Judgement of the Heathen Nations #2

Transcription of the third episode of Studies in the book of Amos brought to you by Pastor Rusty Tardo.

You can listen to the series here.

“Let's open them to the Book of Amos. We're going to continue our studies here.

Amos chapter one.

We began looking a couple of weeks ago, studying this Book of Amos. Remember who Amos is? The herdsman from Tekoa, the prophet from the southern kingdom who was prophesying to the northern kingdom.

He was a missionary. The herdsman from Judea. He's gone up to the northern kingdom.

He's in some public place where people gather, and he begins to prophesy against the surrounding nations, the nations that surround Israel. We already saw as he follows a particular formula. That formula is repeated six times in the beginning of Chapter 1 and Chapter 2, where he says, Thus saith the Lord.

That's his claim for divine authority. He's not speaking out of his own mind or heart, but it's thus saith the Lord. This is God's message.

This authenticates him as well as God's prophet, God's messenger. Then he says in each case, for three transgressions and for four. It's rather an interesting phrase.

And the whole idea is he's saying that God has more than enough reasons to judge you. His reasons are full to overflowing. In fact, he's got more than enough reasons for you to be judged.

It's for three and for four. And then he, in each case, specifically names one sin that God is going to bring his wrath upon those nations for. One particular sin.

Perhaps that's the sin that was the last straw, you know, the sin that broke the camel's back. So six times here in Chapter one and Chapter two, he repeats this denunciation against the foreign nations. He uses that same ritual, that same scenario.

He goes through it each time. Now, we looked last week at his pronouncements of judgments against Damascus, which was the capital of Syria, the Syrian nation. That was Chapter one, verses three to five.

His denunciations against Gaza, which was representative of the Philistine nation. That was verses six through eight. And then, his pronouncement of judgment against Tyrus, which represented all of the Phoenician nation in verses nine and ten.

Tonight, we want to pick up with a fourth pronouncement of judgment against the Hithen nations. Now, this one against Edom, the nation of Edom in verses 11 and 12. Let's read these.

Amos prophesies, Thus saith the Lord, For three transgressions of Edom, and for four, I will not turn away the punishment thereof. Because he did pursue his brother with the sword, and did cast off all pity, and his anger did tear perpetually, and he kept his wrath forever. But I will send a fire upon Teman, which shall devour the palaces of Bosra. God's pronouncement of judgment upon Edom.

Now, the Edomites were the descendants of Esau. Some thousand years before, Jacob and Esau, Jacob, of course, God changed his name to Israel. He had twelve sons that became the twelve tribes of Israel.

Esau, his brother, that lost the birthright because of... He didn't esteem it. He didn't prize it.

He lost the birthright. He became a nation also, the nation of Edom, the Edomites. So, I want you to notice right here, in verse 11, he tells the Edomites this.

Because of the three transgressions and four for the Edomites, I will not turn away the punishment thereof because he did pursue his brother with the sword. So, who's his brother? Israel.

Edom, remember, the descendants of Esau, the Edomites pursued the Israelites. The Edomites, in fact, even though they had a common ancestry with Israel, they did not restrain themselves from vicious attacks upon Jerusalem, in fact, upon all of Judah. Verse 11 also says, They did cast off all pity.

You see that passage right there? Literally, it reads this. They destroyed any capacity that they had for compassion.

They destroyed any capacity that they may have had for mercy or pity. They suppressed it. They killed it.

They were a people without mercy when it came to their treatment of their brother. You know, in their ancient lineage, they were brothers. But they hated Israel, detested Israel, and any time anything even tried to arise in them that would make them feel sorry for Israel, they killed it.

They suppressed it. They destroyed it so that there was no place in them for mercy or compassion. They were a people who had no compassionate impulses, at least towards the people of Israel.

They filled their hearts, that is, at least towards Israel, only with thoughts of hatred and murder. All they wanted was the destruction of Israel. Now, you don't have to think very hard to recognize that these kinds of attitudes are still prevalent today amongst the Arab people.

They don't have to have a reason for hating Israel. They just hate them. They detest them, and they have no compassion.

They see Israelites being bombed, even though Israel didn't do anything, and you think that they feel sorry for them? They don't think like you and I do, brothers and sisters. We see a nation over there surrounded by enemies.

