Amos 2: Judge of the Nations

Bookmarks & Needs:

B: Amos 1:3-8, LASER POINTER

Service Intro & Announcements:

Thank Donna. Welcome everyone, both local and online, to the family gathering of Eastern Hills. I hope everyone had a safe and enjoyable Independence Day. We are still in this kind of “soft opening” phase, and will be until we can all be together again. Keep praying for and ministering to one another, and encourage one another as you have opportunity. We understand the concern that many feel about coming to service in the building, and we respect that. Thanks for still being engaged online.

If you’re here for the first time this morning, we’d like to connect with you so that we can pray for you, answer any questions you might have, or help meet a need if we can. This goes for both people here physically and those visiting online. If you’re here physically this morning, you can text the keyword WELCOME to 505-339-2004, and you’ll get a text back with a link, and if you follow that link, it will ask you to fill out a contact card so we can stay connected. If you’re visiting with us online this morning, you can text the keyword LIVE to that same number 505-339-2004, and your contact card will be a little different: just your name and email address. We just want to be able to stay in contact with you and let you know as things change, and pray for you as we move through this crisis.

I have several announcements that I need to make this morning, so I’ll try to be quick:

Our Precepts Bible Study, which is studying Hebrews Part 3, is going to be starting this week, meeting in homes. You can contact our Precepts leader, Mauna Schott, if you have questions.

Next Sunday morning, July 12, we will take a few minutes in our morning worship service to recognize our kids who are transitioning out of the children’s ministry and into the student ministry. It’s kind of a “passing of the torch” from Joe to Trevor for these students, and we are going to recognize this milestone in their journey.

We had to skip our May business meeting because of COVID, but we have some things that we are going to have to vote on in July. So we’ve decided that, rather than have everyone come out twice, that we will hold our July bi-monthly business meeting after service on July 19. We will plan to only have speaking for things that need to be voted, and all reports otherwise will be in written form only. So plan to stay after our morning service for a brief time on the 19th so we can vote on some things, such as repairing our parking lot.

We have put an updated list of online Bible studies on our website under Worship & Study. If you would like to be a part of a Zoom Bible study with others from our church during this time, you can find the schedule and leaders’ emails there, so you can reach out and get connected.

This month, we are taking up our annual offering for World Hunger and Disaster Relief. Goal is $3,500. WE HAVE A VIDEO (1 minute)

A reminder that the Scripture and notes for this morning’s sermon can be found in our Live Event on YouVersion. If you have the YouVersion app, you can just tap the “More” icon, then “Events,” and if you’re local, you should see our event. If you’re not local, you can search for “Eastern Hills Baptist Church” and you should find it in the list.

PRAY

Musical Worship & Praise

Only King Forever

The Lion and the Lamb

King of My Heart

Pray (Wayne)

Opening

We are in our second week looking at the book of Amos. We started out last week with just the first two verses of the book, which provided the context for the prophecy that Amos gave to the Northern Kingdom of Israel, and then at what is basically the thesis or summary statement of the entire prophecy. What we saw in that summary verse is that the Lord roars, and that the Lord is sovereign. As we go through the message of this book, we need to keep those two things in mind, so I am planning on reminding us of them every single week. I’ll get more detail on why this is important in a little bit.

Before we get to our focal verses for today, I want to take a moment and set up what we see in Amos from 1:3 until 2:5. Remember that this prophecy is to the Northern Kingdom of Israel, as opposed to the Southern Kingdom of Judah, and it was given in the mid to late 760’s BC. Beginning in chapter 1, verse 3, and through chapter 2, verse 5, Amos does brings short prophetic messages of judgment against seven nations that were NOT Israel. Here’s a map of the region at the time, with the seven nations who receive oracles from God through Amos: Aram, Philistia, Phoenicia, Edom, Ammon, Moab, and then Judah. And the messages are given in that order.

There’s an interesting thing about the order of these messages. They are given in this kind of criss-crossing pattern, and this pattern is interesting in two ways: First, the subjects of these messages create this geographic surrounding of Israel, piece by piece. One commentary called this pattern “drawing the net” around Israel. Second, the subjects of these messages get closer and closer relationally to Israel, the first three being foreign countries, the next three being national “cousins” to Israel: Edom being the descendants of Esau, Isaac’s son, and both Ammon and Moab being descendants of Abraham’s nephew, Lot. Finally, the seventh Judah, Israel’s sister nation.

