Amos 2:6-8

The Book of Amos chapter 2, reading verses 6 through 8 for our text and study this evening. Thus saith the Lord, for three transgressions of Israel and for four, I will not turn away the punishment thereof, because they sold the righteous for silver and the poor for a pair of shoes. That pant after the dust of the earth on the head of the poor, turn aside the way of the meek, and a man and his father will go in under the same maid to profane my holy name. They lay themselves down upon clothes laid to pledge by every altar, and they drink the wine of the condemned in the house of their God. God blessed to us the reading of His Holy and say, sacred word this evening. The prophet Nathan, you recall, once came before David and told him a rather sorrowful tale. He said, oh, King, there was a poor man. They only had one little ewe lamb. He treated it like a daughter. It ate at the table with him and so forth. But his rich neighbor who had many sheep and cattle stole away from him, to feed it, to a friend who had stopped by for dinner. David was quite moved by the story. His anger, you recall, flared up at the rich man. He had done a terrible thing. The king said to Nathan, this man surely deserves to die, and certainly should pay a fourfold compensation to the poor man. Then Nathan looks at David and says to him, thou art the man. A rebuke followed for David’s sin of stealing the U-Lam of Uriah, his wife Bashiba, having Uriah put the death. David was led by his own interest in Nathan’s story to condemn himself. And that’s what happened. Up to this point, Amos’s audience was probably pleased with the message he has brought. Delighted in it. Amos has hammered the nails of judgment in the coffins of all the nations surrounding Israel. What do we talk about? Damascus? Or Gaza, Tyre, Edom, Amon, Moab, Judah. And it’s easy. And it’s easy like David to condemn the other guy. But in agreeing with God’s judgment on the other guy, you’re also condemning yourself. Thou art the man. So we have the time now comes for the judgment here of Israel. Amos could say, you know, I have been set by God to preach against your sin in particular, because you know, you’ll notice in chapter 1 and verse 1 that it was concerning Israel that he has come with this message in particular. Yes, he talks about the other nations, but Israel in particular he’s going to focus upon. So the prophet has finally reached his goal all along. He’s been heading for Israel, and now he has arrived. Now you’ll notice that the catalog is. sins with regard to Israel is much longer than those of the other nations. When Amos talks about the heathen nations, he often mentions just one flagrant offense, of which they’re guilty. They deserve God’s judgment. When he talks about Israel, who has been specially privileged, he goes into the smallest details and gives a thorough report of their transgressions. Amen, God is much stricter. with his own nation than he is with the heathen nations around. So Judah, he’s a little bit more expansive on, and with Israel, he’s going to be quite expansive on their list of sins. Because as he says in chapter 3 and verse 2, that they had God’s law. He hadn’t done that. He hadn’t given God’s law utter nations, but he gave it to Israel and Judah. So he begins here in verse 7. 6 through 8 on elaborating some of the transgressions of Israel. This catalog of crime is then followed by a brief rehearsal of God’s gracious acts to the nation, which highlights their ingratitude in verses 9 to 12. And finally, the prophet says God’s judgment is inevitably going to fall for their terrible sins, verses 13 to 16. But tonight, let’s take a look at the sins of Israel. Israel exposed. We have the abuse of the law here, or legal system in verse 6. He says, thus saith the Lord for three transgressions of Israel and for four, I will not turn away the punishment thereof, because they sold the righteous for silver and the poor for a pair of shoes. In first reading here, we might simply look at this as a general expectation here of the righteous poor, the godly remnant among apostate Israel. But the language used here applies to something even more specific. The righteous person is the one who, in a court of law, should be declared innocent. He has not done anything guilty. But in verse 8, we read about the ones. that are condemned here, which indicate they shouldn’t have been condemned. These are the guys that would be keeping the second table of the law with regard to their neighbor, but they are not the ones that get condemned in the court of law. The people who are exploiting them are not the ones that get condemned, but these individuals are the ones that get condemned in the court of law. The courts have been perverted. Silver has been exchanged or bribe has been. been paid. The judge has been bought off. And so there’s an exploitation of the righteous, the law-abiding man, the godly man. Thus, for a few dollars, you could tip the scales of justice and put one of the judges in your pocket. There was a law in Israel that if you couldn’t pay off your debts, then you’d have to work as a servant for the one you owed the money to, your creditor. That’s found in Leviticus 24. you have to earn the right you know the back to the debt so you served the person until the debt was paid or at least to the year of Jubilee when you would be freed according to the Jewish law and thus there was a provision put in the law to protect the righteous right of the poor that they can you know eventually you know they’re gonna be freed from this situation seven years was all they were supposed to be able to compel somebody to work. In a year jubilee, automatically, they