Amos 8
McGeeCHAPTER 8THEME: Vision of basket of summer fruitThis is the fourth vision, and it takes in the entire eighth chapter of this book. It is important to get the meaning of this vision, because that will help us in the interpretation of passages that come later on. Especially it will clarify some of the things that our Lord Jesus said.
Amos 8:1
A great deal can be said about a basket of summer fruit. I love fruit. To me all fruits are delicious. I enjoy the citrus fruits of California or Florida, the fruits of northern California and Oregon and Washington. Wherever I am, I enjoy the fruit produced in that locality. There is nothing more attractive than a basket of summer fruit, and that basket of summer fruit has a message. First of all, a basket of summer fruit represents a harvest. It tells us that the tree is no longer producing. My apricot tree had some lovely apricots on it this past summer, but there is no need for me to go out now to see if there is fruit on the tree. The limbs are bare; there is no fruit. The harvest is past. There will be no fruit until next year. So we see that, although a basket of summer fruit is delightful and delicious, it also speaks of the end of the harvest. A basket of summer fruit also tells us of rapid spoilage and quick deterioration. Back in the time of World War II, a missionary from South America wrote to us from the East that she was coming to the West Coast. Since she was a personal friend and would be staying with us during her time in California, she told us the day of her arrival. You may remember that in those days trains were crowded and the military had priority over all else. When our friend reached Chicago, she learned that her reservation had been cancelled. She had to wait a week before she could come out to California.
We had prepared the guest room for her for the day we had expected her to arrive. I had gone out and picked some lovely apricots off my tree and had put a basket of apricots in her room. When we got the telegram from her telling us of her delay, we just closed the door to her room. We forgot all about the basket of apricots. Then when the time came for her to arrive, we opened the door to her room, and I want to tell you the odor was not very pleasant! In fact, it took us weeks to get the odor out of that room.
There is a message in a basket of summer fruit. God gives us a dramatic and a figurative illustration.
Amos 8:2
We have seen in chapter 7 in the previous visitations of God’s judgments that Amos prayed for the survival of Israel and that God changed His mind and withheld His hand. But now the basket of summer fruit indicates that the harvest is past. The jig is up. The northern kingdom of Israel has come to the end of the line. Judgment will come, and harvest is symbolic of that. Since harvest speaks of a time of judgment and falls at the end of an age, I think that some things our Lord said are misunderstood if one does not understand what is meant by “…The harvest truly is plenteous, but the labourers are few; Pray ye therefore the Lord of the harvest, that he will send forth labourers into his harvest” (Mat_9:37-38). Our Lord was speaking at the end of an age when the dispensation of the law was coming to an end. Christ was going to go to the Cross. He said that He needed harvesters to go out into Israel. After His death on the Cross, it is a different picture. For this age of grace He gives His parable of the sower. A sower went forth to sow seed. “…Go ye into all the world, and preach the gospel …” (Mar_16:15), is the message for our age. Go out into the world and sow the seed. This is the time for sowing the Word of God. My business and your business is just sowing the seed.
It is the Lord’s business to do the converting. We believe that the Spirit of God will take the Word of God and make a son of God. We are just seedsowers. We are not harvesters. Harvest speaks of judgment, and it speaks of the end of an age. Our business today is to be out sowing the seed.
I wish so much that I could get this message across to people. I wish I could motivate all believers to do what God has called us to do. Our business is to sow the seed of the Word of God.
Amos 8:3
The place for praising God will be changed into a place of waiting. The place of rejoicing before God will be changed into a place of weeping. The slain bodies will be everywhere. This is a terrifying prophesy.
Amos 8:4
Again God is speaking of the exploitation of the poor. Although I have commented on this before, I feel it is important for us to realize how God feels about the poor of this world. I have experienced being poor. My dad was a workman. I remember him wearing his overalls and drawing his paycheck on Saturday. After he would pay the grocery bill and the doctor bill and the rent, he always gave my sister and me a nickel each, but I remember one Saturday night when he had only one nickel left. He told me to go to the store and buy a sack of candy. I got gumdrops, because I could get a big sack of them for a nickel in those days, and my sister and I divided the gumdrops. My dad died when I was fourteen, and it was up to me to support my mother and sister. At fourteen I had to secure a special permit to get a job. Then, after I was converted and felt called to the ministry, some folk took an interest in me and helped me get through school. Believe me, I am for the poverty programbut not the one we have had in our society that puts money in the pockets of those who already have it. I want to see a poverty program that will really help the poor get on their feet and enable them to work. In the days of Amos, God accuses them of even making “the poor of the land to fail.” That is, the poor were brought down to such a low poverty level that they never could escape from it. The poor always suffer more acutely in a godless nationI don’t think that statement can be successfully contradicted.