We are going to break these up more or less thematically. For now, let’s open up our Bibles and look at the prophecies against Aram (represented by its capital, Damascus), and Philistia (represented by one of its capitals, Gaza):

Amos 1:3–8 CSB

3 The Lord says: I will not relent from punishing Damascus for three crimes, even four, because they threshed Gilead with iron sledges. 4 Therefore, I will send fire against Hazael’s palace, and it will consume Ben-hadad’s citadels. 5 I will break down the gates of Damascus. I will cut off the ruler from the Valley of Aven, and the one who wields the scepter from Beth-eden. The people of Aram will be exiled to Kir. The Lord has spoken. 6 The Lord says: I will not relent from punishing Gaza for three crimes, even four, because they exiled a whole community, handing them over to Edom. 7 Therefore, I will send fire against the walls of Gaza, and it will consume its citadels. 8 I will cut off the ruler from Ashdod, and the one who wields the scepter from Ashkelon. I will also turn my hand against Ekron, and the remainder of the Philistines will perish. The Lord God has spoken.

PRAY

The place that I need to start in our consideration of this passage this morning is that I believe that sometimes we fall into a bad habit of making ourselves the main character when we read Scripture. We see ourselves as Adam or as Eve when we reflect on them in the garden before the Fall, but we tend to look down on them from a distance as if we are God when the Fall happens. We normally see ourselves as the “hero”, don’t we? We are Moses telling Pharaoh to let our people go. We are Joshua declaring, “As for me and my house, we will serve the Lord.” We are David facing Goliath. We are Peter as he says, “You are the Christ, the Son of the Living God.” We are Paul as he shares the Gospel around the Roman Empire of his day.

But the thing that we forget is that the central figure of Scripture is not us. It’s God. And the message of Scripture, from beginning to end, is that God is the hero: He made and loves His creation, but we rebelled against Him, trying to set up our own kingdom. But because of His great love, He personally rescued us from ourselves in Christ, and He will eventually set His creation completely right again. And as both Paul and John wrote, what we have in Scripture has a purpose for us in that regard, both to lead us to belief, and to give us instruction as we out that faith:

John 20:31 CSB

31 But these are written so that you may believe that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God, and that by believing you may have life in his name.

1 Corinthians 10:6–12 CSB

6 Now these things took place as examples for us, so that we will not desire evil things as they did. 7 Don’t become idolaters as some of them were; as it is written, The people sat down to eat and drink, and got up to party. 8 Let us not commit sexual immorality as some of them did, and in a single day twenty-three thousand people died. 9 Let us not test Christ as some of them did and were destroyed by snakes. 10 And don’t grumble as some of them did, and were killed by the destroyer. 11 These things happened to them as examples, and they were written for our instruction, on whom the ends of the ages have come. 12 So, whoever thinks he stands must be careful not to fall.

While we might be tempted to put ourselves in Amos’ shoes in this prophecy, we can’t do that. His role, as the messenger, is secondary. The main character in this prophecy is again, the Lord. The next most important figure is not Amos, but those who are the subject of the message. Where we need to try and see ourselves is not as Amos, and certainly not as God. Therefore, there is only one remaining option: in order to make application of these prophecies to our lives, we must put ourselves as the subjects (especially as we get to Judah and Israel, the people of God). This is a tough pill to swallow, because it makes us not the heroes, but in a way, the villains. We need to try and hear this message to the people of Aram and Philistia and make application to our time from that perspective, keeping especially the second point from the summary verse in mind: that the Lord is sovereign, and what He says is what is most important.

This is why each message begins with “The LORD says...” and then shifts into first person. Amos’ authority comes from what God is saying, not from himself.

The messages to Aram and Philistia have a lot of parallels between them, so we are going to take them together in pieces:

1) It is the Lord’s right to judge any and every nation.

Something that we must never let go of during this series is that God is God. He is the only “real” God. He is not one of many “real” gods. Any other “god” worshiped by any other people at any other time is not only not the Lord God, but they are not even really gods at all. They are man-made fabrications at best, or else demonic forces at worst.

And it is clear in Scripture that it is a part of God’s sovereign plan that nations exist: that nations are collective groupings of smaller communities that coalesce under a particular governmental structure, with borders and rights determined by that government, ideally for the common good of those citizens of that nation.

Since this is the case, then it is God’s sovereign right to judge any and every nation, including these two nations that we are considering this morning:

Amos 1:3 CSB

3 The Lord says: I will not relent from punishing Damascus for three crimes, even four, because they threshed Gilead with iron sledges.

Amos 1:6 CSB

6 The Lord says: I will not relent from punishing Gaza for three crimes, even four, because they exiled a whole community, handing them over to Edom.

