Some Things Never Change

Amos 7:7-15.

PENTECOST

Rev. David Domanski

7/14/20243 min read

The more things change, the more they stay the same. So they say. But really? The world has changed an awful lot since the days of the prophet Amos in the early eighth century BC. Surely his Israel is nothing like our North American context of the twenty-first century . . . Well, except that God, his relationship with people, and their relationship to him have so much that never changes. The very same message God sent Amos to proclaim to Israel in the 700s BC is true for us today.

  In Amos’s time, God’s message to His people was that Israel must change! God usually used visions to communicate with the prophets in the Old Testament. And Amos’s vision employed a visual aid to make a point. The vision showed the Lord standing beside a straight wall with a plumb line in his hand (vv 7–8b). A plumb line is used to measure whether something lines up with a standard. Although not explicitly stated, it is clear that the results were not good; the people were not in line with God’s will. Israel was guilty of greed, of sexual sins, and of false worship—not at all plumb with God’s expectations of holy life!

And in our time, sinful lives still must change too! Many aspects of day-to-day life have changed since eight centuries before Jesus, but God’s Law has not changed, people have not changed, and sin hasn’t changed. And God uses the same plumb line with us as he did with Israel: the Ten Commandments. The Commandments show every individual definitely “out of plumb.” We have to agree with Luther’s Questions and Answers: “How do you know [that you are a sinner]? From the Ten Commandments, which I have not kept” (Question 2). This applies to everyone in the world, and the consequence remains as it was for Israel. Luther explains in the Close of the Commandments: “God threatens to punish all who break these commandments.”

 And in another treatment of what doesn’t change over the course of history is that we and Israel forget that our refusal to change will bring consequences! In Amos’s time, God would punish all those who refused to change their sinful lives. Amos proclaimed God’s judgment, the results of the sins of the people. He made very clear that sin, failing to match God’s “plumb line,” has dire consequences (vv 8c–9). God made sure that the house of Jeroboam, the king who was responsible for the actions of his people, would be destroyed by the sword . . . and the king was killed.

Amos also proclaimed that Israel would have to go into exile, sent away from the Promised Land and no longer allowed to live there. Amos made that proclamation in Bethel, a town where a temple of the Northern Kingdom was located. This should have been a place where the people and the priests understood exactly what the prophet was saying. But they didn’t listen, and we also fight against God in our time refusing to change our sinful lives. Though we don’t want to stop sinning, Ezekiel’s statement, “The soul who sins shall die” (Ezek 18:20), still applies.

Today, speaking against sins people don’t want to hear about (cohabitation, abortion, homosexuality), is often rejected, but a faithful Christian knows and states God’s will—just as faithful prophets did. We know that many will not listen to God’s wisdom, even in the church, even as Amaziah the priest rejected Amos’s warnings in his time. But what the Lord gives, He also has the right to take away. The people of the Northern Kingdom had trampled the covenantal relationship with God; the temple at Bethel had become a place of pagan worship. Amaziah told Amos (not very kindly) to go back to his home in the Southern Kingdom of Judah, probably thinking that they could avoid the consequences of sin simply by having Amos cease prophesying at Bethel.

We should expect the same rejection by the unbelieving world around us. Jesus told His disciples: “If the world hates you, know that it has hated me before it hated you. If you were of the world, the world would love you as its own; but because you are not of the world, but I chose you out of the world, therefore the world hates you” (Jn 15:18–19). The “hate” of the world against us may be just a cold shoulder like Amaziah’s treatment of Amos, or the world may react as violently as Herod did toward John the Baptist.

But even if we face persecution representing God’s Law and Christ’s forgiveness, a change of heart has the power to change everything. In Amos’s time, a change of heart would have changed God’s judgment to forgiveness (vv 14–15). Why? Because God doesn’t want to punish His people. He sent Amos to them so that they would experience a change of heart and turn from their sins—God would eagerly forgive.

And God does eagerly forgive all of us in the cross of Jesus. As we admit that we are in need of change and we repent of our sins, the church and the angels rejoice! The dead become alive in Christ, and THAT love and forgiveness will never change!