Published: May 12, 2024 | Speaker: Tim Freitag | Series: Amos - Daily Rising Early and Sending the Prophets - Part 2 | Scripture: Amos 1:1
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um and so we talked a little bit about that last week about prophets and um some things we might be able to dig out here and so I want to you know start by saying again I'm not not necessarily defending anything here but okay we pick
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the prophets why why pick Amos why why Amos I mean I I could have picked Isaiah um many a scholar has camped there I wouldn't have had to pick a different uh topic for number of years probably if
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I'd gone with Isaiah um there there to to work through but honestly picked Amos almost for for the inverse of that it's relatively short hopefully we can take
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the book at a go in one um one session it's not too short you know it's not obadia um we have something here to actually get our hands around and and
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dig into but again as as was mentioned this is possibly the first of the writing prophets um there is some question Jonah possibly predates but
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it's a little unclear because he doesn't give us a lot of information in his um exactly where he was in the timeline um the one of the works uh described it
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this way that the The Book of Amos is a paradigm of the prophetic genre it goes on to say it is especially notable for its quote powerful rhetorical language while its most significant theological
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contribution to the biblical Canon lies in the uncompromising centure of the social injustice prevalent in is Israelite Society of the 8th Century BC
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and frankly if you've read very much of the prophets I think you could take off the 8th Century BC and just say the social injustices prevalent in Israelite Society because if you know much of the history of them it was a mess almost the
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entire way entire way through um I'm going to pick up in Amos chapter 1 I'm I'm going to take his own introduction this morning as he lays out
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the beginning of his book I have gone through um Aaron picked up on the translation difference last week you heard me read from The New American Standard Version which says um in in the
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middle of verse one the the words of Amos which he envisioned envisions is how my Bible writes it so I have gone back to the original to the to the
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Hebrew and written basically what I think is think is the you know more accurate version of these first couple of words not that I intend to necessarily do this all the way through but the words of Amos who
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was among the Shepherds of tcoa who saw Visions concerning Israel in the days of Uzziah king of Judah and in the days of jeroboam son of joash king of Israel two
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years before the earthquake um this particular opening this particular idea of seeing in Visions or saw Visions is used in a number of the um prophets not
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least of which Isaiah as their self attestation that they saw these things it's used as their opening in a couple of places I think also in Hab and in Micah um this goes back to one of the
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principles that we talked about last week and you may have picked up on it here in this quote that I read um there's a tendency very much to uh ascribe the words that we find in the
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books to the men whose names are on them and again I think Amos is the one who wrote them down but Amos despite the fact that he says these are the words the words of fam he's very clear to
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qualify that immediately by saying the Visions the Visions he had the things given to him by the Lord again this is not amos's um input this is not amos'
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powerful rhetoric these are the visions that God gave him you refer back to the things we we looked at last week out of Peter uh in which he says you know no prophecy came about by the effort or by
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the will of man but by the words that were given to them by the spirit working on them
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so it comes back to this um question of Amos Amos identifies himself here at the very beginning and he will reiterate this again in chapter 7 Amos was a shepherd He was a blue collar worker he was just a guy and he's going to be very
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careful to make that that argument later when he's when he's accused uh some of the commentaries want to go so far as to suggest while he was among the Shepherds he must then have been a foreman you know he was some kind
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of Boss he was you know sort of an Overseer in some way there's nothing in the words here there's nothing in the Hebrew that would indicate that the um the the actual word there Shepherds is
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is maybe more accurately translated as um herdsman it could have even been goats um that he was hurting but it just literally he's just a herdsman he's a
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guy out there watching the Sheep um we don't have any need or Reason to make him into something more than that I think frankly we do him a disservice if
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we make him more than that he was chosen by God for this purpose in the similar sense or an analogous sense to What God Says of Israel yeah my
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new translation new King James says Amos who was among the sheepers you know doesn't
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differentiate being right being right yeah it's very much the sense of he was he was just there he was he was in with the Shepherds he was a Shepherd uh he was in the herds um I think it's the
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same you know an analogy of of what God says to Israel I I chose you not because you were the greatest but because you were the least I chose you because you were a bluecollar worker it was obvious
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that I'm picking you up as an instrument to deliver my word um there is a bias we talked a little bit about the the academic bias that we see sometimes that they insist that he must have somehow
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been a learned man to be so rhetorical and and do all of these things but I'll be honest I don't normally advocate for this sort of thing but think about this
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in your own mind um imagine if you a construction worker uh a mechanic um you know some a farmer perhaps comes to you and says hey I have
