Bible Commentaries

Amos 3:3

The words of our text are in themselves so general, that they might very well stand alone as a proverbial truth, capable of a vast variety of applications. They would furnish an ample theme for many important lessons of practical prudence. It must be understood that the "walking together" signifies co-operation, a working together for some common end. And then we see at once how impossible this is, without some previous agreement.

I. It is recorded of Enoch and of Noah that each of them walked with God. With regard to other holy men, it is said of some, that they walked before God—as Abraham was charged to do by the Lord Himself: "Walk before Me, and be thou perfect"—of others, that they walked "after God." The various forms of expression may be considered as amounting to nearly the same thing, as denoting an extraordinary degree of piety and holiness in the persons so described.

II. Israel's walking with God in the ordinances of His house, could, in the case of individual members of the Church, be no proof of their agreement with Him. The difference between the form and the substance, and the utter worthlessness of the form when separated from the substance, was never overlooked; and it was one of the themes on which the prophets dwelt most frequently in strains of the most solemn warning. If the agreement did not previously exist, the most exact observance of the legal ceremonies not only was quite powerless to produce it, but had the effect of widening the breach.

III. In the worship of the Church on earth there is, and always must be, an admixture of elements foreign to its real nature, but needed for the supply of our temporal wants. Still this worship may and should be, whatever it may be beside, the highest expression, the culmination and efflorescence, of the Christian life. If the flower, which witnesses to the healthy life and growth of the plant, is severed from the stalk, it soon fades and withers, loses its colours and its fragrance, and is only fit to be swept away as worthless refuse. So it is with our worship; though its words should be suited to the lips of seraphs, and its forms worthy of the court of heaven, if it is to us a mere outward thing, having no root or ground in our inner life.

bishop Thirlwall, Good Words, 1876, p. 125.

Applying the text to God's law and man's conscience, the first question is, How they fell out; and the second, How they fell in again. Sin is the cause of the quarrel, and righteousness by faith is the way to peace.

I. The Disagreement. Notice separately the fact and its consequences. (i) The fact that there is an alienation. God's law is His manifested will for the government of His creatures. It is the reflection cast down on earth of His own holiness. His moral law, ruling spirits, is as inexorable as His physical law, ruling matter. It knows of no yielding, no compunction. The conscience of man is that part of his wonderful frame that comes into closest contact with God's law—the part of the man that lies next to the fiery law, and feels its burning. When first the conscience is informed and awaked, it discovers itself guilty, and the law angry. There is not peace between the two, and by the constitution of both, they are neighbours. They touch at all points, as the air touches the earth or the sea; neither the one nor the other can avoid the contact. There is need of peace in so close a union; but there is not peace. The law's enmity against a guilty moral being is intense and total. (ii) The consequence of this disagreement between the two is, they cannot walk together. Enmity tends to produce distance. Distance is disobedience. To walk with the law, is to live righteously; not to walk with the law, is to live in sin. Where love is the fulfilling of the law, hate and distance must be the highest disobedience.

II. The Reconciliation. (1) The nature of the reconciliation and the means of attaining it. The agreement between the law and the conscience is a part of the great reconciliation between God and man, which is effected in and by Jesus Christ. He is our peace. Peace of conscience follows in the train of justification. (2) The effect of the agreement is obedience to the law—that is, the whole Word of God. When there is a quarrel between friends, and a mutual distrust, there is no walking together; but when the enmity is removed and friendship restored, you may soon see the friends by each other's side again; so also is it with the law and the conscience. It ceases to accuse, and you cease to keep it at a distance.

W. Arnot, Roots and Fruits of the Christian Life, p. 314.

"Can two walk together except they be agreed?" is the first of a long string of questions forming an animated and striking passage, but not very easy to interpret. The general idea seems to be that every effect has a cause, and every cause an effect. If the question of the text belongs, as it appears to do, to the same subject with the rest, it seems to say that if two persons take a journey, or so much as a walk in each other's company, that very fact implies a foregoing cause, which is, in this case, the mutual consent or agreement of the two persons concerned.

We have here before us two thoughts.

I. Life is a Divine-human companionship. It is a walk, a little circuit from the door to the door, a circumscribed round for health and for business, of which home is alike the place left and the place returned to—the door of crossing in the morning, the door of re-entrance at evening. You will say this gives the idea of monotony and uneventfulness; it seems to exclude any possibilities of great change or high ambition. Be it so; it is the more like most lives, the average existences, not of the great and noble, but of the bulk and multitude of our fellow-creatures. To walk with God is a different figure from that of travelling or voyaging under God's charge or supervision; to walk with God is to take the daily round of common being in God's company, with God for your companion. To walk with God is to have God with you, consciously, and by choice, in the everyday occupation and the everyday society. To walk with God is to lead a godly and a Christian life.

II. The condition of that companionship is a Divine-human agreement. The text says that there must be a consenting will, there must be a harmony of feeling on the two sides to make the Divine-human companionship possible, otherwise it will degenerate into an empty profession, a heartless form, a riven bond, a broken vow.

C. J. Vaughan, Family Churchman, Oct. 6th, 1886.

I. Religion is, essentially, a social thing. The tendency of all sin is towards solitude. It is to division, to a narrow and a narrowing division. For the most part, as a man becomes wicked, he becomes solitary. The object of the grace of God is always union, union of every kind. It makes one Christ in two hearts and that makes two hearts one: it makes two hearts like Christ, and the resemblance leads them to draw together. They walk together because they are agreed.

II. If you look at man as a social being you may conceive him in three relations. There is his relation to his fellow-man; there is his relation to angels; there is his relation to God. With these three different beings man has to walk. And in each case God lays down one rule, that before there can be harmony in action there must be agreement in principle. To take the metaphor of a walk: they must be agreed as to where they are going, and by what path they are travelling. They need not always exactly place step with step. But the end must be the same end, and the means must be generally the same.

III. What is God's end? Always and invariably His own glory. And what is the path which leads to it? Only one—holiness. The path of holiness, to the glory of God. That walk may be rough, but you walk with God.

J. Vaughan, Fifty Sermons, 2nd series, p. 242.

References: Amos 3:3.—Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. x., No. 597; J. Cook, Christian World Pulpit, vol. xi., p. 181; G. Brooks, Outlines of Sermons, p. 164. Amos 3:3-6.—Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. xii., No. 705. Amos 3:6.—G. Brooks, Outlines of Sermons, p. 295; Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. vii., No. 426; F. Hastings, Christian World Pulpit, vol. xxxii., p. 346. Amos 3:7, Amos 3:8.—Homiletic Magazine, vol. vi., p. 73. Amos 3:11-15.—Ibid., p. 74. Amos 4:1-3.—Ibid., p. 139. Amos 4:2.—E. D. Solomon, Christian World Pulpit, vol. xvi., p. 101. Amos 4:4, Amos 4:5.—Homiletic Magazine, vol. vi., p. 140. Amos 4:6, Amos 4:11.—Ibid., p. 198.