In Peter Allison's sermon 'The Last Straw', based on Amos chapter 8, the focus is on the fourth vision given to Amos, symbolized by a basket of summer fruit. This vision signifies the end of Israel as a nation due to their persistent sins. The sermon emphasizes that God, while merciful, reaches a point where He can no longer extend mercy after repeated warnings are ignored. Historical examples, including the flood and the destruction of sinful cultures, illustrate the consequences of reaching this point. The sermon identifies specific sins that lead to judgment, such as oppression of the poor, desecration of the Sabbath, deceitful trade practices, and false worship. Indicators of impending judgment include widespread death and social injustice. The sermon calls for self-examination to ensure faithfulness and warns of the eternal consequences of unrepentant sin. It also offers hope through the promise of salvation for those who turn to Christ.

Please turn in your copy of God's Word to Amos chapter 8. Beginning at verse 1, hear God's word. This is the fourth vision of the five visions that Amos is given. Thus the Lord God showed me behold a basket of summer fruit. And he said, Amos, what do you see?

So I set a basket of summer fruit. Then the Lord said to me, The end has come upon my people Israel. I will not pass by them anymore. And the songs of the temple shall be wailing in that day, says the Lord God. Many dead bodies everywhere, they shall be thrown out in silence.

Hear this, you who swallow up the needy and make the poor of the land fail, saying, When will the new moon be passed that we may sell grain, and the Sabbath that we may trade wheat, making the ifah small and the shekel large, falsifying the scales by deceit, that we may buy the poor for silver and the needy for a pair of sandals, even sell the bad wheat. The Lord has sworn by the pride of Jacob, surely I will never forget any of their works." May Jehovah give us understanding according to his word. Heavenly Father, your word is true. It is true though everyone, every man be a liar. Your word is true and is righteous altogether.

Please open our eyes that we may behold wondrous things out of your word. Please open our hearts to receive the truth of your word with meekness. Please sanctify us Lord by your word and sanctify my sinful lips that they may proclaim the gospel of the grace of God in Jesus Christ amen Well, one of the many great and precious promises in Scripture is that God is merciful, that He delights in mercy, and that He is ready to pardon. But there comes a time. There comes a time after many warnings that are ignored, after proud persistence and heinous sin, after repeated refusals to repent, that God says, enough!

Enough! No more reprieves. No more extensions of judgment. No more chances. No more delays.

You're done. Before the flood, you remember, The world became so corrupt and so evil that God destroyed the entire world, sparing only eight people, Noah, and three sons and their wives. Because Noah found grace in the eyes of God. Noah received favor that was not merited. And through the history of the world ever since, cultures that persisted in human sacrifices, rampant perversions, and fornications, these cultures are destroyed.

That's happened again and again. It's happened even in the Americas, when they've been able now through advances in biology to look back in time and to see that shortly after the time of Christ there was a whole population that rose up here in the Americas that was destroyed because of these sins. And there was another migration of another culture that we would know today as the Native Americans that was, again, destroyed. Millions and millions and millions of people, 100 million people, reduced to today almost nothing. And Israel is no exception.

Israel being God's covenant people. There's no exception to God's justice. And this account that Amos gives here in this chapter of the destruction of this little tiny nation some 2700 years ago. This is written for our instruction today. This account.

What are the sins that bring a culture to this point? And what are the judgments that fall on such a rebellious people? This chapter deals, in this whole book, but this chapter especially, deals with these two questions. What are the sins that bring a culture to the point where God says, enough, no more mercy, no more reprieves, no more chances, you're done? What are the indicators that that is about to happen?

And what are the judgments then that God brings on such a rebellious people? We'll look at the first question. What are the sins that bring a culture to that point? And what are those indicators this week? And Lord willing next week we'll look at the second question.

This chapter begins then with the first question. What are the sins that bring a nation to this point? The fourth vision of Amos, in this fourth vision, God shows him a basket of summer fruit and asks Amos what he sees. It's kind of like asking somebody what's in Grant's tomb. Who's buried in Grant's tomb.

Here's A basket of summer fruit. Amos, what do you see? And Amos says, a basket of summer fruit. Now what is the significance of summer fruit? And the word there is actually just summer.

