Amos 17: The Final Verdict

Bookmarks & Needs:

B: Amos 9:7-10; 2 Kings 17:1-18

N: None

Opening

Good morning, and welcome to Family Worship here at Eastern Hills. It’s a joy to be able to worship the Lord together, whether we are online or in person. Thanks for being here this morning. And if you’ve found Eastern Hills online during COVID, and you’re here every week watching and worshiping with us, would you mind shooting me a quick note to let us know you’re out there? I’d love to be able to pray for you and get to know you a little more. [e-mail].

I do want to take a moment and say thank you for your generosity as a church family in providing a new iPad for me to use for study and preaching. I didn’t really get a chance to speak last week after the rest of the church staff hijacked the end of the service. So thank you, thank you, church family.

Acknowledge Veterans Day this coming Wednesday. If you have served in any of our armed forces in wartime or peacetime, we want to thank you for your service and your sacrifice on our behalf. Please remain seated while the rest of us stand in your honor and applaud your service to our nation.

Now, let’s all stand in honor of God’s Word as we read our focal passage this morning, Amos 9:7-10:

Amos 9:7–10 CSB

7 Israelites, are you not like the Cushites to me? This is the Lord’s declaration. Didn’t I bring Israel from the land of Egypt, the Philistines from Caphtor, and the Arameans from Kir? 8 Look, the eyes of the Lord God are on the sinful kingdom, and I will obliterate it from the face of the earth. However, I will not totally destroy the house of Jacob— this is the Lord’s declaration— 9 for I am about to give the command, and I will shake the house of Israel among all the nations, as one shakes a sieve, but not a pebble will fall to the ground. 10 All the sinners among my people who say, “Disaster will never overtake or confront us,” will die by the sword.

PRAY

Lord willing, we will finish our study of the message of Amos, our prophet of judgment and justice, next Sunday morning when we look at the future victory that God promises to His people. Today, however, we are on our second-to-last message from the book of Amos, and this morning we are looking at God’s final verdict against the people of the Northern Kingdom of Israel. We’ve seen throughout this message that “The Sovereign Lord roars,” and last week, we considered that our sovereign God is unlike anyone or anything else that we might be tempted to worship or any other “god” that we might conceive of. The Lord is God, and there is no other. The Lord is God, and no one is like Him.

This morning, we are going to consider the results of worshiping something that isn’t God, and how that worked out in the lives of the people of Israel as we read about the judgment that God would bring on His people through the Assyrians.

Remember that this message from Amos was being given to the Northern Kingdom in about 763 BC. When Amos preached, the nation of Israel had been divided into Northern and Southern Kingdoms since around 930 BC, so for about 170 years. The Northern Kingdom never had a king about whom it was said that he followed the Lord. In fact, it was exactly the opposite: every single king of the Northern Kingdom was said have done what was evil in the Lord’s sight to various degrees. So when God would bring judgment on the Northern Kingdom in 722 BC, as promised here in Amos, they would have been walking the path of evil for over 200 years. God has been exceedingly patient with them.

1) The Lord’s Verdict

The Lord has evaluated Israel with a plumb line, as we saw in chapter 7, and has found them ripe for judgment as we saw in chapter 8. But what exactly is the issue? The verdict in Amos 9:7 might seem a little unclear to us today:

Amos 9:7 CSB

7 Israelites, are you not like the Cushites to me? This is the Lord’s declaration. Didn’t I bring Israel from the land of Egypt, the Philistines from Caphtor, and the Arameans from Kir?

When the Lord asked the question, “are you not like the Cushites to me?”, the Lord was more telling them something than asking them. The Cushites were, as far as Israel’s personal experience and knowledge, the people who lived the furthest away from Israel physically. Not only that, but they were also thoroughly pagan, so they lived the furthest away from the Lord spiritually.

So when the Lord says to them, “You’re like the Cushites to Me,” He’s saying that Israel has gone about as far away from God as they could go. He then makes a comparison between Israel, Philistia, and Aram: two nations who were constantly at odds with Israel, and who were the first two nations condemned by God in chapter 1 of Amos’ message.

God essentially tells Israel that they were just like Philistia and Aram—that God had brought all three nations to the land that they possessed. Israel had been clinging to the idea that they were a special people, and that’s why God had worked in their history so clearly. And since He had done so before, He was obligated to do so again. As I have said earlier in this series, they weren’t chosen because they were special. They were special because they were chosen. And God shows that He guides history toward its intended ends. He had worked in the lives of Philistia and Aram, but had not been obligated to do so again. His work in one particular moment in time for those nations didn’t mean His miraculous protection of them from all harm for generations to come, regardless of their actions. So why should Israel expect such a thing?

