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Amos is Shown a Basket of Summer Fruit
November 14, 2015

Last week we continued our study of the Book of Amos by seeing how God will use a plumb line to measure his people. Today we will see how God will bring his people to nothing more than a memory, like the memory of a basket of summer fruit.

Amos 8:1-3
Thus hath the Lord GOD shewed unto me: and behold a basket of summer fruit. And he said, Amos, what seest thou? And I said, A basket of summer fruit. Then said the LORD unto me, The end is come upon my people of Israel; I will not again pass by them any more. And the songs of the temple shall be howlings in that day, saith the Lord GOD: there shall be many dead bodies in every place; they shall cast them forth with silence.

Amos is shown a basket of summer fruit by God to symbolize the end of the the children of Israel. The example might be lost on us today with summer fruit available any time of year but there was a time when a basket of summer fruit meant summer had come and was soon to leave. For many, the basket of summer fruit was a memory during the dead of winter.

Amos 8:4-10
Hear this, O ye that swallow up the needy, even to make the poor of the land to fail, Saying, When will the new moon be gone, that we may sell corn? and the sabbath, that we may set forth wheat, making the ephah small, and the shekel great, and falsifying the balances by deceit? That we may buy the poor for silver, and the needy for a pair of shoes; yea, and sell the refuse of the wheat? The LORD hath sworn by the excellency of Jacob, Surely I will never forget any of their works. Shall not the land tremble for this, and every one mourn that dwelleth therein? and it shall rise up wholly as a flood; and it shall be cast out and drowned, as by the flood of Egypt. And it shall come to pass in that day, saith the Lord GOD, that I will cause the sun to go down at noon, and I will darken the earth in the clear day: And I will turn your feasts into mourning, and all your songs into lamentation; and I will bring up sackcloth upon all loins, and baldness upon every head; and I will make it as the mourning of an only son, and the end thereof as a bitter day.

God's people were abandoned because of their corruption. The took delight in the Sabbath and Holy Days solely to measure when they could once again oppress the poor. There were some who took such great delight in the sport that their desire was to purposefully make the poor fail. God promised to never forget this deceit and to punish those who oppress the poor. Only God can take the light and heat of the day and turn it black.

Amos 8:11-14
Behold, the days come, saith the Lord GOD, that I will send a famine in the land, not a famine of bread, nor a thirst for water, but of hearing the words of the LORD: And they shall wander from sea to sea, and from the north even to the east, they shall run to and fro to seek the word of the LORD, and shall not find it. In that day shall the fair virgins and young men faint for thirst. They that swear by the sin of Samaria, and say, Thy god, O Dan, liveth; and, The manner of Beersheba liveth; even they shall fall, and never rise up again.

The darkness that God refers to is a spiritual famine; a time when the word of God will not be found; a time when people are corrupt and worship themselves or an image of God that they have made after their own likeness. People will try to find the word of God, and will not find it. Many will die trying to find the word of God.

All verses are from the King James Version.
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