A Nation Under Judgment

It's so good to be with you again, and thank you for the invitation to bring God's Word to you. God's Word is found for our meditation in Amos chapter 8. If you'll return in your Bibles, the New King James Version, Amos 8 verse 1 to the end of the chapter. Thus the Lord God showed me, behold a basket of summer fruit, and he said, Amos, what do you see? So I said, a basket of summer fruit. Then the Lord said to me, the end has come upon my people Israel. I will not pass by them anymore. And the songs of the temple shall be wailing in that day, says the Lord God. Many dead bodies everywhere. They shall be thrown out in silence. Hear this, you who swallow up the needy and make the poor of the land fail, saying, when will the new moon be past that we may sell grain, and the Sabbath that we may trade wheat, making the ephah small and the shekel large, falsifying the scales by deceit, that we may buy the poor for silver and the needy for a pair of sandals? even sell the bad wheat. The Lord is sworn by the pride of Jacob. Surely I will never forget any of their works. Shall the land not tremble for this, and every one mourn who dwells in it? All of it shall swell like the river, heave and subside like the river of Egypt. And it shall come to pass in that day, says the Lord God, that I will make the sun go down at noon and I will darken the earth in broad daylight. I will turn your feasts into mourning and all your songs into lamentation. I will bring sackcloth on every waist and baldness on every head. I will make it like mourning for an only son and its end like a bitter day. Behold, the days are coming, says the Lord God, that I will send a famine on the land, not a famine of bread nor a thirst for water, but of hearing the words of the Lord. They shall wander from sea to sea and from north to east. They shall run to and fro seeking the word of the Lord, but shall not find it. In that day the fair virgins and the strong young men shall faint from thirst. Those who swear by the sin of Samaria, who say, as your God lives, O Dan, and as the way of Beersheba lives, they shall fall and never rise again. So reads God's word by His Spirit. May He bless it to our understanding. God speaks not only to individuals, but to nations. This is especially true of Israel, who had a unique calling and destiny to be the people of God. But when you go to Scripture, you find that God not only spoke to Israel, but to other nations as well. Jonah and Nahum delivered divine warnings to Nineveh, the capital of Syria. Jeremiah, Isaiah, Ezekiel prophesied against Judah, Babylon, Egypt, and Moab, whereas Amos and Hosea spoke specifically against the ten northern tribes of Israel. But, you know, because God's dealings with us as individuals and with nations are always righteous, They are therefore timeless in their general application to us today. Indeed, as you listen to Amos' message, you feel as if he is speaking not to a situation in the 8th century before Christ, but directly to our situation at this present time. As we turn our thoughts then to the chapter that we read, I want you to notice first of all the situation that warranted God's judgment. The twelve tribes of Israel were a privileged people whose national existence and preservation through 700 years was due solely to God's grace and goodness. They could look back over the centuries and note the times when the nation was in jeopardy, but then God intervened, and as a result, they were still in the land. But not only had they enjoyed a continuity and a prosperity for all those centuries, but they had also had the greatest blessing any nation can have, the Holy Scriptures. They had the Ten Commandments by which the individual, the family, and the whole nation could govern its life. God had also given them prophets through whom he had revealed his name or his nature as the one true God who is all holy, all loving, and all powerful. I say Israel was truly singularly blessed But it was also a nation that had gone sadly astray and taken its blessings for granted. And that is why, before they entered the promised land, God warned them against going away from Him. And He said, you shall remember that the Lord your God led you all the way these forty years in the wilderness, that He might make you know that man does not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds from the mouth of the Lord. Beware that you do not forget the Lord your God by not keeping His commandments. But alas, that is exactly what they did. They forgot God's commandments and turned their back upon Him. The ten northern tribes, you remember, under Jeroboam I, broke away from the two tribes of Judah in the south and they made two golden calves. One was set up in Bethel to the south and the other in Dan to the north. And as Jeroboam explained to them, It is too much for you to go