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AMOS 6:8-14
(Readings: 2 Corinthians 10:1-18; Hebrews 6:13-20)
Pride Goes Before A Fall
Congregation of our Lord Jesus Christ…
There is a type of person who is very much full of himself.
When you are with him, you cannot help but notice that.
He will tell you the great things he has done, how he has done it, and what he is going to do next.
Perhaps you have met a person like this.
He’s actually very easy company, because you don’t have to say a thing!
That, though, does not make for a very satisfying relationship.
You come to see that there is no one else in his world.
As someone described him once, “He is a self-made man - and worships his own creator!”
This leads us to realising something else about such a person.
Think about it.
What would also stand out about such a person?
Well, because they are so full of themselves and in interpreting everything in their own particularly positive light, isn’t it mostly true that they don’t ever actually learn the important lessons in life?
Many people like this end up on society’s scrap-heap.
They cannot see where they go wrong, and so they increasingly cut themselves off - from family, friends, and work.
One well-known nursery rhyme appropriately says this,
Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall,
Humpty Dumpty had a great fall;
All the King’s horses and all the King’s men
Couldn’t put Humpty together again!
Perhaps you didn’t think that nursery rhyme was all about pride?
How apt it is though!
Such a person is so puffed up in himself, he is very difficult to help.
In the words of Carl Jung, “An inflated consciousness is always egocentric and conscious of nothing but its own existence.
“It is incapable of learning from the past, incapable of understanding contemporary events, and incapable of drawing right conclusions about the future.
“It cannot be argued with.
“It inevitably dooms itself to calamities that must strike it dead.”
Now, if it is hard enough having a person like this, imagine how terrible it would be if you have a whole nation like this!
What could you do with a self-made people, who interpreted everything in the most self-promoting light?
Well we see what point God has reached with Israel in the first aspect to our text.
In the words of the first part to this passage from Amos … I HATE WHAT IS IN YOU.
Now put yourself in the position of the One who has to deal with them.
While you would love to have nothing at all to do with them, that’s the exactly wrong thing to do then.
That is why, if you are no one less that the Lord God himself, you have to tell them that.
And after you have clearly laid out all those different things which show how full of itself this nation has become, you would bring it all home to them in the clearest way possible.
This way is to take the way that those people would swear to something as being absolutely true, by swearing to it by your very self.
The strongest witness in that society now becomes the supreme witness in the whole world.
You see, now God swears, by himself, that he’s fed up with it all!
Let’s look further at this swearing of the Lord by himself.
It is a thing which happens rarely in Scripture.
When it does, though, as we read in Hebrews 6, it shows how something is certainly going to happen.
Because when the One Person who can do it says he is going to do it, he will do it!
I mean, isn’t this the whole ground for our salvation, since what he says in his Word is true?
What he says will happen, in his time and in his way!
So when verse 8 highlights the First Person Singular Pronoun, as God speaking of himself, you’d better listen.
And when the Lord himself addresses this nation in such a specific way about such a specific characteristic, it’s clear as day!
“I abhor the pride of Jacob…”
Congregation, the tense of “abhor” is no fleeting emotion.
Here is no sudden upset which blows over quick enough.
Rather, this is a continued, lasting feeling.
And it’s a feeling directed against the “pride of Jacob.”
The use of Jacob’s name here may be a reference to their great ancestor who himself was so weak and sinful.
Joining the name to the sin of pride makes it clear that he detested what they thought they had become in themselves.
The proud nation is the one which worships itself.
Whatever else that nation may do, it stands out that they have made themselves great.
And you better believe they’re always going to be that way!
Don’t we see here shades of ‘The Third Reich’?
Didn’t Adolf Hitler so much promote the Aryan racial supremacy?
The mention of “his strongholds” shows the proof such a nation presents.
They have built up and out.
Their impregnability is shown.
This was all in the time when Jeroboam II had advanced the borders to as far as Damascus.
The economic wealth was burgeoning.
It was all go!
It is hard to argue with success.
Amos would not have had an easy time.
But even if the economy were in recession - and worse, in depression - the blinkers would still be on those Israelites!
You see, there is another god they worship - themselves.
The Lord has to say it … I HATE WHAT IS IN YOU.
And then his prophet continues … AND YOU’LL KNOW IT TOO.
This is the second aspect to this passage.
Verse 9 has a gruesome picture of what will happen to this nation which so much believed in itself.
“And if ten men remain in one house, they too shall die.”