We see them being bombed by Iraq, and we would think that at least the Arabs would have some compassion towards Israel because they didn't do anything to provoke Hussein. But they don't think like we do. Just like ancient Edom, most Arabs have no compassion whatsoever, no feelings of mercy or pity towards Israel at all.

If anything, they like the idea that Hussein is bombing Israel. Now, if you think that's not true, then your head's buried in the sand. They don't think like we do.

They just don't think the way we do. But here's what the Bible says their sin was. Verse 11, their sin was hate.

Hate, hatred of the people of Israel. They had no mercy towards them, no compassion, no pity. Notice he says this.

His anger did tear perpetually. He was constantly hateful and angry towards the people of Israel. They were viciously cruel and hatred towards Judah, and they attacked him at every opportunity that they had.

Every chance they had, they attacked Judah. They attacked the people of God. Now notice this, the last part.

He kept his wrath forever. They wouldn't give it up. They wouldn't give up their anger.

They couldn't be reasoned with. They couldn't be talked out of it. They weren't the kind of people you could sit down and speak rationally to about this unnatural hatred they had for their neighbor Israel, their brother Israel.

God called them their brother because in their ancient lineage, they came from Jacob and Esau. There was no reasoning with them. They couldn't rationalize like normal people could.

They were just full of hatred, full of bitterness. They detested Israel. They wouldn't give it up.

They hated them with a passion. And you see the same thing today. I'll tell you, these passages, you read things like this, and it's so current.

It's not like something that occurred thousands of years ago. It's just right out of today's paper, because these things are going on right now. There are...

We can see it not only in these Arabian countries, but keep in mind that there are people today right here in America who can't be reasoned with also. There are people who fill their hearts with bitterness and anger and hatred, and you can't sit down and reason with them. They have given themselves over to demons or something, because you can't reason with them.

You can't talk like a normal person to them, because they've got this irrationality about them that just hates and detests. It drives them. It compels them to hate and despise.

Well, God says, You have no mercy in you at all. You have no pity in you at all. You're full of hate.

That's all you do is hate, hate, hate, hate. And therefore, I'm going to bring judgment upon you. In fact, therefore, He tells them literally, I'm going to kill you because of this hatred.

Nothing but animosity. Let me give you an example. Keep your finger right here.

But let me show you an interesting passage about the kind of spirit the Edomites had towards Israel. Look with me to the Book of Numbers. Here's a good example.

Numbers chapter 20. This is the kind of thing that was going to bring judgment right upon their heads. Numbers 20 is a good example.

This is just one example. Numbers 20, beginning in verse... Well, 14.

The people of God are in the wilderness. Notice this. Numbers 20, 14.

Moses sent messengers from Kadish unto the king of Edom. This is the Edomites, the same ones that God is pronouncing judgment against over in Amos that we're reading about. Thus saith thy brother Israel.

Moses appeals to their common ancestry. Thus saith thy brother Israel. Thou knowest all the travail that hath befallen us, how our fathers went down into Egypt.

We have dwelt in Egypt a long time, and the Egyptians vexed us and our fathers. And when we cried unto the Lord, He heard our voice and sent an angel and has brought us forth out of Egypt. And behold, we are in Kadish, a city, in the uttermost of thy border.

Let us pass, I pray thee, through thy country. We will not pass through the fields or through the vineyards, neither will we drink of the water of the wells. We will go by the king's highway.

We will not turn to the right hand nor to the left until we have passed thy borders. We just want to pass through. We won't go through your fields and eat your food.

We won't go through your vineyards and trample them down or eat anything. We're not going to bother you. We're not going to drink from your wells.

We just want to pass through. That's all. And he appeals to their common ancestry.

He appeals to, you know how we've been in slavery for all these years. He just asks for pity. He just asks for mercy.

A little common human compassion. Notice the answer of Edom, verse 18. And Edom said unto him, Thou shalt not pass by me, lest I come out against thee with the sword.

And the children of Israel said unto him, We will go by the highway, and if I and my cattle drink of thy water, then I'll pay for it. I will only, without doing anything else, go through on my feet. And he said, Thou shalt not go through.

And Edom came out against him with much people and with a strong hand. Thus Edom refused to give Israel passage through his border. Wherefore Israel turned away from him.

