Grace, mercy, and peace to you from God our Father, through our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, Amen. Let us pray. O Lord send forth your word into our ears that it may bear fruit in our lives, in Jesus’ name, Amen. A plumb line, it’s a simple tool. It’s been around for centuries. Still helpful if you ever need. Once a few years ago, my wife asked me to oversee the installation of some curtains on the stage that we used in Michigan, and I had to get an accurate measurement from how far off the ground to hang the tracks and the rigging so the curtains didn’t sit too high or too low and bunch up on the bottom. So, I used the plum line. It gave me a straight measurement down to the floor. I didn’t have a laser level. The plumb line worked just fine. When it came time to actually build the set pieces for the shows, sometimes we use the plumb line. If it wasn’t a plumb line, we used a bubble level, some sort of straight edge, maybe a carpenter square, or a chalk line. The point is, we weren’t just going to try to estimate a straight line across 4 feet of plywood. We wanted a tool of some kind, something to make sure that our line was straight, and in reality, that’s what a plumb line is for, isn’t it. It’s a way to make sure your line is straight. A piece of weight attached to a string that builders or masons will hold next to a wall so it’s barely touching the floor. Gravity does the rest. The string hangs straight down so it’s a good tool to measure whether or not your wall is leaning, whether or not your wall is straight. It’s a standard to see how something measures up and it’s the image that our Lord gave his prophet, Amos. He tells the prophet “Behold, I am setting a plumb line in the midst of my people Israel; I will never again pass by them; the high places of Isaac shall be made desolate, and the sanctuaries of Israel shall be laid waste, and I will rise against the house of Jeroboam with the sword.” The Lord says that he will measure Israel against his standard and when they are found crooked, he will knock down the wall. They will be made desolate. They will be laid waste. Those are some harsh words. There are a few things to remember. First, this is taken from the end of the book of Amos, not the beginning. In fact, it’s the third time in this book that our Lord said he would measure his people, and the previous two times that Israel was found crooked, the Lord’s prophet interceded on their behalf, and the Lord spared them. See the Lord takes no pleasure in judging sin. He’s patient, he’s long-suffering, he gives people ample time to repent, but the Lord’s attempts to straighten out the wall finally failed in Israel. Now it was time to knock that wall down. So, what was Israel doing that was so bad? Well in a word, it was idolatry. You see, shortly after the reign of king Solomon, and in fact in reality, because of Solomon’s own idolatry, the kingdom of Israel split into two, the northern kingdom and the southern kingdom. The northern kingdom was bigger, but the southern kingdom was where Jerusalem was, and in the northern kingdom the king knew that many Israelites would want to travel to the temple in Jerusalem for festivals and for feasts, and he was afraid of what that would mean for his own power, for his own economy, and so he introduced a new system of worship in Israel in the northern Kingdom, one that did not include the temple of God in Jerusalem. So, the Lord continually warned the Israelites in the north that he was not happy with what they were doing, and they in turn continually ignored him. Prophet after prophet spoke the Lord’s words of warning. King after king refused to listen, so finally the Lord had seen enough. He got out his plumb line, he measured Israel to show them how crooked they truly were, and he knocked them down with the sledgehammer of Assyria. Israel had crossed the line for too long, and the Lord finally acted. There’s a truth there about God that’s often unpleasant for us to admit. It’s a picture of God that perhaps makes us just a little uncomfortable, much like the lion Aslan in the CS Lewis’ classic The Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe, our Lord has teeth. He has claws. In fact, the book of Amos opens with the image of the Lord roaring like a lion from Zion. As one Lutheran scholar puts it, in Amos, the lion in Yahweh sends fires, earthquakes, and locusts, and drought, and famine, and disease, and an army bent on the complete annihilation of Israel, because his wrath is real, his anger against sin is real. God will not be mocked. He will only tolerate sin for so long, and there came a time in the days of Amos when he knocked down the walls of Israel. So what about us, do we have walls that are in danger of destruction? How well do we listen to our Lord’s word spoken to us? How seriously do we take it? Do we refuse to see our Lord as anything other than the Good Shepherd? Do we recognize that he also calls himself the Lion of Judah? I mean sure, we may not have statues that we pray