The lion has roared--who will not fear? The Lord GOD has spoken--who will not prophesy? Sermons
That there must be assumed to be some limitation to this broad statement is manifest. It is not intended to declare that God made his prophets acquainted with all his counsels and intentions, but rather that revelation and inspiration are realities, and that prophecy is a Divine ordinance. I. THE ACTIONS OF GOD ARE THE RESULT OF DELIBERATE COUNSEL AND PURPOSE. This way of representing the conduct of Divine affairs is out of harmony with much current teaching of our time. We are often told that it is childish to conceive of God as personal, as thinking, feeling, and acting. But so far from such representations being derogatory to the Divine dignity, they do, in fact, enhance our conceptions of him. Reason and will are the lofty attributes of mind; and whilst the Eternal is not bound by the limitations which circumscribe our faculties, these faculties are the finite reflection of what is infinite in him. It is the glory of our Scriptures that they reveal to us a God who commands, not a blind awe, but an intelligent veneration, and elicits an appreciative and grateful love. II. THE COUNSELS AND PURPOSES OF GOD ARE REVEALED TO THE SYMPATHETIC MINDS OF HIS SERVANTS THE PROPHETS. The mode of this communication is concealed from us; it may have been but partially understood even by the prophets themselves. There is nothing unreasonable in the fellowship of mind between the Creator and created spirits. The human consciousness is above all vehicles surely the fittest medium for the intercourse between the Divine and the finite. God has his own servants employed in his household, his husbandry; and he chooses his own agents for the several works he has for them to do. Among his servants are the prophets - men selected and qualified to speak forth his mind and will to their fellow men. Perhaps we are too restricted in the view we commonly take of the prophetic office. We know that there were schools of prophets among the Hebrews, and that there was an order of prophets in the primitive Church. There were oases in which by the agency of prophets new truth was revealed, but there were also cases in which prophets were inspired to apprehend and republish truth already familiar. Prophets in this second sense there certainly are among us to this day. III. THE COUNSELS AND PURPOSES OF GOD COMMUNICATED BY THE PROPHETS DEMAND OUR REFERENTIAL ATTENTION AND CHEERFUL OBEDIENCE. When the Omniscient declares his mind, when the Omnipotent unfolds his purpose, by the agency he has chosen, the revelation is first made by the Spirit to the human minister, and then by the human minister to his fellow men. The holiness of the Divine character and the righteousness of the Divine government are thus brought effectively before the minds of the intelligent and responsible sons of men. The secret is revealed, not simply to excite wonder, but to guide conduct. The appropriate attitude of those privileged with a revelation so precious is that expressed in the resolution, "All the words which the Lord hath spoken will we do." - T. Surely the Lord God will do nothing, but He revealeth His secret unto His servants the prophets. I. GOD AND THE PROPHET (or God's revelations to the prophet). The seventh verse gives a striking picture of the dignity of the prophetic office. God, the Ruler of the earth, is watching the tides of human life. Before God interposes He admits the prophets into His councils and reveals to them what is yet concealed from the world ( Genesis 18:17). Deluge to Noah, etc. The lives of all the prophets of Israel illustrate Amos's words. II. THE PROPHET AND THE WORLD (or the prophet's utterances to the world). The prophet, admitted to the secrets of God, was bound to utter them. He was a daysman between heaven and earth. Aware of danger, he would neither have been a man nor a patriot had he failed to prophesy. God foretold the evil that He might escape the pain of inflicting it. They were reckoned troublers of the land (Ahab to Elijah), yet they persisted in their message. Application. God still reveals His purposes concerning men. The fate of individuals is not known, but the fate of sin and the sinner is clearly revealed. Listen to all warnings. Regard every one who utters them as a friend who may aid you to avert the evil. Do not attempt to silence such warning voices (Acts 4:20; Acts 5:20, 29; 1 Corinthians 9:16). () This has been the least understood of all the evidences in support of Christianity. Superior difficulties attend the subject. Not difficulties which stagger our faith, but such as require attention to overcome. Trace out the causes from which the difficulties attending this subject have arisen. The obscurity of the prophecies is generally supposed to have arisen from the metaphorical or figurative language in which they are conveyed. But figurative language is not necessarily obscure; it is the style that always did, and still does, predominate throughout all the East. It is the natural language of all rude and uncivilised nations, and may be made, if a writer is inclined to make it so, as clear and as intelligible as the most literal expressions. The obscurity of prophecies neither did nor does arise from any one peculiarity, property, or principle of language. It is still more evident that it did not arise from anything in the subject to which they allude. For whatever event is capable of being described after it has happened, is equally capable of being described before it has happened, the change of tenses being in this case the only thing required. The obscurity of the prophets can be attributed to nothing else, but to the original intention and plan of their Divine Author. The full evidence of prophecy does by no means appear from the discussion of one or of a few single predictions concerning Messiah, but from the consideration of all the prophecies taken together, dispersed as they arc throughout the Bible. We have the same right to unite them into one body of evidence, that we every day assume, of drawing the character of any eminent person in the records of history, by the general tone of all his actions compared with one another and taken together. The prophecies are not only dispersed in various parts of Scripture, but are in most places connected with some other circumstance or transaction near the time at which they were delivered, and to which and to its immediate consequences they also allude. These events are often so interwoven in the very texture of the prophecy that to separate them requires a superior knowledge of ancient history, and superior powers of discrimination. Besides the predictions of Moses and the prophets, the law itself, the Mosaical and Levitical law forms in its very structure and essence a distinct series of prophecy. The ceremonies of Jewish worship were a shadow of good things to come, whilst the body was of Christ. To extract the prophetical matter out of the Levitical law, and to show what weight it has, as an evidence for Christianity, requires not only sagacity, but in a much higher degree, the greatest sobriety, moderation, and good sense. May not these difficulties suggest some arguments even in favour of the pretensions of prophecy? 