If we drink any of your water, we'll pay for it, more than what it's worth. They said, You're not passing through at all. You stay out of our land.

Stay off of our property. If you dare to pass through, we'll attack. And that's exactly what they did.

They did attack with a strong army, and they drove Israel right back across their border. Why? Pure meanness.

That's why. Pure hatred. That's why.

No compassion. That's the very thing God addressed over there in Amos. He said because you had no pity, no compassion, because you're just full of hatred, just pure meanness.

Unfortunately, the world's still full of people like that. I don't know. You know, this past week, a lot of interesting things have happened with this war that's broken out in the Middle East.

If any of you heard what Jordan has recently told Israel, you know, Iraq has been firing missiles at Israel, of course, over Jordan. If Iraq, if Israel dares to mount any return strike, if they go out to retaliate against Iraq, Jordan says, if you fly over our airspace, we'll go to war with you. You'll have to deal with us.

We'll send our armies against yours. Jordan is like modern Edom, saying, it's all right if Iraq bombs you over our airspace, but if you dare to try to go after Iraq, you'll have to deal with us. Well, there you go again.

It's just that irrational, demonic hatred of the Arab for the Jew. It's been that way all along. But you see, it's the same thing.

We just see it today. Here's the same thing right there. You can't pass by.

You can't even pass through our land. Well, God says He will judge such people. Back over here in the Book of Amos, notice what God says.

He won't forget their hatred. He won't forget the way that they treated His people. And I think that this should be a lesson really for anyone who still harbors any kind of unforgiveness, resentment, bitterness towards anyone.

Because though Amos was spoken to the Edomites, we can apply this, and we should apply this to our own selves, because keep in mind, anyone who harbors hatred is going to fall under divine judgment. That's the whole point here. 1 John 3.15, He that hateth his brother is a murderer.

And you know that no murderer has any life in him. He's not going to have any part of God's kingdom. 1 John 4.20, If any man say he loves God but hates his brother, he's a liar.

He says, if you hate, you're a liar. You don't love God. You're a murderer.

You know where liars go. Revelation 21.8. You know where murderers go.

They all spend eternity in the pit. But the Edomites were obsessed with hatred. A lot of people today have become obsessed with hatred.

They were hurt. They were offended. Somebody took advantage of them, and now they can't forgive or they won't forgive.

They're just obsessed with desires for revenge, retaliation. These things will destroy us. They'll bring God's wrath upon us.

Here's God's pronouncement of wrath upon Edom. Verse 12, I will send a fire upon Teman, which shall devour the palaces of Bosra. Teman and Bosra, the northern and southern seats of the Edomite kingdom.

In other words, God's saying, I'm going to destroy them from top to bottom. From top to bottom, he would destroy. He would have those palaces, their cities, their fortresses, ravaged, plundered, and destroyed.

In fact, this judgment was fulfilled by the cruelest people who ever lived, the Assyrians, and later, Babylon as well, ravished the Edomite nation. God showed no mercy to the people who showed no mercy. And once again, we have an illustration of the Biblical principle that what a man sows, that's out, shall he also reap.

So this judgment of Edom should stand as a lesson and an example to all of those who are cruel, mean-spirited, who harbor bitterness and unforgiveness. You harbor those things to your own destruction. They harbor those things to their own hurt.

Then we see fifthly, God's pronouncement of judgment against Ammon, verses 13 through 15. Let's read these. Verse 13.

Thus saith the Lord, for three transgressions of the children of Ammon and for four, I will not turn away the punishment thereof. Because they have ripped up the women with child of Gilead, that they might enlarge their border. But I will kindle a fire in the wall of Rabba, and it shall devour the palaces thereof, with shouting in the day of battle, with a tempest in the day of the whirlwind.

And their king shall go into captivity, he and his princes together, saith the Lord. So verses 13 and 14 and 15 deal with the pronouncement of judgment against the Ammonites. Now, the Ammonites were also distant blood relatives to Israel.

Ammon, the nation of Ammon, sprang from the incestuous relationship of Lot with his daughters. Remember after they fled from Sodom and Gomorrah, his daughters got him drunk. It just shows you how perverted they had become by living in Sodom for all of those years.

His daughters got him drunk, lay with him, and both of his daughters became with child, pregnant by their drunken father. And one of the daughters had a son named Ammon. The other daughter had a son named Moab.

