Published: May 5, 2024 | Speaker: Tim Freitag | Series: Amos - Daily Rising Early and Sending the Prophets - Part 1 | Scripture: Amos 1
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well I'm beginning a uh study in Amos if you would like to turn to
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Amos I'm going to go ahead and read Amos chapter 1 I know we've been reading out of Amos the last couple of months as part of the regular reading of the word uh from the pulpit upstairs
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and I always um personally feel like it's helpful to read at least a portion of his record his word to set the stage for what we're doing this morning so I'm going to go
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ahead and read uh chapter one it's not long the words of Amos who was among the Shepherds of tcoa which he envisioned
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invisions concerning Israel in the days of Uzziah king of Judah in the days of jeroboam son of joash king of Israel two years before the
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earthquake he said the Lord Roars from Zion and from Jerusalem he utters his voice and the Shepherds pasture grounds mourn and the summit of Carmel dries up
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thus says the Lord for three transgressions of Damascus and for four I will not revoke its punishment because they threshed Gilead with Implements of sharp iron so I will send fire upon the
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house of Haz hazzel it will consume the citadels of benh Hadad I will also break the gate bar of Damascus and cut off the inhabitant from the valley of aan and
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him who holds the scepter from betheden so the people of Aram will go exiled to kir says the Lord thus says the Lord for three transgressions of Gaza and for four I
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will not revoke its punishment because they ported an entire population to De deliver it up to Edom so I will send fire upon the wall of Gaza and it will
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consume her citadels I will also cut off the inhabitant from ashdod and from him who holds the scepter from ashalon I will even unleash my power upon ekron
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and the remnant of the Philistines will perish says the Lord God thus says the Lord for three transgressions of Ty and for four I will not revoke its punishment because they delivered up an
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entire population to Eden and did not remember the Covenant of Brotherhood so I will send fire upon the wall of Ty and it will consume her Citadel thus says
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the Lord for three transgressions of Edom and for four I will not revoke its punishment because he pursued his brother with the sword while he stifled his compan compassion his anger also
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tore continuously and he maintained his Fury forever so I will send fire upon Taman and it will consume the citadels of bazra thus says the Lord for three
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transgressions of the sons of amnon and for four I will not revoke its punishment because they ripped open the pregnant women of Gilead in order to enlarge their borders so I will Kindle a
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fire on the wall of rabah and will consume her Citadel amid war cries on the day of battle and a storm on the day of Tempest their King will go into Exile
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he and his princes together says the
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particularly intend to give a defense of why I've picked Amos but I do want to give a little um background as to why I've picked this particular idea um to
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chase I've been musing on the prophets off and on for a couple of years trying to figure out how to bring a Sunday school on the subject of the prophets or
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prophecy um in particularly I think I became aware of a general sense of how the prophets get used as I was reading
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various commentaries and studying other subjects you sort of come across this and I I began to acrw a sense of the uh abuse or mishandling of the prophets as
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I counted it over and over again um additionally just in terms of how much exposure to it um I think the last time
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we as a church were in a profit in particular was in uh 2015 2016 when dad was doing Hosea um now I might be wrong
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obviously the prophets touch on many subjects and they interact with many parts of scripture but in terms of a devoted study of any particular Prophet that's the last one that I think we've
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done so I had a desire to treat more or interact more with the prophets um and then these phrases were coming to me Jesus of course in in the gospels makes
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reference a number of times to the law and the prophets as these sort of two major portions of the word the law and the prophets and in terms of relative
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proportion of the scripture um some of the numerologists like to point out that something like 27% of the Bible is prophecy including revelation of course
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but just in terms of the Old Testament writing prophets if you look at the number of pages in your English Bible the writing prophets is the same approximate length as the entire New
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Testament so the writings of the prophets are a significant portion of God's word not that I intend to do this in a numerological way but um that is God's word and what he has recorded is
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for our instruction to so to ignore so large a section of it uh I think is obviously a Miss uh again not not trying to accuse anybody of not
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studying it but I think a devoted study in a prophet is uh worth our time Peter says of Prophecy in second Peter uh 1:
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20 and 21 Peter writes no prophecy of scripture came about by The Prophet's own interpretation for prophecy never had its origins in the will of man but men spoke from God as they were carried
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Along by the Holy Spirit Edward J young titles this in his book um he calls this idea the divine origin of the prophetic
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institution the Lord presents uh prophets and biblical prophecy as a work that he has done and is doing for his people the Lord himself represents this in this way in uh by his Prophet Jeremiah sort of in the in the middle of
