⁶ Thus says the Lord: “For three transgressions of Israel, and for four, I will not revoke the punishment, because they sell the righteous for silver, and the needy for a pair of sandals—⁷ those who trample the head of the poor into the dust of the earth and turn aside the way of the afflicted; a man and his father go in to the same girl, so that my holy name is profaned; ⁸ they lay themselves down beside every altar on garments taken in pledge, and in the house of their God they drink the wine of those who have been fined. ⁹ “Yet it was I who destroyed the Amorite before them, whose height was like the height of the cedars and who was as strong as the oaks; I destroyed his fruit above and his roots beneath. ¹⁰ Also it was I who brought you up out of the land of Egypt and led you forty years in the wilderness, to possess the land of the Amorite. ¹¹ And I raised up some of your sons for prophets, and some of your young men for Nazirites. Is it not indeed so, O people of Israel?” declares the Lord. ¹² “But you made the Nazirites drink wine, and commanded the prophets, saying, ‘You shall not prophesy.’ ¹³ “Behold, I will press you down in your place, as a cart full of sheaves presses down. ¹⁴ Flight shall perish from the swift, and the strong shall not retain his strength, nor shall the mighty save his life; ¹⁵ he who handles the bow shall not stand, and he who is swift of foot shall not save himself, nor shall he who rides the horse save his life; ¹⁶ and he who is stout of heart among the mighty shall flee away naked in that day,” declares the Lord.

At one time, there was a saying among the Jews of Poland that was used when they wanted to say that a man was not a good man. They would say, “He lives like a Christian.”[1] I repeat: “He lives like a Christian” was synonymous with “He is a bad man.”

How did this come to be?

A reading of the New Testament will show that the church has always struggled with sin. There is no perfect church, because even the redeemed people of God struggle with sin and need forgiveness. But one does wonder if this fact has been used as a cover for us no longer trying to be good.

Perhaps a little bit of church history will help us here. Fifteen-hundred years into the Christian story, Martin Luther called for a great work of reformation, what we now know as the Protestant Reformation and what some Catholics call the Protestant revolt. Luther nailed his 95 theses to the castle church door in Wittenburg on October 31, 1517. However, amazingly, five years later, in April of 1522, Luther would complain that the lives of the Protestant Christians were just as worldly as before the Reformation: “We who at the present are well-nigh heathen under a Christian name, may yet organize a Christian assembly.” As Luther began thinking about this problem—the worldliness of the church and how to have a true church—he toyed with an idea, as Harold Bender explains:

Between 1522 and 1527 Luther repeatedly mentioned his concern to establish a true Christian church, and his desire to provide for earnest Christians (“Die mit Ernst Christen se in wollen”) who would confess the gospel with their lives as well as with their tongues. He thought of entering the names of these “earnest Christians” in a special book and having them meet separately from the mass of nominal Christians, but concluding that he would not have sufficient of such people, he dropped the plan.[2]

What Luther was essentially toying around with was the idea of ecclesiola in ecclesia, a “little church within the church,” a separate group of serious Christian within the otherwise corrupt larger church.

But here is the problem: the New Testament does not know of a separate and serious church within the larger compromised church. It simply knows of the church. And the standard and call is the same for all: If you are a born-again follower of Jesus Christ it is your calling and responsibility and privilege to actually follow Jesus in the living of your life.

In Amos 2, beginning in verse 6, the Lord speaks to His own children through the prophet. He is going to name their sins. He is going to announce the coming of discipline. And He is going to call upon them to remember who He is and what He has done for them. In short, the Lord will be giving the answer to Luther’s struggle by saying this, in essence: “My people are to follow Me. My people are to be a holy people.”

The catalogue of transgressions.

We begin with a catalogue of transgressions, a list of sins. Israel had become corrupt, and their offenses were piled high. God had seen and so God now names their crimes in withering detail.

