In Peter Allison's sermon 'The Last Straw - 2', he explores the fourth vision in Amos chapter 8, where God shows Amos a basket of summer fruit, symbolizing the end of Israel's grace period. The sermon discusses God swearing by the 'pride of Jacob', highlighting the serious and irrevocable nature of His covenantal judgments against a persistently rebellious nation. God’s judgments will include a symbolic darkening of the sun and a literal famine—not of food, but of the spiritual nourishment found in His word. The land itself will react to the people's sins, essentially testifying against them and preparing to cast them out. Despite the dire warnings, the sermon concludes with a message of hope, citing that God is always willing to forgive those who truly repent and turn to Him, as exemplified by Jesus' offer of salvation to the Samaritan woman.

Amos chapter 8. We pick up at verse 7 in the middle of this fourth vision. Hear God's word. The Lord has sworn by the pride of Jacob, surely I will never forget any of their works. Shall the land not tremble for this?

And everyone mourn who dwells in it, and all of it shall swell like the river, heave and subside like the river of Egypt. And it shall come to pass in that day, says the Lord, that I will make the sun to go down at noon, and I will darken the earth in broad daylight. I will turn your feasts into morning and all your songs into lamentation. I will bring sackcloth on every waist, and baldness on every head. I will make it like mourning for an only son, and its end like a bitter day.

Behold, the days are coming, says the Lord, that I will send a famine on the land not a famine of bread not a nor a Thirst for water but of hearing the words of the Lord They shall wander from sea to sea and from north to east they shall run to and fro seeking the word of the Lord, but shall not find it. In that day the fair virgins and strong young men shall faint from thirst. Those who swear by the sin of Samaria, who say, As your God lives, O Dan, and as the way of Beersheba lives, they shall fall and never rise again." May our lips utter praise as He teaches us His statutes. Almighty Father in heaven, please speak to us now as we have heard your word. Give us hearts to understand and eyes to see and faith to believe your words and grant us Lord to be doers of all that we have heard.

Lord we need You to teach us and to empower us and strengthen us. And I ask that You would sanctify my sinful lips and preserve me from error in proclaiming your word in Jesus name. Amen. Well, in this fourth vision of Amos, God showed him a basket of fruit, summer fruit, and asked him what he saw. And Amos, as a good prophet, answered the Lord's question with what he saw, a basket of summer fruit.

And we saw that the significance of summer fruit is that it's the last fruit of the season. It's the last harvest. After that, there is no more. It's the end. And hence it's used here as a picture of the end of Israel as a nation.

They shall fall and never rise again. Now last week we saw that although God is merciful and delights in mercy, and He is ready to pardon, There does come a time after repeated warnings are ignored, after the proud persistence in sin, that God says, no more, Enough. No more reprieves, no more extensions of judgment, no more chances. And so we looked at two questions, or we asked two questions. What are the sins that bring a culture to this point?

What are the indicators that they are at this point? And the second question that we didn't look at last week, which we want to this morning, is what are the judgments that God brings on such rebellious people? What are those judgments that God brings on nations that are ripe for judgment? And that begins in verse 7. The Lord swears.

The Lord swears by the pride of Jacob. By the pride of Jacob? Who is he swearing by the pride of Jacob? That's probably better translated as the glory or the excellencies of Jacob. And God is swearing by himself in saying that he swears by the pride or the excellencies of Jacob because That is the only name by which the Lord swears.

That is the only thing by which the Lord swears. It says, He swears by Himself, for He can swear by none other. There is none greater than Him. And that's who we're commanded to swear. We're commanded to swear only by the name of the Lord, not by anything else, not by anything that He has made.

And everything that exists outside of Himself, He has made. So God can only be swearing by His name when He swears by the pride of Jacob. How do we understand God swearing by himself when he swears by the pride of Jacob. Well, we say that because God is the excellency of Jacob. He is the glory of his people.

The Bible says that God is the glory of his people, Psalm 106.20. God is the glory of his people Israel. A light to the Gentiles and a glory of his people Israel. So this is really a title for God, that God is the glory and the excellency of Jacob. There is nothing outside of God that can make people glorious.