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a word from the Lord just you know just a blue collar guy comes up to you and says hey here's the word from the Lord you're probably going to Furrow your brow at that guy a
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little bit aren't you um there is a bias here amos's ordinariness though is to indicate that this is the word this is the work of the Lord that this is not um
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coming from the halls of learning Amos like Moses was not a public speaker before he is called to this um you think of of Moses's complaint uh to the
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burning bush as the Lord speaks to him out of the burning bush saying you're going to send me to Egypt to speak I don't speak I'm not a public speaker and the Lord basically says well then shut up because I'm going to give you the
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words to speak to Pharaoh um John golden gay in his uh commentary on this describes Amos as a quote gifted Communicator well in one sense perhaps
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he was gifted the communication to take to the people um to make that point and Amos I think is is very conscious to keep that point for
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himself um again just sort of working through the introduction here as
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Amos introduces himself uh he was among the Shepherds or he was in the the herdsman of tcoa well what's special about tcoa frankly not much uh tcoa was a village in the area
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some say around 12 miles outside of Jerusalem a bit South um perhaps the most notable thing about it was it's right on the border of the desert uh there in Judea and so probably
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the grazing wasn't all that great so Not only was he a bluecollar worker he was a blue collar worker in a fairly poor area as far as we can tell it was a was a tough place to scratch out a living the
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biggest Point here out of this though is that Amos is coming in the context of the divided Kingdom Judah and Israel Amos was coming from
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and being sent to Israel he was a judite being sent on a mission to the northern kingdom um talking about this I'm going to do a little bit in terms of the
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contextual setting um the prophecy of Amos in terms of the timeline of Israel is landing uh in the last third or so of what we would call The Divided Kingdom
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era um those couple of hundred years uh his prophecy is is about halfway through the history that you will find in Second Kings and 2 Chronicles he's sort of
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halfway through that portion of the the record of scripture um if you want to work your way down through the timeline you can think of um and I'll
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just put this up on the board I did not do my fancy TV work this time so I'm going have to pull up this and do
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and do it by hand here but you can think of um the sort of the book of the judges and I I'm going to locate it more in terms of the books of the
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Bible because that's how I tend to think of these histories if you want to put the timeline the timeline out actually that was a mistake I'm not going to start with a tick because I'm
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going to let it float when you go on here if you pick up wherever you want to decide that
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judges starts judges comes down to about um 1085 or
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so sorry that's not particularly clear at least by the Reckoning of most of the more um conservative or traditional um reckonings Samuel picks up
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so and of course we're in BC so we're counting down right um 2 Samuel is going to take us down to
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oops here so the actual Century change here and here it's not quite right but
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speaking and if we work our way along here um Kings and Chronicles are going to go all the way down to about
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here um the kingdom is dividing roughly in here um just sort of
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[Music] after second S I should have done it in
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red the kingdom divides um Amos is teaching somewhere in here or delivering his Oracle I should
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hereabouts um he clearly identifies his teaching as Landing in the Reigns of Uzziah and jeroboam both of whom picked up sort of right here in
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[Music] 7 90 I think it was somewhere in
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here they were within a couple of years of each other in terms of their Reigns and they both end in a similar place within a couple of years of each other in the seven
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50ish range that should be right in the middle so a lot of numbers throwing at you all of that to say we're well into the period of the divided Kingdom you are rapidly approaching the actual Exile
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that's going to happen down here on this end when we get down to the various Exiles of course Israel will go first Judah will go later most of you probably
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remember this from Sunday School classes in uh in uh history all of that to say the writing prophets are picking up somewhere in
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here not back here so we have the history of kings and Chronicles tell us about um Elijah and Elisha who are starting in this period during the
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divided Kingdom but then we have uh a little bit of a gap and then we pick up Amos and the various prophets now some of those prophets are of course post exilic but we've talked a little bit
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about the writing profets are doing this kind of a
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bracket it's interesting in terms of um Chuck pointed this out I think in his uh class how often did God speak directly to the people either by signs and
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wonders or by uh oracles either through Moses or through the various prophets and you look at the actual history these things are relatively rare in the history of Israel the amount of time and
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the number of people that show up and actually deliver messages fairly confined it's interesting that Amos and Hosea are more or less contemporary as far as we can tell they did not appear
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to meet up for coffee or wine um as far as we know they were in a very similar time bracket um plus or minus a couple of years as far as we can tell both of them in the northern
