Please turn to Amos 2. Beginning at verse 6. We now come... to Amos's indictment of Israel, the nation to whom he is preaching. Hear God's word. Thus says the Lord, for three transgressions of Israel and for four, I will not turn away its punishment because they sell the righteous for silver and the poor for a pair of sandals. They pant after the dust of the earth, which is on the head of the poor and pervert the way of the humble. A man and his father go into the same girl to defile my holy name. They lie down by every altar on clothes taken in pledge, and drink the wine of the condemned in the house of their God. Yet it was I who destroyed the Amorite before them, whose height was like the height of the cedars, and he was as strong as the oaks. Yet I destroyed his fruit above and his roots beneath. Also, it was I who brought you up from the land of Egypt and led you 40 years through the wilderness to possess the land of the Amorite. I raised up some of your sons as prophets and some of your young men as Nazarites. Is it not so, O you children of Israel, says the Lord? But you gave the Nazarites wine to drink and commanded the prophets, saying, Do not prophesy. Behold, I am weighed down by you as a cart full of sheaves is weighed down. Therefore, flight shall perish from the swift. The strong shall not strengthen his power, nor shall the mighty deliver himself. He shall not stand who handles the bow. The swift of foot shall not escape, nor shall he who rides a horse deliver himself. The most courageous of men of might shall flee naked in that day, says the Lord. His testimonies are wonderful. May our soul keep them. Heavenly Father, Your Word is wonderful, even when it speaks of awesome and terrible things. We ask, Lord, that you would give us ears to hear what your Spirit says to your church. And I ask that you would preserve my lips from error and cleanse them through Jesus Christ. Amen. Please be seated. Well, the former Malaysian Minister of Education, Masley Malik, said at a recent conference a few months ago, he said, the increasing loss in the sense of shame among the Malays is the main reason for the systemic corruption in the country. And Pat Utomi, a Nigerian professor of entrepreneurship, said this in a recent message. But if truth be told, what puzzles me most about the Nigerian condition is the total loss of the sense of shame in people. When a sense of shame is lost, all is lost. The culture, he said, of the military junta in 1966 crippled the dreams of two generations because entrenched in their culture is the absence of a sense of shame. When I read that, I was reminded of something my mother told me 20 plus years ago when they were in Nigeria, of their experience, and I think I remember this right, if not, she can correct it, of receiving a package well, I should say of knowing that a package had been mailed to them, but never getting it for months, and finally going down to the post office to look for this package, and finding that there were just lots of people in the post office, but the lights were out, and many of them were just sleeping at their desks, and when you would come by to try and get them to do their duty, there was absolutely no sense of Shame at having been caught sleeping when they were supposed to be working. Complete absence of shame. There is a lot of talk today about guilt and shame and shame-based cultures, but much of it is about how to get rid of guilt and shame by just by just rejecting them. But it doesn't work that way. Guilt. Guilt is the state of a moral agent. And by moral agent we mean somebody who is morally responsible. Animals are not moral agents. They are not morally responsible. So they might kill somebody, kill something, but they're not morally responsible for that. Guilt is the state of a moral agent. People are moral agents. Guilt is a state which results from an actual commission of a sin or a crime of offense. When that moral agent knows that it's a crime or a violation of the law. And so guilt exists as soon as that sin or crime is committed. Guilt renders a person a debtor to the law and makes them liable for punishment. But shame is different. It's very close. You might say it's a twin or the other side of the same coin. Shame is a painful sensation or emotion. guilt is a legal liability, shame is an emotion excited by an awareness of our guilt or of having done something which injures our reputation. Shame can be intensified by the disclosure of our actions to others when we think that others will consider them to be base or low or mean or degrading and hence This emotion is often accompanied in us by a downcast look or by blushing, that involuntary transport of blood to our face that turns it red, called confusion of face in the Bible. See, guilt is very objective. It's based on what's been done. It's legal. Shame is subjective. It's an emotion, what we feel. It's driven by what we think others are thinking about us. And if we are oblivious or unaware of what others think of our actions, we can be guilty without feeling any sense of shame. We can also feel a sense of shame even if we're not guilty when we think others are going to think lowly of us for it. But this idea of it's based on what others think of us. I remember I was in Malaysia Well, Singapore actually, this was in Singapore. And I went to church on the Sunday and I was invited to a home of a family in the church that afternoon. And I went, well, in Singapore, it's the custom to take off your