to each day, maybe there’s not a shrine set up in our living room, but do we have idols? Idols are false gods, and as Luther put it, “A God means that from which we are to expect all good and in which we are to take refuge in all distress.” So, do we look to our Lord for all good at all times? Do we look instead to our own talents and abilities, maybe to our own intelligence, and education? Maybe we rely on our own career accomplishments, we look to our paycheck, or our bank account. Where do we flee for refuge when the times are tough? Do we turn to the promises of our Lord or do we turn to our own iron will, our own resilience, our own determination that we can get through anything on our own. What about our Lord’s Word? Do we listen? Do we listen to our Lord’s word about sexuality, or are we seduced by the voice of our culture, whispering that those ancient words are outdated, they no longer apply to us, we’re civilized people. What about our Lord’s Word telling us to defend our neighbors, to speak well of them, to put the best construction on their motives at all times. Is that something that we do, or are we quick to assume the worst of the people around us, especially those that have differing political or social views. Do we strive to outdo one another in showing honor, like Paul says in Romans 12, or do we try to outdo each other in some other way, places where the world would give us accolades. The list goes on and on. The basic question remains the same. How seriously do we take the Lord at his Word? When the standard is applied to us, when the plumb line is held in our lives, measured against our attitudes, we’re forced to admit that the walls of our lives are indeed crooked and crumbling, just like Israel of old. Now we too deserve to be knocked down, for we, like Israel of old, are guilty of not fully trusting our Lord’s Word, not living up to his standard. And so, what hope do we have, where are we to look, what are we to do? Well, you could finish reading Amos. We could look beyond today’s short reading to the end of the book. For words of judgment and wrath are not the only words that the Lord has for his prophet. Listen to the end of the book. “‘The days are coming,’ declares the Lord, ‘when the reaper will be overtaken by the ploughman and the planter by the one treading grapes. New wine will drip from the mountains and flow from all the hills. I will bring back my exiled people Israel; they will rebuild the ruined cities and will live in them. They will plant vineyards and drink their wine; they will make gardens and eat their fruit. I will plant Israel in their own land, never again to be uprooted from the land I have given them,’ says the Lord your God.” See, ultimately there is nothing that can remove the Israelites from the loving hand of their Lord. He is the one who brought them up out of Egypt, and they are his people, and we are too. We are his people today, and while yes, he disciplines and chastises us as needed, ultimately, he loves us, and everything he does, he does to bring us into our own land, a land that will remain ours forever. The promised land of the new creation. He chose you through his Son Jesus Christ. He adopted you. He claimed you. You belong to him. And so yes, we are guilty of not listening to our Lord’s Word perfectly, and no we don’t measure up to the standard of the plumb line, but Jesus does, and that’s what matters. Whereas Paul says, “In him we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of our sins”. In him we have obtained the inheritance, the inheritance of the Kingdom of Heaven. Jesus measures up to the plumb line. “The stone that the builders rejected has become the cornerstone.” And in baptism we are united to him so that all our sin becomes his, and all his righteousness becomes ours. In the bread and wine of this Supper, we commune with the Lord himself, so that I no longer live, Christ lives in me. We claim his perfection, claim his righteousness. The word of judgment is not our Lord’s final word. The plumb line is not the final image. It does not get the last say. For just as a builder doesn’t use a plumb line and then proceed to ignore the results, neither does our Lord show us our sin and then leave us without hope. He doesn’t show us our failure and then ignore us. He silences our excuses, so that we can hear his promise, and he points us to his Son, and he plants new seed, cultivates new life in his people. That’s the final image of Amos, the image of harvest, the image of growth, and the image of life. Our Lord gives us strength for this life, promises us a share in the life to come. So, yes, the plumb line may be an instrument of judgment, but the day of the Lord’s judgment is coming to an end. The day of salvation is upon us. So, live in that salvation, rejoice in your Lord’s love for you, take comfort in knowing that you belong to him. Thanks be to God for the love he has given us through Christ Jesus our Lord. To him be all glory and honor forever and ever, Amen.
Sunday, July 14th, 2024