The two sons of Lot who was the nephew of Abraham, those two sons of Lot became deadly enemies of Israel throughout their history. So we see the descendants of Abraham, though Abraham and Lot were related, uncle and nephew you've got here, Abraham's children were hated and despised by Lot's children, those children of that incestuous relationship. Well, here's the specific sin that God charges the Ammonites with.

And I want you to know that it really is an inhuman sin, truly vicious and cruel, the way that the Ammonites dealt with the Israelite women of Gilead when they conquered that land. Notice it says, Because they have ripped up the women with child of Gilead, that they might enlarge their border. Literally, they just ripped their bellies open.

The pregnant women of Israel just ripped their bellies open, pulled the unborn children out of their bellies, and let both die, mother and child, let them both die in the dust. For no reason but just total viciousness and cruelty, it wasn't because they posed any threat to them, to be sure. In fact, notice the goal or the ambition of the Ammonites.

The very last part of verse 13 says this, that they might enlarge their border. In other words, their sole purpose, goal, and aim was they wanted more land. So, they went after Gilead.

And in attacking Gilead, whenever they not only killed the men, but whenever they came across women who were with child, they just ripped them, ripped them open, tore the children out of their wombs, and let mother and baby die in the dust. Now, some commentators suggest that that was not really an uncommon practice in those days, that it was something that many of these, the Assyrians certainly practiced it, many other of these vicious people did. But you would think that the blood relatives of Israel would at least have some mercy upon their brother, their, through their ancient lineage and ancestry, that they would at least have some mercy upon them.

But here again, you find the people who don't know the meaning of the term, who don't know what compassion really is. The other day, I was listening to the radio just a couple of days ago, and they had a lady who has written a book about the Iraqi treatment of the Kuwaitis since Iraq invaded Kuwait back in August and took over. This woman was being interviewed.

She had interviewed many, many Kuwaitis from out of the country there, and they talked about their treatment in the hand of the Iraqis. Now, here you have Muslim against Muslim, brother against brother, Arab against Arab.

They talked about, the woman talked about how they went into the hospitals, everybody who was sick, everybody who was in intensive care, everybody who was dying, if they were a Kuwaiti, they ripped them out of their beds and threw them out of the hospital. There were no hospital beds, no rooms, nothing available for Kuwaitis, only for Iraqis. They went into the nurseries where the babies were, pulled them out of incubators and threw them on the floor.

And took away all the incubators and just left the babies to die, left the mothers to die. The inhuman treatment of the Kuwaitis by the Iraqis was almost, it was almost beyond belief. Burning people's eyeballs out with cigarettes, removing tongues and lips and ears, and just unbelievable treatment of the Kuwaitis by the Iraqis.

I tell you what, I heard all of that, and then it made me think, well, you know, maybe the things that's going on in Iraq right now is just divine retribution. Because listen, there is a God who punishes injustice. There is a God who punishes injustice, even when wicked nation attacks wicked nation.

There are certain atrocities committed, even when there's war taking place, that God will not excuse. God will never excuse the inhuman treatment of innocent civilians like this, especially where innocent people are brutally murdered. There is a God who punishes such injustices.

And it made me think, well, maybe what Iraq is receiving right now is a part of God's retribution upon them, by the way, because of the way they've treated so many people through the years, the way they treated Iran some years ago, gassing them, the way they treated the Kurds, gassing their own people, the Turks. Iraq has a history of viciousness, of cruelty, of inhumanity, of murder.

I don't know God's mind in all of this, but I do know this, the nation of Iraq is being brought to its knees. That much is certain. Hussein may ride out the storm for a while, but he sure has given his people over to annihilation.

Interesting that the war that's taking place in the Middle East right now is for the very same reason that God said He was going to judge Ammon. They simply wanted to enlarge their border. You see it in verse 13, the latter part of verse 13.

Why? Why did Ammon do this? Why did they deal so cruelly with the people of Israel to enlarge their border?

They just wanted more land. Well, that's what Iraq did with Kuwait. They just wanted more land.

That's what started World War II. Adolf Hitler just wanted more land. He was eating up those nations surrounding Germany like they were breakfast cereal.

He just gobbled them up till he got to Poland. And then World War began, a world war that wouldn't end until some 50 million people were dead. World War II took the lives of some 50 million people when civilians and soldiers and everyone is counted altogether.

