Grace to you and peace from God our Father and our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. Amen.
Our text for our sermon today comes to us from the prophet Amos, chapter 7, verses 1 through 6:
This is what the Lord God showed me: behold, he was forming locusts when the latter growth was just beginning to sprout, and behold, it was the latter growth after the king’s mowings. When they had finished eating the grass of the land, I said, “O Lord God, please forgive! How can Jacob stand? He is so small!” The Lord relented concerning this: “It shall not be,” said the Lord. This is what the Lord God showed me: behold, the Lord God was calling for a judgment by fire, and it devoured the great deep and was eating up the land. Then I said, “O Lord God, please cease! How can Jacob stand? He is so small!” The Lord relented concerning this: “This also shall not be,” said the Lord God.
My dear friends in Christ,
This is a sermon about locusts. Locusts are disgusting. They're big, hard, winged things that never, ever stop making sounds. They're worse than cicadas, since they come in by the thousands. This is a sermon about locusts. Now just the mention of locusts should bring to mind the man who made locusts famous, John the Baptist. I mean, can you imagine being in his shoes and having to eat locusts all your life?
A few years ago a man from Bloomington, Minnesota, certainly could. He made national news by eating thirty of them. The man ended up in the hospital with a rash all over his body. Pastors may call that “proverbial folly.” Most other people call that “just plain dumb.” Imagine all those locusts.
Now, locusts may not be our insect of choice, then again, what insect does any one really like, but they certainly were THE insect of the Old Testament. Israelites were so familiar with locusts that they coined NINE different Hebrew words to describe these purveyors of powerful plagues. Sometimes there can be as many as 120 million critters in one square mile of locusts. One swarm that crossed the Red Sea in 1899 covered an area of over 1,900 square miles! There's even a huge swarm of locusts, this very day, making its way over Egypt towards Saudi Arabia. Go figure.
And man do locusts love to eat! Why, they can eat their own body weight each day. Just imagine eating your own body weight each day! Uh, on second thought, don’t imagine eating your own body weight each day. I've been TRYING to watch my weight anyway.
So, hopping back to the text, Amos, who grew sycamore trees and harvested their fruit, knew all about the deadly destruction of locusts. It would be a plague. The prophet describes one in our text. And for God, the timing of the plague is critical. If a locust plague attacked in the late spring, the results were catastrophic, which is God's plan. They destroyed both the crops planted in the late spring as well as the more developed, and as yet unharvested, earlier spring crop. But if the locusts had arrived earlier, the late-spring crops would not have sprouted. And if they had come later, the grain was already gathered. So the locusts would arrive not only when they could maximize their destruction, but adding insult to injury, also after the king had taken his lawful part of the harvest remnant, meaning there would be nothing, nothing left for the common person.
As it stands, Amos is seeing the worst possible agricultural enemy come at the worst possible time. The result is certain. If not halted immediately, the people would have to face the worst possible hardship, an entire year of famine. Amos is worried for his people, and yet he trusts in God's judgment. It seems harsh, but God's judgment is righteous against an unrighteous people.
Now we all know the first judgment of locusts came when God inflicted them upon Egypt, a righteous judgment against an unrighteous pharaoh and his people. What does this mean? It means that Israel is now in the same place as their ancient enemy, Egypt. They're in the same class. Why is this the case? Because upper class Israelites were enslaving lower class Israelites by withholding justice in the courts, ignoring their cries for food and water, and by employing dishonest business practices. They were doing evil in God's sight. The “haves” were abusing the “have-nots” and in doing so they were doing more than just making a living. They were making a killing. So the nation fell under this covenant curse: “You shall carry much seed into the field and shall gather in little, for the locust shall consume it." Moses warned Israel what would happen all the way back in Deuteronomy 28, and Israel didn't listen. The locusts were coming.
In Revelation 9 John uses the imagery of locusts to remind us of our enemy, who also comes to kill, steal, and destroy. John looks at this vast army and describes them with these graphic terms: “Their teeth are like lions’ teeth. They have iron breastplates . . . they have tails and stings like scorpions . . . and they have as king over them the angel of the Abyss, whose name in Hebrew is Abaddon, and in Greek, Apollyon.”
