No smoke without fire.
God cannot utter empty threats. His every declaration is bona fide. When he roars he is about to rend. Let, then, the doomed sinner tremble. For all his insensibility he is no better than a dead man.
I. SIN INVOLVES DISCONNECTION FROM A HOLY GOD. "Can two walk together," etc.? This deep principle involves that:
1. Israel, quarrelling with God, cannot reckon on his company. For so far God had associated with them. In Egypt, in the wilderness, in Canaan, he had vouchsafed them close companionship. But their rebellious attitude against him, approaching as it was a climax of irreconcilableness, must make a continuance of intimate relations impossible.
2. The prophet, walking as he did with God, must be regarded as in agreement with him, and so expressing his will. Amos spoke as God's servant and mouthpiece. He looked at Israel's sin from God's standpoint. In reference to it he was as emphatically associated with God as he was dissociated from them. Underlying this formal association it must be believed there was real agreement. "He whom God hath sent speaketh the words of God."
II. WHEN THE THUNDER OF GOD'S THREATENINGS IS HEARD, THE LIGHTNING OF HIS JUDGMENTS IS IMMINENT. That peril is sure and near is tangent in a series of similes of a graphic kind.
1. When God utters his war cry it is evident that he is just about to strike his enemy. (Verse 4.) The lion roars when he has marked his prey, and is about to spring. God sees the sinful nation ripe for judgment. He sees that the time for sending it has come. His roar out of Zion (Amos 1:2) is, therefore, the prelude to striking his prey forthwith. "The thrcatenings of the Word and providence of God are not bugbears to frighten children and fools, but are certain inferences from the sin of man and certain presages of the judgments of God" (M. Henry).
2. When God reaches forth his hand there is something to take, and within his reach. (Verse 5.) It is the lighting of the bird on the trap that snaps it. If there were no trap laid no bird would be caught. If there were no bird in the trap it would not rise from the ground. Israel is the bird, and God is the Fowler, and his judgment is the snare, and the lesson of all is that she is already in God's destroying grasp.
3. When some are already alarmed it shows that danger to all is real and close. (Verse 6, "Is a trumpet blown," etc.?) The prophet, who knew what was coming, was alarmed, and those like minded with him. The note of alarm was already ringing over the land. Signs of evil will not show themselves until the evil is comparatively at hand. So surely as the smoke rises the fire is kindling.
4. When misfortune falls it is a proof that God has been at work. "Does misfortune happen in the city," etc.? (verse 6). "All things are of God," is an axiom that in one sense or other covers all events, whether good or bad. The qualification of it is that the sin of any of them is exclusively of man. God "creates evil" (Isaiah 45:7)—the evil of suffering—whilst the evil of sin he allows us to create, that he may bring out of it greater good.
III. GOD WARNS HIS PROPHETS OF EVIL BEFORE IT COMES. (Verse 7.) The prophet is a negotiator, hearing the truth from God, and handing it on to men. God does not destroy men unwarned, nor warn them but through his accredited messengers. The history of his judgments illustrates this. Through Noah he revealed the coming deluge, through Lot the destruction of Sodom, through Joseph the famine in Egypt, through Moses the Egyptian plagues, through Jonah the sentence on Nineveh, and through Christ and his apostles the destruction of Jerusalem. "Thus God has ever warned the world of coming judgments in order that it may not incur them" (Lange). "He foretelleth the evil to come that he may not be compelled to inflict it" (Pusey).
IV. GOD'S TRUE PROPHETS CANNOT BUT SPEAK HIS MESSAGE. (Verse 8.) It is his will that they should prophesy. He tells them his purposes mainly with a view to this. To prophesy is their function and duty, and is made their business. They are moved at the sight of coming evil. They are in sympathy with the Divine compassion, giving a last chance to the doomed; and so, like the apostles, they "cannot but speak the things they have seen and heard" (1 Corinthians 9:16, 1 Corinthians 9:17; Acts 4:19, Acts 4:20). "Moses was not excused though slow of speech, nor Isaiah though of polluted lips, nor Jeremiah because he was a child. Ezekiel was bidden 'be not rebellious like that rebellious house;' and when Jeremiah would keep silence he saith, 'His Word was in mine heart as a burning fire, shut up in my bones, and I was weary with forbearing, and I could not stay'" (Pusey). Taken in connection, verses 7 and 8 reveal a perfect arrangement for making known God's purpose in reference to sin. God anticipates action by a communication to his prophets, and the prophets execute orders, and hand the communication on.