The doomed people who will not turn.
Sin brings often present gain, but it never pays in the end. When the balance is struck, the wrong doer always finds it on the wrong side of the book. A sinner is one who sets himself against God, and in the nature of things ignorance cannot overreach knowledge, nor weakness overcome omnipotence. Israel had long been under instruction in this matter, and they would see it one day when the knowledge would be too late. Many Scripture maxims are illustrated here.
I. "BEHOLD, YE ARE OF NOTHING, AND YOUR WORK OF NOUGHT." (Amos 6:13.) "In a thing of nought;" literally, a "non-thing," a phantasm, what has an appearance of being, and yet is not.
1. Human strength is nothing. It is nothing in comparison with God's. It is nothing apart from God's. Being derived wholly from God, it has no existence independent of him. It is, therefore, virtually and practically "a thing of nought;" incapable of being used for any purpose either against him or irrespective of him.
2. Out of nothing nothing comes. Human power being a nonentity, belief in it is delusion, trust in it is baseless, and expectation from it must be disappointed. Doubly, therefore, and trebly "cursed is he that maketh flesh his arm."
3. Yet it is in this nonentity that men rejoice. Sin is at bottom a deification of self. We believe in ourselves—in our own power and knowledge and excellence. We are satisfied with ourselves, expect great things from ourselves, and rejoice in ourselves (Psalms 10:6; Psalms 52:7). Only by a work of grace are we disabused of our carnal confidence and won to a higher trust. It is as complementary of our "trusting in the Lord" that we "lean not to our own understanding."
II. "WHO CAN BRING A CLEAN THING OUT OF AN UNCLEAN? NOT ONE." (Amos 6:12.) Israel joined oppression to unrighteousness, and out of this endeavoured to bring themselves lasting gain. This is likened to an attempt by the husbandman to cultivate the rock. It implies:
1. Utter futility. The husbandman does not attempt impracticable things. He knows there is no fertility in a bare rock—no soil for crop, no bed for seed, no furrow for plough; and so he cultivates the good soil, and leaves the rook alone. And no more than till the rock for a harvest need men seek safety by wrongdoing. They cannot find it so. It is not where they seek it. Good cannot come out of evil by natural generation, for it is not in it.
2. Loss instead of gain. An attempt to plough the rock, like every other offence against the nature of things, must be worse than futile. It means lost time, lost labour, and broken implements. So with the perversion of justice, and the corruption of the fruit of righteousness. It is evil, and can only lead to evil. It increases the sum total of the wickedness that provokes Divine wrath, and itself creates a new source of danger.
III. "THEREFORE LET NO MAN GLORY IN MEN." (Amos 6:13.) It is the very essence of unreason.
1. It is a crime. It involves departure from God. The soul is capable of sustaining but one great attachment at a time. We cannot love both the Father and the world, or "serve God and mammon," or "make flesh our arm," without our heart departing from the Lord. And it is not only that the two trusts are one too many; they are incompatible and mutually destructive. To deify serf, and defy Jehovah, are acts of the same moral quality. The blindness, and only the blindness, that is capable of the one is capable of the other.
2. It is a blunder. It is putting faith in the faithless. It is attributing power to the impotent. It is pitting the creature against the Creator, the vessel against the potter, the thing formed against him that formed it. Only disappointment can come out of this. A pierced hand is the natural and inevitable penalty of leaning on a broken reed. "Hast thou an arm like God," etc.?
IV. "O ASSYRIAN, THE ROD OF MINE ANGER." Israel's overthrow was decided on, and the instrument of it prepared.
1. War the minister of God. He does not command, nor authorize, nor sanction it. He forbids the lusts of ambition and greed and revenge that lead to it. He inculcates a love of others which, carried out, would make it impossible. The progress of his religion leads to the diminution of war, and its final establishment will coordinate itself with the turning of war into peace to the ends of the earth. Yet, as with other evil things, he permits it to happen, controls its operation, utilizes its results, and makes it a means of good, and the minister of his holy will. War has always been a prominent agency in the judgments that fall on nations. And a terrible agency it is, more ruthlessly destructive than any other. It expresses all the evil qualities of corrupt humanity, deserving the poet's scathing words—
"O war, thou son of hell,
Whom angry Heavens do make their minister."
And war, apart from its severity as a scourge, is well calculated to be disciplinary. As a revelation of human wickedness, it indirectly lays bare to us the plagues of our own heart. Linked hand in hand as it is, moreover, with deceit and treachery, it exhibits carnal human nature as "a thing of nought," and so is an effective antidote to confidence in the flesh
2. The heathen the rod in his hand. God is not fastidious in the matter of instruments. He uses every man, however vile, for some purpose or other. Israel, moreover, was so enamoured of the heathen—of their gods and worship and ways—that to know them in the character of enemies and conquerors and masters would be a great advantage. It would be in these capacities that the worst effects of idolatry on the human character would show themselves, and closer acquaintance with them might help to disenchant the idol loving Israel.
3. Victory always on God's side. God, for the time being, would be on the Assyrian's side. Without reference to the intrinsic merits of the struggle, as between parties almost equally wicked, he would help the heathen to overcome the apostates. Israel's victories over the nations were due, not to their own valour or strength, but to God's assisting arm (Psalms 44:2, Psalms 44:3). Left to themselves, they would be utterly beaten now. The difference between defeat and victory is the difference between the God-forsaken and the God-defended.
4. God-sent affliction covers all the ground covered by the provoking sin. "And it shall oppress you from the entrance Hamath"—the extreme northern boundary (Numbers 34:8)—"to the brook of the desert," the southern boundary, whether "the brook of the willows," Isaiah 15:7 (Pusey), or the present "El Ahsy" (Keil). This territory they had recovered under Jeroboam II; and lost soon to Tiglath-Pileser, defeat and loss retracing to the last inch the steps of conquest. Not only was "the whole scene of their triumphs one scene of affliction and woe" (Pusey), but the very thing, and the whole thing, which they had made an occasion of pride and carnal confidence, vainly deeming that they had conquered it in their own strength, is made an occasion of humiliation and distress. The only way to put us out of conceit with our idol is to destroy it all, and destroy it utterly.