Amos 7-9 Which Way IS Up?

Three times Amos received visions from God about impending disasters for the northern kingdom of Israel.  After the first vision, Amos prayed, “Lord God, forgive us!  How could Israel live through this?”  So the Lord changed His mind and forestalled the punishment.  After the second vision, Amos prayed again, “Lord God, stop!  How can Israel live through this?”  It’s scary to think about even requesting that God stop a punishment that’s deserved, but Amos dared to pray, and God again relented.  The third vision was of the Lord standing by a straight wall with a plumb line in His hand.  The Lord said, “See, I will put a plumb line among My people Israel to show how crooked they are.  I will not look the other way any longer.”

This passage always reminds me of climbing our town’s old north and south water towers.  After climbing at the slightly-less-than-vertical angle for some 100’, I’d reach the ladder that departed from that angle, going straight up through the catwalk to access it.  It always felt like I was climbing up an overhang, leaning outward as I climbed, because I’d been climbing for so long at the previous angle that it seemed that it was straight up when it really wasn’t.

Here, the people had been “climbing” or living at an angle away from what God wanted for so long that when He put a plumb line among them (Christ) to show His true angle, they too felt that the true angle had to be wrong, and that’s why, centuries later, they would deny that Christ is Messiah.

In chapter 8, God relates how the Jewish people would be spiritually blinded for denying Christ’s Messiahship:  “The days are coming when I will cause a time of [spiritual] hunger in the land.  The people will not be hungry for bread or thirsty for water, but they will be hungry for words from the Lord … they will search for the word of the Lord, but they won’t find it.”  Of course, God can sovereignly do that to anyone who willfully chooses to deny the truth of the Cross.

To show how badly they had fallen away from Him, God says, “I will keep watch over them, but I will keep watch to give them trouble, not to do them good.”  Oh, that would be horrible to hear!

Father, Your words to a people who were far from You, despite being chosen by You, remind me of the song, Living Life Upside Down.  The writer talks about trying to go his own way, without You, and finally realizing that, instead of climbing up to heaven, he’d been descending into a well, because he, like the people here, had been living life upside down.  He’d failed to take advantage of Christ, our Plumb Line, whom You sent to show us how to live for You.  Don’t ever let me forget having that same feeling, and the climb it took to get back to You.  Thank You for loving me enough to show me just how wrong I’d been.

Your Brother In Christ,

Gary Ford