CRITICAL NOTES.]
Amos 5:4. Live] Not only remain alive, but possess real favour.
Amos 5:5. Bethel] “A strong dissuasive from idolatry derived from the predicted fall of the objects and places of false worship.”
Amos 5:6. Lest] Danger threatened. Like fire] consuming everything before it (Deuteronomy 4:24; Isaiah 10:17; Lamentations 2:3).
SEEKING GOD AND RENOUNCING SIN.—Amos 5:4-6
Departure from God is the root of all sorrow. Reformation therefore must beradical and not formal. God has not utterly abandoned Israel. He speaks as “our God,” ready on our return to him to deliver and bless. “Seek ye me and ye shall live.”
I. The urgent request. The prophet repeatedly urges them to seek God (Amos 5:4; Amos 5:6; Amos 5:14), from whom they had wandered and whom they had offended.
1. God is the object sought. We must seek him not for any selfish ends, not for gifts, nor for anything out of him. What is the world without him? All may be found and enjoyed in him. Some pursue pleasure, riches, and wealth, others find in God their chief good. “Whom have I in heaven but thee? and there is none upon earth that I desire beside thee.”
2. God must be sought earnestly. The seeking is diligent and anxious. Infinite good is more desirable than created good. We must not seek God anyhow, but with earnestness and perseverance. The pursuit is not an indefinite desire, the mere natural working of the mind, but an intense longing for God. “Ye shall seek me and find me, when ye shall search for me with all your heart.”
II. The needful caution. “But seek not Bethel,” &c. Israel sought God at Bethel; but idolatry is opposed to seeking God, and must be renounced. The worship of God cannot be reconciled with the worship of Baal.
1. Outward forms will not avail. Gilgal and Bethel were ancient places, but empty forms. The truth once taught there had become powerless, and Israel had ceased to obey. Men may plead beauty, antiquity, and prevalence of forms; but we are admonished to abandon them all and trust to the living God. Idolatrous customs will ensure and increase our condemnation. They are an abomination to God. “Seek ye me,” and “pass not to Beersheba.”
2. False hopes wiil disappoint. Bethel was not the house of God. Gilgal would go into captivity, and Beersheba would soon be in ruins. The pleasant things of Gilgal passed into the hands of the enemy. All hopes of residence there were disappointed, and bitter was the remorse of the people. Schemes of worldly happiness and forms of idolatry will utterly fail. False confidences allure men to destruction, do not avert danger nor quench the fire of Divine anger against sin. Idols of every kind are vanity. An idol is nothing in the world (1 Corinthians 8:4; 1 Corinthians 10:19); and “they that observe lying vanities forsake their own mercy.”
III. The encouraging promise. “And ye shall live.”
1. Ye shall escape danger. If the fire broke out none could quench it. Bethel, the centre of idolatry, would be consumed. But if they sought God, they would escape and be delivered from calamities. The sinner can only be saved from eternal death in Christ. For “who among us shall dwell with everlasting burnings?”
2. Ye shall obtain God’s favour. We may be delivered from outward danger, from sickness and distress, yet not redeemed from sin—preserved in natural existence, but deprived of real enjoyment. Life in any sense is good, for “a living dog is better than a dead lion!” The soul can only live when converted, refreshed, and oured of its ills. “Your heart shall live that seek God.” In his favour is life, and “thy lovingkindness is better than life.”
DIVINE JUSTICE A CONSUMING FIRE.—Amos 5:6
This verse is an awful picture of sin and Divine retribution which breaks forth in violence upon ungodly nations.
I. The fuel. “The house of Joseph.” Sinners make themselves fuel for the flame, ripen themselves for destruction. Rotten and unfruitful branches of the Church will be burned. “Behold, they shall be as stubble, the fire shall burn them, they shall not deliver themselves from the power of the flame.”
II. The conflagration. “Lest he break out like fire.”
1. The Divine nature is like fire. “Our God is a consuming fire” (Hebrews 12:28-29; Isaiah 33:14). Holy anger and holy love are found in God. He that is light and love may become, by the power of his wrath, a consuming fire. “A fire goeth before him and burneth his enemies round about” (Psalms 97:3; Deuteronomy 4:24).
2. The Divine procedure is like a fire. When God is provoked to anger judgments will burn the wicked like chaff. Pestilence and war ravage and waste like fire. “The material of sorrow and distress accumulates from period to period. Violation of God’s laws, followed by disregard for social duties, prepares both governments and people for tumult and war. The spark of discontent falls on some portion of the mass, suddenly it blazes forth, and is rapidly communicated from one part to another, till everywhere the signs of woe are seen, ‘blood, and fire, and vapour of smoke.’ ”
HOMILETIC HINTS AND OUTLINES
Amos 5:4. Such as find a distance and are seeking to make it up, may not speed at first, yet that should not weaken their hands, nor will they be accounted less penitent, or be further from acceptance, that they are but pursuers and not enjoyers; for, approven repentance here is not to find God, but to seek him, and these get the promise, Seek ye me, and ye shall live [Hutcheson]. Seek and live. Equally simple and definite are the monition and the promise. Man knows what he has to do, and what to expect. Not merely is warning given, but also promise and the reverse. The gain is certain if one fulfils the condition, but the condition is indispensable. [Lange]. Ye shall live. God’s gracious promises must be held before sinners, lest in despair they go from sin to sin. For how can one feel genuine repentance if he has no hope [Ib.].
Amos 5:5. This is the law of God’s dealings with man; He “curses our blessings,” if we do not use them aright (Malachi 2:2). Christ, the Corner Stone, will break to pieces those who fall upon it; and it will grind to powder those on whom it falls (Matthew 21:44). Our holiest Gilgals—our Sacraments, our Scriptures, our Sermons, our Sundays—which were designed by God to roll away from us the reproach of Egypt, will be rolled away from us, if we do not use them aright, and will roll us downward into our destruction [Wordsworth].
Amos 5:6. Seek. The oft pressing of a duty imports:
1. The excellency;
2. The necessity;
3. The difficulty of doing it: else what need so many words? [Trapp].
ILLUSTRATIONS TO CHAPTER 5
Amos 5:4-6. Jeroboam pretended that it was too much for Israel to go up to Jerusalem. Yet Israel thought it not too much to go to the extremest point of Judah towards Idumæa, perhaps four times as far south of Jerusalem as Jerusalem lay from Bethel. For Beersheba is thought to have lain some 30 miles south of Hebron, which is 22 miles south of Jerusalem; while Bethel is but 12 to the north. So much pains will men take in self-willed service, and yet not see that it takes away the excuse for neglecting the true [Pusey].
Amos 5:6. “Justice is the great but simple principle, and the whole secret of success in all government. It is as essential in the training of an infant as in the government of a mighty nation.”
“Justice, like lightning, ever should appear
To few men’s ruin, but to all men’s fear.” [Sivenam.]