Amos 6:8-14

Amos chapter 6, reading verses 8 through 14 for our text and study this evening. The Lord has sworn by himself, said the Lord, lo God of host. I abhor the excellency of Jacob and hate his palaces, therefore I will deliver up the city with all that is therein. and it shall come to pass if there remain ten men in one house that they shall die and a man’s uncle shall take him up and he that burneth him to bring out the bones out of the house and shall say unto him that is by the sides of the house is there yet any with thee and he shall say no then shall he say hold thy tongue we must not make mention of the name of the Lord for behold the Lord commandeth and he will smite the great house with breeches and the little house with clefts shall horses run upon the rock will one plow there with oxen for ye have turned judgment into gall and the fruit of righteousness into hemlock. Ye which rejoice in a thing of naught and say have we not not taken to us horns by our own strength but behold I will raise up against you a nation O house of Israel, saith the Lord God the God of host and they shall afflict you from the entering in of hemath unto the river of the wilderness May God bless to us is sacred and holy word this evening. Some believe that it was the boxer Robert Fitzsimmons, which coined the phrase the bigger they are, the harder they fall. Fitzsimmons said these words following the capture of the heavyweight boxing crime from the young brash of Jim Corby. For 13 rounds, the proud Corbett punched and taunted his older opponent and seemed invincible. But unknown to Corbett, Fitzsimmons, who was a blacksmith, had developed a special punch which was unheard of in 1897. He called it the Solar Plexus punch. In the 14th round of the title fight, fight. Corbett still was proudly strutting around seemingly brimming with confidence as if it was in the bag. Then suddenly Fritz Simmons found the opening that he had been waiting for for 13 rounds and he unleashed his special punch. Corbett pitched forward, fell to the floor, and was paralyzed. He could not catch his breath. And he was counted out. And so, the aging blacksmith snatched the title from the cocky young Corbett. This story certainly illustrates the truth of Proverbs 1618. Pride goeth before destruction and a haughty spirit before a fall. Israel has been a very proud nation, really, since its inception. The scripture uses the phrase, stiff-necked, to speak of pride. God often calls the nation stiff-neck because they don’t know how to bow the head. They’re never humbled. Israel has expected and thought it would retain its position among the nations for a long time. But, as the saying goes, the bigger they are, or think they are, harder they will fall. Amos here describes the collapse of the nation of Israel. God is going to deflate the pumped up nation. He’s going to knock them out. The first thing we see is the frightening downfall here of Israel. Israel’s pride and complacency provokes God to wrap. And we see that in verse 8. The Lord God has sworn by himself, saith the Lord, the God of host. I abhor the Excellency of Jacob and hate his palaces. Therefore, I will deliver up the city with all that is therein. The message here is introduced by a divine oath where God swears by himself. He can’t swear by anybody greater. And he swears, here to emphasize the certainty of his word of doom and destruction for Israel. God swore by his honor that the city of Samaria together with all its inhabitants was going to be delivered up to judgment and there would be no escape. The root cause of the city’s fall is found in their pride. The Excellency here of Jacob referred. verse two, the pride of Jacob. Israel wore a crown of pride because of her riches, because of her possessions, because of her strength, because of her position, because of her fortresses and so forth. She had the luxuries that we talked about last week, the beds of ivory, she had the delicacies food-wise with regard to the prime rib, and the in the veal that she ate. She had the entertainment with the music. She drank the wine by the bullfalls. She bathed in the richest lotions. In other words, she was pampered to the hilt. Israel was also, as we saw last week, one of the chief of the nations in the Palestine area. A power to be reckoned with despite some of the tiny cities around her that are mentioned in verse 2 of this chapter. When you place your confidence in your position, your power, your possessions, there’s a sense in which you make yourself in your situation a rival to God. Thus, it’s an abomination to him. Now, the palaces that he mentions here of sinners, he hates, for the sake of the wickedness, those who live within them. And thus, the curse of the Lord is in the house of the wicked, as Proverbs 333 indicates. So Israel’s pride and complacency here provokes God’s wrath. We also see that Israel will be ravaged by war. And we see that in the latter part of verse 8, where he says here that therefore I have delivered up the city with all that is therein and it shall come to pass if there remain ten men in one house they shall die and a man’s uncle shall take him up he that burneth him to bring out the bones out of the house and shall say unto him that is by the sides of the house is there yet any with thee and he shall say no then shall he say, hold thy tongue, for we may not make mention of the name of the Lord. For behold, the Lord commandeth, and he will smite the great house with breaches and the little house with clefts. The stronghold of Samaria here is going to be given over to the enemy. The guardian of Israel is going to turn over, or hand over, those. that he hates. God had been a wall of