When a Vineyard becomes a Graveyard

Transcription of the eleventh episode in Studies in the Book of Amos brought to you by Pastor Rusty Tardo.

You can listen here.

"Do you have your Bibles? I'd like for you to turn with me tonight, if you would, to Amos chapter 8.

We've been studying the prophet Amos.

The last time we studied in chapter 7, the beginning of a new section of this book, where Amos begins revealing a series of five visions that the Lord gave him. There were three he spoke of there in chapter 7, the vision of the locust, the vision of the fire, and then the last one, there was the vision of the plum line that he saw in chapter 7. Now, beginning in chapter 8, Amos has a whole new vision, and this chapter is the chapter that speaks of his vision of summer fruit.

I've titled the study tonight, When a Vineyard Becomes a Graveyard. When a Vineyard Becomes a Graveyard. So let's begin reading here in Amos chapter 8.

Thus hath the Lord God showed unto me, and behold, a basket of summer fruit. And He said, Amos, what seest thou? And I said, a basket of summer fruit.

Then said the Lord unto me, The end is come upon my people of Israel. I will not again pass by them anymore. And the songs of the temple shall be howlings in that day, sayeth the Lord God.

There shall be many dead bodies in every place, and they shall cast them forth with silence. Hear this, O ye that swallow up the needy, even to make the poor of the land to fail, saying, When will the new moon be gone, that we may sell corn, and the Sabbath, that we may set forth wheat, making the ephah small and the shekel great, and falsifying the balances by deceit, that we may buy the poor for silver, and the needy for a pair of shoes, yea, and sell the refuse of the wheat? The Lord hath sworn by the excellency of Jacob, surely I will never forget any of their works, shall not the land tremble for this, and everyone mourn that dwelleth therein?

And it shall rise up holy as a flood, and it shall be cast out and drowned as by the flood of Egypt. And it shall come to pass in that day, saith the Lord God, that I will cause the sun to go down at noon, and I will darken the earth in the clear day, and I will turn your feasts into morning and all your songs into lamentation, and I will bring up sackcloth upon all loins and baldness upon every head, and I will make it as the morning of an only sun and the end thereof as a bitter day. Now, I know that most all of us are familiar with verses 11 and 12.

Behold, the days come, sayeth the Lord God, that I will send a famine in the land, not a famine of bread nor a thirst of water, but of hearing the words of the Lord. And they shall wander from sea to sea, and from the north even to the east, they shall run to and fro, and seek the word of the Lord, and shall not find it. In that day shall the fair virgins and young men faint for thirst, they that swear by the sin of Samaria, and say, Thy God, O Dan, liveth, and the manner of Bersheba liveth, even they shall fall, and never rise up again.

It's a very solemn and sober passage, just as all of Amos has been. Nowhere has Amos really offered any solace or any comfort to the people of Israel. His message is continually harsh, continually reproving, continually a message of coming judgment.

The people who hear Amos certainly don't go there and leave feeling good. That's for sure. You hear Amos preach, and it's all gloom and doom.

It's all condemning. It's all judgment, judgment, judgment. Now, actually, what Amos sees here in this vision is something that was real common in his day, and especially in that part of the world, a vision of summer fruit.

Now, that's not profound. The first thing we want to see is this vision he has of summer fruit. Amos saw a basket.

God said, now, what do you see, Amos? I can just picture him standing in a marketplace, which would be quite a common thing to do. Nothing extraordinary about this or spectacular about it.

It would be a very common site, an ordinary site in the streets and marketplaces of Samaria. There would be quite a crowd around as sellers would hawk their goods and farmers would sell and trade their crops and their produce. The buyers would barter and mingle trying to find the best deals and so forth.

Nothing very profound as you see a basket of summer fruit there. It would be pretty much like you seeing a box of tomatoes, you know, in the grocery store and nothing profound about that, or looking at a sack of oysters or a sack of crawfish, you know, down here in our part of the country, you look at a sack of crawfish and the Lord says to you, what do you see? You say, a sack of crawfish.

What does that mean? I have no idea. I have no idea.

I mean, what's so spectacular about a sack of crawfish or a sack of oysters? Well, that's about the way it was with Amos, seeing his summer fruit, just a common, ordinary sight. You know, a vision doesn't mean anything unless the Lord tells you what it means.

It doesn't mean a thing. What is that, Amos? It's a basket of summer fruit.

But if the Lord doesn't tell him what he's trying to show him, if he doesn't give him a message from that basket, that ordinary basket, the ordinary basket had an extraordinary interpretation as God began to show him what it all meant. But there have been things. You maybe have experienced the same thing.

Maybe you've had visions before. Maybe the Lord's shown you things. Maybe it was something common.

Maybe it was something ordinary. Maybe it was something profound. But unless he gave you what it meant, then you were just baffled.

I've had people ask me at different times. They say, Brother Rusty, let me tell you what the Lord showed me. And then they'll tell me, I saw a streetcar going down St. Charles Avenue and people all hanging out the windows and waving or whatever.

What do you think it meant? I have no idea what it meant! I don't know what it meant.