up to Jerusalem. Here are your gods, O Israel, which brought you up from the land of Egypt." He didn't want them to come under the influence of the leaders in Jerusalem and the worship in Jerusalem by going there for the three annual religious festivals. So he set up these idols, representations of God, And if you had asked the people, is not Jehovah your God, they would have said emphatically, yes. But these are simply visual aids to help us in our worship of Jehovah. But by disobeying the second commandment, not to make raven images, the pure worship of God, of Jehovah, was polluted by idolatry. And with it, of course, there came the inevitable spread of unrighteousness. Look at verses 4 to 6. Hear this, you who swallow up the needy and make the poor of the land to fail or cease, saying, when will the new moon be past that we may sell grain, and the Sabbath that we may trade our wheat, making the ephah small and the shekel large, falsifying the balances by deceit, that we may buy the poor for silver and the needy for a pair of sandals, even sell the bad wheat. The rich, you see, were getting richer at the expense of the poor. Business comes first, they said. So, business came before compassion to the poor, who had to work the land that the rich owned for subsistent wages. Again, business came before religion. Because although these rich exploiters went to the temple, they could not wait for the Sabbath to be over so that they could make money again. And then business came before honesty. The ephah was the standard unit of volume for measuring out the grain that you sold. So the rich made a smaller ephah to give less grain to the poor who were buying it. And then again, the shekel was the standard unit of weight to measure the silver that you paid for the wheat you bought from the rich. So, the poor were paying more silver for less wheat. So Amos is saying that these rogues were giving small measure for inflated prices. They saw no conflict between their worship of God on the Sabbath and their sharp practices during the week. Yes, and again, because business is business, it came before people themselves. As in Ruth 4 verse 7, an exchange sandal pledge the forfeiting of your property if you did not honor a business transaction. Amos is therefore saying that a peasant farmer in this society could be sold into slavery by these business tycoons if he did not pay his bill. Here then is a picture of outrageous social injustice. And friends, I wonder if, as I have been speaking, you have been thinking, is he speaking really about 8th century B.C., or is he speaking about America in the 21st century A.D.? Because so much of what Amos describes here in chapter 8 and in the preceding chapters is applicable to our own national situation. Because we are an acquisitive society, obsessed with money and the things that money can buy. Living standards keep on rising. They get higher and higher with every generation. Compare our homes, our cars, our boats, our vacation trips, our investments with what our parents had and our grandparents had. And when we get ahead of ourselves and we can't pay the debts that we have run up, we simply declare bankruptcy and let our creditors or the taxpayer cover the costs and take the loss. Covetousness is the curse of American society today. Kickbacks plague both business and government. Greedy lenders and greedy borrowers are behind the current banking and home mortgage crisis, the highest number of foreclosures in American history. And so I could go on, but there are other social cancers in our national life. Like Israel, America is also a permissive society. In Hosea's prophecy against these ten tribes in the north, God says, your daughters commit harlotry and your brides commit adultery. For the men themselves go apart with harlots and offer sacrifices with a ritual harlot. They commit harlotry continually. And of course, widespread drunkenness contributed to Israel's immorality. Substance abuse and promiscuity go together. It's a process that has been repeated again and again in human history. Declining morals have always led to declining civilizations. So, with illegitimacy, homosexuality, drug and alcohol addiction at all time high levels, let us not think that America is going to prove to be the exception. Moral perversion of every kind is as bad in our land as it was in the days of the Roman Empire when it collapsed. 