September 1927
584
T h e
K i n g ’ s
B u s i n e s s
is no escaping the terrible penalties pro nounced by the Word of God upon the violation of the laws of purity. Society is absolutely certain to reap an awful harvest from the unbounded pro miscuous lust that exists today. In Amos’s day these conditions went so far as to profane the very house of God, and is it not a scandal to the church today that leaders of the church can be found who plead for the lowering of the stan dards of marriage? “Remember," said Amos, how God “de stroyed the Amorite, whose height was like the height of cedars, who was as strong as the oaks. Yet He destroyed his fruit from above and his roots from be neath” (v. 9). And let us consider that the great empires of the past which sunk into oblivion, went down by the same path of apostasy, injustice and moral leprosy which thousands of people today are traveling. Amos enumerates in vs. 10-11 the sig nal favors conferred upon Israel. The mercies our nation has received from God are the heaviest aggravations of the sins that are now being tolerated. What a requital for all His favors! What shame upon us for not rendering to Him according to the plain teachings of His Word! Can we heap such contempt upon His Word and His divine Son and think long to escape national punish ment? The closing verse of the lesson charges that some had sunk so low as even to seduce into a violation of their relig ious vows, some 'who were sincerely seeking to separate themselves unto God. When men go so far as to try to de bauch Christian people and draw them off from their seriousness in devotion, they are fast filling up the measure of their iniquities. No wonder such a people said to the prophets: “Prophesy nof’ (v. 12). Many today are doing everything within their power to silence the voices of true min isters or to get them to tone down the Gospel to fit in with modern conceptions. It is bad enough for a man who cannot bear faithful preaching, but it will be Worse for the man who tries to suppress it. —O:— P ith and P oint Morality is that for the sake of which all things exist. It is the one essential thing in a nation. “Morality is the first object of govern ment.”—Emerson. When we are told that a man is relig ious, we have a right to ,ask—“What are his morals?” “It is not possible to found a lasting power upon injustice and treachery.”— Demosthenes. God’s mill grinds slowly, but surely. Justice is the handmaid of acceptance of the Bible. Peace is its companion. Fools measure actions after they are done; wise men beforehand, by the Word of God. God does not weigh criminality in our scales.
O ctober 30, 1927 Amos Denounces Sin Lesson Text—Amos 2 :4-12
ments, and their lies caused them to err.” This is the further indictment of Amos upon Judah. The world today is full of religious liars. New cults are born every day, all professing to be of God and all contradicting one another; yet the peo ple love to swallow their false teach ings, never pausing to consider that God has made no one dependent upon any in dividual for the correct interpretation of His truth. All can come to the pure stream, His Word, and find it for them selves. The people preferred in those days Baal-peor, Baalim and Ashtaroth to the message of the true God, as thousands in our day run after the teachings of cult leaders, who make their writings, essen tial to the understanding of the way of life. It is just as true today as in the days of Amos that people love to be de ceived by lies; but no amount of sin cerity of belief in what is false can save one from the consequences. “I will send a fire upon Judah,” said the Lord, “and it shall devour the places of Jerusalem" (v. 5). This prediction, re peated by Jeremiah (17:27), was literally fulfilled (2 Kgs. 25:9). The charge against Israel follows. The first indictment is that they “sold the righteous for silver, and the poor for a pair of shoes” (v. 6). They were no torious for the corrupt administration of justice, and for cruelty and oppression. They would pervert justice for the most paltry recompense. Are not these conditions which follow in the wake of apostasy? Throughout our land today, the complaint is going up that it is next to impossible to obtain justice. Especially is this true in the case of the poor man. The withholding of the Word of God from the children of our schools, the substitution of evolutionary and atheistic teachings in schools, . col leges and even churches, is bound to re sult in a crop of Bolshevists,•everyone of whom is a law unto himself and set upon getting what he desires at any price. Not only does injustice walk hand in hand with apostasy, but as Amos de clared to Israel, grossest sexual impurity may be expected. “A man and his father will go in unto the same maid” (v. 7). They will even ‘Hay themselves down upon clothes laid to pledge by the altar.” Some are indeed shocked to find such suggestive sentences in the Bible, and these are the very people who close their eyes to the licentious conditions that ex ist in our own day to an alarming degree. Amos made Israel face these conditions, and told them plainly what would happen if they were not corrected. The farther the people of our nation get from the teachings of personal purity as taught by the Word of God, the looser become their views regarding sex mat ters. In our day some ministers are pleading for church recognition of “free love” relationships. Scientific devices are provided, supposedly to make it safe for the young to violate the laws of purity. Those who have been careful students of human history, well know that there
'T'HE lesson committee have chosen this portion of Scripture as a temperance lesson. We fail to discover anything in the passage concerning the sin of intem
perance. The l a s t verse speaks of some having given wine to the Nazarites, who had for a certain pe riod taken a vow not to touch the fruit of the vine (Num. 6:2- 4). The p a s s a g e ,
however, contains much in the. way of warning that is timely for the day in which we live. Amos, the simple herdsman, of whose call as a prophet we learned last Sunday, though a citizen of the kingdom of Ju dah, went, under a divine impulse, into the adjoining kingdom of Israel. At Bethel, the chief seat of calf worship, he uttered the prophecies of Israel’s down fall recorded in this book. It will be noticed that Amos’s former pursuits furnished him much of the im agery of his prophecies. He alludes to the height of the cedars, the strength of oaks, the snaring of birds, the roaring of lions, the sifting of corn, the treading of grapes, the constellations of the heavens. All these natural objects which had been familiar to him as he tended sheep by day and night, furnished him illustrations. Although commissioned especially to rebuke the sins of Israel, the first and second chapters record his denunciations of six other powers just outside of Judah and Israel. Chapter 2 continues the se ries of judgments pronounced on these outside nations, concluding with Moab, the last outside of the chosen people. With verse 4 he proceeds to tell the doom of Judah and Israel. On the surface it may seem that Amos makes too much of mere morality; It should be remembered that Amos was called to protest against definite sins and errors, and to show the people that sac rifices and incense meant nothing what ever to Jehovah so long as they utterly disregarded all His standards of right eousness. The central note of Amos’s prophecy re minds one of the definition of pure re ligion given by the Apostle James: “Pure religion and undefiled before God and the Father is this, To visit the fatherless and widows in their affliction, and to keep himself unspotted from the world." Addressing himself to Judah (v. 4), Amos declares that for four transgres sions their punishment shall not be turn ed away. They have “despised the law of the Lord.” The nation that has had the Scriptures and then turns its back upon them, cannot escape the judgments of God. Other nations may sin without light and may suffer much for violating the dictates of conscience alone, but woe to the people who have known the writ ten revelation of His will, who have had proofs that He is a covenant-keeping God, and who then forsake it for the guess work of men and the false gods manufac tured by the human mind. They had "not kept His command
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