Amos 01: Let Justice Roll

Pastor Brandon introduces the book of Amos as a prophetic call to align worship with ethics, challenging believers to reflect God's character through justice and compassion rather than compartmentalizing faith.

• Amos was a shepherd from Tekoa, not a professional prophet, making him an unlikely messenger
• He lived in the southern kingdom (Judah) but prophesied primarily to the northern kingdom (Israel)
• Written between 760-750 BC, shortly before the Assyrian invasion that would destroy Israel
• The prophet warns against spiritual complacency and defines justice as doing what God requires
• Israel was economically booming but morally corrupt, with growing class division and oppression
• Amos demonstrates that true love includes speaking truth with kindness when others are heading toward danger
• Three steps when facing sin: deal with your own sin first, check your motives, and pray for the Holy Spirit to open doors

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Chapters

• 0:48 Welcome to Amos
• 4:52 Background of Amos the Shepherd
• 10:58 Why Amos Matters Today
• 15:09 Reading Through Amos Chapter 1
• 20:04 Three Steps When Facing Sin

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:24

Well, hello everybody. Welcome back to the Bible Breakdown Podcast with your host, pastor Brandon. Today, amos, chapter 1. And today's title to begin the whole Amos journey, which is about nine chapters, we're going to call this Let Justice Roll. Let Justice Roll. And this reminds me of I'll just be very honest with you. I got this title from an old country song by, I think it's Garth Brooks. It says you know, let the thunder roll. Hopefully that will make sense as we go further into the book of Amos.

Speaker 1: 0:59

And so, if you have your Bibles, want to open up with me to the book of Amos? I want to give you just a second because I know it's not every day you open up to the book of Amos, unless you are part of the Bible Breakdown crew, because we'd be walking through the Bible one chapter at a time. But to give you that opportunity, go ahead and turn there while you're doing that. If you're new around here, make sure you take just a moment to like, share and subscribe to the YouTube channel and the podcast. Leave us a five-star review on the podcast. It really does help us. And also make sure you are commenting on the podcast because when people read through there to see what we're all about. It is you that helps them know whether or not they need to listen. So make sure you leave them a good idea of what to expect when they go to the Bible Breakdown podcast on the comments for YouTube. It really does help us. We love to engage. And then two other things. Make sure number one you're going to the Bible Breakdown discussion on Facebook. That's where we want to dig even deeper into God's Word. There's an amazing team of people that are just faithfully writing these wonderful devotions every single day, and we are working on creating a hub to put all of that the podcast, the YouTube videos and the discussions all of those links can be found at thebiblebreakdowncom. Okay, all right, I've given you a minute.

Speaker 1: 2:10

Now let's jump into the book of Amos, chapter 1. Remember, I told you, the overall goal title is Let Justice Roll, and I've got this idea of just having lightning, you know, because, remember, it's like let the thunder roll, but instead it's let the justice roll, and we're going to get to all of that. But before we do that, as always, as we are jumping into a new book of the Bible, we want to give an overview of what Amos is and kind of give us some fresh eyes to see how great the books of the Bible are. So here's kind of some background. Give you some idea of what the book of Amos is all about.

Speaker 1: 2:48

First of all, who wrote Amos? Well, amos wrote Amos, and here's one of the interesting things about him and we'll cover this again in a minute. But Amos was a shepherd from Tekoa. He was not a what you would call a career prophet. There were people who, from a young age they grew up and would attend these schools of the prophets you can see this when you study Elijah and Elisha and there would be these different people. They would grow up to learn how to read God's word, be a scribe, how to prophesy and all these different things. But that was not Amos. Amos was a shepherd. He was not a professional prophet.

Speaker 1: 3:25

Another thing that's very interesting is he lives in Judah, the southern kingdom, and we're going to dive into that in a second. But very not normally he is actually not talking primarily to Judah, even though he'll bring them up. He's talking to the northern kingdom. So he is from the southern kingdom, talking to the northern kingdom, and he's doing this between 760 and 750 BC, right before the Assyrian invasion. So they're on their way. They are definitely a force to be reckoned with and he is almost like a brother from the other side of kind of this fence saying, hey, friends, be careful, it's during the same time as Hosea.