Amos 8:5
If you had been among the people in that dayespecially down in Jerusalem at the templeyou would have wondered what the Lord was talking about. You would have seen them going through the rituals which God had prescribed. But, you see, God knew what was in their hearts. “The new moon” and “the sabbath” were holy days on which business was not transacted. God is saying that even when the rich went to the temple to praise God, they were so greedy and covet[h[ous that they were thinking about business the next day and how they could make more money by cheating their customers. They not only practiced their sin during the week, but they carried it into the temple. What a picture this gives us of Israel in that dayand of modern man as well.
Amos 8:6
“That we may buy the poor for silver.” The poor even had to sell themselves into slavery. That was permitted in that land under the Mosaic system. They would buy the needy for a pair of shoesthat’s how cheap they were! And they would sell the poor the refuse of the wheat. That means they got the “seconds,” the leftovers which an honest dealer throws away. I have never felt right about giving old clothes to help the poor in the church. I have never felt they should be given the leftovers of anything. When I was just starting my ministry, a dairyman in Georgia told me he generally had a quart of skim milk left over and he would leave it for me since I preached in a little church there. I didn’t accept the milk even though I could have used it. I felt it would not be fair to the man to give him the feeling he was doing a great service to the Lord by giving his leftovers. Remember how David said, “…neither will I offer burnt offerings unto the LORD my God of that which doth cost me nothing …” (2Sa_24:24). It is no accident that the Lord Jesus, when He was here on earth, sat and watched how the people gave in the temple. Was that His business? Yes. And He is interested in how much we give to Him and how much we keep for ourselves. I guess you can tell that I can identify with Amos. Maybe the reason I love this man Amos so much is that he talks my language. He was a poor man himself, and he says the thing that I understand. You see, Amos is explaining why Israel was like a basket of summer fruit. The goodness of Israel was just as perishable and just as soon deteriorated as summer fruit. One evidence of this was the way they treated the poor.
Amos 8:7
“The LORD hath sworn by the excellency of Jacob.” The excellency of Jacob is the Lord Jesus Christ. The Lord has sworn by the Messiah who is coming. No oath could be taken that is higher than that. Now notice what it is that He has sworn: “Surely I will never forget any of their works.” As we have seen previously in this book, God does not forget the works of any of usbeliever or unbeliever. Those of us who are believers will one day “…appear before the judgment seat of Christ; that every one may receive the things done in his body, according to that he hath done, whether it be good or bad” (2Co_5:10). In the days of Amos, they had heaped up sins unto the day of God’s wrath, and He remembered every one of them.
Amos 8:8
Some commentators think this refers to an earthquake. That is possible, and I certainly wouldn’t want to rule that out. However, I think it is the fact that God is coming down hard upon them in judgment that makes the land tremble. Even today one cannot go through places like Samaria and the rugged hill country around Gilgal and Bethel without being impressed by the frightful state of the land. It once was a very fruitful area with a great deal of vegetation, including a great many trees, but today the land has been pretty much denuded. It shows the evidence of judgment upon it. God came down heavily upon the land. We will see in the next chapter that the promise for the future includes a promise for the land. When we study prophecy, we need to remember that whether God promised judgment or blessing, the land was involved as well as the people. That is one reason why I cannot accept the idea that the prophecies of the Scripture are being fulfilled in the present return of Jews to that land. Although they have returned physically to the land, they have not returned spiritually to the Lord. It is obvious today that God’s blessing is not upon that land. It hasn’t changed. It is true that a great deal of hard work has gone into it, areas have been recovered from swamps, and irrigation has reached the desert in many places (which has made it blossom like a rose), but those places are few and far between even in that small land.