We have nothing excellent in ourselves. We are born in sin, David said, conceived in iniquity. There is no good in us, the psalmist say, and Paul repeats that. There is none who does good. There is none who seeks after God.

There is nothing excellent in us. If there's any excellency or glory in Jacob, it's of the Lord. And He is our glory. He's our banner. It's His name that we live under.

And So the Lord is swearing by himself here. The second question is, why is God swearing? What is the significance of that? O's are taken when there's something very important. If we are witnesses in a court case where people's lives or liberty are at stake, then the witnesses swear by the name of God to tell the truth because it's very important.

What we say is always important, but it's even more important in a trial or in a court setting. There are other times that we may be called upon to swear an oath. But if God is taking an oath, if God is swearing, that's very important. We should stand up and take notice. Why?

What is happening? Why is God swearing? And we see in the scripture that God takes an oath, that God's swearing is always associated with His covenant activity. God's swearing is associated, connected, with covenant activity. It's either to bring into a covenant or to cut out of a covenant.

Remember in Genesis 15, God established His covenant with Abraham. And he had Abraham put those animals, cut them in half, and separate them. And then God passed between them. God came in the form of a torch. And God passed between those two animals that were cut in half.

And basically it was God taking an oath saying that, may I be cut in half if I do not keep my word. The New Testament says that God swears by himself because he can swear by no other and therefore by two immutable things, God himself and this oath. Our salvation is made sure. And so God was establishing their, His covenant and he was bringing Abraham into it and shortly after that he gave Abraham the sign of that covenant which was circumcision. This covenant oath and God's swearing to bring his people into the covenant is referred to many times.

Over 30 times just in Exodus and Deuteronomy, this God swearing, this covenant with his oath is mentioned. And there are other books that mention it. Joshua judges Micah, says, You will give truth to Jacob and mercy to Abraham, which you have sworn to our fathers from the days of old. Zechariah, the father of John the Baptist, refers to this promise of God's covenant oath in his testimony in Luke. Remember after he's given his voice back, he speaks about the oath which he swore to our father Abraham.

He's recognizing that God has remembered that covenant. Stephen in Acts 7-17 in his defense says, but when the time of the promise drew near which God had sworn to Abraham, The people grew and multiplied in Egypt. Again and again, God's swearing is connected, closely connected to his covenant which he established and to him bringing Abraham and his spiritual heirs into that covenant. Scripture even refers to covenants as God swearing even when an oath isn't present in the historical record. In Noah, for example, God made a covenant with Noah.

We don't have any record in Genesis at the time of the flood of God swearing like we do a little later when God swore with Abraham. But Isaiah refers back to that and says, For this is like the waters of Noah to me, for as I have sworn that the waters of Noah would no longer cover the earth, so I have sworn that I will not be angry with you nor rebuke you." Isaiah is saying when God took that covenant with Noah, he swore. He swore an oath. And the sign of that oath that he took is the rainbow. It's a sign of his promise.

It's a sign that God has sworn never to destroy the earth again. It's a good sign. We really ought to use it more. But God also swears in His wrath when people are cut out of the covenant, when they are divorced, disinherited, branches are cut out and thrown into the fire. And then the scripture speaks about God swearing in His wrath.

He's swearing because He is removing people from the covenant. The covenant is something that is external. It points to an inward reality. It points to a spiritual relationship that we have with God, but it is an external and conditional thing, the covenant itself. It's external.

It's something that we can write with our hands. We can take in our mouth, and you can be broken. And when that covenant is broken, then God swears in His wrath to remove those from His covenant. I'd like to look at Deuteronomy 32, because this is where Moses speaks about this aspect of the covenant. Deuteronomy 32, verse 40.

Verse 40. Well, Moses is speaking to the song of Moses right before he is to depart. And he says in verse 36, the Lord will judge His people, and He will have compassion on His servants. And verse 39, now, see that I, even I am He, and there is no God beside me. I kill and I make alive.

