Amos 3:6 Shall a trumpet be blown in the city, and the people not be afraid? shall there be evil in a city, and the LORD has not done it? The evil here dealt with is not moral evil, it is the suffering of evil or calamity. The text does not attribute to God the production of sin, but the infliction of that penal or corrective evil which God may lay on a city or nation, to punish it duly for sin, and to correct it, and bring it back to God. The world is composed of good and evil. Of good, which was in it as it came from God; of evil, that entered into it when it became infected with sin. In this world, while we have much that is real good and that is imaginary good, we have both real and imaginary good commingled with what is evil; and it becomes a problem of no easy solution to tell whether the one or the other doth generally predominate. When we enjoy uninterrupted and unmingled good we are disposed to attribute all the good we enjoy to ourselves. We easily forget God. The moment that evil is inflicted on us, our pride is alarmed by the injury to our feelings. We begin to look beyond self, and search for some cause to which we can attribute the evil we endure. Some attribute to chance. Others to a general law of nature. The particular actings of these general laws they take entirely out of the hands of God, and only look to this second instrumentality by which, according to their ideas, the general laws impressed on the creation of God are found to operate. The consequence of this will be that good will be enjoyed and self will be honoured; or if, perchance, nature, or the God of nature, be acknowledged, yet the secondary cause will be their own skill, or industry, or application, or some other such cause that still leaves God out of His temple and sets up humanity. Or, on the other hand, if evil be endured, it will be attributed to any cause but to God. Here it is that the Spirit of God comes in as our instructor. Wherever there is evil, in the sense of calamity, "the Lord hath done it." I. THE EVIL IN THE CITY. 1. The commercial distress of the times. Men are ready to attribute such evil to any cause whatever but to the true cause — sin in the heart of man, and God putting His hand on that sin to punish it, or reform those who are the subjects of it. 2. The extended want of employment where employment was abundantly enjoyed. Why is there want of employment? Attribute it to the stagnation of trade — what is the cause of that? The sin of the people and the judgment of God. Attribute it to an overflowing population — what is the reason that employment does not hold pace with population? It is simply because the population are not educated in the knowledge of God, not educated in the principles of morality. 3. Comparative famine and the pestilence. 4. The disunion of the land. This is to be attributed to our national sin; for God in His mercy is able to take away all these disunions, and He will remedy all these evils the moment He has taught us, rich and poor, to repent of our individual sins and turn to the living God. 5. Sabbath-breaking. There is one great cause or effect of the national depravity of morals. II. THE IMPORTANT LESSON TO BE DRAWN FROM THE FACT, "THE LORD HATH DONE IT." No individual, no Church, no minister is free from a share in the national sins. It is the object of God, by bringing calamity on us, to make us think of Him. The moment man thinks of God, he is compelled to think of himself, because he is God's reflected image. So man asks, Why am I like God, and yet so unlike Him? There is not a portion of the land which is not suffering from these sins — the neglect of the education of the people and Sabbath-breaking. Whenever God sends a calamity on the land, He sends with it a voice, calling upon His own people to do all the good they can by the means of the evil He inflicts on them and on others. Two great lessons to be derived from the subject. 1. The mercy of God in the infliction of evil as Calamity. 2. There is but one remedy for the evils of the land — the Lord Jesus Christ. (Henry Cooke, D. D. , LL. D.) Parallel Verses KJV: Shall a trumpet be blown in the city, and the people not be afraid? shall there be evil in a city, and the LORD hath not done it? |
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