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kingdom but uh Hosea was more in this sort of Samaria area um and was not again they're often presented in the commentaries as sort of two halves Hosea
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focusing more on the religious side of things Amos focusing more on the social side of things I think it's not a terrible way to think of it although I think it's some times does a disservice to them taking their message as it
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stands on its own the way God delivered it through them um he obviously did not send them to preach together he sent them to the places that he did intentionally so we're going to pick
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some of that up that's the sort of contextual setting in which we're we're looking at these things is here in the later portion of the divided Kingdom um and of course when you think
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about this uh to go back to our question of um okay who cares why why read the prophets why
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bother with these things um who who has cared about the history of Israel since you were in Sunday School uh we looking at scripture in terms of God's self-revelation of course we're looking
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at scripture as the history of redemption so when we talk about the history of the various movements of the Kings of Israel and of Judah later on and the message of the prophets and all of these things this is right in the
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middle of the timeline of of what we call Redemptive history and God's dealing with his people so there is that portion of it um additionally we have of
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course a number of of comments in the New Testament regarding and and Aaron I think has brought this out well in in his Deuteronomy study Israel the law the prophets all of these things are that
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pedagogue that school master that example for our instruction that went before so in their own context they have all of that value and all of that meaning for us it is it is for us
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adopted Heritage or history um I am not of Jewish blood as far as I know but it's an an adopted history because this is our God and these were the people
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that he chose and this is the history that he established for us to know and to understand um but when you think about this and I and I mentioned this at the top the genres
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I'm not going to assign this a label I'm going to let somebody else figure out where it where it goes we have of course law which you've been hearing about out of Deuteronomy um and also Leviticus Deuteronomy is also
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at least partially historical and with the historical you also have also have narrative oops I think there's two RS
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right narrative
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genre and I quite liked what one of the uh one of the sources described the prophets as effectively God's commentary on this that it is not a narrative per se
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for the most part that we read in the writing prophets they're not usually giving us a long timeline or history or to the extent that they're recapping a timeline or a history it's to make a point about it this is God's commenting
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on what has already happened in the history of Israel or what is happening in their day and so there is that uh sense in which we have God's Own view on
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the matter we have God through His prophets offering what he thinks about what's happening right then and you can see that sometimes in in uh Chronicles and in Kings you will see occasionally
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comments written by the compilers there saying hey here's uh here's a thing but a lot of times they actually withhold any particularly railing judgment um they tend to be a little more just the
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facts in Kings and Chronicles the prophets are sent to give God's feeling on this give God's um opinion is not the right word but give God's view on the
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matter is the way I'm going to phrase that um and it you know it occurred to me as I'm going here probably the internet it has rotted my brain but there's certainly a an element of the uh
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how it started versus how it's going Meme here in Israel which is to say you know you had um somewhere in here you know we
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had David and Solomon yay and now here we are in The Divided Kingdom um
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after after years and years of horrible turmoil and and Terrible Things um you come to jeroboam and Uzziah
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actually both reigned over relatively stable periods in Israel and Judah and in fact relatively wealthy periods in some sense this was a a Resurgence for
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them or a make Israel great again moment for them in the sense that things were actually going relatively well at this time um at least externally seem to be
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going relatively well and it's at this moment that God sends the prophets to say hey about that about just how well you think this is going so why do we
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care well we have God's Own uh opinion or God's Own um testimony about this God sends his prophets to testify I want to talk a little bit
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though about um this idea you know the sort of the now and the not yet aspect of of the word because in their original context the prophets were largely
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enforcers and reminders so in the day that they were sent um all of the history of Israel is in the context of the Covenant that God made with Israel
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and the law that we've been hearing about is it not that Israel existed in this relationship to God um some have categorized the prophets as preachers
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and we'll get into that particular question later but effectively as preachers with their Bibles open to Moses open to the pentet took to say you already had the word of the Lord here's
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how you're supposed to be applying it and here's how it's going wrong um they came to the people in the context frankly of the of the curses of Mount ebal and the blessings of Mount gazim
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that we've already talked about a little bit that I'm sure Aaron will get to at one one of these studies we'll get to Deuteronomy what 27 and following um days one of these days I I look forward