1. The evidence of prophecy is by no means absolutely necessary to the proof of a Divine revelation. The working of miracles is of itself sufficient to prove that a teacher came from God. The Divine authority of Moses, for instance, was never foretold by any prophecy, but was grounded on the belief of his miracles alone. 2. The evidence drawn from the ancient Jewish history is considerably increased by the obscurity of the prophets, which has been so much complained of. Obscurity, at least before their completion, was in the original intention of their Divine Author. No one, before their com pletion, was able to unravel or understand them, so no one but God was able to work their accomplishment. Other means might co-operate, but the obscurity of the prophecies alone was a sufficient guard and security for reserving their completion in the hands of God Himself. We have shown that it is from a view of the whole, not from single predictions, that our arguments are drawn. Such a view carries with it the force of the strongest circumstantial evidence, which in many cases is more convincing than evidence which is direct. Independent circumstances are facts, not liable to suspicion, unbiassed and invariable. Should an unbeliever insinuate any suspicion of collusion in the first settling of Christianity, his argument would immediately lose its force when applied to the prophecies. It must insinuate a collusion between persons of different countries, who lived many centuries distant from one another, between our first parents, and all the patriarchs, prophets, apostles, and martyrs who succeeded. () Homilist. I. GOD HAS MADE A SPECIAL REVELATION TO HIS SERVANTS. "He revealeth His secret unto His servants the prophets." In all ages God has selected men to whom He has made communications of Himself. The Bible is indeed a special revelation.1. Special in its occasion. It is made on account of the abnormal moral condition into which man has fallen, — made in consequence of human sin and its dire consequences. 2. Special in its doctrines. II. That the right reception of this special revelation necessitates preaching. "The lion hath roared, who will not fear? the Lord God hath spoken, who can but prophesy?" The idea is, that the men who have rightly taken the truth into them can no more conceal it than men can avoid terror at the roar of the lion. There are some truths which men may receive and feel no disposition to communicate, such as the truths of abstract science, which have no relation to the social heart. But Gospel truth has such a relation to the tenderest affections of the spirit that their genuine recipients find them to be irrepressible. "Who can but prophesy?" None but those who have not received the truth. () God has given to different nations different missions. He has given to Rome the mission of teaching the world the meaning of law; to Greece the meaning of art and philosophy; to the Hebrew race the meaning of religion. He has given this race this message: Tell the world what you can learn of God and His relation to men. The Hebrew people have added nothing to the architecture, the art, the philosophy of life; but they have been a prophetic race — discoverers of God. In this race there were pre-eminently religious men, who saw God more clearly than their fellows, and God's relation to mankind more clearly, and God's relation to human events more clearly, and told their fellows what they saw. And, from all their telling, natural selection says the scientist, providence says the theologian — I say the two are the same — elected those that had in them the most vital truth, the most enduring, the most worthy to endure. Thus we have in the Old Testament something like two score of writers, the most spiritually-minded of a spiritually-minded race, telling us what they have discovered concerning God. This is the Bible. It is the gradual discovery of God in the hearts and through the tongues of prophets who were themselves members of a prophetic race.() The lion hath roared, who will not fear? St. Bernard has described the first stage of the vision of God as the Vision Distributive, in which the eager mind distributes her attention upon common things and common duties in themselves. It was in this elementary school that the earliest of the new prophets passed his apprenticeship and received his gifts. Others excel Amos in the powers of the imagination and the intellect. But by the incorrupt habits of his shepherd life, by daily wakefulness to its alarms, and daily faithfulness to its opportunities, he was trained in that simple power of appreciating facts and causes, which, applied to the great phenomena of the spirit and of history, forms his distinction among his peers. In this we find perhaps the reason why he records of himself no solemn hour of cleansing and initiation. "Jehovah took me from following the flock, and Jehovah said unto me, Go, prophesy unto My people Israel." Amos was of them of whom it is written, "Blessed are those servants whom the Lord, when He cometh, shall find watching." Through all his hard life this shepherd had kept his mind open and his conscience quick, so that when the Word of God came to him he knew it, as fast as he knew the roar of the lion across the moor. Certainly there is no habit which so much as this of watching facts with a single eye and a responsible mind is indispensable alike in the humblest duties and in the highest speculations of life. When Amos gives those naive illustrations of how real the voice of God s to him, we receive them as the tokens of a man, honest and awake.()
People Amos, Israelites, JacobPlaces Ashdod, Bethel, Egypt, SamariaTopics Cry, Fear, Lion, Possible, Prophesy, Prophet, Quiet, Roared, Sounding, Sovereign, SpokenOutline 1. The necessity of God's judgment against Israel.
