Amos 2:12














The transgressions of Israel were all the more reprehensible because of the peculiar favour which had been shown, to the people who were descendants of the father of the faithful and the friend of God. Upon these special privileges the prophet here dwells and expatiates, with a view to bring home to the offenders the magnitude of their sin.

I. A NATION SHOULD TRACE THE HAND OF GOD IN THE DELIVERANCES WROUGHT ON ITS BEHALF. Israel was established in the land of the Canaanites, of whom the Amorites are in this passage taken as the representatives. These foes of the chosen nation are pictured majestic as the cedar and mighty as the oak. Yet Jehovah had smitten them in the lofty branches, and had extirpated them from the roots, and had planted in their stead the vine brought out of Egypt. It was not by Israel's sword or bow, but by the right hand of the Lord, that the Amorites had been vanquished. A devout mind will trace the presence and the action of Divine Providence, in a nation's history. In great crises England has been succoured by the interposition of Omnipotence from the assaults of powerful and unpitying foes. The "good hand of our God" has been upon us to protect and to deliver.

II. A NATION SHOULD REMARK THE GUIDANCE OF THE ALL-WISE GOD APPARENT IN THE EVENTS OF ITS POLITICAL LIFE. "I led you:" such is the language in which Jehovah reminded the forgetful and unfaithful Hebrews of his treatment of his chosen. The epoch of wilderness wandering was the critical epoch of Israel's life; it was then that the nation was consolidated and disciplined. A marvellous story it remains to this day, the story of the forty years in the Peninsula of Sinai. Fraught, too, with encouragement for all who trust God. What Christian nation has not reason to give thanks to "him who led his people through the wilderness" for his mercy endureth forever"? The eye must be dull which cannot see, the heart must be cold winch ages not confess, the directing hand of the Eternal in the career of such a nation as our own.

III. A NATION SHOULD GRATEFULLY HONOUR GOD FOR RAISING UP WISE AND HOLY MEN AS NATIONAL TEACHERS AND EXAMPLES. The prophets and Nazarites of the Jews may represent men of sanctified genius and insight, and mental and moral force, whom Providence appoints to be the inspiration of the community towards all that is beautiful and good. A people's greatest strength and most valuable possession must be sought in its finest, purest, ablest men. God did much for Israel in the way of outward guidance and interposition; but all his mercies were transcended by the gift of heroes and saints, judges and seers, valiant, true-hearted kings, fearless prophets, faithful priests. Rich as our own country is in many other respects, its true wealth must be sought in its noblest, most unselfish sons. God give us grace to appreciate and to profit by his goodness in this respect! - T.

And I raised up of your sons for prophets, and of your young men for Nazarites.
The sin and folly of their conduct is manifest when we consider —

I. THE AUTHOR OF THE APPOINTMENTS. "I raised up." The Founder of their nation. He whose mercies have been commemorated in the ninth to the eleventh verses, had originated these appointments. What more signal proof of the folly in attempting this reversal! Everything that God willed should have been accepted gratefully as their rule of life; yet they tampered with His appointments thus.(1) An abiding sense of the relations which God bears to His people is a constant safe. guard against the spirit which would east off all restraint. He is the Author of all our blessings.(2) The claim on reverence for Divine appointments is not confined to His people. God's love is boundless as the universe.

II. When we consider the CHARACTER of the appointments. God was striving to preserve the national purity, to train them up in all His ways. Such was His purpose in these remarkable institutions: — the prophetic office, and the order of the Nazarites. God had raised up these workers out of the "young men" of Israel — the class which could bring the greatest energy to this arduous work, devote the longest time to it, and furnish, amid the temptations to which youth was peculiarly exposed, the strongest proof of the restraining grace of God. God still uses means to preserve men in purity. The Spirit of God is His witness; conscience is His voice; truth is His messenger; His servants, by their words, and by the example of godly lives, are our prophets and the Nazarites. How great these agencies! Seek to know them to your own salvation.

III. Were frustrated by those for WHOSE BENEFIT they had been made. No regard for God, no sense of their own interest, deterred them from presuming to interfere with the counsels of God. The motive which prompted such conduct marks their degradation. The Nazarites were a standing reproof of their excess and revelry; the prophets were obnoxious because they tore away the disguises by which sin sought to hide its deformity, and warned the people of danger. If the voice of the prophet was silenced, they fancied that heaven had no means of reproving sin. They forgot that God could speak in the thunder and the earthquake. Application — Man can frustrate the purposes of God. Heaven may appoint; earth may undo the appointment. The effort is proof of degradation. Success in such effort is the worst punishment of any man. Israel reaped disaster and ruin from this attempt to reverse God's appointments. False prophets multiplied, sin increased, the nation went into captivity.

