Amos

Anyone here from St. Paul Minnesota? Do you know of the Jewish Synagogue, The Temple of Aaron?

The 1956 sculpture is an abstract representation of flowing water.

The rotating circle at the top of our sculpture represents a waterfall. Below it is the symbol representing flowing water in a stream. Because the sculpture faces the Mississippi River and is the dominant theme of the synagogue, the words below are selected from the prophet Amos: ‘Let justice well up like water, and righteousness as a mighty stream.’

Whoever choose these words to be put in that place had an instinct for what is central to the prophet’s preaching. Those who drive or walk along the road can hardly miss the point: May justice and righteousness roll through the land like the mighty Mississippi.

This theme of social justice is a major theme of Amos.

The Book of Amos is set in a time when the people of Israel have reached a low point in their devotion to God. The people have become greedy. They have stopped following the Law and they have lost their sense of values.

God speaks to Amos, a farmer and herder, and tells him to go to Samaria, the capital of the Northern kingdom. Through Amos, God tells the people that he is going to judge Israel for its sins, and it will be a foreign nation that will enact his judgment.

The people understand judgment as the coming of "the Day of the LORD." "The Day of the LORD" was widely celebrated and highly anticipated by the followers of God. However, Amos came to tell the people that "the Day of the LORD" was coming soon and that it meant divine judgment and justice for their own iniquity.

Amos 1

¹ The words of Amos, one of the shepherds of Tekoa—the vision he saw concerning Israel two years before the earthquake, when Uzziah was king of Judah and Jeroboam son of Jehoash was king of Israel.

Tekoa is a small, rural town not far from Bethlehem.

The earthquake mentioned here, was a serious one – and a century later people writers still made reference to this ‘Great Earthquake.’

² He said:

“The LORD roars from Zion
and thunders from Jerusalem;
the pastures of the shepherds dry up,
and the top of Carmel withers.”

³ This is what the LORD says:

“For three sins of Damascus,
even for four, I will not relent.
Because she threshed Gilead
with sledges having iron teeth,
⁴ I will send fire on the house of Hazael
that will consume the fortresses of Ben-Hadad.
⁵ I will break down the gate of Damascus;
I will destroy the king who is in^[b] the Valley of Aven^[c]
and the one who holds the scepter in Beth Eden.
The people of Aram will go into exile to Kir,”
says the LORD.

⁶ This is what the LORD says:

“For three sins of Gaza,
even for four, I will not relent.

Sound familiar? Verse 5 and verse 3 have the same pattern – in fact it is a pattern that is repeated over and over.

Damascus is in the north.

Gaza is in the south – in the direct opposite direction.

Amos goes onto to talk about Tyre, Edom, Ammon, Moab, Judah, and Israel.

Let’s think about what is going on here. Amos is not speaking to these different nations, he is talking about these nations to the people of Israel. Think geographically. Damascus in the north, Gaza in the south. Tyre in the north. Edom in the south. Moab in the east, and then Judah in the southwest.

Imagine a street preacher in World War II. He starts preaching,

“For the three sins of the Nazis, even for four, I will not relent. I’m going to punish the Nazis.

And I’m going to punish the Empire of Japan.

And I’m going to punish the socialists.

And I’m going to punish the communists.

At this point, everyone is cheering the street preacher. They’re shouting Amen, preach it brother!

And then the preacher says, “For the three sins of Sanibel Island, even for four, I will not relent. I’m going to punish Sanibel Island.”

That’s what Amos is doing.

He is preaching to the people and is listing all of the great enemies of the people – but then he zeros in on a neighbor. Judah -- The sister-nation of the people who are listening to Amos.

Like a good Southern Baptist preacher, Amos disarms the listeners and then begins to make them squirm.

⁴ This is what the LORD says:

“For three sins of Judah,
even for four, I will not relent.
Because they have rejected the law of the LORD
and have not kept his decrees,
because they have been led astray by false gods,
the gods their ancestors followed,
⁵ I will send fire on Judah
that will consume the fortresses of Jerusalem.”

Now the other nations are under judgment because of war crimes, but Judah is being indicted because of their rejection of the Law of the Lord and have not kept his decrees.

And now, watch out! Amos turns away from the map. He stops talking about those OTHER people in the north and south and north and south and north and south and then turns his finger to the people and says, YOU.

Like the people of Judah, the people of Israel have rejected the Law of God, but when Amos gets to preaching against the people of Israel, he gets down right specific.

⁶ This is what the LORD says:

“For three sins of Israel,
even for four, I will not relent.
They sell the innocent for silver,
and the needy for a pair of sandals.
⁷ They trample on the heads of the poor
as on the dust of the ground
and deny justice to the oppressed.
Father and son use the same girl
and so profane my holy name.
⁸ They lie down beside every altar
on garments taken in pledge.
In the house of their god
they drink wine taken as fines.

Do you hear what is going on here?

The righteous, the ordinary citizens are being sold for silver, and the needy are sold for a pair of sandals – “a pair of sandals” means “for very little.” Another way to put it might be, the needy are sold for a nickel and dime.

