So we will turn to Amos and after we walk through Amos then we will have a time of prayer and then we'll sing one final song before. We're dismissed. So Amos, my girls have been passing out a handout, which I think I underestimated how many people were coming, which is a good thing. So if you have a chance to find the handout, if you're not able to get one, we can always get you one afterwards. So the handout is to, for one, give you a little bit of structure as we go. I'm not gonna follow it as a, I'm not gonna read it to you, but we're essentially going to follow this outline. And then also, secondly, as you're reading Amos, it will hopefully be a help in terms of your Bible study. So let's turn to Amos. And I'm not going to read the whole book, or else I wouldn't have time to talk about it. But we'll read the first two verses of Amos, chapter one, and then we'll turn to Amos 9. So the first two verses of Amos 1. The word of Amos, who was among the shepherds of Tekoa, which he saw concerning Israel in the days of Uzziah, king of Judah, in the days of Jeroboam, the son of Joash, king of Israel, two years before the earthquake. And he said, the Lord roars from Zion and utters his voice from Jerusalem. The pastures of the shepherds mourn and the tops of Carmel withers. Now turn back to Amos 9. Amos 9 says, and those who are left of them I will kill with a sword. Not one of them shall flee away, not one of them shall escape. If they dig into Sheol, from there shall my hand take them. If they climb up into heaven, from there I will bring them down. If they hide themselves on the top of Carmel, from there I will search them out and take them. If they hide from my sight at the bottom of the sea, there I will command the serpent and it shall bite them. And if they go into captivity before their enemies, there I will command the sword and it shall kill them, and I will fix my eyes upon them for evil and not for good. The Lord God of hosts, he who touches the earth and it melts, and 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 in the heavens. and founds his vault upon the earth, who calls for the waters of the sea and pours them out upon the surface of the earth. The Lord, Yahweh, is his name. Are you not like the Kushites to me, O people of Israel, declares the Lord. Did I not bring up Israel from the land of Egypt, and the Philistines from Kaphtor, and the Syrians from Kerr? Behold, the eyes of the Lord are upon the sinful kingdom, and I will destroy it from the surface of the ground, except that I will not utterly destroy the house of Jacob, declares the Lord. For behold, I will command and shake the house of Israel among all the nations as one shakes with the sieve but no pebble shall fall to the earth. All the sinners of my people shall die by the sword 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 his 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 plowman shall overtake the reaper and the treader of grapes, him who sows the seed. The mountains shall drip sweet wine and all the hills 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." This is the word of the Lord. So as we go through the prophets, we begin to see some recurring themes. So Amos is very similar to the prophets that we've gone through. We've looked at Hosea and Joel, and they've talked about judgment falling on Israel. But as we look at Amos, I'm going to try to emphasize themes that are somewhat unique to the book. So first of all, who was Amos? Amos is not mentioned anywhere else in the Old Testament. So all the information we get about him we get from his book. So he was a shepherd or a sheep breeder from the city of Tekoa, which is a small city south of Jerusalem in the region in the kingdom of Judah. Now, he was sent to the northern tribes of Israel. So his book is essentially a foreigner to that land, delivering the word of the Lord to the northern tribes of Israel. Amos also calls himself a herdsman in chapter seven, as he's speaking to Azariah, who was a priest in the temple in Bethel. And so listen to what Amos says, he says, So Amos is a true lay pastor, a true non-vocational prophet that was taken and called by God to go leave sheep shepherding to shepherd the people of Israel. So now when did Amos live? Amos lived during a very prosperous time in the northern kingdom. He lived during the reign of Uzziah or Azariah in the southern kingdom and Jeroboam II in the northern kingdom. Jeroboam was a very prosperous king who had extended the rule of Israel to the furthest bounds it had been. made Israel to be a very prosperous nation. Amos is also prophesying simultaneously with Jonah and Hosea, and immediately precedes Isaiah and Micah. He refers to an earthquake that takes place two years after he delivered this prophecy. And that earthquake must have been pretty big because 100 years later, Zechariah refers to this earthquake in his prophecy. So that is the time frame for Amos. So to whom was Amos sent? I already mentioned he was sent to the northern kingdom of Israel. In the handout, I talk about some of the cities that are mentioned in the book. So you have Samaria, the capital. You have Bethel and Dan, which are centers of false worship that were set up by King Jeroboam I with golden calves for the Israelites to worship. But Jeroboam said these calves represent Yahweh, or the true God. And as we know from our studies in Exodus, The true God cannot be represented by images. Then Gilgal and Bethel are cities very near Judah on the border, and those are mentioned in this book. Bashan is an area that's mentioned in this book of very rich agriculture, cattle farming, that is on the other side of the Jordan River. The book also mentions Beersheba, which is somewhat curious because