Christ Church Washington D.C.

Good morning, Saints of Christ Church. It was a real honor to be with you all on Friday at the March for Life. It was such an encouraging experience, to sing, to rejoice, and look at the long road ahead and the pro-life issue. And I’m so disappointed that I’m not able to be with you in person now, as the snow has separated us. But our reading today for our sermon text comes from Amos chapter 2, verses 4 through 16, which I will now read.
Transgressions of Judah, and for four, I will not turn away the punishment thereof, because they have despised the law of the Lord, and have not kept his commandments, and their lies caused them to err, and after the which their fathers have walked. But I will send a fire upon Judah, and it shall devour the palaces of Jerusalem. Thus saith the Lord for three transgressions of Israel, and for four, I will not turn away the punishment thereof, because they sold the righteous for silver.
And the poor for a pair of shoes, that pant after the dust of the earth on the head of the poor, and turn aside the way of the meek, and a man and a father will go into the same maid to profane my holy name. And they lay themselves down upon clothes laid in pledge by every altar, and they drink the wine of the condemned in the house of their God. Yet destroyed I the Amorite before them, whose height was like the height of the cedars, and he was strong as the yokes, yet I destroyed his fruit from above, and his roots from beneath.
Also I brought you up in the land of Egypt, and led you forty years through the wilderness to possess the land of the Amorite. And I raised up of your sons for prophets, and of your young men for Nazarites. Is it not even thus, O children of Israel, saith the Lord? But ye gave the Nazarites wine to drink, and commanded the prophets, saying, Prophesy not. Behold, I am pressed under you, as a cart is pressed that is full of sheaves.
Neither shall he stand that handleth the bow, and he that is swift of foot shall not deliver himself, neither shall he that rideth his horse deliver himself. And he that is courageous among the mighty shall flee away naked on that day, saith the Lord.
And he oppressed his people fearsomely. To save the people from this oppression, a man exiled by Solomon named Jeroboam was called back from Egypt to launch an attack on Rehoboam. Though Jeroboam took most of Israel with him, God’s wrath on Rehoboam abated, and he managed to take back Jerusalem as well as the southern tribes of Judah,
and many of the Levites. Part of the reason why God’s wrath abated was that Jeroboam practiced political pragmatism without regard for God’s law, assuming that idolatry posed no national danger. That assumption would become Israel’s downfall. But Jeroboam was Israelite enough to understand that worship unites the people, and so he put prominent altars to golden calves at the northern and southern border of his nation.
The story of Jeroboam can be found in 1 Kings 11-14 and 1 Chronicles 10-13. But our story picks up around two centuries later, when Israel has another king named Jeroboam on the throne, and he represents all the ideals of the first Jeroboam even more successfully than the first, such that some liberal commentators have even speculated that the first Jeroboam was a fiction of Jeroboam 2.0.
But nonetheless, the parallels to the founder of the old Israel are striking, except that this new Jeroboam is in fact greater. With the major power, Assyria, weakened by internal disputes, Jeroboam II expands Israel’s boundaries and wealth, taking over much land and influence from the region, formerly belonging to Syria, Tyre, Moab, and other regional powers.
But those six enemies of Israel are the six enemies that Amos condemns as under God’s judgment, which you heard last week’s sermon. And this is welcome news. Amos proclaims judgment upon Damascus of Syria, Gaza of Philistia, the free city of Tyre, then Esau’s descendants, Edom, and then Lot’s descendants from his incestuous daughters, the Ammonites and the Moabites.
And until now, Amos has left the listeners in suspense. How many nations will he condemn? As a matter of Israelite rhetoric, it must be either seven or eight, numbers of completion and fullness. And so who will that seventh be? There is probably some doubt, given Amos was from the south and almost certainly had a southern accent. But to the spectacular surprise and joy of the northern listener, it is Judah, not Israel,
receives the cup of wrath, the seeming final criticism. Judah will fall with fire. When even those arrogant, backward southern prophets condemn themselves, the Israelites can be sure that Judah’s days are numbered. Israel is growing in wealth and prestige the very day Amos enters. The Sumerian counterfeit of Jerusalem’s true worship has never been more successful and credible than it is right now.
Amos appears to be a full-on David French character, telling the enemies of God exactly what they want to hear. Listen.
Yet something in Amos’ voice is clearly poised for one more result. His oration is not quite finished, and he prepares to take on one more enemy of God’s wrath. Imagine you’re a listener to Amos. Could it be Assyria, the long shadow over Israel and the entire Levant? Perhaps Egypt? Could the Mediterranean open up before the wealth of Israel and Jeroboam II? Could Jeroboam finish what Solomon began?
This is clever, because it means that the prophet,
this popular prejudice against Israel’s enemies, is grounding his condemnations in a moral standard beyond what Israel can actually claim for itself. But by now, he would have built ethos with the crowd, and it could not easily be stopped. See, Amos is a prophet who teaches with authority, and not like the scribes or the priests of Israel. But this standard, this law of God, is about to come crashing down on the very people who hail its coming.
Eight is a number of completion and then some, a final finality. And now comes this eighth judgment, and it comes like a scorching fire, like a hammer that shatters rock. Thou art the man. Israel, your end is at hand. And every applause against their enemies fell on their own head, and it accuses them of their own guilt. Listen to God’s judgment against Israel.
Therefore, I will not turn away the punishment thereof. One, because they sold the righteous for silver, and the poor for a pair of shoes. Two, they pant after the dust of the earth on the head of the poor, and turn aside the way of the meek. Three, and a man and his father will go into the same maid to profane my holy name. And four, and they lay themselves down upon clothes laid in pledge by every altar, and they drink the wine of the condemned in the house of their God.
