Amos [Part 1] - Four Transgressions Are Enough

Read the transcript below, or watch a video of the teaching by Joseph Shulam.

Shalom, my name is Joseph Shulam, and together in partnership with Brad TV, we are now studying the prophets. I started with the minor prophets, with an introduction to prophecy in general, and we did Hosea, the prophet.

Now we are going to start Amos. I don’t know if it’s going to be one lesson or two lessons or three lessons about Amos, but Amos is one of my favorite prophets. If you are watching this, you might ask me why am I not wearing a tie and a jacket and a suit but wearing a leather jacket and a kind of wool shirt? Well, the reason is this; Amos starts his prophecy with the following word. “The words of Amos who was among the sheep breeders of Tekoa “which he saw concerning Israel “in the days of Uzziah, the king of Judah, “and in the days of Jeroboam “the son of Joash King of Israel, “two years before the earthquake.”

An interesting opening, very unusual opening. Isaiah starts, “This is the vision of Isaiah the prophet.” Amos starts in a totally different way, unique among all the prophets. There are two things in his opening statement that are unique. First, right off the bat he says, “I am a farmer, I’m a sheep breeder. “Don’t take me as a prophet. “I’m a sheep breeder, A simple farmer from Tekoa.” Tekoa is South of Jerusalem, South of Bethlehem.

I have to confess that I have something to do with the rebuilding and the resettlement of Tekoa, because in the 1970s when I was in the Orthodox yeshiva, our yeshiva, the Mount Yeshiva, initiated first in prayer and then practically, the restoration and the rebuilding and the establishment of a Jewish town back in Tekoa, and it was an amazing experience.

I had a Volkswagen model 411, a little larger than the beetle, loaded up with students from the Yeshiva and we drove in a caravan to Tekoa. There was nothing in Tekoa. A barren hill. How did we know that It was Tekoa? Because we had old maps that pointed out Tekoa, and we had old books like George Adam Smith “The Historical Geography of the Holy Land,” that described where Tekoa is. Now, we just walked on the barren hill and we kind of mapped it out in our own idea and our own imagination of where it’s going to be.

As we were walking, I saw a huge rock laying on its side, but it was shaped by men, it was not natural. It was an octagonal rock and it was a Byzantine baptism placed to put the water in. And it was probably a part of a church, a Byzantine church. And at that moment, I knew that it was God’s will for Jews, after more than 2000 years, to come and rebuild this desolate city of the prophet Amos. So I didn’t wear a tie and a suit today on purpose. I wore a leather jacket, like a sheep breeder, like a farmer.

As we read, Amos prophesied in the days of the kings Uzziah King of Judah and Joash, King of Israel eighth century BC, about the same time as Hosea and Isaiah and some of the other prophets.

But he was probably one of the first prophets who wrote down his prophecy and recorded it in writing. He’s also one of the first prophets to prophesy not only to the Jews and to Israel, but he also prophesied to the nations around us.. And this for me is very important point.

Why is it important? Because when people think about the prophets, they think about Israel, they think about Israel’s problems and challenges and God’s revelation through the prophets to the nation of Israel. But actually, the God of Israel is the God of the whole world, and He cares about the other nations, which were created by His command in Genesis 11 when God divided the human race into nations.

So Amos is a prophet. The first one that has specific prophecies, judgments and calls to repentance for other nations. For me, that is very touching, very important. And I think that all Christians all over the world and all people should know that God has never lost interest in the world, in the other nations.

He cares about Korea and China; He cares about Vietnam and Japan and United States and Europe and Asia and Africa. This is His world, and He cares, and He blesses, and he judges all the nations as needed, as provided for their good relationship with the Almighty God.

Amos starts his prophecy with the following word, verse two of chapter one, “The Lord roars from Zion “and utters His voice from Jerusalem, “the pastures of the shepherds mourn “and the top of Carmel withers.” Simple proclamation, but the important thing that we need to pay attention to is the opening of this statement, “The Lord roars from Zion.”