When the Lord says, “three crimes, even four,” this was a common literary device called “numerical attribution.” It’s a way of saying, “there was plenty to judge you for, but you did even more than that.” The specific sin or sins that are listed in the prophecy were the “over the top” sins, the ones that make up that “even four.”

The Lord declares that He “will not relent” from punishing these two nations, nations who do not follow and do not worship the Lord God. So one might argue that He doesn’t have the right to do this, because they aren’t His. Whether or not they worship Him is immaterial. He is the King over the nations, even if the nations do not follow Him:

Psalm 47:2 CSB

2 For the Lord, the Most High, is awe-inspiring, a great King over the whole earth.

Psalm 47:7–8 CSB

7 Sing a song of wisdom, for God is King of the whole earth. 8 God reigns over the nations; God is seated on his holy throne.

Whether or not you believe in God doesn’t change the fact that He exists. Whether or not you believe in God doesn’t change the fact that He is sovereign over all people of all times in all places. Whether or not you believe in God doesn’t change the fact that He will judge the nations as their ruler and king. He has that absolute right, and He can and will judge any and every nation, including the United States of America.

Please hear me: I am so thankful to God that He saw fit for me be an American. I am proud to be an American, and yesterday we celebrated our independence and our nation by reflecting on our freedoms and lighting fireworks in the street. Our nation has the greatest system of government devised by man: a representative constitutional republic. Our governmental structure was formed by predominantly Christian men using biblical principles such as moral law and individual accountability and responsibility as its foundation. I am grateful for those who founded this nation, for those who embarked on this incredible experiment in governance and brought the United States of America into existence.

But they weren’t perfect. And we aren’t perfect. To think that we are is to wear blinders. We can’t be perfect. We’re a government of the people, by the people, and for the people… and at each juncture in that sentence, there’s imperfection because there are people, and the ills of our nation don’t flow out of the structures and institutions of our government.. they flow out of our hearts because our hearts are flawed by the corruption of sin.

This is why, as believers in the Lord Jesus Christ, we cannot and must not define ourselves first and foremost by our nation. If we are followers of Jesus, then He is entitled to our allegiance above anything else. Yes, we pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America, but that allegiance is to be secondary to our allegiance to Christ, because only He is Lord.

Bruce Ashford, provost and professor of Theology & Culture at Southeastern Seminary, wrote this week:

“It is good to love and serve the nation in which God has set us; we need more, not less true patriotism. But to give absolute commitment to the nation is to go into bondage. For that reason, as Christians, we must cultivate a moderate patriotism. We must be grateful for what is good in our nation’s history and appropriately critical for what is bad. We must cultivate a real but limited allegiance while reserving our ultimate allegiance for Christ.”

Since the Lord is sovereign and holy and perfect, when He says that something is wrong, then we must agree, even if it doesn’t exactly match our political affiliations. If we are Americans first and Christians second, then we worship an idol called our nation. If we are a specific political party first and a Christian second, thinking that our party’s way of thinking is THE answer to our national issues and ignoring their very human shortcomings and failures, then we put humans in a place that no human except for Jesus Christ should be, because He’s the only one who lives up to that standard. We should love America, but we should love Jesus more.

But make no mistake: our nation, like every nation, must be judged for our failures. The nations of Aram and Philistia were both judged for the same reason: how they treated people.

2) The Lord will judge nations for their treatment of people.

We see in the creation account in Genesis 1 that the Lord God made mankind in His image, and made them male and female. As such, humanity is different from and above everything else in creation. We are the only beings on the planet that bear the image of God… every single one of us. With the Fall, that image was most certainly marred and contorted, broken and flawed, but it is still there. As humans, are still image bearers of the Almighty. Since we still bear that image, that likeness of God, then to mistreat another human is to violate that image.

The problem with both Aram and Philistia was that they both abused other image-bearers:

Amos 1:3 CSB

3 The Lord says: I will not relent from punishing Damascus for three crimes, even four, because they threshed Gilead with iron sledges.

We don’t have a lot to go on here, so let me explain what this appears to mean. Sledges were these flat sleds, used for separating grain kernels from their stalks, called threshing. Normally these were just made of wood, and had a rough bottom for being dragged over wheat or other grain and breaking the stalks and chaff. Iron sledges would have had iron spikes driven through them, or even iron blades attached, to assist with the threshing, because they would have been harder, sharper, and more durable. When the Lord condemns Aram for threshing Gilead with iron sledges, He’s condemning them for running those sledges over not the fields of Gilead, not over the crops of Gilead, but over the people of Gilead. What would that be like to drag over people? Whether this is figurative or real, it is clear that the people of Aram had greatly abused, even tortured the people of Gilead.

