Amos 1:1-2:3 | Does God Care About the Conduct of Nations?

This sermon was recorded at Faith Evangelical Free Church in Grand Forks, North Dakota.

We've spent the majority of the last 15 months in the New Testament.

We've looked a little bit at 1 Corinthians together.

We've looked all the way through 1 Peter.

But I have a conviction that it is also good to hear what God says in the Old Testament, or as I prefer to call it, the First Testament.

So I would like you to walk with me through the coming weeks in the short book recorded by the prophet Amos.

So over the next seven weeks or so, we will read through Amos' prophecy and look at it briefly in order to answer the question: does God care?

Does God care?

Now that isn't the point that Amos makes.

Amos wrote sometime around 760 BC to awaken people in his world to the sovereignty of God over all of heaven and earth.

Amos wrote about specific people groups.

He wrote of judgment for sin and the promise of salvation.

Now my goal is for us to hear Amos speak and be able to apply his truth to our world.

So we'll answer questions like does God care about the conduct of his people?

Does God care when his people don't respond?

Does God care about the actions of the wealthy and the religious?

Does God care about the actions of leaders and other questions like that?

Now, as we begin in Amos 1, the first verse sets the stage for us.

Here's what it says.

The words of Amos, who was among the shepherds of Tekoah, which he saw concerning Israel in the days of Uzziah, king of Judah, and in the days of Jeroboam, the son of Joash, king of Israel, two years before the earthquake.

In today's terms, we might call Amos a farmer, or maybe a rancher.

He was a breeder of sheep who also took care of sycamore trees and their fruit.

We see that a little bit later in this book.

But the terms used here may indicate that he was more than a typical shepherd who just moved sheep around on the hillsides making sure they had grass and water.

It indicates more that he was an owner and a breeder of sheep, like a businessman.

And Amos lived in Tokoah.

Jerusalem is here, and Tokoa is about 16 miles to the south of Jerusalem.

And God took that farmer, that rancher, and called him to speak divinely given words of judgment.

Now the Jewish people at that time were separated into two kingdoms.

The smaller was called Judah in the south of Palestine.

The larger was Israel, and they were in the northern portion of Palestine.

And this book is given during a time of prosperity and growth in those nations that was fueled by a false religion of pride and self-centeredness.

Not much unlike our own time.

In fact, politicians and leaders from both of those kingdoms hated and fought one another.

As enemies, they sought to destroy one another.

Again, not so much unlike Washington, D.C., presently.

So the sovereign Lord took Amos away from the sheep and told him to prophesy to Israel, the northern group of God's people.

But first, God spoke to all of the nations surrounding Israel before focusing in on that northern kingdom.

In kind of a crisscross sort of pattern, God closed in on his people.

In fact, seven nations or people groups are mentioned by God directly before he focuses in on the people of Israel.

Now let's hear what he said.

I'd like to read, beginning in verse 2 of chapter 1, all the way through chapter 2 and verse 3.

And he, that is, God, said, Yahweh roars from Zion and utters his voice from Jerusalem.

The pastures of the shepherds dry up, and the top of Carmel withers.

Thus says Yahweh, for three transgressions of Damascus, and for four I will not revoke the punishment, because they have threshed Gilead with threshing sledges of iron.

So I will send a fire upon the house of Hazael, and it shall devour the strongholds of Ben Hadad.

I will break the gate bar of Damascus and cut off the inhabitants from the valley of Avan, and him who holds the scepter from Beth Eden, and the people of Syria shall go into exile to cur, says Yahweh.

Thus says Yahweh, for three transgressions of Gaza and for four I will not revoke the punishment, because they carried into exile a whole people to deliver them up to Edom.

So I will send a fire upon the wall of Gaza, and it shall devour her strongholds.

I will cut off the inhabitants from Ashdod and him who holds the scepter from Ashkalon.

I will turn my hand against Ekron, and the remnant of the Philistines shall perish, says the Lord Yahweh.

Thus says Yahweh.

For three transgressions of Tyre and for four I will not revoke the punishment, because they delivered up a whole people to Edom, and did not remember the covenant of brotherhood.

So I will send a fire upon the wall of Tyre, and it shall devour her strongholds.