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to it but you know we have the the COV that God made with Israel had in it a promise both of blessing and a promise
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of punishment of punishment for uh straying for for for varying from the way we see this and again just to to give the idea of the prophets in
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their um context I'm actually going to go to go to Daniel briefly here
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yeah come on now oh
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all right sorry pages are sticky here Daniel chapter 9 in his prayer uh the heading in my
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Bible is actually Daniel's prayer for his people but listen to what he says as he's praying before the Lord um I'm going to pick up a little ahead
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the the specific verse I was looking at was 11 but he says starting here in um in seven as he's praying before the Lord his prayer for his people Daniel chapter
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9 righteousness belongs to you oh Lord but to US Open shame as it is this day to the men of Judah the inhabitants of Jerusalem and all Israel those who are
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nearby and those who are far away in all the countries to which you have driven them because of their Unfaithful Deeds which they have committed against you open shame belongs to us oh Lord to our
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Kings our princes and our fathers because we have sinned against you to the Lord Our God belongs compassion and forgiveness for we have rebelled against him nor have we obeyed the voice of the
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Lord Our God to walk in his teachings which he set before us through his servants the servants the prophets indeed all Israel has transgressed your law and turned aside not obeying your voice so the curse has
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been poured out on us along with the oath which is written in the law of Moses the servant of God for we have sinned against him thus he has confirmed his words which he had spoken against us
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and against our rulers who ruled us to bring upon us a great Calamity for under the whole Heaven there has not been done anything like what was done to Jerusalem So Daniel in the midst of his um prayer
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in the midst of his cry to God um regarding the the people from which he has compassion he recognizes what the Lord is doing to them is just what the Lord is doing to them is in fact
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faithful to to the promise that he made to them through Moses um and this is one of the the points I want to bring out through here is the prophets continually
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remind the people of God that God is faithful both for good and for bad not that anything that God ever does is bad but good for you or bad for you God is faithful to what he has promised to do
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um depending on which side you find yourself on um Ezekiel has a similar um moment if you
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will in uh Ezekiel 21 the Lord sends a message through Ezekiel uh telling him to cry out and to
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wail and I'm going to pick up in verse 14 as the Lord speaks to him he says you therefore son of man prophesy clap your hands together and let the sword be doubled the third time the sword for
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slaughtery Slaughter it is the sword for the great one plain which surrounds them that their hearts May melt that many fall at their Gates I have given the glittering sword it is made for
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Slaughter like lightning it is wrapped up in Readiness for the Slaughter Show Yourself sharp go to the right set yourself and go to the left wherever the edge is appointed I will also clap my
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hands together I will appease my wrath i the Lord have spoken and these are the people that God loved out of the Nations these are the people that God chose for
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himself and so we we see in the in the prophets and in the commentary that God is offering to his people he cannot help but confirm his attributes we have his
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self-description here in his Justice his desire for Mercy what is it that that Daniel said right before he said all of these curses coming upon us is just he also says mercy and Grace belong to the
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Lord for we have sinned against him these are the things that he has to appeal to is the nature of God and yet God through the prophets is all also often confirming to them that his nature
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includes Justice his nature includes a demand for satisfaction of sin and so why do we read the prophets well we have all of these things um here in of God's
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self-description you think of Holiness as we've talked about in the Leviticus study what does it mean to be holy what does it mean to approach a holy God well he has compassion he has Mercy on his
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people but he is also just he is also um the one who has wrath against these things um we're going to get into it hopefully soon in Amos 1 and 2 you will
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see these these elements but his refrain that you will read again and again in Amos chapters 1 and 2 for three transgressions and for four meaning
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three the number of completion three transgressions was enough to fill up the table to where it could not be born anymore and the Lord forbear and you went to a fourth you went beyond
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complete in terms of the Wrath that God was going to pour out against you you filled your cup to overflowing with the transgressions that God has uh born with you has been patient with you so in
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reading the prophets um I'm going to write over here I
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here but in the the proph phet as a as a generalization the genre of the prophets I'm going to point out things here and hopefully we'll identify them as we go through yeah I think it's uh it's really
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helpful and it's very important that you know Jesus himself in in the
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the the encounter with the man on the road toas and they were discussing
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they didn't recognize the Lord first and then he then he revealed he starts to explain things and he says you know beginning with Moses
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and all and all prophets and I and I I think because this is now after his resurrection and yet he refers back to what we're talking