46% of babies born in our country are born to unwed mothers. If we factored in all the babies who are aborted by single mothers, the figure, of course, would be much higher. And we have also reached now the sad situation where the laws of our land are being changed to legalize things which are an abomination to God. This is 21st century America. And like Israel, we too have our false prophets who encourage us in our apostasy and our iniquity. We have what is called The new theology, which instead of condemning the wickedness of our day, is condoning it with the heresy of situational ethics or relativity. Homosexual or premarital unions are legitimate, they say, if the parties concerned are committed to a faithful and lasting relationship. The new theology says it's okay if it's done in the name of love. The Bible says it's wrong because it's done in the name of lust, whatever spin you try to put upon it. So, this prophecy is not a remote voice speaking to a nation 2,700 years ago, but rather the timeless word of the living God to our own immediate situation. God speaks to nations as well as to individuals. As he says through Amos here in the first three verses, thus the Lord God showed me, behold, a basket of summer fruit. And he said, Amos, what do you see? So I said, a basket of summer fruit that's ripe for the eating. Then the Lord said to me, the end has come upon my people Israel. I will not pass by them anymore. And the songs of the temple shall be wailing in that day, says the Lord God. Many dead bodies everywhere, they shall be thrown out in silence. But secondly, we learn from Amos, not only that God speaks to nations as well as individuals, but that God's judgments are always preceded by warnings. Now that's true in the life of an individual. Take the case of Pharaoh, king of Egypt, in the days of Moses. When God spoke to Pharaoh through Moses and Aaron, he repeatedly hardened his heart. He would not let the people go and listen to God's command. But after a while, God brought judicial hardening upon Pharaoh's heart, whereby he was no longer capable of heeding and obeying God's warnings. Pharaoh's repeated hardening of his heart brought upon himself a divine hardening that was irreversible. Friends, we must never imagine that God is going to wait indefinitely for our repentance. For we are dealing with the supreme sovereign of the universe, whom Paul says in Romans 9, has mercy on whom he wills. And whom he wills, he hardens. But this is true not only of individuals but also of churches. Church history proves that while God uses churches to bring blessing to men and women, God is never tied to any church. Christ warned the church at Ephesus that if it did not repent of falling out of love for Him, He would remove its lampstand from its place. And that's exactly what has happened. The light has gone out of Turkey. Judgment begins with the house of God, says Peter. There are other areas besides Turkey, like North Africa, that produce great theologians, like Tertullian and Augustine, but where for centuries now there has been no church to speak of. Likewise, there are many churches in our land that 50, 60, 70 years ago once faithfully preached the gospel, but who now cease to be churches in any real sense at all. They are merely houses of human wisdom and philosophy. And then again, as we see in Amos 8, the same thing can happen to a nation. that God has blessed in many extraordinary ways just like our own. The people who came here in 1620 did so because they wanted to be free to enjoy the blessing of God's Word and not be tied to a corrupt state church. And for nearly 400 years, God has given America men who have faithfully preached that word and written books to help us understand it. That is what has made America a great nation. And as a result, from our shores, thousands and thousands of men and women have taken the gospel to the far ends of the earth, far more than from any other nation in the world. But God is not tied to any nation He uses. The God who has blessed us is the God who can equally cast us aside if we do not turn from our apostasy and our iniquity. God, you know, was on the throne when He redeemed Israel from slavery in Egypt and drove out their enemies from Canaan so that they could inherit the land He promised them. But God equally demonstrated His sovereignty when He sent the Assyrians to destroy Samaria in 722 BC and carry the ten tribes into captivity. And God was sovereign when again He raised up Cyrus, the emperor of Persia, to bring the Jews home in 538 B.C. And God was sovereign when 532 years later, in 70 A.D., God sent the Roman armies under Titus to destroy Jerusalem and scatter the Jews all over the world. And again God was sovereign when in turn he brought the Roman Empire under judgment because the nation was given over to excessive cruelty and drunkenness and pedophilia. And so in the 5th century the barbarians from the north poured over the Alps into Italy capturing the capital and destroying it. God is the God of nations, and the God who raises them up and gives them success to accomplish His purposes can just as easily cast them away. Now thirdly, as we come to the key verses in the passage, verses 11 to 14, we learn that the ultimate judgment of God in this life is to be deprived of His Word. In the previous chapters, Amos