Amos and Divine Intervention

Let's turn to the book of Amos please. Daniel, Hosea, Joel, Amos chapter 1. Amos chapter 1 and we read there at verse number 1. The words of Amos, who was among the herdmen of Tekoa, which he saw concerning Israel in the days of Uzziah king of Judah, and in the days of Jeroboam the son of Joash king of Israel. Now that's Jeroboam the second, that's another man from the man we heard of this morning.

This was two years before the earthquake and he said the Lord will roar from Zion. Now chapter 2 verse 4, thus saith the Lord for three transgressions of Judah and for four, I will not turn away the punishment thereof because they have despised the law of the Lord and so on. Verse 6, thus saith the Lord for three transgressions of Israel and for four, I will not turn away the punishment thereof because they sold the righteous for silver and the poor for a pair of shoes.

Now chapter 4, hear this word ye kind of Bashan that are in the mountain of Samaria which oppress the poor and crush the needy which say to their masters bring and let us drink the Lord God had sworn by his holiness that lo the day shall come upon you that he will take you away with hooks and your posterity with fish hooks. That's a reference to the coming captivity. Now down to verse 11, I have overthrown some of you as God overthrew Sodom and Gomorrah and he were as a firebrand plucked out of the burning yet ye have not returned on to me saith the Lord.

Therefore thus will I do unto thee, O Israel, because I will do this unto thee. Prepare to meet thy God, O Israel, for lo he that formeth the mountains and createth the wind and declareth unto man what is his thought and maketh the morning darkness and treadeth upon the high places of the earth. The Lord, the God of hosts, is his name.

That's Jehovah, the God, the Elohim of host, Sebaoth, is his name. Now chapter 5 please, chapter 5 verse 11. For as much therefore as your treading is upon the poor and you take from him burdens of wheat, ye have built houses of hewn stone, but ye shall not dwell in them.

Ye have planted pleasant vineyards, but ye shall not drink wine of them. For I know your manifold transgressions and your mighty sins. They afflict the just, they take a bribe, and they turn aside the poor in the gate from their right.

Verse 15, hate the evil and love the good and establish judgment in the gate. It may be that the Lord, God of hosts, will be gracious unto the remnant of Joseph. Come down to verse 18.

Woe unto you that desire the day of the Lord. To what end is it for you? The day of the Lord is darkness and not light. As if a man did flee from a lion and a bear met him and went into his house and leaned his hand on a wall and a serpent bit him, shall not the day of the Lord be darkness and not light, even very dark and no brightness in it.

I hate, I despise your feasts. I will not smell in your solemn assemblies. Now that's a reference to the practices that we heard about this morning.

Now one more from chapter 8, please. Chapter 8, chapter 8, verse 3. And the songs of the temple shall be howlings in that day, saith the Lord God. There shall be many dead bodies in every place.

They shall cast them forth with silence. Hear this, O ye that swallow up the needy, even to make the poor of the land to fail. Saying, when will the new moon be gone, that we may sell corn and the Sabbath, that we may set forth wheat, making the ephah small and the shekel great and falsifying the balances by deceit, that we may buy the poor for silver and the needy for a pair of shoes.

Yea, and sell the refuse of the wheat. The Lord hath sworn by the excellency of Jacob, surely I will never forget any of their works. Shall not the land tremble for this? And so on.

The Lord will bless to us the reading from his word. They were the best of times and they were the worst of times. In the days of Uzziah, Uzziah reigned for a long time and Jeroboam II reigned for a long time as well.

There was relative stability in that region at that particular time. But that resulted in many becoming wealthy and the poor of the land, however, were being exploited by the rich. And God took note.

So God raised up this prophet Amos. He was a humble man. He was a herdsman from Tekoa, a town in the remote hill country of Judea, south of Jerusalem.

And he was sent to be a prophet to the land of Israel, the kingdom of Israel, to the to the north. He didn't have any special training, yet God used that man from a remote location to speak for him to a nation that was marked by disobedience, luxury. They had everything that they wanted but they were oppressing the poor.

They imagined that God was remote, that God was aloof. God was not a reality in their lives. And God was taking note all the time.

Now, I thought that this would tie in with what we were hearing this morning from our brethren regarding conditions in which we live and which are prevailing in many parts of the land. So I want to speak a word about God intervening, divine intervention. And so we have here in our reading solemn statements of intervention.

That'll be our first thought. Then we want to notice sure signs of intervention. I'm going to speak a word about the Son's saving intervention at Calvary.

And then follow that up with the Sovereign Supreme intervention in that day of the Lord that we read about. That is soon coming. Now, in chapters 1 and 2, eight times over, we have this expression, for three transgressions of whatever country or or city, and for four, God will not turn away the punishment.

In other words, God is certainly going to visit in judgment. So he speaks about Damascus, he speaks about Gaza, he speaks about Taris, speaks about Edom, speaks about Ammon and Moab, and then he speaks about Judah, and he speaks about Israel. The two kingdoms that we were hearing about already today.

The point is this, if God will judge the nations and the heathen for their wickedness, he will certainly judge his people as well. They cannot expect to get off scot-free. God will judge his people.