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the prophetic period the Lord says through Jeremiah since the day your fathers came forth from the land of Egypt unto this day I have ever sent unto you all my servants the prophets
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daily rising up early and sending them so the Lord represents this as a labor that he's doing to rise up to do this work to prepare these prophets and send
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them to them to Israel uh Jeremiah chapter 7 ver 25 I can put the references on the board if you like I suppose
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reference here wait no second Peter chapter 1 I know what I'm
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25 so obviously the prophets are important to the Lord um related to this though as I was musing on it and trying to figure out where I was going to
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go providentially we've just come off of um and study in Deuteronomy and later in Deuteronomy than we have got to but I'm sure we'll get to um Moses of course gives a description of uh sort of the future of
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Prophecy for Israel in Deuteronomy
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18 so it's partway through here starting in the beginning of chapter 18 in your English versification of it he actually picks up with the levitical priests and spends several verses here um discussing
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the levitical priests their portion in the tribes of Israel and how they will be um involved there and then um my Bible
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has a heading spiritism forbidden but uh Deuteronomy 18 beginning in verse 9 he says when you enter the land which Yahweh
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your God gives to you you shall not learn to imitate the detestable things of those Nations there shall not be found among you anyone who makes his son or his daughter pass through the fire
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one who uses divination one who practices witchcraft or one who interprets Omens or a sorcerer or one who casts a spell or a medium or a spiritist or one who calls up the dead
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for whoever does these things is detestable to the Lord and because of these detestable things the Lord your God will drive them out before you speaking particularly of the Canaanites you shall be blameless before
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yah your God for those Nations which you shall dispossess listen to those who practice Witchcraft and to divers but as for you the Lord your God has not allowed you to do so Yahweh your God
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will raise up for you a prophet like me from among you from your countrymen you shall listen to him this is according to all that you asked of Y yeh your God and Herb on the day of the assembly saying
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let me not hear again the voice of Yahweh my God let me not see this great fire anymore or I will die Yahweh said to me they have spoken well I will raise up a prophet from
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among their countrymen like you and I will put my words in his mouth and he shall speak to them all that I command him and it shall come about that whoever shall not listen to my words when he
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shall speak in my name I myself will require it of him but the prophet who speaks a word presumptuously in my name which I have not commanded him to speak or which he speaks in the name of other gods that
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Prophet shall die you may say in your heart how will we know the word which Yahweh has not spoken when a prophet speaks in the name of the Lord if the thing does not come about or come true
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that is the thing which Yahweh has not spoken the prophet has spoken it presumptuously you shall not be afraid of him so there's a couple of things happening in that verse and we're going
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to revisit it throughout the study um he's certainly speaking in a longer term sense in perhaps a prophetic manner in and of itself of the Prophet who will be
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like Moses we touched on this a little bit actually Thursday night in Chuck's Leviticus study but he is also giving them some instruction on how to measure those prophets who come to them in the
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name of Yahweh as a category prophets as a whole um whole um Chuck was talking about it I think particularly in terms of the
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um vestments and the Priestly robes and the um contrast and and interpretive um difference between priest and Prophet as
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we see in um the way things get interpreted in the New Testament uh manifestation of these ideas knowing that what went in Israel's history is a a lesson or a um Prelude to the things
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that the Lord is doing for us in light of the revelation of Jesus Christ many writers of course highlight both prophet and priest as the sort of Two Old
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Testament mediators between God and man um even in in Deuteronomy 18 here we see that Moses first picks up the Levites and part of their role and then
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discusses the prophets so you have the sort of two aspects here the law and the prophets again through through the word of Moses of Moses um and the sort of shorthand that you'll
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see frequently in the commentaries is the idea that the priest goes to God on behalf of the people the prophet goes to the people on
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behalf of God so you have the sort of two directions of interaction there um this term came up a couple of times it is used in scripture I think
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it's the the term I heard Chuck use most on Thursday this last week was Oracle of God the one who speaks words on God's behalf and we have certainly a number of
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places in scripture where you have this um Moses says it here in Deuteronomy 18 I will put my words in his mouth so the Lord himself is giving them the words to
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speak and part of the reason I want to interact with this is um and we're not this is an introductory lesson please feel free to ask questions as I go but I'm trying to give you an idea of the
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scope of what we're doing Abe I says something about Prophet goes to God people Prophet goes to the people on
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behalf of God I may have mixed my order up there the priest approaches god with the sacrifice on behalf of the people so priest and Prophet so it's the idea of