would be free. Now in the days of Amos, however, the law is bent to such a degree that the person in debt is sold into slavery not over a large sum of money, but over a trivial amount, even for that which we might call a pair of shoes. A pair of shoes. The little guys brought the court, sold by the corrupt judge into slavery. for practically nothing. The corruption of the integrity of the judicial system of any country really is an indication of its spiritual study. We see it in our own country today. If you’re rich, you get off. If you commit that same crime and you’re poor, you’re going to jail. In Israel, lies were accepted by the courts. The integrity of the judges was for sale. This is all condemned by God. So the have to be. the abuse of the law. The second thing we see is the oppression of the poor. They, that pant after the dust of the earth on the head of the poor, turn aside the way of the meek. First part of verse seven. Now the rich and the powerful in Israel enjoyed making the poor man miserable. The pant here out. after something is to chase after it, to pursue it eagerly, become breathless in your pursuit of it. Having dust on your head would be a sign of mourning, would be a sign of grief. And so we see that the rich here exploiting the poor love to put them in a position of grief and suffering and misery. They delighted in it. They wanted the dust on their heads. So they were happier when they could give the poor guy grief. So there’s sort of some sadistic pleasure here in hurting the poor. No doubt, Amos being from Judah, the Southern Kingdom, could see this very explicitly in the nation. Here with the meek, the humble, the modest, the godly person for the meek shown here at the earth. are the ones that are being exploited. The oppression of the poor. And then we have sexual immorality that’s mentioned in the second part of verse 7. A man and his father will go in under the same maid or young woman to profane my holy name. Immorality was so rampant that the father and the son were both used. the same young woman for sinful purposes. It was a violation of Leviticus 18. That shouldn’t be taking place. There is some question about how this accusation should be taken. This may or may not have involved what we call temple prostitution, where the false gods like bail and other gods, there was prostitutes involved with regard to their worship. You see this in 1 Corinthians when he talks about this kind of activity. going on also in Paul’s day. However, the idea may simply be that every adult male without exception was a womanizer, and the women evidently didn’t object. This may undoubtedly be true. However, there is reason to believe that their sexual activity had a religious significance attached to it, and I say that because in verse 8, It says they lay themselves down, or perhaps even better. They lie down here. And who are these they that lie down? I take it it’s the father and the son with one of the young women here, and they lie down here beside these altars, which seems to connect some type of religious activity with this lying down with the woman. These women would not be considered prostitutes. These women would be considered holy women because they were involved in religious activity here in this action. It shows you how far, you know, depraved minds will go when it comes to religion. Somehow we can even get sexual sin involved in religious practices. So this sex was an act of worship. They were dedicating, these women would dedicate themselves. to bail and engaged themselves in acts of worship. So when the father came and then later the son came and whoever else came, they would be involved sexually with these women. And of course this was all highly religious activity. Now, it may be difficult to understand this aspect of Canaanite worship. Perhaps a silly illustration may help us in this regard. You know, small children have to be taught how to blow their nose before their parents. parents can actually explain to them verbally the details of how to do that. So what happens is this. Most of the parents hold a Kleenex up to the nose of the child and they make nose blowing noises. Blow like this, they tell the child. And the theory is simple. You do something more or less like you want the child to do. And he catches on to the idea and he acts accordingly. Communication. between bail worshippers and their God was chiefly along the same lines as this, if you can believe it. This is what we’re talking about here. When therefore the people wished bail to perform acts of fertilization with regard to their crops, with regard to their cattle and herds and so forth, even regard to their family, that they might have more children and so forth, they would perform acts of fertility. These sexual relations with the temple prostitutes, as we would call them, as they would call them the holy women. So bail was supposed to see and catch on to what he needed to do. That makes you wonder how they could worship such a dim-witted God, but that this is what they were doing, believe it or not. So you wonder why this all gets involved. That’s why this is what it’s all about. So they’re hoping bail would be prompted to perform a similar function with regard of their crops and their animals and their family. But Israel was not a Canaanite nation. Israel was a nation that was not ignorant of God’s laws and what God required of them. This profanes God’s name in the eyes of the Gentiles. This was a terrible thing. You do this to profane my holy name. You’re supposed to be a light to the Gentiles. nations and you’re disgracing me. Do you remember when David committed adultery with Bashiba and Nathan rebuked