Amos 5:16-20

Amos chapter 5 verses 16 through 20 for our text and study this evening. Therefore the Lord, the God of hosts, the Lord, saith thus. Whaling shall be in all streets. They shall say in all the highways, alas, alas! They shall call the husbandmen to mourning, such as are skillful of lamentation to wailing. In all vineyards shall be wailing, for I will pass through thee, saith the Lord. 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 it. flee from a lion and a bear met him, or went into the house and leaned his hand on the wall, and a serpent bid him. Shall not the day of the Lord be darkness, and not light, even very dark, and no brightness in it? God blessed to us His sacred and holy word this evening. Years ago there was an article in the newspaper. about Auburn Hudson entitled It Just Wasn’t His Day. And the article talked about Mr. Hudson when he left his Midland, Michigan home, picking up the newspaper from the lawn and jumping into his car and heading off to work. What he didn’t realize was that there was a live bird inside the newspaper when he picked it up, and all of a sudden this bird is making him. all kinds of racket and noise. So he stopped the car, opened the door to try to shake out the bird from the newspaper that was rolled up. He didn’t have a seat belt on, so he fell out of the car. Well, the car continued to roll down the street, and eventually crashed into one of the neighbor’s houses. He raced down after the car, but his pants fell down. in the process, and eventually one leg got out of the pant leg, and so he had one leg out and one leg in, and in full view of all the neighbors. It just wasn’t his day. You talk about having a bad day? Well, that’s how a bad day starts. Amos relates here what will happen to Israel. And it corresponds to what happened to Alburn Hudson. It’s not going to be Israel’s day either. Such disaster would overtake them that would be like escaping a lion and a bear only to get bitten by a serpent in the very end, as he talks about in verse 19. Amos makes it clear that the day of the Lord was not going to be a good day for them. In fact, it was going to be. a day that was evil. Now, in verses 16 and 17, you find God passing through the land of Israel. We have the solemn promise of the Lord God that he’s going to do this. Therefore, the Lord, the God of host, the Lord, saith thus, whaling shall be in all the streets, and they shall say in all the highways, alas, alas, and they shall call the husbandman to mourning such as our skillful lamentation to wailing, and in all vineyards shall be wailing, for I will pass through thee, Seth, Lord. Here we have the solemn promise of the Lord God. The Israelites have been told, and no uncertain terms previously in verses 14 and 15, that they needed to repent. and be converted. Conversion is not merely the change of outward behavior, but it has to do with a heart change that God provides, and it is one that affects the attitude and the thinking of an individual. There must be a love for what is good in the sight of God, and a hatred for that which is evil in the sight of God. Amos warned the people, unless they sought the Lord, God’s wrath was going to fall upon them. Now, because Israel was not going to turn from her evil ways, God says, therefore, this is what I’m going to do. I’m going to pass through you. God here promises this using a full description of himself. The Lord. The God of hosts, the Lord, said thus, to demonstrate how serious the matter is and what he is going to do. This threat is not just an idle threat from a small prophet who happened to come to the Northern Kingdom and preach to them. It comes from the Lord God himself. He is Jehovah God. He is the Holy One. He is the God of host who has an army of heaven at his command with all the angels that are under his authority. Who has boundless, irresistible power. He is the Lord Adonai, who has an absolute incontestable sovereignty over the entire. universe who can do whatever he pleases in heaven and earth. It is he who speaks. The one who without a doubt can make his words good and bring to pass any threat that he makes. So this is the solemn promise of the Lord God here. Now there’s going to be, in a sense, here another Passover. I will pass through. through thee, he says in verse 17. Now, these words remind us of the time where God passed through Egypt and brought his judgment. And he slew the firstborn in every home except for the Israelites. It was a night when Israel Israel rejoiced because God’s death angel passed over them, but smote the homes of their enemies, the Egyptians. The Israelites sat calmly in their house, their homes, eating the Passover meal with the blood of the lamb painted on the doorpost, and God passed over them. They were safe and sound. And when the death angels saw the blood, those houses of the Jews were skipped and they were spared the awful judgment which Egypt endured. Here, however, God says, I’m not going to pass over you. I am going to pass through you. You will feel the plague of judgment that you missed in Egypt. Instead of joy, there