Abaddon and Apollyon both mean “Destroyer.” Later in Revelation 12 and then again in chapter 20 John calls this Destroyer, “the ancient serpent who is the devil and Satan.” Satan and his demons seek to devour everything in us that is spiritually alive. Their strategy is clear: “We will chew you up and spit you out!” Sounds like Satan learned his strategies from the insects.
The devil’s lies strip away baptismal promises, eucharistic joy, and Gospel power. His temptations destroy marital fidelity, moral responsibility, and churchly civility. The devil’s swarms lead us to whisper wicked words, lunge for lustful looks, hate with hard hearts, and go on in godless gossip.
Who can stop this onslaught of the locusts?
There's a story about this little girl named Rachel. One day when Little Rachel was at her first wedding and watched the ceremony with great interest. When it was over, she asked her mother, “Why did the lady change her mind?” Her mother asked, “What do you mean?” “Well, she went down the aisle with one man, and came back with another one.” Changing our mind is not always a bad thing. God changes His mind, too, and in the case of the locusts, it was for the better. It still displayed His righteousness, though Israel was hard pressed to see it.
Amos the prophet intercedes for Israel, and God relents. The Lord changes from wrath to mercy, from Law to Gospel. And we call this change amazing grace! This is what Jesus is all about.
Jesus is the greatest intercessor and insister in the Bible. He continually intercedes for sinners. In fact, one of our Lord’s chief functions as High Priest is to make intercession for His people. Luke 23 records Jesus’ prayer for the Roman soldiers crucifying Him: “Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing.” The verb in this verse indicates that, far from saying this just once, our Savior repeatedly asked His Father to have mercy on those who killed Him. "Father, forgive them, please forgive them, Father, please, please forgive them, please forgive them." Jesus said this outside of Jerusalem at a place called Golgotha where the Romans bent and broke and maimed and mauled their victims. And then they systematically threw them away. There “the angel of the Abyss, Abaddon and Apollyon” stalked Jesus, took aim, shot straight, and killed Him, a locust utterly destroying the very Root of Jesse. Or so that great locust, Satan, thought.
Christ is instead alive! Even during this season of Lent, we know that Jesus is still alive! And this means that the Destroyer will one day be destroyed and the Devourer will soon be devoured. John, in his Revelation, encourages us with these words: “And the devil who had deceived them was thrown into the lake of fire and sulfur where the beast and the false prophet were, and they will be tormented day and night forever and ever."
There are some years in South Africa when locusts swarm the land and eat all the crops. They come in hordes so thick that the sun is completely blocked out. The crops are destroyed and an impoverished winter follows. The years of the locust are feared and dreaded. The year that follows, however, is a year of plentiful abundance! The dead bodies of the previous year’s locusts serve as fertilizer for the new seeds, and the crops swell from the land.
In life, there are seasons of deep distress and afflictions that eat away the baptismal abundance that is ours in Christ. Yet the promise of God is that in Jesus Christ He will restore the years that the locusts have eaten. Jesus intercedes for us sinners, you and me, even now, continually lifting up His supplications to His Father, "Father, forgive them, please forgive them, they don't know what they're doing. More than that, O Father, use my body and blood, my crucified body and blood, to nourish them, to strengthen them, to bring them together in My name. O Father, forgive them and bring them to everlasting life."
This Lenten season, remember that the Father has changed His mind about you. He once called you enemy, now He calls you friend, for the sake of His Son, who was crucified and risen from the dead for you, so that you may have the years of this life restored to you, so that you may also rise from the dead, never to fall into the terror of the enemy... or insects... ever again. In the name of Jesus, Amen.
Now may the peace of God that passes all understanding keep your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus, our Lord! Amen.
(This sermon is an edited version of sermon written by Concordia Seminary professor, Dr. Reed Lessing, for Concordia Publishing House's 'Restore the Roar' 2013 Lenten Series. This sermon is posted for educational and edification purposes only. No copyright infringements are intended.)
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