Amos 2

CHAPTER 2THEME: Judgment against Moab, Judah, and Israel

Amos 2:1

Iconsider this man Amos to be a great preacher. The mold was broken after he was madethere is only one of him. He uses unusual expressions. “For three transgressions of Moab, and for four"that is his way of saying that there were many transgressions; but, as usual, he will mention only one specifically.

Amos 2:2

JUDGMENT AGAINST MOAB FOR INJUSTICE"I will not turn away the punishment thereof; because he burned the bones of the king of Edom into lime.” The judgment against Moab is for an awful spirit of revenge. The Moabites had gained a victory in battle over their enemies, the Edomites, and had killed their king. You would think that that would be enough, but they even burned the bones of the king of Edom into lime. The Moabites carried their revengeful spirit to the nth degree, and God says here that He will judge them for that. “Moab shall die with tumult"that is, they will go out with a real bang, and the nation will be ended. This proud nation was brought to extinction later on at the hands of Nebuchadnezzar, and you haven’t seen a Moabite since then. But isn’t it interesting that, many years before, out of this heathen country had come that gentle, lovely, and beautiful girl by the name of Ruth who became the wife of Boaz? Her story is recorded in one of the loveliest books in the Bible. Ruth is in the genealogical line which leads to Jesus Christ. And she had come from Moab, of all places. They were really a heathen, pagan people with a sad and sorry beginning and just as sad and tragic an end as a nation. But Ruth’s story reveals what the grace of God can do in the life of a believer if the believer will let Him do it.

Amos 2:4

JUDGMENT AGAINST JUDAH FOR DESPISING THE LAWNow Amos turns to the nation Israel in a reverse of the method which the other prophets used later on. They would always mention God’s judgment of Israel and then the judgment of the other nations which surrounded them. However, Amos has taken up these other nations first before he turns to Israel against whom the judgment of God will be greater. The reason for their greater judgment is quite obvious: Privilege always creates responsibility. The more light that you have, the more responsible you are to God. I believe that you and I are more responsible to God than people who are denied Bibles and who are not hearing the Word of God at all.

We are more responsible than they are. We often like to sit in judgment of these other nations round about us, but have you ever stopped to think of the tremendous responsibility that you and I have because of the privilege of having the Word of God? We boast of the fact that we have the Bible, but the important thing is our own personal obedience to the Word of God and whether or not we are doing anything to help get it out to others. As Amos turns from the surrounding nations, he takes up the sins of God’s people. He begins with Judah, the southern kingdom, from which he himself had come. “Thus saith the LORD; For three transgressions of Judah, and for four, I will not turn away the punishment thereof.” God could enumerate many transgressions of which they were guilty, but here is the key one. “Because they have despised the law of the LORD, and have not kept his commandments, and their lies caused them to err, after the which their fathers have walked.” This is saying in a very brief way what the prophets Isaiah and Jeremiah and Ezekiel took quite a few pages to say; that is, that God would judge the southern kingdom. For what would He judge them? They did not keep the commandments of God; they despised God’s law. Judah had the law of God and despised it. They even had the temple which was in Jerusalem. Therefore, God now judged them according to the Law. Have you noticed that God did not judge any of these other nations on that basis whatsoever? He judged them for certain specific sins which are common to the natural man. Because these other nations did not have God’s law, they were not judged according to God’s law.

Amos 2:5

Again and again, Amos mentions, as do the other prophets, that there is to be a judgment by fire. When Nebuchadnezzar came against the city, he absolutely burned Jerusalem to the ground. There was nothing left but the stonesof which there is an abundance in that particular area.

Amos 2:6

JUDGMENT AGAINST ISRAEL FOR IMMORALITY AND BLASPHEMYRemember that Amos is delivering these messages in Bethel of the northern kingdom. He is speaking in the king’s chapel. I think that every time he got up to speak, he would take as his subject one of these nations, and he would pronounce God’s judgment upon it. Now he has even talked about Judah, and that’s getting pretty close to home. It may be that a few people squirmed in their pews when he mentioned Judah. However, the ten northern tribes and the two southern tribes were at war with one another a great deal of the time.

There were several occasions when they made alliances, but that was only because of fear and of the necessity to stand together against a common enemy. Most of the time they were enemies. Therefore, when Amos gave his message of judgment against the southern kingdom, everyone was present and “amened” him. They agreed that God should judge Jerusalem and Judah. But what about the northern kingdom? Beginning with verse Amo_2:6, he will speak to the northern kingdom.

