A Basket of Summer Fruit
Year C - 2021-2022 • Sermon • Submitted
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1 This is what the Lord God showed me: a basket of summer fruit.
2 He said, “Amos, what do you see?” I said, “A basket of summer fruit.” Then the Lord said to me, “The end has come upon my people Israel; I will never again forgive them.
3 On that day, the people will wail the temple songs,” says the Lord God; “there will be many corpses, thrown about everywhere. Silence.”
4 Hear this, you who trample on the needy and destroy the poor of the land,
5 saying, “When will the new moon be over so that we may sell grain, and the Sabbath so that we may offer wheat for sale, make the ephah smaller, enlarge the shekel, and deceive with false balances,
6 in order to buy the needy for silver and the helpless for sandals, and sell garbage as grain?”
7 The Lord has sworn by the pride of Jacob: Surely I will never forget what they have done.
8 Will not the land tremble on this account, and all who live in it mourn, as it rises and overflows like the Nile, and then falls again, like the River of Egypt?
9 On that day, says the Lord God, I will make the sun go down at noon, and I will darken the earth in broad daylight.
10 I will turn your feasts into sad affairs and all your singing into a funeral song; I will make people wear mourning clothes and shave their heads; I will make it like the loss of an only child, and the end of it like a bitter day.
11 The days are surely coming, says the Lord God, when I will send hunger and thirst on the land; neither a hunger for bread, nor a thirst for water, but of hearing the Lord’s words.
12 They will wander from sea to sea, and from north to east; they will roam all around, seeking the Lord’s word, but they won’t find it.
A Basket of Summer Fruit
A Basket of Summer Fruit
We saw last week that God gave Amos a vision, it was a vision of a plumb line. God was saying that he was measuring the people and they were not measuring up.
In our text today, God asks Amos what he sees in this vision. Amos says:
Amos 8:2 (CEB)
“A basket of summer fruit.”
Reading it in context you wonder what summer fruit has to do with what God says in the rest of the passage.
What does summer fruit indicate to us? For me, it reminds me that summer is almost over and it is time for harvest. The farmers markets are busy. The roadside stands with fresh corn and other produce. We’re reminded to get it now because it will soon be done.
If you have a basket of fruit on your table it is a reminder that you had better eat it before it spoils. If you just let it sit there it is going to start rotting and it will attract fruit flies.
A basket of summer fruit is an indicator that fall is just about here. Summer is coming to an end.
When we use the phrase “the time is ripe” we are saying that this is the opportune time or that all the conditions necessary are coming together to do something. That is what God is saying. In this situation the people of God had been living such disobedient lives, thinking only of themselves that God has had enough, the time is ripe and He is about to bring judgement on them.
God says there in verse 2
Amos 8:2 (NRSV)
“The end has come upon my people Israel; I will never again pass them by.
As I studied this passage my mind went to Egypt and the Passover when the Angel passed over the house that had the blood applied. The ones in that home were spared.
God here is saying that the end has come. He say that he will never again pass them by. God is saying that he is not going to spare them any longer. One translation says “I will never again forgive them.”
Amos must have been stunned by what he is hearing from God.
Look at what God says to them beginning in verse 3. God says:
3 On that day, the people will wail the temple songs,” says the Lord God; “there will be many corpses, thrown about everywhere. Silence.”
4 Hear this, you who trample on the needy and destroy the poor of the land,
5 saying, “When will the new moon be over so that we may sell grain, and the Sabbath so that we may offer wheat for sale, make the ephah smaller, enlarge the shekel, and deceive with false balances,
6 in order to buy the needy for silver and the helpless for sandals, and sell garbage as grain?”
Dr Sweat wrote about this passage. He wrote:
In today's Old Testament text, Amos addresses merchants who may appear to be serving the needs of the community. But their greedy, grasping motivations exploit the poor, and eventually destroy the very society they claim to be serving. When these merchants "win," the whole nation ultimately loses. By grinding the poor so far down that the impoverished had no choice but to sell themselves into slavery in order to survive, the very foundation of Israel's vaunted covenant culture was chipped away. In order to always come out on top, the merchants thought they had to stand on the stacked-up bodies of the poorest and most helpless in their society. They won by wiping out everyone else.
The merchants game of "I win" wasn't unlike a contest of cultural dodgeball. Remember dodgeball from rainy days when P.E. class had to be inside? You probably remember it as great fun or as hideous torture. For kids who were naturally strong, agile, and competitive, dodgeball was a great gladiator fight. Leaping out of the path of an oncoming ball, snatching a missile out of mid-air, firing back a well-aimed shot and wiping yet another opponent off the playing field.
For kids who were slower, more mild-mannered, or just plain shy, dodgeball was just another opportunity to get pummeled, bashed, and immediately relegated to the sidelines after being smacked by a big, stinging ball. In other words dodgeball became "killerball," "prisonball," or "bombardment." One professor of physical education named Neil Williams of Eastern Connecticut State University berates dodgeball for the way it "encourages the best to pick on the weak and to be glorified for picking on the weak" ("The Painful Playground," Washington Post, May 8, 2000).