That's the sovereignty. God is sovereign. Nor is there any who can deliver from my hand. And then in verse 40 it says this, for I raise my hand to heaven, and say as I live forever, if I wet my glittering sword, and my hand takes hold on judgment, I will render vengeance to my enemies and will repay those who hate me. I will make my arrows drunk with blood and my sword shall devour flesh with the blood of the slain and of the captive from the heads of the leaders of the enemy.

I will raise my hand to heaven." That's an aspect of taking an oath. And in Revelation when this is described with respect to apostate Jerusalem, there is the same thing. The raising of the hand to heaven and the swearing of an oath in Revelation. Because God is there swearing to remove Israel, who has broken His covenant, from His covenant. He's casting them out.

He's divorcing them. In Revelation 10.5, The angel whom I saw standing on the sea and the land raised his hand to heaven and swore by Him who lives forever and ever, who created heaven and the things that are in it, the earth and the things that are in it, the sea and the things that are in it, that there should be delay no longer. He raised His hand. So this is in Deuteronomy 32, Moses is referring to God raising His hand, swearing an oath. Swearing an oath regarding the destruction of His enemies and the removal from the covenant of those who are covenant breakers.

O'Palmer Robinson in his book Christ of the Covenant says that a covenant is an oath, and the commitment of the covenantal relationship binds people together with a solidarity equivalent to the results achieved by a formal oath-taking process. Oath so adequately captures the relationship achieved by covenant that the terms may be interchanged. And that's what we've seen in Scripture where a covenant and an oath go together. They go together closely. So when God is swearing here by Himself, by the pride of Jacob, He is saying, I will remove Israel from the covenant.

I will excommunicate them. I will cast them out of the church. They shall no longer be my people. They shall no longer be a part of my people. I am not their Savior.

I am not their Redeemer. And that's a very terrifying and sobering thing. God is swearing by the pride of Jacob, by himself, that these people are no longer in His church. They have been excommunicated and He will never forget their works, their sins against Him. Some scriptures can speak of that with respect to repentance, that the Lord does not remember our sins against us.

He remembers them in the sense that He knows about them, but He doesn't remember them against us. God is saying here He's going to remember their sins against them because they are not in Christ. They've been cast out. The second thing we see is that the land trembles. The land itself trembles.

The land itself is essentially testifying against the people. And again, in Leviticus 18, Moses told the Israelites about this aspect as well. Leviticus 18, 26, You shall therefore keep my statutes and my judgments, and shall not commit any of these abominations, either any of your own nation, or any stranger who dwells among you, lest the land vomit you out when you defile it, as it vomited out the nations that were before you." The land in trembling is testifying against these Israelites. The land is preparing to cast them out, no longer allowing them to live there anymore, no longer allowing them to desecrate that land. God says, that's what happened to the Canaanites that were before you.

The land vomited them out. How did it do that? What did that when Joshua came in and conquered all those nations and destroyed them. They were gone. The land also speaks about flooding, trembling and flooding.

All of it shall swell like the river." That's probably a reference to the Nile. Like heaven even subsides like the river of Egypt. That's probably the Nile river, which could flood and subside. And the earth is, part of its trembling is flooding. It's destroying people's crops.

It's wrecking their businesses, their means of income, their food supply. These things are being threatened. And this is what the king of Assyria did to Israel a few years later. Probably about 60 years later, this land vomited out the inhabitants of Israel. In 2 Kings Chapter 17 is the historical account of this happening.

Verse 17, 2 Kings 17, 5, the king of Assyria, and that would be Sargon 2, the king right before Sennacherib that came up against Hezekiah a little bit later. Sargon 2 went throughout the land, and Sargon 2 came right after Shalmaneser, who is mentioned there in verse 2. The King of Assyria went throughout the land and went up to Samaria and besieged it for three years. Samaria is the capital of Israel. And in the ninth year of Hosea, the king of Assyria took Samaria and carried Israel away to Assyria and placed them in Hela and by the harbor, the river of Gozan, and in the city of the Medes.

