1. Introduction (8:1-2)
2. The first fruit in God’s basket of obedience is the fruit of worship. (movement from songs to howling to silence)—Amos 8:3
3. The second fruit in God’s basket of obedience is the fruit of stewardship. (movement from commerce to consumerism to condemnation)—Amos 8:4-8
4. The third fruit in God’s basket of obedience is the fruit of the Word. (movement from feast to famine to falling)—Amos 8:9-14
AMOS 8:1-2
If you look on the calendar, today is the first day of fall. Fall is one of my favorite times of the year. I love the cooler weather. The changing leaves. I enjoy just about everything that comes with fall. Just about everything, but not quite. You see, fall means that the time for all of those fresh fruits and vegetables is just about over. We didn’t have a garden this year. But even though we didn’t have a garden, many of you kept us well-stocked with tomatoes. There’s nothing better than a fresh garden tomato, is there? But they don’t have a very long shelf life, do they? The other day, I was looking for one. We had gone through all of the tomatoes we had, but I just happened to find one in the bottom of a vegetable bowl in the kitchen. Somehow it had gotten hidden in there. You would have thought I had struck gold. It was that good deep red color. It was beautiful. I couldn’t wait to throw that thing between a couple of slices of bread. But I didn’t notice the little bit of liquid in the bottom of the bowl. I didn’t notice it till I grabbed hold of that tomato. As soon as I touched it, I knew. It was squishy. The skin just about fell off when I tried to pick it up. You see, even though that tomato looked red and ripe and beautiful, it was really completely rotten. It had sat there festering in its own juices for so long that it wasn’t any good any more. The only thing it was good for was to throw away. It had become disgusting. Fit only for destruction. That is the picture that God gave Amos here in this vision. He showed Amos that Israel had become like a basket of summer fruit to Him. That sounds appealing. Just like that tomato looked appealing to me. But it wasn’t. They had taken the wonderfully good fruits of God and allowed them to over ripen and turn into sin. For Israel, God’s good fruits of worship, stewardship and the Word of God had gone from fresh and ripe to overripe. And they would soon be rotten. Because Israel hadn’t kept God’s fruits fresh, He would allow each of them to completely rot in affliction. Just like He did for Israel, God still gives good fruits today. As a matter of fact, He gives the same fruits today. The same fruits that were evident in Amos’ basket are still around in our church today. Are we keeping them fresh by obeying God’s pattern for them? Or are we allowing them to become overripe and rotten by our disobedience? Tonight, I want our church to keep the fruit God has given us fresh. I want us to keep it fresh by obeying Him in all we do. In order to do that, we’re going to look at three fruits in God’s basket of obedience. The first fruit is the fruit of worship. Look with me at verse 3.
AMOS 8:3
The first fruit in God’s basket of obedience is the fruit of worship. Notice how this verse starts. It starts with the songs of the temple. Well, what were those songs? What did God’s good fruit of worship look like? Well, we obviously don’t have any recordings of what services were like in Israel. But we know they were filled with music and singing. Of course, they had dancing too, but we’re Baptists, so we don’t talk about that. But how do we know that’s what their worship looked like? Because we have a copy of their main hymn book. We call it the book of Psalms. As a matter of fact, the original word for Psalms carries the meaning of plucking or twanging on strings. It’s obvious that they were meant to be accompanied by musical instruments. We think of the Psalms as passages to read. But not the Israelites. They would no more read the Psalms than we would read out of the Baptist Hymnal. The very last Psalm puts a capstone on the purpose of all the Psalms. Psalm 150 says, “Praise ye the LORD. Praise God in his sanctuary: praise him in the firmament of his power. Praise him for his mighty acts: praise him according to his excellent greatness. Praise him with the sound of the trumpet: praise him with the psaltery and harp. Praise him with the timbrel and dance: praise him with stringed instruments and organs. Praise him upon the loud cymbals: praise him upon the high sounding cymbals. Let every thing that hath breath praise the LORD. Praise ye the LORD.” That describes perfectly what the songs of the temple were supposed to be. They were supposed to be joyous expressions of worship. Emotional expressions of love and devotion to the Almighty creator of the universe. To the savior and sustainer of His people. What beautiful, fresh and ripe fruit true worship had been. I say had been, because it had become something completely different. Something unrecognizable to God. Our English text uses the word “howlings”. The original is more chilling than that. It carries the meaning of an inarticulate screech. In other words, Israel’s worship had become like fingernails on a chalkboard to God. It was screeching and howling in His ears. It’s like in other places where He said that the smoke from their sacrifices had become a stench in His nostrils. Well, how in the world could the God-exalting words of the Psalms become so offensive to God? How could words like Psalm 16:5, “The LORD is the portion of mine inheritance and of my cup: thou maintainest