will be mourning in all your homes. Amos’ sketch of the misery of Israel was rather complete. There’s no area of Israel’s life that’s bypassed. When he talks about the cities, the dead will be so numerous. They’ll be wailing in every public square. The people will be crying out, alas, on the highway as they flee the city and terror, and there’s a mass exodus. On the countryside, the countryside, there’s going to be judgment also, even the farmlands, the vineyards, the rural sections of Israel are going to feel God’s judgment as well. The farmer, the husbandman here, will be called into the field to the home because there’s been death in the family. There will be a call here for those who were skillful of lamentation versus the professional mourners. Jeremiah talks about this in Jeremiah 9, 17, and 18. Thus saith the Lord of hosts call for the mourning women. They may come. Send for cunning women that they may come. Let them make haste and take up a wailing for us that our eyes may run down with tears and our eyelids gush out with water. Even the vineyards, which were normally happy places where they tread out the grapes and make the wine and so forth. They sing the songs while they’re doing this. It too will not be spared. And they’ll be wailing there too. Now, the Assyrians are going to be God’s death angel on this occasion. They’re the ones that are going to be the sword, so to speak, that passes through the land, the northern kingdom. and that brings judgment, and they are going to lay waste the northern kingdom of Israel. So you find God passing through the land of Israel. You also find the day of the Lord is to be feared in verses 18 to 20. Now, we see Israel’s mistaken notion of the devil’s mistaken notion of the devil’s, day of the Lord. Look at verse 18. Woe unto you that desire the day of the Lord to what end is it for you? The day of Lord is darkness and not light? Verse 20. Shall not the day of the Lord be darkness and not light? Even very dark. No brightness in it. Now Israel has a mistaken notion about the day of the Lord. They didn’t regard the day of the Lord with fear. They thought it was going to be a positive thing. They thought it was going to be a positive thing. They thought it was going to be great when the Lord judged their enemies and brought down those who opposed them. They recalled the great days of God’s activity, perhaps in the past, days of his visitation, what he would grant deliverance to them, what he would grant deliverance to them, what he would grant grant the giving in the day of the day of the day of the day of the day of the day of the day of the day of the day of the day of the day. the day of redemption in Egypt, let’s say, the day of giving of the law when God came down on Mount Sinai, the revelation that he provided, or the day of Joshua when the sun stood still so that they could defeat their enemies. All these things were God’s visitations, the day of the Lord. And these recollections of these ancient days of the Lord gave them a positive view that when the Lord visits us, it will be a good. a good thing. So in the coming year, they would hope that God would visit them and grant them the victory that we talked about. Did they have temporal deliverance? And thus the day of the Lord in Israel’s mind was a day to desire. However, Amos comes along and tells them that you’re delusionary. If you think the day of the Lord is a day that you should desire, for the day they all desired was going to be turning out to be a day of darkness. And here, the word darkness is used in a sense of affliction, calamity, misery, distress, and not light, not happiness, not blessing. Misery, not joy. Israel no longer lived according to the commandments of God. How could they expect God’s blessing? And perhaps they had an idea because of their political and social prosperity at the time that God was blessing them, that their good fortune would suggest that the future was bright. Perhaps their recent victory over the Syrians would make them think that everything was going in the right direction for them. But they confused earthly success with God’s blessing, as many do today. All their good fortune suggested to them, our future is going to be great when the day of the Lord comes. But Amos says the decline here, the fall of Israel is certain. There’s going to be a judgment associated with the day of the Lord. Now we have a vivid illustration in verse 19 of what we might call inescapable danger. Notice what he says here. As if a man did flee from a lion and a bear met him or went into the house and leaned his hand on the wall and a serpent bid him. Now you can imagine you’re a man encountering a fierce lying and in he has just a terrifying encounter with the King of Beast. And it is a scary ordeal to him. And he’s running like a man possessed to get away from the lion. He somehow manages to escape. Maybe he jumps off a cliff into the river below or something, swims over to the other side of the bank and gets out and wipes his forehead and thinks, boy, that was close. But no sooner does he escape the lion, but we find