CRITICAL NOTES.] The visions continued from ch. Amos 7:9
Amos 8:2. Summer] Late fruit, fully ripe (2 Samuel 16:1; Micah 7:1); a symbol of a people ripe for judgment
Amos 8:3. Howl.] Songs of joy (ch. Amos 6:5; 2 Samuel 19:36) would be turned into lamentation on account of the dead. Silence] Lit. silently, not with customary rites and professional mourners; the terror of God and dread of the enemy would make them afraid to speak. “An admonition to bow beneath the overwhelming severity of the judgment of God, as in Zephaniah 1:7 (cf. Hebrews 2:18 and Zechariah 2:13).”
HOMILETICS
A BASKET OF SUMMER FRUIT.—Amos 8:1-2.
Under a new type the final subversion of the state is represented. As summer fruits portend ripe harvests, so the sins of Israel ripened them for destruction. Taking the basket of fruit as an emblem of ripeness for judgment, notice—
I. A ripeness which is gradual. Nothing is matured at once. There must be seed-time before harvests; buds and flowers before fruits. Individual character is of slow growth. Seeds of national ills ripen secretly. The interval between the spring and the reaping time is defined in nature and religion.
II. A ripeness which is ruinous. Men grow in wickedness as well as in holiness; ripen for destruction as well as for salvation. God’s dealings influence according to moral condition. The sun which melts the wax hardens the clay. The dew and rain water the earth, but injure the fruit. God’s mercies and judgments ripen for glory or for shame. A condition which is spiritually rotten can produce nothing but decay and untimely end. Some people are like stubble laid out to dry in the sun and ripen for the fire. “They shall be devoured as stubble fully dry.”
III. A ripeness which terminates existence. “The end is come upon my people.” In summer nothing more is to be done but reap the crops. Good or bad, the time is come and it must be cut down. God’s dealings with Israel were completed. They had neglected to reform. Their harvest was past and their summer ended. A period comes when God no longer spares a people. The fruit must be gathered and devoured by the enemy. The days are fulfilled and the end is come (Lamentations 4:18). “An end is come, the end is come; it watcheth for thee; behold, it is come.”
FRUIT FROM THE HEAVENLY ORCHARD
We may derive from these words the following lessons.
1. God gives fruit. “The fruit of the Spirit,” &c. “The tree of Life that beareth all manner of precious fruit.”
2. God’s fruit is ripe. “It is summer fruit.” The fruit of sin is sour; sweet to the taste, but bitter afterwards—“pleasures of sin for a season.” Hence—
3. God’s fruit is wholesome, like all ripe fruit, regulating and adjusting food of other sort. Christianity is a grand controlling and regulating force. The soil that grows the fruits of the Spirit cannot nourish growths of an opposite character.
4. God’s fruit is satisfying. Even ripe fruit is not long satisfying. Lawful pleasures do not bring contentment. The fruit that the soul craves grows not in earthly orchards.
5. God’s fruit is sustaining. Certain kinds of fruit will appease appetite for awhile without any sustentation. The fruit of God imparts strength that is permanent; in care, sickness, bereavement, and death.
6. God’s fruit is stimulating. It is the fruit of the vine, “the true vine,” yielding “the best wine.” It is the stimulus of waning powers; prompts to action where energies would otherwise be dormant.
7. God’s fruit is plentiful. “A basket of fruit,” always replenished, multiplying in the use, like the “twelve baskets” of fragments, &c. The basket always filled. There is no dearth in God’s orchard; no grudging in his supplies; enough for all, everywhere, at all times.
8. God’s fruit is cheap. “Wine and milk, without money and without price,” &c. [The Study].
A DAY OF SADNESS.—Amos 8:3
The prophet now describes the greatness of approaching judgments to rouse attention to a sense of danger—universal mourning and universal death would afflict the land.
1. Temple music would be turned into grief. The songs and sacred solemnities of the temple would cease. Mirthful music would end in grievous misery. Sin turns the greatest joy into the greatest heaviness, the loudest music into the bitterest howlings. If men do not sing in a day of grace, they will howl in a time of wrath. “Those that will not serve God with gladness of heart,” says an old author, “in the abundance of all things, shall serve him in sadness of heart in the want of all things (Deuteronomy 28:47-48).”