The word “roars” in Hebrew and in English is attributed to who? To lions. The lions roar, the Lion of Judah. Judah’s symbol is already from the blessings of Jacob in the book of Genesis. Judah is a lion and he roars from Zion, and he did roar from Zion more than one time. But the time that he roared from Zion more effectively than any other time, was the time when the Prince, the Son of David, the Messiah, Yeshua, walked on the streets of Jerusalem, taught, healed, blessed and was crucified in Jerusalem.

That roar reached to the big and small islands in the ocean. It reached to the ends of the earth. Yeshua is the Jew that spread the knowledge of one God and the knowledge of the Bible from Genesis, not from Matthew, but from Genesis to Revelation, to the whole world.

So this picture that Amos draws here “The Lord roars from Zion, “and speaks His voice from Jerusalem.” The result of this statement is that Isaiah takes the same statement and interprets it as, “For out of Zion shall come forth the Torah “and the word of the Lord from Jerusalem.

And the Torah came and the word of the Lord came from Jerusalem and reached Patagonia in the southern tip of the South American continent, and reached the North Pole and reached the South Pole, Africa, Asia the Aborigines in Australia, the Indians in the States. It reached the Indians in India, and to the smallest corners of the world. The roar of that Lion of Judah, through Yeshua, reached everywhere.

That is what Amos is telling us. “Into the pastures of the shepherds, and “in the top of Carmel”. He’s not talking about Mount Carmel. He’s talking about Carmel in Judea, which is not very far from Tekoa. The story of Carmel in Judea, is about Nabal and his wife Abigail, who were in Carmel, a rich agricultural land in the territory of Judea between Jerusalem and Hebron on the East side overlooking the Jordan Valley.

Then in chapter one, verse three, Amos starts his prophecies to the nations. The first nation is Syria. He’s talking about the capital of Syria that is the capital until this very day, Damascus; one of the ancient cities of the world, and also about as old as Jerusalem; about 4,000 years old.

“Thus says the Lord, ‘For three transgressions of Damascus and for four, I will not turn away its punishment because they have threshed Gilead with implements of iron, but I will send fire into the house of Hazael which shall devour the palaces of Ben-Hadad, and I will break the gate bar of the Damascus and cut off the inhabitants from the Valley of Aven. And one who hold the scepter for Beth Eden. The people of Syria shall go captive to Kir,’ says the Lord.”

Damascus and Syria are still our enemy, very much so. They’re trying to house Iranian forces, they’re loaded with Russian arms, airports, air force, artillery, rockets and everything. And they’re protecting Assad, who killed literally millions of people of his own nation, destroyed and deleted villages of Christians that exist from the time before Jesus.

Maaloula, a village that still spoke the same Aramaic language and dialect as people spoke in the Middle East in the days of Jesus.The Syria in present day, has been devoured. The Assad Family destroyed it, flattened it out. 80,000 Christians that lived in that area had to flee, spread all over the world, especially North to Turkey.

So here you have God... and my point is this; God didn’t only take Israel to exile, didn’t only apply the laws of sin and repentance and punishment for sin to Israel. He applied it to the Gentiles as well, to Syria. And we have it here. The people of Syria shall go captive to Kir. Exactly where is Kir? I don’t know, but it’s not close.

“Thus said the Lord, ‘for three transgressions of Gaza and four, I will not turn away it’s punishment because they took captive the whole captivity delivered them up to Edom. And I will send fire upon the walls of Gaza.’”

Again, you’ve got Amos before he touches Jerusalem, Israel, in the sins of Israel, he is enumerating and prophesying about our neighbors, our bad neighbors. And they’ve always been bad neighbors, they’ve never been good neighbors. We have never had a good neighbor.

And I ask myself, “why did God choose to send Abraham to this piece of land between the Jordan and the Mediterranean Sea?” He could have sent us to Switzerland. Ah, that would’ve been nice. At least we would’ve had better neighbors in Switzerland than we have here.

These neighbors that Amos is talking about are still our neighbors. Gaza is still there, and it’s a land of Hamas, inspired, armed, financed partially by Iran, against us, against the people of Israel, same as Syria.