Whenever the Lord shows you something, ask Him, Lord, what does this mean? Lord, what are You telling me? What's the message here?

Because there have been many times the Lord has shown me things, and then I would just ask Him, Lord, what are You showing me? Lord, what's the message here? What does this mean?

And then He would tell me. He would give me the meaning. I'll never forget perhaps the first vision I ever had, one of the earliest at least.

We were not long in our charismatic experience that I was worshiping the Lord, because a lot of times that's when the Lord would give me visions in my mind's eye. And I was just, my eyes were closed. We were in the middle of a church service.

My hands were up. I was just oblivious to everyone and everything. I want to tell you something.

You don't have visions when you're looking around and see what everybody else is doing. You don't have visions. The Lord doesn't speak to you when you're just talking to the guy next to you or the lady next to you.

You're passing notes to one another, or you're all outdone over the day's busyness, or you've got your mind on a thousand other things, or you're all concerned about what the person around, what they're wearing today, or what this one's doing, or if he's here or they're there, and you're looking at one, if the other one's saying, you don't have visions that way. The Lord's not going to show you anything. He's not going to use you in the gifts that way.

Hello? When we come and we assemble, it's for you to ask the Lord to use you, for you to minister to the Lord, to worship Him, to praise Him, to actually come into a time of praise and worship and supplication, asking God to use you, to minister to you, to use you in the gifts. I really think that we've developed some bad habits.

I think we come to church too casually. I really do. We come to church too casually.

We come talking and conversing and having a good time. Not that there's anything wrong with that. Because we love one another, we want to talk to one another.

But we need to come praying. We need to come asking the Lord to fall upon us, to use us, to minister to us, to minister to people who are here, to have a word from the Lord for us, to speak to our hearts, to our needs, to use the ministry of the Word, to anoint the worship team. We ought to come prayerfully.

We really should. I know the correspondence I get from Brother Wilkerson as he relates the tremendous outpouring of God's Spirit that's going on in Times Square Church. You know what he says?

The people are there an hour early to pray, not to socialize, not to talk and laugh and run up and down and just have a good time. Not that it's wrong to love one another and converse and socialize. You follow what I'm saying?

But when we come, it ought to be, let's pray that God would fall upon us in a powerful way, that God would use us, that God would minister to us, that there be a word from the Lord for us. We come too casually. We come, we sit, we hear the Word, we listen to the worship service.

Sometimes we enter in, half the time, we think, these guys, I don't know what they're doing wrong. They ought to be doing something else, but I don't know what it is. I'll tell you what it is.

It's you. It's you.

If our hearts were right, if we came in, I'm telling you, if we came in expecting God to move, expecting God to fall upon us, He would! He would.

I really believe we need to become a little bit more sober and serious minded about the assembly. In our time of worship and praise and prayer, asking God to use you... This is just for you to ask yourself and be honest with yourself.

When is the last time you sincerely asked God to use you in the gifts of the Spirit? The Bible tells us that the manifestation of the gifts is given to everyone for the profit of all.

Come on. Lord, use me in the gifts. Lord, anoint tonight.

Just let Your Spirit move upon us tonight. Lord, touch somebody's life. Save somebody tonight.

Fill somebody with the Holy Ghost tonight. That's the way we ought to come. Use me tonight.

Let there be just a sense of reverence, of awe, of expectancy, of the presence of God. Let that be in our midst. Sometimes we come too casually.

We really do. And certainly when you come and you're all just caught up in all of these other things, foolish things, busy things, things of the world, whatever, looking around, seeing what others are doing, God's not going to give you anything. God's not going to anoint you.

He's not going to use you. But if you can come and you come genuinely asking the Lord to anoint you, to use you in the gifts, to speak to you, to speak through you, to use the ministry, to use the worship, to let His anointing be here, if you come and you forget everybody else that's here and you just enter into the worship and praise of the Lord, you know you just might find God will start showing you things and giving you things and using you. But I can remember standing up in the front of the church just worshiping and praising the Lord, new in my charismatic experience, and I had a, it was profound to me, a vision of an ostrich with its head buried in the sand.

And then a figure of a very hideous looking individual whipping that ostrich with a whip. The ostrich head buried in the sand and the man whipping the ostrich, and every time the ostrich would shudder and feathers would tear off and blood would form, and that thing would whip it again. Boy, this was profound.

But I had no idea what the Lord was showing me. Lord, what is this? And then, then the Lord began to speak to me about what he was, exactly what he was showing me.

And it was that the ostrich represented Christians. It represented the church in many regards. And the man whipping the ostrich was the devil.

But this is what was happening. As the ostrich was being whipped, its head was buried in the sand, and it didn't have no idea who was whipping it, and it was saying to itself, Oh God, why are you doing this to me? Oh God, why am I going through these things?

Oh God. But it wasn't God doing it at all. It was the devil doing the whipping.

And then I saw a knight with a sword who just began to cut that whip into shreds. Every time the whip would come to lash out against the ostrich, the ostrich became a knight with a sword that just cut that whip to pieces. And that was a Christian who knew how to take his attack to the enemy and not just sit by and think that everything that happens to him is God doing it, whether it was sickness.