(J. Telford, B. A.)

Though Amos was neither a prophet nor a prophet's son, but a rough herdsman, and unlettered gatherer of sycamore leaves, his was one of those masculine, indignant natures which burst like imprisoned flame through the white ashes of social hypocrisy. Like Samuel before Saul, like Elijah before Ahab, like John the Baptist before Herod, like Paul before Felix, like John Huss before Sigismund, like Luther before Charles V., like John Knox before Mary, so Amos testified undaunted before the idolatry of courts and priests. One crime of that bad period was luxury and intemperance. In this text the prophet confronts Israel with the high appeal of God, whether He had not put the fire of the Spirit into the hearts of some of their sons, and they had quenched that fire by their blandishments and conventionalities; and whether He had not inspired some of their youths to take the vow of abstinence, and they with the deliberate cynicism of worldlings had tempted them to scorn and break that vow? The very essence of the vow of the Nazarite was self-dedication. The young Nazarite consecrated himself to God, he offered himself, his soul and body, a reasonable, holy, and living sacrifice. The Nazarite was a marked man, and because his vow was regarded as a tacit condemnation of the popular self-indulgence, he was exposed to the sneers of the worldly, and the temptations of the base. Nevertheless, "wisdom is justified of her children." The best men, and the bravest men, and the least conventional men, in this world have been ever the most loudly and the most scornfully abused. Little recked the true Nazarite of muttered sarcasm and bitter hate, — little as recks the sea of the foolish wild birds that scream above it. Health, strength, physical beauty, wholesomeness of life, tranquillity of soul, serene dominion over evil passions, followed in the path of early and life-long abstinence. There seems to be a special strength, a special blessing, above all, a special power of swaying the souls of others for their good, which is imparted to wise and voluntary abstinence. The hands of invisible consecration overshadow, the fire of a spiritual unction crowns the head of him who in early youth has learnt to say with his whole heart, "In strong warfare, in holy self-denial, I dedicate my youth to God." This age wants, this England wants, the Church of Christ wants those who, self-dedicated, like the ideal Nazarite, to noble ends, have not lost the natural grace and bloom of youthful modesty. We do want natures strong and sweet and simple, to whom life is no poor collection of fragments, its first volume an obscene and noisy jest book, its last a grim tragedy or a despicable farce; but to those of whom, however small the stage, the life is a regal drama, played out before God and man. We want the spirit of willing Nazarites. And total abstinence was the central conception of the vow of the Nazarite. (The rest of the sermon is an impassioned plea against indulgence in alcoholic drinks.)

(Dean Farrar.)

To supply the abundance of life in the large and rich nature of a young man is difficult; and it is that which makes his being for ten or twelve years of his youth so critical and so precarious. You will have noticed that it is not the dull men who go to pieces in a small town, but often the best men, the men who have the largest natures to fill, and who, therefore, find the town too monotonous for them. It is the same in the workshop. It is the best workmen who go furthest wrong when they begin to drink. A cabbage is perfectly happy in a back garden; and a dull young man is perfectly happy without any brilliant outlet for his energies and amusements. But the man that requires looking after is the man of strong and vigorous youth, the man of rich personality, the man of strong individuality, the all-round good fellow, who is so hard to interest and so hard to control. So much as his life is difficult to control, so much the better to the community when it is fairly won over for high purposes and noble ends. The difficulty is to get hold of the brilliant young man and interest him, and divert his strong, rich life into useful channels.

(Prof. Drummond.)