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the two directions having two separate offices in the Old Testament so the priest is the one who is allowed to put the um sacrifice before God and do those things we've been hearing about in the
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Leviticus study the priest is in that sense mediator that's where we sort of come to this idea that we see in the writer of Hebrews Jesus now being the only mediator between man and
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God in the Old Testament though this is one of the reasons why you get the uh we talked about this a couple of times the three-fold office Prophet priest and King the prophet is the one that God
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gives words to and says go speak this to the people it's the other direction of travel does that make sense and so in that sense those figures you see that
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are holding that three portions of the office are emblematic of Christ because they're taking in both directions both the the desires or needs
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of the people and the will and intentions of God check just to point out from our Thursday night study that the again the priest's role is
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silent it's the prophet who speaks yes thank you for that reminder the has nothing to say when he goes before God yes formula no incantation
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no no verbalization it's a silent mediation yes you pointed out Thursday even in the the atonement that sort of major yearly sacrifice there are no words written down that the priest is supposed to speak he is meant to
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silently probably meditatively carry out his duties but he has no word that he's bringing to God he simply is bringing the sacrifices um it's interesting when
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we think about these things in the in again I think we'll revisit this as we get further into the study but Peter's description here of a prophet being carried Along by the Holy
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Spirit having those words to speak and in large measure we've talked about this a little bit out of um the the preaching out of Romans the idea of the the intercession of the Holy Spirit the
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groanings the idea that in some very real sense as we go to God our prayers are carried Along by the Holy Spirit and turned into what they ought to be as we
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bring our thoughts and our our desires before God just uh from this past Thursday evening just a question for you to did prophecy replace the
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Ure yeah so um that's an interesting question again in terms of you were talking about this in in the Thursday night study by the way if you have not listened to the Leviticus Thursday night
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study not that I have anything bad to say about any of the plum line studies but this particular session has been incredibly helpful um so please if you haven't there are notebooks with the notes here and there are um playlists
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that Aron has organized on YouTube I would highly highly recommend it for your listening and uh reading been very helpful yes
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since the prophet could not speak for the people to God that is the greatness of Christ that he can speak for us to yeah and that's one of the things
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that Chuck was bringing about about when Moses says a prophet like me Moses was the only one that we ever see remonstrating with God in this way now we do see a couple of things um there
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are times that you will see in the prophets and and we're going to focus on Amos I come back to this in a minute but um habach for example has a very famous sort of uh I don't know what the right
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term is but when the Lord says I'm going to take these uh Babylonians and I'm going to strike Israel with them and habach says how can you do this your eyes are too pure to look upon evil and
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yet you're going to wield this evil as a so you find places where the prophets are conversing or interacting in some sense but you're right it is very unique
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in terms of of both Moses as that one who literally stood before God and spoke with him and Jesus who can enter in in that way and and speak to the father um
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so there are distinctions there um a related question to that so so Chuck was bringing out in Thursday night this past week the uim and thumim the things that
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were given to sort of understand or interpret the will of God particularly in the very early sort of conquest of Israel and up into um sort of early days of the Kings you see some interaction
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with this but then it sort of disappears um it drops out now when you think about the timeline the history of Israel and I might have charts to put up on the TV for you another day um trying to get
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some of the timeline here but when you look at the actual what we call the writing prophets um we obviously have prophets that show up throughout scripture starting with Moses going on
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um you have of course famously Nathan that that speaks to David there are prophets who show up but the writing prophets don't start until
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approximately 800 uh BC or thereabouts in fact according to depending on who you read Amos may or may not be the
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earliest of the writing prophets um some I think put uh where's my list here some put Jona perhaps is slightly before but um Jonah Hosea Amos
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and uh the early part of Isaiah's Ministry probably have some overlap in terms of the number of years there both from self attestation Amos is giving us
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the name of the king here that he was prophesying under um so but when you think about that timeline of of Israel's history it is um picking up with Jonah
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and Amos it is by the time of the divided Kingdom that you have the writing prophets so all of the conquest all of the period of the judges all of the period
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of uh the reign of Saul and David and Solomon there are prophets but there are not writing prophets until after that period so just to help sort of frame in
