Amos: "The Lion Has Roared" | Amos
Brian Hedges | June 22, 2025
Well, let me invite you to turn in your Bibles this morning to the book of Amos. This is in the Old Testament—Daniel, Hosea, Joel, Amos.
While you’re turning there, let me tell you about the man-eaters of Tsavo. This was a pair of killer lions that killed dozens of people in East Africa in 1898, when the Uganda-Mombasa Railway was being built. This picture of the lions is actually from the Natural History Museum in Chicago, where the lions are.
The lions were made famous in the nineties through a film that many of you perhaps saw called The Ghost and the Darkness. And there are whole books that have been written about the story of these lions and how eventually they were killed.
When we come to Scripture and we think about the image of a lion, our minds and imaginations probably go most quickly to 1 Peter, where Peter warns us that our adversary the devil is like a lion, a prowling, roaring lion that’s seeking someone to devour. We probably don’t think of a lion—this ferocious king of beasts—we probably don’t think of a lion as an image for God. But in the book of Amos, that is exactly the image that Amos chooses as he warns the people of God about the impending judgment on their nation.
You can see this in the opening lines of Amos, Amos 1:1-2; and then the conclusion of the first section of this book, Amos 3:7-8. Notice the key word “roar.”
Amos 1:1:
“The words of Amos, one of the shepherds of Tekoa—the vision he saw concerning Israel two years before the earthquake, when Uzziah was king of Judah and Jeroboam son of Jehoash was king of Israel.
“He said:
“‘The Lord roars from Zion
and thunders from Jerusalem;
the pastures of the shepherds dry up,
and the top of Carmel withers.’”
Then, just to remove any doubt that the Lord is pictured as a lion who roars, read Amos 3:7-8.
“Surely the Sovereign Lord does nothing
without revealing his plan
to his servants the prophets.
“The lion has roared—
who will not fear?
The Sovereign Lord has spoken—
who can but prophesy?”
It’s a striking image, an image of God who is actually coming against his people in judgment because of their sin. This is the basic message of the prophet Amos.
This is the second in our summer series on the Book of the Twelve, “Judgment, Salvation, and Hope: The Message of the Minor Prophets.” Last week, we looked at the prophet Hosea, who gives us the picture of God as the husband who has been betrayed by his bride Israel. Amos gives us a very different picture, a picture of God as a lion coming against his people.
Amos was another one of the eighth-century prophets, along with Hosea, Isaiah, and Micah. We’ll come back to Joel later; we’re trying to take these prophets in roughly chronological order. Amos was a prophet from the South, but he did most of his ministry, we think, in the North. He was a shepherd from Tekoa; it was a village just five miles south of Bethlehem and Judah. But his ministry was especially focused on the Northern kingdom of Israel and the wealthy, upper-class citizens of Samaria.
This was a time of great prosperity in Israel. There had been recent military expansion under King Jeroboam II. Everything seemed good, but Amos came on the scene to announce God’s judgment against Israel for her sins of religious syncretism, wealthy indifference, and social injustice; and his book just blisters the people of Israel with indictment after indictment and the prophecies of coming judgment for their sin.
So I just warn you from the outset, this is a bleak book. This is not necessarily the kind of place in Scripture you’re going to go and feel warm devotional thoughts. But this is part of God’s word, and it’s important for us to pay attention to God’s word. As we will see in the course of the message, while this is a book full of judgment, it’s not a book without hope. In fact, there are notes of hope in the book, and the book ends on a wonderful note of hope, as we will see.
I want us to do three things this morning. I want us to see three main threads in this book: sin, judgment, and hope. As you can see, and as we will see in the course of exposition, each one of those points can be broken down into further categories.
1. Sin: Syncretism, Indifference, and Injustice
So first of all, sin, and the sins of Israel were these sins of syncretism, indifference, and injustice. And right off the bat, in Amos 1-2, Amos begins confronting Israel for her sins, and does so in a very interesting way in these first two chapters with a literary pattern that gets repeated again and again. You’ll notice this as you read: “For three sins, even for four, God is going to punish…” and then you have a nation named. It’s actually the nations that surrounded the people of Israel.
