Amos Intercedes – Amos 7:1-9

The first six chapters of Amos contain three leading challenges brought by the prophet against the northern kingdom of Israel. He challenges the surrounding nations for their violence before focusing on Judah and Israel. He challenges the ‘Family of Israel’, focusing on the leading women who bully the poor, and he speaks against the ‘House of Israel’, charging the leading men for their injustices, their indulgence and for not grieving over Israel’s ruin.

In the last part of Amos, we see three responses: first, Amos himself, then the leading priest Amaziah, and then God himself.

Today, we look at how Amos responds with deep intercession.

In what is surely the most moving part of the book of Amos, the prophet sees the destruction that is about to fall on the people he loves so deeply. We watch God himself through His Spirit, guiding Amos’ intercession through ‘revelation pictures’. Amos responds by crying out in the deepest and most earnest intercession, that the Lord will stay his hand and give time for the northern Israelites to repent, change their society and restore a just judicial system. This is one of the very great passages in scripture describing the ministry of intercession. Anyone who does not weep after studying this passage has neither understood the heart of the prophet Amos nor the ministry of intercession, nor the leading of the Holy Spirit of God in intercession.

V1-3 ‘The king’s share’ was the very first part of the harvest, which should have been offered to the Lord as the ‘first-fruits’, but it seems that King Jeroboam was taking it for himself. In the first prophetic picture, the Holy Spirit reveals the Lord’s coming judgment in terms of a locust swarm coming to ruin the harvest. Amos intercedes and the Lord stays His hand of judgement, thereby giving more time for His people to repent and demonstrate their repentance by restoring justice to their society.

V4-6 This second picture is of a metaphorical fire that burns up everything, even ‘the great deep’. Amos responds again in fervent intercession, and for a second time, the coming judgement that God had revealed to his prophet is, through the prophet’s own intercession, dismissed and not allowed to proceed. For a second time, Israel is again given time to repent and demonstrate that repentance through their judicial and fair treatment of those most deprived in their society.

V7-9 Numbers 12:8 teaches that God often speaks in riddles, and this picture is a prime example. The plumb line shows the wall is no longer perpendicular; it is crooked and toppling over and is about to collapse. Despite years of prophetic warning and Amos’ fervent intercession, this plumb line picture demonstrates beyond any question that it is only a matter of time before the wall collapses. The ‘picture’ illustrates that there is now no alternative and the nation must receive the results of its own violation of God’s laws. So Amos no longer intercedes for the nation. Despite years of God’s forbearance and his warnings to them, they are ‘bent on turning from him’ (Hosea 11:7). And so the judgement will fall, and the Assyrians will overrun the nation, and it will be ended forever. This third prophetic picture gives a full insight into both why the Lord sent Amos to prophesy and why, with the deepest sadness, the Lord reveals to his servant that judgment must now fall. Amos’ challenges in chapters 1-6 have not brought about national repentance or the changes in the social and judicial practice that were essential to the nation’s survival. So it is only a matter of time before the whole edifice collapses in ruin, which is exactly what then happened.