Amos 7:1-9
Grace and Absolute Righteousness

This is what the Lord God showed me: he was forming locusts at the time the latter growth began to sprout (it was the latter growth after the king's mowings). When they had finished eating the grass of the land, I said,
    "O Lord God, forgive, I beg you!
        How can Jacob stand?
        He is so small!"
    The LORD relented concerning this;
        "It shall not be," said the LORD.

This is what the Lord God showed me: the Lord God was calling for a shower of fire, and it devoured the great deep and was eating up the land. Then I said,
    "O Lord God, cease, I beg you!
        How can Jacob stand?
        He is so small!"
    The LORD relented concerning this;
        "This also shall not be," said the Lord God.

This is what he showed me: the Lord was standing beside a wall built with a plumb line, with a plumb line in his hand. And the LORD said to me, "Amos, what do you see?" And I said, "A plumb line." Then the Lord said,
    "See, I am setting a plumb line
        in the midst of my people Israel;
        I will never again pass them by;
    the high places of Isaac shall be made desolate,
        and the sanctuaries of Israel shall be laid waste,
        and I will rise against the house of Jeroboam with the sword."

New Revised Standard Version

Most of the messages that God gave to Amos were harsh warnings for the egregious sin that permeated the nations of Israel and Judah in his time:

"You only have I known
    of all the families of the earth;
Therefore I will punish you
    for all your iniquities"
-- Amos 3:2

"Hear this word, you cows of Bashan
    who are on Mount Samaria,
    who oppress the poor, who crush the needy,
    who say to their husbands, "Bring something to drink!"
-- Amos 4:1

"Take away from me the noise of your songs;
    I will not listen to the melody of your harps.
But let justice roll down like waters,
    and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream."
-- Amos 5:23-24

The message Amos spoke to the high priests and kings, in this brief respite from his career as a sheep breeder, is as pointed, direct, and confrontational as any of the prophets. I have to think that John the Baptist considered Amos as one of his personal heroes, as John stood at the Jordan River and called the Pharisees of his day a "brood of vipers."

But God gave Amos the complete breadth of God's messages, not merely messages of condemnation and repentance. In the last part of the last chapter, Amos shares God's message of restoration. God gave assurance that when Israel had been "shaken" to drive them to repentance, there would be a relationship between God and God's people that is unrivaled in blessings, in closeness, and in love.

In this passage, God gives Amos a personal vision of grace. Amos witnessed the vision of complete destruction of grazing lands by locust, knowing the punishment was fully justified for this nation that continued to reject and ignore God, but he cried out for mercy -- and God felt sorry for the people and declared, "it shall not be."

Again, Amos had a vision of great fires that consumed the land. Maybe Amos even saw in this fire the "refiner's fire" that Malachi describes in 3:2 to come and rid us of sin. Again, Amos cried out for mercy, and again God felt sorry for the people, and declared, "this, too, shall not be."

But this was not to happen a third time -- the repetition could not continue. "What do you see this time, Amos?" No horrible destructions, no great famine, merely a simple plumb line, an innocuous builder's tool, held up to a perfectly straight, proper wall.

But this simple plumb line told a more devastating story than locust and fire, because God could not change it. A wall that is leaning is a dangerous and worthless wall. God could show mercy and forego even justified punishment, but it was the evil and rebellion of God's people that would cause them to fall, sooner or later.

God's mercy is magnificent and immense, driven by God's infinite Love, but mercy is not limitless. If there were no limits on mercy, there would be no righteousness, and without righteousness, there is no cause for mercy. But just as sure as a plumb line defines the perfect, true vertical orientation for a wall, so there is an absolute righteousness in God's Love that is the true orientation for our lives.

The rulers and priests of Amos's day were very good at comparing themselves against other nations, rather than against God's standard. The nation of Israel was convinced of its goodness relative to foreign lands, and the nation of Judah was convinced of its goodness relative to the sin in the nation of Israel. Righteousness becomes a competition to self-serving humanity -- we don't have to be "good", just better than the bad folk, and we pretend God will be satisfied with that.

No, says Amos, there is an absolute measure of righteousness with which we must be measured. No, writes Paul, we must forget all else and press on toward the goal of the heavenly call of God. No, says Jesus, there is only One who is Good, and all we do must be measured against what this One has called us to do.