Beersheba is the far south, south of Judah. But the book does talk about Israelites crossing over and going to Beersheba to worship. So they were going other places to worship, but not to the true temple. So those are some of the places that are mentioned. Additionally, Amos talks about the other nations surrounding Israel and Judah, as we'll talk about later. Next, what did Amos preach? And so Amos wasn't making up his own sermon, he wasn't coming up with his own ideas. Throughout the book he says, thus says the Lord, or at the end of a paragraph he says, This is what the Lord says, or he says, declares the Lord, or hear the word of the Lord. And three times in the book he says, the Lord has sworn. I've got the references spelled out in your handout, more so you get the idea of almost every time Amos takes a breath, he is saying, this is what the Lord has said. Towards the second half of the book, we get into the visions and these are the visions that Amos saw. He describes these as what the Lord God showed me. So he says what the Lord said and he describes what the Lord showed him. And when Amos is accused of speaking against King Jeroboam, he said that this is the word of the Lord. So that is what Amos was preaching. Next, We'll look at the structure of the book of Amos. And the book of Amos is very highly structured. It's very easy to see what the structure is. So after a brief introduction in the first two verses, Amos gives eight judgments on the nations surrounding Israel and Judah and Israel are number seven and number eight in this list. He says, introduces each of these judgments with the formula, for three transgressions of this nation and for four, I will not revoke the punishment because, and then he names a specific transgression. For the heathen nations, the transgression usually involves what we would call in our day human rights abuses. God had given these nations victory over their neighbors, but they abused their strength to crush the other people. Each of these nations had their strongholds, but their trust was not in the Lord God who had given them the victory. And so from Syria to the Philistines to Tyre to Edom to Ammon to Moab, God was going to judge these nations with fire that would devour their strongholds and destroy whatever it was that they were trusting in. Many of these nations would be punished with exile. Some of them would be cut off entirely. But these prophecies against Israel's neighbors are relatively short. Then Amos hits home with his message. God is also going to judge Judah and Israel. God sent Amos specifically to the northern kingdom, Israel, so he spends more time talking about the northern kingdom. He gives a summary statement that Judah, the southern kingdom, rejected the law of the Lord. And he proceeds to give example after example of how the northern kingdom has rejected the law of the Lord. They abuse the righteous and they do not show justice to the poor. They use the poor to advance their own prosperity. They commit abominable sexual sins. They profane God's name. They take clothing given as a pledge and use it to lie down before false altars. They drink to excess. They command the prophets not to prophesy, and they give wine to the people who have taken a vow, the Nazirite vow, that forbade the drinking of wine. This is in addition to worshiping the golden calves at Bethel and Dan. So Amos starts off, he uses an attention getter to focus, talk about the judgment on Israel's neighbors. And he doesn't address, oh, you don't keep the Passover, you don't go down to the temple. He focuses on the heart issues. He focuses on how they're seeking wealth, and they're salving their conscience with false worship rather than seeking to honor God's holy name. And they command the prophets of the Lord not to prophesy, And this happens, we'll see, in Amos 7. Amaziah, the prophet, or the priest in Bethel, says to Amos, do not prophesy. And Amos, not only does he refuse to listen to him, he also gives him a special prophecy of judgment specifically geared at him. So that is the first two chapters of Amos, prophecies against Israel's neighbors and then Judah and Israel. Following these introductory pronouncements, Amos moves to a series of oracles against Israel. And the main idea in these chapters is that God will judge sin. His people can't get away with sin. They cannot get away with injustice. And so he has oracle after oracle and then three woes of judgment against Israel. So in chapter 3 of Amos, the focus is on God's relationship with Israel, their family. God is their God. God brought them out of Egypt and God knows them. And this relationship is the basis for God's judgment. Amos 3 contains a famous passage. The KJV would be, can two walk together except they be agreed? The ESV is, do two walk together unless they have agreed to meet. And that is a very nice sounding proverb. It sounds like a passage you could use to talk about friendship or relationships, but the context tells us this is not talking about friendships. It goes on to talk about a lion roaring unless, does a lion roar unless it has prey? Is a trumpet blown in the city unless it causes the people there to fear? And so he gets to his point, does disaster come to a city unless the Lord does it? So these Proverbs are building to the point that disaster is coming and it's going to be the Lord that does it. As disaster has fallen amongst other cities and you've seen other nations judged, That wasn't because, okay, you were stronger or that nation was outmaneuvered or outsmarted or met with political might that they could not overcome. It was the Lord judging that nation. And so consequently, the application for us is not to go on walks with our friends, but to look at