Thus says Yahweh, for three transgressions of Edom, and for four I will not revoke the punishment, because he pursued his brother with the sword and cast off all pity, and his anger tore perpetually, and he kept his wrath for ever.

So I will send a fire upon Taman, and it shall doubt devour the strongholds of Bazrah.

Thus says Yahweh.

For three transgressions of the Ammonites, and for four I will not revoke the punishment, because they have ripped open pregnant women in Gilead that might they might enlarge their border.

So I will kindle a fire in the wall of Raba, and it shall devour her strongholds with shouting on the day of battle, with a tempest in the day of the whirlwind, and their king shall go into exile he and his princes together, says Yahweh.

Thus says Yahweh.

For three transgressions of Moab, and for four I will not revoke the punishment, because he burned to lime the bones of the king of Edom.

So I will send a fire upon Moab, and it shall devour the strongholds of Kariot, and Moab shall die amid uproar, amid shouting and the sound of the trumpet, I will cut off the judge from its midst and will kill all its princes with him, says Yahweh.

Amen.

How do you look at the world around you?

When you when you take in information, whether it be looking at what happens in our own community, or watching the news, or reading the newspaper, or seeing the news come across the internet, do you do you see it through eyes of opportunity?

Looking and interpreting what is seen by how it might benefit you?

Or are you a realist, someone who simply takes the world as it is and deals with it and whatever comes to you?

Does what you see and hear bring you stress or maybe fear?

So you tend to turn off the news.

How about anger?

Do you ever face the events of our world with righteous indignation?

Because you're burdened by the overwhelming nature of sin in our world?

Do you ever think like Habakkuk, who wondered, looking at the world around him, when God was finally going to do something with the sinfulness that he saw?

It seemed to him that God was just sitting back and watching and doing nothing.

Habakkuk saw the world degrading before his very eyes and wondered how God could see what Habakkuk was seeing and yet do nothing.

See if this sounds familiar from Habakkuk chapter one.

Destruction and violence are before me.

Strife and contention arise.

So the law is paralyzed and justice never goes forth, for the wicked surround the righteous, so justice goes forth perverted.

Habakkuk lived more than a hundred years after Amos.

But he could have been describing the United States of America.

Have you ever looked at the murder rate in the United States and wondered where is God?

Have you looked at the mass killings in our country and in our world and asked, where is God?

What about the travesties of justice?

Where is God?

That hasn't even started to address the issues of human trafficking, the terrors of ISIS or Boko Haram?

We haven't mentioned the 60 million aborted children in our own country at the rate of more than three per minute and 86 per minute worldwide.

Where is God?

Does he care?

Does he care about the governments and the nations of our world and their treatment of human beings?

The answer is yes.

God does care.

He is sovereign over all the world and he sees all that happens, and he will respond with decisive judgment.

Amos shows us this quite clearly.

God spoke through his prophet, one by one, addressing the nations surrounding Israel, and it's terrifying.

In verse 2, he says, Yahweh roars from Zion.

That word roar could refer to the sound an animal makes, but in context it may be better understood to understand the thunder of a horrific storm, or perhaps the sound of a tornado coming through like a freight train.

This storm comes from the sovereign Lord, and rather than blessing, it curses.

Rather than bringing rain that refreshes and benefits the ground, it dries up the pastures where the sheep feed, and it causes the fertile Mount Carmel to wither as though in a desert.

Amos shows us the chilling sound of God's voice to sinful nations.

And to do that, he uses a repeated pattern to address every people group in this opening section.

He says, for three transgressions and for four.

Your translation might say, because of three transgressions.

Mine says four, but the idea there is because of this, God does this.

God was going to bring judgment on these people because of their transgressions.

And the repetition of the three and four shows us how far their sin had progressed.

This is poetry.

Amos writes this section in poetic form, and this is a poetic way of saying seven.

The biblical number for fullness or completeness or perfection.

You see, God is patient with his people.

God is patient with all people because he wants them all to repent of their sin and come to him.

But if there is no repentance, sin just keeps piling up and piling up and piling up until there comes a point at which God's patience ends.

And his righteous judgment begins.

These nations had reached that point.

They had reached the fullness of their sin.

They were without excuse.

But the seven may not merely point to God's to the fullness of their sin, but of the completeness of God's judgment.

