Living Theology | Amos 7:1–9:10

Living Theology is a blog series that draws out the theological principles of each week's sermon text and thinks through how we can apply them to our personal lives. In other words, this series asks how we can live out the theology of Scripture each day.

Sermon Text: Amos 7:1–9:10

You can watch Pastor Brian's sermon on this text here:

Amos 7:1–9:10 contains five visions the Yahweh showed Amos regarding his judgment on Israel. In the first two visions, Amos pleads on behalf of Israel that God spare his people. They would not be able to survive. And twice, Yahweh relents and stalls the judgment. But in the third vision, Amos no longer intercedes on behalf of Israel. Yahweh's judgment is certain. It is as if Amos himself has realized it is futile to continue speaking up on behalf of Israel. Pastor Brian highlighted two lessons that we learn from this text.

Lesson 1: Because God is righteous, he must judge sin.

God is good, but he is also just. God is loving, but he is also just. God is patient, but he is also just. We often think of the various attributes of God's character in isolation from one another. We think of God's righteousness, sure—his justice, of course. And then we think about God's love. But God's love is not separate from his justice. The attributes of God's character are not independent of each other. God is not a loving God sometimes and a just God other times. He is not a patient God sometimes and a wrathful God other times. God's goodness is loving, patient, and just—all at the same time. God's righteousness is a patient righteousness. And God's love is a just love.

One of the reasons we have such a difficult time squaring God's love with his justice is because we are so often on the wrong side of God's justice. The apparent conflict between God's goodness and his wrath is not an inconsistency within God. It is an inconsistency within ourselves. God's love and wrath are both good! The only reason we don't think is wrath is good is because it is so often directed toward us. We're biased.

But take, for a moment, the perspective of a third party. Imagine viewing God's love and wrath from the view of the holy angels. Imagine these angels—who never sinned, who know that God is sovereign, and who know that they are created for his good will—imagine these angels seeing God's overwhelming patience and his overwhelming goodness to a race of creatures who repeatedly reject him, scorn him, and even despise him. Imagine seeing God, in his kindness, provide skins to cover their nakedness (Genesis 3:21), provide an ark of shelter to protect them from his judgment (Genesis 6:12–18), provided a line through whom he would bless the nations of the earth (Genesis 12:1–3). Imagine seeing this God, provide deliverance for his people from slavery in Egypt (Exodus 14), provide water (Exodus 17) and quail and manna in the wilderness (Exodus 16), provide victory over the nations that opposed them (Exodus 17:8–16; Numbers 21; Numbers 31), and provide his covenant as a promise to bless them (Deuteronomy 27–30). If you were one of the holy angels, watching God continually forgive, redeem, and restore his people—if you were one of these angels watching humanity continually defy, reject, and despise the good and gracious Creator of all things, what would you think of God's wrath? What would you think of God's judgment? What would you think of God's justice? Would you see it at odds with this love? Would you see it conflict with his patience? Or would you see God's judgment as a sign that he is in fact a good and loving God?

Because God is righteous, he must judge sin. He cannot ignore it. He cannot simply pretend that we never sinned. That's not how justice works. That's not even how forgiveness works! Instead, God lovingly, graciously, patiently offers a way for us to survive this judgment. And that leads us to the second lesson.

Lesson 2: Because God is merciful, we need not despair in judgment.

Mercy is not a prominent theme in Amos 7:1–9:10, but it does appear in a couple important places. First, God mercifully relents from judgment not once but twice at the plea of Amos (Amos 7:2–3, 5–6). As many times as Amos interceded, Yahweh was willing to relent. We could point out that, as with Abraham and the cities of Sodom (Genesis 18:22–33), God's mercy continued as long as there was a plea for mercy.

Another glimmer of mercy in this text is the surprisingly brief note in Amos 9:8 that the destruction will be limited. It is only a short comment, but it is shocking in its context. For several verses, Amos has been describing Yahweh's pronouncement that:

he will "never again pass by" his people (Amos 8:2)
he will "bring sackcloth on every waist and baldness on every head" (Amos 8:10)
he will "shatter" the tops of buildings "on the heads of all the people" and "those who are left" he will "kill with the sword" (9:1)
there will be no escape in the grave or in heaven, at the tops of the mounts or the depths of the sea (Amos 9:2–3)
even if they go into captivity among their enemies, he will "command the sword, and it shall kill them" (Amos 9:4)

There is no escape. Yahweh will "destroy it from the surface of the ground" (Amos 9:8)—but ... "I will not utterly destroy the house of Jacob" (Amos 9:8). Even in judgment, God has mercy. Even in judgment, God provides a way to survive.

God's mercy and his judgment are not contradictory; they are complementary. God's mercy exists only because his judgment does. Without judgment, there is no mercy. And because of God's judgment, we can have hope in his mercy. After all, if there were no judgment, we would be stuck in this fallen, broken world. But because of Jesus's death for us, for our sin, God is able to put an end to injustice, sin, and evil and at the same time provide a way for us to survive this judgment (Romans 3:26).

Because God is merciful, we need not despair in judgment. We need only look to Christ and what he has done for us. Whoever is baptized into Christ participates in his death—we are judged in him. And whoever is baptized into Christ participates in his resurrection—we are raised as he was raised and thereby survive God's judgment. God does not spare us from judgment, but he does protect and preserve us through judgment in Jesus Christ.