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What is the one thing that you would miss most
if it were taken away from you? What would you most miss
if you woke up tomorrow and found you no longer had it?
Would it be your family? Your children? Your dog or your
cat? Your photo albums? Your health perhaps? I want you
to think about that question as we look at Amos 8. |
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In fact
we'll look at chs 7&8, because they fit together.
Here's the situation. Israel has been ignoring God. He's
been sending his prophets to warn his people to return to
just living and to faithful worship of the LORD alone
almost since the kingdom was first divided, back in 930
BC. But the people haven't listened. As we saw last week,
the rich have oppressed the poor. They live in luxury
while the poor are downtrodden. Writing at about the same
time, the Prophet Hosea speaks of their idolatry. They've
taken for granted their status as God's chosen people for
so long that they seem incapable of understanding their
plight; of understanding that God might be angry with
them. Despite Amos' warnings they continue to do evil in
God's sight. And so God is preparing to bring judgement
on them. Ch7 begins with the approach of a swarm of
locusts, which will destroy the harvest, leaving the
people to starve. Amos sees this and prays to God to
forgive them; to have mercy on them, because this will
devastate the land. And God relents. Then he sees a
vision of a great fire coming that will be so great that
it will even fry up the sea. Again he prays for mercy and
God relents. |
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But it's
clear that this is only a temporary respite. In 7:7 God
shows Amos a plumb line set against a wall, to show that
the wall had been built true to plumb. And he says I am
setting a plumb line in the midst of my people Israel; I
will never again pass them by; 9the high
places of Isaac shall be made desolate, and the
sanctuaries of Israel shall be laid waste, and I will
rise against the house of Jeroboam with the sword."
God's patience has a limit. He's listened to Amos'
prayers up until now, but the time has come to apply
God's building code to the structure of the nation of
Israel. God is going to judge the sins of Israel. |
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Mind you,
the scale of destruction in this case is different. The
earlier visions showed utter destruction for Israel. They
would have wiped Israel out altogether. But this time God
is acting not in wrath, but in objective judgement. The
high places will be destroyed, the sanctuaries of Israel
shall be laid waste. Up until now, he says, he's passed
by the high places, the sites of pagan worship by his
people. But no more. Now he's going to target them as he
sends the Assyrians to carry out his judgement. |
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God's
patience is a tricky thing isn't it? Sometimes we see how
God lets sinfulness go and we wonder what he's doing. We
see evil in the world and wonder why God hasn't done
something to wipe it out. On the other hand sometimes it
makes us complacent. We see that we're getting away with
blue murder and maybe begin to think that it doesn't
matter. That's certainly the way the people of Israel
were thinking. We'll see that in a moment when we look at
their attitude to the Sabbath. But it does matter. God is
patient. God is merciful. But let's not forget that when
he revealed his name to Moses on Mt Sinai he said this:
"The LORD, the LORD, a God merciful and gracious,
slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love and
faithfulness, ... yet by no means clearing the
guilty." God is patient, but a time will come when
his patience will run out and he'll come to judge the
world. Peter tells us this: "The Lord is not slow
about his promise, as some think of slowness, but is
patient with you, not wanting any to perish, but all to
come to repentance." (2 Pet 3:9 NRSV) |
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But time
has run out. In 8:1 Amos sees another vision, this time
of a basket of fruit. God asks him "What do you
see?" And Amos replies "A basket of summer
fruit." So what? What does this basket of summer
fruit mean? |
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Well, we
actually lose a bit in the NRSV translation. There's
actually a play in words in the Hebrew here. The word for
'summer fruit' and the word for 'end' sound very much
alike. The NIV puts it like this: '"A basket of ripe
fruit," I answered. Then the Lord said to me
"The time is ripe for my people Israel."'