protection about the nation so that he kept them from a demise. But the sad thing is Israel failed to see that. They trusted in their own military and their manpower to protect them. The words delivered up imply the surrendering of a person that it’s been protected to an enemy. You recall in the story of Samson, at one point, the Philistines were in power over the Israelites, and so the Philistines were not too happy with Samson in his escapades and bringing down the nation, their nation. And so they wanted to capture him. and they went to the men of Judah and said, we want you to turn over to us, Samson. So they knew where Samson was at the rock of Edom, and they said we have to turn you over. We have to deliver you into the hand of the Philistines. What else they’re going to harm us? Samson, Samson can recall, said, okay, Just tie me with ropes and turn me over and promise you won’t harm me. So they do, and of course you know what happens. He breaks the ropes. He grabs that jawbone of an ass that had been there and strikes down a thousand men on the Philistian part. But he was turned over by the men of Judah. They delivered him up. And this is what God is saying he’s going to do to the Israelites. I’m going to turn you over. I’m no longer going to protect you. So God will allow Samaria to be ransacked and wasted by an enemy army of Syria. All the pomp, all the glory is going to be taken away. They’re going to be stripped of their pride. God is saying here, though you were full of wealth, I’m going to empty you of all that is within you. want to take it all away. So the stronghold of Samaria will be given over to the enemy. We see that horrible pestilence here will eat up the people in verses 9 and 10. Now Amos here paints a horrible picture of the suffering that awaits Israel. He gives us a preview of what the city of Samaria is going to go through in the siege. You are shown a house. It’s occupied by a family. All of whom are stricken by some plague or some disease. Perhaps a famine has eaten them up. We’re not told exactly, but those who escaped the sword, those who resided in the fortress of Samaria, were the ones that here were stricken like this. Now a distant relative, an uncle, along with a man called a burner, would enter the house expecting to dispose of a few dead bodies. Now, the burning of the bodies of the dead was considered an abomination if you were an Israelite. Not something they normally did, but this was an extraordinary time because there was disease. And people that are sick with disease, they were trying to prevent its spread. And so that’s why they’re burning the bodies on this occasion. So the uncle and the burner go in to get the bodies out of the house. They enter in and they’re appalled by what they see. They find nine that are dead. and when they call out to see if there’s anybody else, they find there’s one, still alive, but soon to die, evidently. And so, we find that this solitary survivor with a weak voice says, no one but me. And it seems evident that he’s not long for this world either. We see a fearful, a terrible fear of Almighty God prevails because of this judgment. As soon as the uncle learns that one person still remains alive at this point, he cautions him to be quiet. He cautions him not to mention the name of Jehovah. Don’t say anything about Jehovah. Now, this seems to be a manifestation of an idolatio. heathen idea that had penetrated the nation that you could not mention the name of the God that would bring disaster upon you or else you would curse everyone around you. So they don’t want to have a curse upon them. So they say, don’t mention Jehovah’s name. And therefore the uncle’s scared here tells them be quiet. Now, this is all a frightening picture of the coming disaster. a vivid picture of the nightmare that awaits Israel. Horrible pestilence will eat up the people. And finally, we see the completeness of destruction from verse 11 that I read earlier. This indicates that only the residence of Samaria would be destroyed, but the Lord himself would be to destroyer. Very clearly stated in this text. He gives the command and it’s done. He calls forward a heathen power, a nation against them, the Assyrians, and they do his bidding. The Assyrians were going to be the attackers. But the bottom line is that God has decreed he has ordered this attack. And now, as throughout the prophecy of Amos, we should realize there is a condemnation of the rich. And yet there were poor people that were guilty sinners as well as rich people. And so the rich are evil, not because they’re rich, you know, God’s word does not promote Marxism, they’re evil because they are ungodly. And the poor are no better. They may be guilty of different sins, but their sins are no less serious. Therefore, the great day of judgment of God comes, and the huts of the poor are destroyed, along with the palaces of the rich. This is a pretty much even-handed judgment of everybody. So Israel will be ravaged by war. And then we see also from verse 12 that Israel is guilty of perverting the proper order of things. verse 12 says this shall horses run upon the rock will one plow there with oxen where ye have turned judgment into gall and the fruit of the righteous of the righteous embalch. Now at first reading you might say this doesn’t make a whole lot of sense. After all, horses can run but they’re not running on cliffs. You don’t see the Kentucky Derby run. You know, people, the horses is run around on top of a cliff. Oxens can plow the fields, but they’re not up there on a rocky mount plowing. So the answer to both questions really is no. Both questions are in a sense foolish. In other words, they’re absurd. They