God's response to the level of sin in these nations would not be partial, it would be full and complete.

Now, on the one hand, that sounds good.

Because God will deal with sin.

As we look at the horrors of our world, God will deal with those.

Everyone who feels like Habakkuk ought to be comforted.

God will respond to the evil and the injustice among the nations of our world.

But that's also frightening.

Because God's judgment and his wrath against sin is not something with which to trifle.

And the impact of his judgment is far reaching.

So what kind of sin caused these nations to be such a stench to the sovereign God?

Well, Amos makes it easy for us to see.

Six times here in what we read, we see the pattern because of this, so this.

God would act in judgment because of a particular sin.

But it's not so much that these particular sins mentioned here are so egregious that God had to step in instantly and stop them.

No, it's that these sins had been building and building and piling and piling, and these particular sins are the pinnacle of those sins as such that they characterize the complete sinfulness of these people groups.

And he starts with Syria in the north.

Damascus was the capital of Syria, representing the entire nation.

It would be like us using Washington, D.C.

to refer to the United States.

Gilead was just to the south of Damascus.

That made it easy pickings for Syrian expansion.

Threshing, as you might know, is the process of separating a seed from the stock on which it grows.

There are several ways of doing that, even in the ancient world, and one of them was by using a sledge.

A sledge was a wide piece of wood, or in some cases something like a pallet, that was used to beat stalks of grain, or if it was large enough, it would be drawn by animals across grain that was laying on a rock or on a hard packed surface.

Sometimes, in order to increase the efficiency of those implements, they would drive iron spikes through the wood in order to separate the grain from the stalk.

Now picture the seeds of grain as people.

If we take this literally, it would describe the captives of war laying down on the ground and having iron sledges drawn over them, tortured mercilessly.

But even if it is a figurative description of the treatment of conquered peoples, the image is no less cruel.

The bottom line is that God cares about the inhumane treatment of other people.

In response, the sovereign Lord would put an end to Syrian rule, wiping out their line of kings, breaking down the secure walls of their capital, and sending their people into captivity as slaves.

Syria was responsible for her crimes against God.

You see, crimes against humanity are crimes against the God who created humanity.

And we may see terrible treatment of people for long periods of time.

But we must never confuse God's patience with people to repent with not caring.

God does care.

So he moves from the northern side of Palestine to the opposite end to Gaza.

To the Philistines.

The charge against the Philistines was likely the result of border warfare.

Gaza was a port city situated just inland from the Mediterranean Sea, situated on the primary north-south trade route through Palestine.

The Philistines were known to raid the border towns of Israel and Judah during which they would carry off captives.

Mentions that they sold those captives to Edom.

Edom comprised the desert cousins of the Jews, and they were either the buyer of these captives for their own slave labor, or they served as the middleman in a slave trade.

Says in verse 6 that they carried into exile a whole people.

That word whole could be translated peaceful.

So either the Philistines have raided communities with which they were at peace, or they have carried off entire communities to sell them into slave labor.

They did it for their own profit.

To make a buck.

Telling us that God cares about treating people like property for one's benefit.

This wasn't an act of war.

It wasn't done in battle between nations.

No, it isn't even so much a statement against slavery.

That was something that God regulated very carefully in his law to Israel.

No, this was a prophet-making enterprise at the expense of others.

As a result, God promised to completely destroy the Philistines.

Their primary cities would be wiped out, their people would be killed, and any who escaped that would die.

We go from Syria to Gaza, and now we go back up to Tyre.

The Phoenicians.

Tyre was the greatest of the Phoenician cities.

It was wealthy, it was powerful, and it held a very secure position.

It was the hub of a very successful trading empire.

And one particular aspect of their trade was especially heinous to God.

He says, because they delivered up a whole people to Edom and did not remember the covenant of brotherhood.

Like the Philistines, the Phoenicians bartered people for profit.

We know already how God reacted to that.

But the people of Tyre took it a step further.

The taking of captives was done in a treacherous manner.

God said they did not remember the covenant of brotherhood.

That amounts to the breaking of a peace treaty between allies.

It means that Tyre had a peace treaty with another nation.

They broke that, went into that nation, gathered up a whole group of people, and sold them to their enemies in Edom.

