Immanuel Sermon Audio
Amos (30:66)
All right, there are outlines, notes in the front and the back if you need one of those. We are looking at the book of Amos. This is number 30 out of 66. Next week we'll look at Obadiah. So we'll be almost halfway through the Bible when we finish up next week. We will break for the summer and then we'll pick up with Jonah, Jonah, Jonah in the fall, beginning of September. We'll pick up with Jonah. And I think looking at the calendar, I think we'll have almost exactly the right amount of Wednesday nights next year to finish this up. We're going to squeeze a couple books together next year. We're going to squeeze first, second, third, John together. We're going to squeeze Philemon and Titus together. So a couple of books will squeeze together, but we should be able to finish up all 66 next year. So we're looking at Amos. You can find that in your Bible. One of my favorite authors and Bible commentators is a guy named James Montgomery Boyce and he was the pastor of 10th Presbyterian Church in Philadelphia for a long, long time. And he died kind of before, or he retired I should say, before I was kind of aware of things going on. So he's a little bit older than me, died of cancer after retiring from 10th Presbyterian in Philadelphia. And I like his commentaries, I read his commentaries a lot because he writes commentaries like a pastor. He doesn't write them like a seminary professor, and the ones written by seminary professors are good and I read those two and they're helpful, but it's sometimes just good to hear a pastor think through something and not only thinking through the text, but thinking through how to communicate it and how to preach it and how to teach it. And so I read his commentaries a lot and he has a commentary called the minor prophets and he just goes through each of the minor prophets and sort of breaks them down. And this is the opening quote from Mr. James Boyce in his commentary on Amos. He says the book of Amos is one of the most readable, relevant, and moving portions of the Word of God. But in much of church history, until very recent times, little or no attention has been paid to it. Why? Because the book speaks powerfully against social injustices and religious formalism in many who would otherwise read the book have been implicated in such sins and are condemned by it. So you can agree with that or disagree with it when we get through with the book of Amos, but what he's saying is people have ignored it because it makes them uncomfortable. It talks about things that they're not great at and it talks about things that they struggle with and add to that that it is one of the minor prophets and we tend to ignore these guys because they're in the Old Testament and because they're minor prophets. We don't tend to pay them quite as much attention. He says we have neglected this book when really it is a helpful book. And so I would agree with that. I mentioned that it's a minor prophet. Here's the minor prophets. In case you have forgotten them, there's 12 of them. You remember in the Hebrew Old Testament or we call it the Hebrew Old Testament, they just call it the Hebrew Scriptures. In the Hebrew Scriptures, this is one book and the book is called the Twelve and they just combine them all together. And so we're looking at Amos and then I've color coded these for you. I've showed you this the last couple of weeks. Do I have that up there this week? Don't have that this week. Okay, put the next one up then. I know I've, yeah, I broke this down for you just so you could keep some of these guys straight. Look at Amos, Micah, and Jonah, okay? These guys are before the fall of Samaria in the 8th century BC and I'm going to show you a picture that will, I think, make this a little bit clearer than just a bunch of dates and names. Nahum, Habakkuk, Zephaniah, all kind of go together before the fall of Jerusalem. But after Samaria, they're in the 7th century BC. And then you've got the next group, Joel and Obadiah, already looked at Joel, we'll look at Obadiah next week, they write after the fall of Jerusalem in the 6th century BC. And then you've got the last three guys, Hagai, Zechariah, Malachi after the exile somewhere around the 5th century BC. So you remember BC dates go backwards. The 1st century BC would be 0 to 100. So 10, 20, 30, 40, 50, 60, 70, 80, 90, that'd be the 1st century. So when you're reading 5th century BC, that would be 600 BC to 699 BC going backwards if that makes sense. So here's the timeline, pictures help me and my small brain, okay? 400 BC on one side, if you keep going that way, you get to Jesus 400 years later. And then you go backwards in time, all the way back to, we'll say 700 BC. And I just put a few dates up there. Around 722 ish, Israel gets taken into exile. They're conquered by Assyria and so the northern kingdom is gone. And then you trek on about 140 years or so, and Judah gets taken into exile. The southern kingdom gets hauled off into exile, about, I think it's 587 or so, 586. Judah gets taken into exile, Babylon comes and conquers them. And then you got about a 70 year window while Judah's in exile, and then they start coming home. And I put three lines for the return because they come home in three waves. They come home first with a guy named