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your mind when we're talking about the portion of scripture the package of the prophets is pretty much starting post Solomon as far as we can tell eron should clarify that it is not that the
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early prophets did not write things down but their writings were were collected and transformed into what we know as Sam King correct correct so it becomes
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unique because the direct teachings of these prophets are then written down it's very different the way it's transmitted to us that's very helpful yes I thank you for that because
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obviously we believe and the sort of Orthodox uh tradition is of course that Samuel was writing 1 and 2 Samuel um at least Those portions that he was alive
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for um but a lot of that is more narrative it it fits much more into the sort of history of Israel and there are times again you think of some of the prophets that approach both Saul and
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David they're folded into the sort of narrative history of Israel is not written for us in the same way that what we call the writing prophets where it seems like their direct prophecy for the
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most part is the Corpus of what they're writing down Amos is an interesting exception in some respects because he interludes parts of his with some narrative um
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narrative um so we will talk about this a little bit as we go forward um but before I get too far off of that we were talking about um the uim thumim the the ability to sort
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of discern the will of the Lord and to ask questions or discern things and whether or not Chuck Chuck said maybe in this study we can discuss this idea of did prophecy um replace that and that's
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an interesting question that we can explore another question that you will find quite often in various formats of both it tends to be more in the sort of covenantal Presbyterian but it shows up
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in other places as well is this idea that the the elder or preacher in the church is fulfilling the quote prophetic office and it is often used in those
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terms because the idea is that the man who stands in the Pulpit is taking up the word of the Lord and delivering it to the people and so there is a um line
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drawn in certain circles or commentaries or ideas of um the idea of the Elder the preacher is fulfilling the prophetic office and we need to discuss in the course of this study whether or not
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that's actually true and where understandings or misunderstandings are arising there so I I want to hold that particular discussion but just in terms of understanding how the word of the
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Lord is transmitted to his people both historically for Israel and now in our day I think is sort of entailed on this again though um the law and the prophets
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it was interesting to me having sort of struggled with this where am I going to to enter into this over the last couple of years that now we have both the Leviticus study and the Deuteronomy
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study sort of back toback right before I was jumping into the prophets um we had so much on the law very providentially my preparations uh aligned with these
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two studies and what occurred to me I was talking about this a little bit earlier as I was is reflecting on the way we see the prophets um
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mishandled my personal sense in reading so many different commentaries and and books and things preparing for various studies is the law and the prophets get misused and abused in similar but in some sense
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opposite ways so the law Aaron has been very careful to demonstrate to us how we ought to approach it as a wisdom and as a help uh being careful not to wield it as so many
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do as this sort of thundering moral cudel right that thou shal and thou shalt not um to strike at us with and yet many people as they
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approach the law approach it for that reason alone that that is the the only thing that they're going to do with the law is to pick it up to wield it to say thou shal and thou shalt not to to give
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us a a list of dos and don'ts give me tell me from on high this was kind of your your closing argument from the a new law just tell me what I'm supposed to do I don't want to know the heart or
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the wisdom behind it just give me the list of what I should and shouldn't be doing um there's often a sense in which people approaching the law in this way
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use it strongly in a literal sense what says this that's what we're doing I find
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the prophets pretty much the opposite approach which is to say the prophets where we find strong rhetorical often
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thundering judgments that condemn that very behavior that very misuse of the law we don't take those literally those don't apply to us that was for Israel that has
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nothing to do with us today living here under the Light of Christ um we hand with any um biting condemnation that we find in there as applying only to Israel
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that well those were Israel's mistakes I don't interact with Canaanites I mean what does it have to do with me the prophets are often approached uh and in many senses admired only as poetry oh
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well they get they get you know you know how you know because in your English translations they go from the nice Justified lined paragraph and then they offset them well that's poetry that's where the Poetry is in the Hebrew you
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know because the translator offset it for you for you Yuri ex
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Jeremiah right so that's the other misuse that you will find of the prophets which is to say um it's picked up by those who have a particular es eschatological AXS to grind or it's picked up Cherry Picked to uh prop up
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our sermons you know we need another verse to go in here so that it's clear that I'm preaching from the scripture so we're going to go find the nice cheerful ones here in in U Isaiah or in Jeremiah
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or perhaps the ones that that lend themselves to our theology saying that your your good works are as dirty rags you know we we go in there and we find the verse that applies to the thing we're doing out of the prophet and you