You can see this on a map. You had Damascus in Syria to the northeast, and then Gaza in Philistia to the southwest, Tyre to the northwest, Edom and Ammon to the southeast, Moab also to the southeast, and then Judah—remember that Israel and Judah are two separate nations now—Judah to the south. For one-and-a-half chapters, Amos is simply indicting these various nations, ending with Israel’s rival, Judah. You can imagine how the people just listened to this with glee as they heard their enemies being scorched through the prophetic words of Amos.
But what they did not realize is that Amos was actually laying the groundwork to indict them as well, and Amos 2 ends with an indictment of the nation of Israel.
Alec Motyer in his commentary says, “The review of the encircling nations was a noose of judgment about to tighten around their own throats.” That’s the picture that you get in these two chapters.
Now, I’m not going to read all of those indictments against the nations, but they were essentially being confronted and punished by God for their sins against humanity. It was sins of injustice. It was war crimes, covenant-breaking, treaty-breaking, injustice, slavery, oppression. These are the sins for which God indicts the nations.
But then, when Amos turns his focus on Israel, what we find is that God indicts Israel for some of these same kinds of sins as well. You see this in Amos 2:6-8.
“This is what the Lord says:
“‘For three sins of Israel,
even for four, I will not relent.
They sell the innocent for silver,
and the needy for a pair of sandals.
They trample on the heads of the poor
as on the dust of the ground
and deny justice to the oppressed.
Father and son use the same girl
and so profane my holy name.
They lie down beside every altar
on garments taken in pledge.
In the house of their god
they drink wine taken as fines.’”
Drop down to Amos 2:13. “Now then, I will crush you as a cart crushes when loaded with grain.”
So you can see that the sights are now turned on Israel, on these people who had been the chosen people of God, but for their sins God is going to bring judgment.
Now, what were the specific sins? I’ve already mentioned them. The sins were religious syncretism, wealthy indifference, and social injustice.
Syncretism, of course, is the merging of ideologies. So, religious syncretism in Israel meant that while they were still in name and in word worshiping Yahweh—they were offering sacrifices—this had been polluted with other kinds of worship, especially with Baal worship and with the worship of these calves and bulls. In fact, it was all centered in Bethel, which will be right in the focus of Amos’ prophecies. Bethel was this city in the North where Jeroboam I, hundreds of years before, had erected two golden calves—not one, but two golden calves—and created there a shrine of worship. So this was worship that would then compete with the Jerusalem worship down in Judah. So the religious syncretism is part of what Amos is confronting the North with.
You see this—all three of these sins, really—in the passages that kind of cluster in the middle of this book in Amos 3-6. I just want to read a handful of these passages to you and kind of point out a few features as we go.
Amos 3:13-15.
“‘Hear this and testify against the descendants of Jacob,’ declares the Lord, the Lord God Almighty.
“‘On the day I punish Israel for her sins,
I will destroy the altars of Bethel [where the golden calves are];
the horns of the altar will be cut off
and fall to the ground.
I will tear down the winter house
along with the summer house;
the houses adorned with ivory will be destroyed
and the mansions will be demolished,’
declares the Lord.”
So, right in that verse, you get a sense of the wealth and the prosperity and the opulence that was current in that day. They have winter houses, they have summer houses, they have houses of ivory, they have large houses—mansions—and the house of the Lord, Bethel, is a place full of corruption.
Amos 4:1: “Hear this word, you cows of Bashan.” This is Amos at his most sarcastic.
“Hear this word, you cows of Bashan on Mount Samaria,
you women who oppress the poor and crush the needy
and say to your husbands, ‘Bring us some drinks!’”
In case you missed it, Amos is literally calling these wealthy women of Samaria fat cows.
“The Sovereign Lord has sworn by his holiness:
‘The time will surely come
when you will be taken away with hooks,
the last of you with fishhooks.’”