Therefore, it cannot be said that these great prophecies are being fulfilled. Israel’s last return to the land has not yet taken place. Let’s remember that there are more Jews in New York City than there are in the entire nation of Israelthat ought to tell us something.
Amos 8:9
Now here is Amos speaking of “that day,” which we have already seen is a technical expression that refers to the Day of the Lord. And generally it refers to the Great Tribulation because that comes firstthe day begins at night as far as Israel was concerned. Amos gives a mingling of prophecy of the near future and the far distant future. The Day of the Lord has not yet arrived. The sun has not gone down at noon, nor has the earth been darkened in the clear day. When Amos wrote this, this was still in the far distant future. Now he turns to the more immediate future for Israel
Amos 8:10
“And I will turn your feasts into mourning.” God gave to the nation Israel seven feasts. The males of Israel were required to come before Him for three of those great feasts. They were to come with rejoicing. It was to be a time of praise and thanksgiving and glorifying God. Now God says that, since they have been celebrating the feasts but not giving praise to Him, He will turn their feasts into mourning. They will become the very opposite of what He intended them to be, “…and all your songs into lamentation.” When God’s judgment falls upon them, there will be no more singingno more joyonly lamentation. Although I am certainly no music critic, I have been interested to observe the trend of modern music. When I was a young fellow, the popular music was the blues. That was followed by jazz and then rock and roll. Today it is hard rock. Do you detect any joy in that music? Oh, the songs have a beat to them so that you hop up and down like a yo-yo, but it is almost a mindless kind of motion which requires no thinking.
That kind of music stimulates the flesh but certainly gives no real joy. This is the type of music that the world produces. It is mournful and it is tragic. When I had the privilege of being in Vienna, I attended an opera there. It was the first opera I had ever heard, and I have to confess that I enjoyed it. However, it was a tragedy.
The boy didn’t get the girl. It was a tragic story, and the songs were lamentations and wailings. Now that is the type of music which the world produces. I am struck with the fact that God has said, “I will turn …all your songs into lamentation.” “And I will make it as the mourning of an only son, and the end thereof as a bitter day.” Sackcloth on all loins and baldness on every head are indications of the deepest mourning. This was literally fulfilled in the judgment that was to come unto them presently.
Amos 8:11
Here is a most unusual famine. God had given them His Word, and they had rejected it. They had despised it and turned aside from it. Now God tells that the day is coming when they will no longer have the privilege of hearing His Word. God tells any church or any nation that if they will not hear His Word after He has given it to them, He will withdraw it from them. I think we can see this happening in America. There has been a rejection of the Word of God. The churches have turned to liberalism, and the Word of God is no longer preached. There has come a famine of the Word of God. So many of the formerly great churches of this country, the great downtown churches, have turned from the Word of God. As a consequence, many of them have had to close shop. Others are just barely operating, and many of them are operating in the red. Even those which have stayed open have lost their influence and have lost their drawing power. Actually, very little of the Word of God is getting out in this land today. There is a Gideon Bible in every room in every hotel and motel in this country. Nearly everyone owns a Bible. But who is studying it? Who is reading it? Who is believing it? I think we are beginning to see the famine of the Word of God in this country.
Amos 8:12
The distraught people will wander from sea to sea seeking the Word of God but will not find it. God in His great love for His chosen people had sent His Word by prophet after prophet, but they had rejected His Word, persecuted and even slain His prophets. Now one of God’s judgments will be His silence. We see something of this same situation in our own land. I receive numerous letters from folk all over the country who tell me that they have no Bible teaching in their town or community and haven’t had any for many years. The famine has already set in for this land of ours. My friend, the most important thing in the world that we can do is to give out God’s Word by every means at our disposal.
Amos 8:13
Even the young people, the most hopeful and vigorous members of society, will faint for thirst after the Word of God.
Amos 8:14
It was their custom to swear in the name of their gods. “The sin of Samaria” refers to the golden calf which was located at Bethel. The second golden calf was located at Dan, and there was an idolatrous sanctuary at Beer-sheba, as we have seen. God’s judgment upon them from such idolatry concludes this chapter: “they shall fall, and never rise up again.” This indicates the dissolution and permanent downfall of the northern kingdom. The ten tribes are going into captivity, and they will never return as the northern kingdom of Israel. When they come back to their land, they will come as part of the twelve tribes.