Build Back Better

In that day, I will raise up the booth of David that is fallen and repair its breaches and raise up its ruins and rebuild it as in the days of old. (Amos 9:11)

God is going to "build back better." It was this passage that St. James quotes in the great Jerusalem council (see James 15:13-17). The Lord had foretold that the Gentiles, too, would find welcome at the time that the Lord restores the booth of David by sending His Son in the flesh to suffer and die to raise victoriously and reign over all until His enemies are placed beneath His feet.

In the Scriptures, bread tends to be associated with the Fall, sorrow, and life in this fallen world like Genesis 3:19. But wine now is associated with eschatological joy, with the feast of the kingdom of God. And so a time of abundance is foretold when the mountains will drip sweet wine, and all the hills will flow with it. You can't help but think of that first of signs, which Jesus performed in Cana of Galilee (see John 2:1-12). It's as if though He is waving this verse from Amos in their faces, manifesting His glory, and announcing in His person the arrival of the messianic age.

Now, if Christ is the fulfillment of the restoration of David's kingdom, and this includes the Gentiles, then the "They shall build the ruin cities and inhabit them, and they shall never be uprooted from there again" does not refer to some restoration to Palestinian soil. This points to the home which God prepares for His people (Hebrews 11). God has prepared for us a home, a heavenly inheritance. Here in this world, we don't have a final home, but God has a final home for us, and we will arrive there, at last, a home prepared by and through the gift of His Son into our flesh and blood to restore, and to rebuild the fallen down house of David.

-Pr. Will Weedon