Discover the dynamic confrontation between Amos, the unassuming prophet, and Amaziah, the priest of Bethel, as highlighted in this week’s exploration of Amos Chapter 7. Allen J. Huth provides insightful commentary on the prophet’s unwavering commitment to convey divine messages despite opposition. Through personal reflections and a recount of his path to daily Bible reading, Allen shares how these ancient texts maintain relevance in contemporary life. Join us as we unveil the depth of these prophetic visions and their lasting impact on faith and action.
00:03:34 Allen J. Huth’s Bible Reading Reflections
00:09:04 The Role of the Plumb Line and Personal Reflection
00:12:10 Personal Testimony and Path to Daily Bible Reading
SPEAKER 02 :
Welcome to ADDBIBLE, an audio daily devotion from the Ezra Project. We join Allen J. Huth as he shares Bible passages and comments from over 30 years of his personal Bible reading journals.
SPEAKER 01 :
Today brings us to Amos chapter 7. Listen to Faith Comes by Hearing’s reading of the 17 verses of Amos chapter 7. Amos 7
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This is what the Lord God showed me. Behold, he was forming locusts when the latter growth was just beginning to sprout. And behold, it was the latter growth after the king’s mowings. When they had finished eating the grass of the land, I said, Oh, Lord God, please forgive. How can Jacob stand? He is so small. The Lord relented concerning this.
SPEAKER 03 :
It shall not be, said the Lord.
SPEAKER 06 :
This is what the Lord God showed me. Behold, the Lord God was calling for a judgment by fire, and it devoured the great deep and was eating up the land. Then I said, O Lord God, please cease. How can Jacob stand? He is so small. The Lord relented concerning this.
SPEAKER 03 :
This also shall not be, said the Lord God.
SPEAKER 06 :
This is what he showed me. Behold, 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.
SPEAKER 03 :
Then the Lord said, Behold, I am setting a plumb line in the midst of my people Israel. I will never again pass by them. 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.
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Then Amaziah the priest of Bethel sent to Jeroboam king of Israel, saying,
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Amos has conspired against you in the midst of the house of Israel. The land is not able to bear all his words. For thus Amos has said, Jeroboam shall die by the sword, and Israel must go into exile away from his land. And Amaziah said to Amos, O seer, go, flee away to the land of Judah, and eat bread there, and prophesy there, but never again prophesy at Bethel, for it is the king’s sanctuary, and it is a temple of the kingdom.
SPEAKER 06 :
Then Amos answered and said to Amaziah, I was no prophet, nor a prophet’s son, but I was a herdsman and a dresser of sycamore figs. But the Lord took me from following the flock, and the Lord said to me, Go, prophesy to my people Israel. Now therefore hear the word of the Lord. You say, Do not prophesy against Israel, and do not preach against the house of Isaac. Therefore thus says the Lord, Your wife shall be a prostitute in the city, and your sons and your daughters shall fall by the sword, and your land shall be divided up with a measuring line. You yourself shall die in an unclean land, and Israel shall surely go into exile away from its land.
SPEAKER 01 :
In my personal Bible reading in 1997, I read Amos 7-9 on the same day. I did not make a reference to Amos 7, so let’s go on to 2004. In 2004, I read Amos 5-9 on the same day and again did not make a reference to this chapter. So let’s go on to 2011. In 2011, I read Amos 7-9 on the same day. And concerning chapter 7, I wrote, Amos prophesies about Israel and is asked to leave. People don’t want to hear truth. It disrupts their lives. Today I’d first like to make a comment about Bible reading and these AdBible recordings. You might notice through my personal Bible reading journals that oftentimes I read more than one chapter a day. But on these recordings in AdBible, we try to take just a chapter a day. The reason for some of this is when you’re reading the Bible, either the whole Old Testament or chronologically, or reading the whole Bible in a year, you have to read more than one chapter a day. And also, you can see that some of the content of these chapters is maybe not as comprehensive as other chapters, so you bunch your readings so you can move through the Scriptures more rapidly. But in the Ad Bible recordings, we try to just do a chapter a day because of the time of about 10 minutes a day for these recordings. So there are plenty of times in my Bible reading journals that I read several chapters, but I don’t make a comment on each chapter like we’re doing in Ad Bible. So let’s look at Amos chapter 7. This is the shift in the book of Amos. The first six chapters were oracles of judgment by God against the nations. Chapters 7 through 9 are different. The prophet turns from speech to sight. He now tells of visions he has received from God that leave no doubt of the deadly peril in which the nation stands. So chapters 1 through 6 were about oracles. Chapters 7 through 9 will be about visions. We can see that by the opening verse of this chapter. It says, “…this is what the Lord God showed me.” The first vision Amos sees is locusts eating up the produce of the land. Amos cries out to the Lord, please forgive. Amazingly, God listens to Amos and he relents. The second vision is fire devouring the great deep, which is the sea, and eating up the land. And again, Amos cries out to God, please cease. And the Lord again relents. The third vision Amos sees has to do with a plumb line. And I want to read my English Standard Version footnote so we understand what this vision is. The third picture that God showed Amos was of a plumb line held against a wall. A plumb line is a string with a weight fastened to the end of it. When the string is placed beside a wall and the weight is allowed to hang freely, it will be apparent whether or not the wall is perfectly vertical. If the wall is leaning and it is not fixed, it will eventually collapse. Compared