⁶ Thus says the Lord: “For three transgressions of Israel, and for four, I will not revoke the punishment, because they sell the righteous for silver, and the needy for a pair of sandals—⁷ those who trample the head of the poor into the dust of the earth and turn aside the way of the afflicted; a man and his father go in to the same girl, so that my holy name is profaned; ⁸ they lay themselves down beside every altar on garments taken in pledge, and in the house of their God they drink the wine of those who have been fined.

¹² “But you made the Nazirites drink wine, and commanded the prophets, saying, ‘You shall not prophesy.’

It would perhaps be easiest to outline Israel’s sins under four categories:

• Greed (i.e., the slave trade [v.6]; pursuit of trifles, silver and sandals [v.6]; garments taken in pledge [v.8]; the wine of those who have been fined [v.8]).
• Cruelty (i.e., toward the poor and afflicted [v.7])
• Immorality (i.e., the wicked behavior of fathers and sons [v.7])
• The desecration of the holy (i.e., in the house of their God [v.8]; making the Nazirites drink wine; silencing of the prophets [v.12])

The sins of greed reveal the abuse of the poor by the rich. It likely reflects the behavior of predatory lenders who extorted and robbed those who needed help to survive the lean times of the year. So the poor would take loans from the wealthy who would then abuse them by taking what the poor needed to live. It was widely recognized in the ancient world that it was particularly harsh to take what the poor need for survival from them in payment of their debts: for instance, garments or livestock. The picture that emerges here is of the wealthy in Israel fleecing the poor in the name of debt-payment, and doing so for their own hedonistic pursuits: to increase their silver and their wine. Those in dire straits were being sold into slavery and others were being oppressed to the point of cruelty: “those who trample the head of the poor into the dust of the earth.”

What is more, a father and son have the same girl. This is like a reference to a concubine. The laws and statutes of Israel would have condemned this as incest. It was seen as perverse. That this is mentioned reveals the depths of Israel’s depravity and wickedness. They had lost their moral compass.

They had even perverted the sacred places and things of God. They would take the garments from the poor then lay down upon them beside the altars, perhaps in immoral behavior with the concubines just mentioned. It is a picture of debauchery in the church, to use our terminology. The wine of the poor was being sloshed around and consumed in the house of God. Even more shocking—and this must have been hard for Amos to relay—the prophets were being silenced and the Nazirites, those who had taken strict vows of holiness, were being forced to violate their vows by drinking wine (something Nazirites were not to do).

In short, this is a picture of a decadent, worldly people who should have known better! And this forces us to ask an uncomfortable question: is there any parallel between this and the church of Jesus Christ today? Sadly, there is. In many churches, the truth is suppressed and decadence and immorality have been ushered into the house of God. Things have gotten so worldly in some ways that Dallas Willard believes that “the primary mission field for the Great Commission today is made up of the churches in Europe and North America.”[3] What an unbelievable thing to say! Yet, he is tragically right.

Let me give but one example. The late James Baldwin, the African American author and activist, wrote of how the wickedness of the pastors and churches he knew helped to turn him away from the Christian faith. Nicholas Buccola writes of Baldwin:

[James] Baldwin’s stepfather, David, is the centerpiece of “Notes of a Native Son.” Baldwin said that David, like the character Gabriel in Mountain, “could be chilling in the pulpit and indescribably cruel in his personal life and he was certainly the most bitter man I have ever met”; he treated other blacks in the neighborhood “with the most uncharitable asperity” and distrusted all white people.