9. The publication of it, with the causes thereof.
Dictionary of Bible Themes Amos 3:8 1427 prophecy
4666 lion
8334 reverence, and God's nature
8426 evangelism, motivation Library April 21 Evening
Enoch walked with God.--GEN. 5:22. Can two walk together, except they be agreed? Having made peace through the blood of his cross . . . You, that were sometimes alienated and enemies in your mind by wicked works, yet now hath he reconciled in the body of his flesh through death, to present you holy and unblameable and unreproveable in his sight.--In Christ Jesus ye who sometimes were far off are made nigh by the blood of Christ. If, when we were enemies, we were reconciled to God by the death of …
Anonymous—Daily Light on the Daily PathWalking with God
Genesis 5:24 -- "And Enoch walked with God: and he was not; for God took him." Various are the pleas and arguments which men of corrupt minds frequently urge against yielding obedience to the just and holy commands of God. But, perhaps, one of the most common objections that they make is this, that our Lord's commands are not practicable, because contrary to flesh and blood; and consequently, that he is an hard master, reaping where he has not sown, and gathering where he has not strewed'. These …
George Whitefield—Selected Sermons of George Whitefield On Public Diversions
"Shall a trumpet be blown in the city, and the people not be afraid? shall there be evil in the city, and the Lord hath not done it?" Amos 3:6. It is well if there are not too many here who are too nearly concerned in these words of the Prophet; the plain sense of which seems to be this: Are there any men in the world so stupid and senseless, so utterly void of common reason, so careless of their own and their neighbours' safety or destruction, as when an alarm of approaching judgments is given, …
John Wesley—Sermons on Several Occasions Preparation for Revival
I trust that most of us who are here met in the name of Jesus, feel a deep, sincere, and constant agreement with God. We have been guilty of murmuring at his will; but yet our newborn nature evermore at its core and center knoweth that the will of the Lord is wise and good; and we therefore bow our heads with reverent agreement, and say, "Not as I will, but as thou wilt." "The will of the Lord be done." Our soul, when through infirmity she is tempted to rebellion, nevertheless struggles after complete …
Charles Haddon Spurgeon—Spurgeon's Sermons Volume 10: 1864 Whether God is a Cause of Sin?
Objection 1: It would seem that God is a cause of sin. For the Apostle says of certain ones (Rom. 1:28): "God delivered them up to a reprobate sense, to do those things which are not right [Douay: 'convenient']," and a gloss comments on this by saying that "God works in men's hearts, by inclining their wills to whatever He wills, whether to good or to evil." Now sin consists in doing what is not right, and in having a will inclined to evil. Therefore God is to man a cause of sin. Objection 2: Further, …
Saint Thomas Aquinas—Summa Theologica Whether the Angels Know the Mysteries of Grace?
Objection 1: It would seem that the angels know mysteries of grace. For, the mystery of the Incarnation is the most excellent of all mysteries. But the angels knew of it from the beginning; for Augustine says (Gen. ad lit. v, 19): "This mystery was hidden in God through the ages, yet so that it was known to the princes and powers in heavenly places." And the Apostle says (1 Tim. 3:16): "That great mystery of godliness appeared unto angels*." [*Vulg.: 'Great is the mystery of godliness, which . . …
Saint Thomas Aquinas—Summa Theologica Whether by the Divine Revelation a Prophet Knows all that Can be Known Prophetically?