Now the exegetical details of that verse are difficult, but a possible interpretation reflected in this translation is that this would refer to the coming judgment, when they are carried away into exile, and the Assyrian practice of deporting people by stringing individuals together, lashed together by hooks protruding from their lower lips. And Amos is saying, “This is what’s coming.”
Drop down a few verses.
“Go to Bethel and sin; go to Gilgal and sin yet more.” This is what’s happening in their worship. They go to Bethel, but they’re just sinning.
“‘Bring your sacrifices every morning,
your tithes every three years.
Burn leavened bread as a thank offering
and brag about your freewill offerings—
boast about them, you Israelites,
for this is what you love to do,’
declares the Sovereign Lord.”
How does God feel about this worship? Amos 5:21:
“I hate, I despise your religious festivals;
your assemblies are a stench to me.
Even though you bring me burnt offerings and grain offerings,
I will not accept them.
Though you bring choice fellowship offerings,
I will have no regard for them.
Away with the noise of your songs!
I will not listen to the music of your harps.”
These are some of the strongest denunciations of hypocritical religion, formalistic religion, in the Old Testament prophets. God was not interested in their worship. He hated and despised their worship because it was corrupt and because in their lives they turned away from righteousness and justice.
What God wanted in Israel was justice. Look at Amos 5:24: “But let justice roll on like a river, righteousness like a never-failing stream.”
One more passage, Amos 6:1: “Woe to you who are complacent [or at ease] in Zion—” here’s the wealthy indifference again—“and to you who feel secure on Mount Samaria, you notable men of the foremost nation, to whom the people of Israel come!”
Amos 6:4-7:
“You lie on beds adorned with ivory
and lounge on your couches.
You dine on choice lambs
and fattened calves.
You strum away on your harps like David
and improvise on musical instruments.
You drink wine by the bowlful
and use the finest lotions,
but you do not grieve over the ruin of Joseph.
Therefore you will be among the first to go into exile;
your feasting and lounging will end.”
This is stern stuff, isn’t it? This would not have made Amos a popular preacher in his day. Nobody would have been listening to his podcast. I mean, if anything they would have laughed at him or they would have been angry at him. In fact, there is a conflict between Amos and one of the religious leaders of the day in Amos 7. This is not popular stuff, and I wonder how it hits your heart this morning.
What would the application of all of these denunciations of wealthy indifference and religious syncretism and social injustice—what would the application of that be to our lives?
You probably know that we live in the most affluent nation and society in the history of the world, and while most of us would probably not consider ourselves wealthy, the truth is that comparatively speaking, we have vastly more than millions of people in the rest of the world. What would the Lord say to us in our wealth? We are devoted to church and worship, but could it be that our religion is also syncretistic? Is it possible that we have compromised true Christianity by adopting attitudes and perspectives and philosophies and worldviews that dilute true Christianity into something that’s tamer, more culturally acceptable?
I just state these as questions; these aren’t declarations, they are not accusations. They are questions for each one of us to ask ourselves as we search our hearts.
I want to focus for just a minute on the third sin that Amos focused upon, which was social injustice. Social justice, social injustice—those are inflammatory words in our day and in the church, very divisive words. I’m not going to say anything about specific policy. That’s not my focus this morning. But I want you to just see that justice—true biblical justice—is a theme that runs through this book. We’ve already seen it in a couple of verses.
Amos 2:7, “They trample on the heads of the poor as on the dust of the ground and deny justice to the oppressed.”
In Amos 5 you have it again and again. Amos 5:7: “There are those who turn justice into bitterness and cast righteousness to the ground.”
Amos 5:10: “There are those who hate the one who upholds justice in court and detest the one who tells the truth.”
Amos 5:12: “For I know your many offenses, how great are your sins. There are those who oppress the innocent, take bribes, and deprive the poor of justice in the courts.”
Amos 5:15: “Hate evil, love good; maintain justice in the courts.”
Amos 5:24: “Let justice roll on like a river, righteousness like a never-failing stream.”
Amos 6:12: “You have turned justice into poison and the fruit of righteousness into bitterness.”