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about here about here it's being helpful to explain because this explains the Revelation about
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what absolutely yeah and I I had that down a little bit later as as a reference here um in Luke of course in Luke 24 the road to um emus the the sort of famous incident
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in which he he joins with these men and talks to them but in Luke 24:25 and and 20 25- 27 Jesus said to
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them oh foolish men slow of heart to believe in all that the prophets have spoken was it not necessary for the Christ to suffer these things and to enter into his glory then beginning with
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Moses and all the prophets he explained to them the things concerning himself in all the scriptures so all of the prophets it it relates also you know Peter tells us that all of scripture is
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profitable and God breathed and for our instruction so yes um I I do want to make it clear again I I will freely admit that I am sympathetic to the question of why do we
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read the prophets and why do we care because so much of what you read feels like it's aimed at Israel um and there is certainly an element in which you look at at time and again it's happening in a historical context where he's
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saying this is what you are doing right now in Israel that is contravening the Covenant under which you live that is true that is right and that is something we need to look for but there are
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lessons to be drawn out of the sort of General truths of the prophets and the specific prophets um one of the things I want to want to examine in that question is um you know God is expanding the
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revelation of himself and his attributes through the prophets so if you think about it in terms of commentary that's one he describes the way his holy nature is responding to these circumstances to his people he is making clear what is
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happening um in his own view of the matter um additionally there is there is an element of um and I I want to be
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careful in in how we phrase this but sometimes they are misused I think it's less a danger for us perhaps some sometimes the prophets are misused in
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the sense of drawing out this and that um principle for living kind of thing uh Jason dushi in his his book says don't assume that principles for living are
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going to be derived from every single biblical passage some texts tell us not how to live but whom should we live for and so there is that element of a lot of
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this is about God and it is informative of who he is in his person on the other hand and this is the thing that was striking to me as I was studying for
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this particular this particular section um I went to a presbyterian Seminary and a lot of the books I have are Presbyterians so a lot of them are very covenantal not all of them but a lot of them are very covenantal and they
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sure do like to remind everyone that they are the Covenant people and the New Covenant etc etc for prophets who have a lot to say about contravening the
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commands of the Covenant they sure do Dodge out of the way of uh any sort of suggestion that maybe they are contributing the Covenant any sort of suggestion that maybe what the prophets
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are identifying as rot from within the people of God can apply to the people today to the churches today and that's one of the things I want to look at as
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we go through the prophets is um I think a lot of times we we take their fangs and Claws away and say well that only applied to Israel the only thing I want
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out of the prophets is the general principles I'm not going to listen to a judgment that says you chewing up your brothers and sisters and spitting them out when they're no longer valuable to
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you is only applicable to the Kingdom of Israel in Israel in 773 BC it applies to the Church of God it applies to his people we are the
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people of God the messages of the prophets are not solely confined to the historical context so obviously we have to be careful as we go forward but I do
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want to say on the other hand I I don't want to assume that the prophets have nothing to say to us today because I frankly think they do um again to to
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refer back to Peter's comment on all scripture as profitable but also here what Peter says in Acts um in a couple
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oh I'm sorry this is just after Pentecost um in chapter 3 uh what is sometimes called Peter's second sermon but Peter says in chapter 3 starting in verse 18 the things which God announced
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beforehand by the mouth of all the prophets that his Christ would suffer he has thus fulfilled therefore repent and return so your sins may be wiped away he
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goes on to say further down Moses said the Lord God will raise up for you a prophet like me from among your brethren to him you shall give heed to everything that he says to you and it will be that
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every soul that does not heed that Prophet will be utterly destroyed from among the people of course he's referring to Christ likewise all the prophets who have spoken from Samuel and his successors onwards announced these
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days it is you who are the sons of the prophets and of the Covenant which God made with your fathers saying to Abraham and your seed all the families of the Earth shall be blessed um so so Peter
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clearly pulling out here all of the prophets I've erased my timeline but from Samuel onwards all of the prophets were looking to this announcing this we're going to pull this out as we go through Amos the day of the
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Lord these days that Peter is in um and then later in chapter 10 uh with
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Cornelius oh sorry it's after that he's returned to cesaria um Peter in speaking to them says uh let's see who was he speaking to well it is just after Cornelius I think
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he's still at his house um in verse 43 well I'm going to start in verse 42 as he's he's describing the call and the witness he says uh and he ordered us to
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preach to the people and to solemnly testify that this is the one who has been appointed by God as judge of the living and the dead of him all the prophets bear witness that through his
