Come to Bethel, and transgress; at Gilgal multiply transgression.
Ill-spent service
I. The scenes of this idolatry. “Come to Bethel, and transgress; at Gilgal multiply transgression.” Idolatry was flourishing in the seats of their most hallowed memories. “Come,” he says, “to Bethel.” Here, where everything spoke of God’s mercy, they were to transgress. At Bethel the founder of their race, fresh from his home in Haran, had “builded an altar unto the Lord, and called upon the name of the Lord “ (Genesis 12:8). Here, on his return from Egypt, he had received the promise that all the land on which he looked should be given to him and his seed for ever (Genesis 13:1-18.). There was no spot in the land so rich in memories of God’s great goodness as Bethel, yet here they transgressed. Think of a man calling the Duke of Wellington a coward at Waterloo, or forgetting Nelson in Trafalgar Bay. Even this is a faint picture of the insults which Israel offered to God in the place of His richest mercy to the nation. At Gilgal too they multiplied transgressions. Hosea (Hosea 9:15) even says “all their wickedness is in Gilgal.” It was the spot where Joshua, just installed as leader after the death of Moses, placed the twelve stones which they had taken out of Jordan (Joshua 4:24). Strange and sad is the story of human sin! In Gilgal they were despising their Champion and Deliverer. The city had another memory which might have saved them. They kept their first passover in the land in Gilgal (Joshua 5:10-12). Sin has a short memory. It tries hard to escape from the remembrance of God’s mercy, and can transgress without remorse in the places where heaven has multiplied blessings. Learn, if you would escape the misery of grieving God, to recall His mercies. Every step of life’s journey is rich in proofs of His mercy. Barrow says in one of his sermons, that as men choose the fairest places in great cities for monuments of national deliverance, so we should erect in our hearts “lively representations of, and lasting memorials, unto the Divine bounty.”
II. The spirit of their idolatry. For once they were whole-hearted in worship. They seem to have been prompt to do everything for their idols, though they refused to do anything for God. Sacrifices every day; tithes of their substance every three years; thank-offerings, even freewill offerings, were readily presented at Bethel and Gilgal. Nothing seems to have been too much for them to do. They withdrew from business and pleasure that they might offer their morning sacrifices, etc. To whom? To the idol calf of Bethel, which was soon to be carried--a curiosity of the plundered land--as a present to king Jareb (Hosea 10:6). For God they would do nothing. Their whole strength and wealth were devoted to idols that were powerless to help them, and to priests who were blinding them to the doom which was near at hand. It is a true picture of many still. They will do nothing for God, they are ready to do anything for sin.
III. Reason for this determined transgression. “This liketh you, O ye children of Israel, saith the Lord.” Their hearts were wrong, therefore they multiplied transgression. There was no call to think in this false worship. The idol priests sought to drown the voice of conscience and to silence any faithful reproof which might have led to reformation of life. Men came from their houses of ivory, which had been built up with oppression, from the palaces where “robbery and violence” were stored up, and there was no Baptist voice to cry as they entered into the idol temple, “Bring forth fruits meet for repentance.” The reason for the alacrity which men show in sin is written here: “this liketh you.” But let every man of reason consider! Are we children that “like” should rule? (J. Telford, B. A.)
Worship abounding with abounding sin
Crimes ran riot among the people at this period, and yet how religious they seemed to be!
I. Abounding worship often implies abounding sin. This is the case when the worship is--
1. Selfish. Men crowd churches, and contribute to religious institutions purely with the idea of avoiding hell and getting to a happier world than this.
2. Formal. Abounding worship is no proof of abounding virtue and abounding godliness.
II. Abounding worship often springs from abounding sin, It may spring from--
1. A desire to conceal sin. Sin is an ugly thing; it is hideous to the eye of conscience. Hence efforts on all hands to conceal.
2. A desire to compensate for evils. Great brewers build churches and endow religious institutions in order to compensate in some measure for the enormous evil connected with their trade.
3. A desire to appear good. The more corrupt a man is, the stronger his desire to appear otherwise. Do not judge the character of a nation by the number of its churches, the multitude of its worshippers. ( Homilist.)
A sinful people resisting the chastisements of God
No sterner picture of an utterly rotten social state was ever drawn than this book gives of the luxury, licentiousness, and oppressiveness of the ruling classes. This passage deals with the religious declension underlying the moral filth, and sets forth the self-willed idolatry of the people (Amos 4:4-5); their obstinate resistance to God’s merciful chastisement (Amos 4:6-11); and the heavier impending judgment (Amos 4:12-13).
1. Indignant irony flashes in that permission or command to persevere in the calf worship. The seeming command is the strongest prohibition. The lessons of this burst of sarcasm are plain. The subtle influence of self creeps in even in worship, and makes it hollow, unreal, and powerless to bless the worshipper. Obedience is better than costly gifts. Men will lavish gifts far more freely in apparent religious service, which is but the worship of their reflected selves, than in true service of God. And the purity of willing offerings is marred when they are given in response to a loud call, or when given, are proclaimed with acclamations.
