Sunday

Amos, a shepherd and a caretaker of sycamore-fig trees, was recruited by God to prophesy to Israel. The prophecy was plain and simple, King Jeroboam would die and the Israelites would be exiled. Put yourself in King Jeroboam place for a second, what would you do? As I see it you have one of 2 choices, you can ignore the prophecy or you can take heed. Which would you choose?

King Jeroboam might as well have chosen to ignore it, because the action he took was not the type of action that was beneficial. He ordered that Amos be silenced. If you were to cast King Jeroboam as Tony Saprano you would say that the King ordered a hit on Amos. You know how the saying goes, if you don’t like the message that the messenger brings, get rid of the messenger. Unfortunately, in today’s post modern society where we live this is all too often the case particularly when it comes to Jesus Christ being the way, the truth and the life. Like King Jeroboam, who saw Amos as an enemy because he questioned his authority and exposed his sin, Jesus is often seen as an enemy because His way and His word is too confining.

Confining or not God’s Word, as revealed to us in the prophecy God gave to Amos is a plumb line that helps you and I become aware of our sin. For those of you who don’t know what a plumb line is let me tell you that it is a device used to measure the straightness of a wall. When I was a child I learned how to wallpaper from my Dad. I remember that before we would hang the first sheet of wallpaper he would draw a plumb line on the wall. He did this by chalking a piece of cord with blue chalk. Then he held the piece of cord at the top of the wall. The cord stretched from the ceiling to just above the floor. On the bottom of the cord was tied a weight. When the string lay perfectly still against the wall, he would tell me to press the cord against the wall and then give the string a twang. The chalked cord would snap against the wall leaving a vertical plumb line. We were then ready to hang the first sheet of wallpaper. The first sheet would be hung so that the edge would be butted up to the plumb line. By doing this, the wallpaper would be hung straight. The pattern in the wallpaper would not be running up or down the wall.

What we did when hanging wallpaper is exactly what God was revealing to Amos in his vision.

“This is what the Lord showed me: The Lord was standing by a wall that had been built true to plumb, with a plumb line in His hand. And the Lord asked me, ‘What do you see, Amos?’ ‘A plumb line,’ I replied. Then the Lord said, “Look, I am setting a plumb line among my people Israel; I will spare them no longer.” (Vs.7,8)

The wall represents the people of Israel. God’s Word is the plumb line. When God held His Word up to His people the Israelites could see how crooked their sins had made them. God warns them in this vision that like any wall that has become crooked, they will fall. Instead of ordered Amos to be silence, Jeroboam should have put on sack clothes and ashes of repentance, and ordering all the people of Israel to do like wise. They should have repented of their sins. Had they done this maybe we would have heard God say through Amos what Jesus said to the lawyer.

“You have answered correctly.
Do this and you will live.”

The parable of the Good Samaritan is the New Testament version of the plumb line vision of Amos.

A lawyer, an expert, of what I will call holy law, confronts Jesus. His knowledge of the law is evident in that when Jesus responds to the lawyer’s question about eternal life with his own question,

“What is written in the Law?
How do you read it?”

The lawyer answers correctly. The lawyers’ answer, which is known to us as the summary of God’s law,

“Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all you mind and Love your neighbor as yourself”

is the plumb line for our living. When the lawyer attempts to justify himself, Jesus quickly points out the crookedness of the lawyer’s life. He does so with the story of the Good Samaritan and by asking the lawyer,

“Which of these three do you think was a neighbor to the man who fell into the
hands of the robber?”

What is the lawyers’ answer?

“The one who had mercy on him.”

Why not just say the Samaritan? Why, because their was such hatred between the Jews and the Samaritans in those days that he could not bear to say Samaritan. His attitude toward the Samaritan betrayed his lack of the very thing he had earlier said,

“Love your neighbor as yourself.”

Does your attitude toward your neighbor betray you?

When was the last time you prayed for your immediate neighbor, for the family who lives to the right and left and across the street from you? Could you commit to pray for them for the next 40 days? Could you pray that become real to each person and each family AND that you would be open to how God might use you? Don’t limit your prayers just to your immediate neighbors because Jesus has clearly defined neighbor as the person next door, the person across the street, the person of a different race, the person of a different creed, the person of a different social background, the person who is in need. Whether the need be emotional, physical, financial, spiritual.

If we are honest, we often will find ourselves in the place of the lawyer, in need of learning again who our neighbor is and how to love them. Lack of love is often easy to justify, but it is never right. The story of the Good Samaritan is the plumb line for loving your neighbor. It is no less than the love that Jesus expressed for you and me. He died for every single one in the story, the lawyer, the robbers, the religious men, the innkeeper, the Samaritan, the Jew who fell among robbers, for you and me. All of them and all of us were worth dying for.

The Word of God was not meant to be hid, to be kept a secret. Hide the Word of God in your heart as though it was a seed being planted in fertile soil and let it blossom into fruits and acts of love to and for your neighbor. Let the Word of God shine upon your path and upon your living and loving. The Word of God enable you to fulfill Jesus’ command,

“Love your neighbor as yourself.
Do this and you will live.”

Amen