God’s Burden (Amos #7)

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Text: Amos 2:6-16

I’m told the name Amos actually means burden, so this would be a very appropriate picture of God if that is the case.  Look at Amos 2:13.

Burdened by sin (vss 6-8)

• Cultural sin meant acceptable sin
• Cheap betrayal of the righteous. (2:6)
  • …they sold the righteous for silver…
  • (Can you think of a man who betrayed a righteous man for silver in the New Testament?)
  • Speaking of cultural sin, Judas Iscariot and the religious leadership agreed to betray a righteous man for silver, so betrayal was acceptable by people professing godliness and supposed teachers of the truth.
• Covetousness devalues human life (2:6)
  • …and the poor for a pair of shoes…
  • Cultural values say you are the sum of what you have.  Which leads to the idea that you aren’t as valuable of a human being as I am if I have more stuff.
• Desperate greed (2:7)
  • …pant after the dust of the earth on the head of the poor…
  • Amos says Israel is like desperate dogs going after real estate so greedily that they see dirt on a poor man’s head they think that plot of land needs to belong to them
• Ambitious self promotion (2:7)
  • …that turn aside the way of the meek…
  • Meek meaning lowly, unassuming, mild temper; soft; gentle; not easily provoked or irritated; yielding; given to forbearance under injuries.
  • Blessed are the meek, they shall inherit the earth.  The world believes the ambitious, self promoters shall inherit the earth, but God said it would be the meek.
• Fornication (2:7)
  • …a man and his father will go in unto the same maid, to profane my holy name…
  • This is such a disgusting kind of fornication of father and son with a mother.
  • 1 Corinthians 5:1 It is reported commonly that there is fornication among you, and such fornication as is not so much as named among the Gentiles, that one should have his father’s wife.
  • People who say the Bible isn’t up to date have never read the Bible honestly. I’m going to say this as delicately as possible.  In 2018, we have one of the worst profanities in the English language that describes this act between a mother and a fornicator.
• Predatory lending and extortion (2:8)
  • …lay themselves down upon clothes laid to pledge by every altar…
  • A pledge is collateral.  You might offer something up as collateral if you’re borrowing money for instance.  That collateral is a pledge that you’ll pay the debt back. But the bank doesn’t own the collateral unless the debt isn’t paid in the agreed time.
  • Deuteronomy 24:12-13 And if the man be poor, thou shalt not sleep with his pledge: 13 In any case thou shalt deliver him the pledge again when the sun goeth down, that he may sleep in his own raiment, and bless thee: and it shall be righteousness unto thee before the LORD thy God.
  • A more common name for it today would be predatory lending.  Or racketeering and extortion
• Functioning drug addicts (2:8)
  • …drink the wine of the condemned in the house of their god…
  • Give strong drink unto him that is ready to perish… (Proverbs 31:6)
  • The idea is to give a concoction to a dying man to dull the pain.  It would be like morphine, or alcohol back in the day; it’s what you’d call pain management.  It’s what the doctors say when there is nothing else to do they say, “We’ll just try to make them comfortable.”
  • The difference is that in Israel’s culture people were dulling their lives with strong sedatives while they sat in front of their idols, doped up or drunk, and wasted their fruitless lives away.

Divine help before the burden became too heavy (vss 9-11)

• Yet…
• …destroyed I the Amorite before them…
  • Defeated the giants until they were wiped off the map completely.  (No more Amorites exist today.)
  • The Lord fought some battles for Israel and defeated the giants that faced them.  BUT, that didn’t mean Israel was right with God.
• …I brought you up from the land of Egypt…
  • Redeemed out of slavery in Egypt
  • 10 plagues in Egypt, crossing the Red Sea; God redeems Israel out of Egypt in a mighty way!
  • The Lord delivered Israel from rigorous slavery and bondage in Egypt.  BUT, that didn’t mean Israel was right with God.
• …I raised up of your sons for prophets…
  • Calling men to ministry
  • Sending preachers/prophets and sanctifying the people through the Nazarite vow.
  • The Lord was actively sending direction and guidance to Israel, BUT that didn’t mean Israel was right with God.
• Israel could look at the victories and active work of the Lord and say God was on their side.  But He was only on Israel’s side because that’s where His name was. Israel was not right with God just because they were the recipients of deliverance, victory, and active pursuit by the Lord.
• Now, that is what we think too.  Answered prayer, or you might say you’ve seen God do some miraculous things, and Israel would say the same thing.  But that didn’t mean they were right with God or that you are.

Burden would limit God’s work (vss-12 13)

• But ye…
• Israel limits and hinders the work of God.
  • Someone may say, But God is all powerful!  No one can stop Him from accomplishing His will!
  • The will of God that ye abstain from fornication.  God’s will is all would abstain from fornication.  Do all people abstain from fornication? So God’s will isn’t accomplished because of man’s own will.
  • Sin is burdensome to God
• Behold, I am pressed under as a cart…
  • God pictures Himself as a cart bearing the burden of sin and being pressed under such that the wheels creak and groan, and the load is so heavy that the cart cannot perform the work of a cart.
  • The sin is so burdensome that God cannot do His work there.
  • Jesus said one time of his own home town that he could there do no mighty work… because of their unbelief.
• God bears the iniquity of people
  • Things that we think a big things such as nations and large land masses God said don’t even make Him break a sweat.  Isaiah 40:15 Behold, the nations are as a drop of a bucket, and are counted as the small dust of the balance: behold, he taketh up the isles as a very little thing.
  • The magnificent universe and the innumerable stars farther away than we can imagine.  But God simply said of all that greatness, he made the stars also.  Almost as an afterthought.
  • The things we think are such big things God counts so little.  But then the things we count as little things, our sin, God is weighed down by.  He is put in the middle. While on the one hand wanting people to bear fruit, but on the other hand cutting them down like a tree or uprooting us like a plant means His final decision to end the life of a fruitless branch.  How long does He bear with fruitless people? Desiring to see men saved and abundant life, but facing the reality that it will not happen with some people. God bears the sins of people.
  • Jesus Christ on the cross became the cart pressed under by the burden of man’s sin.

Burden became too great

• Therefore the flight shall perish from the swift, and the strong shall not strengthen his force…
• Physical advantages made no difference when God couldn’t work in their lives.
  • All the physical advantages that Israel had or tried to get were vain.
  • Swift will perish, strong will fail, mighty will be put into bondage, skillful will fall, courageous will run for their lives.
  • Physical advantages are no advantages if God’s work is limited by you.  In fact, there are no advantages, there is no defense if God is hindered.
  • Wicked know not at what they stumble
  • Now whoever thought that covetousness and greed had anything to do with a nation losing its ability to defend itself?
  • Israel would see their children destroyed and taken by the enemy and there was nothing they could do about it.  That was the result of the transgressions and accepted sin back in versus 6-8.
  • You might see in these verses your family has gone to the devil because you choose to accept sin.  But you don’t understand your greed is connected to God’s inability to protect your family from the enemy.
• Let’s quit burdening God with our sin and give Him a chance to bear fruit in our lives.  Give God a chance to bear fruit abundantly as Jesus said, I am come that they might have life, and that they might have it more abundantly.