God is concerned about justice. It could not be more clear. And the church today should also be concerned about justice and injustice in the world.
Remember that James in his letter, James 1:27, says that “religion that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless is this: to look after the orphans and the widows in their distress and to keep oneself from being polluted by the world.”
I think the application for us is pretty obvious. We must take justice seriously, because God does. Amos is unflinching. He tells us that justice is not optional.
I think the first question for us is just this: Do our hearts resonate with the theme of justice and Scripture, or are we quick to dismiss it or even resist it? Or do we just ignore it? Could it be that some of us live such insulated and isolated lives that we simply don’t come into contact with much of the injustice in the world? So it’s out of sight, out of mind; we’re just not very aware?
I remember many years ago preaching a sermon on Jesus and the rich young ruler. You remember the story? It was just a passable sermon. It wasn’t great by any means. I said some true things about law and grace and salvation, but when I talked to a friend who was attending our church at that time, someone who had a very robust social conscience, someone who cared a lot about the poor, cared a lot about justice, was actively involved in seeking to do things in that realm—when I talked to this friend, he just pointed out, “Brian, you said nothing about Jesus’ command to sell your possessions and give it to the poor.”
I probably said something like this: “Well, you know, it just wasn’t really the focus of my sermon.”
He said, “Yeah, but Brian, you never focus on those parts of Scripture.”
It was kind of a wake-up call to me that those are the parts of Scripture that I was just tending to overlook, explain them away, didn’t think they really applied in our day. I probably had a way of thinking about them, but I was not thinking about them in a way that really led to any direct application.
But those passages are in the Bible, friends. They do mean something to us today. And maybe it just starts with us opening our eyes. Open your eyes and notice people. Notice neighborhoods. Look for need. Look for opportunities to help, to advocate, to volunteer, to engage in schools, in courts, in neighborhoods, in hospitals, in nursing homes, in jails; and ask the question, “How can I be both an ambassador for Christ and an advocate for the needy in my community?”
Amos calls us to live lives marked by justice and righteousness, and the great sin of Israel was the sin not only of corrupt worship but in their wealthy indifference to the needs of the poor, their sin of injustice.
2. Judgment: Covenant Curses and the Day of the Lord
That led to judgment—point number two. We hear the note of judgment in Amos 3:1-2.
“Hear this word, people of Israel, the word the Lord has spoken against you—against the whole family I brought up out of Egypt.” It is recalling the exodus, right? “You only have I chosen of all the families of the earth; therefore I will punish you for all your sins.”
Here’s the irony: they are the elect of God. They are the people of God. They are the people who have been redeemed from Egypt, but precisely because of their great privilege, God holds them accountable. “You alone have I chosen of all the families of the earth; therefore I will punish you for your sins.”
This whole book is full of the prophetic oracles of judgment. We don’t have time to look at nearly all of this, but I want to point out just a couple of themes where you see this. You see it first of all in what we might call the covenant curses.
Now, we have to have a little bit of background. We have to understand that before the children of Israel went into Canaan, the promised land—you have this in Deuteronomy—Moses gathered the tribes together and he set them on these two mountains, and he preached a sermon and he essentially said, “Here are blessings and here are curses. If you will obey God, you will receive these blessings. If you disobey God, you will experience these curses.” And they are the covenant curses. The blessings of the covenant, the curses of the covenant. Curses if they disobey.
The minor prophets, hundreds of years later, come on the scene as something like prosecuting attorneys. What they’re doing is leveling indictments against Israel for their covenant-breaking. And that’s exactly what you see Amos doing, especially in Amos 4.
When you read through Amos 4 (you can kind of see this on the screen; I’m not going to read all the verses) and compare it with Deuteronomy 28-29, it’s very clear that they have been experiencing these covenant curses. The very things God had warned them of, these are the things that have been taking place. So there’s famine and droughts and failed crops and locusts and plagues and the land is being judged like Sodom and Gomorrah. All of these are things that were directly spoken of in Deuteronomy 28-29.