For it was that the children of Israel had sinned against the Lord their God, who had brought them up out of the land of Egypt from the hand of Pharaoh, king of Egypt. And they had feared other gods, and they walked in the statutes of the nations whom the Lord had cast out from before the children of Israel, and of the kings of Israel which they made. And the children of Israel secretly did against the Lord their God things that were not right. Secretly. They did it in the privacy of their homes, thinking nobody can see what we're doing, but God saw.

And they built for themselves high places in all their cities, from watchtower to fortified city. They set up for themselves sacred pillars and wooden images on every high hill under every green tree, and they burned incense on all the high places like the nations whom the Lord had carried away before them, and they did wicked things to provoke the Lord to anger." We looked at some of those things last week. The horrible abominations. You can Listen to that message. Things of which the Lord had said to them, you shall not do these things.

Yet the Lord testified against Israel and against Judah. By all his prophets, every seer, he sent them messengers, his servants the prophets, rising early and bringing God's word, God's warning to them, saying turn from your evil ways, keep my commandments and my statutes according to all the law which I commanded your fathers, which I sent you by My servants, the prophets. Nevertheless, they would not hear, but they stiffened their necks like the necks of their fathers, who did not believe in the Lord their God. And they rejected His statutes and His covenant, which He had made with their fathers. And see, when they rejected God's covenant, and they refused to repent, then God swore in His wrath to remove them.

They followed idols. They rejected His statutes and His testimonies, became idolaters, and went after nations who all around them concerning whom the Lord had charged them that they should not do like them. And so they left all the commandments of the Lord their God, made for themselves a molded image and two calves, made a wooden image, and worshiped all the hosts of heaven and served Baal. And they caused their sons and daughters to pass through fire, practiced witchcraft and soothed saying, and sold themselves to do evil in the sight of the Lord to provoke him to anger. Therefore the Lord was very angry with Israel and removed him from his sight and there was none left but the tribe of Judah alone." That's the land.

It rose up and cast out the inhabitants. There are also, thirdly, there are signs in heaven. There are signs in heaven when God moves in judgment, when He swears in His wrath to cast out people from His covenant. And it shall come to pass in that day, says the Lord, that I will make the sun go down at noon, and I will darken the earth in broad daylight, and I will turn your feasts in the morning and all your songs into lamentation and weeping." Now, there were actually a couple of eclipses that I could find in this time that would have come over Samaria. There was one on November 8 in 770 BC and this the end of Israel that we just read about happened in 722 BC.

So this is 48 years prior to that. There was an eclipse on November 8, 770 BC at the Feast of Tabernacles. And it was over noontime, started about 1148 and went to 3 or 4 in the afternoon. It was only a partial eclipse though, about half of an obscuring. There was another one in June 15, 763 that was much, much closer to a total eclipse, over 90% of blockage and darkness.

And it was the path of the total eclipse was just north of Samaria. But it was not over, as far as I can tell, it wasn't over noontime, it was in the morning, or just before noon. I don't know whether either of these are referred to here, but darkness and the sun being dark is also symbolic language to speak of the powers that be, being shaken, being removed, being destroyed. And so the scriptures speak many times of that, but many times these symbolic statements have physical fulfillment as well. And so this is saying that the powers, these authorities who have boasted against God, who have despised His laws, who thought that they were wiser than God and more merciful than God, would be removed.

They would go dark. And there would be pervasive. In the next verses, verse 10, there would be pervasive mourning and sorrow. Pervasive mourning and sorrow. There was a lot of rejoicing and feasting and celebration going on in this time in Israel because there was some outward prosperity.

There was a reprieve from Syria at this time. A notoriously cruel and oppressive nation. There are things that would shock us today. As wicked as we are, things that would shock us today were commonplace. And we have stones and monuments that were erected in public places that were like on the gates of their cities, in very prominent places showing all manner of torture.