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know forget about context you don't need context with the prophets that's that's strictly not done um you know I I encountered a fellow years ago when we were in Scotland early in uh one of the
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other young men in the program uh found out that I was a Christian and somewhat to his surprise I guess because it's not particularly common there these days and
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uh started basically oh so like you you read the Bible and everything and I was like yeah and he oh I just think it's so beautiful you know like the prophecy you know it's so and I was like beautiful in
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what I mean what do you but they people have this idea of like oh well the Bible has this poetry in it you know the Psalms and the prophets and the Proverbs and it's just it's so beautiful it's like I don't know if you've ever
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actually read this um you know for for three transgressions and for four I'm going to put fire on your walls and consume you beautiful
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okay um but again you know it's uh it's often used or misused as a as a cherry pick or it's misused in terms of uh eschatology you know tell me what to
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look for while I was doing some research to to prepare for this of course came across a number of of uh sources that will tell you the exact percentage of prophecies that have been
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fulfilled you can get into the numbers boy I can give you some charts and py graphs on how many have been fulfilled and how many we're looking for and um you know so we have these people
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cherry-pick to prove their own Theory or thematic structure and all these sort of misuses but the point that I'm trying to make there make there is Jesus holds up the law and the
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prophets and they get abused in effective exactly opposite ways taking one very literally for our own uses and and Del literalizing the other one very
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much for our own uses to mold it and and allow it to be what we want it to be I'm going to pause here and say I I do recognize a danger in this particular
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format that I'm going to try to avoid which is to say I do intend for us to study to study Amos I am not going to take an Excursion into every single one of the prophets
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and do this and that the other thing however I do think that this is a useful place for us to discuss this larger context of prophets prophecy even poetry what do we do with these things it has
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long been our uh intention or practice in these studies to try to come up with uh hermeneutic principles that can be universally applied to the genre right
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so what can we say when we're we're looking at Amos and studying Amos that is applicable to reading the prophets as a whole or to reading uh prophetic poetry as a whole those things where we
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have a larger General picture I I think we would be well served to examine them and to take them up but I don't want to um separate or decouple this from the
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actual book that I've picked out here the Amos in in itself um also being careful not to overgeneralize the prophets as a whole we have to take each book of the
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prophets on their own terms um I can tell you looking around for resources as I set out for this there are a lot of books out there that'll be glad to take
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on the prophets as a whole um there are at least three different books with the title the message of the prophets okay the message of the prophets holes singular um there are a
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number of variations on that title again there are quite a few in fact as I was looking around for for books on amus to study Amos in particular
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um there are very few commentaries that were written about Amos specifically he gets treated in with the Minor Prophets or he gets treated in with the prophets as a whole
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or um sometimes we'll couple him up with Hosea because they're similar and maybe they were alive at the same time um you know he gets lumped in here and I don't
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want to be guilty of saying Amos sort of among all the other prophets I want us to actually examine the book but then take out of the book places where we can find um useful
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hermeneutical principles for reading other portions of
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Prophecy I also want us to look in Amos for his own structure his self-evident structure I think this was something I found particularly helpful out of Aaron's study in Deuteronomy which is often in my own reading approaching
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Deuteronomy it felt a little bit soupy um a little bit unclear where things were connected or why and so looking for some structure there was helpful um Amos
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I think we can we can do a similar thing or hope we can do a similar thing that will depend on who you read however um I came across this quote um well first a quote from Gard Von Rod who if you
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couldn't tell was a 20th century German quote unquote quote unquote Theologian he wrote In the late 70s regarding the prophets the prophetic Corpus lies before us in what are to
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some extent very shapeless collections of traditional material arranged with almost no regard for Content or chronological order on Amos specifically another man
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wrote in the 80s Amos has twoo little story twoo little train of thought and too little internal coherence to be to hold interest for more than a few verses or
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at most a chapter and he wrote a whole book on Amos
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the idea that Prophet would have zero structure is is crazy when when you read that the Proverbs which it it's very difficult to discern what the ordering principle
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in much of the Proverbs is were're nevertheless arranged with great care say the scriptures so if if the Proverbs are which are very soupy are arranged