Speaker 1: 4:04

It's during the same time as Hosea, jonah, isaiah, micah, these different people in the Bible, and he is part of a group of writings called the minor prophets, and we've got to remember minor doesn't mean less than as far as in. You have the major prophets, which would be Isaiah, jeremiah, ezekiel, these type of people. Then you have the minor prophets. Only reason why it's between major and minor has to do with the amount of material that they wrote. You've got like isaiah, who wrote 66 chapters of you know the over the course of many, many years that are put into this one book called isaiah. You know amos has got nine, nine's a lot, but it's not a lot compared to 66. That's only reason why these guys are considered minor prophets. Well, let's look at some background.

Speaker 1: 4:51

The big idea of Amos is justice is about to flow. What he is going to be telling them over and over and over again is it is a prophetic call to align our worship with our ethics or our morals to make sure that we are not putting God into a compartment of our life. We don't want to compartmentalize and we know a lot of people who will say things like like just to go ahead and start the process of just calling us all out. There are some, some people who will put God in the Sunday box and say this is where God exists, this is where he is welcomed. Monday through Saturday is mine, or we will have people who will have these phrases like business is business. You know these kinds of things, and that is that you have to operate by a different set of ethics in different circumstances. Well, amos is helping us first of all realize that this is nothing new to our generation. It's been going on for a really long time. But he's also telling everybody that's not right, like we don't need to have God rules and other rules, but our worship of God must match our ethical ideas. God doesn't tolerate oppression or any of that kind of stuff, but he expects his people to reflect his character through justice and compassion.

Speaker 1: 6:05

Now, why is Amos important? Why should we read Amos? Well, here's three good reasons, and that is number one. It reminds us that God cares deeply about justice and we as his hands and feet, are to enact his justice. And I really honestly I hate the idea that the word justice has been so co-opted by so many different people, groups, within our current culture. Can I tell you that anytime you put a word in front of justice, I think you're taking away from the universal idea of justice, justice being do the right things for the right thing. Excuse me, try it again. Do the right things for the right reasons all the time. That's what justice should mean.

Speaker 1: 6:47

But we have all kinds of phrases to put something in front of the word justice and now all of a sudden, it kind of takes away from the meaning. But rather, god cares deeply about justice and we, as the Christian church, should be the ones who are proactively seeking after justice, but his justice, not ours. Number two is it warns against spiritual complacency and an activity that ignores the right thing for the right reasons. So, in other words, that is not one of those I scratch your back, you scratch mine, kind of thing when it comes to doing the right thing, but rather we do the right thing because it is the right thing, period. And then one more he defines justice as doing as God's word requires, not as to what seems fair and unfair. That's a very hard one, because isn't it true that we try to? You know, there's so many different things and so many different ways of looking at things that we have to try to find filters, and so we simply put it into a filter of what is fair and unfair. Well, the problem with that is is what is fair? Fair to you may be very different than fair to me, and so we can't, we can't, look at life through a very subjective lens. If we want to be just, we have to look after an objective lens, one that doesn't change, which would be then God's word.

Speaker 1: 8:07

Here's a couple other things. What's going on elsewhere in the world is Israel is booming in their economy. Now, remember, he is in Judah, the southern kingdom. He's talking to the northern kingdom. As a matter of fact, let me show this to you.

Speaker 1: 8:21

If you're doing the podcast, this might be lost on you, but if you're YouTubing, you'll get this. And all around them are all of these neighboring nations, and you can see, here's Assyria, at the very north. They're the ones who are already starting to threaten. They're growing in power, all this kind of stuff. You've got the Phoenicians, philistines, who are going to be a constant thorn in their side, moab that's where Ruth came from. Then you've got all these other kings of Edom, arabu, ammon, armenia, all these different things.