Zerubbabel and then they come with a guy named Ezra and then they come with a guy named Nehemiah. And so there's a couple of waves of people coming back from exile. Here's where the minor profits fit on that timeline, okay? Hosea Amos, Micah Jonah before the exile caused by Assyria, Nehem, Habakkuk, Zephaniah after the northern kingdom is already gone and before Judah goes, Joel and Obadiah are after Judah gets taken into exile. And then the last three over there in the blue are as people are coming back to the land from exile. So if that helps you good, if it doesn't, then you can still figure out Amos. So don't worry about that too much. Here's where it fits in the history of the nation. We've done this every week. It's right during the rebellion, okay? So the conquest is they go in and they fight for the promised land, period of the judges where the judges rule, then there's a monarchy under Saul, then under David, then under Solomon, then Rehoboam and Jeroboam split it, Jeroboam is the king of Israel. He was one of Solomon's servants, Rehoboam is Solomon's son and he rules in Judah, so they divide the kingdom, then they both just rebel and in my personal Bible reading right now, I'm reading in that, in kings and I'm reading about so-and-so was king. He was a bad guy. Here's all the bad things they did. While he was king in Israel, this guy was king in Judah. He was a bad guy too. Here's all the things that they did. And every now and then you read about a decent guy. This guy was okay. He loved God, he tried to do what was right, but even on most of those guys it says he was a good king, he loved the Lord, but they still did some knucklehead things while this guy was king. And so there's this period of rebellion, God sends them into exile and then he brings them back. So that's where we're at in the history of Israel. Let's talk about Amos the man. Who was Amos? And let me just share a couple of thoughts with you that help you understand the book. Okay, first of all, he was a shepherd, a farmer, and a layman. Layman meaning he was not clergy. He was not a priest. He was not a Levite. He did not make his living off of religion. He was a layman. He was just a blue-collar guy. Probably, depending on who you're reading, he was probably the first writing prophet prophet. So you had a couple of prophets we know about in the Bible who didn't write. Guys like Elisha and Elijah, they didn't write any books, they just went around talking to people. Then you had other guys like Amos who wrote down some of the things that they preached and some of the things that they taught. So he was a shepherd, a farmer, and a layman. If you look in chapter one, verse one, it says he lived in Tacoa. I know that you all know where Tacoa is, but I'm going to show it to you on a map anyways. You can see the Dead Sea right there and the southern kingdom of Judah, and you see Jerusalem, and then you see Tacoa right below it. Little bitty village just south of Jerusalem and Bethlehem, if you want another city that you've maybe heard of, Bethlehem is right in between Tacoa and Jerusalem about halfway. So now you kind of know where it's at. Before we switch that picture, just look up. You see Judah, this is the southern kingdom, and then when you look above Jerusalem, you go to Gibeah, Mizpah, and then there's a city named Bethel, and you notice Bethel is not in the blue, it's in the green. If your eyes are good, you can kind of see that. There's a border there, and Bethel is in the northern kingdom, and just file this fact away because we're going to talk about it later. When Rehoboam and Jeroboam split the kingdom, Judah in the south, Israel in the north. Rehoboam is king in the north, and he's got this new nation, and he has a big problem on his hands. And the problem on his hand is this. He says the temple is in Jerusalem, and Jerusalem is in the southern kingdom. And I'm afraid that all the people in Israel are going to go worship down there, and when they go down there, they're going to start to say to themselves, "If we worship down here, shouldn't we submit to the king down here?" And so he says, "I've got to stop everyone in Israel from going down there to worship, and his plan is to say I'm going to build two calf idols, and I'm going to put one on our northern border." It's not on this map, but it's way up there like up by the ceiling, okay? One idol up there, and the other one I'm going to put in Bethel. So wherever you live in Israel, you can go worship up there, you can go worship in Bethel, but you don't have to leave the nation to worship our quote unquote gods. You just file that away, we'll come back to that. In Amos 7, we read that he tended sycamore trees. Sycamore trees. I learned more about sycamore trees this week than I ever wanted to know, okay? In the United States, we have sycamore trees, and that is S-Y-C-A-M-O-R-E, syc-A-A sycamore. Not the same kind of tree. On the other side of the world, in the Middle East and kind of down, actually in the southern part of Africa, they have trees that are sycamore trees, S-Y-C-O, so I see I'm a terrible speller, S-Y-C-O-M-O-R-E, syc-O-M-O-R trees, and they look like that. That's a really big one, but you can find other pictures online. That's a sycamore tree, and go to the next picture. This