The Israelites should have been very bothered by this comparison. “How could God say that we are like the Cushites, or compare us to the Philistines or the Arameans?” It’s simple: it’s because the comparison was accurate, as we will see in just a moment. If anything, God’s acts of grace put a nation under greater obligation, because greater privilege carries a greater weight of responsibility. Israel was without excuse. Which is why the Lord must act.

2) The Lord’s Judgment

So the judgment of God would come, just like it would against Philistia and Aram, as we saw in chapter 1, and just like we’ve been reading over and over in this book. And here in the first half of verse 8, we see the final result:

Amos 9:8 CSB

8 Look, the eyes of the Lord God are on the sinful kingdom, and I will obliterate it from the face of the earth. However, I will not totally destroy the house of Jacob— this is the Lord’s declaration—

We’re going to skip the last half of verse 8 for the moment, and go on to the rest of the judgment verses:

Amos 9:9–10 CSB

9 for I am about to give the command, and I will shake the house of Israel among all the nations, as one shakes a sieve, but not a pebble will fall to the ground. 10 All the sinners among my people who say, “Disaster will never overtake or confront us,” will die by the sword.

The time is coming, and the Northern Kingdom is going to face their destruction. They will be completely obliterated as a political entity—there will be no more “Northern Kingdom of Israel.”

In verse 9, we read that the Lord is planning on shaking the house of Israel “among all the nations” as one shakes a sieve. Many of us have some idea of what a sieve is and how it works. For those that don’t, a sieve can be as simple as a strainer that you use in the kitchen that separates things into their different size components. When you strain your pasta, for example, you are separating the pasta from the water. This is a simple sieve.

In their agricultural society, the use of sieves would have been primarily to separate grain from trash, rocks, and dust. But this would have required the use of two sieves: one for the trash and rocks, which were larger than the kernels of grain, and so the kernels would fall to the ground and the trash would be kept; and a second for the dust, which is smaller than the kernels of grain, so the dust would fall to the ground and the kernels would be kept. The word “pebble” here in the CSB can mean a small rock, or it can mean a kernel of grain. So which is it?

The point is simply one of separation. Either the worthless people of Israel (the “pebbles”) would not be allowed to escape, or the faithful remnant of God’s people (the “kernels”) would not be lost. That’s why verse 8 says that God promises not to totally destroy the house of Israel (the “house” includes both Northern and Southern Kingdoms). This separation would take place “among the nations.”

The common practice of the Assyrians when they conquered a land was that they would transplant the people of that land to other locations in their empire, and then transplant people from those other locations to the place they had just conquered. This kept rebellion to a minimum, because no one would be fighting for their “homeland.” This is exactly what Assyria did with the Israelites, as we will see in our next section. The Babylonians would later do basically the same thing with Judah, but without sending other peoples back to occupy Jerusalem. They would be in this way “shaken among the nations.” Judah, however, would ultimately survive this exile, as we just read as a church in Ezra and Nehemiah.

Those who continue to cling to the idea that “Disaster will never overtake or confront” them simply because they are Israel will die by the sword. An all-around grim picture for the Northern Kingdom.

But the question we are left with this morning is: “Why? Why does the Lord do this to His people?” Since we have been looking at this message for the entire book, we know the answer. But that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t review it today from a different perspective.

3) The Lord’s Reason

Israel’s problem is that they have been led into unbelief, into forsaking the covenant that the Lord had made with them when He brought them out of Egypt.

There is one more large passage that we need to consider this morning if we are going to more fully understand the verdict that God is announcing on His people. In 2 Kings 17, we have the record of the fall of Israel to Assyria in 722 BC, which God promised through Amos. The writer of 2 Kings doesn’t just give us a play-by-play of Israel’s fall, but goes to great lengths to explain the why behind it:

2 Kings 17:1–18 CSB

1 In the twelfth year of Judah’s King Ahaz, Hoshea son of Elah became king over Israel in Samaria, and he reigned nine years. 2 He did what was evil in the Lord’s sight, but not like the kings of Israel who preceded him. 3 King Shalmaneser of Assyria attacked him, and Hoshea became his vassal and paid him tribute. 4 But the king of Assyria caught Hoshea in a conspiracy: He had sent envoys to So king of Egypt and had not paid tribute to the king of Assyria as in previous years. Therefore the king of Assyria arrested him and put him in prison. 5 The king of Assyria invaded the whole land, marched up to Samaria, and besieged it for three years. 6 In the ninth year of Hoshea, the king of Assyria captured Samaria. He deported the Israelites to Assyria and settled them in Halah, along the Habor (Gozan’s river), and in the cities of the Medes. 7 This disaster happened because the people of Israel sinned against the Lord their God who had brought them out of the land of Egypt from the power of Pharaoh king of Egypt and because they worshiped other gods. 8 They lived according to the customs of the nations that the Lord had dispossessed before the Israelites and according to what the kings of Israel did. 9 The Israelites secretly did things against the Lord their God that were not right. They built high places in all their towns from watchtower to fortified city. 10 They set up for themselves sacred pillars and Asherah poles on every high hill and under every green tree. 11 They burned incense there on all the high places just like the nations that the Lord had driven out before them had done. They did evil things, angering the Lord. 12 They served idols, although the Lord had told them, “You must not do this.” 13 Still, the Lord warned Israel and Judah through every prophet and every seer, saying, “Turn from your evil ways and keep my commands and statutes according to the whole law I commanded your ancestors and sent to you through my servants the prophets.” 14 But they would not listen. Instead they became obstinate like their ancestors who did not believe the Lord their God. 15 They rejected his statutes and his covenant he had made with their ancestors and the warnings he had given them. They followed worthless idols and became worthless themselves, following the surrounding nations the Lord had commanded them not to imitate. 16 They abandoned all the commands of the Lord their God. They made cast images for themselves, two calves, and an Asherah pole. They bowed in worship to all the stars in the sky and served Baal. 17 They sacrificed their sons and daughters in the fire and practiced divination and interpreted omens. They devoted themselves to do what was evil in the Lord’s sight and angered him. 18 Therefore, the Lord was very angry with Israel, and he removed them from his presence. Only the tribe of Judah remained.

Verse 7 starts the “why”: “This disaster happened because...”, and then goes on to state the reasons for Israel’s downfall. Do we see why God said that they were like the Cushites? The list feels like it goes on and on, doesn’t it? We won’t go verse by verse through this today. But for our purposes this morning, I think we can summarize it fairly well with verses 15 and 17:

2 Kings 17:15 CSB

15 They rejected his statutes and his covenant he had made with their ancestors and the warnings he had given them. They followed worthless idols and became worthless themselves, following the surrounding nations the Lord had commanded them not to imitate.

2 Kings 17:17 CSB

17 They sacrificed their sons and daughters in the fire and practiced divination and interpreted omens. They devoted themselves to do what was evil in the Lord’s sight and angered him.

They rejected His statutes and His covenant, and ignored His warnings.

They followed worthless idols.

They acted like all the nations around them, becoming worthless themselves.

They devoted themselves to doing evil, angering the Lord.

The Lord had given them 200 years and plenty of warning. Even the earthquake in about 761 BC didn’t wake them up. They were going to go their own way no matter what. And they were going to go their own way generationally: in their refusal to listen and repent, they kept passing down their evil choices to the next generation, until the time for their removal had come, according to verse 18.

Application

So where does this leave us? How are we to apply the fall of Israel to our own time, our own context, our own lives? This is a good thing to do, according to Scripture. Paul wrote to the church at Corinth:

1 Corinthians 10:11–12 CSB

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.

The things that are recorded in the Old Testament aren’t just illustrations for us. But they aren’t less than that, either. They are examples that are given for our instruction and learning.

I have to confess that often, in my own reading and study of the Old Testament, I look at the nation of Israel and think, “What is their problem? Why don’t they get it?” Anyone else do that?

It’s super easy for us to sit in judgment on Israel, to turn a haughty eye to their failures and foibles, and say that we would never have done such and such a thing. But as Paul said in verse 12: “Whoever thinks he stands must be careful not to fall.” So we should wonder: if these things are written as an example for our instruction, and God has seen fit to have us in this passage of Scripture on this morning, is it possible that we are on a similar path, church?

What if, rather than looking down on Israel in their fall, we mourn over the mirror that such a fall holds up to our own propensity toward acting just like the Israelites did—our own tendency to give in to the gravity of the world as they did, to seeing things and doing things in those same ways, to become devoted to practices that are NOT of the Lord? Last week, we talked about giving things that are not ultimate a place that is ultimate in our lives.

I’m not asking for hands or any indication, but: how many of us are sitting here, or out there on the internet this morning, full of anger, frustration, and dare I say even hatred, for half the voting population of our nation? And notice that I didn’t say which half. There are those who voted Republican AND those who voted Democrat in our congregation and our online viewership. And while the makeup of the government of our country is important for our lives, and for our future, it is not ultimate.

NO! Jesus is still on the throne, and He was always going to be, no matter what the outcome of this election was or is. He, and only He, is ultimate. He is God, and there is no other. He is God, and no one is like Him.