You think it's God's doing that? No, you're supposed to take your sword and go fight the devil. It's the devil laying those things on you.

It's not God. God didn't bless anybody with sickness. It just so happened that that night, the pastor ministered on divine healing, and that sickness was not from God.

It was from the devil. And so the vision went right in with his message, because it simply confirmed everything that he was going to be saying, that a lot of times, Christians think that their sicknesses and oppressions, all those kind of things, come from God. Like the ostrich with its head buried in the sand.

It's not God at all. It's the devil. And we need to take up the sword of the Spirit, which is the Word of God, put our heads in the Word of God instead of in the sand, start believing God's Word, and fight the devil, resist the devil.

He'll flee from us. Fight those kinds of sicknesses and so forth. Well, the point is that God gave Amos really not a real profound vision, a simple vision of a common ordinary object, a basket of summer fruit, but then an extraordinary meaning, an extraordinary message to the vision.

What do you see, Amos? Verse 2. Amos says, a basket of summer fruit.

Then said the Lord unto me. Okay? Here comes the interpretation.

Here comes the message. Then said the Lord unto me, the end is come upon my people of Israel. I will not again pass by them anymore.

The end is come. Their time has run out. And keep in mind that Israel had been experiencing a time of great privilege, of great prosperity, of great peace in their own borders.

They had lived a riotous, wanton lifestyle, a lifestyle of self-indulgence, a lifestyle of idolatry, refusing to harken to the word of the Lord, refusing to listen to the message of the prophet, Amos. Now, this is what God's saying. The season for them is over.

Now, that was the message. The season for them is over. And Amos grasped the significance immediately.

You see, this is the thing. The summer fruit was the fruit that came in at the end of the harvest. This was the last of the harvest.

This was it. There was no more after this. This was the end.

You know, it's kind of like crawfish season is running out. If you're going to get any, you better get them now, because after this, there ain't no more. You know what I'm saying?

Well, that's the way it was here with this summer fruit. This was the end of the year fruit. The end of the year.

There'd be no more after this. And the message was to Amos, Israel has come to its end. Israel is finished.

There'll be no more. Now, something as simple as that, simple as that summer fruit had such a profound message because God said, Israel as a nation, Israel as a people have come to their end. They will be no more.

No more time for them. No more grace for them. No more postponement of their judgment.

This was it. Their time had come. Verse 2, I want you to notice this.

The last thing he says in this verse, I will not pass by them anymore. Now, you remember when he said that same thing over in chapter 7 and verse 8 where he said actually the same thing, I'll not again pass by them anymore. This is it.

You know how previously when he had shown Amos the vision of the locust, remember when we studied this last time? The vision of the locust, the devouring locust, and Amos prayed, and God said it shall not be, because Amos interceded. Remember we studied last time?

And then the vision of the fire, he showed him the tremendous fire that would ravage the land, and Amos interceded, and God said this also shall not be. But then the last vision that he had in chapter 7, the vision of the plumb line, there was no more intercession because God said, I'm not going to pass by them anymore. I'm not going to postpone their judgment anymore.

They refused to repent. They continued to rebel. They refused to harken to my word.

Warning after warning I have given them. They refused to repent. Therefore, I will not delay their judgment anymore.

No more passing over them. Well, he repeats that same thing here in chapter 8. And verse 2, he says, I will not again pass by them anymore.

No more delaying. In other words, no more delaying of their judgment. Instead of saying, it shall not be, as he had said in those first two visions, now he's saying, this time it shall be.

Israel shall come to her end. And you know, as we've said in previous studies dealing with this book of Amos, you know that Israel did shortly thereafter come to its end. And as a nation, Assyria invaded them some years later, and the northern kingdom ceased to exist as a nation, never to come into existence again as a separate nation.

It was her end, finally and at last. So then God pronounces this, verse 3. He says, there will be weeping in harvest.

Now, this is going to be strange. Look with me in verse 3 again. The songs of the temple shall be howlings in that day, saith the Lord God.

There shall be many dead bodies in every place. They shall cast them forth with silence. Now, here's the significance.

This is the end of the harvest, you see. The last of the fruit, the summer fruit. Generally, the end of the harvest was a time of great rejoicing.

It was a time of song and mirth and happiness because all their toil, all their labors, it was all over now. The harvest was in, and that's the time of celebration. Agricultural nations have from time immemorial celebrated at the end of harvest.

But here's what God says here. No celebration at this harvest. This will be a time of weeping, a time of mourning.

Instead of singing, there would be howling, He said. There would be wailing. The wail of grief and mourning.

Verse 3. The songs would be howling in that day because of so many dead, of the slain, because of the devastation, because of the Assyrian invasion. So many of Israel would be killed.

There would be a great cry of grief and wailing. You see, according to verse 3, this harvest would not be a harvest of crops. It would be a harvest of corpses.

It would not be a harvest of grain. Where the grain was piled in heaps, it would be a harvest of the slain, where they would be piled in heaps instead. The mirth would be turned to mourning.