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with great care how much more the collected writings of one right insane um I agree I I do think it's insane to to posit that that has zero interests
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and then go ahead and write a whole book on it but also to posit that the profits as either a collective or in their individual books are without chronology or without content or without
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intentional I mean you don't see the same well maybe you do depending on how liberal of a book you read uh you don't generally see the same thing leveled against say the gospels who at times are
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intentionally reordering chronology to juxtapose certain themes or examples that were in Christ's life but the prophets aren't allowed to reorder things that happened in terms of their
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Visions to help you see them side by side well that's that's strictly right out um said cont that's what
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righty um however on the opposite side of this um and I do want to talk about this because I'm looking mostly here when I when I'm talking in the general sense and certainly in the case of Amos in
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particular talking about writing profit so as far as we know and in the traditional formulation of these things the guy whose name is on the book is the guy who wrote it down okay so I'm not
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going to go off on this you know some other person wrote Amos and then put amos's name on it um there's a number of these things you'll get uh particularly reading some of the more 20th century theologians regarding uh a number of
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these books including not the least of all Deuteronomy was written in Josiah's Reign to sort of prop up things and you know that's how we got that nonsense the uh the the priests sort of cobbled that
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one together so they could hold on to power um you know we're not we're not going down that road um however in the the dictionary of Old Testament prophecy has this to
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say um speaking on these sort of um uh uh commentators who who uh isue any kind of structure in the prophecies it says
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similar conclusions um were reached oh sorry it says such views had to be thoroughly rised following detailed redaction and rhetorical
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critical investigations with the effect that R Gordon can now claim that quote the prophetic books clearly represent the work of Craftsmen and rhetoricians
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who sought to influence not only the content of the message but also the literary form into which they molded it well that's a dangerous thing to say
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about any book of the Bible um what they're doing there is is uh airing quite on the reverse to say well these guys were excellent speakers master rhetoricians and boy did they write up
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some stirring poetry that sure molded the nation of Israel around them uh completely getting the what Peter is saying over here which is to say prophecy does not arise by the will of
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man the word of the Lord went into these men and they delivered it faithful to the people um it's particularly ging to me in the sense of um Amos uh you know
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this idea of prophets as rhetoricians seeps into even the um uh conservative commentaries um this idea that they shaped their messages are they shaping
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their messages or are they delivering the word of God and this is going to come back up frankly when we talk about the idea of whether or not the elders and pastors are fulfilling the prophetic office because you will get this same
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kind of discussion inray the crafting of sermons because there are folks like I think it's the Quakers right who say well you just have to wait for the Holy Spirit to move and then that person stands up any kind of crafting any kind
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of rhetoric is uh against the will of the Lord because now you're shaping the message you're not strictly delivering
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this Insidious idea however of that it must have been learned men it must have been a master Craftsman um I'll be honest the honest the commentators love a Paul they don't like
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a Peter they really don't like the idea that the Lord can pick up an unshaped untrained man and use him for his purposes because well it might just
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devalue your Seminary education I don't know even a more um conservative commentator like uh Mater I think is his
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how you pronounce his name I was uh interested SL perturbed as I read his introduction to Amos he wrote a he wrote a book about Amos he didn't
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treat him in with the other prophets so so that's a good start um he says in here Amos must have been really
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well-versed he must have really known the the times around him he must have been an astute uh student of of geography and history and know these things about the place in
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which he lived and the the northern kingdom because we're going to find out as we get into the geography next week that um Amos sort of left the area where he was from and went North to preach against the northern kingdom um so he
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must have known about all that geography up there he must have been really well versed and in fact M goes on to say um Amos must have preached a lot more than
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he actually wrote down for us because the Prophecies of Amos are too intricately and carefully crafted to have been easily understood by an
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audience because you could read through the whole of Amos in about 20 minutes probably so he must have been up there really expounding on these things and there must have been a lot more filled in in these prophecies than we actually
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have now can I say for sure that Amos didn't say any more than we have written down no I mean we even have the attestation of the the gospels that Jesus said and did many other things
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than were written down certainly there were almost almost certainly there were other aspects of his ministry other interactions he interactions he had but carried on again to to call back