Speaker 1: 8:51

You'll hear a lot of these different tribes mentioned, but here you have Israel, which is really big compared to Judah, and what Amos is doing is he lives here in Judah, he's got a farm, he's raising sheep, but he is yelling over to Israel and he is saying guys, you've got to do the right things for the right reasons, because the big, bad uglies, you've got to see that these Assyrians are coming. You've got to be careful and see that. And so he is trying to tell them that, even though they are rich and wealthy and one of the reasons why is because they're doing all kinds of shady deals with these neighboring nations but he's telling them hey, listen, you got to be careful. And so he is saying that, even though they are economically booming, they're growing corrupt. Another thing is, as I was just saying, assyria is gaining in power. They are absolutely becoming a local power and within 30 years of this prophecy spoiler alert, israel doesn't listen that they fall, like Israel falls to the Assyrians. And also what you're going to hear throughout this book is this class division is growing, that the elites are starting to oppress and really just run over all those who don't have. So interesting facts.

Speaker 1: 10:09

Once again, this is written to the northern kingdom from a southern kingdom. Prophet Amos is a shepherd and a fig tree farmer, which is very uncommon because he didn't grow up in a school of the prophets. There is this interesting, and I can't wait till we get to it. There's this interesting idea of a plumb line vision, which is it's a way to figure out what is what is straight. You know, like, like you, you can measure other things by it, because you kind of have a, an objective standard. We'll get into that.

Speaker 1: 10:34

And then the book of amos is actually one of the oldest prophetic books, possibly written before isaiah or hosea. So while they are all contemporaries of each other, think of Amos already being an adult, seeing what's going on and prophesying, even while, let's say, isaiah and Hosea are still kids or they're still figuring it out, and so he is probably one of the older ones and we don't know. But it's possible that he may have even been somebody that they looked at as someone to you know, listen to, and so it's very interesting to look at. He's more of a foundational idea than the rest of them, and so, while we are getting ready for this, I want to kind of bring something to our attention to really think about when it comes to the prophets, because I want us to really think on this when we jump into it. And that is this that the prophets are so important for us to read.

Speaker 1: 11:28

And the reason why, as Christ followers, is because we have this idea of this thing that is almost called toxic empathy, and it's this idea that we want to empathize with people so much that we lose perspective and we begin to find reasons to excuse sin and excuse other things. And there's absolutely nothing wrong with walking with people, to sympathize with them and all of that. But if we're not careful, we don't want to give them the truth of God's word, because we know that it's going to challenge what they like and what they don't like. But what I love about the prophets is it reminds us that true love is truth with kindness.

Speaker 1: 12:08

And Amos this whole book is like him waving a yellow flag and saying, guys, be careful, be careful. Or like if you're going to the beach during the summertime, this is a double red flag, like don't get in the water, like it is. If we just lived according, to wanting to hurt other people's feelings, then you know we could just say oh well, you know there's there's thunder over there, which means there's probably a storm, but I don't really want you to change your plans. Go ahead, or would love be waving the yellow flag. Now there's a difference between saying be careful and be careful, you idiot. Those are, those are the same phrase, but different. And so he's not saying be careful, you stupid idiot. He's saying be careful, god's got a better idea for you.

Speaker 1: 12:53

It reminds me of a story, and we'll get into the chapter in just a second, but it reminds me of the story of I was with a bunch of friends one time, I was a teenager, and there was this young man sitting in the passenger seat and he was just so funny, just a funny guy, and there was a lady he was dating at the time. She was driving and let's just be kind and say she could not drive a lick. Okay, and, by the way, this is not a story about my wife and I. Okay, we were, I don't even know if Autumn was there, but we were in the back seat and this young lady is just, she's not a good driver, she is all over the road, she is. She is getting right next to the ditch on his side of the road and he just keeps saying babe, you got to be careful, hey, be careful. And finally he doesn't know what else to do and he's like, well, maybe you'll listen to the Lord. And so he says Lord, show her the ditch. Lord, just show her where the ditch is, because she ain't listening to me. And it was the funniest thing, because I think he was pretty serious, because he was realizing she's not listening to me.