But 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 to picture the end of Israel as a nation, as a people.

There's also, though, a wordplay in the Hebrew. The word for summer is kayyitz, or kayyitz. The word for end is ketz. They're very close. Cah-yitz and ketz.

So there's not only an analogy there between the summer fruit being the end of this harvest, signifying the end of Israel, but there's also a similarity in the very words. The words rhyme. Amos says, I see cayettes, and God says that means the ketz, the end, is upon Israel. See, people near to destruction are usually oblivious to what's coming. And they have to be warned in repeated ways.

In ways that are most easily remembered. And hence the words for this sign, and the words for what it signifies, rhyme. Because rhyming words are easy to remember. They're more memorable. But also, like fruit coming to maturity and being ready to eat, sin is similar.

Sin reaches maturity as well. And so just like that ripe fruit is consumed or eaten when sin is mature, sinners, those who commit those sins are ripe for destruction. The Lord will no longer pass those people by anymore. They've reached the end of His mercy. You remember when God spoke to Abraham, He said that He would give him this land, the land that he was sojourning in, he would give it to his descendants as an inheritance.

Then he talked about that it would be in the fourth generation, they would be servants oppressed in Egypt. In the fourth generation he would deliver them. Why? Because the iniquity of the Amorites was not yet complete. Their sin had not reached maturity to the point where God was ready to destroy them.

That took four more generations. But God is saying to Israel, their sin is ripe. They are ready to be picked and eaten. They are ready as a nation to be destroyed. God will no longer pass them by anymore.

God said, the end has come upon my people, I will not pass them by anymore. They've reached the end of His mercy. And that's saying a lot. That's saying a lot. An awful lot, because God's mercy extends to the heavens.

Micah says that God delights in mercy, Jehovah delights in mercy. The ark where God lived in the Holy of Holies, where God's glory and presence was. And what covered the ark but a mercy seat. God delights in mercy. His mercy extends to the heavens, but there comes a time when it ends.

There comes a time when God's mercy ends for all of us. What does a nation that is ripe for judgment look like? What sins characterize a nation who is at the end of God's mercy? And what are the indicators that that end is near? Well, God gives them what the indicators are.

The songs of the temple are wailings in that day. The songs, some have translated it, the house, the residence. Either way, the significance is the same. That due to the calamities that would fall upon them, the songs of rejoicing and praise and festivity would be gone. Cease.

Nobody would be singing praises. Nobody would be singing, rejoicing, and dancing, but rather they would be replaced by songs of wailing and lament. Everybody would feel the oppression. Nobody would feel happy, like dancing around. And the second indicator is that there are dead bodies everywhere.

There are so many dead bodies everywhere that they're not buried. They're just thrown out. They're thrown out in silence. There isn't even any memorial for them. Now that's happened at different times and places, but it's usually been limited to very specific places and very specific locations, events, and in very narrow points in time.

For example, that happened in the hurricane of 1902 or 1903 in Galveston. There were so many dead bodies, nobody could get a funeral. They were just burned. But in this case, they're not even burned. They're just thrown out in silence to rot, to be eaten by animals.

And when God moves in judgment, dead bodies abound. Psalm 110, it's a Messianic Psalm that speaks of Christ's Messianic reign. It speaks of His victory over His enemies. This is what it says. The Lord is at your right hand.

He shall execute kings in the day of His wrath. He shall judge among the nations. He shall fill the places with dead bodies. He shall execute the heads of many countries." That's an indicator. Dead bodies everywhere is an indicator of God's judgment.

Speaking of Israel, Jeremiah prophesied, the princes of Judah, the princes of Jerusalem, the eunuchs, the priests, and all the people of the land who pass between the parts of the calf, I will give them into the hand of their enemies and into the hand of those who seek their life. Their dead bodies shall be meat for the birds of heaven and the beasts of the earth. Their dead bodies would be abound, they'd be thrown out, not even burned. Certainly not buried, certainly unremembered. When you start to see dead bodies being thrown out, it's time to be concerned that God's mercy is nearing its end.