what God is doing in the world and realize he is doing something. And we should bow before him in humility. And the application to Israel was that in mercy, God is declaring what he's about to do to them. He, if they do not turn from their robbery and violence, he will destroy their strongholds. They will be plundered by an adversary that will wreak destruction that's so great and so thorough that the only thing that can be salvaged is the corner of a couch or a part of a bed. And that's the only treasure they have left. And Amos 4. focuses on the wealthy women that Amos refers to as the cows of Bashan. And as I mentioned before, this is a wealthy area, prosperous for their cattle. Their cattle were the best of the best. And, but Amos is not using this as a compliment to the wealthy women of Israel. These women are proud gluttons. They're oppressing the poor to increase their wealth and they're living only to increase their wealth and live in comfort and drink the best wine. And so God is sworn by His holiness that their injustice will be punished and their treasure will be destroyed. In the end of Amos 4, God actually gives us commentary about the ministries of Elijah and Elisha. Now Amos doesn't mention them by name, but as you're reading about God withholding rain, God sending famine, God judging Israel, scenes from the lives of Elijah and Elisha are going to come to mind. And I think that's what God's saying. And after every single one of these events that God mentions, He says that He did this so that they would return to Him. But they did not return to Him. So at the end of this we have another famous passage, prepare to meet thy God, O Israel. They would have to come to terms, come to judgment, they would have to meet with God for their flagrant refusal to return to him. This God, who is their God is 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, the God of hosts, is his name. And this is our God. Our right response to this passage is to seek the Lord. And exactly that's where Amos goes in chapter five. So in the middle of a lament for Israel who's fallen no more to rise, God says three times in Amos five, seek me and live. Seek the Lord and live. Seek good and not evil that you may live. God is offering Israel on the verge of destruction the opportunity to return to him to live. It's not too late. And if they do turn to the Lord with their whole heart, they will give themselves to doing what is right. Amos 5.24 says, let justice roll down like waters and righteousness like an ever flowing stream. Israel must be doers of the word and not hearers only. They have to turn to the Lord and demonstrate that they indeed are turning the Lord to the Lord by doing what is right. The end of Amos 5 and into Amos 6, three woes are proclaimed against Israel. First, we have a woe to those who desire the day of the Lord. There are those who are envisioning the day of the Lord as being when God comes to Israel and makes Israel the wealthiest, most prosperous nation on earth. All the kings of the earth are bringing their wealth into Israel. and it is just going to be an awesome time. Already they're starting to have some prosperity, and they're thinking that the day of the Lord is coming. But the day of the Lord, to those who are not obeying his word, is not going to be a happy time. The day of the Lord will be darkness and judgment, not light and prosperity to those who do not fear him. So the first woe is against those who are wanting the day of the Lord when they are living in wickedness. The second woe is against those who are at ease in Zion, who are complacent about what's going on. And the third woe is against those who lie on beds of ivory. level of luxury, if you've got a bed of ivory, that's beyond my imagination. These are folks who are resting in luxury instead of being grieved at the wickedness and ruin of Israel. And these three woes emphasize no one will escape the judgment of the Lord. And so we come to the last three chapters of Amos, and these three chapters contain five visions. The first two are briefly discussed. Amos sees visions of locusts and fire devouring everything. And unlike Joel, where the locusts devour everything, Amos intercedes on Israel's behalf and the Lord relents and he says it shall not be. So these visions of locusts, these visions of fire don't come to pass, but the Lord still says that the judgment is coming. Even Amos' intercession does not turn away God's judgment from Israel in entirety. The third vision is the vision of the plumb line. The plumb line is God's standard against Israel, and Israel's broken God's standard. This vision has the same message as the handwriting on the wall in Daniel where it says that the Babylonian kingdom has been weighed in the balances and found wanting. Israel too has been measured against the standard of the plumb line and found to be wanting and God will never again pass by the northern kingdom without bringing judgment. The same holds true with the vision of the summer fruit in Amos 8. Israel is overripe for judgment and the end has come and God will never again pass by them or ignore them when it comes to judgment. But sandwiched in between the vision of the plum line and the vision of the summer fruit, there's an interruption. This discourse of Amos is interrupted by the priest, Amaziah, rebuking him and threatening him and saying, get out of here. Go back to Judah where you came from and preach to them, but don't preach to us. Here we have a stark contrast of a good shepherd with a false shepherd. The good shepherd is Amos, who is interceding for the people of Israel. He is warning them of impending judgment. He's speaking the truth. He doesn't care what they think about him. He must tell the