September 3, Amos 8
This is what the Lord GOD showed me: behold a basket of summer fruit. And he said, "Amos, what do you see?" And I said, "A basket of summer fruit." Then the LORD said to me, "The end has come upon my people Israel; I will never again pass by them." - Amos 8:1-2
In Chapter 7, the Lord showed Amos three visions that foretold how God would destroy the nation of Israel for their wickedness. Because Amos pleaded with God on behalf of the people, the Lord relented from his plans in the vision of locusts and fire. But the vision of the plumb line stood. The nation failed the test of being straight and true with the Lord, and God said he would not pass by their wickedness any longer.
In Chapter 8, the Lord showed Amos two more visions. The first one must have looked pleasant enough — a basket of summer fruit. The fruit had reached its pinnacle of texture and taste, and would swiftly decline. The gathered summer fruit marked the end of the harvest, so much that the Hebrew word for summer and end sound alike. God said it signified the end of the nation. He would judge them, and as he said about the plumb line, he would not overlook their sinfulness. Their sins were ripe; decay was about to begin.
The final days of the nation would be a time of intense mourning. Many would die. God told them (through Amos) why it had come to such a sad end. These people were totally obsessed with making more money. They couldn't wait for the Sabbath to end so they could get back to their fraudulent business practices. They took advantage of the most helpless ones, the poor. They cheated their customers on both ends of the transaction. They had a false weight so they could sell less product than they were supposed to give for the price. The money was weighed with another dishonest measure that overcharged the customer. When they drained the pockets and purses of the poor, they bought them as slaves. The desperate people sold themselves, mortgaging their future and their strength to buy today's food. On top of that, the unscrupulous merchants sold their customers an inferior product. They charged them for grain, but gave them chaff.
They made big profits from their diabolical multilayered scheme. But God would remember and punish them for their crookedness and exploitation.
The Lord used an ominous symbol to describe the punishment that would come as the consequence of their disobedience. He said that he would make the sun go down at noon and darken the earth in broad daylight. With New Testament understanding, we can see that the image looks ahead to the ultimate rejection of God by the nation of Israel, when they rejected Jesus as the Messiah. On the day when Jesus died on the cross, the symbol became reality when the world was shrouded in darkness for three hours.
Throughout this chapter, God warned them that they would respond to the death and destruction around them with mourning, wailing and trembling. He also described the time when they would have no prophet to warn or guide them as a famine of the word of the Lord. They had not listened when they could and should have. But the days (and centuries) were coming when they would run to and fro seeking a word from God. But it would be too late; they would not find it. The gods they swore by were lifeless and unable to help them. And the God they had abandoned had finally abandoned them. The nation would fall and would not rise again.
Think with me about three contrasts that came to mind as I studied this chapter. First, when God said he would never pass them by again, it reminded me of a time when he did “pass over” them. When the Lord killed all the firstborn in Egypt, even Pharaoh’s son, all the Israelites were spared. That night it was the blood of the passover lamb that saved them. How tragic that when the real Passover Lamb of God came and died, they rejected him.
When I read God’s words, “I will not forget any of their deeds,” I thought about God’s promise of the new covenant that he gave through Jeremiah: “For I will forgive their iniquity, and I will remember their sins no more.” I know which side of that situation I want to be on, don’t you?
Finally, let’s focus on that basket of ripe summer fruit that stood for the sins of the nation. It was ready for harvest, not by the gentle hand of God’s loving care, but as the object of his fierce wrath. As God said, “The end has come upon my people Israel; I will never again pass by them.” These people were ripe in their sins, but not in righteousness. They would be gathered for mourning and destruction, not for celebration and reward. When the great harvest time comes, let’s make sure we are ripe in holiness and ready to be gathered by the gleaning angels into the Father’s barn. We do not want to be ripe in wickedness, and gathered to be cast into the fire and burned. I do not mean to offend by these words. I mean to remind us that harvest time comes. When it does, we do not want Jeremiah’s sad lament to be ours: “The harvest is past, the summer is ended, and we are not saved.”
Copyright © 2024 by Michael B. McElroy. Used by permission. All rights reserved.
Today in God's Word—September 2024
East Tallassee Church of Christ
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