Things that you couldn't even mention are publicly displayed by Assyria. And A lot of these things are dug out of the ground and some of these, the most obnoxious of these monuments, they would tear them down and just make roads out of them and drive over them and cover them over. Syria was a very, very cruel nation and very tortured their people that they captured. And so there was a little bit of a reprieve at this time, and there was a lot of temporary prosperity. But God is saying all that prosperity that you're rejoicing in is going to pass away.

It's going away. It's not real. It's not lasting. The sorrows of the righteous, God says, are turned to joy. He redeems them and sanctifies them, but the rejoicing of the wicked becomes sorrow.

As symbolized by baldness and sackcloth and no feasting and songs, no singing. This is the wine, women, and song that God is going to destroy. But the worst judgment of all, by far, The worst judgment of all is the famine of the Word of God. The days are coming, says the Lord, I will send a famine on the land. Not a famine of bread nor thirst for water, but of the hearing of the word of the Lord." God cuts off His Word from those who spurn it.

He takes it away. When people do not want to listen to the preaching of the Word, then there soon aren't any preachers left. See, people have the preaching that they desire. Really, both are responsible. Yes, we can condemn the fact that preachers don't preach the truth.

But they don't preach the truth because people don't want to hear the truth. People don't want to hear the truth because they haven't been taught the truth. So This is a famine. It's really a two-way famine. The people don't want to hear the truth.

They despise it. And so there God takes away all of His messengers. He no longer sends it. Saul is an example of this. Saul refused to listen to the Lord.

He despised the word of the Lord to him. And God sent a famine. God refused to hear his prayers. And Saul realized that God was not hearing his prayers, and he became very desperate. He became very desperate, so desperate that he went to a witch to conduct a séance for him.

It wasn't because Saul was interested in hearing what the Lord had to say. Saul's desire was simply for his own benefit. It's simply for his own knowledge about what would happen. It wasn't a desire to hear the Lord. And this passage talks about people then wandering from sea to sea, running to and fro, seeking the word of the Lord, but not able to find it.

That's not because they really desired to hear the words of the Lord, it's because they, like Saul, were desperate for an answer for themselves. Calvin says that the Israelites, God does not speak here strictly of famine, as though he said that the Israelites would feel the want of God's Word, that they would really look for it and that they would sincerely seek it, but that they would perceive by the punishment itself that nothing is to be more dreaded than to be deprived of the spiritual food of the soul. So their searching for this, their frantic search, is not out of a desire to hear God's Word, it's out of a recognition that they don't have it, and they're under judgment because of it. See, a land Where there's a righteous people, people are the salt of the earth, the light of the earth. And when you have a nation where God's Word is being proclaimed, where it is being followed, there can be many wicked people in that land who enjoy the fruit of God's Word in that land in many ways.

You enjoy just peace on the streets, for example. Where God's Word is gone, people have no peace on the streets. They can't walk. We take for granted that we can drive to the store and not get mugged. That we can take a walk in our neighborhood and not be shot.

But where God's Word is not present, you don't have that. You walk out of your house and you get shot. You get robbed. Your property isn't safe. All these things are blessings that come from the Word of God.

And when God takes that Word away and gives people over to utter depravity, then that's all gone. And people become desperate for it. And they go looking, not knowing what they're looking for. Just knowing that they're under a judgment. And that the land is kicking them out, vomiting them out.

What happens when people are in this condition? What is another sign of God's judgment? They double down on their sin. They double down on their sin. In that day the fair virgins and the strong men shall faint from thirst.

Who are these people? These are people that persist in swearing by the sin of Samaria and who say, as your God lives, O Dan, and as the way of your Sheba lives. So here are people who are dying and yet they are persisting in believing and swearing by these false idols, these gods that Jeroboam I set up in the land and said, Oh Israel, this is the God that delivered you out of Egypt. If you rewrote history, that's always critical. We have to rewrite history.

And Jeroboam did that when he set up these golden calves and then he changed Moses' true version of history from the Lord delivered you out of Egypt to these calves here delivered you out of Egypt. One of the signs of God's judgment is that people double down on this idolatry. They double down on their sins. See, nations are composed of people. And the sins of a nation are just the sins of the people that comprise that nation.