God does not respect persons when it comes to righteous judgment. And brothers and sisters, neither should we when it comes to matters that need to be dealt with even in God's assembly. Thus saith the Lord for three transgressions of Israel, and for four, I will not turn away the punishment thereof, because they sold the righteous for silver, and the poor for a pair of shoes.

This is the problem throughout the book. God is noting the oppression of the poor, of the needy, how that these men that were rich were living in luxury themselves, but they were dealing immorally, they were dealing in violence against the poor man. And God noticed, and God took note, and God said he's going to judge it.

Verse chapter 4, hear this word ye kind of Bashan that are in the mountain of Samaria that oppress the poor, the kind of Bashan. Those were well fed cattle up on the hills, the Golan Heights area, Bashan, where the grass was luxurious and the cattle did well, but they were oppressing the poor, they were crushing the needy. And notice this, the Lord God, the sovereign Lord Jehovah, hath sworn by his holiness, and lo the day shall come upon you that I will take you away with hooks, and your posterity with fishhooks.

God would intervene. He wouldn't let that situation continue. The divided nation of Israel in the north, Judah in the south, they were going to come in for judgment, and God would send the Assyrians, and after them the Babylonians, and carry them away captive to the land of Assyria.

The ten tribes, they would never be regathered until a future day. And then the two remaining tribes ultimately taken away to Babylon. So we have solemn statements here in the little book of Amos of the fact that God will intervene in this situation.

Not only that, but God gave signs and spoke of signs of his intervention. To remind the people that God was not aloof, and God was not remote, but God was in fact in touch with what was going on, and knew exactly what was going on. And he showed signs and spoke of signs of his displeasure.

So we read in chapter 4, for lo he that formeth the mountains, and createth the wind, and declareth unto man what is his thought, and maketh the morning darkness. Think of that. He maketh the morning darkness, dreadeth upon the high places of the earth.

The Lord Jehovah, the God of hosts, is his name. And so when his people would see these things, they ought to know that the Lord is taking note that he is not remote, that God was actively engaged with his people, as he was engaged in creation. Speaks about the mountains, that touches the land.

Speaks about the morning turned to darkness, that touches the daylight. And in chapter 8, the songs of the temple shall be howlings in that day, touches the sanctuary. Now keep these things in mind.

These will be evidences of God's intervention. Chapter 8, that we may buy the poor for silver, the needy for a pair of shoes. The Lord hath sworn by the excellency of Jacob, surely I will never forget any of their works.

Shall not the land tremble for this? God will touch the land. He'll make it tremble. Chapter 5, we read, for I know your manifold transgressions and your mighty sins.

God is fully aware of what was going on. Brethren and sisters, God is fully aware of what's going on today. I know your manifold transgressions, these assaults on divine order and God's assembly.

God knows all about it. And your mighty sins. They afflict the just, they take a bribe, they turn aside the poor in the gate from their right.

God was taking note and God is still taking note today. God would intervene and God can intervene still. If any man will corrupt the temple of God, him shall God corrupt.

It's the same word. For the temple of God is holy, which temple ye are. The local assembly.

God takes note and God can intervene. He would intervene because of his interest in the poor man. Now that brings me in thought to another poor man.

And to the greatest intervention in history. God sending his own son in the likeness of sinful flesh and for sin, condemned sin in the flesh. I'm talking about the crucifixion of the very Son of God.

And they sold the righteous for silver, didn't they? Thirty pieces of silver. Just the price of a slave. That was the price they gave for him.

Was the Lord Jesus poor? He was the poor man, wasn't he? Show me a penny. The foxes have holes, the birds of the air have their nests, but the Son of Man hath not where to lay his head. And says, Paul, you know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ? That though he was rich, yet for your sakes he became poor, that you through his poverty might become rich.

Think of the deep poverty of the Lord Jesus Christ. Such was the poverty of the poor man that the Jews mocked him. Come down from the cross if you be the Son of God.

He trusted in God that he would deliver him. Let him deliver him, seeing that he trusted in him. Quoting from Psalm 22, Psalm 42.

Where is thy God? That was the question that was really on their hearts. Where is thy God? They were oppressing the poor man. The one who cried on your behalf and my behalf.

My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me? There is abject poverty like none other. As the Lord Jesus, bearing our sins in his own body upon the tree, he hung upon that cross. And if there's a soul here today without Christ, he was there on behalf of the sinner.

Are you the sinner that he was there for? Christ died for the ungodly. Thank God that's exactly what was revealed to my heart. I was the ungodly one for whom Christ died.

And he took my place on dark Calvary. But where was God? Where was God? How come he wasn't intervening, said the Jews. But did you notice the signs? Matthew puts it this way, from the sixth to the ninth hour, there was darkness over the whole land.

God touched the light of day, made it dark. Did you notice that God touched the land and made it tremble, just like Amos said? The earth did quake and the rocks rent, and God touched the sanctuary. The veil of the temple was rent in twain from the top to the bottom.