Objection 1: It would seem that by the Divine revelation a prophet knows all that can be known prophetically. For it is written (Amos 3:7): "The Lord God doth nothing without revealing His secret to His servants the prophets." Now whatever is revealed prophetically is something done by God. Therefore there is not one of them but what is revealed to the prophet. Objection 2: Further, "God's works are perfect" (Dt. 32:4). Now prophecy is a "Divine revelation," as stated above [3663](A[3]). Therefore …
Saint Thomas Aquinas—Summa Theologica Whether a Good Life is Requisite for Prophecy?
Objection 1: It would seem that a good life is requisite for prophecy. For it is written (Wis. 7:27) that the wisdom of God "through nations conveyeth herself into holy souls," and "maketh the friends of God, and prophets." Now there can be no holiness without a good life and sanctifying grace. Therefore prophecy cannot be without a good life and sanctifying grace. Objection 2: Further, secrets are not revealed save to a friend, according to Jn. 15:15, "But I have called you friends, because all …
Saint Thomas Aquinas—Summa Theologica Whether the Supreme Good, God, is the Cause of Evil?
Objection 1: It would seem that the supreme good, God, is the cause of evil. For it is said (Is. 45:5, 7): "I am the Lord, and there is no other God, forming the light, and creating darkness, making peace, and creating evil." And Amos 3:6, "Shall there be evil in a city, which the Lord hath not done?" Objection 2: Further, the effect of the secondary cause is reduced to the first cause. But good is the cause of evil, as was said above [431](A[1]). Therefore, since God is the cause of every good, …
Saint Thomas Aquinas—Summa Theologica The Carcass and the Eagles
'Woe to them that are at ease in Zion, and trust in the mountain of Samaria, which are named chief of the nations, to whom the house of Israel came! 2. Pass ye unto Calneh, and see; and from thence go ye to Hamath the great; then go down to Gath of the Philistines: be they better than these kingdoms? or their border greater than your border? 3. Ye that put far away the evil day, and cause the seat of violence to come near; 4. That lie upon beds of ivory, and stretch themselves upon their couches, …
Alexander Maclaren—Expositions of Holy Scripture "But it is Good for Me to Draw Near to God: I have Put My Trust in the Lord God, that I May Declare all Thy
Psal. lxxiii. 28.--"But it is good for me to draw near to God: I have put my trust in the Lord God, that I may declare all thy works." After man's first transgression, he was shut out from the tree of life, and cast out of the garden, by which was signified his seclusion and sequestration from the presence of God, and communion with him: and this was in a manner the extermination of all mankind in one, when Adam was driven out of paradise. Now, this had been an eternal separation for any thing that …
Hugh Binning—The Works of the Rev. Hugh Binning The Sovereignty of God in Reprobation
"Behold therefore the goodness and severity of God" (Rom. 11:22). In the last chapter when treating of the Sovereignty of God the Father in Salvation, we examined seven passages which represent Him as making a choice from among the children of men, and predestinating certain ones to be conformed to the image of His Son. The thoughtful reader will naturally ask, And what of those who were not "ordained to eternal life?" The answer which is usually returned to this question, even by those who profess …
Arthur W. Pink—The Sovereignty of God Letter xxxvi (Circa A. D. 1131) to the Same Hildebert, who had not yet Acknowledged the Lord Innocent as Pope.
To the Same Hildebert, Who Had Not Yet Acknowledged the Lord Innocent as Pope. He exhorts him to recognise Innocent, now an exile in France, owing to the schism of Peter Leonis, as the rightful Pontiff. To the great prelate, most exalted in renown, Hildebert, by the grace of God Archbishop of Tours, Bernard, called Abbot of Clairvaux, sends greeting, and prays that he may walk in the Spirit, and spiritually discern all things. 1. To address you in the words of the prophet, Consolation is hid from …
Saint Bernard of Clairvaux—Some Letters of Saint Bernard, Abbot of Clairvaux Divine Support and Protection
[What shall we say then to these things?] If God be for us, who can be against us? T he passions of joy or grief, of admiration or gratitude, are moderate when we are able to find words which fully describe their emotions. When they rise very high, language is too faint to express them; and the person is either lost in silence, or feels something which, after his most laboured efforts, is too big for utterance. We may often observe the Apostle Paul under this difficulty, when attempting to excite …
John Newton—Messiah Vol. 2 Christian Perfection
"Not as though I had already attained, either were already perfect." Phil. 3:12. 1. There is scarce any expression in Holy Writ which has given more offence than this. The word perfect is what many cannot bear. The very sound of it is an abomination to them. And whosoever preaches perfection (as the phrase is,) that is, asserts that it is attainable in this life, runs great hazard of being accounted by them worse than a heathen man or a publican. 2. And hence some have advised, wholly to lay aside …
John Wesley—Sermons on Several Occasions Homiletical.