They're about to be gathered in like the summer harvest
of fruit. Not that this will be a particularly joyful
occasion mind you. In fact it'll be the opposite: "3The
songs of the temple shall become wailings in that
day," says the Lord GOD; "the dead bodies shall
be many, cast out in every place. Silence!" Do you
remember how a couple of weeks ago we heard Amos
preaching in the temple square with the sound of the
singers echoing through the gates of the Temple. But no
more. All you can hear now is silence. Desolation. The
people have been removed or killed. The sanctuary is laid
waste. |
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And why
is this about to happen? Is it just God being fickle? Is
he doing this on a whim? No! The full extent of their
corruption comes out in the next few verses: "4Hear
this, you that trample on the needy, and bring to ruin
the poor of the land, 5saying, "When will
the new moon be over so that we may sell grain; and the
sabbath, so that we may offer wheat for sale? We will
make the ephah small and the shekel great, and practice
deceit with false balances, 6buying the poor
for silver and the needy for a pair of sandals, and
selling the sweepings of the wheat." |
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Not only
were they exploiting the poor. At the same time they were
putting on a show of piety. They hadn't turned away from
religion. They still went to church each week. They made
sure they fasted on the full moon and during the
festivals. But all the time their thoughts were on new
ways to make a profit. This was economic rationalism gone
mad. Never mind the poor blighters who'll suffer from our
corrupt practices, lets think of new ways to maximise our
profits. Rig the scales, overvalue the produce, use your
economic muscle to manipulate the weak and powerless,
even to the point of selling the rubbish off the floor
along with the wheat. |
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There are
echoes here of some modern business practices aren't
there? Squeezing the middleman. Undercutting the weaker
opponent. Pressuring staff to work longer hours for the
same money. Forcing people to take redundancies, and
expecting those who are left to handle the extra
workload. Company directors receiving million dollar
bonuses while their company flounders, leaving the small
investors to carry the can. And they seem to get away
with it don't they? As long as they haven't acted too
illegally. But God says to these rich merchants of
Israel: "I will never forget any of their
deeds." They won't get away with it. God is about to
act in judgement. Nor will those who act corruptly today
get away with it. It matters what God thinks of your
business dealings more than how the law sees it or how
the community perceives it. This is a particular warning
for those of us who are involved in the business world,
of course. It's no use coming to church on a Sunday and
going through the motions of worshipping God if your
behaviour on Monday, or even on Sunday these days I
guess, doesn't match the way God expects us to behave. |
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And
what's the nature of the judgement that God is about to
bring? Here's where we come back to the question we
started with. What's the worst thing God could do to
them? Well, look at what he says: "8Shall
not the land tremble on this account, and everyone mourn
who lives in it, and all of it rise like the Nile, and be
tossed about and sink again, like the Nile of Egypt? 9On
that day, says the Lord GOD, I will make the sun go down
at noon, and darken the earth in broad daylight. 10I
will turn your feasts into mourning, and all your songs
into lamentation; I will bring sackcloth on all loins,
and baldness on every head; I will make it like the
mourning for an only son, and the end of it like a bitter
day." The first thing he describes is an earthquake.
The land trembling, being tossed about, rising and
sinking again like the Nile. The sun will be darkened.
People will be so terrified they'll throw off their
normal clothes and dress in sackcloth as a sign of
mourning and repentance. Too late they'll seek the Lord,
but they won't find him. Why? |
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Because
the real depth of the calamity that's about to befall
them isn't to do with earthquakes and darkness. It isn't
to do with a famine caused by locusts eating the wheat.
Oh, there's a famine coming, but not a famine of bread or
a thirst for water. No it's far worse than that! "11The
time is surely coming, says the Lord GOD, when I will
send a famine on the land; not a famine of bread, or a
thirst for water, but of hearing the words of the
LORD." The ultimate judgement of God on those who
refuse to listen to him is that he'll stop speaking. That
he'll close our ears. When we read in v3 those awful
words, "the dead bodies shall be many, cast out in
every place. Silence!" we don't realise just how
deathly a silence it will be. A silence not just of human
voices, but silence also from God. A famine of hearing
the words of God! (cf Is 6:9-10) |
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And no
matter how hard the people try to find God's word again,
they'll fail. "12They shall wander from
sea to sea, and from north to east; they shall run to and
fro, seeking the word of the LORD, but they shall not
find it." God has given them so many chances to
repent. So many times he's warned them. So many times he
disciplined them, given them close calls from other
nations' attacks, sent them prophets to remind them of
his word, and they've ignored them all. And the time
comes when it's too late; when they've gone beyond the
point of no return, and God withdraws from them; leaves
them to their own devices. And sadly it's only then that
they realise what they've lost. |
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I'm
reminded here of the story of Job. Do you remember how
Job experienced that series of disasters culminating in
an awful skin disease that left him wanting to die. But
what was it that Job most desired at that point? It
wasn't death. It wasn't healing. No, it was to speak to
God face to face. He wanted to hear God's side of events.
