Amos 7:7-9 God’s Plumb Line
The Perspective of God’s Plumb line
7 This is what he showed me: behold, the Lord was standing beside a wall built with a plumb line, with a plumb line in his hand.
There was about 75 years between Jeroboam I and Jerobaom II In all that time they continued in the path of degradation that he had set up. Now God was evaluating their behavior by his plumb line and finding leaning off center.
Aspects of the Plumb line
The plumb line in building is a weight tied to the end of the string which will indicate a true perpendicular relationship of a structure to the earth. By using it a wall can be tested, both during construction and at a later date, against an inevitable standard. If the wall leans an appropriate extent it will inevitable be declared unsafe and must be repaired or demolished Yates. It is similar to what doctors call a baseline reading for an EKG and other medical tests. The plumb line reveals God’s standard
The wall is the people of God, Israel. Israel was a wall, a strong wall, which God himself had reared, as a bulwark, or wall of defense, to his sanctuary, which he set up among them. This wall was made by a plumb-line, very exact and firm. Matthew Henry
The plumb line represents two things: God himself (Lev 11:44-45, 1 Pet 1:14-16, Ex 19:2-6, Lev 19:1-2, Heb 12:14, Matt 5:48, Matt 19:21) and His Word (Ps 19: 7-11, Rom 7:12, Heb 4:12, James 1:23-25, 2 Chron 34:18-21 . A distorted or skewed view of God or of His word will produce a false reading, because the plumb line will not be true. Only a true perspective of the Sovereign and scripture will produce a true and tested plumb line that will give an accurate standard.
Agent of the Plumb line
God has two roles as implied in the test:
1) He is an Architect a builder. He is the designer and builder of the structure Matt 16:18
2) He is a Building Inspector. His task is to periodically drop the plumb line besides the building to determine the soundness of the wall.
God always uses a plumb line in His building. Everything that God builds is built plumb, straight, square and fair. God is the great Arithmetician—the great Master of geometry—and so He never makes any mistakes in His calculations. There is not anything in the world that He has made in a careless manner. Everything is done by order and rule. God always has the plumb line in His hand. He never begins to build that which might turn out to be right, or might turn out to be wrong—He makes sure work of all that He does. In spiritual matters it is very manifest that whenever God is
dealing with souls, He always uses the plumb line. The Lord never builds anything falsely in any man, or teaches him to reckon that to be true which is not true. When the Lord builds in a man, He builds with the plumb line in the sense of always building up that which is towards holiness. If any of you have embraced any form of doctrine which hinders you from being watchful, prayerful, careful and anxious to avoid sin, you have embraced error and not the Truth of God, for all God’s building tends towards holiness, towards carefulness, towards a gracious walk to the praise and glory of God! When the Lord builds a man up, He makes him conscientious, makes him jealous of Himself, makes him detect the very shadow of sin so that before the sin, itself, comes upon him, he holds up his all-covering shield of faith that he may be preserved from its deadly assaults. You may always know God’s building because it is pure building, clean building—but if anybody builds you up in such a style that you can talk of sin as a trifle and think that you may indulge in it even in the least measure with impunity—that is certainly not God’s building! And, blessed be His name, when our souls are really given up into the Lord’s hands, He will continue to build in us until He has built us up to perfection! There will come a day when sin which now makes its nest in this mortal body of ours shall find this body dissolving and crumbling back to the earth of which it was made—and then our emancipated spirits, delivered from the last taint and trace of sin—free from even the tendency to evil—shall soar away to be with Christ which is far better—and to wait for the trumpet of the Resurrection, when the body, itself, shall also be delivered from corruption, for the grave is a refining pot and, at the coming of Christ, our body shall be pure and white like the garments of a bride arrayed to meet her bridegroom! And the soul, re-united with the body, shall have triumphed over every sin! This is the way that God builds. He does not build us up so that we can go to Heaven with our sin still working in us. He does not build us up to be temples for Him to dwell in and let the devil also dwell in us. God builds up surely, solidly, truthfully, sincerely and until we have reached that state of perfection which makes us fit for Heaven! Spurgeon
Accuracy of the Plumb line
The wall is evaluated by the plumb line. The plumb line is always true and the standard by which the soundness of the structure is judged. The plumb line is true even though the structure may appear to be sound. The object evaluated may appear plumbed and look perpendicular to the beholder, but when set alongside the plumb line the true nature of the structure is evident. It might even look plumbed compared to other structures around it but when cast need to the true perpendicular it is off plumb. Do not let us judge either ourselves or one another simply by the eyes. I have frequently thought that a building was out of the perpendicular when it was not and I have sometimes thought it perpendicular when it really was not so. The human eye is readily deceived, but the plumb line is not—it drops straight down and at once shows whether the wall is upright or not Spurgeon