Speaker 1: 13:48

Only a divine revelation is going to keep us from dying tonight, and I think that's what the book of Amos is. He is yelling over to the other nation. He's saying Lord, show them the ditch, because the ditch is called Assyria and it's coming if they're not careful. And so he's waving this yellow flag and he's not being nice, he's kind, but he's not nice. And so here's my challenging question to all of us as we get ready to jump into this, and that is this what ditch does God need to show us? What is it that is right there? And that, if somebody loved us enough. What is something that they would come and talk to us about? Kind of think of it like this If you needed to have a conversation with yourself about something that is dangerous, something you don't need to be doing, you're flirting with the enemy, you're flirting with disaster. And if you had a chance to go talk to yourself, what ditch would you pray that God would reveal to you? We're going to read in the book of Amos, as he's willing to step up and say hey, listen, I'm a shepherd, I'm a fig tree farmer, I got no rights other than the Lord has spoke to me and I care enough to say something, and so he's going to do this. And throughout this book, I'm curious as to what God will say to all of us. If you're ready, here we go.

Speaker 1: 15:02

Amos, chapter 1, verse 1, says this this is the message given to Amos, a shepherd from the town of Tekoa in Judah. He received this message in visions two years before the earthquake, when Uzziah, the king of Judah, and Jeroboam II, the son of Jehoash, were king, was king in Israel, and this is what he saw and heard. Pause Now. If you remember the name Uzziah, that is because that was in Isaiah, chapter 6. The Bible said the year King Uzziah died, that is when Isaiah received his call to ministry. So kind of give you a bit of a context between the two, here we go.

Speaker 1: 15:40

Verse 2 says this the Lord's voice will roar from Zion, the thunder from Jerusalem, the lush pastures of the shepherds will dry up and the grass on Mount Carmel will wither and die. This is what the Lord says. The people of Damascus have sinned again and again and I will not let them go unpunished. They will beat down my people in Gilead as grain is threshed with iron sledges. So I will send down fire on King Hazael's palace and the fortresses of King Ben-Hadad will be destroyed. I will break down the gates of Damascus and slaughter the people in the valley of Avin. I will destroy the ruler of Beth-Edan and the people of Aram will go as captives to Ker what the Lord says selling them as slaves to Edom. So I will send down fire on the walls of Gaza and the fortresses will be destroyed. I will slaughter the people of Eshdod and destroy the king of Ashkelon. Then I will turn to attack Ekron and the few Philistines still left will be killed, says the sovereign Lord.

Speaker 1: 16:59

This is also what the Lord says the people of Tyre have sinned again and again and I will not let them go unpunished. They broke their treaty of brotherhood with Israel, selling whole villages as slaves to Adam. So I will send fire down on the walls of Tyre, and all its fortresses will be destroyed. This is also what the Lord says. The people of Edom have sinned again and again, and I will not let them go unpunished. They chased down their relatives. The people of Edom have sinned again and again and I will not let them go unpunished. They chased down their relatives, the Israelites, with swords showing them no mercy In their rage. They slashed them continually and were unrelenting in their anger. So I will send down fire on Tima. The fortresses of Borzah will be destroyed. This is what the Lord says of Rabbah, and all its fortresses will be destroyed. The battle will come upon them with shouts, like a whirlwind, in a mighty storm. Their kings and their princes, or their king with his princes, will go into exile together.