shoes before you go into any house. And so every door has a row of shoes in front of it. And I didn't know that. I didn't know this. But it's considered shameful to have a hole in your sock, other than the one to put your foot in. And so I'm being the Scots that I am, I have lots of holes in my socks because I figured nobody sees them and what does it matter? So I didn't know anything about this custom and I was perfectly oblivious to walk into their house with holes in my socks. or at least a hole. They were gracious enough to tell me about this custom, but I felt no shame for that because I had no idea that's what they thought of people with holes in their socks. I was oblivious to this until they told me about it. Even then, it wasn't a custom I was used to, and so I didn't feel too bad about it, but I recognized this for them was a matter of great shame, and they were embarrassed for me that I had a hole in my sock. But then they were very gracious and said, well, you're okay, we forgive you. But see, that illustrates some of the complexity of how shame works. Well, Guilt can't be shared. Only the person that commits sin is guilty, but many can experience shame over that sin. The parent of a disobedient child, for example, can feel, experience shame from that child's guilt, even though they might not be guilty of that sin of their child. Or a child, on the other hand, may be guilty but have no sense of shame because they're not aware of what they've done being wrong yet. Well, while it's possible to experience shame where there's no guilt, the far bigger problem is those who experience no shame when there is guilt. And that's what we see in the passage this morning in Amos's indictment of Israel is a people who have lost any shame over their guilt. Their guilt is real, but they are completely oblivious. They have so seared their conscience. They have turned to follow another God and another law and have completely discounted the law of God so that they feel no shame in their guilt. Shame is actually mentioned in the Bible quite frequently. It's not mentioned by name in this book, but it is mentioned over 120 times in the Old Testament. And most of those are in three books, Isaiah, Jeremiah, and the Psalms, the most being in Jeremiah. Jeremiah was a prophet like Amos, preaching to a people who had lost any sense of shame. Amos, he doesn't use this word, but he describes a people here that are acting without any shame for their sins. And what are their sins for which they are indicted? This is kind of like a summary. An indictment is a summary list of the sins. Doesn't go into all the details and all the specifics, all this, what we call specifications of all the instances where these sins were committed, but it is an indictment, a statement. And this indictment begins just like all the other indictments did of all the other nations for three transgressions of Israel and for four, I will not turn away its punishment for three transgressions and for four. This is not an isolated case. This is not a one time thing. This is something that has been going on and on. There's a numerous, numerous transgressions. They're ongoing, they're systemic in the culture. and their guilt is multifaceted. And the first thing that he mentions is the exploitation of people for financial gain, especially the poor. They sell the righteous, he said, you sell the righteous for silver and the poor for a pair of sandals. Now this could describe human trafficking and slavery, and while that was undoubtedly going on, it's mentioned in the other nations earlier. Most commentators understand this in a more figurative sense. That of unjustly denying people what is rightfully theirs. So it's the sense of when you sell someone out. You, in effect, betray them. You don't give them what is due to them or what's been promised to them. And it's a specific reference to corrupt judges and a corrupt system of justice that sells out the righteous for a bribe. The righteous are sold out by corrupt judges when the wicked are not condemned And the righteous are not justified by the judge. That's a selling out. Selling out of the righteous. The law of God said you shall, told judges, you shall not pervert justice in Deuteronomy 16. You shall not show partiality. You shall not take a bribe for a bribe blinds the eyes of the wise and twists the words of the righteous. In Deuteronomy 24, you shall not pervert justice due to a stranger or the fatherless or take a widow's garment as pledge. Cursed is the one who perverts the justice due the stranger, the fatherless, and the widow, Deuteronomy 27 says. That was part of the curses at Mount Evol. And all the people shall say amen. In other words, this was a covenant that the entire nation had entered into. This was something that they had sworn before the Lord to do, that they would not pervert justice. And Amos is coming now and saying, you have broken your covenant. It's bad enough when we sin. But when we sin against our vow, the Bible says it's better not to vow than to make a vow and break it. And these people have sworn in a formal covenant ceremony described in The words are given in Deuteronomy 27 and 28. Remember the people were to stand, when they went into the land of Israel, they were to stand on these two mountains, Mount Gerizim and Mount Ebal. And they were in an antiphonal way to recite the blessings of the covenant and the curses, the judgments that would come upon God's people for breaking the covenant for