Twenty-four homilies on miscellaneous subjects, published under St. Basil's name, are generally accepted as genuine. They are conveniently classified as (i) Dogmatic and Exegetic, (ii) Moral, and (iii) Panegyric. To Class (i) will be referred III. In Illud, Attende tibi ipsi. VI. In Illud, Destruam horrea, etc. IX. In Illud, Quod Deus non est auctor malorum. XII. In principium Proverbiorum. XV. De Fide. XVI. In Illud, In principio erat Verbum. XXIV. Contra Sabellianos et Arium et Anomoeos. …
Basil—Basil: Letters and Select Works Purposes of God.
In discussing this subject I shall endeavor to show, I. What I understand by the purposes of God. Purposes, in this discussion, I shall use as synonymous with design, intention. The purposes of God must be ultimate and proximate. That is, God has and must have an ultimate end. He must purpose to accomplish something by his works and providence, which he regards as a good in itself, or as valuable to himself, and to being in general. This I call his ultimate end. That God has such an end or purpose, …
Charles Grandison Finney—Systematic Theology The Instrumentality of the Wicked Employed by God, While He Continues Free from Every Taint.
1. The carnal mind the source of the objections which are raised against the Providence of God. A primary objection, making a distinction between the permission and the will of God, refuted. Angels and men, good and bad, do nought but what has been decreed by God. This proved by examples. 2. All hidden movements directed to their end by the unseen but righteous instigation of God. Examples, with answers to objections. 3. These objections originate in a spirit of pride and blasphemy. Objection, that …
John Calvin—The Institutes of the Christian Religion Use to be Made of the Doctrine of Providence.
Sections. 1. Summary of the doctrine of Divine Providence. 1. It embraces the future and the past. 2. It works by means, without means, and against means. 3. Mankind, and particularly the Church, the object of special care. 4. The mode of administration usually secret, but always just. This last point more fully considered. 2. The profane denial that the world is governed by the secret counsel of God, refuted by passages of Scripture. Salutary counsel. 3. This doctrine, as to the secret counsel of …
John Calvin—The Institutes of the Christian Religion The Prophet Amos.
GENERAL PRELIMINARY REMARKS. It will not be necessary to extend our preliminary remarks on the prophet Amos, since on the main point--viz., the circumstances under which he appeared as a prophet--the introduction to the prophecies of Hosea may be regarded as having been written for those of Amos also. For, according to the inscription, they belong to the same period at which Hosea's prophetic ministry began, viz., the latter part of the reign of Jeroboam II., and after Uzziah had ascended the …
Ernst Wilhelm Hengstenberg—Christology of the Old Testament "But Whereunto Shall I Liken this Generation?"
Matth. xi. 16.--"But whereunto shall I liken this generation?" When our Lord Jesus, who had the tongue of the learned, and spoke as never man spake, did now and then find a difficulty to express the matter herein contained. "What shall we do?" The matter indeed is of great importance, a soul matter, and therefore of great moment, a mystery, and therefore not easily expressed. No doubt he knows how to paint out this to the life, that we might rather behold it with our eyes, than hear it with our …
Hugh Binning—The Works of the Rev. Hugh Binning Second visit to Nazareth - the Mission of the Twelve.
It almost seems, as if the departure of Jesus from Capernaum marked a crisis in the history of that town. From henceforth it ceases to be the center of His activity, and is only occasionally, and in passing, visited. Indeed, the concentration and growing power of Pharisaic opposition, and the proximity of Herod's residence at Tiberias [3013] would have rendered a permanent stay there impossible at this stage in our Lord's history. Henceforth, His Life is, indeed, not purely missionary, but He has …
Alfred Edersheim—The Life and Times of Jesus the Messiah Of the Incapacity of an Unregenerate Person for Relishing the Enjoyments of the Heavenly World.
John iii. 3. John iii. 3. --Except a man be born again, he can not see the kingdom of God. IN order to demonstrate the necessity of regeneration, of which I would fain convince not only your understandings, but your consciences, I am now proving to you, that without it, it is impossible to enter into the kingdom of God; and how weighty a consideration that is I am afterwards to represent. That it is thus impossible, the words in the text do indeed sufficiently prove: but for the further illustration …
Philip Doddridge—Practical Discourses on Regeneration Links Amos 3:8 NIV
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