Amos 3:6 Shall a trumpet be blown in the city, and the people not be afraid? shall there be evil in a city, and the LORD has not done it? I. ALL THE CALAMITIES WHICH BEFALL A GREAT STATE ARE SENT THE OVERRULING PROVIDENCE OF GOD. Case of Pharaoh (Exodus 9:14-16); and Tyre (Isaiah 23:9-11). But if the hand of God was manifested in the punishment and destruction of idolatrous individuals and nations, much more plainly do the judgments that so frequently befell God's own people, the Jews, seem to have been the result of a judicial sentence from heaven, passed upon them for their transgressions. The evil spoken of in the text is not criminal evil, but the punishment that follows the commission of sin and all the inconveniences which accompany it. This is termed the evil of punishment or penal evil. This may be ascribed to God. The evil of sin, or moral evil, is from ourselves; it is our own doing; but the evil of trouble and suffering for sin, individual and national, is from God, is His doing, whatever be the immediate instruments by which He chooses to inflict it. II. IN ADDITION TO INDIVIDUAL CHARACTER, AND THE OTHER OBVIOUS RELATIONS IN LIFE MEN HAVE TO SUSTAIN, GOD REGARDS THEM IN THEIR COLLECTIVE CAPACITY, AND VISITS THEM WITH NATIONAL JUDGMENTS. This great truth cannot be too often insisted on. Each of us belongs to a country which has its claims upon him, in return for the benefits he receives from it. When any particular country is subject to peculiar national advantages or evils, the inhabitants of that country are benefited or injured by them. But what experience teaches us is the method that has been found necessary to be adopted for the mutual help of society, and which we find coincide with the laws of nature, Scripture teaches us is the plan upon which God's moral government over man is conducted; namely, that God regards man in his national capacity, and rewards or punishes him accordingly. III. ATTEMPT TO JUSTIFY THESE IMPORTANT DOCTRINES OF HOLY WRIT. 1. The relationship which exists among men, as members of society upon earth, will have no existence in another state. 2. God rewards or punishes nations in this world that they may be led, in their national capacity, to acknowledge His authority, and to regulate their affairs according to His will, and in obedience to His commands. It was on this very account that the Almighty purposed to form the Jewish State into a theocracy. Lesson — 1. We should learn to acknowledge the hand of God in the chastening visits of His providence, and humble ourselves before Him as parts of a guilty nation. 2. We should endeavour to ascertain the cause, or causes, of afflictive dispensations, so that we may be enabled to put from us the "accursed thing" that is so offensive to our Maker. 3. We should be thankful to God that we have hitherto so mercifully escaped the judgments, and in gratitude to Him give liberally of our. substance in aid of those on whom the judgments have fallen. (Joseph Peer, M. A.) Parallel Verses KJV: Shall a trumpet be blown in the city, and the people not be afraid? shall there be evil in a city, and the LORD hath not done it? |
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