my lot.” Or like Psalm 36:5-7: “Thy mercy, O LORD, is in the heavens; and thy faithfulness reacheth unto the clouds. Thy righteousness is like the great mountains; thy judgments are a great deep: O LORD, thou preservest man and beast. How excellent is thy lovingkindness, O God! therefore the children of men put their trust under the shadow of thy wings.” How could words like those be offensive to God? The same way that words like “Praise God from whom all blessings flow” can be. Or words like “Oh Lord my God, when I in awesome wonder, consider all the worlds Thy hands have made.” Or words like, “Amazing grace how sweet the sound, that saved a wretch like me.” The same way that words like those can be offensive to God. As offensive as fingernails on a chalkboard. So many times, we sing words that have become all too familiar to us. We sing them out of habit without even thinking about what we’re singing. We get so caught up in our preferred style of music that we don’t even pay attention to who we’re singing to or what we’re singing about. We sing, “We are one in the bond of love” when we have people in the church we won’t even talk to. We sing, “I surrender all” and still hold on to our sin and pride and selfishness. That’s what Israel was doing. They were singing the Psalms with their lips, but their heart was rotten. The summer fruit of worship looked ripe and good on the outside, but was overripe and rotten on the inside. And God was going to get rid of it. He promised that the destruction of Israel was going to be so severe that even their howlings would be silenced. Their grief and mourning would be so severe that they wouldn’t even be able to weep, much less sing. The first fruit in God’s basket of obedience is the fruit of worship. Israel had allowed the fruit of worship to become overripe and rot. And now God was going to get rid of it. The second fruit in God’s basket of obedience is the fruit of stewardship. Look with me at verses 4-8:
AMOS 8:4-8
The second fruit in God’s basket of obedience is the fruit of stewardship. I want you to take just a minute to look back over Israel’s history. Think about all the wonderful things God gave them. The things God gave them weren’t things they could have even imagined, much less deserved. How could Abraham have imagined the splendor of Solomon’s temple when he was sitting in Ur of the Chaldees? How could Isaac have imagined the pools and fountains of Jerusalem as he was digging his wells? How could Jacob have imagined the abundance of Israel in Amos’ day as he was sending his sons into Egypt for a sack of grain? God had brought Israel up out of nothing and had given them everything. He had brought them up from slavery to prosperity. And what did they do with all God had given them? Our passage tells us they swallowed up the poor. Their wealth and prosperity didn’t make them more generous. It made them more selfish and greedy. Not only did they refuse to help the poor, they took advantage of them. They were so overcome with money, they couldn’t even take off the day God had given them to worship Him. Instead of worshipping God on the Sabbath, they were thinking about business. Now, don’t get me wrong, they were still going through the motions. They were still going to their places of worship. They were still obeying the Sabbath laws. But they were spending the whole time wishing the time would quickly pass. “When’s church going to get over so I can hurry up and get to Ryan’s.” “As soon as church is over, I’m heading over to the mall.” “I can’t wait for the service to get over so I can watch the ball game.” But Israel’s sin wasn’t just in their attitude toward the Sabbath. It wasn’t just how they treated the time resources God gave them. It was also in how they treated the physical resources He gave them. God had made Israel prosperous. At the time of this prophesy, they had a great economy. But what did they do with it? Look at the last part of verse 5. They made the ephah small and the shekel great. They falsified the balances by deceit. In other words, they were cheating God’s people out of God’s money. It would be like changing the meter on the gas pump to make it turn faster. So when you were done pumping gas, somehow you put 25 gallons of gas into your 20 gallon tank. That’s what Israel was doing—they were robbing God’s people by cheating on the way they measured stuff. And by robbing God’s people, they were robbing God. Just like Israel, God gives us resources for one reason. That’s to bring honor and glory to His holy name by using them for His purposes. Out of Israel’s greed, they hoarded what God gave them. They hoarded it and tried to get more through dishonest means. But that’s not why God gave it to them. He gave it to them to use. To use for His glory. What beautiful, ripe fruit are the resources God gives us. But when we hoard them instead of using them for His glory, the fruit begins to rot. Just like Israel’s did. And then what happened? God got rid of it. He painted a picture of utter economic destruction for Israel. They weren’t good stewards of what God gave them. They wanted to hoard what God gave them. So God took their prosperity away. Look at the words He used: “it shall be cast out and drowned as by the flood of Egypt.” When God brought up Israel out of Egypt, He took everything Egypt had. He afflicted them with horrible plagues. He killed their firstborn children. He even made them give their gold and money to Israel. Then He utterly destroyed their military in the Red Sea. That’s what He told Israel He was going to do to them. All because they had let the good fruit of stewardship become overripe and rot. The fruit of worship and the fruit of stewardship. But there was one more fruit in God’s basket of obedience. That was the fruit of the Word. Look with me at verses 9-14:
AMOS 8:9-14
The third fruit in God’s basket of obedience is the fruit of the Word. Yes, God gave Israel physical blessings. But more important than that, He gave Israel His Word. He spoke to them directly from the top of Mount Sinai. He spoke to them through leaders like Moses and Joshua. He spoke to them through judges like Gideon and Samson. He spoke to them through priests like Eli and Samuel. And He spoke to them through prophets like Isaiah and Jeremiah and Amos. As a matter of fact, during this time right before the exile, there were many prophets of God. They God’s written Word, recorded as the Law and the prophets. But not only that, they had God’s revealed Word through Amos and the other prophets. God’s Word was widely available. There was no reason for anybody not to know what God wanted them to know. The availability of God’s Word increased steadily during the whole time of Israel’s existence. But what good did it do? About as much good as it does for us today. Did you realize that a 2003 survey showed that Americans have nearly 4 Bibles per household? Since the printing press was invented almost 600 years ago, the number of Bibles in the world has skyrocketed. They come in all kinds of shapes and sizes and colors. They come in good translations and bad ones. They come in nearly every language you can think of. Just like Israel in Amos’ day, there is no shortage of the availability of God’s Word. That’s beautiful fruit, isn’t it? It is beautiful fruit for the Word of God to be available to everyone. As a matter of fact, it’s like a feast of fruit. But what did God say in verse 10? He told Israel that He was going to turn their feasts into mourning. See, it’s not enough just to have the Word of God available. It’s not enough just to have a copy for your bedroom and your dining room and a big family Bible for your living room. It’s not enough to have a copy in the back window of the car and a copy to carry to church. That is certainly a feast of fruit. But that feast will quickly become overripe and rot if it’s not eaten of. You can carry a Bible around with you all day long, but if you don’t read it, it is offensive to God. As a matter of fact, you can read your Bible all day long, but if you don’t live it, it is even more offensive to God. It is as offensive as rotten fruit to Him. It is offensive to the point that He will throw it out. Verse 11 says that there would come a day for Israel that God would turn their feast of His Word into famine. History bears that out. There was a mini-famine of God’s Word during the exile. After a period of time, God showed mercy on them by feeding them with a few of the later prophets and with Ezra and Nehemiah. But they still returned to their ways. They heard the Word, but didn’t let it change them. So God gave them a 400 year drought. From the close of Malachi to the preaching of John the Baptist was 400 years. 400 silent years of drought from God’s Word. But Israel as a nation still didn’t respond did they? As a matter of fact, they rejected Jesus Christ as their Messiah. And God has darkened their understanding. As Isaiah 6 says, they will keep on hearing but not understand. They will keep on seeing, but not perceive. Oh, I don’t want that to happen to us. God has blessed us with more availability of His Word than has ever been in the history of the world. What are we doing with it? I can tell you what we’re doing with it as a nation. We’re rejecting it. We’re mocking it. We’re ignoring it. But what are we doing with it here at Brushfork? What are you doing with it personally? Are you eating of it? Are you reading it? Are you studying it? Or are you just looking at how pretty it looks on display? Seeing how pretty the fruit looks in the fruit bowl? Love God’s Word. Live God’s Word. But most of all, share God’s Word. That’s the best way to avoid the famine of God’s Word in your own life. It’s just like with the rest of the fruit we’ve been talking about. Just like the fruit of worship and the fruit of stewardship. If you try to keep them to yourself, they’ll rot. They’re not meant to be put in a bowl on display. They’re meant to be eaten. They’re meant to be shared. The funny thing is, the more you eat of them and share them, the more you’ll have. But the more you hoard them and try to keep them for yourself, the more they’ll just rot. So what about you? How is the fruit of your worship? Do you just go through the motions? Do you just sing the songs because you like the tune or that’s just something you’re supposed to do? Or do you truly worship God? Do you honestly worship God by living out the songs you sing? What about the fruit of your stewardship? Are you using the things God has given you for His glory? Are you giving freely of the time and resources He has given you? Or are you looking for ways to cut corners in your giving? Are you looking to give with strings attached? Are you treating the things you give as if they are still yours? What about the fruit of God’s Word? Do you love it? Do you read it? Do you study it? Do you live it? Do you share it? God has filled your basket of obedience to overflowing with wonderful fruit. Are you keeping it fresh? Or are you letting it rot? What do you see Amos? A basket of ripe fruit that’s getting ready to turn. What are you going to do about it?