Their songs would be replaced by a shocked silence at the extent, at the magnitude, at the ferocity of the devastation that would come upon them so suddenly by the Assyrians. You know, the Assyrians were never noted for their mercy or for their compassion. They came in killing men, women, and children.

And so, what should have been a harvest of celebration became a harvest of the slain and a time of great wailing and great mourning. What a tragic end this would be. The people who had been so privileged by God, the people who had been so favored by God, the people who had been visited by God, the people who had so much would be devastated because of their rebellion.

Because they refused to repent. A tragic end, didn't it? Those who had been his vineyard would become a graveyard.

I believe that we can find a relevance today also in Amos' messages. We don't want to just look at these things and see how they applied to Israel in ancient days. We want to see how they apply to us today, because I believe Amos' messages do speak to our society today.

They're very relevant.

I'm reminded when I see this in verse 3 of how the Lord says, your songs will be turned into mourning and so forth. I'm reminded of something Jesus said. He said, woe to you who laugh now, for you shall weep.

Remember when Jesus spoke those words? Woe to you who laugh now, for you shall weep. You know, those who today are singing their blasphemous songs and the airwaves are permeated with them, songs of blasphemy, of irreverence, of immorality, Antichrist songs, those who are today, like Israel was then, indulging in a decadent, wanton lifestyle, immoral, rebellious, just like Israel was, materialistic, drunkenness, and wild.

You know, they're laughing now. They're partying now. But Jesus said, woe to those who laugh now, for they shall weep.

He's speaking of the laughter of the world, the laughter of sin, of foolishness. He said, they will weep. They may laugh now, but they won't laugh long.

They'll weep and they'll weep eternally. They'll soon weep and they'll eternally weep. Now, that's sobering, isn't it?

But that's exactly what it is. No one will be laughing or singing when judgment falls. So he sees, first of all, the vision of summer fruit.

Then let's see, secondly, that the fruit he sees is all rotten. Verses 4 through 6. You know, Jesus said in the Sermon on the Mount, you'd know them by their fruits.

Well, Israel's fruits were the fruits of wickedness, the fruits of rebellion. And the evidence of that rebellion was everywhere. Amos could have named any number of sins here, but he seems to concentrate on the kinds of sins that characterized a greedy nation, a materialistic nation.

And this is what he hones in on. Notice the fruits that he mentions, the rotten fruits of Israel. First of all, he calls them greedy.

And that's evident by the fact that they were oppressing the poor and the needy. Verse 4, hear this, O ye that swallow up the needy, even to make the poor of the land to fail. Swallowing up the needy.

Now, here's a picture of, it's a picture that he painted already back in chapter 2 and verse 7 of a predator, a predatory beast chasing an animal. Like a, you know, like a rabbit is chased by a dog, or a mouse is chased by a cat. Well, he says the poor are being chased by the rich.

Just like the cat chases the mouse to swallow it up, to devour it, to rip and tear it and eat it. Well, he paints this picture of the rich pursuing the poor. They were so consumed with greed that they weren't even satisfied with what they had.

They wanted to take what the poor had. What little they had, they wanted to take that from the poor. There is something that gets into a person who's given over to materialism and greed that never satisfies them.

They're never satisfied. If they had a million, they'd want two. If they had ten million, they'd want twenty.

If they had a hundred million, they'd want two hundred million. They're never satisfied. Always out to grasp.

And you know what's the saddest part of all? The Bible pictures these people as so greedy that they would actually pursue the poor like a cat pursues a mouse, to take away what little bit it had. They'd pursue the poor to take what little the poor had.

That's how greedy Israel had become. That's how materialistic they had become. Then he mentions another part of their rottenness.

Here in verse 5, he says, They profaned the Sabbath, saying, When will the new moon be gone, that we may sell corn, and the Sabbath that we may set forth wheat, making the Ephah small and the Shekel great, and falsifying the balances by deceit? One of the things that the Pharisees and scribes and Sadducees and all the religious groups, one of the charges they leveled often against Jesus was that he profaned the Sabbath because he broke it constantly, healing the sick, delivering the oppressed, casting demons out of people. Jesus did a lot of miracles on the Sabbath, always to help, always to bless, always to heal.

Here you've got a group of what would appear to be pious Israelites, pious keepers of the law, who didn't break the Sabbath like Jesus did when he healed the sick. They kept the Sabbath, but they profaned it in their hearts. Because though they observed it ritualistically, legalistically, they observed it in their hearts, all they could think of, man, I sure hope the Sabbath will get over with so we can go back to buying and selling, so we can go back to selling our goods.

They hated the thought that they were forbidden to buy or sell on the Sabbath or on the festival days. You see, Israel had a very strict law. Nothing, nothing is sold or purchased on the Sabbath day.

Everything shut down, you don't buy nor sell. And the merchants hated it. They had one thought in mind.

You know what that was, money.

They wanted to sell, they wanted to buy, they wanted to increase their wealth, and they hated the fact, detested the fact that they had to stop all of their money grasping and trading and so forth on the Sabbath days.

