Amos preached on sin, and he was against it. His message was subtle at first. He started by talking about the sins of Israel’s neighbors. He drew a circle of judgment starting with their enemies. At first, the people of Israel would have said “Amen! You should judge the sins of our foes.” Amos preached, “For three sins of Damascus, no for four. Damascus represented the Syrians. He continued with Gaza, the leading city of the Philistines. Up the coast, God would judge Tyre. Across the Jordan he would judge Edom. God would judge the Ammonites, and the Moabites.” Amen. Amos was saying all the right things in Samaria, the capital city of the northern kingdom of Israel.
To this day, most of us are against the sins of others. Imagine if a preacher had said, “God is going to judge Al Qaeda for blowing up the World Trade Center. Osama Bin Laden is in trouble." Amen! Or, “God will get the Taliban in Afghanistan for aiding and abetting Osama.” Amen! “God will judge North Korea for making nuclear weapons to threaten South Korea.” Amen! As I was growing up sermons against Russia were in vogue. “God will judge the communists . . . God will judge the sexual predators . . . God will judge the abusive parents . . .” All of this would have garnered a strong, “amen!”
So far so good. But then Amos stopped preaching and started meddling. He then said God would judge Judah – well that was the Southern Kingdom. Will God really judge our brothers and sisters? As typical siblings, the Israelites in the northern Kingdom might have been ok with that. Then he said, “God will judge your sins Israel!”
Amos’s verbal circle was complete. No sin would be left unpunished. The same God who judges our evil enemies is also our judge. This was surely a less popular message. What were the sins of Israel? They committed the economic sin of selling their brothers and sisters into slavery. Worse yet, they trampled the poor, committed sexual immorality. When God sent them holy people who had taken a Nazirite vow not to drink, they convinced them to forsake their vows and get drunk. When God sent prophets to preach, the Israelite leaders silenced them. So God called a shepherd named Amos who lived in Judah to go and preach against Israel. He was not well received.
Years ago, evangelist Billy Graham said, “God will have to apologize to Sodom and Gomorrah if he does not judge the sin in our cities today.” Those were strong words. God judges sin among other nations. Our holy God will judge sin in our nation. When someone shows us our sin, we can get mad at the messenger, or we change our behavior. What will we do?