2. The blaze of indignation changes into wounded tenderness. Mark the sad cadence of the fivefold refrain. “Yet have ye not returned unto Me, saith the Lord.” To Amos, famine, drought, blasting, locusts, pestilence, and probably earthquake, were messengers of God, and Amos was taught of God. If we looked deeper we should see more clearly. To the prophet’s eye the world is all aflame with a present God. Amos had another principle. God sent physical calamities because of moral delinquencies, and for moral and religious ends. These disasters were meant to bring Israel back to God, and were at once punishments and reformatory methods. Amos’s lesson as to the purpose of trials is not antiquated. Amos also teaches the awful power which we have of resisting God’s efforts to draw us back. The true tragedy of the world is that God calls and we refuse.
3. Again the mood changes, and the issue of protracted resistance is prophesied (verses 12, 13). Long-delayed judgments are severe, in proportion as they are slow. The contact of Divine power with human rebellion can only end in one way, and that is too terrible for speech. The certainty of judgment is the basis of a call to repentance, which may avert it. The meeting referred to is not judgment after death, but the impending destruction of the northern kingdom. But Amos’s prophetic call is not misapplied when directed to the final day of the Lord. The conditions of meeting the Judge, and being “found of Him in peace,” are that we should be “without spot and blameless”; and the conditions of being so spotless and uncensurable axe repentance and trust. Only we have Jesus as the brightness of the Father’s glory to trust in, and His all-sufficient work to trust to for pardon and purifying. (A. Maclaren, D. D.)
Israel often reproved
The Book of Amos is one of the simplest in the Bible. The gist of it is found in Amos 3:2. This is the prophet’s theme. It contains three distinct thoughts: the love of God for Israel; the fate in store for them; and the sins by which they had forfeited the one and merited the other. The rest of the book is largely a series of variations on this theme.
1. “Come to Bethel,” cries the prophet. The words are hortatory only in form, for Amos adds in the same breath, “and transgress.” It is not very clear why the prophet condemned the worship at Bethel. It is probable that Amos was thinking of the character of the worshippers. They certainly, if they had been only h all a§ bad as he describes them in the second chapter, would have been sadly unfit to appear before a holy God. Amos did not condemn sacrifices and offerings as such. They mean that the man who is impure in his life, or unjust to his neighbour, whatever else he may he or do, is yet in his sins: that if he continues such as he is no amount of zeal in the forms of religion will make him acceptable to God; that in fact the attempt to substitute anything for moral character is an insult to the Holy One of Israel.
2. “Yet have ye not returned unto Me.” There is a note of surprise and disappointment in the words by which the second thought is introduced. They indicate that the condition of Israel was not what was to be expected. The words following explain why a different state of things ought to have existed--because God had repeatedly afflicted them. Amos here clearly teaches that the calamities which he describes were sent upon Israel on account of their sins, and for the purpose of turning them to God. It would be interesting to know just what was his idea with reference to what we call “misfortunes.” Probably he saw some connection between the afflictions which befell Israel and their moral condition. We are not satisfied with the simple views of God and His relation to the world which once prevailed. We know that, though we cannot explain why, the guiltless as well as the guilty arc sometimes overtaken by misfortune. But Israel did not heed the lesson that God would have taught them.
3. “Therefore thus will I do unto thee” (verse 12). There is no picture of coming terror. Amos could at most but dimly outline what they were to expect. The summons, “Prepare to meet thy God,” is usually misunderstood. The words are not an appeal, but a challenge. Persistence in sin means nothing short of an encounter with the Almighty. We have dwelt upon the goodness of God so much that we have almost lost sight of His severity. There is, however, a severe side to His character. And can a man contend with his Maker? The fate of Israel is an illustration of the fatal consequences of persistent disobedience of God. (Hinckley G. Mitchell.)
Israel of ten reproved
This entire prophecy is one of denunciation. Only once or twice is there even hinted the possibility of better things, and only at the very close, like a gleam of sunset glory at the end of a day of gloom, is the full promise given of a restoration of Israel to goodness and to glory. The prophecies against the six enemies of the chosen people and against Judah, with which the book begins, are only preparatory to the full description of the sin of Israel and the punishment which is to come upon its people. Israel, so far as it is like the nations that know not God, is exposed to the same judgments as they.