Well, I think that we can find a modern analogy here, modern application even, when you realize that it wasn't too many years ago, that everything was closed on Sunday. But today, the most important thing to the merchants and corporations, of course, is to make money. Not that we would be for the legislation of some legalistic law anyway, but the fact is that our country has seen a transformation in the past 20 years.

It really has, where the most important thing has become making money, making profits. Years ago, people counted to these corporations, to these stores. You know, I worked in a grocery store for a long time when I was in high school.

Even when I went to barber school, I worked in a grocery store. They never opened on Sunday, never. They wouldn't have imagined opening on Sunday.

Opening on Sunday. But now everything's open on Sunday. It's because these merchants, these owners and so forth, they're just out after the bucks.

That's what matters to them today. It's just money. So you see the analogies that we can paint.

I think if Amos were here today, he'd be leveling the same charges against America that he leveled against Israel. Hello. His message wouldn't be any different.

It'd be the same thing. The same thing, if he saw the way people behaved, if he saw the wantonness, the materialism, the irreverence, they're in church like these self-righteous Jews. They were in church, but they detested being there.

They couldn't wait for it to be over. Now, they couldn't wait for it to be over. They go sell and buy and so forth.

But how many come to church today, Christians, how many come to church, but they can't wait for it to be over so they can go eat, or so they can go watch the ball game, or so they can go do what they want to do. You follow what I'm saying? Now, they may be piously, sanctimoniously there, but they're profaning it even with their presence because in their hearts, in their hearts, they're profaning it by their hearts being somewhere else, not wanting to be there by any means.

All right, here's something else Amos indicted them for. The last part of verse 5, he indicted them for their dishonesty in their weights and measures. Notice the latter part of verse 5.

He says that we may set forth wheat, making the ephah small and the shekel great, and falsifying the balances by deceit. In other words, they engaged in false business practices to cheat the public. You know, like the old butcher who put his thumb on the scale, so that it looked like the meat he weighed up for you, weighed more than what it did.

He was pushing the scale down. Well, that's what they did. They falsified their scales and weights and balances.

You read the Old Testament, you'll find over and over, God speaks of how he detested those kinds of things. You know, God actually detests false business practices. That's right.

He detests it. If a person cheats the public, if a person deceives the public, if a person robs the public, or if he pretends to be selling something that's really worthwhile, and all the while he knows he's selling them a piece of junk. You know, God detests those kinds of practices.

He detests unethical business practices. Now, Israel was a wicked nation at this time. They were involved in every kind of immorality, every kind of idolatry imaginable, and Amos is addressing business practices unethical, immoral, deceitful business practices.

Now, I think that's significant. I really do. That God is concerned about how we conduct our everyday affairs, our everyday business.

That we do it ethically, morally, upright. That we give people what they pay for. You know, if we're in business, you don't cheat them.

You don't deceive them. You don't misrepresent your goods. If you're just selling something out the paper or whatever, you ought to tell them, listen, anything wrong with this thing you're selling?

Oh, not a thing. Works perfect. You know, you can't misrepresent goods, or you'd be just as guilty as Israel was in this regard.

God hates deceitful practices like that. He goes even further. Notice this in verse 6.

He indicts them even further for making slaves of the poor people who couldn't pay their debts, even for sometimes paltry sums of money. Verse 6 speaks of the price of a pair of shoes. That we may buy the poor for silver and the needy for a pair of shoes, yea, and sell the refuse of the wheat.

The refuse of the wheat was the chaff. You know, they were supposed to winnow or remove the chaff before they sold the grain, but they didn't do that. They mixed a lot of that chaff down in the bottom of the sack and then poured the grain in on top.

So they were actually selling these poor people who didn't have anything to begin with. It was hard for them to come up with money to buy the wheat, and they were selling them part chaff and part wheat. Fraudulent, deceitful business practices.

You know, we could expound quite a bit on how people today cheat others in their transactions, misrepresenting the goods, telling them they're selling them Class A merchandise, when in fact they're selling them Class C. You know, like we've been getting prices on shingles, and you find that there's big variations in prices. Somebody, you got to watch some of these contractors.

They'll tell you, oh yeah, we'll sell you a 25-year shingle. We'll sell you the best. And then you pay for the 25-year, and then they put on a 15-year shingle, you see, and it doesn't have, it's not as thick, and things like that.

That's the way people operate. It's unfortunate, but a lot of people operate that way. Christians, however, should always give people exactly what they pay for.

If you're in business, don't ever misrepresent what you sell in public. You hear all the time about fraudulent business practices. One of the major automakers was reprimanded not long ago and fined hundreds of millions of dollars.

You know why? Because they sold used cars as new cars, just put in new speedometers on them, and sold them as new cars. Actually, they had been executive cars that had no...

Nobody knew how many thousands and thousands of miles these cars had on them, but the manufacturer just changed all those speedometers, sold them as brand new cars, but they got caught. That's the kind of business practices we're talking about, fraudulent practices. It goes on all the time, misrepresenting goods, deceiving the public.

You know, God hates that kind of behavior. In fact, I want you to notice something here in verse 7. Look at what God says here.