God has had enough of their abuse of the poor and needy and their disrespect towards God. God says that the singing in the temple will be turned to wailing, there will be bodies flung everywhere. The wailing will be turned to silence. There will be no one to sing, there will be no one to wail and morn, there were just be awful silence.
God gets to point of what the people were doing in taking advantage of the poor and needy. He repeats the words that the people have said. The people have said “When will the New Moon be over that we may sell grain, and the Sabbath be ended that we may market wheat?” The New Moon feast was to be a time of rejoicing. God said in Numbers 10 verse 10:
10 On your festival days, your appointed feasts, and at the beginning of your months, you will blow the trumpets over your entirely burned offerings and your well-being sacrifices. They will serve as a reminder of you to your God. I am the Lord your God.
They had gone from being a time of rejoicing a memorial to God to a think of duty that the only thing that they could think of was to say let’s get this over with. The same thing had happened to the Sabbath. They couldn’t wait for the Sabbath to get over with so that they could get about their business of making money.
There was a lady in a prior church who when it got close to the time that the service was to be over with, which was noon she would dig her car keys out of her purse. She wasn’t quiet about it. She would dig those keys out and they would start jingling as soon as she pulled them out. And they jingled more than what a normal person would permit. Occasionally she would accidently drop them onto the floor. I realized after some time that she was doing it on purpose to remind the pastor that he was going into overtime and that she wanted him to sit down and shut up so that she could go home. This happened nearly every week. It didn’t seem to bother our pastor as he ignored it. I spoke to him about it once and he said that he had learned to tune her out. One thing that I found odd was that when the service ended the keys were no longer in her hand, they were in her purse and they stayed there until she got out to the parking lot. She only did that in a feeble attempt to disrupt the service.
That lady was no better than the people waiting for the New Moon festival or the Sabbath to be over with. They were no longer participating in the true worship of God. They were just going through the motions of worship but their minds were on other things such as making money.
We can become just like the Israelites today. We can sit in a worship service and have our minds a million miles away thinking about all the things that we want to accomplish later today. We go through the motions of participating in a worship service. We go through the motions of living a righteous life but our lives can be empty and devoid of the things of God. That is where the Israelites were.
The people were waiting for the feasts and the Sabbaths to be over so they could sell their grain and wheat. God said that they were
5 saying, “When will the new moon be over so that we may sell grain, and the Sabbath so that we may offer wheat for sale, make the ephah smaller, enlarge the shekel, and deceive with false balances,
6 in order to buy the needy for silver and the helpless for sandals, and sell garbage as grain?”
They were cheating people on their purchases. They were skimping on the amount that they were selling. They had jacked up the prices and they were using dishonest scales. They were getting rich off of their dishonesty by cheating the poor. God says that they were “buying the poor with silver and the needy for a pair of sandals. They were even selling the sweepings with the wheat. The sweepings were the dust and dirt that fell off when they wheat was threshed. They were sweeping that up and selling it with the wheat so that the poor were not even getting all the wheat they thought they were.
God says to Amos in verse 7
7 The Lord has sworn by the pride of Jacob: Surely I will never forget what they have done.
God then proceeds to tell of the judgement that He is going to bring upon the people for the injustices and the sins that they have committed. One commentator wrote:
Reading through Amos, we realize that God’s anger constantly flashes out against those who oppress others. The poor of the land seem very precious to Him. The indifferent attitude of men and women concerned with only profit and their own pleasures deeply offends God.
The Old Testament Law made careful and explicit provision for meeting the needs of all God’s people. When a man sold himself or one of his family into servitude, it was not slavery. He would later be released and restored to his ancestral land (Lev. 25). Widows and others without means of support were provided for. Each farmer was to allow gleaning, the gathering of part of his harvest by the poor. All grain that fell to the ground was to be left for the poor. Fruit of the vine and tree was not to be completely harvested by the owner. There was no welfare roll in Israel; the poor maintained their self-respect and worked for what they received. The man who had plenty made the excess available to the less fortunate. No wonder the Old Testament promised that, should Israel obey God’s Law “there should be no poor among you” (Deut. 15:4–5).[1]
Those laws, and God Himself, were now being denied by God’s people. Love for neighbor and respect for the poor had long been forgotten. In their place had come deep social cleavage; brutal oppression was undertaken for material gain.[2]
Even in their religious worship they had abandoned God.
Israel had never abandoned the worship centers erected by Jeroboam I in violation of God’s Law. She still bowed down before golden calves. What is more, Baal worship had again crept into the land. Altars were built on high ridges of land in honor of the ancient nature gods, and around them the old immoralities were practiced still—in the name of religion.
The ritual, even when performed in God’s supposed honor, horrified the Lord.[3]
It is into this situation that God declares that the people are ripe and ready for judgement.
I believe that all of us have experienced the loss of a loved one or a friend and we wish that we could have one more conversation with them. We wish that we could sit down over a cup of coffee and just reminisce. We wish we could pick up the phone and call them to see how their day is going. Their voices are silenced now.
