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HERE is a great destruction that is planned for Israel. Yet, in
contrast, God will also pour out great grace upon Israel (Amos 9:11-15). So, which one is it, destruction or grace?
The answer is, both. Amos was forecasting a time of great misery for the Jews,
followed by a time of incomparable peace.
When God decides to execute justice, there is absolutely no way to hide
from His hand. As Amos 9:2-3 teaches plainly, not only is God omnipresent, but
He demonstrates His omnipresence with incredible clarity when He starts judging
rebels. He always sees us, and He can always reach us (Amos 9:8).
One of the most marvelous things about God's wrath is the precision of
it. There are never accidental consequences of His anger. There is no
collateral damage. As Amos 9:9 points out, not one grain of wheat is lost, yet
every worthless piece of chaff is burned. Even in the Bible stories where it
seems that some of the characters are simply smashed in the story of the main character,
without regard to their own story, we can be sure that God had their interest
in His heart as well. We don't have the tale of what God was doing in the lives
of Job's children when they all died as a result of the testing of Job’s faith,
but we can be sure that if we only had their story and not the record of God's
interactions with their father, the narrative would make just as much sense.
God does work on a macroeconomic scale, yet even in that, He is always dealing
with every single individual as if his or her life story was the only one being
told. Every sinner pays his debt eventually (Amos 9:10), and every faithful
servant is rewarded eventually. God never says oops.
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