is what the fruit looks like on a sycamore tree, and apparently these trees are delicate trees, and they need help with ripening their fruit. When it says that Amos tended sycamore trees, this was his job. He had a long stick, and on the end of the stick, there was a pokey thing, and he walked around to these sycamore fig trees, and when the figs were on there unripe green, he reached up there, and he poked them, and once you punctured that fruit, then it ripens, and so that's his job, tending sycamore fig trees. That sounds like a fascinating job, right? You got a stick, you walk around under the tree, and you look up there, and you just poke all day long, and you poke fruit, and when you poke it, it ripens, and then you're responsible for the harvest, so that was part of his job. Also says elsewhere in the very next verse that he was a shepherd, okay? So he's involved in agriculture, farming and ranching, that's what he did for a living. He's just a blue collar, everyday regular guy, not clergy, not a priest, not even a prophet by trade, like Elisha or Elijah, just a farmer, a tinder of fig trees, and a herder of sheep, so that's who he was. Chapter 7 verse 10 to 13 says that he was from Judah in the south, but he was sent to Israel. This makes him kind of unique as a prophet. He tended these trees in the southern kingdom of Judah, and when God told him that it was his job to be a prophet, he was sent to the northern kingdom of Israel, and people looked at him with suspicion. People sort of wondered, "You're just a farm and ranching guy from down south. What are you doing up here telling us about our religion and our faith in getting in our business?" And people weren't quite sure what to make of him. And there's some irony in this, that God takes a guy whose job it is to poke fruit and take care of sheep, and he sends him to the northern kingdom of Israel, wicked wicked wicked, and his job is to tell them how wicked they are and how angry God is. And God uses this guy, who is just an ordinary guy, he's not trained, he's not been prepared for this in any way, shape, or form, and God uses him. And just hold your spot in Amos and go to the New Testament and look at 1 Corinthians 1, just as a reminder that this is what God likes to do in the Bible. He likes to take guys like Amos and accomplish his purposes through these guys. 1 Corinthians 1, we'll start in verse 26. Paul talking to the church in Corinth, and he says, "Consider your calling, brothers. Not many of you were wise according to worldly standards. Not many were powerful. Not many were of noble birth. That describes Amos pretty well. But God chose what is foolish in the world to shame the wise. He chose what is weak in the world to shame the strong. He chose what is low and despised in the world, even things that are not, to bring to nothing the things that are, so that no human being might boast in the presence of God. And because of him, you are in Christ Jesus. You are in Christ Jesus, who became to us wisdom from God, righteousness and sanctification and redemption, so that as it is written, let the one who boast, boast in the Lord." So God does this, right? He does it from the beginning of the Bible to the end of the Bible. He comes to a pagan idol-worshipping guy named Abraham, not looking for God, and says, "Abraham, I'm going to pick you in your old, in your past the age of having children, in your just worshiping statues, but you're not going to do any of that anymore, and you're going to have a big family, and I'm going to do all of this through you. And you're not going to get any of the credit for it. I'm going to get all the credit for it. I did this with King David. Is he the oldest son, is he the second oldest son, the third oldest, he's the eighth oldest. He's the youngest, out with the sheep. No one even thought about bringing him in, and God says, "That's the guy I want. I want to make him the king." I know he's not the firstborn, but this is the guy that I want to use. He takes Moses, a slave, and says, "I'm going to raise you up to be second in all of Egypt." And then once you fall all the way back down again, and you're just a shepherd out in the wilderness, I'm going to send you back to humble Egypt. I'm going to use a nobody to accomplish my purposes, and so God likes to do this. He did it with Amos. Here's the last thing you need to know about Amos. This is in chapter 1, verse 1. He was a prophet during the days of Euseiah in Judah. Euseiah was the king of Judah in his time, and Jeroboam was the king of Israel during Amos's day. So look at this in Amos 1, 1. The words of Amos, who was among the shepherds of Tychoa, which he saw concerning Israel in the days of Euseiah, king of Judah, and the days of Jeroboam, the son of Joash, king of Israel, two years before the earthquake, two years before the earthquake. So think about that earthquake. Euseiah was the king in Judah, and the Bible says for the most part, Euseiah was a good king. He loved God. But Euseiah had won really bad moment in his time as a king. And while Euseiah was the king, there was a high priest name, Azariah, Azariah, I want to call him Amaziah, Azariah. So Euseiah is the king, Azariah is the high priest. And Euseiah decides, I think as the king of Judah, I should be allowed to be