those that were at the class a week or two ago, or last week, I guess. We talked about the sanctions of the covenant. And Amos is coming and saying, you are breaking your covenant, the covenant that you made. Yes, it wasn't you personally there, but you there corporately. This was your nation that took this. These were your representatives that took these covenants to not pervert justice, but you are selling the poor for silver and the poor for a pair of sandals. That's a progression. There's first maybe a resistance to taking a bribe. There's no price that you would accept for perversion of justice. But once that is broken down, then it becomes cheap. Because the judge himself becomes liable to being extorted. And once that's become a pattern, We say in the drug community people would murder their own grandmother for the money for the next fix of drugs. And here these judges sell the poor for a pair of sandals, something of not great value. And I don't need to tell you that this is a problem in our land. And if you've been a victim of it, you know how deep it hurts when you know that you have been denied justice. One example of this kind of injustice was right here in this county, right here in the court that's a few blocks from us, as we sit here. One example was published, it was so egregious. Such an egregious violation and denial of justice, of selling the righteous for a sandal, happened here and was published in a book called White Lies. It's somebody in New York that heard of what was going on and was so dumbfounded they came down to investigate for themselves and ended up writing a book on it. It tells of the complete and total miscarriage of justice. A young girl, high school student, on the volleyball team was murdered at Conroe High School. And a black man was indicted for that murder. And yet, There was corruption from one end of it to the other. The investigation by the Texas Rangers was completely corrupt. They overlooked blatant, obvious evidence that would have, exculpatory evidence that would have declared his innocence. They lied. They twisted the records and investigation. The judges saw all this and allowed it and ruled, continually ruled against this man. Thankfully, he wasn't executed, that there was eventually somebody came in and saved him. But nothing was ever done for all the wicked and corrupt judges right here in our own county. And I can list a personal example that I'm personally aware of, just in the last few years. We have a practice in the state of Texas where a utility district can be created by an active legislature, and they are a taxing body, and they are governed by an elected board. And most of them are used for utility districts, for your electricity and your water, if you don't live in a city. But they can use them for other things. And in the woodlands, there is a district for the roads. The interesting about this district is that it only includes the roads and not the people that live on the roads. And it only includes commercial land where nobody lives. And so it was by design. to create a district that could tax without anybody living in it to vote on the board members. So who gets to pick the board members? Well, the people in the know. The way they do this is they move people onto that property It'll move a little trailer on there, and then they'll say those people live in there, and then those people will be the ones to vote in this board, and then they will also usually vote in a big bond. So millions of dollars that this utility district will be in debt. And then those people disappear. They weren't really living there. They were just there to do this. And it's all legal. This way of moving people in and having them be there temporarily to vote on this utility district. It's all legal. It's perfectly legal according to our laws. Even as they have been interpreted by the courts and by those in our authority in our state. And yet when when a righteous man saw this and sought to, following the same legal process, to elect board members to this board who would do justly and who wouldn't simply be taking bribes and acting corruptly, then he was prosecuted. He wasn't prosecuted by our local district attorney because there was no crime committed. He was prosecuted by the attorney general of the state of Texas, contrary to their own laws and contrary to what they themselves do. Why? Because there was a lot of money at stake. This was a game that goes on and is still going on today. It's just one more example among many of these injustices happening, not in Washington, D.C., not in Austin, but right here, right in our community. People on the jury just didn't even realize what they were voting on because key evidence was withheld from them. One of the attorneys who was an advisor to this man who was doing this, He was fired by the Secretary of State when it came out that he was going to testify in the trial. Why? Intimidation. To cover up his testimony. That there was no crime actually committed. Now sins can be aggravated. Aggravation of sin makes it more wicked and makes people more culpable for that sin and liable to greater punishment for the same sin. That's what we call an aggravation. And Amos lists a few aggravations. What are aggravations or what makes a sin aggravated? Well, if people should know better. If maybe somebody is older and more experienced, maybe somebody has a greater, has been a Christian longer, has greater experience of grace or has been given greater gifts