2. Mortality would be prevalent in every place. Sin brings sword, pestilence, and famine (Ezekiel 14:21); sweeps away its thousands, and fills the land with lamentation and mourning. History tells of populations carried away by Divine judgments like leaves before the wind (Isaiah 64:6). The picture in Israel is a type of many a fact in providence. Many dead—dead in every place and buried in common pits, without customary rites. Grief could find no vent to relieve itself. The sorrow could not wear away in utterance. The burden was intolerable and the silence universal. The living and the dead were solemn as the grave. How sad that everlasting death which awaits an ungodly race!
“Death loves a shining mark, a signal blow” [Young].
HOMILETIC HINTS AND OUTLINES
Amos 8:1. A basket, &c.
1. A type of God’s goodness in nature. He gives fruit in due season, in rich abundance, &c. He never left himself without a witness (Acts 14:17).
2. A type of human diligence in co-operating with God. Beasts eat without industry. Man has to till the ground and cultivate the trees. The fruit must be gathered and the basket made. If we do not work, neither can we eat. “There is a basket of fruit which is so ripe, that it has been gathered, and it is a sort of fruit—summer fruit—which will not keep, which will not lay by until winter, but must be eaten at once. It teaches—
1. That there is a ripeness in God’s purposes. God always times his decrees. In the first and second advent of Jesus Christ. In our own personal affairs God gives deliverance not in thy time, but in his. Trust him for mercy in its time, &c.
2. That nations have their ripeness, and that when they come to their ripeness they must be destroyed. Sceptics may entertain doubts concerning individual transgression and personal punishment, but history proves that national judgments have been sent from God. Take Babylon, Greece, and Rome. We as a people are guilty, and should not be proud and self-righteous.
3. That there is a ripeness of men as well as of summer fruit. With the righteous a time of ripening for heaven, a ripening in knowledge, experience, and spirituality. With the ungodly a ripening in the love of sin and hardness of heart, a ripening for eternal judgment! Take heed! Be renewed in heart and ripened for eternal glory” [Spurgeon].
Amos 8:1-2. The manner in which the truth is conveyed to the prophet’s mind by different representations reminds us of the course pursued towards the apostles by the Lord, and teaches that we should endeavour to answer the purpose of God, and to let the truth sink deeply into our minds, that being clearly understood it may powerfully affect us, and make us ready to impart it to others [Ryan].
First, those nearest destruction are often the most negligent and stupid. They need to be told often of their danger and roused to diligence. God warns them often and leaves them without excuse. Second, the servants of God have need to be instructed that they may warn others. Attention to the revelation must be quickened. Behold. The vision itself must be seen and explained. “What seest thou?” They must declare nothing but what they have received. “Thus hath the Lord God showed unto me.”
Meditate carefully on the object presented to view. It suggests the idea of a tree which had been planted, tended, watered with the rain and 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 that fruit. At previous times, when the leaves and blossom came forth, there would be room for anxiety or hope; there would afterwards be room for doubt as to its future size and goodness, according to its progress during the weeks of its growth,—but now all was over. 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. “The end is come” [Ryan].
ILLUSTRATIONS TO CHAPTER 8
Amos 8:1-2. God hath done more for Britain, or certainly as much, as he did for Abraham’s race, and even if we have not rebelled as often as Israel in the wilderness, yet our little rebellions are great because of the greatness of God’s goodness. Oh, Christians, be in earnest that the land may be filled with grace; that the torrent of our iniquities may be dried up, lest haply that supposition of a great historian should at last become a fact, and the New Zealander should yet sit on the broken arch of London Bridge, wondering that so great a city could have passed away [Spurgeon].
Amos 8:3. Mirth. Many a sigh is heaved amid the loud laughter of folly. Take the fullest cup of earth’s best joys. What is this to satisfy desire, to allay trouble, to meet eternity? Even the present end of this short-lived mirth is heaviness, sometimes so intolerable, that death is fled to as the cure of anguish; and to avoid the fear of hell the wretched sinner leaps into it. At best eternity will change this mirth, when that will remain which would be the most desirable riddance—the sting of conscience, as enduring as the pleasures of sin were momentary [Bridge].