Have we traded our love for Jesus for the love of something or someone else? Have we forgotten the words that Christ had for the church at Ephesus in Revelation 2:

Revelation 2:4–5 CSB

4 But I have this against you: You have abandoned the love you had at first. 5 Remember then how far you have fallen; repent, and do the works you did at first. Otherwise, I will come to you and remove your lampstand from its place, unless you repent.

This isn’t about our losing our salvation, but about our losing the place that God has given us in this world. Losing our way, our mission, our purpose as a church family. We are called to be salt and light in this world. But consider what Jesus said in the Sermon on the Mount:

Matthew 5:13 CSB

13 “You are the salt of the earth. But if the salt should lose its taste, how can it be made salty? It’s no longer good for anything but to be thrown out and trampled under people’s feet.

The people of the Northern Kingdom became worthless because they pursued and became devoted to what was ultimately worthless. We must not be like them. We are to keep our eyes on Jesus, trusting Him, following Him, obeying Him, believing Him, proclaiming Him, because He is to be our first love. We are to teach our children these same things, passing down our love for Jesus generationally. We are to model for our children what it means to love the Lord with all our hearts, our souls, our minds, and our strength, and to love our neighbors as ourselves: even if they disagree with us in massive ways. This is part of how we are salt!

And how do we best love our neighbor? First, by being good neighbors: loving them as we love ourselves. Jesus didn’t qualify that statement in any way. Love other people. Love people who agree with you. Love people who disagree with you. Love people you’re close to. Love people you’ve never met before. Love people who love you. Love people who hate you. Love them as you love yourself. A tall order I know, but for those of us in Christ, it’s commanded. And for those who struggle and feel like it’s impossible, think about Jesus:

Hebrews 12:1–3 CSB

1 Therefore, since we also have such a large cloud of witnesses surrounding us, let us lay aside every hindrance and the sin that so easily ensnares us. Let us run with endurance the race that lies before us, 2 keeping our eyes on Jesus, the pioneer and perfecter of our faith. For the joy that lay before him, he endured the cross, despising the shame, and sat down at the right hand of the throne of God. 3 For consider him who endured such hostility from sinners against himself, so that you won’t grow weary and give up.

And if you’re not a follower of Jesus Christ, part of my loving you as my neighbor is for me to tell you that it’s only in Jesus that we have ultimate hope. That’s because everyone has a problem called sin: we all act like the Israelites, doing what is evil in God’s eyes. And we all deserve punishment for that sin. But the good news of the Gospel is that Jesus Christ took your place and my place in that punishment. He never sinned, but died for us so that we could be rescued from that punishment, and set free from the power of sin in our lives by surrendering to Jesus. That’s because He rose from the grave, and death no longer has any authority over Him. So if we surrender our lives to His Lordship in faith, we get His power and His presence in our lives through His Spirit, and we will live forever with Him in heaven. That’s what is ultimate for all of us. Surrender to Jesus this morning and be saved.

Closing

In closing, I’d like to share something that Trevin Wax tweeted out yesterday: He said:

The Christian task remains unchanged: to seek justice, love mercy, walk humbly with God (Micah 6:8), pray for those in authority, witness to the sanctity of life, and spread the fragrance of Christ in all our words and actions. Where we fail, we repent. Where we succeed, to God be the glory.

We must cling to our first love: our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. We must then love our neighbors as ourselves, even if we disagree. We must be salt and light in this world, standing on the truth of God’s Word and pursuing His glory in all things. Let us not be like Israel, devoting ourselves to anything that isn’t ultimate. Where we have failed in that, brother or sister, we must repent. During our time of reflection in a moment, the steps will be open for prayer.

If you today have understood the Gospel and surrendered your life to Christ in faith, then I would love to celebrate that with you and help you on this journey. Or if you have questions about the Gospel and how we are saved, then during our reflection time, stay in your seats, and then after my closing remarks and before the business meeting, I’ll be happy to meet with you out in the foyer.

If you’re watching online, you can feel free to post to Facebook or Youtube, or to fill out the response card at the bottom of our Live Stream page. You can also email me at [e-mail].

If you believe that God is calling you to join this family of believers in formal membership, then I invite you to wait in your seats after dismissal and through the budget discussion, so that I can chat with you after service is over. If you can’t wait that long this morning, feel free to email me and set up a time to talk this week.

As Donna comes this morning, let’s pray.

PRAY

Closing Remarks

Don’t forget our budget discussion immediately following service this morning.

Don’t forget about our business meeting next Sunday night at 5:30 pm here in the sanctuary. We will need a quorum to conduct business.

Dismissal instructions for those not staying for the budget discussion. We will take a couple of minutes before starting the budget discussion as Donna plays the postlude.

Let’s strive to be loving and kind, even as we stand for truth this week. God bless you all.