Amos 2 -- The Sins of America, let's be fair
2 This is what the Lord says: “For three sins of Moab, even for four, I will not relent. Because he burned to ashes the bones of Edom’s king, 2 I will send fire on Moab that will consume the fortresses of Kerioth. Moab will go down in great tumult amid war cries and the blast of the trumpet. 3 I will destroy her ruler and kill all her officials with him,” says the Lord.
Wow, what a relief! Thank you Jesus! Whenever someone starts enumerating the sins of the US I always dread that they will bring up slavery. Is that fair? First of all not all the states had slavery, and then in the ones that did only 25% of the people had slaves, and then when you are talking about plantation owners with 100 or more slaves it was only about 3%. So is it really fair to go back several hundred years and dig up some cursed plantation owner and say the entire US is cursed because of this guy? Even God, right here in Amos condemns doing that! Of course slavery was cursed, but were these men who were made in the image of God cursed because of the US, or were they cursed by God? Oh yeah, Moab, they were amateurs, they only went back one or two generations to justify themselves, we went back much further than that. We went back to before there even was a New World, before Jesus, hey we even went back before Moses, we went all the way back to Noah. We went back to Noah and dug up Ham, and believe it or not, that is why all these people thousands of years later were cursed! Did we stop there? No, no, no we then brought out our witch doctors with their mumbo jumbo science as a racial justification. Burning bones to ash? That is kid’s stuff. We put those ashes into baby food. By the 1950s you could put two dolls before a young child, one black the other white, and ask which is the pretty one, which is the smart one, which is the good one and they would point to the white doll. Which one looks like you? They would point to the black doll. Which one is ugly and stupid? They would point to the black doll. Do you really think this generation will escape the judgement and wrath of God?
4 This is what the Lord says: “For three sins of Judah, even for four, I will not relent. Because they have rejected the law of the Lord and have not kept his decrees, because they have been led astray by false gods, the gods their ancestors followed, 5 I will send fire on Judah that will consume the fortresses of Jerusalem.”
The US claims to be a Christian nation that trusts in God. His commandment was to love our neighbor as ourselves. Torture, violating treaties, hunting down and killing women and children, selling communities to the highest bidder, and cursing man made in the image of God are all examples of rejecting that law. Money and power are false gods that have led this nation astray.
Judgment on Israel 6 This is what the Lord says: “For three sins of Israel, even for four, I will not relent. They sell the innocent for silver, and the needy for a pair of sandals.
Where was your phone made? How about your slippers? You want to blame covid on China, a poor country eating bats and living in crowded conditions, yet you don’t blame the sweatshops that you buy from for creating these conditions.
7 They trample on the heads of the poor as on the dust of the ground and deny justice to the oppressed.
Build the wall. Not so that we can keep illegal immigrants out because if we did that who would do all the menial tasks we don’t want to do. No, we build the wall so that we can deny justice to the oppressed. You don’t like the oppression, fine, we’ll send you back to the other side of the wall.
Father and son use the same girl and so profane my holy name.
Is this true? Some things I am glad I don’t know about. I recently heard that the value of the child trafficking industry in the US is greater than all professional sports taken together!
8 They lie down beside every altar on garments taken in pledge.
The law in the OT said you had to give the pledge of a garment to the poor at night so they could sleep and not be cold. The Lord is saying that they put the poor out into the cold and take their pledge, their downpayment. This is precisely what happened during the Mortgage crisis. People paid for their house for a couple of years, then a balloon mortgage kicked in, they couldn’t pay, the bank took back their house, keeping the money they had paid for about 5 years as well as their downpayment.
In the house of their god they drink wine taken as fines.
I worked for a bank and learned that the overdraft fees and other “fines” were their bread and butter. I once saw a person who had written ten small checks for a total of about $100. If the checks had been paid out in the order they were received one would have bounced, but by paying the big one first, and then bouncing the next biggest one, they were able to cause the other nine checks to bounce because of the fees. This person had to pay $75 in bounced check fees because of the clever way in which they paid out the checks. Sadly the money to cover these checks had been deposited, it just hadn’t cleared yet. Cheers!
9 “Yet I destroyed the Amorites before them, though they were tall as the cedars and strong as the oaks. I destroyed their fruit above and their roots below.
There were two main battles, in the wilderness the children of Israel asked for permission to pass through the land of the Amorites and they refused, instead coming out with their full army to attack them. Israel defeated them which was a great sign to all the nations round about. Later, in the good land 5 kings of the Amorites came out to attack Joshua and that was the day the sun stood still so he could finish the battle. You saw what God did to these people who you have dispossessed and now you have taken their place. Why would you imitate them? We defeated Britain, the superpower of the day, a leader in banking and finance, and then we imitated them!
10 I brought you up out of Egypt and led you forty years in the wilderness to give you the land of the Amorites. 11 “I also raised up prophets from among your children and Nazirites from among your youths. Is this not true, people of Israel?” declares the Lord. 12 “But you made the Nazirites drink wine and commanded the prophets not to prophesy.
There have been many great spiritual leaders in the US. There is no denying that. It is also true that we have laws that forbid the word of God in schools. No prayer, no bible studies, no name of Jesus, no word of God. But how did they “make the Nazarites” drink wine? That is a violation of their vow. I suspect this is much like the Lord’s word: But woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye shut up the kingdom of heaven against men: for ye neither go in yourselves, neither suffer ye them that are entering to go in. (Matt 23:13)
13 “Now then, I will crush you as a cart crushes when loaded with grain.
Many times the poor feel like the system is designed to run them over like a truck. So, as you have done it will be done to you.
14 The swift will not escape, the strong will not muster their strength, and the warrior will not save his life. 15 The archer will not stand his ground, the fleet-footed soldier will not get away, and the horseman will not save his life. 16 Even the bravest warriors will flee naked on that day,” declares the Lord.
You have designed a system so that the poor are trapped, so loaded up with pressures they can’t escape. A system so confusing the poor don’t know how to even use their strength to save their life. I recently wanted to pay off the car for my wife, feeling that eliminating this debt would make our financial situation more secure. She was against it, she wanted to keep the money in reserve in the event of an emergency. I did the math, I showed her that paying it off now would save her $700. She was stunned, she had no idea how the system was designed. The archer has a nice distance between him and the battle, when you lose your house they give you a month, two months, even three months warning. But in the end you lose your shirt and wind up fleeing naked. As they have done it will be done to you.