The Lord hath sworn by the excellency of Jacob, surely I will never forget any of their works. God detests such behavior, and he says, I won't forget it. I won't forget it.

He's going to bring judgment upon them for it. I won't forget it. Now, keep in mind, this is an unrepentant people.

This is an unrepentant nation. If you've ever engaged in that kind of activity in the past, repent, and you'll find forgiveness. Hello.

But what we've got here is a nation of unrepentant people, and God says, I won't forget that. They've cheated the poor. You know, God always takes the side of the poor.

He takes the side of the needy. He takes the side of those who have been oppressed, those who have been trodden down by the rich and the hearty. God takes their side.

He hates it, and He says, I won't forget it. I won't forget it. You cheat the poor.

You cheat those, the lowly, the ones who have so little. You cheat them. I won't forget it.

I'm on their side. Well, he speaks even here of the absolute heartlessness of these rich merchants in Israel who, if a poor man couldn't pay, if he didn't have the money, they'd sell them into slavery, sell their family into slavery, sell their children into slavery. It's something similar that he mentioned over in an earlier chapter.

You might remember in chapter 2, we saw the same thing Amos denouncing over there, the heartlessness of Israel, the way that they would think nothing of taking a man away from his family and having him cast, sold into slavery just because he couldn't pay a minor debt, and sell him as a slave, rip him away from his mother, his wife, his children, leave a child without a father or a child without a mother, sell him off into slavery just because they owed a minor debt. It was a heartless nation, a nation consumed with greed and materialism, a nation thinking only of themselves. They didn't care who they hurt.

They didn't care whose family they destroyed. They didn't care whose home they took away. They only cared about themselves, enriching themselves, putting money in their own coffers.

God says, I won't forget it. I won't forget it. I'll judge him, and his judgment, you know, would be awful, would be severe.

And it was. It was horrible, beyond description. What do you think Amos would do today if he saw the injustices in our own society?

What do you think he would say? What do you think his message would be? If he saw the aged who lose everything they have.

When you see elderly people who lose their homes, who lose their property, because they couldn't pay a medical bill, because of the greed of a particular profession, or the greed of attorneys, or whatever, who will sue them and think nothing of taking everything they own away from them. I'll tell you something. It's a rotten profession that thinks nothing of what it does to human beings, when it will take an old man or an old lady to court to take away her home, because she committed the terrible sin of getting sick.

The only thing she had in this world was a house that her husband worked all of his life to pay for, you know, with a 30-year mortgage, which is the way most of them go. And then the old man dies, and the ladies left a widow, and then she got sick and had exorbitant medical bills. Let me tell you, you don't get sick today without having medical bills that are so astronomical that if anybody had said that you go have an operation, if somebody had said 10 years ago, oh yeah, you know, you have a heart, you have heart surgery in 10 years, it's going to cost 100 grand, you'd have laughed them to scorn.

You'd have said, that's ridiculous. 100 grand, $100,000 for heart surgery? They think nothing of charging 100,000, $100,000, $60,000, $80,000, $180,000.

And then they'll take away what little the poor have, what little this elderly lady has. They think nothing of leaving them destitute, forlorn, poverty stricken. Now you say, oh yeah, but we've got laws to protect the poor.

We've got a law that says all they get is $15,000. $15,000 out of their home. That's it.

$15,000. That's what the law allows them. Everything else they own can be taken away from them.

And it happens every day. Every day, every hour of every day, people lose everything they own. You know who's losing it?

The people who can least afford it. The aged, the elderly, the poor, the sick. And you know who gets it?

The fat cats. It's just as it was in Amos' day. It's no different.

It's no different at all. Then you see the frivolous lawsuits. You know, one of the things I really have to overcome, I guess because I've been on the receiving end of more than one lawsuit, I really have to overcome the heartlessness of a profession that will try to take everything away from people they don't even know.

They'll just drag them through the courts, level any kind of charge over. Guilty or not guilty doesn't matter one bit to them. All they care about is there is a way to make money, sue them, and let's see what we can get out of them.

Something's wrong, brothers and sisters. Something's wrong. There's a lot of people who are going to have to give an account for the kind of profession, the life they've lived in their professions.

And that's the truth. That's the absolute truth. You know, these frivolous lawsuits that have multiplied so rapidly in our country, people out to get something for nothing, suing anybody for anything.

There's more lawsuits today than you can shake a stick at. We are the most litigation-prone society in the world. Somebody brought to my attention not long ago.

I may have mentioned this before. I don't remember if I did or not, but they said, you know what? They said, they saw looking through the yellow pages, seven pages of churches listed in the yellow pages, over 40 pages of attorneys listed in the yellow pages, seven pages of churches over 40 pages of attorneys.

Well, I know that not all attorneys are evil and wicked and despicable and so forth, but I do know that a lot of them are. It's a wicked profession. It's a heartless profession.

Listen, there's good men involved in it. Brother Joe has told me himself, he said, that attorneys will tell you, you can't have a conscience and be in this business, not if you're going to be an average attorney. You have to, I guess you have to develop some sort of callousness about you.