But ye gave the Nazarites wine to drink
In Israel worldly prosperity had produced its usual effect — in excessive self-indulgence, and in forgetfulness of God; and in the capital itself, more especially, the luxurious life of the upper classes contrasted painfully with the miserable destitution of those who were dependent upon them. Under the circumstances we should have expected God to interfere. And He does interfere. He calls forth a considerable number of Nazarites, and sends them as His representatives among the people. The Nazarites were a class of persons whose mode of life wan intended to be a witness to the high importance of the covenant-position of Israel. Some such took vows for a period; some for life. Their obligations were mainly to abstain from the use of all intoxicating liquor. And they were to be on their guard against ceremonial defilement. Every Nazarite who made his appearance in public would be a living protest against the sensual ways of the leading inhabitants. We, can well understand that these self-indulgent nobles and wealthy citizens would not unfrequently endeavour to induce one of these devotees to break his vow. It would be a triumph for them if they succeeded. The charge is brought against them by Amos. What lessons may be conveyed to persons situated as you and I are? There is something peculiarly bad in God's sight in the endeavour to induce another person. to act in opposition to his conscience. By "offering wine to the Nazarite we are clearly casting in our lot with the opponents of the cause of Christ.

(Gordon Calthrop, M. A.)

Great Thoughts.
: — We have no means for focalising the ruin wrought by England s greatest trade. The Press cannot mirror the tithe of it, nor the gossip relate its thousandth part. The trade is everywhere, and everywhere its work is one — unceasing slaughter. Could we but see in one fearful perspective the colossal host of men and women and sweet children struck to death by the traffic in drink, a new agony of compassion would break from the Church's heart, and the days of the trade that can only flourish as men decay would be numbered.

(Great Thoughts.)

People
Amorites, Amos, Nazarites, Nazirites
Places
Edom, Egypt, Jerusalem, Kerioth, Moab
Topics
Cause, Charge, Commanded, Drink, Laid, Longer, Nazarites, Nazirites, Prophecy, Prophesy, Prophets, Saying, Separate, Wine
Outline
1. God's judgments upon Moab,
4. upon Judah,
6. and upon Israel.
9. God complains of their ingratitude.

Dictionary of Bible Themes
Amos 2:11-12

     4544   wine

Library
Ripe for Gathering
'Thus hath the Lord God shewed unto me: and behold a basket of summer fruit. 2. And He said, Amos, what seest thou? And I said, A basket of summer fruit. Then said the Lord unto me, The end is come upon My people of Israel; I will not again pass by them any more. 3. And the songs of the temple shall be howlings in that day, saith the Lord God: there shall be many dead bodies in every place; they shall cast them forth with silence. 4. Hear this, O ye that swallow up the needy, even to make the poor
Alexander Maclaren—Expositions of Holy Scripture

Third Circuit of Galilee. The Twelve Instructed and Sent Forth.
^A Matt. IX. 35-38; X. 1, 5-42; XI. 1; ^B Mark VI. 6-13; ^C Luke IX. 1-6. ^b 6 And he ^a Jesus ^b went about ^a all the cities and villages, teaching in their synagogues, and preaching the gospel of the kingdom, and healing all manner sickness and all manner of sickness. [In the first circuit of Galilee some of the twelve accompanied Jesus as disciples (see [3]Section XXXIII.); in the second the twelve were with him as apostles; in the third they, too, are sent forth as evangelists to supplement
J. W. McGarvey—The Four-Fold Gospel

The Kingdom of God Conceived as the Inheritance of the Poor.
These maxims, good for a country where life is nourished by the air and the light, and this delicate communism of a band of children of God reposing in confidence on the bosom of their Father, might suit a simple sect constantly persuaded that its Utopia was about to be realized. But it is clear that they could not satisfy the whole of society. Jesus understood very soon, in fact, that the official world of his time would by no means adopt his kingdom. He took his resolution with extreme boldness.
Ernest Renan—The Life of Jesus

To his Praise!
"They shall abundantly utter the memory of thy great goodness." THIS chapter is written more than seven years later than the foregoing, in further testimony and praise. Returning to Canada at the time of the Great War, we came face to face with a serious financial crisis. Only two ways seemed open to us. One was to lay our affairs frankly before the Board, showing that our salary was quite insufficient, with war conditions and prices, to meet our requirements. The other course was to just go forward,
Rosalind Goforth—How I Know God Answers Prayer

The Tests of Love to God
LET us test ourselves impartially whether we are in the number of those that love God. For the deciding of this, as our love will be best seen by the fruits of it, I shall lay down fourteen signs, or fruits, of love to God, and it concerns us to search carefully whether any of these fruits grow in our garden. 1. The first fruit of love is the musing of the mind upon God. He who is in love, his thoughts are ever upon the object. He who loves God is ravished and transported with the contemplation of
Thomas Watson—A Divine Cordial

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