“The Revelation of Divine Chastisement”

(Amos 3:7-8, Preaching: Pastor Stephen Magee, July 2, 2006)

Amos 3:7-8 ⁷ “For the Lord GOD does nothing without revealing his secret to his servants the prophets. ⁸ The lion has roared; who will not fear? The Lord GOD has spoken; who can but prophesy?”

Introduction: God’s disciplinary speech to His people

It is part of God’s special love for His people that He would discipline them. It is also part of His love that He would warn Israel about the discipline that is coming. The stranger, who does not know a child, may walk on the other side of the street and ignore the misbehavior of a young one that is not part of his family. But a father will warn his son and will take action to claim him back from the pathway of dangerous error.

This is what we call chastisement. It is meant to be corrective and restorative. Condemnation is a different thing entirely. The goal of condemnation and of just punishment is retributive justice, not correction. In the Old Testament prophetic book of Amos, God is correcting his people Israel, with a view to their future restoration. This kind of discipline is an expression of the mercy and love of God for His people. We know that this is why Amos has been sent with a prophetic word against Israel, for the end of the book speaks about the future restoration of Israel. We need to keep this in mind when we think of God’s disciplinary actions back then and even now to us today. God discipline those He loves (Hebrews 12:6). His chastisement is a part of His wonderful mercy. It reminds us that He is our Father, and we are His children.

THE PASSAGE CONSIDERED:

The Lord God’s plan to discipline Israel

In the two verses before us this morning we are looking at the special connection between the words of a prophet, and the merciful chastisement of God for His people. Verse seven tells us that “the Lord GOD does nothing without revealing his secret to his servants the prophets.” This has to be understood in light of the immediate context.

Clearly there are billions of things that God does in His great works of creation and providence that He says nothing to His prophets about. The immediately preceding verse spoke of disaster from the Lord coming to a city in Israel. The point in verse seven is that the God who is in covenant with His people Israel, if He is about to bring disaster upon Israel, will surely first announce this through His covenant representatives, the prophets.

The secret things and the revealed things

In Deuteronomy 29:29 we read these words: “The secret things belong to the LORD our God, but the things that are revealed belong to us and to our children forever.” Obviously there are many things in the lives of individual Israelites about which they knew nothing. People did not know the date and circumstances of their death, for instance. They did not know what tomorrow’s business held for them, and neither do we. These things have not been revealed by God. They are what the Bible calls “secret things.”

But there is much that God has revealed. We are responsible to hear and understand these things. We are not to treat these revealed things as if they were matters of great confusion and mystery. As an example, God’s view on self-centered greed was not a secret thing. The individual Israelite was not free to decide that such a teaching was a matter of personal interpretation to be accepted or rejected based on private inclination or opinion. Yet many in Israel rejected the clear word of God, and God’s merciful chastisement was headed their way.

First the prophet, then the discipline

If the prophet’s message were not given to the people, then the coming specific discipline from God would remain a secret thing about the future, known only to God. But now that coming chastisement was being revealed.

This kind of divine revelation through His prophet shows both the righteousness and mercy of God – righteousness because God is serious about all His holy requirements for His covenant people, but also mercy because God is giving them an opportunity to hear His solemn warning and to repent. Sadly, we get ourselves into a horrible mess when God gives us a clear message, and we treat it as some esoteric matter of sophisticated interpretation.

The right thing for the hearer to do

As the eighth verse tells us, “The lion has roared; who will not fear?” God is the lion, and His Son is the lion of the tribe of Judah. He roars in His prophetic word of chastisement. It is not complex. Israel is to hear God, to fear God, and to turn away from evil. Instead the covenant people are more likely to shoot the messenger, and to pretend that they still are honoring God. But the Lord knows the truth.

The right thing for the prophet to do

The people have a responsibility to hear. Yet they resist the Word of God. The prophet also has a duty. Yet for the true spokesman of the Word of God, this is made irresistible to Him. “The Lord GOD has spoken; who can but prophesy?” As the Apostle Paul would say in the New Testament: “Woe to me if I do not preach the gospel!” According to this gospel, Paul says, “there is a day coming when God will judge the secrets of men by Christ Jesus.” It is never safe to ignore the Word of God whereby God mercifully calls us back to close fellowship with Him. It is never safe to ignore the announcement of His judgment.

POINT: God uses His prophets to reveal His message to His people. His correction of us is a very important part of that message.