And right there on that day, right before their eyes, there were the signs that the prophet Amos had spoken to the people, that the Lord, the God of hosts, is his name. He would intervene. And here was the greatest intervention that this world has ever seen, when God sent a son to be the Savior of the world.

Marvelous, isn't it, how the scriptures dovetail together? So the signs were there. It was the Lord, the God of hosts, who makes the morning darkness, who touched the land, who touched the sanctuary. Now, I don't know what your thoughts are on the darkness of Calvary.

Some say, some of our dear brethren would say that it was to hide the scene. But remember, there were three hours of daylight, and the Bible says he bear our sins in his own body on the tree. You can't confine that to three hours of darkness.

Or if you choose to do that, that's going beyond what I would feel comfortable to do. But I do think this, that the darkness of Calvary was an evidence to Israel of the intervention of the Lord God of hosts, that this was a scene of divine intervention. It was a sign to the nation, spoken off by Amos, the prophet, and it showed God's displeasure.

Listen, here's the point. It showed God's displeasure in how they were treating the poor man, our Lord Jesus, hanging upon that cross. Now, Amos had brought the remedy to the people as well.

Chapter 5, verse 15, hate the evil and love the good, and establish judgment in the gate. In other words, repent of what you've been doing. And it may be that the Lord God of hosts will be gracious unto the remnant of Joseph.

So the offer of forgiveness was still going out to the nation, even though they had acted in such a way. And after they crucified the Lord Jesus, the offer of forgiveness still went out to the nation. In the early chapters of the book of Acts, and I would take it for us today, brethren and sisters, that if you and I remain faithful to God, that God will still bless.

Now, what we were hearing today already, if these people had have been true to God and true to his word, and had have even repented of what they were doing, and established judgment in the gate again, the Lord would be gracious unto the remnant of Joseph. And if you and I, in our day and generation, remain faithful to the Word of God, to the principles of the New Testament, and to the New Testament assembly that God has established in his word, God will bless. That's the way it works.

God will bless. Compromise, liberal practices, is the sure highway for further departure and further exodus and division amongst the people of God. Now then, let me say a word about the Sovereign's intervention, his supreme intervention.

We've thought about the sign of darkness. That's going to be repeated. Woe unto you that desire the day of the Lord.

To what end is it for you? The day of the Lord is darkness, and not light. Shall not the day of the Lord be darkness, and not light even very dark, and no brightness in it? Now, this is looking forward to the events that will follow the rapture. The rapture is the first event in God's program, and then the day of the Lord will commence.

It's the day when the Lord intervenes on planet Earth. It's the day when the wrath of God will come upon the rebellious earth dwellers. That's what the book of Revelation is all about.

Now tell me, who is it? Who is it that intervenes? Who is it that's going to intervene in that day and bring that wrath upon this wicked world? No one was found worthy to open the book. John wept much at the prospect of earth without a Redeemer. Ah, hold on John.

The lion of the tribe of Judah has prevailed, and he turned and he saw what? A young lamb as it had been freshly slain. The abject picture of weakness? Who is it? It's the poor man of dark Calvary. That's who it is.

It's our Lord Jesus Christ. He was found worthy, and they sang, thou art worthy to take the book, and to loose the seals thereof, for thou was slain, and has redeemed us to God by thy blood. He's the one that's worthy.

Oh the irony of the whole thing. The one that this world crucified is coming back in his glory, and he's going to establish his right as Lord, sovereign Lord, to reign from the river to the ends of the earth. John saw another sign in chapter 15.

I saw another sign in heaven, great and marvelous. Seven angels having the seven last plagues, for in them is filled up the wrath of God. The wrath of God.

John wrote to the, or Paul wrote to the Thessalonians to remember about those that would experience wrath. Who was that? It was the Jews. Chapter 2. Who both killed the Lord and their own prophets, and have persecuted us, and they please not God, and are contrary to all men, forbidding us to speak to the Gentiles that they might be saved, to fill up their sins all way, for the wrath is come upon them to the uttermost.

Although there is a future for a remnant. God is not remote. God is not aloof.

And that day at Calvary, God was looking on. There was a nation that crucified his son. And even this whole world is marked by that guilt.

But there's a day of intervention coming. And the golden line of divine purpose and the program of God will be carried on. And God is about to intervene again here on planet earth.

When the Lord comes at the rapture, it's the trigger for these events to start to take place. And you and I are living on the very cusp of these events. And in our day and generation, we're charged with being faithful to God, of maintaining testimony in a dark day.

And for those that are faithful, there will be blessing. God has not forgotten his purpose. He's not forgotten his program of events.

Things in the world might go from bad to worse, but everything is on a clear timeline. And very soon, it will all come to pass. And we have the joy of serving him now.

Soon he'll come in his glory and in his power. And it will be glory then to say that he's a friend of mine. When he appears in glory, we also shall appear with him in glory.

Brethren and sisters, lift up your heads. Redemption draweth nigh. And soon we'll be in his presence.

Let us labor for the master then from the dawn to the setting sun. Let's remain faithful to him. Let us seek to go on faithfully according to the principles of the New Testament, the Holy Bible that we're hearing about.

And live for God until we hear the show. The Lord bless his word to our hearts.