to the standard of the Torah, the plumb line according to which the wall of Israel was built, it is clear to Amos that the nation is now so far out of true vertical that the collapse cannot be prevented. Israel is hardened in sin. Thus, in this case, Amos does not ask God to relent. The next thing that happens in this chapter is a priest, Amaziah, hears the words of Amos and he goes and tells the king what the prophet is saying. The priests were to uphold the plumb line of the Torah in the community. The priests were the ones who were to hold the people accountable to the law of God. Rather than standing side by side with Amos in his prophecies, this priest went to conspire against him. In verse 12, Amaziah the priest tells Amos to get out of town. He says, “‘O see or go, flee away to the land of Judah, and eat bread there and prophesy there. But never again prophesy at Bethel, for it is the king’s sanctuary, and it is the temple of the kingdom.'” So the priest is telling Amos to get out of Israel and go to Judah. Notice too, he calls him a seer, not a prophet. I refer again to my footnote in my English Standard Version Study Bible. When Amaziah called Amos a seer, his intent may have been contemptuous. This term for prophet suggests Amos is not a member of the royal guild of prophets, who, since they were paid by the king, would speak to his pleasure. And thus Amos had no standing in the king’s sanctuary, and basically that’s why he calls him a seer, not a prophet. And look at Amos’ response in verse 14. Then Amos answered and said to Amaziah, I was no prophet, nor a prophet’s son, but I was a herdsman and a dresser of sycamore figs. But the Lord took me from following the flock, and the Lord said to me, Go, prophesy to my people Israel. So he basically agrees with Amaziah, you’re right, I am not an official prophet. I am somebody that God has put a message in my heart for, and that’s what I am proclaiming. And the chapter concludes with Amos lighting up Amaziah. Your wife shall be a prostitute in the city, and your sons and your daughters shall fall by the sword, and your land shall be divided up with a measuring line, and you yourself shall die in an unclean land, and Israel shall surely go into exile away from its land. Because the priest Amaziah rejected the true words of God spoken through Amos, he too would be judged. The application from Amos chapter 7 is pretty clear. It’s be careful and be discerning about what we’re hearing from the Lord and who is speaking it. Sometimes the religious leaders or the religious establishment where we expect to hear from God is not really where God is speaking. He may use common people like Amos rather than religious leaders like Amaziah. And how will we know the difference? The plumb line, the example here in Amos 7. The plumb line was the Torah then and is the Word of God today. We must measure what we hear from religious people or anybody with the plumb line of the Word of God. As we stay close to the Word of God, we will be able to have a discerning spirit about what we’re hearing from people. In the New Testament, doesn’t Jesus say, The sheep hear my voice. We will be able to discern the voice of God by measuring it against the plumb line of the Word of God. So, Father, help us do just that. Help us stay close to your Word so that we can measure what we’re hearing from others by the Word of God. Give us ears to hear and eyes to see the truth of that which is being proclaimed around us. Holy Spirit, give us a discerning spirit. Protect us from false teaching and help us follow the truth as proclaimed in our ears around us. To God be the glory. Amen. Thanks for listening to Add Bible today. You might wonder how I became a daily Bible reader. When I was 15 years old, a buddy and me stole his father’s car. We could steal his father’s car because his father was in Vietnam, serving in the war. So he was never home. So we took the car that day. Neither one of us with a driver’s license. And we took off out east of Colorado Springs on a dirt road. We were flying down this dirt road at 60 miles an hour. And he lost control of the car. We began to spin and we were going down the road, fishtailing, and he spun the wheel of the car, 60 miles an hour. The car tumbled, crushed the top, tucked the wheels under, totaled the car. I was on a dirt road. I don’t know if I was thrown out of the car or crawled out of the car, but I looked at that car and I thought, am I even alive? Am I broken? Am I bleeding everywhere? And I began to pat myself down, and I felt like I was okay. So I stood up, and I was uninjured, amazingly. The sheriff came to draw up the accident. He said, it’s a miracle you guys are alive. I got home that night, went down into my bedroom. My mother came to me and said, you ought to thank God you’re alive. I was laying on my bed, and I was thinking about the day’s activities, and I just thought, wow, I could have been dead today. I wasn’t the driver. I was the passenger. I wasn’t in control, but God was. At that moment, I figured out at 15 years old, God could take my life any time. He could have that day. So as I laid there, I thought, okay, you could take my life any day. So you saved my life today for a reason. For whatever reason that is, I’m going to live for you and that reason. As I said that, I heard a voice say to me, there’s a Bible on your bookshelf. Get it down and read it. I must have heard something, because I got up, I went over to the bookshelf, and I pulled down a Bible. I opened it to the first page, just like I would any other book, and I began to read God’s Word. I read Genesis chapter 1. The next day I read Genesis chapter 2. The next day I read Genesis chapter 3. And a chapter a day, I began to read God’s Word at 15 years old. If you do that, by the way, it’ll take you about three and a half years to finish reading the Bible a chapter a day. And that’s a good plan. So that’s how I became a daily Bible reader. And when I finished going through the Bible the first time, at 18 years or so, I just started over because I thought that’s what Christians did was read their Bibles every day. So that’s how I became a daily Bible reader.