that he encounters a bear before he’s even able to catch his breath. And so this bloodthirsty bear confronts him and growls angrily at him, and now he’s facing death again and he begins to flee again. He runs and runs and runs until he’s almost out of strength, and he can hear the panting of the bear as it gets closer and closer to him. closing the distance. He’s where he can’t run any further. He runs into a house here, which seems to be some type of like Shepard’s cottage or something of this nature out there in the fields. And so he rushes inside and bars the door. Again, he is escaped. It’s a miracle. I got away from a lion and a bear. And you can imagine and he’s exhausted. He leans up against the wall. But through a crack of the wall, out comes a serpent and bites him on the arm. And the poison goes into him and he’s going to die. And he dies there in the cottage. It seemed like he was going to escape. It seemed like that he had had miraculous escape. But no, we find that there was a hidden danger that cut up with him. and here he dies. He ultimately didn’t escape death that day. Now, what is this application with regard to Israel? What a frightening story that a man would escape a lion and a bear, but not the deceptive snake who was concealed in the crack in the wall. Well, the real danger of the snake simply had not crossed the man’s mind. It was a hidden danger. It cost him his life. The nation had escaped dangers in the past. When we think about Israel, it had faced its lions and bears. You remember how Daniel 7, the different wild beast represented nations. In fact, remember the lion would represent Babylon, not here, but there. And also the bear represented. represented Medo-Persia in Daniel chapter 7. So it’s not unusual for these animals to portray some type of wild beast, a nation that’s foreign, that’s hostile to them. We could talk about the Egyptians, we could talk about the Philistines, we could talk about the Syrians, and they escaped these nations in the past. But now Israel’s and peace and prosperity. They’re in the cottage. They’re leaning against the wall thinking of how everything has gone well and they escaped the danger that was in hand when all of a sudden out of nowhere judgment comes against them. And the Assyrians are going to come along and just destroy them. The thing that they didn’t expect was it was concealed at the the moment is suddenly going to strike them like a snake coming out of a crevice hidden and then striking and they’re going to be caught off guard. The day of the Lord is to be feared. Now, what are the practical applications we can make? I want to make two tonight. The first one is this. You need to watch out for his dangers. It’s possible to be caught off guard by small hidden dangers. You certainly know how to defend yourself perhaps against the lions and the bears, the obvious dangers that come along in your Christian life. You see the lion and the bear on the road you carefully avoid them, you know, to run for your life. I trust that you’re all aware of the dangers of adultery and theft and murder and things of this nature. And you’d run away from these things and flee youthful lust and so forth. You know, how Joseph literally had to run away from Potipher’s wife when she was making sexual advances toward him to escape adultery. But you don’t often see the snakes. You don’t often see those hidden things lurking in the corners and crevices of your life. and that can be the real problem. There are subtle dangers that you face. There are snakes in the wall. There are times when there may be unchecked lusts in your life. Maybe there are outbursts of anger. Maybe there is selfishness. Maybe there is greed. Maybe there is pride still in your heart. Maybe you have a lot of anger. have a harmful tongue. That is very much given to gossip or the cutting and the slicing and the slicing and dicing of other people. Maybe there’s covetousness that still hinders you. Maybe you have a situation where you’re in temperate with regard to the things of this life. I could go on and on. There are subtle dangers in your day. Do they pull you away from the duties that you have to serve the Lord? Snakes in your life or are the uncombated sins that still show up here and there. And we need to be very careful that we look into the cracks of the walls of our hearts, so to speak. There are not snakes still there that can bite us, that can harm us as we go through this life. If you have a poison snake, your house, I’m sure you had worked diligently to get it out. I had a nephew that had a boa constrictor that was lost for like six months in their house. They didn’t know where it was. I’m thinking, I don’t think I would want to be in that house. But poisonous sins, we can’t tolerate them. We have to realize that sin is deadly. It has to be put to death. Spurgeon once said with regard to sin in your life. He said, it’s easier to smash the egg than it is to kill the serpent. Kill sin at its earliest stage. Don’t let it grow. Don’t let it get bigger. Nip it in the bud, so to speak. So you need to be watching out for