The tragedy in Amos 4 is a running refrain that, as Amos reminds the people of Israel that they’ve experienced these things (drought and famine and all the rest), he says again and again, “You have not returned to me, declares the Lord.” That’s the tragedy. Even when they were facing things that should have awakened them and got their attention, they did not return to the Lord.
So the covenant curses are coming upon them, and you could almost say that the covenant curses are like a reversal of the exodus. They had been redeemed from Egypt; but now, because of their deep rebellion against God, you’re going to have exodus in reverse. You see this in Amos 5:16-17. There’s a very striking passage in Amos.
“Therefore this is what the Lord, the Lord God Almighty, says:
“‘There will be wailing in all the streets
and cries of anguish in every public square.
The farmers will be summoned to weep
and the mourners to wail.
There will be wailing in all the vineyards,
for I will pass through your midst,’
says the Lord.”
One of the books that I’ve found very helpful on these minor prophets, called The Message of the Twelve, Fuhr and Yates, explains what this means. I’ll just kind of paraphrase them. They show that this is essentially language from Exodus 12, the language of the Passover. And you remember in Exodus 12 that the Lord passed through Egypt in judgment, but he passed over Israel. So you have the great redemptive event of the Old Testament, the Passover. God passed over their sins. But what you have here in Amos 5 is a reversal of that, where God says, “I’m not going to pass over your sins anymore; I’m going to pass through. I’m going to pass through your land in judgment.”
Fuhr and Yates say that “this would have had a chilling effect on that original audience.” And all of this is going to end in exile. This will take place less than a hundred years, really within just about a generation after Amos’ prophetic ministry, in 1722 B.C., when Israel is invaded by Assyria and the people are carried off into exile.
Amos 5:27: “‘Therefore I will send you into exile beyond Damascus,’ says the Lord, whose name is God Almighty.”
This judgment: the covenant curses.
The other way you see judgment in Amos is in the day of the Lord, the day of Yahweh. The day of the Lord in the Old Testament was something like a hopeful expectation, where the people look forward to military victory and economic prosperity and the expansion of their kingdom. But Amos—and some of the other minor prophets do this as well—they flip the script on Israel, and they say, “The day of the Lord for you is not going to be a day of victory, it’s going to be a day of judgment.”
Let me just show you one passage, Amos 5:18-20.
“Woe to you who long
for the day of the Lord!
Why do you long for the day of the Lord?
That day will be darkness, not light.
It will be as though a man fled from a lion
only to meet a bear,
as though he entered his house
and rested his hand on the wall
only to have a snake bite him.
Will not the day of the Lord be darkness, not light—
pitch-dark, without a ray of brightness?”
Again, it is a prophecy of God’s judgment.
Then, in Amos 7-9, you have visions of judgment. We don’t have time to look at those. But there are visions of devouring locusts and fire. Amos intercedes and God relents. There’s a vision of a plumb line, where Israel is seen to be crooked, not measuring up to the standard of God’s righteous law. There’s a vision of a basket of summer fruit. This is fruit that is ripe and it’s showing that Israel is ripe for judgment. And then a vision of the Lord at the altar, who is ready to bring judgment, inevitable judgment to the people.
Friends, these warnings of divine judgment are not just an Old Testament thing. They’re also a New Testament thing. You find warnings of judgment—in fact, a great and final judgment—in the ministry of Jesus and in the writings of the apostles. Such warnings are always intended to be calls to repentance. Our problem is when we, like Israel, don’t listen to the warning. We ignore the warning as if it doesn’t have any application to us.
I one time read about a man who lived in Long Island, and he had this wonderful house in Long Island, and he had this lifelong dream of buying a very nice, expensive barometer. When he got the barometer, he was initially confused. It looked like the barometer was broken because the needle was stuck on the sector that said “hurricane.” And he shook it, he messed with it, he worked with it. He was trying to get this thing to work. It didn’t work, so he wrote a scorching letter to the vendors from which he had bought it. He mailed it the next day when he went into work in New York City, and when he came back at the end of the day the barometer was gone, his house was gone—everything was gone, because a hurricane had hit the island! He had just ignored the warning.