Now there are several sources of dead bodies. One source is war. One source is war. Another source is sickness, pestilence. In the pandemic that we went through recently, there was an attempt to create that picture of so many dead bodies that nobody knew what to do with them.

Now that was, we know, a fraud, but they were still attempting to create that perception. But another source of dead bodies is abortion. Don't think that 20th century America invented abortion. It was practiced long, long, long before we ever came around. This was, this is a sin of people, of nations that reject God.

And abortion is something that leaves dead bodies to be thrown in the trash. To be dismembered, torn limb from limb, and thrown in the trash. And that's happening all around our nation today. Dead bodies from aborted babies are thrown in the trash and carried away by as medical waste and dumped or in some cases flushed down the drain Never not buried unknown on many times unnamed Another source of dead bodies in ancient Israel and today is human sacrifices. Leviticus 18.20 says, Moreover, you shall not lie carnally with your neighbor's wife to defile yourself with her.

And you shall not let any of your descendants pass through fire to Molech. That's a human sacrifice. Nor shall you profane the name of your God, I am the Lord. You shall not lie with a male as with a woman. It is an abomination." And Deuteronomy repeats this very same prohibition.

When you come into the land which the Lord your God is giving you. You shall not learn to follow the abomination of those nations. There shall not be found among you anyone who makes his son or daughter pass through fire, or who practices witchcraft or soothsayer, or one who interprets omens or a sorcerer or one who conjures spells or a medium or a spiritist or one who calls upon the dead. You notice the connection of human sacrifice with occult, with Satanism, witchcraft, soothsayers. Those human sacrifices are sacrifices to devils and demons.

And these were going on in Israel. Ahaz was 20 years old when he became king and he reigned 16 years in Jerusalem. And he did not do what was right in the sight of the Lord, his God as his father David had done, but he walked in the ways of the kings of Israel. And what are the kings of Israel doing? This is the northern kingdom.

Ahaz is the father of Hezekiah. He walked in the ways of the king of Israel. He made his son pass through fire, according to the abominations of the nations whom the Lord had cast out before them. There were human sacrifices going on in Israel. And He sacrificed and burned incense on the high places, on the hills and under every green tree." And so the second king says, "...they left all the commandments of the Lord their God.

They made for themselves a molded image and two calves. They made a wooden image and worshiped all the hosts of heaven and served Baal." Baal is a demon. "...and they caused their sons and daughters to pass through fire, human sacrifices to demons. They 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 Jehovah was very angry with Israel. And He removed them from His sight.

And there was none left but the tribe of Judah alone. And now Judah was beginning to do the same things that their sister to the north was doing. In 2 Kings 21, the king of Judah built altars for the hosts of heaven in the two courts of the house of God right in the very place where God's name was and he made his sons pass through fire, practice sues saying, used witchcraft and consulted spiritists and mediums he did much evil in the sight of the Lord to provoke him to anger. He even set a carved image of Asherah that he had made in the house of which the Lord had said to David and to Solomon, in this house and in Jerusalem, which I have chosen out of all the tribes of Israel, I will put my name forever." He put an image of Asherah there and offered human sacrifices of his own children to demons. And he built altars for the hosts of heaven in the two courts.

And he caused his sons to pass through fire in the valley of the Son of Hinnom. He practiced sues saying, used witchcraft, sorcery, consulted mediums and spiritists." 2 Chronicles 33, 7 goes on to say, he set a carved image of the idol which he had made in the house of God. And these human sacrifices are rampant in our nation today. Dead bodies abound. They're thrown out in silence like garbage.

God said, enough. It's the end. No more. And Israel ceased to be a nation. They were destroyed.

They were carried away, captive, dispersed, carried away in great humiliation. So that's the first indicator that Amos gives of a nation that is ripe for God's judgment. The second indicator, the second sin, is that they swallow up the needy and make the poor of the land fail. As a result of the oppression of the land, the poor are put out of the land, they are made to fail, they are no longer able to live, they are no longer able to provide food for themselves and their families, they are no longer able to provide houses and land. They no longer have any assets or any means of income.

Now, how are poor people assaulted? Well, I don't know all of the specifics of Israel, but they would be similar. We know some basics. One is inflation. When you increase the money in circulation, you devalue the money so it is worth less.