has spoken of economic trouble in the land as evidence of God's displeasure and judgment. He's spoken of drought and of locusts and of blight that have brought hunger and thirst. But he now goes on to tell us that this is not the worst of God's judgment. For God says, verse 11, Behold, the days are coming that I will send a famine on the land, not a famine of bread nor a thirst of water as you have had, but of hearing the words of the Lord. And this is why the ten tribes of Israel never survived their exile in Assyria, because When God handed or abandoned them over to His judgment, He sent Amos and Hosea back again to Jerusalem before the fall of Samaria. And so unlike Judah, who continued to receive God's word in Babylon from the mouths of Isaiah and Ezekiel, who went with them into exile, Israel heard no prophetic word from God when they were in Assyria. And today, friends, there are signs in America that a famine of hearing the words of God is coming. Elaborate rituals and lively entertainment are taking the place of sound doctrine. People need a word from the Lord, but they don't know where to find it. Verse 12. They shall wander from sea to sea and from north to east. They shall run to and fro in vigorous pursuit, seeking the word of the Lord, and shall not find it. Why not? I mean, what could be the difficulty? What could be standing in the way? The difficulty, my friends, is that they were not prepared to look in the place where they could find it. They looked everywhere else, but not in the place where they could find it. So God says they shall wander from sea to sea, from the Dead Sea to the Mediterranean Sea, from east to west, and then they shall run to and fro from the north back again to the east. Do you see the one thing that they don't want to do? They don't want to go south to Jerusalem, where Isaiah and Jeremiah were preaching the Word of God. Why not? Because if they did that, they would have to say, Brethren, We were wrong to follow Jeroboam 200 years ago and leave the Church of God at Jerusalem. We were wrong to build rival temples at Bethel and Dan. We were wrong to make idols and worship them. We are coming back home again, if you will have us and help us to find the truth and the living God. No. Pride will keep them from doing that. And it's the same today, isn't it? The last thing that liberal Christians and liberal churches will do is to go back to the evangelical churches or denominations that they left. They will rather seek help from the rationalism of the West of California, humanism of the North, or mysticism of the East in India or Asia, anywhere except the faith that was once for all delivered to the saints. Another consequence of this coming judgment, of a famine, of hearing the words of the Lord, is going to be its effect upon the young people in the nation at that time. Look at verse 13. In that day, says God, the fair virgins and strong young men shall faint from thirst, that is, spiritual thirst, thirst for the living God. What a tremendous truth is in that verse 13, because this is always the case. The old folk will at least have their memories of the word that God spoke to them in days past. The old folk will have something to turn to, but not the young folk, not their children, not their grandchildren. The young people who will be growing up when the famine of hearing the words of the Lord begins will not have the truth of God to give them hope, or direction. As always happens, the sins of one generation become the penalties of another generation. And so when the famine comes, the young will not see the hand of God in it and turn to Him. In spite of the energy of their youthful quest for the truth, for wisdom, Amos says, all they will have is the errors of the previous generation. All they will have, he says in verse 14, is the false worship that is being conducted in Samaria and Dan and Beersheba, which exploits their spiritual thirst but never satisfies it. Even for the young, with all their optimism and all their enthusiasm, when that day of judgment comes, of a famine, of hearing the words of the Lord, it will be the end. Verse 14, they shall fall and never rise again. Because false religion, as with no religion at all, leads irrevocably to eternal loss. The members of the ten tribes who were carried into captivity were never heard of again. Never. Well, it's time to conclude. And as I have already pointed out, there are increasing signs that America is quickly becoming a nation under God's judgment. Not only because of the social troubles that we see in our land, but supremely because of the spiritual problems. The signs already of a famine, of hearing the words of the Lord. The difficulty in any city, especially the smaller rural areas, of finding a church where sound doctrine is preached. Now the final collapse is undoubtedly still in the future, but I