the one that goes into the temple and burns the incense. I know that God's Word says only the priests can do that. And I'm not of the priestly tribe, I'm of the kingly tribe. And I'm happy to be the king, but I would also like to have this responsibility. And so he just goes in there and he does it one day. And Azariah, the high priest, comes walking in and confronts him and says, my paraphrase, that was really stupid. And God's not amused. And Euseiah gets mad at him and he reaches out his hand to grab at him. And when he reaches out his hand, his hand becomes leopress. And for the rest of his life, God struck him with leprosy. And he was a leper and he lived out by himself. That was a consequence for his sin, struck with leprosy. And Jewish tradition says that when he did that, when he reached out and got struck with leprosy, you don't read this in the Bible, but Jewish tradition says when he reached out and he got struck with leprosy, there was a giant earthquake in that moment as a sign that God's saying, hey, I'm shaking some sense into you here. I'm not amused. And so maybe this is the earthquake that Amos is talking about. And interesting that archeologists in the Holy Land dig around in these cities and they look around and they say, you know what, about the year 750, about the year 750 BC, it looks like there was a really big earthquake here. They think it was an 8.0 magnitude earthquake, about 750 BC. So again, I can't give you a Bible verse that connects all of that. But when you think about the story of Uzziah, and he's mentioned here, and Amos says this was two years before the earthquake, two years before he reached his hand out and burned the incense and all of that stuff, he's just sort of dating himself around 750 BC. So that's Uzziah. And then there's Jeroboam, who is really Jeroboam the second. I know this is kind of confusing with all of these kings, but this is the second guy named Jeroboam, and you can read about him if you want to in 2 Kings 14. He was a really bad guy. He was just rotten is the bottom line. And the weird thing is, the strange thing is that he was king for a very long time, 42 years. Uzziah in the south king for 52 years, Jeroboam in the north king for 42 years, that's two guys ruling for a very very long time. And Uzziah for the most part, a good king, Jeroboam the second in the north, a really really bad king. But we'll talk about this when we come back in September. God sent the prophet Jonah to Jeroboam, and Jonah's job to Jeroboam was to say, go out and restore the borders. We talked about this a couple of weeks ago, go out and fight, take back this land that we've lost, and Jonah loved that job because he was very patriotic. And even though his king was wicked, he wanted to see the borders restored, and more land come in, and military victories won, and so he did that. And they were very prosperous. They won these battles. They took back these cities. They had all of this spoil. They were wealthy, and he was a king for 42 years. It was very very stable, even though it was very very wicked, and they prospered economically. And in their prosperity, they forgot the poor. And that's one of the things that Amos is going to talk about. So those guys were the kings during Amos's reign, and it helps you understand some of the things he talks about in the book. Here's the outline. Okay? I'm going to give it to you one piece at a time, and we'll talk about it. First two verses, introduction. We've talked about Amos. We meet him in verse one. Look at verse two. We meet God. He said, the Lord roars from Zion, or you could say Jerusalem. The Lord roars from Zion, and utters his voice from Jerusalem. The pastures of the shepherds mourn in the top of caramel withers. Now when you think about something that roars, what do you think about? A lion. What else? Anything else? Maybe a crowd. The crowd roared. It was very loud. They were excited. It hit the last second shot and won the game. The crowd was roaring. Maybe you think of a waterfall, a roaring waterfall, and just the power of water coming down, crashing down. Maybe you think of an army, think of some movie that you've watched, Gladiator, and the armies are marching, and they're just roaring and they're loud. The idea here is that God is roaring. The first image you have I think is the best one to think of as God as a ferocious lion. I've been on two safaris, and I've seen lions, but I've never heard a lion roar on a safari. They've told me, the guides have told me, that when you hear it, it just terrifies you. It doesn't matter if you're in the bus, in the jeep, in your 100 yards away, and whatever. When you hear it, it just sends chills down your spine. Here's the closest I've ever come to it. When we lived in Louisville, the tigers at the zoo had babies, and so we took Emma to see these baby tigers. We got in this long line, there's a thousand people in this line, and we waited and waited and waited. You finally get into this sort of area, and they had this big glass wall, and you get about 10 seconds to walk by the tigers, and oh, look how cute they are, oh, they're so sweet. In our 10 seconds, there we are, we're walking by with Emma, and we're looking at the tigers, and nobody's tapping on the glass, nobody's doing anything, nothing. We're