It's worth less than it was before. And so it buys less and less. When the money is worth less than it was before, it takes more and more of that worth less money to buy the same items as you did before. And that especially hurts the poor. If your budget just covers your house and your transportation and your food and other basic needs, and all of your money is spent on that, and then your money buys less, then you are doing without those basic needs.

There's a problem. People start going without the very basic necessities of life. If your basic necessities of life take up 90% of your budget, and then the money becomes worth less, then you lose your discretionary income. You lose the ability to save, you lose the ability to invest in a business. But if your basic needs take up only a tiny, tiny, tiny fraction of 1% of your income, if it only takes up 0.0001% of your income, and now it takes up 0.001%, well that's hardly noticeable, is it?

Doesn't matter to the wealthy. So those who have the earliest access to this new money as it's injected into society, they benefit from that money at the expense of those who are farthest from the money as it's injected into the society. Those who are nearest the point of injection get to buy in today's market with tomorrow's money. Those who are farthest away from that money get to buy at tomorrow's prices with today's money. And they're at a disadvantage.

That is, swallowing up the needy and making the poor of the land fail by inflation. By another way that the poor are made to fail is by access to justice. A legal Monopoly restricts the practice of law to only those who are approved by gatekeepers. And in our culture, those gatekeepers, that gatekeeper is the state bar association. Monopolies always drive up the price of things.

They make it unaffordable for the poor people. What do we think of as expensive? Lawyers. Because it's a monopoly. It didn't used to be that way.

It didn't used to be a monopoly. And when there is a monopoly, then prices are affordable because there's competition. Oakbrook is a law school that teaches their students from a biblical perspective. But there's only one state in the entire union that will even allow them to sit for the bar exam, after taking a number of other steps that those from approved law schools don't have to go through. Truth is redefined in the courts from God's standard of truth to man's standard of truth.

Justice is redefined from God's standard of justice to whatever the human standard is. And who sets that human standard? The wealthy, the ones in power. And who do they set it against? The ones who are poor, who aren't in power, who don't have access, who can't afford the lawyers.

This is another way that the poor of the land are made to fail and the needy are swallowed up. Another way is access to health care. A medical monopoly restricts the practice of medicine to only those who are approved by the gatekeepers. The state medical license boards in our culture are the gatekeepers. That monopoly drives up prices, making it unaffordable for many people.

Not only is it unaffordable, it's also Harmful. The wealthy have the ability to go elsewhere, to go outside of the monopoly, to bring in means of care that are helpful. The poor do not. The poor have very limited ability to pursue effective medical treatments outside of the monopoly. In fact, in many cases, they aren't even aware of them because of their limited ability.

These are just a couple of ways in which Israel was oppressing the needy, swallowing the needy up and making the poor of the land to fail. The next sin is the desecration of the Sabbath and of God's worship. They say, when will the new moon be passed? When will we sell grain and the Sabbath that we may trade wheat? Well, what's wrong with asking when the Sabbath will be passed so that we can continue working to provide for our family?

What's wrong with that? Why is Amos preaching against that question? Here's why. Isaiah 58 tells us how we ought to view the Sabbath. If you turn your foot away from the Sabbath, from doing your pleasure on My holy day and call the Sabbath a delight, the holy of the Lord, honorable, and shall honor Him, not doing your own ways, nor finding your own pleasure, nor speaking your own words." Israel was not finding the Sabbath a delight.

To call the Sabbath a delight is an act of judgment. Now when you eat, it's an act of our will. When you eat food, you render a judgment about it generally, whether you speak that judgment or not, you form a judgment about it. Is it good food? Is it really good food?

Is it bad food? Or it's food? Or it's somewhere in between? That's a decision that you make about that food. When we love the Lord, then we think that His Sabbath is a delight.

It's an act of our will. That's a judgment that we have about the Sabbath. We consider it a delight. It's something that we look forward to. It's something that we desire.

It's something that we anticipate. It's something that we delight in. We're not looking past it for when we can get to our other things. We're not seeing it as an obstacle to when we can pursue our incomes, our work, even if that work is for a good purpose. When we delight in the Sabbath, we're thinking about the Sabbath on the Sabbath.

