Sermon Tone Analysis

A Basket of Summer Fruit

We saw last week that God gave Amos a vision, it was a vision of a plumb line.

God was saying that he was measuring the people and they were not measuring up.

In our text today, God asks Amos what he sees in this vision.

Amos says:

Amos 8:2 (CEB)

“A basket of summer fruit.”

Reading it in context you wonder what summer fruit has to do with what God says in the rest of the passage.

What does summer fruit indicate to us?

For me, it reminds me that summer is almost over and it is time for harvest.

The farmers markets are busy.

The roadside stands with fresh corn and other produce.

We’re reminded to get it now because it will soon be done.

If you have a basket of fruit on your table it is a reminder that you had better eat it before it spoils.

If you just let it sit there it is going to start rotting and it will attract fruit flies.

A basket of summer fruit is an indicator that fall is just about here.

Summer is coming to an end.

When we use the phrase “the time is ripe” we are saying that this is the opportune time or that all the conditions necessary are coming together to do something.

That is what God is saying.

In this situation the people of God had been living such disobedient lives, thinking only of themselves that God has had enough, the time is ripe and He is about to bring judgement on them.

God says there in verse 2

Amos 8:2 (NRSV)

“The end has come upon my people Israel; I will never again pass them by.

As I studied this passage my mind went to Egypt and the Passover when the Angel passed over the house that had the blood applied.

The ones in that home were spared.

God here is saying that the end has come.

He say that he will never again pass them by.

God is saying that he is not going to spare them any longer.

One translation says “I will never again forgive them.”

Amos must have been stunned by what he is hearing from God.

Look at what God says to them beginning in verse 3. God says:

Dr Sweat wrote about this passage.

He wrote:

In today's Old Testament text, Amos addresses merchants who may appear to be serving the needs of the community.

But their greedy, grasping motivations exploit the poor, and eventually destroy the very society they claim to be serving.

When these merchants "win," the whole nation ultimately loses.

By grinding the poor so far down that the impoverished had no choice but to sell themselves into slavery in order to survive, the very foundation of Israel's vaunted covenant culture was chipped away.

In order to always come out on top, the merchants thought they had to stand on the stacked-up bodies of the poorest and most helpless in their society.

They won by wiping out everyone else.

The merchants game of "I win" wasn't unlike a contest of cultural dodgeball.

Remember dodgeball from rainy days when P.E.

class had to be inside?

You probably remember it as great fun or as hideous torture.

For kids who were naturally strong, agile, and competitive, dodgeball was a great gladiator fight.

Leaping out of the path of an oncoming ball, snatching a missile out of mid-air, firing back a well-aimed shot and wiping yet another opponent off the playing field.

For kids who were slower, more mild-mannered, or just plain shy, dodgeball was just another opportunity to get pummeled, bashed, and immediately relegated to the sidelines after being smacked by a big, stinging ball.

In other words dodgeball became "killerball," "prisonball," or "bombardment."

One professor of physical education named Neil Williams of Eastern Connecticut State University berates dodgeball for the way it "encourages the best to pick on the weak and to be glorified for picking on the weak" ("The Painful Playground," Washington Post, May 8, 2000).

God has had enough of their abuse of the poor and needy and their disrespect towards God.

God says that the singing in the temple will be turned to wailing, there will be bodies flung everywhere.

The wailing will be turned to silence.

There will be no one to sing, there will be no one to wail and morn, there were just be awful silence.

God gets to point of what the people were doing in taking advantage of the poor and needy.

He repeats the words that the people have said.

The people have said “When will the New Moon be over that we may sell grain, and the Sabbath be ended that we may market wheat?”

The New Moon feast was to be a time of rejoicing.

God said in Numbers 10 verse 10:

They had gone from being a time of rejoicing a memorial to God to a think of duty that the only thing that they could think of was to say let’s get this over with.

The same thing had happened to the Sabbath.

They couldn’t wait for the Sabbath to get over with so that they could get about their business of making money.

There was a lady in a prior church who when it got close to the time that the service was to be over with, which was noon she would dig her car keys out of her purse.

She wasn’t quiet about it.

She would dig those keys out and they would start jingling as soon as she pulled them out.

And they jingled more than what a normal person would permit.

Occasionally she would accidently drop them onto the floor.

I realized after some time that she was doing it on purpose to remind the pastor that he was going into overtime and that she wanted him to sit down and shut up so that she could go home.

This happened nearly every week.

It didn’t seem to bother our pastor as he ignored it.

I spoke to him about it once and he said that he had learned to tune her out.

One thing that I found odd was that when the service ended the keys were no longer in her hand, they were in her purse and they stayed there until she got out to the parking lot.

She only did that in a feeble attempt to disrupt the service.

That lady was no better than the people waiting for the New Moon festival or the Sabbath to be over with.

They were no longer participating in the true worship of God.

They were just going through the motions of worship but their minds were on other things such as making money.

We can become just like the Israelites today.

We can sit in a worship service and have our minds a million miles away thinking about all the things that we want to accomplish later today.

We go through the motions of participating in a worship service.

We go through the motions of living a righteous life but our lives can be empty and devoid of the things of God.

That is where the Israelites were.

The people were waiting for the feasts and the Sabbaths to be over so they could sell their grain and wheat.

God said that they were

They were cheating people on their purchases.

They were skimping on the amount that they were selling.

They had jacked up the prices and they were using dishonest scales.

They were getting rich off of their dishonesty by cheating the poor.

God says that they were “buying the poor with silver and the needy for a pair of sandals.

They were even selling the sweepings with the wheat.

The sweepings were the dust and dirt that fell off when they wheat was threshed.

They were sweeping that up and selling it with the wheat so that the poor were not even getting all the wheat they thought they were.

God says to Amos in verse 7

God then proceeds to tell of the judgement that He is going to bring upon the people for the injustices and the sins that they have committed.

One commentator wrote:

Reading through Amos, we realize that God’s anger constantly flashes out against those who oppress others.

The poor of the land seem very precious to Him.

The indifferent attitude of men and women concerned with only profit and their own pleasures deeply offends God.

The Old Testament Law made careful and explicit provision for meeting the needs of all God’s people.

When a man sold himself or one of his family into servitude, it was not slavery.

He would later be released and restored to his ancestral land (Lev.

25).

Widows and others without means of support were provided for.

Each farmer was to allow gleaning, the gathering of part of his harvest by the poor.