God said He would not allow their atrocious sins. In fact, the sins of Ammon would have to be considered the apex of cruelty, the way they dealt with the women of Gilead. God said in verse 14 and verse 15 that the ravages of war, He would send fire, He said, and that's always symbolic of war.

I will send fire in the wall of Rabba. The whole idea here is Rabba is their capital city. It represents the whole nation of the Ammonites.

God said their entire nation would crumble. That's what He's saying. The palaces would be destroyed and devoured.

All of their power and strength would be broken. Their nation would be plundered. Notice also verse 14.

He speaks all about the shouting in the day of battle and so forth. Notice this. With a tempest in the day of the whirlwind.

That's the way God's going to come against Ammon. Because of the cruelty, the viciousness in which they dealt with the people of Gilead, God said, I'll come after you with a tempest in the day of the whirlwind. It's like a hurricane and a tornado all at the same time.

And I'll leave nothing. I'll leave nothing but devastation in the wake of it all. That's the whole idea.

You know, the tempest and the whirlwind, the hurricane and the tornado, they leave nothing in their path but devastation, just a trail of devastation. That's all that would be left of Ammon. And all of the royalty, verse 15, would go into captivity.

They would all be destroyed, killed, or they'd be left in such a state that they wished they were killed. Because the way that people often dealt with captured royalty was inhumane, you know, inhuman in itself. Usually they crippled any captured royalty.

If they left them alive, they blinded them, many times removing tongue and lips, cut off legs, or at least cut up their legs so that they could never walk again, leave them crippled, removing thumbs and toes. They mutilated them and then mocked them for the rest of their days, is what was often the case of captured royalty. I want to read a verse to you because it's significant.

Listen to this. This is what God did to Ammon. Now, He pronounced judgment against the Ammonites right here.

You know, He talked about annihilation and destruction. Let me read a couple of verses to you from... Let me read one over in Ezekiel.

Ezekiel chapter 25. This speaks of judgment against Ammon. Listen to this.

Ezekiel 25 and verse 5. He says, this is God's pronouncement of judgment.

Remember, this is the capital of the Ammonites. I will make Rabah a stable for camels, and the Ammonites a couching place for flocks. And you shall know that I am the Lord.

In other words, this mighty city, the capital of the Ammonites, this place of their pride, and this fortress...

We're going to become a barren, grazing land. The flocks and the camels are just going to eat there. There'll be nothing but ruins left.

There's another passage over in Zephaniah. Listen to this one. Zephaniah chapter two and verse nine.

God says this about the Ammonites, and the Moabites as well, but listen to this. Zephaniah two and verse nine. Therefore, as I live, saith the Lord of hosts.

So here's God swearing by himself. So this is a solemn oath God is taking. He's saying, as I live, saith the Lord, here's something that's going to come to pass, and you can mark it down.

It'll be just the way God said it. Therefore, as I live, saith the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel, surely Moab shall be as Sodom, and the children of Ammon as Gomorrah, even the breeding of nettles and salt pits, and a perpetual desolation. The residue of my people shall spoil them, and the residue, the remnant of my people, shall possess them.

He says, I'm going to make the Ammonites like I made Sodom and Gomorrah. Nothing but a salt pit. Total annihilation, total destruction.

Now, here's the quotation from the 19th century from a historian and an explorer who went to this ancient land. I want to read something that he said. An American explorer, he wrote this about the once mighty empire of the Ammonites.

He said this, listen, not an inhabited village remains, and not an Ammonite exists on the face of the earth. God did to them just what they attempted to do to Israel. They wanted to exterminate Israel.

They wanted to murder the unborn of the women of Gilead. Perhaps their motivation was, if we kill the unborn, if we kill their children, they'll never be able to retaliate against us, because we're going to kill all their unborn. You know, even in 20 years or 30 years, they won't have any males to come after us.

Well, God destroyed them. And once again, you see a powerful illustration of the law of sowing and reaping. What you sow, you will reap.

God annihilated the nation that intended to annihilate Israel. God just wiped them right off the face of the earth, so that not an ammonite exists on the face of the earth. Then back in Amos chapter 2, we come to chapter 2 now, as God pronounces judgment upon Moab verses 1 through 3.