believe God is speaking a word of warning, and God is not someone who is to be trifled with. When a human being voices his or her opinion or concern, well, we can consider that. And if we think so, we can dismiss it. But when God commands all men everywhere to repent, we must give heed. Perhaps someone listening to me now has heard the gospel from this precious pulpit over and over again. The gospel of Christ and Him crucified as the only Savior for sinners. And friend, it may be that you have thought that sometime in the future you will probably receive Him as your Savior, but not yet. I caution you against that procrastination. For you have no guarantee that you will have an opportunity in the future to do so. None at all. Because if you continue to harden your heart, God may well abandon you to your spiritual hardness. To every procrastinator God says the same thing in Isaiah 55. Seek the Lord while he may be found. Call upon him while he is near. Let the wicked forsake his way and the unrighteous man his thoughts and let him return to the Lord and he will have mercy upon him and to our God for he will abundantly pardon. You dare not leave it till later. God's Word says again, now is the accepted time. Behold, now is the day of salvation. And again, today if you will hear His voice, listen, do not harden your hearts. God's patience has its limits. I beg you in the name of Jesus Christ, Receive Him now. It may be the last time you will hear and feel the Holy Spirit calling you to Christ. And then to those who know the Savior and are concerned about the spiritual state of our land and what will become of the next generation, our text has this to say. The words of judgment that God spoke through Amos were also words of mercy, because all God's warnings are in reality entreaties. God was denouncing Israel's sin and warning of judgment so that Israel would be moved to repentance and his judgment averted. And that is how you and I are to see our situation today. Although judgment is coming, it has not yet finally fallen upon our land. The Bible has still been faithfully preached in some places like this and others, many others, but all too few for a country that is as large as ours with over 300 million people. Proverbs 14 says, Righteousness exalts a nation, but sin is a reproach to any people. Righteousness, however, can only come from one source, the Righteous One, the Lord Jesus Christ. But Americans will not turn to Christ in increasing numbers until we have more earnest, persistent, believing prayer from the various evangelical churches. Like Jacob of old, we need to lay hold of God in prayer and not let him go until he blesses us in such a mighty way that young and old will not have to run to and fro seeking the word of the Lord, but will hear it from every pulpit in the land. And so brethren, I ask you, join with me and others in this great need of the hour before God writes Ecuador, the glory has departed over our nation and land. I can't stress enough how greatly prevailing prayer is needed in this hour of moral decline and spiritual darkness. And my prayer is that God will have mercy upon our nation, that he will revive us again as he did in the 1740s with Jonathan Edwards and George Whitefield and others, and again in the 1850s with the revival that broke out from the prayer meetings in New York, and that he will do it for the glory of his name, for the completing of his church. Let's pray. Oh God, our Father, we thank you for your word, both the Old Testament and the New. It is as relevant today as it was two, three thousand years ago and more. And our Father, we pray that the Holy Spirit will take this word from Amos and burn it into ourselves. that if we are indeed hardening our hearts for a time against the gospel, that we will repent of it and run to the Lord Jesus Christ and receive from Him the forgiveness of our sins and the gift of eternal life. And Father, we pray for our whole country We thank you for the wonderful way you have used America in the past and the blessing that has been brought all over the world because of the sacrificial and courageous endeavors of your people to take the gospel out to every quarter of the world. But Father, we know that Your blessing in the past does not tie you to us. And so we would ask for mercy and grace, for an outpouring of the Holy Spirit of intercession, so that we, your people, in evangelical churches all over the land, will start taking the crisis seriously. and giving ourselves privately and corporately in our churches to pray for revival. Our Father, lay this burden upon our hearts and help us to lay hold upon you and not let you go until the windows of heaven are opened and you pour out a blessing for us that we cannot contain. We know we don't deserve it, but you are a good God and we are asking it for your glory. In Jesus' name we pray, Amen.