God in our Scripture text gives a prophecy to Amos to say that there is going to be silence from God. Listen to what Amos recorded:
11 The days are surely coming, says the Lord God, when I will send hunger and thirst on the land; neither a hunger for bread, nor a thirst for water, but of hearing the Lord’s words.
12 They will wander from sea to sea, and from north to east; they will roam all around, seeking the Lord’s word, but they won’t find it.
Can you imagine being in a place where you never hear the words of the Lord? Turn on the TV anytime of the day and you can find a religious show. There are several stations on the radio to listen to Bible teaching or Christian music. Google the word Christian and you’ll find over 1.2 billion hits. You would really have to try hard here in the United States to avoid God.
God said through Amos that there was going to be a famine. That wouldn’t be the first time for the people of God that there was a famine. When Joseph’s family went to Egypt it was because of a famine. During the time of Elijah there was a drought and famine that lasted 3 years until God sent the rain again. God said that there was going to be a famine but this one was going to be different. This was going to be a famine from hearing the world of the Lord.
For a long time the people did not want to hear God, they wanted to do their own thing. God was going to grant their desire. They would not be able to hear God when He does speak.
God said that people will “stagger from sea to sea and wander from north to east, search for the word of the Lord, but they will not find it.” It will be as if God stops up the heavens the people will search the world over trying to find the world of the Lord and they won’t find it. In our time it would be like all the religious TV shows suddenly disappeared, all the religious radio programming suddenly went off the air, you would do a Google search for God and find nothing.
That is what God is saying it is going to be like for the Israelites. They will search the world over for God and not be able to find a place to hear from Him. This is God’s people, the Jews and they won’t be able find any place to hear a word from the Lord.
Why has it come to this for the Israelites? We started to look at some of the reasoning last week.
The moral condition of the nation was clearly revealed by the prophet’s shock at the cruel treatment of the poor by the rich, at the covetousness, injustice, and immorality of the people in power, and at the general contempt for things holy (2:6–8). Trampling on the poor, taking exactions of wheat (5:11), afflicting the just, taking a bribe, and turning aside from the needy (v. 23) stirred the indignation of the prophet, and gives us insight into the morals of the day. These people were ready to “swallow up the needy” and “to do away with the poor of the land”—that is, to let them die (8:4).
Are we living in such a day? Is there injustice in our nation? In our world? How much of the popular message of the church today is all about me and what’s in it for me and how can I live a better life and prosper?
The Apostle Paul in his second letter to the young preacher Timothy wrote:
1 Understand that the last days will be dangerous times.
2 People will be selfish and love money. They will be the kind of people who brag and who are proud. They will slander others, and they will be disobedient to their parents. They will be ungrateful, unholy,
3 unloving, contrary, and critical. They will be without self-control and brutal, and they won’t love what is good.
4 They will be people who are disloyal, reckless, and conceited. They will love pleasure instead of loving God.
5 They will look like they are religious but deny God’s power. Avoid people like this.
I am convinced that we are living in such a time as Paul describes.
What has happened to our country? Are we like the Israelites? Are we ripe for judgement? Is there a coming famine for hearing the word of the God in our nation?
Is God permitting the violence that we’ve witnessed in Buffalo, Texas, Chicago, and other places around the world to get our attention? Is this a wake-up call to the Church?
Dr Ogilve wrote:
Often when we preach or teach, there are traditional church people present who have never surrendered their lives to Christ. Years of running their own lives place them in the danger of duality—pretending to be Christians on the outside but unconverted on the inside. We need to take seriously the plight of agnostics in our churches—people who do not know Christ personally.
Then, too, there are people who have consistently resisted the Master’s mandate of ministry. His words startle and shock us: “Not everyone who says to Me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ shall enter the kingdom of heaven, but he who does the will of My Father in heaven” (Matt. 7:21). Our pious claims of righteousness by faith must be combined with seeking and doing His will in our relationships and in responsibilities to care for the poor, hungry, and disadvantaged.
I believe that the solution to the problems that we face are founded in a personal relationship with Jesus Christ. That is not just a Sunday relationship with Him either. It is a daily taking up your cross and following closely behind Him.
God gave us the solution the Israelites should they walk away from Him. Unfortunately, they did not follow God’s instructions. They continued to do their own thing. Which brought them to the place in this passage from Amos:
People will stagger from sea to sea and wander from north to east, searching for the word of the Lord, but they will not find it.
What was the solution that God gave them? It is found in 2 Chronicles chapter 7:
13 When I close the sky so that there is no rain or I order the locusts to consume the land or I send a plague against my people,
14 if my people who belong to me will humbly pray, seek my face, and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven, forgive their sin, and heal their land.
[1] Richards, Larry, and Lawrence O. Richards. The Teacher’s Commentary. Wheaton, IL: Victor Books, 1987. Print.
[2] Richards, Larry, and Lawrence O. Richards. The Teacher’s Commentary. Wheaton, IL: Victor Books, 1987. Print.
[3] Richards, Larry, and Lawrence O. Richards. The Teacher’s Commentary. Wheaton, IL: Victor Books, 1987. Print.