Philistia also mistreated people:

Amos 1:6 CSB

6 The Lord says: I will not relent from punishing Gaza for three crimes, even four, because they exiled a whole community, handing them over to Edom.

They took advantage of a whole community (we do not know exactly what community), and captured it in its entirety. While this is not all that shocking for Old Testament times, it appears that they did so for no real purpose, other than to make money. They took free people that they were likely not at war with (as the Hebrew word here for “whole” can also mean “at peace”), and sold them into slavery to Edom, whom God will deal with later.

First of all, it matters how each of us, individually, treat other human beings. Jesus made this exceedingly clear in the Sermon on the Mount:

Matthew 7:12 CSB

12 Therefore, whatever you want others to do for you, do also the same for them, for this is the Law and the Prophets.

We are individually called to treat other human beings as we ourselves would like those human beings to treat us. It’s not “others who are like us.” It’s not “others who share our point of view.” It’s not “others who agree with us.” It’s just “others.” However you would want someone else to treat you, that is how you are to treat them. In person. Over text. On social media. At work. At the store. At home. Everyone else on the planet, by definition, is someone “other” to me, and so I should treat them as I would like to be treated by them. It’s simple, right? I would want someone to treat me with respect, kindness, fairness, honesty, grace, and love. I should be willing to treat them that way because of who I am in Christ. I know that in a way, it is Christ Himself that I am serving:

Matthew 25:40 CSB

40 “And the King will answer them, ‘Truly I tell you, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me.’

I had to make sure that was clear on an individual level. However, we’re talking about nations here. The Lord had declared here in Amos that we was going to judge both Aram and Philistia, as nations, for how they had treated other people.

Before we dive in on that, I must make one other thing clear from this passage: neither of these situations were in the context of on ongoing war. The Arameans often simply raided Israel for supplies and slaves, even when they were “at peace” with one another (see 2 Kings 5:2 for an example of this). As I mentioned, it appears that Philistia was at peace with the community they sold as slaves to Edom. One valid and extremely important role of government is warfare against other nations who would violate her borders, threaten her security, or harm her allies, whereas the individual Christian does not have the ability to “declare war” on someone else.

This is because the government should exist for the blessing and benefit of her citizenry, not the other way around.

1 Peter 2:13–17 CSB

13 Submit to every human authority because of the Lord, whether to the emperor as the supreme authority 14 or to governors as those sent out by him to punish those who do what is evil and to praise those who do what is good. 15 For it is God’s will that you silence the ignorance of foolish people by doing good. 16 Submit as free people, not using your freedom as a cover-up for evil, but as God’s slaves. 17 Honor everyone. Love the brothers and sisters. Fear God. Honor the emperor.

The role of the government is supposed to be “to punish those who do what is evil and to praise those who do what is good.” I suppose that this is as simple as it can get, but I don’t have time this morning to go much beyond this idea.

Now, I honestly try not to spend much time in the pulpit on cultural commentary. I would much rather focus on the truth of the Gospel and on what Christ has done for us, on the greatness and magnificence of God, or on encouraging us to walk in ways that honor Him. But sometimes, if we are going to make useful application of Scripture, we need to see where we find parallels in our culture and our time. This is why looking at Amos is so difficult, because we aren’t the heroes of this story.

How will the United States be judged for how our nation has treated human beings? For how we are treating human beings right now? This question in incredibly complex, it’s also highly emotionally charged, polarizing, and divisive.

How does our nation treat our own citizens who are of a different skin color or ethnic heritage than the majority of the populace? Racism is a very hot topic right now, because of historic and modern problems with how many (not all) people of color, especially black Americans, have had a different, more difficult experience in life than many of (not all) their white counterparts, for a great variety of reasons. We as Christians must be willing to say that of course the lives of black people or other people of color matter, because they are human beings made to bear the image of God. One might argue “all lives matter.” Of course they do, because Christ died for all people. But we’re not in an argument. We’re saying the same thing from different points of view. Wouldn’t black lives or hispanic lives or native American lives or others be a part of “all lives?” But if there are Americans whose lives are as though they don’t matter just because of their skin color, then we as Christian Americans should be willing to do for them what we would want them to do for us were the roles reversed.

Since we have a representative form of government, where we have the blessed right and privilege as Americans to petition our government for redress of wrongs, even for the wrongs of our own government, we must be willing to stand up and seek to discover and correct any areas in which systemic or institutional racism still exist in our nation. Racism in any form stands against the truth of the Gospel: that God loves the world, all of His image bearers, and sent Christ to die in the place of all of humanity so that we could be made right with God through faith in Him.