hidden dangers in your life. The second thing is this. What will the day of the Lord be like for you? I’m afraid that there are millions of people who think about death and eternity like Israel thought about the day of the Lord. They’re expecting things to work out all right in the end for them. There are a number of professing Christians, their devotees of various denominations, that are viewing eternity as something to desire. When is Christ going to come back again? Or some believe it. When’s the secret rapture going to occur? And they anticipate the coming of Christ or even their own death as something that’s going to be positive for them. That heaven they’re going to enjoy. They’re going to escape all their earthly troubles. The real Christian centers his hope on a reconciled and redeemed state with God. He has fellowship with God now through the atonement that he has in Christ His Savior. But there are many really do not know anything about personal faith in Christ have nothing more than a smattering of religion who desire the day of the Lord, but they’re mistaken when they desire the day of Christ in his return. They’re looking for good and not evil. They’re looking for a bright future and not one of darkness. And yet they are devoid of what Scripture calls true discipleship. Which involves a saving trust in Jesus Christ as the only hope of your salvation. A love of Christ in the hearts and you’re devoted to the Savior is like a marriage bond that we’ve seen in the Song of Solomon. It’s a diligent obedience to the teachings of God found in Scripture. that we even talked about this morning, being the wise builder, not the foolish one. Nevertheless, these people somehow are confident that when Christ returns or when they die, they’re going to go to heaven. Perhaps they’re led to believe that when they die, all of a sudden they’re going to be somehow so transformed that they’ll magically become a different person than they were in this life, and they will now have love for Christ, and they will now have spiritual desires what they presently lack. You don’t want to find that the day you hope would bring brightness, joy and happiness, is actually one of doom and darkness, misery, and disaster. And my friends, the outer darkness of hellfire is a terrible place to end up. And yet, it is going to be a day of darkness for many who profess to know the Lord God. Let me test yourself in four areas. And one is the love of God’s truth. In verse 10 of this chapter, we read about, they hate him that rebuketh in the gate, they abhor him, that speaketh uprightly. The people who speak uprightly, the people who speak what God says in his word. We have to be a people who love God’s word. We have to be a people that do not attempt to suppress the truth, but receive it, and allow it to govern our lives, so that we can say with the Psalmist, O how I love thy law, that we’re guided by its dictates and its teachings. You need to have love for others. Verse 11, for as much as you therefore tread, your treading is upon the poor, and you take from him burdens of wheat, you have built houses of eunstone, but ye shall not dwell in them. You have planted pleasant vineyards, but you shall not drink wine of them. Amos points out here that Israel’s relationship to God cannot be right because of the way they treat their fellow human beings, their fellow citizens in the nation. They mistreat them badly. Israel thought, that the life to be lived was that on the principle that other people are to be taken advantage of, swindled, played for suckers. If you have been transformed by God’s grace, you’re going to be willing to serve others, to love your neighbor as yourself, not harm them. You’ll seek their good, their prosperity, and certainly their spiritual health. Third thing here. Concern for God’s approval. In verse 12, for I know your manifold transgressions and your mighty sins. They afflict the just, they take a bribe, they turn aside the poor in the gate from their right. If you can go along nonchalantly in your life with these sins that are manifold, something seriously wrong. There’s no grief. over their transgressions. There can obviously be no assurance that their sins are forgiven because they have no concern about sin in their life. That’s a dangerous thing. The latter part of verse 12 that I just read also provides the fourth point and that is moral integrity. If you are a believer, you’re not going to be siding with people because of what you can get from them, what they have to offer you, how you can be advantaged in this life. What is important to you? Is it money in the pocket? Or is it holiness of life? What motivates you in this life? What’s driving you? What’s the thing behind your life? And we see with some, it is an evil motivation, but for the godly, it is a whole. Holy one, we must set ourselves to live in the manner prescribed here. Not to earn salvation, but as evidence that we are saved. That we are changed by the grace of God. Otherwise, we’re not prepared for the day of the Lord when he visits. Let us close with the word of prayer tonight.