just walking by the glass, and this mama tiger decides that we're a threat, and she just lunges at the glass, and roars, and just tries to come right through the glass, and luckily she didn't, she just bounced off the glass, but I'm telling you, I was terrified. The tiger is roaring at me, and it is causing fear, right? That's what you ought to understand, when Amos introduces God and says he's roaring, he's angry, he's mad, he's on the prowl, he's on the move. If you've read C.S. Lewis, The Chronicles of Narnia, there's this idea that Aslan is this God figure in the book, and when he roars, everyone is just terrified, and that's how God introduces him. He is roaring, and where's he roaring from? It's not Bethel, Jerusalem. You can take your little calf gods up in the north, and forget about them. They're nothing. The lion God is roaring in Jerusalem, and so that's where we meet Amos, and that's how we meet God. In this section, chapter 1, verse 3 to 2, 16, tells us that Israel is just like all the other nations. They are absolutely no different than any of the nations who lived in this land before God brought them in, and they won all these battles at Jericho and AI and all these places. Israel has become exactly like them, and so look in this section and imagine that Amos is preaching this. He leaves Judah. He goes to Israel in the north, and this is what he starts preaching. Chapter 1, verse 3, "Thus says the Lord for three transgressions of Damascus." He's talking here about the Arameans, that's the first nation he singles out. Look down to verse 6, "Thus says the Lord for three transgressions of Gaza." Now he's talking about the Philistines, so he's picking on the Philistines and how wicked they are. Look at verse 9, "Thus says the Lord for three transgressions of Tyre." Tyre is the capital city of the Phoenicians, so he brings them in. Verse 11, "Thus says the Lord for three transgressions of Edom." These are the Edomites. God's mad at them too. Verse 13, "Thus says the Lord for three transgressions of the Ammonites." The Ammon was the capital city of their nation, and God is angry with them. Chapter 2, verse 1, "Thus says the Lord for three transgressions of Moab." So now he's mad at the Moabites. Then you come to chapter 2, verse 4, "Thus says the Lord for three transgressions of Judah." Remember, where's he preaching this? In Israel. So he goes through all these pagan nations. God's mad at these people. He's mad at these people. He's mad at these people. And you know what? He's even mad at Judah. And all these people are sitting back saying, "This is the greatest sermon ever." God is mad at all these people around us. People to the north, people to the south, people to the east, people to the west. This is great. We love this guy. This is the best prophet we've ever heard. And then he says, "Here comes the hammer." Chapter 2, verse 6, "Thus says the Lord for three transgressions of Israel." And for for I will not revoke the punishment. So Israel is absolutely no different than all of these nations. And let's just read real quick what he says about Israel. Middle of verse 6 here, "They sell the righteous for silver and the needy for a pair of sandals." They're exploiting the poor. They trample the head of the poor into the dust of the earth and they turn aside the way of the afflicted. A man and his father go into the same girl. That means what you think it means. So that my holy name is profaned. They lay themselves down beside every altar on garments taken in pledge and in the house of their God they drink the wine of those who have been fined. This idea of garments taken in pledge, the law in the Old Testament says, "Look, if me and Jim Parris make a deal and Jim Parris is a poor man, don't take his shirt as a pledge for the garment because then Jim Parris won't have a shirt." They did that. They made deals with these poor people and they said, "Give me something to put up as a pledge. Whatever you got. If you're back, I'll take it. That's what they're doing." Yet it was I who destroyed the Amorite before them whose height was like the height of the cedars, who was as strong as the oaks. I destroyed his fruit above and his roots beneath. Also as I who brought you up out of the land of Egypt led you 40 years in the wilderness to possess the land of the Amorite. I raised up some of your sons for prophets and some of your young men for Nazarites. Is it not indeed so, O people of Israel declares the Lord? So God did a lot of good things for him. But you made the Nazarites drink wine, you made them break their vow. You commanded the prophet saying, "You shall not prophesy. You wouldn't listen. Behold, I will press you down in your place as a cart full of sheaves presses down. Flight shall perish from the swift and the strong shall not retain a strength, nor shall the mighty save his life. He who handles the bow shall not stand. He who has swift a foot shall not save himself, nor shall he who rides the horse save his life. He who astound of heart among the mighty shall flee away naked in that day declares the Lord." So Israel is just the same and God is not pleased with it. Here's the next section. Chapter 3 verse 1 to 614 is basically God through Amos saying, "Here's what I'm going to do to you, just a bunch of prophecies