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name everyone who believes in Him receives the Forgiveness of sins so Paul sees it Jesus sees it Peter sees it I hope that we can see it too as we move
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forward that all of the prophets have something to say here so as we look at Amos and we dig into the Book of Amos in particular that we see what he has to say U that is christological but also
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those things that still apply to the people of God and those things that are revelatory of God about his own person and his own nature in the historical context so hopefully you can
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kind of see those three sort of broad categories the historical factual the um applicable to us now and the christological are sort of major pieces
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of the the prophets that are worthwhile and worth digging out um and I again want to stick to Amos as much as we can but hopefully bring out the hermeneutical principles of reading
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these things I'm going to wrap up this morning real quick quick by just putting I think in the general sense of the prophets there are four categories oops I know how to
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spell four categories that the oracles can be generally classified
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under and again the prophets have a tendency to be a lot more poetic um than many of the other books we'll get into that as we go but the first one is the idea of indictment
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that the prophets are sent to give to the people a statement of their offense a specification of the Covenant terms that have been violated this is where you went wrong this is what you have done um here is the accusation against
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you secondly you have uh clarification and to be clear the prophets do not always follow these 1 through for in this order but
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these are the categories I think you can put most of the oracles under not universally but again principles instruction and no I didn't go alliterative they're not all
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eyes the prophets are sent to clarify the expected response from the people um a call to heed the Covenant stipulations that they ought to be following the things that they were under a declaration of the
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sentence what is the punishment that is to be carried out a warning and a promise of the curse God's faithfulness to do those things that he promised that he would do if his people violated the coven Covenant and finally an
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hope that there is a future hope of Deliverance a future hope of relief from these punishments uh an affirmation that God remains faithful to preserve his people he remains faithful to um guide them and to to heal them and to love
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them um there are a number of of lessons that we can draw out of the general truths of the prophets um and we talked about those a little bit I would Hazard though for you that if you were curious
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this is not a bad place to start with some parenting um you view God as your father this is a pretty good way to handle things when your children have done something wrong um I try to make sure
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that whenever our children are particularly in trouble that they understand what they have done do you know why you're in trouble and that's often where the prophets come to the people of God and say there is Calamity
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coming to you do you even know why you're in trouble do you understand what you have you have done um and certainly the understanding of what the the sentence is and where
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what it is based on the rules that have been laid out that order the the household in in this instance the household of God's people they were living by rules set down from
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Moses the prophets are careful to remind them that God is being faithful to this he is not being capricious you you often see this idea of God particularly the god of the Old Testament as being angry
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and wrathful well his children were awfully misbehaved but again he's not being capricious he's following the rules that he set out for them in his Covenant he is following through these
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things and if any anything he reminds them consistently through the prophets not only am I being faithful I'm borderl line on being too lenient with you the number of times
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I've let these things go I can't let it go anymore
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um it reinforces God's indelible faithfulness he is faithful he is just he is compassionate he is all of these things and we see them displayed in the words that he delivers to the people through the prophets are there any other
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questions or comments before we close morning all right well let's close in a word of prayer as we assemble to worship
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upstairs father we do thank you for the delivery of your word we thank you for the prophets the prophets who endured much suffering of their own to bring these words to us who were
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scorned not heeded in some cases abused or even killed by the people they were sent to minister too and yet they followed your example and
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were faithful even to death so we thank you for their word and we ask that you would help us to read your word as it was delivered to them with greater understanding to honor you in
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our mining out of truths new and old out of this store but father we thank you that we do live in the light of the revelation of Jesus
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Christ that we are a people blessed to live in that final Revelation that you have presented through him so father we ask that we would see him more clearly
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that we would understand him better as he was able to demonstrate through the prophets to these people that we would seek to follow his footsteps his Trail through these
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through these things we ask that you would be glorified in our diligence that you would be glorified in glorified in our desire that you would move the spirit within us to honor your name and
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to love one another in a way that is an example a light before the Nations we ask all of these things in Jesus name
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amen know actually seems like I was looking this too