There are ten men left.
The emphasis is on just ten.
Already a slaughter has happened which has decimated the population.
A massacre the likes of which Israel had not experienced before.
These are all who are left.
And they’ll be wiped out as well!
But the scene only gets worse.
Verse 10 pictures a relative coming to burn the bodies.
It’s a description which has some resemblance to the burning of thousands of cattle across the United Kingdom and Europe when there was the terrible outbreak of foot and mouth disease.
The news showed us those huge flames burning day and night.
That was being done to try and halt that devastating sickness.
The original Hebrew speaks of the relative coming also to burn bodies rather than only anoint for burial.
Whether it is because of disease or something else we cannot be sure.
But it certainly points to a time which is devastatingly disastrous.
Because normally there is no way a Jew would burn anyone’s body.
That is regarded with the utmost anathema.
It’s seen to be against the natural order.
Things are terribly drastic indeed!
There is still more to this story, though.
It’s a twist which sets it completely at odds with the Israel of Amos’ day.
You see, verse 10 goes on to tell of what the relative asks of anyone still hiding in that house.
Where that person is found is described in a way as to suggest the very back corner of the house.
He asks them what would seem to be the most logical question of anyone in such a tragic situation, “Is anyone with you?”
When he receives the reply “No”, that seems fair enough.
That says how bad it is.
It is the most devastating punishment of the Lord.
But the person found there in the deepest recesses of this house goes on, “Silence!
“We must not mention the name of the LORD.”
There’s one name he doesn’t want too speak of here.
Because he knows it’s the name that’s got him caught there!
What would this mean, though, for the audience of Amos?
What would describing this person not wanting to use the Lord’s name mean to them then?
Well, earlier on in Amos he had spoken of a religious situation where the name of the Lord was used very often.
When we looked at that passage we used the example of how often American entertainers so readily thank the Lord when they receive awards.
While not wanting to judge them personally, yet knowing the lifestyle of some of them, we can easily get the idea that the Lord’s name is something they use without thinking.
Then it’s a kind of cultural thing, like, what they say.
Bono, the lead singer of U2, cryptically said at one such awards night, “Most would thank the Lord right now, but I’m sure he’s up there saying, ‘No! No! Don’t thank me for that!’”
He was cynical towards those many entertainers who would thank the Lord, for something the Lord himself might well disagree with.
You see, while they used the Lord’s name often enough, like Israel of Amos’ time, it wasn’t anything coming from a personal faith in the Lord.
So when disaster did strike, those who had often used the Lord’s name in religious ceremonies were hesitant to do it anymore.
And exactly because they were afraid this Lord had found them out spiritually.
But, even then, the way Amos puts it, those Israelites were still hedging their bets spiritually.
It leaves a question mark over whether it was the Lord God, or any of the other gods they may have somehow offended.
In other words, there isn’t a real repentance for what they’ve done.
Oh, there was regret.
But everyone has that when they’re caught in the act!
Amos shows how this self-worshipping religion is shared by all in Israel.
They were all on the gravy train - rich or poor!
And they would all go down together.
The rich in their own way, as smashing the great house into pieces suggests, and the poor in their own way, by their homes being broken into bits, as suits the nature of their construction.
That’s what verse 11 develops.
The ruling classes have given the wrong leadership.
But everyone has participated in that as well!
In Calvin’s words, “We learn how great the corruption of those people was; for God punishes none but the wicked.”
I HATE WHAT IS IN YOU … AND YOU’LL KNOW IT TOO, says the LORD God.
The passage hasn’t yet finished, however.
There is a third aspect to the text … BECAUSE THERE’S NOTHING ELSE I CAN DO!
The vivid word picture in verse 12 illustrates the way things have turned out between the Lord and his people.
As Amos says, “Do horses run on rocks?
“Does one plough there with oxen?”
These two similes show the stupidity of what Israel has become.
The twisting of right into its very opposite has as much chance of saving them as horses being able to run on rocks, or anyone ploughing those rocks with oxen!
It shows how the pride of Israel has totally blinded her to anything from the Lord at all!
They were still thinking they were God’s chosen - of course everything we’re doing is going to be alright!
The picture Amos should have been painting is the most fruitful vineyard and the richest harvest field of the Lord.
“But you have turned justice into poison and the fruit of righteousness into wormwood…” – which is bitterness.
They have spat in the Lord’s face.