him for it? One of the things he said was because you caused the Gentiles to the heathen to blasphemy my name by your actions. These people were supposed to be godly people. They’re supposed to have the law of God. They’re supposed to be following God and this is what their king does. It caused the other nations to criticize and look down upon Israel because of what David did. And this is a similar idea, I think, here. Therefore, Amos may describe them as running after these young maids. Well, they saw it as visiting the holy women at the temple shrine as an act of worship. Completely different. God’s sight. It was a terrible sin. and their sight, they’re thinking this is a religious action. Sexual immorality. And then, of course, verse 8 indicates to us hypocritical religion. And they lay themselves down upon clothes laid to pledge by every altar, and they drink the wine of the condemned in the house of their God. Now, the Israelites here were pure hypocrites with regard to their religion. Their religion was more sham and mockery in God’s sight. As Amos watched the people draw near their altars here, a foreign god alters, but their altars. He noticed that they brought with them garments taken and pledged. No doubt from the meek, the poor, the righteous, the godly. So these so-called religious people will unmercifully keep back the clothes. the outer garments, perhaps, of those who borrowed from them. This was collateral for the loan, so to speak. Now, the law in Exodus 22 allowed the cloak could be taken as security for a loan, but then you had to give it back at night so that the poor guy had something to wrap himself in so he didn’t get cold and have to deal with the poor climate of the weather. So the cloak could only be kept by day. The cloak was used at night as some type of shelter from the cold blanket or something of that nature. But the law of God didn’t deprive the owner of the cloak the necessary protection he needed, you see, from the elements from the cold. So to keep the cloak here was an act of thoughtlessness, unfeeling thoughtlessness. A lack of pity. A covetousness. without mercy. How can one seek mercy from God when one is unmerciful himself? Furthermore, they drank wine. The wine of those who had been unjustly condemned when they bribed the judges. And they drank this before the altar. So this had been stolen from their victims also. Here the law of God provides that fines were to be paid to the injured party. Since the judges were corrupt, the rich took advantage of the poor and received the wine of the poor as a penalty payment of some sort. So what kind of religion do we have here? Well, sexual immorality before their altars. No concern for the poor man shivering at night without his cloak and ill-gotten wine used to celebrate before their shrine. There it is. This is the religion that they had. Not a pretty sight, is it? So the sins of Israel exposed, abuse of the law, oppression of the poor, sexual immorality, hypocritical religion. Let me make a few practical thoughts now on this text tonight. The first is this. Sin is a progressive thing in your life. Satan knows if you can get you to take the first step into a sinful action, eventually, you’ll fall into the pit. It’s a downhill slide from then. These judges were willing to harden their conscience and accept the bribe. They became progressively worse at it before long they were doing it for trivial matters like just a pair of And it was open and blatant and everybody knew it. What was secret and hush-hush? Now it was clear and obvious. They didn’t care. Sin is always a downhill slide. You give an inch to sin. It’ll take mile in your life. Today’s so-called little white lie usually ends up with tomorrow’s big black, ugly one. Today’s lustful glance ends up as tomorrow’s physical adulterry. Today’s abuse of language towards your wife can be tomorrow’s wife abuse and beating. Today’s refusal to submit to the elders of the church is tomorrow’s division of the church and departure of the assembly splitting of the church. Today’s shady business deal is tomorrow’s outright crooked one. If you steal a few dollars today, tomorrow greed will lead you to theft of thousands. I remind you, took some money out of the treasury of the disciples and before long he’s going to sell Christ for 30 pieces over with money was a big thing to him. He was covetous. once Satan dangles the bait and you take it you’re hooked and therefore these so-called little sins these so-called flaws in your character need immediate mortification because they’re greater evil than you realize they are and they pose a great danger because they lead to more even greater evil than that that that should frighten you it. sin has to have a snowballing I’ll give you another example here. remember David you read it there was a point when kings go forth to war and he stayed at home. He was lazy. He goes up on top of the roof. He looks down. He sees Bashiba and he lusts after her. She’s bathing and he happens to see her evidently nude and he’s attracted. Then he says, a command for her to come to his palace, his house. The next thing we know, he’s committing adultery with her. And then he’s not done yet. She becomes pregnant, so he has to cover it up, so then he ends up killing, murdering really, Uriah sort of secretly, but God isn’t fooled by all this. Then what happens? What comes out of that? Well, there’s discord in his family. And we find. find that we have Absalon killing one of his brothers because of his sexual sin involved with Absalom’s sister. There’s a sword in the family. Did that end at all? No. Absalom leads to rebellion and there’s war and bloodshed and the whole