Bethel is the city where the king worshiped, and this man was speaking in the king’s chapel. Amos is getting closer to home. He’s going to start meddling. The story is told of the preacher who one Sunday morning was preaching against various sins. He preached about the sin of drunkenness, and a woman sitting in the congregation loudly “amened” him. He preached against the sin of smoking, and she “amened” him for that. Then when he started preaching against the sin of chewing tobacco, she shifted her wad to the other cheek and grumbled, “Now he’s quit preachin’ and has gone to meddlin’!” Amos is starting to meddle now. He is going to talk about the sin of the congregation which was before him. No longer will his message be about the sins of the “Moabites” but the sins of the northern kingdom. They, too, had God’s law, and they were schooled in the commandments of God. Listen to Amos as he speaks “Thus saith the LORD.” May I say to you, I personally have never felt that I have any right to stand in the pulpit and speak unless I can speak on the basis of “Thus saith the LORD.” What the Word of God has to say should be the basis of all pulpit ministry. “For three transgressions of Israel, and for four, I will not turn away the punishment thereof.” There are more transgressions than that, and Amos will mention more than that. He is going to deal with the Mosaic Law. He will not deal with the Ten Commandments as he did with Judah, but with the Mosaic Law which had to do with man’s everyday life. “Because they sold the righteous for silver, and the poor for a pair of shoes.” The ten tribes in the north had the Mosaic Law, but they were committing the same sins as the nations that were round about them. The fact of the matter is that the very people whom God had put out of that land were guilty of the same sins that Israel was now committing. First of all, we have here the mistreatment of the poor. You will find that Amos has a great deal to say about the poor. In Amo_4:1 we read, “Hear this word, ye kine of Bashan, that are in the mountain of Samaria, which oppress the poor, which crush the needy, which say to their masters, Bring, and let us drink.” Listen again to Amos: “Forasmuch therefore as your treading is upon the poor …” (Amo_5:11). In studying the prophets, I see again and again that the poor are not going to get justice, nor will they be treated fairly upon this earth until Jesus Christ reigns. The only hope of the poor is in the Lord Jesus Christ. We are told today that certain political parties will take care of the poor. Well, they’ve been taking care of us all right! Every time another politician wants my vote, he tells me how much he’s going to help me. I vote for him and then my taxes go up, and they keep going up and up and up. I will be very frank with you, I find that most of these politicians are rich men. They are millionaires, and they don’t know my problem. They do not understand the poor. I am thankful there is one, the Lord Jesus Christ, who is someday going to bring justice to the poor. God will judge a nation for its mistreatment of the poor. He gave a number of laws regarding this, but I will mention just one: “Thou shalt not wrest judgment; thou shalt not respect persons, neither take a gift: for a gift doth blind the eyes of the wise, and pervert the words of the righteous” (Deu_16:19). God put down this law to protect the poor. In that day a man might be absolutely innocent, but his adversary could slip a bribe under the table to the judge and thus receive a favorable verdict for himself. By the way, that practice doesn’t seem to be out of style today. Other styles change, but this one has not.

It is difficult for the poor to receive justice today when money seems to be the determining factor. Amos was speaking to a very pertinent problem of his day when even a pair of shoes would pervert judgment and cause the poor to suffer.

Amos 2:7

“That pant after the dust of the earth on the head of the poor.” This could mean several things, but I personally think it means that these selfish, greedy, rich judges even resented that the poor had enough dust left to throw upon their heads in mourning. Believe me, that is the covetousness, the modern idolatry of our day. God judges nations for that. “And turn aside the way of the meek.” Justice was being turned aside in disfavor to the meek. Why? Because the meek did not speak out. The old saying is true: “It’s the squeaky wheel that gets the grease.” The meek are not inheriting the earth today. It is inherited by those who are forward and are grabbing for all they can get. The poor and the meek were not receiving justice in Israel, nor are they receiving justice anywhere in the world today. “And a man and his father will go in unto the same maid, to profane my holy name.” Apparently, Amos is talking about a maid who is a prostitute. Both the father and the son went in to her. God says that adultery profanes His holy name. May I say to you, what we call “the new morality” isn’t new at all. Israel was practicing the new morality, but God said He hated it. They were breaking the laws which He had put down concerning these things. You can see that Amos is not going to be popular. He took the side of the poor, and he condemned unrighteousness. He condemned injustice. He condemned the fact that the poor were getting a bad deal, and he condemned immorality.