I. The prophecy is addressed to those who abuse their privileges. Israel was the chosen people, having the oracles of God. They knew the spiritual being and holy character of Jehovah. They had entered into covenant with Him. They had been taught both how to worship Him and how to please Him in their lives. And yet they did not walk as children of the light. They sinned even in their worship. The shrines at Bethel and at Gilgal were the centres of a mingled idolatry and Jehovah-worship. Though they brought sacrifices every morning and tithed their increase or possessions every three days, though they offered not only unleavened bread, but the leavened also, though they encouraged one another to multiply their free-will offerings; however much they might increase their devotion to such religious forms as pleased them, all this was only the increase of their sin, according to the taunting exhortation of the prophet. Mere religiousness never will save a people or a person. External forms grow more rigid when the life has gone out of them, and so announce the loss. To worship the Lord and serve our own gods is the height of impiety. The calf-worship was worse than Baal-worship, because it was a mare conscious defiance of Jehovah. Israel was a prospered people. These days of Jeroboam
II. were at the very summit of its prosperity. The northern kingdom extended to the limits reached under Solomon. Damascus was taken; Moab was reconquered; Israel was powerful and rich. But Israel, instead of making of this richness a very garden of the Lord, suffered all the weeds to grow out of it which so easily find root in such a soil. The sins which mark prosperity are the sins of the prosperous classes. Those who were high in position and rich in possessions in Israel were indulgent toward themselves and oppressive toward the poor. Nations and men need to be warned in their prosperity. It is not easy to tell the truth to the rich and the high. It takes the sense of a prophetic mission to give one courage so to do. Let us beware! What prophet has a message for us like that of Amos the herdsman from Judah for court and priest and people of Israel? Prophets enough, but how many, alas, with no message from the Lord! Our ears are filled with the teachings of political economists contradicting and confounding one another. The air is strident with the harsh cries of the false prophets of materialism.
II. The prophecy is addressed to those who neglect the discipline of adversity. Israel had had its share of that. Jehovah could not vindicate His Fatherhood unless He corrected the faults of His children by reproof and punishment as well as by the encouragement of prosperity and the stimulus of opportunity. By a famine of food and a famine of water, by a failure of crops, by the scourge of pestilence, by general destruction brought upon them in many ways He had sought to rouse the thoughts of His people and to turn their attention to their evil ways. But it had all been to no purpose. “Yet have ye not returned unto Me, saith the Lord.” When all the discipline which the wise father has been able to devise has failed, his heart is sad and disappointed. We have heard a great deal about probation in the pulpits of the past and in the theological discussions of the present. And yet the term and thought are often misused and distorted. We are not set out upon this earthly life that God may put us through its various experiences to see what is in us, as though He were an assayer to whom each human life was brought that He might determine its value and use by an application of the most efficient tests. We are God’s children in our Father’s house, and He is trying to educate and discipline us for our proper place and part in the home life as we come to our maturity. We must learn self-restraint and submission to others; we must grow into fuller sympathy with His ways and plans. All this is discipline, not probation. It is education, not testing. True, it does all test us, but in no peculiar sense. Everything tests us. Each command and each caress equally, by the response which it elicits, shows our quality and fibre. But you neither kiss your child nor send him on an errand to test him. But there comes a time, where all has been done that love and wisdom can devise, when the father says, and the mother sits by consenting through sorrow too deep for tears and moans, “We have done all that we can for him. He abuses all his privileges and misuses all his opportunities. He profits nothing by the consequences of his evil doing or by the punishments we have inflicted. We are only making him worse by trying to help him. We have done all that we can do, ‘yet he has not returned unto us.’” That is just the case with the mass of the people, both of Israel and of our time and nation.
III. The prophecy is addressed to those who have still an opportunity to return. The language of the prophet is stern and severe, and yet it is not an unrelenting severity, nor the sternness of a final sentence. There is this contrast between the threats against the Gentile nations and those spoken to Israel. Nothing is said of a relenting there, but here it is always implied or expressed. The threat against the chosen people is all the more severe by reason of its vagueness: “Thus will I do unto thee, O Israel”; as though could not bear to put into words the terrible things which He foresaw would become necessary. But the threat is relieved by the command which has in it both the elements of terror and of comfort: “Prepare to meet thy God, O Israel!” There could be no escape from that encounter. But there was yet time and opportunity for them to make the needed preparation for that meeting. It could not be a preparation to meet their doom which they were bidden to make. It could only be a making ready by penitence and amendment of their lives to meet their God without fear that they might receive His pardon and be restored to His favour. Indeed, the very announcement of a purpose to punish implies a possibility of averting the threatened wrath. The thunderbolts of God are to arouse the attention of the rebellious ones, and the flashes of His lightning show the path which leads to Him. Yes, one more opportunity is given to every one to whom either the threatening of the law or the invitation of the Gospel comes; to every one to whom at least it has a meaning. Law and grace are but the two hands of love. It behoves the men of the nineteenth century, whether they are in the enjoyment of proud prosperity or in the endurance of humbling discipline, to remember that the purpose of both is to draw or drive them back to God. (George M. Boynton.)