The Sins of the Amorites

 July 19, 2022

My son spoke this morning of praying out of desperation or out of discipline, focusing on the discipline part; the hard work of reading Scripture, fasting, worshipping, and prayer. It’s not always fun and games, or walking peacefully with God through verdant pastures with cool breezes blowing. 

As often as not, my prayers are like Peter’s when he was sinking after trying to walk on water: “Lord, save me!” Unlike Peter’s experience where Jesus immediately reached out his hand, my cry for help seems to be met with silence. Why is that? If God loves us, why does he not answer our prayers of desperation?

Abram had one of those not-so-pleasant encounters with God. It wasn’t a peaceful walk, but more of a nightmare.

“Now when the sun was going down, a deep sleep fell upon Abram; and behold, horror and great darkness fell upon him. Then He said to Abram: “Know certainly that your descendants will be strangers in a land that is not theirs, and will serve them, and they will afflict them four hundred years. But in the fourth generation they shall return here, for the iniquity of the Amorites is not yet complete.”” —Genesis 15:12-13, 16 

Abram lived around 2,000 B.C. The children of Israel were rescued from Egypt between 1400 and 1200 B.C., depending on the chronology you follow. So at least 600 years came and went before this prophecy was fulfilled, four hundred of which they were slaves. They prayed often for deliverance; we know this because when God appeared to Moses in the burning bush, he told him he had heard the cry of the people. And yet, for four hundred years, those cries were met with silence. Why would God wait while his people were suffering so?

The explanation is found in the text I read this morning. It’s somewhat cryptic, and doesn’t seem to make sense, but it’s the only explanation given: “the sin of the Amorites is not yet complete.” God essentially told Abram, “These people are bad, but they aren’t bad enough yet. Things have to degenerate to a certain point before I will act.” Pharaoh’s oppression doesn’t have any connection to the depravity of this particular group of people inhabiting the Promised Land, but in God’s scheme of things, there is a connection we cannot see. Israel’s deliverance is tied to the sin of these Amorites.

It is the Old Testament version of Peter’s words that “The Lord is not slack concerning His promise, as some count slackness, but is longsuffering toward us, not willing that any should perish but that all should come to repentance” (2 Peter 3:9). Perhaps God was waiting till the Amorite’s sins had weakened them to the point that they wouldn’t be able to mount a serious threat to the conquest of the land. Maybe God was giving them time to repent. But from the perspective of those groaning under the lash of the taskmaster, it didn’t make sense that God would turn a deaf ear to them.

The fact is, he didn’t. He heard their cries, but God is a master of timing, and to come to the rescue too soon would spoil it all. St. Paul said, “At just the right time, God sent his Son into the world” (Romans 5:6). Eat an apple or peach before its time, and you’ll get a bellyache. Rushing deliverance rarely works. “To everything there is a season, and a time for every purpose under heaven.” The Byrds sang those words back in the ‘60’s, but they didn’t write them. They come from Ecclesiastes 3, written more than 2,000 years ago. We are still waiting, and praying that the time will come soon. It may be hard to believe, but spiritually speaking, the sins of the Amorites are not yet complete.