You know, when you are doing something you delight in, When you're being entertained, that's where your mind is, that's where you're focused on. You're not saying, when is this going to end? You're delighting in it. And that's the way the Lord says that we ought to look at his Sabbath. And that's not the way the Israelites were looking at it.

They were saying, when's it going to be passed? The new moon was another celebration that marked the passage of the month, because the month is based on the cycle of the moon. The Sabbath marks the week, the passage of the week. There is actually no, there is no cosmological feature that defines a week. It's defined by God's work of creation, that He worked six days and rested on the seventh.

That's the basis of the Sabbath. All the other things have an astronomical basis in them, for them a year, a month, and so forth. But we must also call the Sabbath holy. That means it's set apart for a special purpose. It's not like all the other days.

Maybe you have clothes in your closet that are holy. I don't mean they have holes in them. They're holy clothes. They're set apart for a purpose. They're your good clothes, maybe.

And you wear them when you want to look your best. You wear them when you're going to the job interview. You wear them to a wedding. You wear them when you want to look good. And you save them.

You don't wear them when you're going to deep clean the bathroom. You don't wear them when you're going to change the oil in your car. You don't wear them out in the garden when you're weeding. You save them. You set them apart.

Only for those times that you want to look good. Those are holy clothes. That's what holy means. To call the Sabbath a holy means that we set it apart like that. And we only do those things that are holy on that, not the ordinary works.

Works of mercy are holy works, works of necessity for the well-being of others, like cooking food or helping someone whose car is broken down on the side of the road. Those are holy works to be done on a holy day. But buying and selling merchandise, that's not a holy work. Those are not to be done on a day that we call holy and set apart. Those are ordinary things that we can do another time.

Not on a day that we've set apart as holy, as special, a day that we delight in. You also need to remember those who work for us and not make them work, except for works of necessity and mercy. But God says we must also call the Sabbath honorable or glorious. The Sabbath is glorious because God rested on it and he sanctified it. It bears his mark, it bears his stamp.

He hallowed it. God sanctified the Sabbath day. And that ought to make it glorious. He didn't sanctify Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, he sanctified the Sabbath which is on Sunday. God sanctifies us in making us holy and we sanctify God when we acknowledge Him to be holy.

Ezekiel 20 says, I will accept you with your sweet savor when I bring you out from the people and gather you out of the countries wherein you have been scattered. I will be sanctified in you. God is sanctified when we acknowledge that He is holy. God is sanctified by us. God sanctifies us in making us holy.

We sanctify God in acknowledging that He is holy. And one way we do that is by calling His Sabbath a delight, the holy of the Lord, and honor it, making it glorious. In Leviticus 10, After Moses said to Aaron, this is what the Lord spoke saying, I will be sanctified in them that come near to me. And before all the people I will be glorified. That was when Nadab offered a strange fire and did not acknowledge God's holiness.

God said, He will be sanctified by those who come near to Him. Another Sin marks the nation that is at the end of mercy, is false weights and measures. Making the Ephah small and the shekel large. It kind of goes with the discussion on the Sabbath. They want to buy and sell, trade wheat on this holy day.

But they're also not only are they desecrating the holy day by buying and selling, doing their merchandising, but they're also engaging in deceitful trade. They've made the ifa small and the shekel large. That means when they put, in today's parlance that means they have their thumb on the scale. When they're weighing out the food, their thumb is on the scale. In the balance though, if you think of a balance, if you make the shekel large, then that's a false weight.

Then that's going to, that's a false weight. You're going to get more when you go to buy, you're going to get more than what you should get Because it's going to take more product on the other side. If you've enlarged the shekel so it's no longer a shekel but it's more, then when you balance it with the ifa, whatever you're buying, you're going to get more of it than what you should. That's a deceptive practice. That's essentially what other places in scripture talk about having multiple weights, a large and a small.

Because when you sell, you want a large weight. When you're buying, you want a large weight. You want your shekel to be large, and when you're selling you want it to be small so that you give people a pound, the scale says a pound but it's not really a pound, it's only nine-tenths of a pound. So other places in scripture talk about having in your bag differing weights, a large and a small. The large one when you're buying, the small one, sorry the other way around, the large one when you are selling and the small one when you are buying.