Application of the Plumb line
As God thus uses the plumb line in His building, I gather that we also should use the plumb line in our building. We should make constant use of the plumb line. We must apply the Bible plumb line continually to all your beliefs, views and practices! We must continually use the plumb line of God’s Word upon ourselves. Often the soul needs to use the plumb line to see whether that which is built so very quickly is really built perpendicularly or whether if does not lean this way or that. Put the Bible plumb line to your life, you will be astonished to find how much out of the perpendicular it is
Three key areas where the plumb line must be tested: Your conversion (2 Cor 13:5), your character (Matt 7:15-20, your congregation (2 Thess 3:6, 14, 2 Tim 3:1-9, 1 Cor 5:9-13), and your convictions (Gal 1:6-9, 1 Cor 3:11-15). Use the plumb line to determine whether your church is all straight and square. Try all the doctrines that are taught and do not embrace that which is popular, but that which is Biblical. Spurgeon
O my Brothers and Sisters, if the great scales of Divine Justice were swinging from this ceiling right now and the Judge of All said to you, “Step in and let me see what is your weight,” is there one of us who could solemnly and sincerely rise and say, “Lord, I am ready for the weighing”? Yes, I trust that many could say, each one for himself or herself, “There is not anything good in me, but my hope is fixed on Christ alone. And though I am not what I ought to be, nor what I want to be, nor what I shall be, yet ‘by the Grace of God I am what I am.’ My profession of being a Christian is not a lie. It is not a pretense, it is not a piece of religious masquerade—it is true, great God—it is true.” My Brother, my Sister, if you can say that, you may step into the scales without any fear, for the contrite and believing heart can endure being weighed! But into the scales you will have to go whether you are ready or not. Your building will all have to be tested and tried Spurgeon.
The Predicament of God’s People
8 And the LORD said to me, "Amos, what do you see?" And I said, "A plumb line." Then the Lord said, "Behold, I am setting a plumb line in the midst of my people Israel;
God now stands upon this wall, not to hold it up, but to tread it down, or, rather, to consider what he should do with it. He stands upon it with a plumb-line in his hand, to take measure of it, that it may appear to be a bowing, bulging wall. The plumb-line would discover where it was crooked. Thus God would bring the people of Israel to the trial, would discover their wickedness, and show wherein they erred; and he would likewise bring his judgments upon them according to equity, would set a plumb-line in the midst of them, to mark how far their wall must be pulled down. Henry When God is pictured as standing by the wall with a plumb line in his hand, this is a way of saying that he is about to check Israel to see if the nation is as upright as it claims to be. Israel had been built to plumb. But now there is no way they could pass the test. They have deviated from God’s norm, inclined to disobedience, and then tumbled into sin entirely. Boice Up until this point in Amos’ prophecies there was no objective test, just words pronouncing judgment upon the people as God had directed him. There was no objective test to see if Israel had fallen short or strayed of the mark of God’s righteous standard. But, place the people of God next to the plumb line of God and Amos now sees how far they have fallen into disobedience from God’s holiness. He sees God’s perspective. He sees them like God sees them. That is probably why he doesn’t plead for God’s mercy a third time. Amos now sees and understands the reason for the coming disaster. James 2:10 God stood on the wall ready to test the character of Israel. The plumb line represented his own revealed righteousness as the standard by which his people must be judged. The process of his judging was in no way arbitrary but based on his own absolute stand of righteousness Yates.
The Prognosis of God’s Plan
I will never again pass by them; 9 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 pronounces that he will not pass by them anymore (Ex 12:12-13, Micah 7:18). He has been patient and now comes the punishment (Gen 6:3, Ex 34:6-7).
Yates suggests three symbols of Israel’s moral degradation: (Two were religious, one governmental) Boice
1) The High places: This is where they worshiped the right God in the wrong way. They were unwilling to apply God’s plumb line to the manner and method of their worship, thus incurred God’s judgement.
2) Sanctuaries: Here were structures of immoral and amoral worship. Against God’s plumb line they fall short of true houses of worship.
3) House of Jeroboam: Here the administration who allowed and encouraged the people to continue in rebellion to God’s standard would be punished according to God’s true principles and previous promises to curse them if they abandoned his way. ( 2 Kings 14:24)
The problem here is that we do not think as God thinks and therefore constantly measure ourselves by other human standards rather than by God’s standard for perfection. Boice
We should not plead for justice because justice would require us to be compared to Christ and we would all be under condemnation. But we should plead for mercy where we will find that the same Christ by whom our corruption is revealed is also the Christ who died that our sin might be covered and we might receive eternal life. Boice
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