Ripe for Judgement

Amos was out tending his flocks one day, feeding them sycamore fruit when he heard God's call on his life. God spoke to Amos, telling him how the people of Israel had grown secure by their material prosperity, using their wealth to enlarge their land holdings and to build great houses for themselves while taking advantage of the poor. As Amos listened to God unburden his heart to him, a fire began to burn in his bones.

Amos means burden. And God's prophet went forth with a burden for the justice of God as he delivered a strong searching message for Israel that he delivered standing in the shadow of Jeroboam's pagan temple at Bethel. The message delivered in the Book of Amos still rings down through the centuries to us today with clarity and power.

God uses figurative language as he compares his backslidden people to a basket of summer fruit sitting out in the sun, ripe for judgment. King Jeroboam named the temples at Bethel and Dan National Shrines when Israel split from the southern kingdom of Judah, but we see in Amos that Bethel had become a place that God no longer honored because the people no longer honored God with their lives. They had grown indifferent to the things of God and were unrepentant under the remedial judgments from God who sent them famine, drought, financial collapse, and even a pestilence that killed off their young men.

And through all these calamities which befell them, we continue to hear God's repeated lament. Yet have ye not returned unto me, saith the Lord? The key verse in Amos is found in chapter 3 and in verse 3 as it summarizes the main source of Israel's problems and their spiritual poverty. Can two walk together except they be agreed? The answer is no.

And the fiery prophet Amos thunders warning after warning to the rebellious people to turn back to God with their whole heart to avoid utter destruction. But these warnings fell on deaf ears as we read in Amos 6, 4 through 6, that lie upon beds of ivory, and stretch themselves upon their couches, and eat the lambs out of the flock, and the calves out of the midst of the stall, that chant to the sound of the vial, and invent to themselves instruments of music like David, that drink wine in bowls, and anoint themselves with chief ointments. But they are not greed for the affliction of Joseph.

I will stop their friends. When a nation stops walking with God, then that nation will walk away from God. And all of God's pleadings through his remedial judgments to encourage the people to return to him will fall upon deaf ears.

America today seems very similar to Israel in Amos' day. We grew fat and prosperous while we built lavish churches and bigger houses for ourselves, and lathered our bodies with expensive ointments as we devoured our veal and turned our backs on a holy God. And a merciful God has tried repeatedly to get our attention through his remedial judgments upon us.

And while one end of our nation is burning, and the other end is deluged in flood, and in between is a national pestilence that won't go away, and our daily news reads like a page out of the Old Testament, but our hearts have grown too callous to hear his lament. Yet, have ye not returned unto me, saith the Lord? And we too, like Israel, are like a basket of summer fruit out in the sun that is ripe for judgment.