nation gets involved. Here’s a man for laziness. Because he didn’t go to the battlefield. Look at that. Look what it’s snowballed into. sin is a progressive thing in your life. We always keep that in mind. It’s sort of like Mr. Christian. They get their feet get sore on the pathway because it’s a rocky road. They decide they go off on bypass meadow. And they think, well, you know, it’s going to be beside the road and will be okay before you know what they’re lost. They’re completely away from the road. They’re completely gone. You know, they get trapped and caught by the giant of despair. But they get off the path. They thought they were only being a little bit off, but it ended up being way off. The second thing is this. You can’t be right with God and wrong with man. It’s just impossible to do. All religious worship of these Israelites was hypocritical. Their so-called church, their religious assembly, if you would, with the cloak of the righteous poor firmly grasped in their hand. They went to the cloak of the righteous poor firmly grasped in their hand. the church. What great arrogance displays? They’re mistreating the poor, and yet thinking that they’re pretty good people, because they’re going to the religious assembly. They toast their success before altars with wines squeezed out of the people by unjust fines. God says he finds all this utterly repulsive. First of all, the worship is profane against the first table of the law. and the treatment of the righteous poor is also evil violation of the second table law. If your relationship on the human level is contrary to the law of God, then all possibility of fellowship on the divine level is destroyed. This is what Jesus was talking about in the sermon on the mountain. He says, if you have a lot against your brother and you’re going to the worship, don’t bring your ultimate. the sacrifice to the older yet go reconcile with your brother then bring your sacrifice to you today if you can’t take your fellow believer if you if you if you take your fellow believer to court to extract your pound of flesh you can’t think that somehow or rather it’s okay for you to sit in church and that you’re right with god god’s smile is not going to rest upon you if you mistreat your wife, come to church and sing how your wife is going to be a fruitful vine from Psalm 128 or with David in Psalm 119 saying, oh, how I love thy law. So obviously you’re not loving God’s law or you wouldn’t treat your wife that poorly. You can’t be rebellious against authority, whether it be parents or would be the government or elders or a husband or whatever and come to church thinking that you’re can be submissive to God’s authority. The law of God has two main parts, you know, that which relates to specifically God, that which relates specifically to man, but a violation of one command that puts you in guilty of the whole law, as James tells us. Nor the one, or the other, you can’t be pleasing to God. Mistreatment of your neighbor is, in the end, defiance of God. It’s that simple. So you can’t be right with God and wrong with man. This is what the scripture would indicate to us. The third thing I suggest to you is this. Why are church as accepting and tolerating positions which are clearly opposed to God’s word? One wonders how any group claiming to be a church of Jesus Christ can disobey His Word. His explicit commands and think that all is all right. The Israelites attended a religious assembly which allowed violations of God’s law, and they never addressed the sin. They never said a word about it. Sexual immorality existed right there in the religious assembly. There was abuse of the rights of the poor. It was never questioned. There’s no rebuke. There’s no call for repentance. The unlawful holding of a cloak was acceptable practice for these worshippers. Probably just the tip of the iceberg or what’s going on. Now, in our day and age, the same thing is going on under the guise of so-called Christian religion. Can any church receive into fellowship a practicing homosexual? The Bible says these people are people that God has turned over to a reprobate mind. Yet they’re allowed to join the church, and in some cases be elders in the church. Why is the so-called church today treating a case of incest as merely like a slap on the wrist? Is it no big deal that a man would be married to a stepmother or brother or sister somehow or married? God says, therefore, put away from among your sister. this wicked person. True repentance is absolutely necessary. Why is the church permitting its young adult members, or even it’s teenage members, for that matter, to engage in premarital sex without any rebuke? Is this normal acceptable activity for the youth and the young adults of the church? Even adultery among members is often not rebuked. I know a friend of mine I know was going to one of the mega churches in our area here and he left it because he found, you know, he’s there, he could see, he had eyes, he could see. There was adultery going on within the church between different members of the church, and the church never did anything about it. Is that okay? Is that to be tolerated? Marriage is honorable and all in the bed undefiled, but whoremongers, the same. actually impure and adulterers, God is going to judge. Hebrews 13-4. And my friends, all of this profanes the name of God, just as our text talks about. These sinful practices can never be condemned by God. Let every man, or church for that matter, that names the name of Christ, depart from iniquity. We can’t have this going on. This is evil. This is vile. This is vile. And yet sadly, it’s going on. Well, let’s close with a word of prayer tonight.