than when they sin against that knowledge, they're more culpable. Jesus said it would be more tolerable in the day of judgment for Tyre and Sidon than it would be for Israel. Why? Because Israel had been given more light. They knew better. They should have known better. Tyre and Sidon didn't have near the blessings of the law that Israel had. or if somebody's example is likely to be followed and they sin, that makes it a greater aggravation. People that are in a position of trust and leadership, if they sin, that is a greater aggravation because of their office. If someone holds an office or is a guide to others or is an example that should be followed, and elders should be an example that we can follow as they follow the Lord. But when they commit a sin, there is greater guilt. When people who are eminent for their profession and their walk sin, there's a greater guilt. James said, my brethren, let not many of you become teachers, knowing that we, we who are teachers, shall receive a stricter judgment. because there's greater guilt. There's greater culpability in those sins. Those are aggravating. It's also, depending on who the sin is against, can be an aggravation. If we sin against God, or his attributes, or against Christ and his grace, or against the Holy Spirit and his witness and his working, then those are far greater sins. In fact, there is one sin that Jesus says isn't forgiven, and that is to sin blasphemy against the Holy Spirit. But if we sin against superiors, then that is a greater sin. If we sin particularly against weaker brothers, that's a greater sin. Jesus said if somebody sins, causes a child to go astray, it'd be better if a millstone is hung about their neck and they're cast into the river. Because there's greater culpability when we sin against little ones. But also, the very nature of an offense can make it aggravated. And our laws even recognize this. They talk about assault and then aggravated assault. Assault that is a worse kind of assault. So if a sin is against the express letter of the law, or a sin breaks many commandments, or a sin that isn't just in the heart but breaks out in words, that's an aggravating factor. if it's against means, if it's against conviction of our conscience, if it goes against a private or public admonition, if somebody counseled us against it, and then we persist in that. That's an aggravation. If it's done willfully or presumptuously or arrogantly or maliciously or frequently, a sin that we do many times over is an aggravated sin. If it's done with delight, If it's a relapse after we've repented of it. These are things that aggravate sin, our sins, and make us liable to greater judgment. If it's on the Lord's day, or other times of worship, it's an aggravating sin. And Amos lists here some aggravations. They aren't to this sin of selling people out, of corrupt and unjust courts. They aren't satisfied until the poor, in verse seven, are groveling on the ground with their face in the dust. Their insatiable greed and cruelty drives them to irrational excess. Why do they have to force somebody to grovel with their face in the dust? They pant after the dust of the earth which is on the head of the poor. They pervert the humble. They pervert the way of the humble. They are willing, in other words, to exercise this unjustice and do these things to people who haven't even stood up against them, people who haven't challenged them or threatened them or embarrassed them, people who aren't, when I say threatened, people who aren't a threat to their power. They simply do this to show that they can do it. These are aggravations that make this nation of Israel more liable, more culpable for God's punishment. Because these were people that were just minding their own business, humble, lowly. But this is also. Describing. A people who have lost any sense of shame. For their sin. No longer are their sins done in secret. No longer are they ashamed of these sins that they're doing. They're flaunting them. Jeremiah said, chapter 6 of Israel, were they ashamed when they committed abominations? No. They were not at all ashamed. Nor did they know how to blush. Therefore, they shall fall among those who fall. At that time, I will punish them and they shall be cast down, says the Lord. Or a couple of chapters later, in chapter 8, 12, were they ashamed when they committed abomination? No. No, they weren't. They shall fail among those who fall and they shall be cast down. It is Israel here. Is a nation that has lost any shame. The law of God is so far removed from them. that there's no longer any cultural disapprobation of what's going on. It's become perfectly acceptable. What other people think has been, or other people thinking poorly and badly of these sins is gone. The people no longer think badly of these things. It's just become a way of living. It's become accepted in the culture so that there is no shame in these wicked deeds. Amos' second indictment against Israel is that their worship is corrupted with gross fornication. Gross immorality, a man and his father go into the same girl to defile my name. Now this could be describing incest such as Reuben, Absalom, and Jehoiakim committed against their fathers. But in the context of these verses, of lying down by the altar, it's more likely speaking of the perversion of God's worship through temple prostitution. A man and his father go to the same girl to defile my holy name. They lie down by every altar on clothes taken in pledge. It's