And later:

Baldwin’s sense that Christian behavior was often at odds with morality was also rooted in his experiences at home and in the Harlem churches in which he preached. Under his own roof, he was witness to the brutality of his father, who “slammed [him] across the face with his great palm” when he invited his Jewish best friend over one afternoon. Outside his home, Baldwin’s fellow ministers did little to redeem his faith in Christianity. These men and women were, in his estimation, hypocrites of the worst sort. The hypocrisy of the ministers went deeper than the “houses and Cadillacs” they acquired “while the faithful continue[d] to scrub floors” to a level far more fundamental. The ministers were moral and spiritual hypocrites; they had no love in their hearts, and their religion “was a mask for hatred and self-hatred and despair.” The morality the ministers preached, Baldwin thought, seemed to be a far cry from the teachings of Jesus, and they repeatedly excused their flock from the Christian command to “love everybody” while at the same time telling them to “reconcile themselves to their misery on earth.”[4]

I have met numerous people over the years who have said versions of this same story.

Yes, the Lord’s denouncements of Israel echo through the ages to the church today. We dare not turn away. We dare not stop our ears. Are we too guilty?

The loving hand of divine discipline.

As a result, God would bring discipline upon His people.

¹³ “Behold, I will press you down in your place, as a cart full of sheaves presses down.

Ralph Smith points out that verse 13 is translated by the King James Version to sound like it is God who is pressed down, that is, that God is “burdened by the sins of Israel.” But, he writes, the “majority of scholars seem to prefer the RSV reading” which makes Israel the recipient of the divine pressing.[5] But the Old Testament scholar Robert Alter believes that “to weigh down” was the later meaning of the verb and that here “its likely biblical sense is ‘to bring to a stop, to impede.’”[6] Verse 14 and following would seem to support this idea.

¹⁴ Flight shall perish from the swift, and the strong shall not retain his strength, nor shall the mighty save his life; ¹⁵ he who handles the bow shall not stand, and he who is swift of foot shall not save himself, nor shall he who rides the horse save his life; ¹⁶ and he who is stout of heart among the mighty shall flee away naked in that day,” declares the Lord.

Philip S. Johnston writes:

The entire Israelite military force is covered by this seven-fold description: infantry, the basic force that was swift-footed; archers, who could keep attackers at bay; and “horsemen.” The last term probably means charioteers,” since chariots were a common feature of ancient warfare from early times…Amos declares that all these powerful forces cannot withstand divine judgment.[7]

As an act of discipline, then, the strength and military might of Israel would be thwarted. This divine “pressing” (as the ESV puts it) would serve to hinder Israel’s progress and show them that they cannot continue unabated in their sin. Many of us know Johnny Cash’s version of “God’s Gonna Cut You Down” and its haunting refrain:

You can run on for a long time
Run on for a long time
Run on for a long time
Sooner or later God’ll cut you down
Sooner or later God’ll cut you down

… Go tell that long tongue liar
Go and tell that midnight rider
Tell the rambler, the gambler, the back biter
Tell ’em that God’s gonna cut ’em down
Tell ’em that God’s gonna cut ’em down

This seems to capture what the Lord is saying here: eventually, sooner or later, God’s hand of judgment and discipline will fall upon those doing evil deeds. The image of “pressing” (“Behold, I will press you down in your place, as a cart full of sheaves presses down.”) is a powerful image. It brings to mind Psalm 32:

³ For when I kept silent, my bones wasted away through my groaning all day long. ⁴ For day and night your hand was heavy upon me; my strength was dried up as by the heat of summer. Selah ⁵ I acknowledged my sin to you, and I did not cover my iniquity; I said, “I will confess my transgressions to the Lord,” and you forgave the iniquity of my sin. Selah

I ask you, Christian: have you felt the disciplining, chastening hand of God? Have you felt Him pressing down upon you? Have you felt Him stopping your horses, stopping your forward march? Have you experienced the divine disruption of your plans by the God who loves you? Because truly this is what His pressing hand is: love. He loves you enough to press you, to halt you, to hinder you in your march away from Him. He loves you enough to turn you back to Him.

The loss of remembrance and awe.