Matthew Henry describes them here as being nauseous and noxious - they stink themselves, and they only keep on taking over others with their evil.
They are well and truly stuck in their rut.
The rut that leads straight to their own hell!
Amos has yet more to this sentence though.
“But you have turned justice into poison and the fruit of righteousness into wormwood - you who rejoice in Lo Debar, who say, ‘Have we not by our own strength captured Karnaim for ourselves?’”
Can you see what Amos is saying?
You can’t run a country on a few petty military victories.
If a country is to have a real blessing it must be based on the right foundation - justice and the fruit of righteousness.
What you’re like on the inside matters much more than anything happening on the outside.
There also seems to be a double-play on the words used here by Amos.
‘Lo Debar’ in Hebrew literally means “nothing.”
They were absolutely thrilled about nothing!
And they had taken Karnaim, which translated means “horns”, which represents strength by their own strength.
So they had taken power by power!
Both their emptiness and their whole inside is exposed.
That’s what they depend on - that’s all they’ve got to depend on.
That’s a death sentence if there ever was one!
In fact, if the Israelites want to speak about their military conquests, the Lord ends this passage by telling them of one which will be far greater - their conquest by Assyria!
Then those two small towns of Lo Debar and Karnaim will pale into insignificance.
That will be a complete annihilation across the whole country - from one end to the other!
Congregation, it’s all come to a head!
The Lord God, after having seriously exposed the vices which ruled in Israel, again declares his vengeance upon them.
There’s a difference now, though.
Here he is very clear about the kind of punishment he would inflect on the Israelites.
The curses of Deuteronomy have come home to roost.
Moses had described such a condition in Deuteronomy chapter 29.
He pictured that person thinking, in verse 19 there, “‘I will be safe, even though I persist in going my own way.’”
Moses, the Lord’s prophet, then said in Deuteronomy 29:20, “The LORD will never be willing to forgive him; his wrath and zeal will burn against that man.
“All the curses written in this book will fall upon him, and the LORD will blot out his name from under heaven.”
And when other people wonder why the LORD did this to his people, they were to be told, as verse 25 there says, “It is because this people abandoned the covenant of the LORD, the God of their fathers, the covenant he made with them when he brought them out of Egypt.
“They went off and worshipped other gods and bowed down to them, gods they did not know, gods he had not given them.
Is it any surprise then that in verse 28 there it says, “in furious anger and in great wrath the LORD uprooted them from their land and thrust them into another land…?”
It’s no surprise at all.
The only surprise is how long-suffering the LORD was with his people before it happened.
The saddest part of all, though, is that the people just won’t see this.
The character of the person described at the beginning of this sermon means that they won’t really know.
We can compare that with those going to hell today.
They have heard the Gospel but still they choose to go through their own way.
It is terribly tragic.
But not on their part.
They wouldn’t want us to cry for them – ‘Hey, I’m okay!’
There is, however, a warning for us in the church.
When we begin to boast in what we have - our congregation, our denomination, our particular theology - let the alarm bells ring!
The apostle Paul exhorts us in 2nd Corinthians 10:17, “Let him who boasts boast in the Lord.”
For as soon as we look away from the Lord Jesus Christ our focus turns to ourselves.
There are people with this character in churches right now - perhaps even in this congregation.
They must be warned - even if they are the very last people who would have the ears to hear!
For that reason we must try all we can with those who do this.
Like the watchman in Ezekiel 33 - then we do our duty and it can’t be held against us.
Then they’ve only got themselves to blame!
In everything, dear believer, look to him who was supremely humble, living out the will of the Heavenly Father.
He who so emptied himself out to take that curse upon himself that we may now live forever in his grace.
Let’s see this Jesus - and let’s keep him always clearly in view!
Indeed, let’s meet him upon his return as our Saviour – not as our Judge!
Amen.
PRAYER:
Let’s pray…
O Lord God,
We are so sorry for all that we’ve done to offend anyone.
We have so often gone our own way and done our own thing.
And you’ve warned us time and again.
But do humble us still.
Work in us by your Spirit, that we may act justly and show the fruit of righteousness.
For the sake of your Son, the One who perfectly went your way and who fulfilled your will.
In his name, the Name of Jesus, we pray, Amen.
* As a matter of courtesy please advise Rev. Sjirk Bajema, if you plan to use this sermon in a worship service. Thank-you.
The source for this sermon was: www.rcnz.org.nz
(c) Copyright, Rev. Sjirk Bajema
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