against Israel. All those nations in that previous section, Damascus and the Ammonites and the Edomites, forget them. He's focusing in on Israel, and this is what God says He's going to do." Here's why God is upset. Chapter 3 verse 1, "Here this word that the Lord has spoken against you, people of Israel against the whole family that I brought up out of the land of Egypt, you only have I known of all the families of the earth, therefore I will punish you for all your iniquities." What he's saying there is, "I brought you up out of Egypt and when this verse says I have known you, it's the same word used of Adam knowing his wife Eve. He's saying, "You and me were married. I brought you up to be mine and you've just turned away and so I'm going to punish you for all of your iniquities. Imagine that God is not, He's not just throwing a temper tantrum, we'll read some verses in chapter 4 in a minute and you'll see that the point that God is trying to get across to him is that He wants them to repent. He wants them to turn. They don't do that but that's what He wants. Here's the next section, "Five visions of judgment. Five visions of judgment." There's a vision about locust, a vision about fire, a vision about a plumb line, a vision about a basket of fruit and then a final vision. And so these are just God saying to Amos, saying through Amos, "This is what I'm going to do to you. It surely will happen." And if you want to go and read each one of these, you can jot these verses down. Chapter 7, verse 1, chapter 7, verse 4, chapter 7, verse 7, chapter 8, verse 1 and chapter 9, verse 1. You can go back and read those. We don't have time to look at all of them, 7-1, 7-4, 7-7, 8-1 and 9-1. You can read the visions yourself. The next section is really kind of weird and we're going to look at it. This next section is almost an inset. It's in the middle of what's above it. That's why I put it in italics. I guess you just call it a biographical interlude. Everything else in the book of Amos is Amos talking to the people, God talking to the people through Amos. And then there's this one little spot, chapter 7, verse 10 to 17, that's almost like somebody calls time out and describes what's happening in Amos' life while he's preaching this message. And the story is really kind of strange, so let's just read it. Amos 7, 10, Amaziah the priest of Bethel, you remember where Bethel is, northern kingdom, where the calf idol is, his job is to work there at that temple with this false God. Amaziah the priest of Bethel sent to Jeroboam the wicked king of Israel and he said, "Amaz this has conspired against you in the midst of the house of Israel. The land is not able to bear his words." In other words, have you heard what this farmer from Judah is saying about you? He has come into your kingdom and he is telling everybody that you're about to get your tail walked. Do you know about this? Because we're sick of listening to it. Verse 11, this is what Amos has said, "Jereoboam shall die by the sword and Israel must go into exile away from his land." One little note, Amos never said that Jeroboam would die. And guess what? He did not die by the sword, he died of just being old. So this priest, Amaziah, is lying about Amos. He did say they were going to go into exile, but he didn't say the part about Jeroboam dying. Amaziah said to Amos, "O see or go, flee away to the land of Judah and eat bread there and prophesy there, but never again prophesy at Bethel for it is the king's sanctuary and is a temple of the kingdom." Amos answered and said to Amaziah, "I was no prophet nor prophet son, but I was a herdsman and a dresser of sycamore figs, but the Lord took me from following the flock and the Lord said to me, 'Go prophesy to my people, Israel, now therefore hear the word of the Lord.' You say, 'Do not prophesy against Israel and do not preach against the house of Isaac. Therefore, thus says the Lord.' He's talking to Amaziah. Your wife will be a prostitute in the city and your sons and daughters shall fall by the sword and your land shall be divided up with the measuring line. You yourself shall die in an unclean land and Israel shall surely go into exile away from its land." So then it goes right back to the prophesy. Just one little insert there about what's happening in Amos' life. And lots of lessons you could take away, but here's maybe a couple. If you're going to follow the Lord faithfully, expect unbelievers to misrepresent what you believe and what you preach. Is that fair? If you are going to follow the Lord faithfully and do what He says, do not be surprised when the unbelieving world misrepresent your motives, misquotes your words, puts things into your mouth that you never said or thought, says horrible, ugly things about you. And on the other side of that, the obvious lesson of sometimes doing what God wants you to do doesn't make you very popular. Amos was not popular. He went to a place that was not His homeland to tell everybody how wicked they were and that God was going to judge them and nobody liked it and Amaziah speaks up here and confronts Him on it. So one little biographical interlude about Amos. Last section of the book, chapter 9, 11 to 15, God gives them promises of restoration. And if you look at that last section, the whole thing is