APPLICATION:

The unexpected Word of God

Last Sunday morning at around 7:45 Pacific time I was awoken by the ringing of a cell phone that somehow originated from this assembly, which would have made the time about 10:45 for you. The caller ID simply listed the word “Unknown.” I concluded that it was someone from the East Coast who was trying to sell the church something, so I decided not to answer, simply turning off the phone.

Later that morning when I woke up for church, I was treated with an unexpected voice mail message. It took me a while to decipher the voice on the other end of the line, but after some time I was able to figure out that three or four minutes of Mark Sketchley’s preaching had been sent to my cell phone in California by someone in the congregation who must have accidentally dialed the church number. It was an odd experience. I was treated to an unexpected message from another world about a “heavenly perspective” that I needed to have. While the circumstances of that communication made it especially unexpected, there is a sense in which any time that Mark or Doug or I open up the Word of God to you, it is always a message from a place that is largely “unknown” to us. The message of a godly mindset is always unexpected. It challenges us in our worldliness, and we need to hear its warning and respond to its merciful correction.

I was struck by this point a second time this week as I was reading Luke 15. That is the chapter where Jesus tells three stories about God’s love for the lost. “What man of you, having a hundred sheep, if he has lost one of them, does not leave the ninety-nine in the open country, and go after the one that is lost, until he finds it?” I would not leave the ninety-nine and go after the one. Would you? “Or what woman, having ten silver coins, if she loses one coin, does not light a lamp and sweep the house and seek diligently until she finds it? And when she has found it, she calls together her friends and neighbors, saying, ‘Rejoice with me, for I have found the coin that I had lost.’ ” I would not do that. I might look for the coin, but I would not invite the neighbors in for a party when I found it. And if my son had demanded his inheritance and spent it all on prostitutes and gambling, I don’t think we would invite everyone over to celebrate at first sight of him coming home for food.

But God would. He is different from us. He rejoices to seek and save the lost. His thoughts are not our thoughts. His ways are not our ways. That is why he sends us men like Mark to preach to us. They have a prophetic role because they bring us a message from God that is different than our natural inclinations, and we need to hear it.

Christ our prophet, condemnation, and chastisement

Our hope is this. As Christ, who is the ultimate prophet from God and even the very Word of God, is preached to us from the Scriptures, we are changed. We see that He took upon himself the condemnation that Old Testament Israel and that we in the church today deserve. He did that for us on the cross. That’s why there is no more condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus, who walk not according to the flesh, but according to the Spirit. But there is a merciful chastisement for the church still today, and that discipline teaches us to hear the word of God and to love the way of the cross, and therefore to follow Jesus by the Spirit of God.

The prophetic ministry of the church today

The more we hear the unexpected message of God and embrace this thinking as our own, the more we become unexpected people in a world that expects everyone to worship self and to live for self.

Let me give you an example of this. Stan Armes, a missionary who we support in South Africa, recently told me the story of a couple who worked for 18 years in a tuberculosis clinic serving nomadic people in the United Arab Emirates. They helped people with their physical needs and told them about Christ as much as they were able. Over the course of those 18 years they did not know of one convert to Christianity from their faithful labors. Stan asked them if they were discouraged, and as quickly as you can imagine, they said, “No. We just count on the fact that we are planting seeds. Eventually the Lord will crack the wall.” What patient endurance! What a wonderful example to us of trusting in God and waiting upon the Lord!

For us, the way of godly thinking seems so foreign – so different than our instincts. But to Christ, godly thinking was His every thought. And so whether it is Doug or Mark or me, we bring you Christ. You are loved by Him, and you are chastised by Him, and you are being changed by Him through the prophetic Word if you will receive it. And you must receive it and not resist it.

Conclusion: Unless the Lord builds the house…

This morning, for the first time in over two and a half years, we worship in a building owned by Exeter Presbyterian Church. It needs some work, but then so do we. We are wanting to see Christ more fully formed in this place. But unless the Lord builds the house, unless He makes us to be more fervent lovers of Christ, those who labor to preach His prophetic Word labor in vain. But we know this: our labor in the Lord is not in vain (1 Corinthians 15:58). God brings us beyond our strength. Therefore we rely “not on ourselves, but on God who raises the dead. He delivered us from such a deadly peril, and He will deliver us. On Him we have set our hope that He will deliver us again” (2 Corinthians 1:9-10). Amen.