Let’s take a look at these in reverse order. In Deuteronomy chapter 24:12-13, Moses outlines how the poor could take loans from others. Listen to this:
The priests of the northern kingdom were now keeping the only garment the poor had to warm themselves on their own beds, and they’re now keeping it for a personal benefit. This profaned the altars that the poor were ostensibly worshipping on, thinking they were worshipping Yahweh, however corrupted their worship. It took public loans and made personal profit off of them. It humiliated the poor, who were then
left without warmth at night, and it associates the holy men of God, the priests, with the vice of untrustworthiness. If the priests can take advantage of the poor, how much more does God? Meanwhile, men and their fathers alike take the same women, outside of their spouses, in a pagan worship to fertility goddesses. How quickly sexual perversion spreads into people. Sexual sin always spreads, and if it is not actively being
killed and repressed, and even socially mocked by everyone within the church, it can and it will run rampant, dividing marriages, leaving young people depressed and unfulfilled and purposeless, and resulting in fewer marriages with children, which is the natural result of God’s love. In Andrew Jackson’s first administration as president, the greatest political issue of his day was whether his cabinet officials and their wives would dine and invite to parties the wife of one
of his cabinet members, Margaret Eaton, who had been credibly accused of intimacy to her now husband and other gentlemen in D.C. when her previous husband was still living. It sharply divided Washington D.C. and it almost shattered Andrew Jackson’s chances of re-election, and it resulted in the entire cabinet of his stepping down or being let go to allow a reset of the government. We need not adopt Victorian methods to appreciate the way men and women
together worked to ostracize unrepentant sin. And while the sin of adultery is bad enough, we should note why it was practiced in this context. It was a matter of fertility. Setting aside the mountains of evidence we now have that immorality lowers birth rates and fertility rates and does not increase it, we are already seeing a return to an idolization of fertility in our country.
While children are a great blessing, and there are many good and healthy ways to make conception of children more likely, reaching for that blessing by using parts of other people not in that covenant relationship is the wrong way to do it. The introduction of men and women outside the married couple to guarantee children in some way
and the prosperity that children represent is not a new idea and it is roundly condemned in the prophets. The first two charges of Amos against Israel concern the treatment of the poor. Israel sells the poor for shoes and then with those shoes grinds the head of the poor into the dust. They deceive and encourage the poor to engage in crime and those they can’t corrupt they sell away lest their presence be a witness to Israel’s sin.
See, the fundamental problem with Israel is not that there is inequality, that there are poor, but that the ways the wealthy achieve that power and wealth and what they do with it. The more wealth and influence one has, the greater responsibility one has to those around him of low estate. I think this is a place where evangelicals are woefully under-catechized.
And it shocked me, the answer. It was mainline Christians. See, folks in the United Methodist Church, the Episcopalian Church, the PCUSA churches, these churches as a whole have long since abandoned the gospel, but many of their individual members still have an old, deeply ingrained sense of responsibility for the sake of the nation and for their local communities. And if they outspend us even on right-wing conservative think tanks, that is a testimony to the failure of the even
evangelical church to take responsibility for our own interests, much less apolitical causes. See, we should support private property, even family dynasties, but in the Old and New Testaments, if you are blessed with abundant resources, it is expected to be used to support those around you. First, family and church, but then those proximally near you. The rich man was condemned because he did not take care of the leper Lazarus at his gate, the suffering man nearest him.
Lastly, please highlight the hatred of righteousness. The Israelites actively relished destroying innocent consciences because they feared righteous men. You can also look forward to verse 12,
In spite of their compromised religion and false worship, God continues to raise up some men who set themselves apart for ministry. What an incredible grace that God gives to that northern kingdom. Oh, that God would continue to give a sinful and rebellious people strong men who follow God and speak of all his benefits and blessings.
And what do the Israelites say to these men? Shut up. Break your vows. Compromise on your promises. Leave behind your Puritan morals and join in our reveling. The wicked hate a witness against them. They despise men whose lives are dedicated to being upright and righteous and strong. Case in point, just this past week, the Democratic Assembly in Virginia received legislation,
likely to pass, to subject the Virginia Military Institute to another round of humiliating scrutiny of diversity, equity, and inclusion investigations intended to destroy and seemingly close the institution. Why have radicals continually targeted Virginia Military Institute? Because the very presence of an institution where men are taught to be self-governing, courageous, God-fearing, and armed is a threat to wickedness.
There’s even a chance that a righteous man might be produced, it must be snuffed out. They must not be allowed to speak. They must be made to drink wine and revel with prostitutes and sell their heritage for a mess of pottage. This hatred of righteousness runs deep. It is as old and older than ancient Israel, and our nation trods Israel’s path at our peril. Look now at the closing curse of Amos on Israel.
Why does Israel hate strong men dedicated to the cause of Christ? Because they are cowards. The wicked fear that their wickedness will be found out, and they will do anything to avoid being brought to light. And for their secrecy, they will be punished by God by having every facade ripped off, their cloaks and undergarments alike. They wanted to go into prostitutes,
they want to step on the poor with indifference, well they will be crushed under the heel of Christ. They want to sell the righteous, well they sold the wrong carpenter, and he is returning with a vengeance. Take the nation up in your prayers, take the distressed poor in your prayers, take up your own soul in your prayers, lest you find in your own soul darkness that remains unconfessed. Our Lord Jesus Christ is an older brother who has mercy on the merciful, but he scorns the haughty and proud.
Thanks be to God.