I heard a story the other day that I thought was, well, I'll just repeat it. It was about an attorney and a sailor and a doctor and a minister, all of whom escaped a shipwreck on a lifeboat. The lifeboat had no sailor, no oars.

And so here these four individuals were trapped in a lifeboat for days and days, no sign of land, no sign of rescue. Finally, finally, someone saw land off in the distance. But there was a problem, and the problem was that the tide was not taking them towards the land, the tide was taking them away from the land.

And surrounding the boat was a huge host of sharks that just kept circling the boat, constantly circling the boat. The sailor, the poor sailor on the lifeboat had been injured and was totally incapacitated. And as the boat began drifting further and further away from the land, finally somebody said, you know, we've got to do something about this.

Somebody's going to have to jump in and try and tow us towards that land, because otherwise we're going to perish in this boat. Well, the sailor, he couldn't tow anybody in. He couldn't jump out and swim in that water because, well, he was injured.

The doctor said, I'm sure he can't jump in. I've got to take care of this sailor. The minister said, well, I've got to pray for the spiritual needs of this man in case he dies so I can't go.

The attorney said, no problem, I'll jump in and I'll pull the boat to shore. Everybody was surprised. The attorney would jump in the water surrounded by sharks and pull the boat to shore.

Well, that's immediately what he did. He jumped into the water, grabbed the whole of the boat, and started swimming towards shore. And the sharks all parted and opened up an avenue and stayed clear while the attorney swam safely, dragging the boat to shore.

The minister said it had to be a miracle. The attorney said, no, simply professional courtesy.

Well, I couldn't resist it.

Here's what God says, verse 7. Professional courtesy, oh well. The Lord has sworn by the Excellency of Jacob, surely I will never forget any of their works.

Here's what else we see in Amos' vision about the summer fruit. Not only was the fruit rotten, all of the deeds, the actions of Israel was rotten, but the fruit was bitter. I want you to see this.

Beginning in verse 8, Amos predicts bitter days ahead for the Northern Kingdom. Here's what he says. First, they would be days of great calamity and natural disasters.

Verse 8, shall not the land tremble for this, and everyone mourn that dwelleth therein, and it shall rise up holy as a flood, and it shall be cast out and drowned as by the flood of Egypt. And it shall come to pass in that day, saith the Lord God, that I will cause the sun to go down at noon, and I will darken the earth in a clear day. Amos predicts a time of great earthquakes, great floods, terrible storms that would darken the sky.

You see, things like that can be divine judgment. Earthquakes, tremors, devastation, natural calamity, what people would call acts of God, they can be acts of God. They can be acts of divine wrath, acts of divine judgment.

Yes, they can. We see it exemplified in the Old Testament. Sodom and Gomorrah, what do you think that was?

What about Noah's flood? What was that? Divine judgment, divine wrath.

What about the earthquake that swallowed up Quora and the 250 rebellious princes who withstood Moses? What was that? Divine wrath.

Those so-called natural disasters were wrath. They were judgment. I think maybe we ought to take a good long look at what's going in the world around us right now and the things that have been going on for quite some time now.

Last couple of days has seen three earthquakes in our own world. There was another one today in Alaska. A terrible earthquake in Chile, the Soviet Union, the cyclone, the terrible cyclone that hit Bangladesh.

They said that it was the worst that has ever hit that part of the world. Estimates range from 5,000 dead to 25,000 dead. I even heard one that said as many as 50,000 may be dead.

They have no idea how many are dead in that terrible cyclone that hit Bangladesh. We're being inundated with rain in our part of the country, while other parts of the country are baking. Some are flooding, others are experiencing terrible drought.

I think America really ought to take a look at what's going on in the world, and say, there's a message here. There's a message here. And the message is that God is going to judge this world, this whole world, and that people need to be right with God.

There needs to be repentance, wholesale, wide-scale repentance, not just in our nation, but all over the world.

Because it seems as one disaster after another is rocking our planet. Amos predicts something else. Not only days of great calamity and national disaster for Israel, but he says the days ahead will be days of mourning and bitterness.

Verse 10, I will turn your feasts into mourning and all your songs into lamentation. And I will bring up sackcloth upon all loins and baldness upon every head, and I will make it as the mourning of an only son and the end thereof as a bitter day. The feast he's referring to were undoubtedly those celebrations, those festivals that centered and focused around the false deity worship that they were involved with both in Dan and Bathel as well as the numerous, numerous idolatries that they had adopted from their neighboring states and countries and so forth.

But I want you to see this, what God is saying in verse 10. I will turn your feasts into mourning. You see, since they hadn't themselves turned from their sins, since they hadn't turned from their idolatries, from their rebellion, you haven't turned from all of your foolishness, now I will turn, I will turn your laughing into weeping.

And the songs you sing, these worthless, ungodly, vile, blasphemous songs, I'll turn them into wails, wails of crying. I'll turn. That's what God's saying.

I'll turn against you. Notice what else he says. All your songs into lamentation.