You could say that the Old Testament prophets are like this needle on the barometer pointing to this future day of the Lord, a day of judgment, and there are actually those kinds of warnings in the Scriptures as well. Let me give you just one in the New Testament, Acts 17:30-31.
“In the past God overlooked such ignorance, but now he commands all people everywhere to repent. [This is Paul.] For he has set a day when he will judge the world with justice by the man he has appointed. He has given proof of this to everyone by raising him from the dead.”
We might even go so far as to say that the resurrection of Jesus Christ is the needle on the barometer of history that guarantees that there will be a future day of judgment for the world. We can ignore that, we can scoff at that, we can get angry at that, we can disbelieve that; but the reality of impending judgment remains certain.
Once again, it invites application for us. Whether you are a believer or an unbeliever, it invites application to your heart. We should check the basis of our confidence. If we feel secure that judgment does not apply to us, we should at least ask the question, “Why do I feel secure?” What are we building our hopes on?
It is possible for people in the church to build their hopes on things like coming to church, or “I was baptized,” or “I give,” or “I’m involved in all these other kinds of activities.” That’s not a good foundation. We need to build our hope on the sure foundation of knowing Jesus Christ as Savior and Lord, on the foundation of his death and resurrection for our sins and the ministry of the Holy Spirit bringing transformation in life into our hearts.
We should be careful that we don’t assume that God is pleased with us just because life is going well. Sometimes when there’s money in the bank, we’re getting raises, upgrading our standard of living, the cars are all working, there’s enough left over, maybe I can get a summer house or at least go on nice vacations. All that’s going well, and we can think, “Oh, God’s really pleased with my life, because things are going well.” The book of Amos reminds us that outward prosperity is not an indication of divine approval.
We should also respond to the disruptions that God brings into our lives. Just as God brought drought and famine and locusts—all these things were warnings for Israel, giving them opportunities to repent—sometimes, disruptions in our lives are actually the things he wants to do in our hearts and lives.
Let me ask you, what is God’s spirit warning you about right now? Are you dismissing the barometer, the needle on the barometer of your life, like that man on Long Island?
If you want a practical takeaway, here’s a spiritual exercise for you. Take twenty or thirty minutes this week to be silent before the Lord in prayer and ask the Lord what he is saying. Ask him how he’s speaking to you through his word, his Spirit applying the word to your heart. Are there any warnings? Any things that God’s put his finger on? Things in your life, in your character, in your behavior that he wants to change? Look for a theme of conviction. If the Lord shows you something, then maybe talk about that with a trusted friend. Respond to the conviction and the warnings of God.
3. Hope: Repentance, Restoration, and Renewal
The reason we can respond, friends, is because there’s not only judgment, there’s also hope. And that hope is hope that we have ultimately in the gospel. But while Amos is a bleak book, there’s actually hope in this book. I want to just show you the threads of hope. And I’ll do it with three R words, real briefly: repentance, restoration, and renewal.
(1) First of all, repentance. You have calls to repentance, calls to return. You see these especially in Amos 5.
Amos 5:4-6:
“This is what the Lord says to Israel:
“‘Seek me and live;
do not seek Bethel,
do not go to Gilgal,
do not journey to Beersheba.’”
These are all the religious shrines; these are the places they would go for worship. God’s saying, “Don’t go there! Don’t put your trust in that! Seek me and live.”
“‘For Gilgal will surely go into exile,
and Bethel will be reduced to nothing.’
Seek the Lord and live,
or he will sweep through the tribes of Joseph like a fire;
it will devour them,
and Bethel will have no one to quench it.”
Drop down to verse 14.
“Seek good, not evil,
that you may live.
Then the Lord God Almighty will be with you,
just as you say he is.
Hate evil, love good;
maintain justice in the courts.
Perhaps the Lord God Almighty will have mercy
on the remnant of Joseph.”
It’s a call to seek the Lord.