Amos 2:8

“And they lay themselves down upon clothes laid to pledge by every altar.” God had a very lovely law concerning this: “And if the man be poor, thou shalt not sleep with his pledge: In any case thou shalt deliver him the pledge again when the sun goeth down, that he may sleep in his own raiment, and bless thee: and it shall be righteousness unto thee before the LORD thy God” (Deu_24:12-13). A very poor man would have nothing to put up as collateral for a small loan except his outer garment, and that is what he needed to keep himself warm. God said, “You can take it as a pledge, but when the sun goes down, let him have it back in order that he might not be cold in sleeping that night.” Now God points out that Israel had broken this law and was not obeying Him at this point either. We talk about how just our own laws are today, but how sad it is that we will permit an entire family to be moved from their home when they cannot pay the rent because of poverty. My friend, the Word of God has a great deal to say in behalf of the poor. “By every altar.” God had given Israel only one altar, and that was in the temple in Jerusalem. This reveals that they had gone into idolatry and had a multitude of altars. “And they drink the wine of the condemned in the house of their god.” He condemns their drunkenness.

Amos 2:9

Notice the expressive and figurative language of this country preacher who had come up from Tekoa in the desert in Judah. Through Amos, God says of the Amorite, “He was tall like the cedar. He was strong like the oaks, but I destroyed him. I destroyed the fruit above, and I destroyed the roots from beneath.” God got rid of the Amorites. We read in Jos_24:8, “And I brought you into the land of the Amorites, which dwelt on the other side Jordan; and they fought with you: and I gave them into your hand, that ye might possess their land; and I destroyed them from before you.” We have already said that there are no Moabites around today, and I wonder when the last time was that you saw an Amorite. God had said to Abraham way back yonder, “I cannot put you in the land right now because the Amorite is in the land, and his iniquity is not yet full. I am going to give him an opportunity to turn to Me, to turn from these gross sins that he is committing.” You may want to say to me, “Dr. McGee, after all, these heathen nations didn’t have the Mosaic Law, and they didn’t know any better.” Paul makes a very interesting statement in his Epistle to the Romans: “For as many as have sinned without law shall also perish without law: and as many as have sinned in the law shall be judged by the law; (For not the hearers of the law are just before God, but the doers of the law shall be justified. For when the Gentiles, which have not the law, do by nature the things contained in the law, these, having not the law, are a law unto themselves” (Rom_2:12-14). Why would Gentiles who do not have the Mosaic Law refrain from murder? Why would they refrain from lying?

Why would they refrain from stealing? Paul continues, “Which shew the work of the law written in their hearts, their conscience also bearing witness, and their thoughts the mean while accusing or else excusing one another;)” (Rom_2:15). You and I have a conscience, and even if we had never heard of the Ten Commandments, our consciences would either accuse us or excuse us. We would either say, “I’m guilty,” or we would be free of any sense of guilt. Man has been given a sense of that which is right and that which is wrong. It was on that basis that God judged the Amoritehe continued in sin. God said to Abraham, “I am going to put your offspring down in Egypt for 420 years until the iniquity of the Amorite is full.” I do not think that even the most rabid liberal would want to ask God to give the Amorites more than 420 years of opportunity to repent. I personally will go along with the Lord that when you give a nation 420 years to decide what to do, they have had long enough. The fact of the matter is that the Amorites did not turn to God. When Joshua crossed over the Jordan River, he came into the land of the Amorites. Jericho was an Amorite city, and the harlot Rahab was an Amorite. She and her family were the only ones who were not destroyed. The Moabites disappeared, but Ruth the Moabitess is in the genealogy of Jesus Christ. The Amorites, too, have long since disappeared, but Rahab the harlot is also in the line that led to the Messiah. God is saying to Israel, “I judged the Amorites for the same sins which you are now committing. I have given you My law, and you have broken it.”

Amos 2:10

In effect God is saying, “I wanted you to serve Me in the land. I wanted you to bring up your young men to serve Me, to be prophets, and to be Nazarites.” But what had happened?