suggest an impossible situation. Israel apparently fought that they could do absurd things and get away with it. For they turned the pure juice of justice into wormwood or what we call gall, something that is bitter to the taste. Something is unpleasant to drink. Because, of course, we know that they cheated the innocent and they pardoned the guilty. in their justice system. They also here were guilty of taking the fruit of righteousness and turning it into hemlock, which is a deadly poison. So the idea here is that the persecuted the righteous person, they put him to death. Now all this is a fatal mistake. But just as horses cannot run upon the cliffs and nor oxen plow on steep rocks. So injustice cannot be the basis for any society. It is going to cause the collapse of that society. We have to be governed by principles of justice and righteousness the very thing that they have deserted. So it’s preservation as a nation demands that they have justice and righteousness to prevail, but they are not doing so. and the implication of the two in questions here to which the answer is so obvious is that Israel should know better than this. Everybody knows this. You can’t do these things and get away with it. So Israel is guilty of perverting the proper order of things. And lastly, Israel’s military victories will not avert military defeat. Versus 13 and 14. E. which rejoice in a thing of not and say, have we not taken to us horns by our own strength? But behold, I will raise up against you a nation, O House of Israel, said the Lord, the God of host. And they shall afflict you from the entering in of Himath under the river of the wilderness. There’s sort of a wordplay here that we find in verse 13, which makes the sense of the passage a little bit difficult to grasp. The King James has the words a thing of not in horns. Whereas some translations of the Bible have the words Lodabar and Carnium listed here without giving their meaning. Now, actually if we want to understand the idea of the passage, I think we actually need to know both. We need to know the words and then we need to know the meaning of the words. And so Lodabar and Karniam refer to two cities that had been recently captured by Jeroboam the Second’s military expansion. These two cities were seized from the Armeans and the Armeans They were symbols of Israel’s current military prowess. You by your strength have captured nothing, though, is what God is actually saying. Because Carniam means horns, and Lodabar means a thing I’m not. And so the suggestion is, okay, you captured these two cities by your strength and power, your horns, means nothing. It means nothing. nothing. I suppose if Amos had written in the days of the book, you know, the classic story of Robinhood, if Robin and his men had captured Nottingham, perhaps Amos might have called it Nothingham. Just to give you the flavor of what he’s sort of saying here in this passage. So what we have here is Amos mocking the military confidence of his Israel. You think you’ve done something, you’ve done nothing. Not much. This is no great achievement. You’re bolsting about capturing Lodabar and Karniam. Are these famous cities? Are these well known? So God is preparing a nation that’s going to oppress Israel from the northern extremity of the nation to its southern borders. Another, other words, from Hamath to the brook Araba, that will be a real achievement. And the Assyrians will do it. So they have the confidence over these teeny weeny victories, which are nothing. So we see here in all these and this whole passage, the frightening downfall of Israel. Now let me make two practical suggestions from this passage of Scripture. tonight. And the first practical suggestion is this. Beware of the danger of pride. The excellency or the pride, if you would, of Jacob, is emphasized in this passage. Who is intempted to glory secretly or openly in your load of bars or Carniums? Bragg about your smallest achievement as if you really accomplish something great. We see this happening a lot. If you think about Samson again tonight, if I could draw another illustration, it’s interesting. At one time, he’s traveling alone over to see his girlfriend among the Philistines. And on the way, a lion attacks him. And with his bare hands, he kills the lion on amazing feet. really. Yet, he says nothing about it. Doesn’t even tell his parents about it. Well, he’ll make it into the riddle at the member at the wedding that he’s having later. But there’s a quite achievement, but he didn’t boast about it. How different man is today? We boast about the smallest achievements as though they were great things as if we killed him out. You know, we kill a mouse, I think we’ve done something great like killing a lion. Sadly, this is the case. Maybe we’ve accomplished some little thing in life. Maybe we thought we’ve done something for God. But it ends up being a matter of just promoting our self image, our own ego. God says, I abhorred that. I hate that. You’re exalting yourself. You’re pushing yourself into the spotlight. You’re accomplishing, you you are accrediting yourself for an accomplishment which I enabled you to do. You’re boasting about what you’ve accomplished when in fact God has given you the ability to do that. If we have to create big things out of little things in order to promote ourselves as somebody, what a sad commentary that is upon us. isn’t a lot. We have a problem. Until the Lord humbles you, pride will always keep you from depending upon him. You’ll be looking to your own abilities or expertise or wisdom. Every believer needs to be on guard against pride. Every one of us. Pride goeth before destruction and a haughty spirit before a