sort of hinting and pointing you to Jesus. When you read it as a New Testament believer looking back, you see these hints about Jesus. You read about the booth of David or the line of David. We know that Jesus came from that line. We read about all the nations coming. We know that that happens through Jesus Christ. We read about the people receiving the land. That happens in the New Heavens and the New Earth. We read about safety and security again through Jesus Christ. So this last section gives them a little bit of hope. God promises to restore them. Here's the emphases of the book and I'm just going to give them to you quickly and I will give you a few verses for each of these. You can look them up. We don't have time to look them up. You can do that yourself. First emphasis of the book is God hates oppression of the poor. I know that that's a hot button political topic in today's world. Every time there's violence in a big city or there's a police violence or things like that, this topic comes up. If you watch the news, the oppression of the poor and there's people on both sides of that. The bottom line is God hates the oppression of the poor. When you read through the Bible and you see it so much in the Old Testament, you read this idea over and over again that God cares. He's got a spot in his heart, you could say, for poor people. He's concerned about them and he expects his people to be concerned about them. You don't have to take that and translate that into a particular political ideology. You understand that. That doesn't mean you have to be a Republican or you have to be a Democrat, but that does mean you have to be concerned about poor people. You cannot just sit back and say, "Well, come on, get a job. Take care of yourself. Put your big boy pants on." God puts things in place throughout the Old Testament so that his people will take care of the poor. They ignore all of that in Israel. One of the things Amos goes to confront him on is that God hates that. You can look up chapter 4 verse 1 and you can look up chapter 6 verse 4 to 6. God hates the oppression of the poor. Number 2, God hates idolatrous religion, idolatrous religion. Number 4 verse 4 to 5, chapter 5 verse 4 to 6 and chapter 5 verse 26. So in Amos' day, obviously the idolatrous religion is that they are worshiping these calf statues in Bethel and in Dan up in the north. In another verse in here, it talks about their worshiping star gods, so they're not only into looking at the stars, but they're into worshiping the stars, so they have all these different gods. In the United States, that usually doesn't take the form of worshiping statues, but it takes the form of worshiping big homes or fancy cars or certain kinds of clothing or whatever. Money, status, self, lots of different things. Other people, sex, drugs, lots of things that can be an idol in your life and the book of Amos is very, very clear that God hates that. Number 3, God hates self-sufficiency and pride. One of the things he's mad with these people about in Israel is that they think and they act and they talk like they don't need God. They can take care of themselves. You see it in chapter 6 verse 8 and chapter 6 verse 13. One of those verses just says, "I hate your pride. I'm angry about it." And the other one says, "You talk like you've won all these battles all by yourself. Like you're the ones that restored the borders of Israel under Jerobo in the second. Like you just did it because you're so powerful. You don't need me, so he's angry about that. Number 4, emphasis in the book, God will discipline wicked people. Whether they're his people or they claim to be his people or they don't claim to be his people. God will discipline wicked people. And man, I've got a ton of verses here. I'll give you a couple. Chapter 3 verse 2, chapter 3 verse 14, chapter 5 verse 27, chapter 6 verse 14, chapter 8. Verse 11 and 12 on and on it goes from the beginning of the book to the end. Amos is saying, "God's going to discipline you. He's not amused with your wickedness. He's not going to overlook it. He's not going to pretend like it's no big deal. He is going to punish you." Number 5, God is great and awesome. And we are going to read these because I like these verses. And it's great and awesome. Look at Amos 2 verse 9. We read this one a minute ago, but you notice the emphasis here. Amos 2, 9, says, "It was I who destroyed the Amorite before them. Their height was like the height of the cedars. They were as strong as the oaks. I destroyed the fruit above and the root beneath. So it was I who brought you up out of the land of Egypt and led you 40 years in the wilderness to possess the land of the Amorite. And I raised up some of your sons for prophets and some of your young men for Nazarets. Is it not indeed so, O people of Israel, declares the Lord?" He's bragging about the things that he's done. Number 4 verse 13, we ought to read verse 12 just because it's a good verse. This I will do to you, Israel, because I will do this to you. Prepare to meet your God, O Israel. You think it's the calf in Bethel. I got news for you. You and me are going to come face to face one of these days, so get ready to meet me. Behold, he who forms the mountains and creates the wind and declares to man what is his thought who