It's not a forgetfulness or a mental lapse that brought this about.

It was an intentional breaking of a covenant, a very serious act in God's mind.

And it was done in order to sell people to their enemy.

So we see then that not only does God care about human trafficking, but he cares about the keeping of agreements between nations.

Here a covenant was broken in order to carry out another evil.

The trading of human lives for profit.

From the north to the south, back up to the north, now we go to the very south, to Eden.

Edom, you might Remember, began with Esau, Jacob's brother.

By the time of Amos, there were multiple centuries of hostility between the Edomites and the Jews.

We've already seen their involvement in the slave trade, which would have included Jewish captives.

But there was more.

He pursued his brothers with the sword and cast off all pity and acted with perpetual anger and wrath.

Now God doesn't give us details here.

But at the very minimum, it shows us that a depth of animosity and hostility existed between the descendants of Esau and the descendants of Jacob.

They were brothers.

Half brothers, but still brothers.

Not half brothers, thinking of somebody else.

They're full brothers.

But before birth, God chose the younger, didn't he?

He chose Jacob.

And as the chosen one of God, Esau should have loved Jacob.

And their descendants should have loved the descendants of Jacob.

But instead they killed them with unrestrained anger and pent up wrath.

And in return, God would destroy them by fire.

Taman and Basrah are the northern and southern extremes of the territory of Edom.

And God would completely destroy their land, he said, because he cares when a nation shows a lack of compassion and unrestrained anger toward people they ought to love.

Edom ought to have loved the descendants of Jacob.

Then we move to the last two, the Ammonites and the Moabites.

They were cousins, distant relations to the Jews.

Both groups, if you remember your history, your Bible history from the book of Genesis, began as a result of Lot's drunken, incestuous relationship with his two daughters.

By the time of Amos, these neighbors had become terrors.

And it says of the Ammonites that they pursued people in Gilead.

You remember that Gilead was that nation sort of underneath Syria.

Syria wanted to expand into Gilead.

They wanted that territory for their own.

Well, guess what?

Underneath Gilead was the Ammonites, and they wanted that territory too.

So in order to accomplish that, they went about brutality.

They committed a particular heinous act to terrorize and reduce the border peoples.

They ripped open pregnant women, killing two with one stroke.

Now that act was not uncommon in warfare in ancient times, but here God is not speaking about warfare.

He is condemning the Ammonites for their atrocity because of the motive behind it.

It's materialistic greed.

We learned then that God cares about brutality, especially when driven by greed.

In judgment, God would destroy Ammon's security.

He would reduce them to captives by means of a chaotic war.

The armies are coming.

The Assyrians, perhaps the most brutal army in the name in the history of our world, is going to be coming.

God says every time, I will not revoke the punishment.

Revoke means to turn back.

It's as if God has said, I am sending the judgment.

I am sending an army.

They are on their way.

I am not turning them back.

And the Ammonites and everyone else would be reduced to destruction, captivity, and death as a result.

Finally, Moab.

Moab is the home of Ruth, hundreds of years earlier.

The rulers and the people of Moab would die, God said, and it would not be a calm or peaceful death either.

Their security would be destroyed, and their people would die.

Their leaders would be taken away.

Why?

Chapter 2, verse 1, we read, Because he burned to lime the bones of the king of Edom.

Now, besides being grotesque, why does that rise to the level of such great sin?

Well, first notice that this is a particular act against two pagan people groups.

It's not a sin, a crime against Judah in the south or Israel in the north.

This is a crime against two competing pagan nations.

So God even cares about the actions of nations that do not recognize him.

He is still sovereign over them, and they are without excuse.

But what we learn here with Moab in particular is that God cares when human beings are treated as mere material creatures.

Lime was a common ingredient at the time in making plaster.

What Amos is most likely pointing to is that the king of Moab defeated the king of Edom because he believed that King of Edom was not a living soul made in the likeness of God.

It was just a body.

He burned the king's body to the point of leaving nothing but lime.

According to patterns of the time, he would take that lime and mix it in to make plaster to cover the walls of his palace.

It was an utter disregard of the God who created that person by having no care for the body of another, even an enemy.