He wanted God to come and speak to him about these
disasters that had come upon him so unjustly. That's such
a normal human response isn't it? To want to question God
about the disasters we experience or the state of the
world. But what if God is inaccessible. What if he's
withdrawn his word from us? What a desolate experience
that must be! |
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There's a
warning for us here I think. We evangelicals pride
ourselves in being people of the word. God's word is so
important to us. It's the source of our knowledge of
salvation, it's the guide for our lives, the plumb line
against which we measure how we live, it's the source of
the truths we know about God and the world. But its
actually of no value to us unless we use it, unless we
read it and take notice of it. The danger for the people
of Israel in Amos' time was that they relied on their
ceremonial customs, their worship, their hymn singing. We
run a similar danger in thinking that because we have the
truth about God we're OK. But unless we take that truth,
that word of God and apply it to our lives, to our
behaviour, to our relationships, we might as well not
have it at all. In the end it will become as useless as
their temple worship was. In the end it will be as
useless as if we hadn't had it in the first place. And
then the danger is that we won't be able to recover from
it any more than the people of Israel could even by
seeking God's word to the ends of the earth. Heb 6 warns
us that "it is impossible to restore again to
repentance those who have once been enlightened, and have
tasted the heavenly gift, and have shared in the Holy
Spirit, 5and have tasted the goodness of the
word of God and the powers of the age to come, 6and
then have fallen away, since on their own they are
crucifying again the Son of God and are holding him up to
contempt." (Heb 6:4-6 NRSV) So the warning is here
for us, as well as for them, to take God's word
seriously. |
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But that
isn't in fact the end of the story. Although this is our
last sermon in this series on Amos, the story doesn't
actually end here. The people of God are about to be
judged, but they're still the people of God. They've
failed in the way they've related to God but they still
have a relationship with him. God still has a plan for
his people, a plan not for their destruction but for
their future. So in 9:11ff he promises restoration for
the nation, a return to prosperity for the Land. (9:11-14
NRSV) "On 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; 12in
order that they may possess the remnant of Edom and all
the nations who are called by my name, says the LORD who
does this. 13The time is surely coming, says
the LORD, when the one who plows shall overtake the one
who reaps, and the treader of grapes the one who sows the
seed; the mountains shall drip sweet wine, and all the
hills shall flow with it. 14I will restore the
fortunes of my people Israel, and they shall rebuild the
ruined cities and inhabit them; they shall plant
vineyards and drink their wine, and they shall make
gardens and eat their fruit." God's covenant with
his people isn't wiped out by this act of judgement.
Rather his judgement of Israel is a prelude to his
ultimate fulfilment of his promise of blessing to
Abraham. He's going to raise up the booth of David that's
fallen. A time is coming when a second David will appear
who will do all that Israel has failed to do. A Messiah
who will bring God's word to the nation once again. He'll
rebuild God's kingdom, restore the blessing to the
remnant that remains. And the final state of the nation
will be unparalleled prosperity. That of course is a
promise we find repeated in the book of Revelation, with
the picture of the new Jerusalem with the river of life
flowing through it, and on either side of the river the
tree of life growing, bearing fruit each month, and at
the centre of the city are God and his only Son Jesus
Christ, the lamb of God, the second David, the Word of
God incarnate. |
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Our
situation of course is different from that of the people
of Israel in Amos' time. Our salvation no longer depends
on our obedience to God. We know that Jesus' death on the
cross has cleansed us from sin and that we're ready at
any time to stand before God in the righteousness given
to us by Jesus Christ. (If you don't know that, by the
way, then you should talk to me about it.) But
nevertheless, there is a warning here, not to take for
granted God's grace and forgiveness; not to take for
granted God's word revealed to us in the Scriptures.
Jesus warned of a time that will come when he'll sit in
judgement to separate the sheep from the goats. 1 Cor
3:10-15 warns that the way we've responded to God's word,
the way we've worked on building God's kingdom, will be
judged as if by fire and only that which is solid will
stand. We ourselves will be saved on the basis of Jesus'
death on the cross, but what we've done here on earth may
or may not survive that last day of judgement. So let's
hold firm to God's word, let it dwell in us richly, let
it do its work of teaching, rebuking, correcting and
training in righteousness. Because nothing could be worse
than no longer being able to hear God's word. |