makes the morning darkness and treads on the heights of the earth. The Lord, Yahweh, the God of hosts is his name. He's not a calf, statue, and Bethel. The true God is the one who knows your thoughts and who made the earth, who treads in the high places of the earth, who makes the darkness, the Lord is his name. Chapter 5 verse 8 and 9, he who made the Pleiades and Orion, remember they're worshiping the stars. So they know about the constellations and what's up there, and God says, "How stupid are you? I made that." That's not a God. I just made it. Those massive balls of fire up there. I did that. He made the Pleiades and Orion. He turns deep darkness into the morning and darkens the day and the night. He calls the waters of the sea and pours them out on the surface of the earth. The Lord is his name, who makes destruction flash forth against the strong so that destruction comes upon the fortress. One more in chapter 9, verse 5 and 6. The Lord, the God of hosts, he who touches the earth and it melts in all who dwell in it mourn. And all of it rises like the Nile and sinks again like the Nile of Egypt, who builds his upper chambers and the heavens and fountains his vault upon the earth, who calls the waters of the sea and pours them out upon the surface of the earth. The Lord, capital L, capital O, capital R, capital D, Yahweh is his name, is not your God that is a silly little statue of gold in the south and in the north of your kingdom, but Yahweh is the Lord and he's great and he's awesome. Last emphasis of the book that you need to know is this. God is merciful and he's gracious. Yes he's going to discipline his people. Yes he's going to send them into exile. Yes there's consequences for their sin, but God is merciful and gracious. And so we'll read the last section of the book here. Remember, this is Amos preaching in the north to people who have turned away from the Lord, ignored his laws, oppressed the poor, Amos 9 beginning in verse 9, "Behold I will command to shake the house of Israel among all the nations, as one shakes with the sea, but no pebble shall fall to the earth, all the sinners of my people shall die by the sword. The ones who say disaster shall not overtake or meet us. In that day I will raise up the booth of David that has fallen and repair its breaches and raise up its ruins and rebuild it as in the days of old, that they may possess the remnant of Edom and all the nations who are called by my name declares the Lord who does this. Behold the days are coming declares the Lord when the plowmen shall overtake the reaper. There will be so much to reap, there will be so much produce to pull out of the ground that it's going to be time to plow again before you can even pull it all up. That's how much I'm going to bless you. The treader of grapes him who sows the seed, the mountain shall drip with sweet wine and all the hill shall flow with it. I will restore the fortunes of my people Israel and they shall rebuild the ruined cities and inhabit them. They shall plant vineyards and drink their wine. They shall make gardens and eat their fruit. I will plant them on their land and they shall never again be uprooted out of the land that I have given them says the Lord your God. Lots of good news in there. Here's the best news in those verses we just read. Look at verse 14. I will restore the fortunes of my people Israel. You still belong to me. You're stubborn, you're rebellious, you're hardhearted, you're idolatrous, you're wicked, you're oppressing the poor. There's lots of things I'm ticked off about and I'm going to punish you for those things. But you are still mine. I brought you up out of Egypt. I protected you in the wilderness. I've been with you all these years. Yes, you've turned away from me but you're still mine. And then the very last verse, 15, how the book ends, "Thus says the Lord your God." I am still your God. I am still the one true God and when I do these things for you, you're going to acknowledge it and you're going to see it and you're going to recognize that. So the book ends with hope. Lots of doom and gloom, lots of warning about judgment and discipline but a book that ends with hope and hope, not in that we will be good people but that God will be merciful. So there you go. That's Amos and I will pray and then we'll share a few prayer requests. Father, we thank You for Your word. We thank You that it is true, that it is living and that it is active. Father, we know that You are faithful to Your promises and faithful to Your people. And we know that we are slow and stubborn and stiff-necked and hard-hearted and we thank You that Your grace and Your mercy has been fully revealed to us through Your Son, Jesus Christ, that all of the nations have been brought into Your family through Jesus Christ, that we have hope and we have life and we have forgiveness through Your Son. Father, we thank You that He took the punishment, that He was disciplined for our transgressions and for our sins. Father, we pray that as we leave and as we think about the Book of Amos that we would be mindful of the things that matter to You, of the things that please You and the things that anger You and that we would be serious about the things that You're serious about. We pray in Jesus' name. Amen. Amen. [BLANK_AUDIO]