Bible Commentaries

Omnipotence and Omniscience

Amos 9:8).

That is God's voice. Amos could not have said these words in his own person. God must create his own instruments for preaching, for Amos 9:9).

We were terrified by the first loud burst of tremendous judgment; we thought it was indiscriminating, that it fell upon the earth in a fury of vengeance, and could make no distinctions between the right hand and the left: and, lo, the whole image is that of a man who is winnowing the corn. Watch him; he puts it all into the sieve; he takes it in his arms, he uses it Amos 9:10).

On whom is the doom pronounced? "All the sinners." Not one of the righteous is mentioned there. All the sinners, all the bad people, all the unsound hearts, all the untrue spirits—they shall fall, though they have many a device to which they trust. So it was with the Ten Tribes. They were tribally dispersed, driven about; they were not individually lost. There is a tribal dispersion; there is a corporate dissolution; there is a family break-up. Every member of the family is living, but there is no family. That is one mystery of Providence. Every soul is there, but has nothing to do with any other soul. The tribes were once one in spirit, though twelve in number, a chosen unit; but the time came when they were separated on account of their sins by thunder and lightning and a great tempest, and every soul was alive, yet every soul was alone. Death is not the worst fate that can befall men. Death may be but transition; death may be but translation; death is only change of position, change of relation, change of sphere, change of service; but to be alive and yet to be dead; to be looking at a man and not to know him; to have all sacred memories dispersed or dissolved or turned into roots of poison and bitterness; to have been in the house, and to have left it so that no roof can cover all the members of the family; to be part of a shattered commonwealth,—that is the destiny of disloyal souls. Do not mistake life as in itself a benediction and a comfort apart from God. There is a living death; there is a mortal life; there is a sensitiveness that only expresses a deeper blindness than itself; there is a consciousness that covers up a bottomless pit of lost memory, lost affection, lost hope, lost immortality.

Now Amos will talk in a language partly his own. The language he uses will be coloured in some degree by his occupation, or by his observation:—

"Behold, the days come, saith the Lord, that the plowman shall overtake the reaper, and the treader of grapes him that soweth seed; and the mountains shall drop sweet wine, and all the hills shall melt" ( Amos 9:13).

The laws of nature turned upside down! Some people have imagined that the Lord has made a prisoner of himself in his own universe. He has so constructed the universe that he finds that what he has made is in reality a cage out of which he cannot get; he has made laws, and can do nothing with them; he has outbuilt himself, he has gone beyond his own strength, and he is a creature in the presence of his own creatorship. How often in the Bible he comes and tears the whole thing to pieces, and says that he made it, and has a right to do with it what he pleases; and he will put it together again, or partially; or he will gather it so far up, and then he will dissolve the whole thing. And so here we have the plowman overtaking the reaper, and the treader of grapes him that soweth seed; and the seasons all mixed up with one another, and each pursuing the other without interval,—a rush and tumult of action. This is God's way. He really has not made a cage for his deity. Whatever he has done, all things are under his feet The Lord reigneth, let the earth rejoice. We are the victims of the seasons and of the winds; we are meteorologically bound. We do not know what will happen the day after to-morrow—whether it will be a fog impenetrable, or a frost that will seal our front door. God can make it summer when he will, and turn summer into winter by one frown. He can make the snow but the background of the most glowing flowers. What a pity it would have been, and what an impossibility, if God had so built the universe that he could not get out of it, or into it, or round about it, or do anything with it—an incredible, preposterous miracle! Our joy is to believe that God knows all his universe; has made it, established its laws; that he administers its economy; that not a bird falleth to the ground without his notice, and that no being can steal one drop of dew without God missing it or going after it. That is the large faith, the tender faith, the Christian faith, the faith in which we stand.

Amos disappears. He came in as a layman, but he has lost his laity in the grandeur, the range, the music of his prophecy. If this is being a layman, would God all the Lord's people were laymen! What a thunder voice he had! How it crashed and roared amid the controversies, oppressions, tyrannies, and wrongdoings of the nations! And yet how gentle he was! He said some of the gentlest things ever uttered by any prophet of the Lord. But herein is the mystery, because only they who can be really angry can be really tender. Only men of tremendous force can be truly patient and really gentle. So when you find true patience or gentleness, you find but another aspect of real force, sensitiveness, and faculty of judgment and destruction. Again I say, the disparity between the prophet and the prophecy is a proof of inspiration. There is nothing in this man's credentials to assure us that we are going to hear something very special and very great. There are some prophets whose prophecy is killed by their personal testimonials. They come with such a sheaf of recommendation in their hands, that having read a few of the pages we say, This is impossible; if all this had been true you need not have had this paper; burn it, and be your own credential. So with this man. He brings no paper, no certificate, no signed assurance, no diploma of the great and mighty and accepted and orthodox, to say that, on the whole, he is a respectable Amos 9:14-15).

And the prophet goes! What an echo, what a vibration! What a strange, deep, tender peace comes after such a song! It is even so with the Christian prophet. He has plenty of judgment to denounce. He must look with eyes of fire upon every form of evil; yet he must find words that are tender, or he must make them tender by his intonation of them, whereby he may express the gospel that God waits to be gracious. But God's purpose about every man is that he shall have vineyard and wheat-field and well-founded city, and that he shall be no more plucked up like an ill-planted tree, and have his roots torn up to the withering sun. Every man professing to be prophet of God or minister of the Cross must end in gentleness. "Go ye into all the world, and preach the good news to every creature." This was said after the crucifixion; this was the supplement to Gethsemane; this was the outcome of the Cross. God plans no man's destruction. "As I live, saith the Lord God, I have no pleasure in the death of the wicked.... Turn ye, turn ye from your evil ways; for why will ye die?" The universe was constructed for music, not for discord.