The poor are oppressed, “trampled” in this imaged.

The “afflicted,” or the poverty-stricken, do not get their fair treatment in the courts.

A young woman hired as domestic help is sesxually abused not only by one of the young men in the family, but also by the father as well.

A debtor might be required to give a creditor a coat for security, but the law said that the coat had to be returned each evening. In other words, a person in debt was not left without safety. And yet in Amos these people take the coats from the people in debt, and they use them at night as a picnic blanket in the Temple.

In this first section of Amos, we see that God is concerned about international affairs. He is concerned with this nation, and that nation, and the other nation – but he is also concerned about the individual – the poor and needy and the person in debt.

In the Old Testament, there was no separation of church and state and individual. God expected the individual people to be godly, and he expected the nation of Israel to be godly. So when the nation of Israel failed, God became angry with them.

Amos 3

¹ Hear this word, people of Israel, the word the LORD has spoken against you—against the whole family I brought up out of Egypt:

² “You only have I chosen
of all the families of the earth;
therefore I will punish you
for all your sins.”

Israel is a privileged nation. God has favored them, and because of that, God expects a lot from them.

“I chose you, therefore I will punish you for all your sins,” says Amos.

Luke 12:48 teaches us, “From everyone who has been given much, much will be demanded; and from the one who has been entrusted with much, much more will be asked.”

Much has been expected of Israel, and they have failed, and therefore they will be punished by God.

3:¹³ “Hear this and testify against the descendants of Jacob,” declares the Lord, the LORD God Almighty.

14 On the day I punish Israel for her sins,
I will destroy the altars of Bethel;
the horns of the altar will be cut off
and fall to the ground.
¹⁵ I will tear down the winter house
along with the summer house;
the houses adorned with ivory will be destroyed
and the mansions will be demolished,”
declares the LORD.

Amos 4:1 is the beginning of another, separate sermon. Imagine Amos, the country boy, in the big city. He looks at the women where he is visiting and he is disgusted.

He compares them to cows. Contented, ignorant cows. .

Amos 4

¹ Hear this word, you cows of Bashan on Mount Samaria,
you women who oppress the poor and crush the needy
and say to your husbands, “Bring us some drinks!”

We have a responsibility to the poor and needy.

We are forbidden from oppressing the poor. We see this language all the time. Proverbs 14:31 says, “One who oppresses a poor person insults his Creator.”

How might one oppress the poor?

In chapter 8, verses 5 and 6, Amos accuses the people of oppressing the poor by:

“skimping on the measure,
boosting the price
and cheating with dishonest scales,”

In chapter 5, Amos speaks of the government and the courts oppressing the poor…

¹⁰ There are those who hate the one who upholds justice in court
and detest the one who tells the truth.

¹¹ You levy a straw tax on the poor
and impose a tax on their grain.

But look again at what the cows of Bashan are guilty of.

4:¹ Hear this word, you cows of Bashan on Mount Samaria,
you women who oppress the poor and crush the needy
and say to your husbands, “Bring us some drinks!”

This part of Amos is going to be uncomfortable for some of us. Like hearing Amos talk about the other nation and another nation and another nation, now he may well be zeroing in on us.

We can be guilty of INDIRECT oppression of the poor.

This from CNN

http://thecnnfreedomproject.blogs.cnn.com/2012/01/12/chocolates-child-slaves/

Everyone loves chocolate. But for thousands of people, chocolate is the reason for their enslavement.

The chocolate bar you snack on likely starts at a plant in a West African cocoa plantation, and often the people who harvest it are children. Many are slaves to a system that produces something almost all of us consume and enjoy.

The CNN Freedom Project sent correspondent David McKenzie into the heart of the Ivory Coast - the world’s largest cocoa producer - to investigate what's happening to children working in the fields.

His work has resulted in a shocking, eye-opening documentary showing that despite all the promises the global chocolate industry made a decade ago, much of the trade remains unchanged. There are still child slaves harvesting cocoa, even though some have never even tasted chocolate and some don't even know what the word "chocolate" means.

Did anyone go with the church’s mission trip to Immokalee yesterday? What can anyone here share about the Coalition of Farm Workers or the situation with migrant workers here in Florida?

• Like textile workers at the turn of the last century, Florida tomato harvesters are still paid by the piece. The average piece rate today is 50 cents for every 32-lbs of tomatoes they pick, a rate that has remained virtually unchanged since 1980. As a result of that stagnation, a worker today must pick more than 2.25 tons of tomatoes to earn minimum wage in a typical 10-hour workday -- nearly twice the amount a worker had to pick to earn minimum wage thirty years ago, when the rate was 40 cents per bucket. Most farmworkers today earn less than $12,000 a year.

• In a January 2001 letter to members of Congress, the U.S. Department of Labor described farmworkers as "a labor force in significant economic distress," citing farmworkers' "low wages, sub-poverty annual earnings, [and] significant periods of un- and underemployment" to support its conclusions.

