The Scripture reading for this Sunday is Amos 9:11-15 (but it's a good idea to read all of Amos 9).
By the end of Amos 9:10 it's easy to wonder if there is any hope to be had in Amos. Some faint hope is offered in 9:8-10, but even that doesn’t sound like much hope. Things are so bad, that Amos 9 talks about God hunting down His people, that they cannot escape His judgment. They have long ago failed to live as God's people, long ago failed to worship Him as they should, long ago failed to draw the other nations to God. So they will be taken away, they will be shaken out among the nations. God speaks through Amos of a destruction that is sure to come. It's going to happen.
But then, finally, in the last 5 verses of Amos, we hear some words of hope. This is not the end of God's people. God will not abandon them as they have abandoned Him. God will repair. God will rebuild. God will restore.
Amos 9:11-15 says that no matter how bad things were at the time, no matter how bad things would get, their immediate circumstances wouldn't determine their future. God would. And although it is bad right now, one day, God would restore His broken people and His broken creation and make things new. One day God would make His people rest secure again in His promises.
In his sermon called, “Jesus Vindicated,” Tim Keller tells the following story:
When my wife was growing up, every summer her family spent two weeks at a small compound of cottages on the shores of Lake Erie. Now the cottages are all gone—in fact that part of the beach is gone. Whenever she visits that childhood vacation spot, she weeps because she knows the beech is irretrievable. That sense of irretrievability is like a death. And the older we all get, the more we realize that certain losses are irretrievable; they're gone, and that sucks the joy out of our lives.
But here's where Christ's resurrection offers something unique. Even religions that promise a kind of spiritual future or spiritual bliss, only offer consolation for what you've lost. But the resurrection of Christ even promises the restoration of what you've lost. You don't just get your body back; you get the body you always wanted but you never had. You don't just get your life back; you get the life that you always wanted that you never had.
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But Jesus Christ is walking proof that you will miss nothing. Nothing! It's all coming in the future. It's going to be unimaginably wonderful. There is no religion, no philosophy, and no human being who can offer this kind of future. And as Christians our hope for the future is based on the historical fact of the resurrection.
The promises of Amos 9:11-15 ring with the hope that we have in Jesus Christ. Through His death and resurrection we know that God has done the work to restore us, God has done the work to undo our sin by placing the punishment on Jesus, and through Him we know that God will one day complete that work and make all things new when Jesus returns.
And it’s that hope that we, as God’s people, hold onto today. No matter what it is that we are going through (be it cancer or other health issues, trials, family tension, …) we know that our immediate circumstances don’t determine our future. We know that God is in control. And that gives us hope because regardless of what is going on in our lives and in the world today we know that the Lord will restore.
By sending us His Son, that is not only God’s promise. It is His guarantee.
The Lord will restore.