seeming to speak about something that is done as a part of their worship. The worship of God is so corrupted that it's become an occasion of gross immorality. And then Amos gives two aggravations to this sin, if it wasn't bad enough already. He says, they lie down on every altar on clothes taken in pledge. Now, that might sound like a sort of incongruous comparison. What does gross sexual immorality, how is that related to lying, doing it on a cloth taken in pledge? Well, Exodus and the law of God said that if you ever took your neighbor's pledge, you should return it to him before the sun went down. And in Deuteronomy 24, if the man is poor, you shall not keep his pledge overnight. You shall, in any case, return the pledge to him again when the sun goes down, that he may sleep on his own garment and bless you. And it shall be righteousness to you before the Lord, your God. Now, why? Why take a pledge and why return the pledge if you have to take it? Why return the pledge every night? Well, a pledge is necessary to prevent fraud. Yes, even fraud by poor people because being poor isn't necessarily of itself any special grace. Poor people can sin just like rich people can. And so taking the pledge prevents fraud. If a person wanting a loan didn't have to give something in pledge for it, then they could borrow against that same coat from a number of people. They could go to you and say, I need a coat. I don't have a coat. Can you loan me? Or I need a loan for something. Sorry, I have my coat. Can you take that in pledge? But once they've given that coat and pledge, they can't go to somebody else and pledge the same coat. But if they didn't have to give the coat and pledge, they could go and get a loan from someone here and say, well, I'll give you my coat. You can have my coat if I don't pay the loan back. But if they don't actually have to give them the coat, then they can go to somebody else and say the same thing. They could go to any number of people and get any number of loans based on that one pledge. And that's actually what happens in our Federal Reserve process. Here, it's a necessity though when people are poor and that's the only coat they have that we return it to them at night so they have something to keep warm by. So there is a balance here in the law of God that finally divides between protecting from fraud on the part of poor people and yet showing mercy to them and compassion on them so they don't suffer in the cold because their coat is in pledge. It's a beautiful balance that works. And yet it's easily perverted by these people who are taking these coats and not returning them. But they're actually committing gross sins on top of them. And another aggravation, well, I should say, Today, this process is done with credit bureaus. When someone wants to borrow, a lender will check your credit report at the credit bureau and make a decision on whether to loan. If they see that you have a lot of other outstanding loans, then they would be less likely to loan you money. Or if you want to borrow against property, the lender will check the courthouse for the existence of prior liens on the property. And if they have prior liens on the property, then they won't lend you money based on that. So we have, in our law, a very similar process of ensuring that there is a prevention against fraud. Unfortunately, it doesn't extend to the Federal Reserve. There's another aggravation, and that is they drink the wine of the condemned in the house of their God. So the law provided fines. in certain situations because the law was always concerned about restitution of the victim. And so those fines, unlike our day, those fines went to the victims to make the victim whole. Because that was a concern of justice is how do we restore and make the victim whole? Any fines should go to the victim. not the state. That's one of the problems with all of our traffic laws is that all these fines go to the state and not to the victims against whom those laws were broken. So for example, in Exodus 21, if men fight and hurt a woman with child so that she gives birth prematurely yet no harm follows, in other words, there's no murder, There's no manslaughter because the baby is born, it's just born prematurely. In Deuteronomy 22 it specifies In another situation, if there was premarital fornication, they fine the man 100 shekels of silver and give them to the father of the young woman because he has brought a bad name on the Virgin of Israel. So the money is given in restitution to the victim. And what's happening here is the money is going to the judges and the people in the court system. And Amos says that's unjust. They drink the wine that condemned is literally those punished by fines. Some of your translations may have that. They drink the wine of those punished by fines in the house of their God. So they're using stolen money, money they've taken by the power or the authority of the civil government that should have gone to the victim and they're keeping it for their own sinful pleasures. The next sin that Amos indicts them for, the third one and the last one in this section, is that they resist the will of God. They resist the will of God. By commanding prophets not to prophesy. This is what Jesus said of the Pharisees. They resist the will of God for them. And they also resist the will of God in the giving Nazarites to drink. And these are aggravations. They are sinning in the face of God's goodness. God is the one who has raised up