Now we probably shouldn't be surprised at the depth of depravity there, because 2 Kings 3, verse 27 tells us that another Moabite king was so intent on pleasing his false God that he took his oldest son and offered him as a burnt offering to his God.

2 Kings 3:27

Perhaps treating people as mere bodies was a perpetual issue for Moab.

God says, I'm done.

My patience has reached its limit.

So what do we take away from this roaring of Yahweh?

Well, we learn that God does indeed care about the conduct of nations.

He watches all nations, all peoples, all tribes, all groups, and he is aware of their sin.

One writer said, God is measuring human wickedness, and there will be a reckoning, and absolute justice will be served.

Now I'm sure that there were some hints of familiarity in the kinds of sinfulness here.

It felt like I was reading about our world.

These and similar atrocities are carried out today by governments, groups, and even individuals.

Be assured it will be punished.

God will come in judgment.

No nation that so disregards the treatment of human beings will escape punishment without repentance.

So as God's people, we ought to pray.

We ought to pray for God's perfect patience.

Yes, we ought to pray that God would not judge all of that horrendous sin immediately.

Because to express the character of God is to express the desire that even those people committing those atrocities will come to Christ.

So we have to pray for God's perfect patience that all would come to repentance.

We have to pray for presidents, for kings, for all rulers and authorities in places of power and position to mistreat people.

But most of all, we need to speak, share, and proclaim the gospel of Jesus Christ, because the good news of Jesus Christ crucified, buried, and risen again is the only hope for any people to come to repentance.

That is the only way for true change to be wrought.

Changing laws might help.

Protesting might bring light to an issue, but the only lasting change comes when God grants repentance and changes our heart through the gospel of Jesus Christ.

Finally, let's not neglect to think about ourselves.

God said in Ezekiel 18 4, the soul who sins shall die.

We've all mistreated people.

Every single one of us has mistreated people.

Just think of what Jesus said in the Sermon on the Mount.

Being angry with somebody is equivalent to murder.

In that context, I'm a murderer.

And so are you.

See, it's not simply about the acting out of our sin towards others, it's about the attitude of the heart.

And before we look at the sins of others, before we even look at the sins of our own nation, let's make sure we look at our own hearts.

Because we deserve to die for our sin.

Only by coming to Christ and believing in his sacrifice for sin can we be rescued from that eternal judgment.

And once we've been rescued, we need to be challenged then to see people as God sees them.

As people in need of the grace of the gospel.

If you are in Christ, you once were as they are.

You were once in those shoes.

So think carefully how you feel about others.

How you think about others, and then how you act toward others, especially those who are different from you.

Why?

Why is that?

Because it's when we think that we are different or that someone else is different that we are most likely to view them as less than what God would have us view them.

It's so much easier if somebody is different to think less of them.

The age of social media has made this an even greater danger to Christians.

We are much more likely to share a meme or post something that is unkind, that is inconsiderate or outright judgmental of other people on social media when we would never think of doing that to their face.

But when we can't see them, it's so much easier to say something.

What does that say about us?

What does that say about our attitudes?

What does that say about the heart of God?

Do you react to people based on how they impact your comfort level?

Somebody enters a room that you're in and they are different than you, and you, for whatever reason, are uncomfortable, what does that say about you?

That's not too different than these nations.

But if we properly grasp the love of God and the grace of God in the death of Christ for us, we ought to be moved to love others as he has loved us.

Let's pray.

Our Lord Jesus.

Our hearts are desperately wicked.

We might be murderers every day because of the anger that we sometimes have.

But we come to you recognizing that we must repent of our sin, and so we do that seeking your grace and your mercy, asking that you would forgive us because of the shed blood of Jesus Christ for our sin on the cross.

And we pray that the sin in our world might be judged, might be justly taken care of, but only, Lord, when you have reached your perfect patience, and we ask that you would cause all to come to repentance.

Even some here this morning, if that pleases you.

Lord, we want to be a people who mirror you.

And that includes our inner actions, our actions, and our feelings, and our attitudes, and our thoughts towards those around us.

May we be people that see others the way you see them.

To the praise of your grace.

Amen.

That concludes this sermon from Faith Evangelical Free Church.

Our mission is to declare the Word of God and disciple believers into mature, devoted followers of Jesus.

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