#DailyDevotion How Do You Stand Next To God’s Plumb-line Of The Law?
Amos 7:7–15 7This is what He showed me: The Lord, with a plumb line in His hand, was standing by a wall made according to a plumb line. 8“What do you see, Amos?” the LORD asked me. “A plumb line,” I answered. Then the Lord said: “I’m going to put a plumb line in the middle of My people Israel. I will not overlook their sins anymore. 9And so the high places of Isaac will be laid waste, and the holy places of Israel will be in ruins, and with a sword I will attack Jeroboam’s family.”
Amos was a prophet in the eight century B.C. before the Assyrians gained prominence in the middle east. He was prophesying here during Jeroboam II’s reign. Jeroboam had regained a fair amount of the northern territory David and Solomon once controlled. Yet Israel, that is, the northern tribes who separated from the southern after Solomon’s death. Jeroboam I when he became king of the northern tribes, to keep control of them people set up two gold calves, on in Bethel and one in Dan for the people to worship as the LORD (YHWH), a major breaking of the 1st commandment. This of course was always a contention with the LORD against the tribes and rulers in the north. Following their idolatry with the calves, the northern tribes eventually started worshiping other gods, the gods of their neighbors. This of course led to breaking of the other commandments which Paul outlines in Romans chapter one:
26That is why God gave them up to shameful lusts. Women have changed their natural way to an unnatural one. 27And men likewise have given up the natural relation with a woman and burned with lust for one another, men doing shameful acts with men and for their error getting punished in themselves as they must. 28As they refused to know God any longer, God gave them up so that their minds were degraded and they lived immorally. 29Their lives are full of all kinds of wrongdoing, wickedness, greed, malice. They are full of envy, murder, quarreling, treachery, viciousness. They gossip and slander. 30They hate God. They are insulting, proud, boasting. They invent new evils. They disobey parents. 31They are foolish. They break their promises. They have no love or mercy.
So the LORD called Amos from the southern tribes in Judah to be a prophet to the north, to warn them of their impending doom if they did not repent. So I’m not a great construction person, but a plumb line basically measures something to make sure it is upright. If a structure is found be be leaning then the structure has to torn down. The frame of a building can be upright (tsaddı̂yq) and people can be upright or righteous(tsaddı̂yq). The LORD was placing a plumb-line in the midst of the northern tribes of Israel. Apparently he does not find the people to be upright. Therefore the whole structure has to torn down. The LORD was not going to overlook their sins any more. He was going to send the Assyrians to send them into exile.
How do we look next to the plumb-line? We are not upright in our thoughts, words and deeds. Jesus the LORD is our uprightness or righteousness before God. Only through faith in Jesus will God the Father consider us upright. This state is bestowed freely upon us by the forgiveness of our sins in the name of Jesus.
Merciful Father, grant us faith in Jesus so we may stand upright before you. In Jesus’ name we pray. Amen.