Amos 2, 1 through 3. Thus saith the LORD, for three transgressions of Moab and for four, I will not turn away the punishment thereof, because he burned the bones of the king of Edom into lime. But I will send a fire upon Moab, and it shall devour the palaces of Kiroth.

And Moab shall die with tumult, with shouting, and with the sound of a trumpet. And I will cut off the judge from the midst thereof, and will slay all the princes thereof with him, saith the LORD. Now this is the last pronouncement of judgment against the heathen nations.

See, all along, Amos the prophet has been prophesying against all the heathen nations, the enemies of Israel. And I can just picture that crowd just saying, Amen! That's right!

Preach it. Say it. Praise God.

That's right! But after he pronounced his judgment against Moab, then he says, Thus saith the LORD to Judah, and then thus saith the LORD to Israel. So he didn't stop there.

And keep in mind also, you know, God didn't write in chapters. But here he speaks again by divine prompting, Thus saith the LORD, verse 1 of chapter 2. He mentions their multiplied guilt for three transgressions and for four.

He follows the same pattern. And then the sin, the specific sin, he mentions against the Moabites, is that they burned the bones of the king of Edom into lime or into powder, into ashes. Now, that particular account where that occurred is not mentioned in the Bible.

We don't have the record of that. But most Bible scholars believe that the war that's recorded in 2 Kings 3 is when this event took place, that's spoken of right here. Kyle and Delich, some very reliable commentators on the Old Testament, said this about this passage, that Jewish tradition says that after that war, that war that's mentioned there in 2 Kings 3, after that war, the Moabites dug up the grave of the king of Edom.

They dug up his grave and then burned his bones to ashes. Now, he was already dead, so what they did was to desecrate his dead body. Now, to appreciate how the Jews would consider that a heinous sin, you have to keep in mind the respect with which they considered their dead.

The Jews always treated their dead with a great deal of respect. The dead were anointed, they were wrapped, and then they were buried. They were not embalmed.

Embalming, of course, was an Egyptian practice. They were not cremated. Cremation was a pagan practice, a heathen practice that the Jews detested.

Cremation came from the ancient philosophy of the Greeks and other of the ancients that believed that the body was actually a prison for the spirit and that in order to free the spirit, they had to annihilate or destroy or cremate the body. And so that's the way they often treated their dead. But the Jews always buried their dead, always buried their dead, and they always did it in a very dignified manner.

To the Jew, they considered it a matter of being cursed by God if, number one, their body was not buried with proper dignity or respect. Number two, if their body was left to rot in the field, you know, like sometimes they were killed in battle and so forth. If their body was just left out in the field to rot and decay and let the wild animals eat it and the birds gnaw it and all that, that was considered by the Jews a mark of cursedness, that God had judged them and cursed them for allowing that to happen to their remains.

They wanted their body to be properly buried. And that's the way they always treated their dead. It was considered also a mark of cursedness if the body of the dead was desecrated in any way or if their bones were mistreated.

So here's the sin of the Moabites. They desecrated the dead body of the king of Edom. In other words, they were so full of hate towards the Edomites that they weren't satisfied just with his death.

Even after the man was dead, they exhumed his body and then they incinerated his body. They burned it to powder. Now, many Americans don't, of course, we don't think today like the Jews thought then, but I think it's significant that you note that God is pronouncing judgment upon the Moabites for cremating the body of the king of Edom.

Cremation was just not something Jews did. And even though the Moabites and the Ammonites were not Jews, they were brothers of the Jews because they all had that common ancestor. Remember Ammon and the Moab.

They all go back to Ammon and Moab, to Lot's sons by his incestuous relationship with his daughters, and of course, Edomites are descendants from Esau, which go back to Jacob and Esau. So all of these people are related. All of these people are brethren by far, far ancestry.

But notice God pronounces judgment upon them because of the way they treated this dead body.

We could also perhaps mention that in church history, as well as in the history of the Jews, there have been people who were cremated, but not by their own intention. Christians who were burned at the stake and so forth, that was not considered a mark of cursiveness. They considered it a privilege to die for Christ in such cases as that, when they were martyred for their faith.

But cremation was never something that the Jew or the Christian should consider by any stretch of the imagination. These people were so full of hate that they took out their aggression on the bones of a dead man. Now, you know, that's pretty hateful.