Once again, I think it’d be easy for us to pass over those words too quickly. Here was the tragedy for Israel: they heard those calls and they did not respond. They just ignored them. By the end of the century, they would be devastated by a foreign invasion. We need to listen to the call, and we need to seek the Lord, and actually seek the Lord in not just theoretical ways, but in real practical ways in our lives.
What are ways in which you are actively seeking the Lord, cultivating repentance, turning from sin, and drawing near to the Lord? Remember that seeking the Lord is not just a matter of devotional habits, it’s also a matter of moral practice. Hate the evil, love the good. Hate the injustice, do what is just. Devote yourselves to righteousness, justice, and mercy. This is the call to repentance.
(2) There’s also a hope of restoration. Number two, restoration. You see this in Amos 9. We’re getting down to the end of the book, okay? So just a few more verses.
Amos 9:11-12. Restoration—and it’s a prophetic word, a prophetic oracle, an oracle of salvation at the end of this book—that is looking forward to the restoration of the Davidic kingdom. This is actually pretty interesting, because there aren’t many passages from Amos quoted in the New Testament, but this is one that is, and I want to show you the connection. So Amos 9:11.
“‘In that day
“‘I will restore David’s fallen shelter [or booth or tent]—
I will repair its broken walls
and restore its ruins—
and will rebuild it as it used to be,
so that they may possess the remnant of Edom
and all the nations that bear my name,’
declares the Lord, who will do these things.”
So what’s really clear is this has to do with the Davidic line, the Davidic dynasty, the son of David and God’s covenant with David that one of his sons would sit on his throne, reign over his people forever. God says, “There’s coming a day when I’m going to restore David’s fallen tent.”
That passage gets quoted in Acts 15, and it removes all doubt how this is fulfilled. This is fulfilled through Jesus, who is the son of David, who is the one who restored the Davidic line, and who brings God’s kingdom to earth. You see it in Acts 15, starting in verse 12. This is when the early Christians are meeting together in Jerusalem to discuss the incorporation of Gentiles into the church, into the people of God. And James, the brother of Jesus, the pastor of the Jerusalem church, a thoroughgoing Jew, James quotes Amos in order to argue for the inclusion of the Gentiles. Acts 15:12-18.
“The whole assembly became silent as they listened to Barnabas and Paul telling about the signs and wonders God had done among the Gentiles through them. When they finished, James spoke up. ‘Brothers,’ he said, ‘listen to me. Simon has described to us how God first intervened to choose a people for his name from the Gentiles. The words of the prophets are in agreement with this, as it is written:
“‘“After this I will return
and rebuild David’s fallen tent.
Its ruins I will rebuild,
and I will restore it,
that the rest of mankind may seek the Lord,
even all the Gentiles who bear my name,
says the Lord, who does these things”—
things known from long ago.’”
That’s really fascinating. That is telling us something. It’s telling us that in the definitive, climactic events that happened in the first century when Jesus, the son of David, was crucified and raised from the dead and ascended to the Father’s right hand and then gave the Spirit to the church, that in these events the kingdom of God was being established. Jesus is the son of David. He is the one who sits on the throne. David’s tent has been rebuilt, and now the Gentiles, the nations, are being incorporated into the family of God. It’s a fulfillment of Amos 9.
(3) There’s more. There’s one more thing we see. Repentance, restoration, and then number three, renewal. You see this in the last three verses of Amos, Amos 9:13-15.
“‘The days are coming,’ declares the Lord.” Now, listen for the imagery here. This is all agricultural imagery, and it is showing us a picture of prosperity and abundance that far outstrips anything that anybody has ever experienced, ever.
“‘The days are coming,’ declares the Lord,
“‘when the reaper will be overtaken by the plowman
and the planter by the one treading grapes.’”
That means the harvest is going to be so huge that they don’t even complete one harvest before they start planting again! That never happens, but that’s what’s going to happen, because the harvest is so abundant.
“‘the reaper will be overtaken by the plowman
and the planter by the one treading grapes.
New wine will drip from the mountains
and flow from all the hills,
and I will bring my people Israel back from exile.