Between the catalogue of sin and the pronouncement of discipline, right there in the middle of our text, is a call to remembrance and awe. First, remembrance. Listen:

⁹ “Yet it was I who destroyed the Amorite before them, whose height was like the height of the cedars and who was as strong as the oaks; I destroyed his fruit above and his roots beneath. ¹⁰ Also it was I who brought you up out of the land of Egypt and led you forty years in the wilderness, to possess the land of the Amorite.

The Lord reminds Israel that He had “destroyed the Amorite.” The IVP Bible Background Commentary notes that “Yahweh had given the Israelites a victory over the Amorite kings Sihon and Og…Subsequently, the name Amorites becomes synonymous with the inhabitants of Canaan (see Judg 1:34–36 and 7:14).”[8] This word Amorite was therefore a kind of code word for all the inhabitants Israel had to conquer to inhabit the land of promise.

Behind this remembrance is an assertion: God is able to provide what His people need. All of these acts of greed are a kind of blasphemy, for behind this need for silver and sandals and wine and garments is a disregard for the God’s protection and provision. God had brought them into the land of promise. God had defeated the Amorite. Was God not providing enough? Had God not been good enough for Israel? Robert Alter has written, “Israel has done all these unspeakable acts even though historically it was the beneficiary of God’s manifest generosity that enabled it, against all odds, to conquer the land.”[9] Trust in the provision of God! Church, remember what God has done for you! Why are you greedy for me?

Remembrance. Also, God calls upon them to return to a sense of sacred awe and wonder. He says:

¹¹ And I raised up some of your sons for prophets, and some of your young men for Nazirites. Is it not indeed so, O people of Israel?” declares the Lord.

God has reminded His children of His presence and of His calling on their lives through (a) the prophets who proclaimed, “Thus says the Lord” and (b) the Nazirites who reminded the people that they were to be holy before their holy God. Why is God reminding them of these things? Because He is calling them to return to a sense of awe, to return to Him!

The God about whom the prophets thundered and the God to whom the holy lives of the Nazirites pointed was the God who was still among them, even as He was disciplining them. It is a tragic thing when the people of God lose a sense of the holy and lose a sense awe. When worship is diminished and the house of God becomes a theater for selfish indulgence, then awe has been lost. God is reminding them of His presence and of His demands, as symbolized in the prophets and the Nazirites.

I ask you, church: Have you forgotten what God has done for you? Have you forgotten who God is? Have you forgotten how great our God is?

Have you forgotten how revolutionary the gospel is? Have you forgotten how life-altering the cross of Jesus Christ is? Have you forgotten the stunning good news of Easter’s empty tomb?

Have you forgotten the beauty of Jesus Christ? Have you forgotten the wonder of worship? Have you forgotten the privilege of prayer? Have you?

Church! Remember and tremble and worship the God who made you and who loves you and who has come in the person of His Son, Jesus!

Come back, church! Come back! Come back to Jesus!

 

[1] Lange, John Peter. Amos. (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan Publishing House, ___[?]), p.22.

[2] Bender, Harold. The Anabaptist Vision (pp. 17-18). CrossReach Publishing. Kindle Edition.

[3] Dallas Willard, The Great Omission (New York, NY: HarperOne, 2006), xiii.

[4] Buccola, Nicholas. The Fire Is upon Us (p. 65, 154–55). Princeton University Press. Kindle Edition.

[5] Smith, Ralph. “Amos.” The Broadman Bible Commentary. Gen. Ed. Clifton J. Allen. Vol. 7 (1972.), p.99.

[6] Alter, Robert. The Hebrew Bible, p.1260n13.

[7] Johnston, Philip S. “Amos.” Zondervan Illustrated Bible Backgrounds Commentary. Gen. ed. John H. Walton. Vol. 5 (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2009), p.66–67.

[8] Walton, John H., Victor H. Matthews, and Mark W. Chavalas. The IVP Bible Background Commentary: Old Testament. (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2000), p.767,

[9] Alter, Robert. The Hebrew Bible. Vol. 2 (New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 2019), p.1259n9.