Amos 2:12

A Nazarite was an Israelite who took a vow voluntarily to dedicate himself to God. There were three things that a Nazarite did not do. First, he did not cut his hair. Why? Because for a man to have long hair, Paul says, is a shame to him (see 1Co_11:14). When I look around me today and see some fellows, I agree with Paul that it is sort of a shame for a man to have long hair. But I will simply say that the Nazarites let their hair grow because they were willing to bear shame. The second thing was that a Nazarite was not permitted to drink wine or touch any fruit of the vine. They were not to eat grapes or even raisins. The Israelites were causing a Nazarite to break his vow when they gave him wine. The Nazarite also was not to touch a dead body or come near to one. When a loved one died, he did not even attend the funeral. This was done as an evidence of the fact that he had put God first in his life. “And commanded the prophets, saying, Prophesy not.” The people said to the prophets, “We don’t want to hear you. We don’t want to have any messages from you at all.” They refused to listen to God’s prophets. Let me again make an analogy to our own nation today. We are following the same pattern that Rome followed when she went down. Rome was not destroyed from the outside, and I do not believe that there will come a missile over the North Pole which will destroy America. I think the missile which will destroy us is the propaganda that is abroad today. Through it we have become convinced that we are a sophisticated, very progressive nation and that nothing can happen to us. The truth is that we are probably going down as fast as any nation in history. A leading statesman has said, “This nation has gone down faster in the past ten years than it did in its entire history from its inception.” How true that is! There are two things which are bringing us down as a nation. One of them is drunkenness. There are a shocking number of alcoholics in this country. A majority of the fatal accidents that take place on our highways involve drunk drivers. Yet we are criticized if we speak out about this. We make laws concerning the use and abuse of drugs, and I agree with those laws; but what about liquor, my friend? Liquor is one of the things that is destroying us as a nation. The other thing that characterizes us today is that we are not hearing the Word of God. The liberal preacher is the popular preacher. If we are going to hear the opinion of a minister on television, it will be the liberal preacher. The other day there was a panel discussion on television about abortion. They included a minister on the panel. You guessed ithe was a liberal. Recently I also viewed a discussion about women’s rights. Again, the minister who spoke was a liberal. They do not ask a Bible teaching preacher to tell what God has said on the subject. And yet we talk about religious liberty! My friend, the voice of God is not being heard in this land except for a few of us weak fellows who are trying to declare the Word of God. The same thing was happening in Israel. Amos said, “You are giving the Nazarite wine, causing him to break his vow and turning him from God. And you say to the prophets, ‘Prophesy not.’ You say to me, ‘Don’t talk like that. We want to hear something that will butter us up and make us feel good.’”

Amos 2:13

There are different ways of interpreting this verse, even different ways of translating it. It is the belief of some that it is rather degrading to think of God as being pressed down like a cart. I do not feel that way about it. God is saying here, “You have put Me in a difficult situation. You are My people. I put you in the land, and I put the Amorite out. Now here you are committing the same sins they commit! Do you expect Me to shut My eyes to your sin because you are My people? I’m being pressed down ‘as a cart is pressed that is full of sheaves.’”

Amos 2:14

There are some expositors who believe this refers to the earthquake mentioned in the first verse of Amos’ prophecy. I do not think there is any reference here to an earthquake at all. The point is this: Israel was a strong nation. God had kept the enemy out, and no one had ever advanced into their land. Now everything is breaking down, even the walls of the city. The enemy has come in, and the strong are no longer strong. We as a nation today ought to do a little thinking about what has happened in our land. In two world wars we were able to cross the sea and to bring an end to the conflict. In that we became a great nation, and we were very proud. We felt we didn’t need God at allwe had the atom bomb. Then a little country called North Vietnam came along, and we thought that we would subdue them overnight. I am not attempting to fix blame on anyone, but I do say that America should have learned a lesson from that.

We did not win a victory. We were never able to subdue the little enemy and we were divided at home. It is true that we did not want to bring the full force of our military power to bear, but this reveals the fact that we are becoming weak as a nation. We ought to wake up instead of shutting our eyes to the condition of our land. We ought to begin to call attention to the fact that God is already beginning to bring us down as He brought His own people down. God said to Israel, “You are becoming weak, and you do not seem to realize that I have already begun to judge you.” That was Amos’ message, and it is no wonder that the people wanted to run him out of town. It is no wonder they didn’t want to hear the message he had for them. And he is not through yet!