Meditation on the Text of the Week

Time and Tide are Not Waiting

Thus says the LORD,
For three transgressions of Judah and for four
I will not revoke its punishment,
Because they have rejected the law of the LORD
And have not kept His statutes;
Their false gods also have led them astray,
Those after which their fathers walked.
So I will send fire upon Judah,
And it will consume the citadels of Jerusalem
Amos 2: 4,5

The kingdom of Judah was a mere remnant of the much larger Kingdom of Israel. After the nation split in around 970BC, Judah flirted constantly with idolatry and the worship of false gods. It was a covenant breaking nation. Amos, the prophet of the Lord, pronounced judgment upon Judah over two hundred years later—around 750BC.

The judgment of fire of which he warned fell finally in 586BC, as Nebuchadnezzar put Jerusalem to the torch—that is, a further two hundred years after the proclamation of Amos. The prophet Jeremiah was an eyewitness to the horror. The time frame is very important.

Our modern Athenian culture, in its prosperity and hubris, mocks the very idea of judgment.

It does not see itself as the city of sin facing an angry God. Such ideas are quaint at best, primitive at worst. They are decidedly not modern. They are clearly not consistent with the latest and brightest thinking of those considered to be the wise and clever of the day.

The strongest encouragement to the deafness of Athens lies in the failure of judgment to fall. Things continue on as they were: therefore, warnings of judgment must be spurious. Athens mocks the very idea, saying, “Where is its coming? It is a myth.”

Once again, note the time frames above. Holy Scripture cautions us that our time frames are not the Lord's. A thousand years to Him are as one day; and one day as a thousand years. The Lord does not measure truth or reality by time. Time, rather, is measured and known by His Truth. What He declares will most certainly and implacably come to pass, in His time, when the cup of iniquity is full.

Judah had toyed with idolatry and apostasy for two hundred years. But the Lord was and is longsuffering and unbelievably patient. He gives peoples many opportunities to come to their senses and repent. Amos is part of a long line of prophets warning Jerusalem of judgment to come. All the Lord's prophets were opposed, persecuted—many were martyred. Two hundred years later judgment finally falls. It was exceedingly severe.

There are two kinds of judgments. The first is what we might call “intrinsic judgment” where a society experiences the fruits of its unbelief. The second is “extrinsic” where destruction falls upon a people or nation from the outside. It may be a tsunami or a volcano; it might be pestilence or experiencing the ravages of war. It is always devastating.

Intrinsic judgment serves to chasten and to warn. It declares to us in sermons without words, that if we turn away from the Lord, the consequences of disobedience will follow, as we experience the fruit of our disobedience. If a society turns away from God's commands for marriage and divorce, for example, marriages break up; sexual immorality becomes institutionalised (even protected and encouraged by the law); disease spreads; children are spiritually and mentally (and even physically) torn apart; lawlessness, violence and crime spreads; and so forth. These intrinsic judgments should serve to chasten people and cause them to seek the Lord. The evidence of the evil fruits of sin are all around them warning them, calling them away from the causes of Unbelief.

But the Scripture says that whereas a mere word of warning to the wise is sufficient, for the fool, one hundred heavy blows on his back makes no impression whatsoever. When a culture stiffens its neck and closes its heart to the warnings of intrinsic judgment, finally extrinsic judgment falls. The Son of Man will come riding upon the clouds of heaven, with His holy angels—and for that people or culture it has become too late. Most often they never recover; they pass out of the pages of human history never to return. Like Ozymandius, only the crumbling, overgrown, empty monuments remain, serving as a fearful warning to others.

In our day, the call of the Lord is going forth, “Turn to Me, turn to Me; for why would you, and your children, and your children's children die, O house of Israel?” Why, indeed? And if the Lord did not spare His own beloved covenant people when they arrogantly rebelled, what do you think He will do to our apostate culture?

“Those who hate Me, love death,” is surely one of the truest words ever spoken of Athens.