these Nazarites. God is the one who gives them prophets. and sends them. And Nazarite is somebody who took a special vow. A vow not to drink, not to touch anything from the fruit of the vine. Something that produced by the vine. Not the grapes, not the seeds, not the skins, not wine, nothing. And they also vowed not to cut their hair. Why? Because this was a sign they are dedicating themselves to the Lord. They are giving up this for the Lord. It was a voluntary thing. The desire to do that came from the Lord. And so the Lord is saying, I gave you these Nazirites. These are people who are, in a sense, they are in a form of fasting. They are denying some pleasures to themselves so that they can be dedicated to the Lord. And these are people who would have been a testimony against the sins of their day, against the unrestrained, unashamed sins of their day. And so they seek to corrupt these Nazarites by getting them to drink wine, by getting them to break their vows. And this is an especially aggravated sin. Willfully trying to get somebody to sin against a vow that they have made. Or the prophets that God has sent to them. They seek to stop them, silence them in various ways, to intimidate them, to keep them from bringing this message that God has sent to them. And so they are, these are aggravating sins because God has particularly bless them. God said, I'm the one who destroyed the Amorite before them. Amorites were the people that were in the land before they came and they were very big people, physically strong. Amos says, their height was like the height of cedars and he was strong as oaks. Yet I destroyed the fruit above and the root below. In other words, there's a complete removal and destruction of these people. The fruit above and the root below. So nothing was left to grow up in that land. God says, I did that for you. That was my gift to you. I led you 40 years through the wilderness to possess this land. This was God's goodness to them. So they are aggravating their sin by sinning specifically against God's goodness. Well, what do we learn in this? I think there's three lessons briefly that we learn. And one is that wrath is stored up for a nation, a land. These verses here at the end in verse 13 and following describe a process in which God is wearied by the sins of Israel. It's a very graphic image that Amos uses. Weighed down, a cart full of sheaves is weighed down. Maybe you've seen on the internet these ridiculous pictures, and I've, in poor countries, where you'll see a cart or a truck that's just stacked way up, way, way, way up, ridiculously high, so much so that it's completely unstable. It can't drive down the road without tipping over. Barely. I've seen these kinds of vehicles loaded down. And that's what God is saying here. He's saying, you have done this. You're like you're weighing me down like this as a cart full of sheaves is tottering under its load. This is what you've done. God is saying to me, I'm weighed down by I'm I'm fed up with you. I'm completely fed up with you. And it's a gradual process. It wasn't something that just happened. There's a cumulative effect going on. And God says, therefore, therefore. Because of that, there is wrath stored up. The strong shall not strengthen his power. The mighty shall not deliver himself. He shall not stand who handles the bow. In other words, the second thing we see is that human ability and power are useless against God's judgment. Look at all these examples of Israel's strength. They are useless against God's judgment. They can't trust in them. God will turn them into his own purpose of judgment. You can't run away. You can't shoot your way out of it. You can't fight your way out of it. The strong is gonna be weak. The swift of foot can't run away. He who rides a horse can't deliver himself. The most courageous men of might shall flee naked in that day. And this is something we need to remember about our nation. All of its vaunted military might is going away. It's going to be useless when God brings judgment. All of our financial prowess in the global markets is gonna be useless when God brings his judgment. all of our vaunted ability to design things and make things, and it is true, it's gonna be useless when God brings judgment on our land. We are no exception to God's statement here that human ability and human power are useless against God's judgment. The only deliverer from the wrath of God is the Lord Jesus Christ. The only deliverer, the only savior from this wrath of God is the Lord Jesus Christ. He is the strong man. He is. our Redeemer, the one who has brought us back from bondage to sin and to Satan and to the evil one. And Amos will get to that there in the latter part of the book, and we will, Lord willing. Let us pray. Heavenly Father, We acknowledge how much trust we put in our land, in our military, in our financial ability, in our manufacturing ability, and we find it hard to imagine a desolate land. We ask, Lord, that you would grant us faith, one, to believe your word when it speaks of your judgment, when it speaks of our human inability to withstand it, but also when it speaks of our Savior, Jesus Christ, for who is strong to save? Father, may we put our hope in his name and not in our wealth and not in our properties and our homes, or our nation that has enjoyed great blessing from you and that has enjoyed great peace and great prosperity in so many ways. We ask, Lord, your mercy. We ask your forgiveness. In Jesus' name, amen.