“‘They will rebuild the ruined cities and live in them.
They will plant vineyards and drink their wine;
they will make gardens and eat their fruit.
I will plant Israel in their own land,
never again to be uprooted
from the land I have given them,’
says the Lord your God.”
End of the book.
This is not just a picture of the nation of Israel getting back to the land. They did come back. There is some measure of restoration; but this is more than that. This is giving us imagery of abundance. The mountains are flowing with wine, the gardens are overflowing with fruit—this is Eden language! This is new creation language. Alec Motyer in his commentary puts it like this: “If the Messiah is the second David, he is also the second Adam, reigning in a restored Eden.”
I think it’s essentially the same as Isaiah’s picture of a new heavens and a new earth. In the picture at the end of the Bible, Revelation 21:22, where Jesus Christ comes and he makes all things new and you have a restoration of the created order—that’s the consummation of the kingdom. That’s what you and I are waiting for.
In C.S. Lewis’s second Narnian book, Prince Caspian, there is a chapter, chapter 11, called “The Lion Roars.” It’s a fitting conclusion, I think, this morning.
If you know the story of Prince Caspian, it’s a second-coming story. The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe is a story about the cross and resurrection, right, in the land of Narnia. Prince Caspian is a second-coming story, where Aslan has been gone, and only Lucy has seen him so far, only Lucy. None of the other children believe Aslan is there. He’s been gone for hundreds of years, and it’s all about the second coming of Aslan to Narnia, to bring restoration to this land.
In this chapter, finally the other children begin to catch glimpses of him. They begin to believe Lucy’s word. First Edmund, then Peter, finally Susan, most resistant of all. At last she sees and she weeps.
Then there’s a moment when Aslan roars, and when he roars, it doesn’t destroy the land. When he roars, it’s an awakening. The trees come to life. The land breaks into song and dance. Creation starts to laugh again. There is a celebration like never before, because Aslan has returned.
Brothers and sisters, the ultimate hope of our hearts, the ultimate hope for the church is that God has promised a kingdom, a kingdom inaugurated in the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ, a kingdom that will be fulfilled and complete when Jesus Christ returns. And there will be one final roar. It will be a roar of judgment against the wicked, but it will be a roar that brings creation back into what God intended it to be all along. It will be a return to Eden, a new creation.
Let me ask you this morning, if you are a Christian, if you are a believer, are you listening to the voice of God speaking to the church through the Scriptures? Search your heart today, search your heart this week. Listen to God’s warnings, repent, seek the Lord, and live.
And if you’re not a Christian this morning, but you’ve heard the warning about sin and about judgment, don’t refuse that voice. Don’t ignore the needle on the barometer. Instead, hear the voice of God and respond in the only way we can respond: in repentance from sin, faith in Jesus Christ, trusting in Jesus, the son of David, who took the judgment we deserved, who was exiled for us so that we could be brought back home and restored to a relationship with God. Let’s pray together.
Gracious, merciful God, we thank you this morning for your word, even a part of your word that perhaps we don’t give much attention to, but it’s your word nevertheless, and it speaks to us. We pray this morning that you give us hearts to hear and to respond to the voice of the Spirit speaking through the word of God. Lord, search us. Show us if there’s anything in our lives that needs to change—an attitude, a behavior. Maybe it’s indifference. Maybe it is something in the way we relate to you that displeases you. Lord, show us what it is and give us the hearts to turn from those sins.
We pray that as we draw near to you at the table this morning, that you would draw near to us in grace and mercy by your Spirit; that the table would be for us a means of grace; as we take the elements that we would remember what Christ has done for us, shedding his blood for our sins, his body broken and bruised and beaten as he took the judgment that we deserved. Lord, in reflecting on what Christ has done for us, and in receiving the grace of the gospel, may we in turn give our hearts to you in love, in worship, and in obedience. So draw near to us as we draw near to you and be glorified in our continuing worship. We pray this in Jesus’ name and for his sake, amen.
Brian G. Hedges
