Ripe Rotten Ruined

Our study today, friends, comes from the book of Amos. It's a shame few in our churches today read the minor prophets and fewer still preach out of them. We can learn much from a study of these fiery prophets of God from the Old Testament, for they will teach us much about the attributes of God and about our own hearts as well.

Amos was a humble country preacher who says of his call from God, but I was a herdsman and a gatherer of Sycamore fruit, and the Lord took me as I followed the flock, and the Lord said unto me, Go prophesy unto my people Israel. Amos burst on the scene during the reign of Jeroboam II, and his public ministry appeared in a day of spiritual declension in the people of God. Israel was enjoying the peak of their material and political success, and they were enjoying a prosperous reign under Jeroboam II, who had expanded Israel's territory, but the people of God had become self-focused, self-centered, and self-reliant, as this prosperity caused the people to forget God.

This was a day of an abundance of prophets in the land. There was Hosea and Micah and Isaiah and Jonah, each who were contemporaries with Amos. God raised up his prophets to call his people to repentance in a return back to him, but the stubborn Jews paid no nevermind to Amos or the rest and continued on in their sins and backslidings like stubborn mule.

The Jews disregarded both the prophet of God and the remedial judgments from the hand of God to their hurt and ultimate destruction. God spoke first to his wayward people through a natural disaster of a terrible earthquake that shook the land, but the people did not respond to God. Then he sent his prophet Amos, but they paid no attention to him either.

The book of Amos, friends, is an alarming book. It is like a fire alarm continually ringing in the ears of a people fast asleep who refuse to be roused to escape the common danger. First God drops a plumb line in their midst and holds them accountable to God's standard for them and shows them how far they have removed themselves from God.

We see this in chapter 7. And the Lord said unto me, Amos, what seest thou? And I said, a plumb line. Then the Lord said, Behold, I will set a plumb line in the midst of my people Israel. I will not pass again by them anymore.

This remedial judgment from God resulted in the withdrawn presence of God. Then God showed Amos a picture of a basket of fruit, which was much more disturbing than a plumb line. 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 Israel. It was a more disturbing picture than the plumb line because the basket of fruit signified the doom of a backslidden people who sat in their own material security and self-satisfaction and who were ripe for judgment like a basket of summer fruit was ripe for eating and laying rotten in the sun if not consumed. God in his mercy toward his people sent them series of warnings on the heels, one right after the other, but the people ignored them.

Through his prophet Amos, God called his people to account, judged them for their idolatry. He chastised them for their unworthy walking under the favors God had bestowed upon them. And he showed them their incorrigibleness under his judgments.

He called them to return to him through repentance. And God rejected their hypocritical sacrifices unless they did repent. Then through his mouthpiece, Amos, he foretells the desolations that were coming upon them despite their security.

Fear, friends. This is a vivid picture of the apostate church in America today. We wanted to reach the world, so we let the world into the church.

Instead of holding fast to the old gospel of ruin, redemption, repentance, and regeneration, we watered it down to make it more palatable to sinful man so we could grow our churches and have bragging rights within our denominations. And in the process, instead of our Christianity changing the world, we allowed the world to change our brand of Christianity. And here we sit in our backslidden state, self-satisfied, self-reliant, and focused only on our own self-preservation.

We, too, are unworthy of the favors God has bestowed upon us. We, too, are incorrigible under his judgments. He rejects our hypocritical worship services and ties, which are only an insult to a holy God unless we, too, repent and turn back to him.

The church in the West sits in a basket out in the sun, woven by our own hands of a self-reliant church. And as we as a nation are ripe for destruction, just like the Jews in the day of Amos with his basket of summer fruit was ripe in the sun, we, too, stand guilty before a holy God as a people who have abused the light and favor given to us from God. All we can do now is wait and rot until the hammer on the anvil of his justice falls.