That's what effectively the Federal Reserve enables in our economy today is differing weights. Differing weights. The shekel is a unit of weight. A dollar is a unit of weight, but we've entirely forgotten that. The dollar is a unit of weight and it no longer weighs what it should weigh.

The weight of a dollar is defined by law, but we don't follow that law Because we have differing weights. We have deceptive weights. Amos says that God does not forget. God does not forget. Surely the Lord has sworn by the pride of Jacob that I will never forget any of their work.

All these things that we've been talking about, that Amos lists as the signs and the sins of this nation that is at the end of God's mercy, God says, I am never going to forget these things. God does not forget our sins. Every sin deserves God's wrath, and that penalty will be paid. God does not forget any sin. God is a just God.

And the penalty for every single sin that has ever been committed by anyone will be paid. The question is who? Who will pay that penalty? You or Christ? Those who acknowledge their sins and turn to Christ, who believe in their heart that Jesus is Lord, and confess with their mouth that He is Lord, believe in their heart that God raised them from the dead.

These are the people who we say are saved from the wrath of God, that Christ pays the penalty of those sins. Those who do not, those who reject the Lord, who persist in denying Him, who persist in going their own way, will pay the full penalty for all their sins, suffering for all eternity, the wrath of God, the just wrath of God. That's why Apostle Paul told the Corinthians, in 2 Corinthians 13, for though He was crucified in weakness, yet He lives by the power of God. For we also are weak in Him, but we shall live with Him by the power of God toward you." Examine yourselves as to whether you are in the faith. Test yourselves.

Do you not know yourselves that Jesus Christ is in you? Unless you are disqualified. This is such an important matter that Paul says we ought to examine ourselves. We ought to test ourselves. Doubts never sent anyone to hell.

But sins, failure to examine ourselves and confess our sins, does. This warning that Amos gave to Israel should be a warning for us as individuals and us as a nation to examine ourselves as to whether we are in the faith. Do we delight in the Sabbath? Or are we more like the people described here saying when is the Sabbath going to be passed so we can get back to doing what we want to do? If we even bother to stop doing what we want to do.

But you see how much farther it goes than just ignoring and doing what we want to do? This is talking about calling it a delight. So even if we're not doing these other ordinary things, are we delighting in that? Or are we waiting for the next day to get there? Because we don't delight in it.

In these injustices, are we partaking in them in any way. Are we benefiting from them? Examine ourselves as to whether you are in the faith. Test yourselves. But also, the comfort this morning is that God does not forget our works that are done in Him.

God does not forget the works of His people that are done in Christ. And there is a reward for those works. The writer of Hebrews says, But beloved, we are confident of better things concerning you. Yes, things that accompany salvation, though we speak in this manner. For God is not unjust to forget your work and labor of love, which you have shown toward His name, and that you have ministered to the saints and do minister.

And we desire that each one of you show the same diligence to the full assurance of hope until the end, that you do not become sluggish, but imitate those who through faith and patience inherit the promise. What's that promise? The promise of salvation that our sins, that God never forgets we paid for in Christ, so that we are no longer under His wrath and condemnation. So that our good works, which we can't do in our own strength, but we are enabled to do by the power of God in us, He also doesn't forget. And He has promised to reward those with the crown of life to all those who have loved His appearing.

May God enable us to examine ourselves, to not be afraid of asking the hard questions of ourselves, even, yes, to the point of doubts, so that we might be found in Him in that day, not having our own righteousness, which is of the law, but the righteousness of Christ, and that our works that are done in Christ will be remembered for all eternity as well. Heavenly Father, we thank you for your word and we thank you for your Holy Spirit that applies Your Word to us, that is able to examine the innermost recesses of our heart, that brings us under the conviction of our sin, that reveals to us the way of salvation in Christ that brings life, a new life, a new heart, a delight in your precepts and your commandments. Oh Father, where we have become weary in doing well, where we have been overwhelmed, Lord. We cry out to You for Your mercy and ask that You would lead us to the rock that is higher than us, that You would satisfy us, Lord, with your goodness and your mercy. We thank you in Jesus name.

Amen.