• As a result of intentional exclusion from key New Deal labor reform measures, farmworkers do not have the right to overtime pay, nor the right to organize and collectively bargain with their employers.

• In the most extreme conditions, farmworkers are held against their will and forced to work for little or no pay, facing conditions that meet the stringent legal standards for prosecution under modern-day slavery statutes. Federal Civil Rights officials have successfully prosecuted seven slavery operations involving over 1,000 workers in Florida’s fields since 1997, prompting one federal prosecutor to call Florida "ground zero for modern-day slavery." In 2010, federal prosecutors indicted two more forced labor rings operating in Florida.

Let’s think about what it means to have a vision. Many times we think of a vision as something a prophet sees that no one else can see. For Amos, a vision is like the Children’s Devotional. He sees something in real life, and he sees something of a deeper meaning here – like an audio visual parable.

First, Amos sees something that another prophet saw – Joel. Locusts!

Amos 7

¹ This is what the Sovereign LORD showed me: He was preparing swarms of locusts after the king’s share had been harvested and just as the late crops were coming up. ² When they had stripped the land clean, I cried out, “Sovereign LORD, forgive! How can Jacob survive? He is so small!”

³ So the LORD relented.

“This will not happen,” the LORD said.

The vision is the locusts that devour everything, and the truth that Amos sees in this vision is that if we don’t ask God for mercy, then God can easily destroy us completely.

Then, very quickly, Amos goes to the next vision. It is a wildfire, and again the truth is that God’s anger can be like a wildfire that destroys everything.

⁴ This is what the Sovereign LORD showed me: The Sovereign LORD was calling for judgment by fire; it dried up the great deep and devoured the land. ⁵ Then I cried out, “Sovereign LORD, I beg you, stop! How can Jacob survive? He is so small!”

⁶ So the LORD relented.

“This will not happen either,” the Sovereign LORD said.

Then there is a different sort of vision. It involves a plumb line. Any idea what a plumb line is?

It is a builder’s tool to measure the straightness of a vertical wall.

⁷ This is what he showed me: The Lord was standing by a wall that had been built true to plumb, with a plumb line in his hand. ⁸ And the LORD asked me, “What do you see, Amos?”

“A plumb line,” I replied.

Then the Lord said, “Look, I am setting a plumb line among my people Israel; I will spare them no longer.

In other words, if the people don’t measure up, they are doomed.

In Amos 7:10, we get a personal glimpse into Amos.

¹⁰ Then Amaziah the priest of Bethel sent a message to Jeroboam king of Israel: “Amos is raising a conspiracy against you in the very heart of Israel. The land cannot bear all his words. ¹¹ For this is what Amos is saying:

“‘Jeroboam will die by the sword,
and Israel will surely go into exile,
away from their native land.’”

¹² Then Amaziah said to Amos, “Get out, you seer! Go back to the land of Judah. Earn your bread there and do your prophesying there. ¹³ Don’t prophesy anymore at Bethel, because this is the king’s sanctuary and the temple of the kingdom.”

¹⁴ Amos answered Amaziah, “I was neither a prophet nor the son of a prophet, but I was a shepherd, and I also took care of sycamore-fig trees. ¹⁵ But the LORD took me from tending the flock and said to me, ‘Go, prophesy to my people Israel.’ ¹⁶ Now then, hear the word of the LORD. You say,

“‘Do not prophesy against Israel,
and stop preaching against the descendants of Isaac.’

¹⁷ “Therefore this is what the LORD says:

“‘Your wife will become a prostitute in the city,
and your sons and daughters will fall by the sword.
Your land will be measured and divided up,
and you yourself will die in a pagan country.
And Israel will surely go into exile,
away from their native land.’”

In Amos 8:1, we read

¹ This is what the Sovereign LORD showed me: a basket of ripe fruit. ² “What do you see, Amos?” he asked.

“A basket of ripe fruit,” I answered.

Then the LORD said to me, “The time is ripe for my people Israel; I will spare them no longer.

³ “In that day,” declares the Sovereign LORD, “the songs in the temple will turn to wailing.^[a] Many, many bodies—flung everywhere! Silence!”

Amos has a familiar cycle. We’ve seen it in Hosea and we saw it last week in Joel.

The people sin and reject God.

This is followed by the judgment by God.

And then what happens next?

Repentance and restoration.

Look at the last part of Amos – 9:11.

¹¹ “In that day

“I will restore David’s fallen shelter—
I will repair its broken walls
and restore its ruins—
and will rebuild it as it used to be,
¹² so that they may possess the remnant of Edom
and all the nations that bear my name,^[e]”
declares the LORD, who will do these things.

¹³ “The days are coming,” declares the LORD,

“when the reaper will be overtaken by the plowman
and the planter by the one treading grapes.
New wine will drip from the mountains
and flow from all the hills,
¹⁴ and I will bring my people Israel back from exile.

“They will rebuild the ruined cities and live in them.
They will plant vineyards and drink their wine;
they will make gardens and eat their fruit.
¹⁵ I will plant Israel in their own land,
never again to be uprooted
from the land I have given them,”

says the LORD your God.