God's Ultimate Judgment

What do you think is the worst form of judgment from God? Boils and pains on your body? The loss of your financial stability? Perhaps social isolation and the loss of friends? How about the death of a loved one? When you think of those things, I'm sure one of them strikes you as the worst form of punishment God can offer. Amos 8 teaches us something different. Amos 8 unpacks that God's judgment is climactically experienced in His silence. 

Before we proceed, we must examine the spiritual state of Israel at the time of this writing. 

Amos 8:1–3 (ESV) This is what the Lord GOD showed me: behold, a basket of summer fruit. 2 And he said, “Amos, what do you see?” And I said, “A basket of summer fruit.” Then the LORD said to me, “The end has come upon my people Israel; I will never again pass by them. 3 The songs of the temple shall become wailings in that day,” declares the Lord GOD. “So many dead bodies!” “They are thrown everywhere!” “Silence!”

So far in Amos, the prophet has enumerated the sins of this nation. Violence and treachery toward one another, exploiting the poor, luxury at the expense of others, arrogant pride about their power and station in life, spiritual apathy, and greed. All the while, they attended their temples and celebrated the feasts as if they were truly spiritual. God likens the nation to a basket of "ripe fruit", ripe for judgment. The nation has been given hundreds of years and many prophetic warnings to turn back to God, and they have instead sought to silence, kill, or send those prophets out of the nation (remember Amos was asked to leave in the last chapter). 

In Amos 8, the Lord condemns their behavior toward the least among them once again:

Amos 8:4 (ESV) Hear this, you who trample on the needy and bring the poor of the land to an end,

They took advantage of their fellow Israelites and exploited the financial hardship of the laborers to satisfy their own greed. They went to "church," yes, but longed for the religious observance to end so they might continue their exploitive practices:

Amos 8:5–6 (ESV) saying, “When will the new moon be over, that we may sell grain? And the Sabbath, that we may offer wheat for sale, that we may make the ephah small and the shekel great and deal deceitfully with false balances, 6 that we may buy the poor for silver and the needy for a pair of sandals and sell the chaff of the wheat?”

God likens their judgment to the rising and ensuing flooding that occurs in the Nile. 

Amos 8:7–8 (ESV) The LORD has sworn by the pride of Jacob: “Surely I will never forget any of their deeds. 8 Shall not the land tremble on this account, and everyone mourn who dwells in it, and all of it rise like the Nile, and be tossed about and sink again, like the Nile of Egypt?”

Moreover, God tells them the feasts of their religious practices will be turned to mourning as if they lost a son. 

Amos 8:10 (ESV) I will turn your feasts into mourning and all your songs into lamentation; I will bring sackcloth on every waist and baldness on every head; I will make it like the mourning for an only son and the end of it like a bitter day.

And now we come to the climactic punishment. A day no one would want. A day when God shuts His voice to their ears. 

Amos 8:11 (ESV) “Behold, the days are coming,” declares the Lord GOD, “when I will send a famine on the land— not a famine of bread, nor a thirst for water, but of hearing the words of the LORD.

This is the worst thing you can experience. It is a picture of hell. God's Word will not be heard in hardened rebellion. Paul likens this condition in Ephesians 4.

Ephesians 4:17–19 (ESV) Now this I say and testify in the Lord, that you must no longer walk as the Gentiles do, in the futility of their minds. 18 They are darkened in their understanding, alienated from the life of God because of the ignorance that is in them, due to their hardness of heart. 19 They have become callous and have given themselves up to sensuality, greedy to practice every kind of impurity.

When you don't hear God, every other voice (including your own deceptive heart) sounds worthy of following. To me, there is nothing more terrifying than to only listen to what sinners have to say. Jesus spoke of the religious leaders as the "blind leading the blind... into a pit". 

Amos describes restless living when God's voice isn't being heard. 

Amos 8:12 (ESV) They shall wander from sea to sea, and from north to east; they shall run to and fro, to seek the word of the LORD, but they shall not find it.

Thus, scripture implores us to hear and repent TODAY while the voice remains in our ears. 

Hebrews 3:15 (ESV) As it is said, “Today, if you hear his voice, do not harden your hearts as in the rebellion.”

It is worth mentioning that the original audience of Hebrews was being tempted to abandon their faith in Christ and return to the now nullified religious practices, festivals, and legalities of the Law. Should they refuse to listen to Christ while He called, they too would have become hardened in heart through the empty practice of dead religion. 

But Christ speaks to us today through the Word. When you hear, repent and believe! Receive what He says and let the light of His truth shine into every corner of your mind.