I will bring up sackcloth upon all loins. He's going to turn something else. All of their lavish gowns, their expensive ornamentation.

Keep in mind, this is a rich, materialistic society. These people decked out. These people dress well.

These people were concerned about their design of clothing and putting on the right kind of image and so forth. God says, I'm going to turn all of your finery, all of your finery into sackcloth. You know what sackcloth was?

The rough, coarse, grain, sack type material that they wore when they were in mourning, and when they were in severe mourning, like in the death of loved ones, when they were in deep repentance and judgment had been pronounced. All of your finery, that's going to be changed too, to sackcloth. And all of your fine, extensive, elaborate, cofuse, because they were so concerned about their appearances and so forth, that's going to be turned too, to baldness, because they would shear their heads in remorse and repentance.

It was a custom in that part of the world. So all of this would occur because of the cruelties that would be perpetuated upon them by the Assyrian invaders. But then notice something else he mentions about the days ahead.

Beginning in verse 11, he said they would be days of spiritual famine. Not only days of disaster and calamity, not only days of bitterness and mourning, but days of spiritual famine. The days come, saith the Lord God, I will send a famine.

Now these were people who knew what famine meant. They knew how devastating, how deadly, how horrible famine was. We here in America, we can't actually, we can't even conceive in our minds how horrible famine really is because we've never known it.

If we've known hunger, it's been nothing compared to what people who have lived in famine-prone areas of the world have lived. We know nothing about what these people have experienced. We can't really sympathize or identify with what they knew or what they've experienced.

The terrible nature of famine, the horrible things that it brings in, because with famine comes terrible diseases, terrible plagues, horrible, horrifying, agonizing death. He says, I will bring a famine in the land, but not a famine of bread, nor of thirst for water, but of hearing the Word of the Lord. A different kind of famine.

Keep in mind that these were people who had rejected the Word of the Lord, continually rejected it. People who did not appreciate it, who did not receive it, who did not embrace it. In fact, they much rather hear old Amaziah and his false prophecies and smooth words.

They liked Amaziah, but Amos, they could do without. They didn't like his messages. They were too hard, too stern, too provoking, too wounding, too hurting.

We don't like Amos' messages. We don't like the Word of the Lord. Give us the smooth things, you know, like in Jeremiah's day, prophesy to us smooth things, prophesy deceits.

Give us amusements and entertainments, but not this hard, strong, sometimes bitter pill of the Word of God. They didn't want to hear it, so you know what God did? He removed it.

Hello. They didn't want to hear it, so God removed it. God took it away from them.

God said there will be a famine, a famine of the Word. You don't want to hear it? I'll remove it from your midst.

And then verse 12, notice this. They shall wander from sea to sea, and from the north even to the east, they shall run to and fro to seek the Word of the Lord and shall not find it. Once they lose it, they'll realize what they had and what they lost, what they had rejected.

Because you know why? They'll realize that all of those other things that they had pursued gave them no satisfaction. They rejected the Word of the Lord.

It was too strong, too hard, too uncompromising. It demanded too much from them. They don't want to hear that.

So they ran after other things. They ran after the messages of the false prophets. They ran after the amusements and the enticements.

And people do the same thing today, you know. They do the very same thing today. Oh, they may not be running after idols sitting in temples and groves on high hills, but they make their own idols of the things of the world.

They make idols out of their jobs, their careers. They make idols out of their hobbies, some other pursuit that they have. They make idols out of some sort of recreation.

They make idols out of money. People make idol out of anything. They can make an idol out of an automobile or a home or family or whatever.

They pursue all these other things. But you know what he says? Once that word is taken away, they will eventually, eventually, they will realize they lost the only thing that had the answers.

The only thing that really made sense. The only thing that had any answers at all. They lost it.

It's not here anymore. It's been taken away. We didn't appreciate it when we had it, so God took it away.

That's what's going to happen to Israel, he said. That's exactly what he did. And they shall wander from sea to sea, and from the north to the east.

They sought for answers. They sought for something that would satisfy. They sought for something that would fill that void, give them the answers that they needed, give them meaning and purpose and fulfillment.

You couldn't find it. It wasn't to be found in Dan or Bethel. It wasn't to be found in the groves and the high hills.

It wasn't to be found in their materialism, their luxury. It wasn't found anywhere.

I believe we ought to pray that today our own society will awaken to the fact that what really matters for us as Christians, what really matters, is the Word of the Lord. And that's what we really need, the Word of the Lord. The Word of the Lord that will speak to our hearts, that will prick our conscience, that will give us guidance and light and reveal clearly the way of God to us.

We need the Word of the Lord. More than anything else, we need the Word of the Lord. I'm saying as a people of God, as a church, we don't need amusements.

We don't need entertainments. I mean, sometimes it's nice to have a, you know, a gospel song, choir, concert. I mean, there's nothing sinful about those things, but we don't exist, we don't thrive on a diet of those kind of things.

That's the point. Those kind of things, that's not what we need. You can't live off of that.

You can't grow off of that. We need the Word, the Word, the Word of God. That's what we've got to have, the Word of God.

That's what we have to awaken."