God talked about, we read in Deuteronomy and in Leviticus, the people doing these things in secret. This is not just what happens in the courts and in the public halls and legislatures. This is what happens in people's bedrooms and in their homes where these sins are going on. And then what's happening outside is just a reflection of what's happening inside in the home. This is a nation of people who are doubling down on their idolatry, who are insisting that God is not there, that God is dead, and that the calves at Dhan and Bershiba are their gods who delivered them.

And God's proclamation to these people who refuse to repent, who persist in their pride, is that they shall fall and never rise again. See, every branch that doesn't bear fruit is cut off and cast into the fire. There's really only one kind of Christian, and that's a fruitful Christian. It's by our fruits That we show ourselves to be disciples of Christ. Summarized by our love.

That we demonstrate that we are disciples of Christ. A love, remember, is how we treat our neighbors according to the law of God. That's the fulfilling of the law, that we love them. That we don't oppress them, and that's one of the sins of Samaria. They were oppressing their fellow people.

There was no justice in the courts. Their culture oppressed the poor and the needy. It's by our fruits that we show ourselves to be disciples of Christ. It's by our love that we are known and shown to be disciples. And so Every branch that doesn't bear fruit is cut off and that's what happened here.

Israel was cut out. They were cut off and they were never gathered from captivity again. Sargon deported over 27, 000 people, which the Bible describes, and we know from history, as people that were taken into captivity in nakedness and oppression and slavery. They were marched out of the land and scattered through all the other different countries and never ever gathered together again, never restored. But that doesn't mean that God is not willing and gracious to forgive those who repent.

So this very land of Samaria, all the Israelites, the Jews were scattered and then lions came in and started attacking the people and you remember they cried out to the king and he sent some priests back to the land to teach these people that he put back in the land from other nations who didn't know the Lord, he sent some priests back to teach them about the Lord and how to worship the Lord. And so then they added the Lord's sacrifices to all their other pagan sacrifices. And that's the way the land continued until you remember Jesus' day. And Jesus took a trip through Samaria. And he talked to a woman at the well, that Samaritan woman.

And she asked him about salvation. Who was right? Was it the Jews or the Samaritans? And Jesus answered her indirectly that salvation was of the Jews. The Jews had the right worship.

It doesn't mean they were worshipping sincerely, but in outward form they had the right worship. And all the Samaritan worship was idolatrous. He had asked them which mountain they should go to. Jesus said, well, you're not going to go to any mountain. You're going to worship the Lord in the Spirit and in truth.

But salvation was of the Jews. The Jews had the truth on this. And yet, what was Jesus there for? He was there to call her to repent. It was this Samaritan who was a descendant of this apostate country where pagans had been brought in to repopulate the land after the Israelites had been cut off and sent out.

This woman who was their descendant, Jesus, was there so that she might have life. He was there to give her the water of life. And God calls us to look to Him. There is no other God besides Me, He said, a just God and a Savior. There is none beside me.

Look to me and be saved. All the ends of the earth. For I am God and there is no other." This was Jesus' call to that Samaritan woman. That he was the water of life, and if she would drink from that water, she would never thirst again. There is no nation, there is no person who the Lord will not forgive when they cry out to Him and repent and humble themselves and turn from their wicked ways and acknowledge that God is the Lord and there is none beside him.

He is strong to save. Let us pray. Heavenly Father, we thank you that you are strong to save. We thank you that you do call all the ends of the earth to look to you. We thank you Lord that Christ was raised up as our sacrifice.

And that all those who look upon Him in faith, you are pleased to forgive. You are pleased to bring into your covenant. And you have sworn by your own name that by two immutable things, in which it is impossible for you to lie, our salvation should be secured. So Lord we put our trust and our faith in you this morning, that though our nation is as wicked as Israel, Lord, we look to you for your salvation. We look to you that you might make bear your arm of strength to deliver us, to save us.

We ask this in Jesus' name and praise you Lord for your mercy that extends into the heavens. Amen.