That's pretty spiteful. Well, God says, because of that, verse 2, I'll send a fire upon Moab. It'll devour the palaces of Cherub.

There's their cities, their palaces, their walled fortifications and so forth. The same people who burned the bones of the King of Edom would have that very same judgment fall upon them. On their own heads, they would reap what they sowed.

God says, you sent the fire upon the bones of the King of Edom. Verse 2, I'll send fire upon Moab. It'll devour your palaces.

Moab shall die with tumult, with shouting and the sound of the trumpet. God would bring judgment, devastation. In fact, he brought incineration upon these cities because Moab, too, remember the account we read over in Zephaniah chapter 2, verses 9?

I think it was verse 9. It said, Moab and Ammon would be made like into Sodom and Gomorrah. In other words, God just incinerated those nations.

They just, he just exterminated them. Those who intended to treat the people of Israel with such wickedness, God exterminated. Now, here's an interesting thought.

I want you to keep this in mind. You know, all the other nations he pronounced judgment on, he always says for three transgressions and for four, you know, this is, your sins are overflowing. And then he names one sin in particular that they committed.

Well, in this last case, he mentions that the sin of Moab was actually against Edom. All the rest of them, he mentioned, their sin was against Israel. It was against the people of Israel.

But this one, he says, it's because of the way you treated Edom. Now remember, all these people are related. God says any injustice of one nation against another, God will deal with.

He will punish those people. Even if that injustice is not necessarily against the people of God. If it's just one nation against another, even if they're both totally heathen nations, and yet they are against each other in such cruelty and viciousness and hatred, God will judge them for that.

Now, of course, the Moabites had a long history of hatred against Israel, and many, many of the acts that they had performed against the nation of Israel were equally heinous, and God judged them for those things too. But the point I'm making is that even when a nation like Moab attacks Edom and treats them so viciously, God judges Moab for it. Well, so when a nation like Iraq would attack a nation like Kuwait, you know, God will judge, God does judge.

He'll judge all of these people. He brings everyone into judgment at one time or another. You know, you're going to reap what you sow.

There comes a day when everybody stands before the Lord and reaps what they sow. The things we want to learn from these passages, from these studies, we want to learn to apply them to ourselves so that we don't harbor in our hearts the very things that brought judgment against other people. We don't want to harbor any sort of anger, animosity, bitterness, hatred.

These are the things that God destroys nations over. These are the things that God judges individuals over. These are the things that eat a man's soul or a woman's soul.

They destroy lives and homes and marriages and relationships, and certainly, they have no... they must have no place in the people of God. From here, Amos begins to prophesy against Israel, against Judah and Israel.

But we're going to save that for the next time. I just want you to note and leave with these thoughts that what we sow, we reap, and that such things as hatred, bitterness, animosity towards anyone will certainly prove our downfall if they're not repented of.

Well, praise God. Father, we ask that you would make the words of this book come alive to us and help us all, Father, to make application in our own lives. Father, we pray for deliverance in every regard from any animosity, anger, bitterness, hatred, resentment, desire for revenge or retaliation.

Father, purge our hearts from such things, we pray, as we yield ourselves to You. Father, don't let us become as these ancient nations who refuse to have pity, who refuse to forgive, who refuse to show compassion. Father, remove such things from us.

Let our hearts be ever tender. Let us be a compassionate people, a forgiving people, a loving people. Father, help us in our relationships with each other, in our relationships with others, with family members, with neighbors, with co-workers, with relations.

Help us, Father, help us, to manifest always the spirit of Christian charity and love. Help us, Father, to love our enemies, even as Christ taught us, so as not to hate or despise anyone.

Father, we ask now as we lay our lives, lay our hearts upon Your altar, that Father, You perform that spiritual surgery to cut out from us right now, cut out that poison, that cancer of hatred, of bitterness, of anger, of animosity, of desire for revenge. Please remove it far from us, Father, for we know it's a cancer that will destroy us. Cut it out, Father.

Let Your hand cut deep into our heart. Do whatever You must to remove that from us so that our hearts might be right before You and healthy and whole and pure and clean from the guilt and stain and poison of hatred.

And Father, we thank You for doing it right now. In Jesus' name, Amen. Amen.

Hallelujah. Let's stand."