fall. Proverbs tells us. remember the old adage the bigger they are the harder they fall. God’s going to judge pride because he hates the proud look, the Bible says. And so he will never allow you the luxury of being prideful. You know what the Bible says? Let not the wise man glory in his wisdom. Let not the mighty man glory in his might. Let not the rich. man, glory in his riches. He that glorieth, let him glory of the Lord. That he understandeth and knoweth me, that I am the Lord. Jeremiah 9, 23, and 24. If we accomplish anything, it’s because God enabled us to do it. Therefore, we have to set aside boasting. Remember the words of Paul in 1 Corinthians 4, 4, 7, What hast thou that thou didst not receive? Now, if thou didst receive it, why dost thou glory as if thou hast not received? God gave you that ability. God gave you that gift. God gave you this or that and the other, and so therefore there’s no room for boasting. So beware here of the danger of busting. The second thing I suggest to you is this. Beware of the fear of the Lord, which comes too late. The Israelites reached the point where they had a dreadful fear of Jehovah, according to verse 10. Don’t even mention his name. It’ll bring a curse down upon us. But their fear came too late. It came after the devastation of God upon them. And it was not so much a reverence for God, but a terror of the Lord. that was upon them. Only something earth-shattering can turn such a generation of evil-doers into a God-fearing people. And yet the fear of God which results from such an event is actually the wrong kind of fear. It’s not a saving fear. It arises not from a reverence or love for God, but from anxiety of what he might do to you. what is God going to do next? If Amos is preaching it taught the people a genuine fear of the Lord, then it would no longer necessary for them to actually be afraid because the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom. It leads one to salvation. And to worshiping the Lord. The day of the Lord need not reduce you to anxious silence. Now there are many people who go through this life with no fear of God before their eyes. Remember the parable of the unjust judge? Remember what he said? I fear not God nor regard man. In Luke 18, verse 4. I don’t fear God. There are a lot of people like that. They just despise the righteous. They ridicule prayer. They live in defiance of God and its commandments. And the only time they may use God’s name is a curse. And they don’t believe they need God. They never consider the need to worship their creator. They think they are the master of their own fate that they can you. devise their own way on the ship of life and through the storms of life. There’s nothing you can do for some people because they reach the point, as the scripture indicates, in Second Chronicles in the last chapter, that there is no remedy. There’s no remedy for them. You must leave them alone. You can’t cast your pearls before swine. But the day is coming. The day is coming when God’s death angel is going to knock on their door. And suddenly they are going to be in the grip of death and now they begin to fear the Lord. Is this the right kind of fear? No, it’s a terror of the Lord. It comes too late. Their fate is already sealed. And they’re going to perish in their sins. My wife had known one of the women that she has on her Facebook page from high school. This woman was very anti-god, anti-religion, mocked those who would say something like, I’m going to, my thoughts and prayers are with you or something like that. She would mock such things. Then she had to go to hospital. She had to have an operation. All of a sudden, she’s interested in my wife praying for her. As soon as she gets out of the hospital, she begins to mock prayer and make fun of the message of God and the way of salvation. What can you do for someone like that? You know, Raina, you got to the point we just felt that there’s nothing more I can, you know, I’m not going to say anything more. You know, you you wanted me when you were in serious health condition. And that should have been a wake-up call. But in this case, it wasn’t. So this is the danger. We see that, you know, people that is going to be a day when death is going to knock at the door. And then there’s going to be a day of judgment. They’re going to have to stand before God. And you know what Paul says about the final judgment in 2 Corinthians chapter 5? He says, knowing the terror of the Lord, we persuade men about this judgment that’s coming. It is going to be a day of terror for some people. A fear that’s certainly too late. Because at that day, every knee shall bow and every tongue will confess to the Lord Jesus Christ that he is Lord. That’s the day when they’re going to have to stand before the Lord Jesus Christ. Now is the time. to embrace Christ as the Savior from sin. Now is the time to believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and thou shalt be saved. Because on that day, it’ll be a fear that comes too late. It will be a terrorizing day. A godly fear of Jehovah God, the Lord Jesus Christ, in this life, will remove any fear with regard of the life to come. Because we read that perfect love cast out fear. So a true fear of God now will keep you from fearing too late. So the message here is let us have a reverence for the Lord God. There is a remedy for sin. It’s found in Jesus Christ. Turn to him today. While there is opportunity to do so because there’s going to be a day when the death angel knocks on the door. There’s going to be a day when you’re going to stand before Christ, and it’s going to be way too late at that point. Close to close. With the word of prayer tonight.