word of the Lord exactly as the Lord gave it to him. But the false shepherd, Amaziah, is more interested in what the king thinks. He doesn't want the people of Israel to be bothered by these words of judgment, the false shepherd suppresses the truth and the prophecies of judgment. And so now we've come to the text that we read earlier, Amos 9, which is the climax of the book. Verse one, Amos sees the Lord in the temple, and I take this as the temple in Jerusalem, since Amos chapter 1 told us that the Lord was speaking from Jerusalem. Additionally, the temple in Jerusalem had two very large pillars, and we see the Lord standing beside the altar by the pillars, and he says, strike the capitals until the thresholds shake. It almost brings up the vision of the story of Samson in the temple of Dagon, pushed the pillars down and the temple of Dagon came down on the heads of the Philistines. Here, God is about to push the pillars down of the temple and the whole thing's gonna collapse on the Israelites in a figurative sense. And he says, not one of them shall flee away, not one of them shall escape. In verses two through four, you actually have a paraphrase, so to speak, of Psalm 139, where he says, if they dig into Sheol from there, shall my hand take them. There's no place that Israel can hide. And whereas in Psalm 139, David is giving us a comforting view of God's omniscience, his omnipresence. Here, God's omniscience and omnipresence is not a comfort for those who are wicked. They are unable to hide from God's judgment. Verse 5 and 6, we have another very amazing description of the Lord, the Lord of hosts, who builds his upper chambers in the heavens, founds his vault upon the earth, showing God's supremacy over the whole creation. In the subsequent verses, Amos returns to the theme they cannot hide from God's judgment. And he brings up other kingdoms that God has judged, the Philistines, the Syrians, the Cushites, and Egypt. Is Israel any better than them? No. God will judge them just as he's judged the other nations. He will shake them like one shakes pebbles in a sieve and no one is going to escape. All those who say disaster shall not overtake us are going to meet with disaster. But there's one exception with regards to Israel and that's in verse 8, except I will not utterly destroy the house of Jacob. And so God will keep his promises to the patriarchs. God will keep his promises to Israel. And in verse 11, we see how he will do that. And so we see the hope of the northern kingdom, Israel, is actually in David, the king of the southern kingdom. David and the seed of David. And in the New Testament, we realize that this is indeed Jesus Christ, the son of David, the anointed one, the Messiah, who God uses to rebuild what has fallen. And as verse 12 says, all the nations who are called by my name come to God through Jesus. And ultimately, when God rebuilds the house of David, Israel and all the nations who are called by God's name are then planted in his new creation, and he will be their God forever and ever. And I just want to show you something. The last few words of the book. Throughout the book there have been three names of God. You've got Yahweh, you've got the Lord God, which Adonai Yahweh, and then you've got the Lord God of Hosts or the Lord of Hosts. And these names of God are repeated throughout the book, but at the end, the last few words of the book, there's a slight difference, and it says, says the Lord your God. And this, since he's never said the Lord your God until you get to this, this stands out, and this indicates that in this renewal, you have the restoration of God's relationship with Israel as their God. They are his people. And this is the same for us. And there are two New Testament connections that I wanted to mention first, John 4. And this was what Thomas read earlier. Jesus is walking where Amos walked. He's in the Northern Kingdom territory. He's sitting down by a woman who is descended from the people that Amos was preaching to, a Samaritan woman. And she asks the same question that the people in Amos' day were asking. Where should we worship? Should we worship at Bethel? Should we worship at Dan? Should we go down to Beersheba, which is where Abraham lived, or do we go to the temple? And Jesus' answer sums up what Amos is trying to teach us in his book. And it's not about where you worship, it's about who you worship and how you worship. Knowing who you worship, worshiping the one true God, and that one true God is a spirit. And if you're going to worship him, you have to worship him the way he has commanded us to worship him in spirit and in truth. We worship the Lord in the beauty of holiness, in humility, obeying what he commands us. And the second New Testament connection is in Acts 15, where there's this council in Jerusalem and they're trying to decide what do we do about the Gentiles that are joining the church. And Jesus' half-brother, James, quotes Amos 9 to show that Jesus is not just the Savior of the Jews, but Jesus is for the Jews and Gentiles. The emphasis is on all nations who are called by my name that will come to seek the Lord through the son of David, Jesus, who is Christ the Lord. And so just as God is the righteous judge of all nations, he has chosen his son, Jesus Christ, to be the savior of those he has called out of every nation. And so that's the message of the book of Amos. And as we come to God in prayer, there's many things that we can pull from this book. We can adore him as the creator God who's in control of all the nations, the righteous judge. We can come confessing our sins. We can thank him for keeping his promises. particularly as promises through Jesus, and then we can bring our supplications before him.