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to Peter's statement on Prophecy here these are the words of the Lord that he was given to deliver to the people and he wrote them down for us but mu claimed that he must have known all of these
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things he must have been a learned man he must have had all of this and and Amos himself objects I don't know if you caught this last week um Josiah was reading from Amos chapter 7 in the uh
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assembly upstairs um you get this uh interlude in the middle of his his Visions um Amos sort of has this narrative aside that
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sort of bridges into to chapter 8 here but starting in uh 7:10 amiah the priest of bethl sent word to jeroboam king of Israel saying Amos has
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conspired against you in the midst of the House of Israel the land is unable to endure all his words for thus Amos says Jobo will die by The Sword and Israel will certainly go from its land into Exile and amiah said to Amos go you
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sear flee away from the land of Judah and there oh sorry to to the land of Judah basically go home go back to where you came from and there eat your bread
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uh lost my place oh eat your bread and there do your prophesy and go pedal your wees somewhere else but no longer prophesy at bethl for it is a sanctuary of the king
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and a royal residence Amos replied to amiah I am not a prophet nor the son of a prophet I am a herdsman and a grower of
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Sycamore figs but Yahweh took me from following the flock and Yahweh said to me go prophesy to my people Israel now hear the word of Yahweh you are saying
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you shall not prophesy against Israel nor shall you speak against the house of Isaac therefore thus says Yahweh your wife will become a harlot in the city your sons and your daughters will fall by the sword your land will be parcel up
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by the measuring line and you yourself will die on unclean soil moreover Israel will certainly go from its land into Exile he says I'm not a prophet I didn't
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go to Seminary I didn't have all like I was out there with the sheep and growing my figs and the Lord said hey you you're going to go prophesy he completely tears up any concept that he was this learned
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man it is the it is entirely reinforcing what Peter says it is by the action of the Holy Spirit carrying these men along that they went and they prophesied I mean I think there's a tone there's a
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little bit of a tone in Amos of the like you think I wanted to do this I was I had figs I had sheep I was home I was happy and here I prophesying against the
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kingdomes must FAL humility but he probably wasn't an eloquent man yeah he was reasonably happy hurting sheep as far as we can tell and the Lord took him and said you're going to you know it's
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it's yeah don't keep sheep it it is astonishing though you're right how often the commentators insist because we see eloquence out of prophets they must have
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been eloquent men instead of saying obviously the Lord was giving them the words to speak well the dressing of syamore figs was as I understand it a
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poor man's job this is he's saying I had two jobs the Sycamore figs was something that could be easily done and if you maintained it you can make a lot of extra money delivering pizzas yeah
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that's that's the equivalent right yeah he's saying I I I was out here sweating in the mindes I was working for my living I was I'm not I'm not of the school of the prophets and we're we'll
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talk about that probably in a couple of weeks um but that's a whole other question that we have here which is to say um you know we're we're seven out of nine chapters in and and uh Amos who has
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been prophesying says I'm not a prophet what you're not a prophet you've been prophesying so we have to deal with prophets and prophets I mean uh we'll
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have the nonprofit guy no never mind I won't U terrible pun um but this idea of what were these prophets what is he making reference to there when he says
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I'm not a prophet or the son of a prophet there is this whole other and you know we have it's it's slightly before the time of the writing prophets but you have the is Saul also among the
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prophets when he was moved Along by as far as we can tell the holy spirit that he was prophesying and yet there was this sort of professional class of Prophecy I think
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wheny I was struck
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neom basically a professional class is saying no no you can't go to those I'll send you right the people I want to send you y that's that's me that's yeah right that's it is the work of the Lord and
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and you will see this again it's it's one of those um okay Moses said Thou shalt not and Israel almost immediately goes ahead and does building up a class of sorcerers and Prophets etc etc so
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there's all of that to deal with as we as we move into it and Amos being among the first writing prophets actually seems to take up this is a a phrase that we're going to see um he may be the
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first one that is written down but when you come to this phrase in Amos he presents it as a everybody knows this term um he says you think the day of the Lord is going to be a good day for you
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let me tell you about the day of the Lord y'all um so there seems actually be some tradition there that the quote unquote day of the Lord was effectively maybe a Harvest Festival kind of thing
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that the professional uh sort of sorcerer priest class had said like you know hey we all get together and we celebrate the Day of the Lord you know kind of thing and Amos said let let me tell you let me tell you what you've
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picked up here Abe difficulty reading difficulty reading prophets it's all about Israel
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yeah 100% I want to get into that question because there is very much a tendency um again I found it in some of the sources looking it up you can not only find the percentage of prophecies that have been fulfilled but you can find out you know which books that you