And notice the formula, “For three transgressions of Gaza and for four.” For three transgressions of Damascus and for four. What have we learned from these dear brothers and sisters? God is not out there looking for our sins and our transgressions.

The first transgression He winked pass by. Maybe they’ll repent, maybe they’ll change, maybe they’ll wake up. Second time again He said, “Maybe, give them another chance.” But after four times the nations and including Israel, later were going to Israel.

Most of the book of Amos is not about the nations, it’s about us, about Israel, about the Jewish nation in the eighth century BC, in which Hosea prophesied, and Isaiah prophesied, and Jeremiah prophesied, more or less about the same time.

So this formula for three and four transgressions God says, “Okay, it’s enough.” Why? The number four and all of its multiplications four, 40, 400, is a number of judgments, of testing. That’s why Yeshua was 40 days in the wilderness. Not 48 days, not 38 days, not 14 days, it was four, 40 days, like the children of Israel 40 years in the wilderness.

Like the prophet Elijah was 40 days in the Sinai in a cave. It’s a time of testing, it’s a time of examination, it’s a time of giving us a chance. And after four transgressions, after four turns of transgressions, God says, “Okay it’s time to pull out my belt and teach you a lesson.”

Yep, so after that, we have the same idea. It’s interesting that when he talks about Gaza he includes Ashdod, that was North of Gaza and Ashkelon, that was between Gaza and Ashdod, and Ekron. These are all Philistine cities in the Old Testament and all of them were enemies of Israel.

Verse nine of chapter one, he goes from the South of Israel to the North of Israel to Tyra. Tyra is Lebanon today. Yes, Tyra is today South of Beirut, and the ancient name is Tyra, but then the Greek name of Tyra and Tyra’s suburbs is Biblos.

That’s where we get the name Bible. We get the name Bible from Biblos. Biblos means a book. Biblos doesn’t mean the holy book of God’s revelation, it means a book. That was the original meaning of the word Bible, a book, the book.

So here he goes to Tyra and he says to Tyra the same formula, “For three transgressions of Tyra and for four, I will not turn away its punishment because they have delivered up their whole captivity to Edom and did not remember the covenant of brotherhood, and will send upon the wall of Tyra which shall devour its palaces...”

“Thus, the Lord, three transgressions of Edom...” East of us on the other side of the Jordan. Thus, the Lord, the punishment that will be... Everybody will see what God is going to do there, is going to pity them, because it’s going to be very harsh.

And from Edom he goes south to Teman and to Bozrah. Then I want to finish chapter one, to Amon, Jordan of today. Rabat Amon is the capital of Jordan until today and the king is living there. And there, fire on its walls, devouring its palaces, its temples. The king himself will go to captivity.

Everything that he says about the nations around us, in the end, we also had the same punishments folks. God is not partial. Whatever He did to our neighbors, He did to us. And still not over. Praise God, we’re in the process of repair now.

Amon, Moab, all our neighbors, all around us, the same thing. Until we get to chapter two verse four and that’s going to be in our next lesson, “Thus says the Lord, ‘For three transgression of Judah and for four I will not turn away its punishment because they have despised the law of the Lord and have not kept His commandments. Their lies lead them astray, lies which their fathers followed. But I will send fire upon Judah and it shall devour the palaces of Jerusalem.’”

It happened. You can visit Jerusalem and see the results of the fire in the Jewish quarter, in the Wohl Museum, you could see the beams that held the roofs of the fanciest, the richest houses in Jerusalem during the time of the apostles and Yeshua. You see the beam charred on the floor, beautiful floor with beautiful mosaics from the time of Yeshua.

Yes, God kept His word and kept His promises. May God help us folks not to repeat the mistakes that our forefathers did. May God help us that when we sin, we repent quickly and not wait till the third and the fourth turn, where God loses His patient and says “I will no longer be patient with these people. After the fourth sin, after the fourth turn of sinning I have to punish them.”

Yes folks, it’s important for us to study the prophets. They’re applicable to us all every day. May God have mercy on us, on his children all over the world. And may we continue studying the prophets and be inspired by what the prophets 2,800 years ago, said. It’s applicable for us today also.