Amos 6

Amos 6:1

Wo to those wealthy Jews and Israelites who live in carnal security, as if Jerusalem and Samaria, their capital cities, could protect them from my judgments

Amos 6:2

Behold, how those once-famed cities, Calneh in Chaldea, Hamath in Syria, and Gath in the country of the Philistines, lie in ruins, though they never sinned against such abundant favours as ye have done!

Amos 6:3-6

Ye keep the thoughts of approaching judgments out of your minds, or flatter yourselves that they never will come; and take all opportunities to commit injustice and oppression; and abandon yourselves to sloth, luxury, sensuality, carnal mirth, drunkenness, and pride; in no wise affected with the miseries inflicted on, or impending over, the ten tribes

Amos 6:7-11

Therefore shall ye be quickly carried captive into Assyria, and miserably in want of necessary provision. With unrelenting detestation God will give up your palaces and cities to the ravaging enemies to be destroyed. And meanwhile the pestilence or famine shall cut off whole families, which their few surviving relations shall bury in astonishment, despairing of pity from God: and all ranks, great and small, shall be equally involved in the desolating calamity

Amos 6:12-14

To no purpose do the prophets plead with you, hardened sinners, for your conversion and reformation. Ye have even rendered the civil administrations altogether unjust and oppressive. Ye rejoice in your idols, wealth, and power; and boast of your self-advancement, and your ability to defend yourselves: but, lo, as executioners of my just vengeance, the Assyrians, and afterwards the Chaldeans, shall ravage your whole country, and murder or take you captive, from one end of your land to the other

REFLECTIONS UPON CHAP. VI.—External privileges are very apt to put up in D pride. And, if we be once abandoned to carnal security, the examples of God’s judgments all around us will scarcely affect us. A round of dissipation and luxury effectually alienates the mind from God, and shuts out every serious consideration, and every degree of sympathy with afflicted churches and nations! Pitiful are the darling pleasures of those who are abandoned of God. But fearful is their case when his wrath begins to burn against them. No external relations, church privileges, or temples, can prevent his judgments. He abhors the form of godliness which is separated from its power. Dreadful is the situation, when luxurious dissipation is exchanged for sword, pestilence, famine, captivity, and hell!—when terrible calamities but plunge men into diabolical astonishment and infernal despair; when all are generally miserable, and none left to comfort another!—and when obstinate perverters of justice, and proud boasters, are divinely abandoned to a merciless foe!