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can basically put a little bow on and say well that was Israel has nothing to do with us all of scripture is profitable and God breathed so there is a very much a sense in which there are things here for us but I would I would
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again caution just because it's about Israel doesn't mean it's not therefore also about us Chuck brought this out in some of the Pauline studies this idea that the Jews had an esy and we've moved so
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far away from that Collective esy that they had out of the prophets out of scripture and we're now off on this sort of um 20th century version of eschatology that has so little to do
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with this the history of Israel the ministrations of gods it's the same kind of thing with with Leviticus why would we study Leviticus that's the laws for
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the Jews to do their whole thing what does it have to do with us and I think Chuck bringing that out as a parable is similar to what we're going to see in the prophets which is yeah it had things to say about Israel also has a lot of
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things to say about us as the people that have inherited this I don't know if it's the right way to say it we've inherited this God we have inherited the Lord who gave them
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these words to speak the reason we think that it's all about Israel is itself a product of that teaching that we've had for the past 15 years
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you just read the first chapter you haven't mentioned Israel yet you've mentioned Gaza you've mentioned Tire okay prophets are about God this is the
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mind and will of God right so that yeah we have to reorient ourselves in terms of what we think this is about but we
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think it's about Israel because frankly dispensationalism has been telling us that since the mid 1800s yeah but it's not about Israel it's the word of the Lord which means it's about yah right
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right and again I I hope I hope it's clear or will become clear as we go forward it's to me again very similar to the dealing with the law
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which is often the law gets M used by saying either it applied to Israel or we can excise 3/4 of it and only hold on to this bit that appli to us instead of
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saying Yahweh gave this to his people are we his people or aren't we and if we are what then what do we do
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with it but I I want to be careful again as we go through Amos to take it up as its own book its own sort of self-evident um structure and
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message because it did have a context it was preached to the northern kingdom but it also continued there it has value to us not least of which is I
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mean if you want to do like a high level at the beginning of the study a summary of Amos the summary of Amos is God cares about how you treat each other and the way you treat each other has a lot to do
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with the way the world around you is going to perceive God himself Jenny you had your hand up it's just a small example I remember
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prostituted herself so the Lord stripped her of all
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borrower he gave us what happen yeah and that's exactly what happened so um you know I appreciate that you're you're not wrong I I don't think there's a lot if you're willing if you're willing to not
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defang the profits and let it bite you there's a lot to be said currently um I think we'll get into that as we go
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we're we're sort of out of time for this morning but I do want to say you know I intend this as an introduction I do want to stick to the book as much as we can but I also want to help us get over
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those um those um ingrained difficulties of the well this only applies to Israel or they must have been eloquent and learned men these things that have seeped into our
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understanding of them because they're repeated again and again and again in commentaries both liberal and conservative to where it just becomes the sort of received wisdom but what do
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they actually say about themselves what does the rest of scripture have to say about it I mean there are repeated references in the New Testament again not just to pulling verses from the
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prophets but to the prophets you know one of the major condemnations that that Jesus levels against the Pharisees is you know you who killed the prophets the
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Lord rose up early in the morning and sent them prepared them and sent them to you and you struck them down over and over again you didn't want to hear it you killed him instead and the the Jews
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the Pharisees even in trying to rebut Jesus say well well we have the law and the prophets yeah and what good did it do you do you I mean look at you so uh we're going to
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get into that as we go forward I hope this is helpful giving us some uh foothold into where to to jump off from let's close in prayer as we prepare to
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worship our heavenly father we are very grateful for your word we thank you that you have left us these words written for us for our instruction we ask that you would Open the Eyes of our heart to see
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more clearly and to receive them truly that we would not shy away from the pain if it is intended for us but that we would accept the reproof and correct
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ourselves as ourselves as necessary but Lord we lean most of all on that spirit that spirit that moved the prophets that spirit that imbued
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the disciples the apostles father that spirit that you have placed within us that you have shared with your church as a whole so we ask that it would be
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evident with us this morning that we would receive it um in the manner that you have given it to us that it would be interceding for us anointing our prayers
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Our Praise that these things would be acceptable before you and that they would Empower your preacher as he delivers your word to us this morning we
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ask all of these things in Jesus name and for his glory