These questions are myriad, and we cannot address all of them today. So I would challenge you to search the Scriptures for God’s perspective on the government’s role in treating immigrants, refugees, the unborn, those with special needs, the orphaned, the aged, and the needy. How does the United States of America deserve the judgment of God because of our approach to these things?

3) The Lord’s punishment will be severe.

If the Lord has the right to judge, then He has the right to punish as well. We don’t really like to think this way about God, but He is holy, and He must punish sin. His punishment against Aram and against Philistia were to be severe, and His hand would eventually fall as promised.

Amos 1:4–5 CSB

4 Therefore, I will send fire against Hazael’s palace, and it will consume Ben-hadad’s citadels. 5 I will break down the gates of Damascus. I will cut off the ruler from the Valley of Aven, and the one who wields the scepter from Beth-eden. The people of Aram will be exiled to Kir. The Lord has spoken.

Amos 1:7–8 CSB

7 Therefore, I will send fire against the walls of Gaza, and it will consume its citadels. 8 I will cut off the ruler from Ashdod, and the one who wields the scepter from Ashkelon. I will also turn my hand against Ekron, and the remainder of the Philistines will perish. The Lord God has spoken.

The Lord said that He would send fire, a consuming fire, against the citadels of Aram and Philistia, cut off their rulers, and they would be either exiled or perish. I’m not saying that this is the promised result to the U.S. But it was the promised result, and the actual result, to these two nations.

So what do we do about it? What is the solution? Repentance.

Think about Nineveh in the book of Jonah. God’s message through Jonah was simple: “In forty days Nineveh will be demolished!” The entire land, from the least to the greatest, repented in fasting and sackcloth. And they were spared that judgment.

Consider what the Lord said to His people through Jeremiah and Joel concerning this need to repent, and His willingness to forgive:

Jeremiah 26:3 CSB

3 Perhaps they will listen and turn—each from his evil way of life—so that I might relent concerning the disaster that I plan to do to them because of the evil of their deeds.

Joel 2:12–14 CSB

12 Even now— this is the Lord’s declaration— turn to me with all your heart, with fasting, weeping, and mourning. 13 Tear your hearts, not just your clothes, and return to the Lord your God. For he is gracious and compassionate, slow to anger, abounding in faithful love, and he relents from sending disaster. 14 Who knows? He may turn and relent and leave a blessing behind him, so you can offer a grain offering and a drink offering to the Lord your God.

I’m not saying that we can repent for the whole nation. But I can say that we who know Christ are those who should first examine our own hearts, our own minds, our own attitudes, in the light of the Holy Spirit within us, and we should be the first to humble ourselves and pray and seek His face, and turn from our wicked ways. And we should be willing to bless those who persecute us (Rom. 12:14), to love our enemies (Luke 6:27), to be quick to listen, slow to speak, and slow to anger (James 1:19), to not pay back evil for evil or insult for insult (1 Peter 3:9), and to share with those around us the life-giving message of hope that is the Gospel of Jesus Christ. It is the hearts of America that need to change, and only Jesus can do that. He is our hope, our peace, and our security. We won’t tell people that if we refuse to speak to them.

Closing

My challenge in closing this morning is that those who belong to Jesus would take a moment to reflect on our own sins against our fellow image-bearers, and repent.

For those who do not yet know Jesus Christ: just because you’ve never made a commitment to God does not mean that you are absolved from following His mandates. He is God. And He loves you and has provided a way of rescue for you: the death, burial, and resurrection of His Son, Jesus Christ. Surrender your allegiance to Him, and give up your right to do things your own way, and be saved from your sin, from death, and from hell, and enter into a right relationship with the One who made you. And let us know by email or text if you make this most important of decisions today, so we can pray for you, counsel you, and help you as you start this journey of faith.

This is because we are still not doing an in-person invitation just yet. Donna will play some reflective music for us while we consider the truth of God’s Word. You are also welcome to use this time to give your offering in you are doing so online. We will have plates out for you to drop your offering in as you leave the sanctuary after the end of service if you’d like to give physically.

PRAY

DONNA

Add that there is a drive-by baby shower for Amanda Clark next Sunday from 2-4 at their house. You can get the address or directions this week from the church office.

Remember that we can’t really hang out in the building once service is over, to allow the cleaning crew to get it sanitized and then home to their families. Thank you for joining us this morning for worship. Feel free to have COVID-safe conversation in the courtyard or out front. Otherwise, follow the instructions of Joe and Kerry (and Trevor) as they release you row-by-row starting at the back. If you’re parked in the north parking lot, you are free to head that way once they get to your row. God bless you this week!