Speaker 1: 18:15

Thus says the Lord Wow, so he really opens up with this just big idea of here we go, let's do this. These are all the things that are going on, and justice is on the way. And so, just like when we cover the book of Matthew, we said that in Matthew, chapter one, he just opens up the gate with saying I can prove to you that Jesus is at least the rightful king of our earthly kingdom. But then the rest of it's all about how he's so much more. That's a lot of what Amos is doing, and I wonder if who knows some of that writing passed its way all the way to Matthew. We have absolutely no way of knowing that, so we're not going to say that with any kind of definitive truth other than Amos is doing the same thing he's saying.

Speaker 1: 19:00

You wonder why I'm breaking my silence, why you wonder why I am willing to stand up when I've got no right to do it. It's because I see all the sinning. The Lord has spoke to me and said I'm not going to let this go unpunished. I've got to do something about it. I'm going to do something about it. And so the interesting question that we need to ask ourselves as we get ready to end our time together and what can we apply today is together, and what can we apply today is what are you going to do about any kind of open, celebrated, rampant sin? You see all around you? Let me give you three steps on what to do if you see sin around you, and then we're going to pray together.

Speaker 1: 19:42

Number one is deal with the sin in your own house first. Jesus himself said how in the world can you speak to somebody else about a little speck in their eye when you've got a log in your own eye? In other words, he's saying make sure you clean up your world before you worry about somebody else's world. And if I can tell you it takes a full-time job to take care of me, I can't even imagine how, how, what it would take before I could take care of somebody else. But if you see sin all around you, the first thing you do is you work on yourself. That's number one is work on yourself.

Speaker 1: 20:13

Number two is if you see something, check your heart on it and go. Are you wanting to fix it or does it grieve you and you want to be the catalyst for God to heal it? Let me say that again when you see sin in the world around you, is the heart in you to say I want to go fix it, or is it it grieves your heart? Do you want to be part of what God uses to heal it. And if you're in this judgment space where you just want God to slash it and burn it, don't do anything yet Pray and ask God to give you maybe a little bit different perspective. But if you're at the place where you say, man, I don't care if God uses me to do it or not, I just want to see God heal this, I think you're in a better place. So here's number one is check on. Check yourself first. Number two check your heart second, and then number three pray for the Holy Spirit to open a door for an audience.

Speaker 1: 21:03

Now, by an audience I don't mean a group of people, but an audience with the person. Let me give you one example and then we'll go from there. I was talking to someone one time and they were grieved because a member of their family was really getting a little too close to a bad crowd and they started to see some of that, you know, rubbing off on them and they they didn't know what to do and they had tried to talk to them and it just fell on deaf ears. Fell on deaf ears, all this stuff. And so they came to both myself and a couple other people, and one of the other people in the group said why don't you try something different Instead? Why don't you pray for the Holy Spirit to open the door? Because the Holy Spirit loves them more than you do. He's wanting you to do this more than you do. So pray for the Holy Spirit to open the right door, set the tone, and then you be ready to walk through it.

Speaker 1: 21:48

Be patient, and it took three months of doing that, but one day we got a text message from that person that said you're never going to believe what happened, and it later ended in a conversation and it was out of nowhere. The person who did not even want to talk about their friends came up and just said what do you think about my friends? Do you think that they're helping me become a better Christian? You want to talk about teeing up for a home run? I mean, it was like how does that happen, holy Spirit? Because the Holy Spirit had been working on that person for a while and the whole time, the one we talked to had been praying, had been preparing, was ready. So when that door opened, they just jumped right through it and had an amazing conversation that led to some healthy boundaries, and so, once again, amos loves the people enough that he's willing to pray. God, show them the ditch, show them what's going on.

Speaker 1: 22:37

And then he opens up in chapter one just saying listen, I'm waving all the yellow flags and saying these are the reasons why we got to talk, because all these bad things are happening. And so the call for us is what do you do, what do I do when we see bad things happening? We do three things. Number one is we check ourselves first. Number two, we check our motives and then. Number three, we pray. The Holy Spirit will open doors. Can we do that right now? Let's pray together. Father, thank you so much for your goodness and your mercy. Lord, I'm so thankful that you are with us and that you love us and the people around us more than we can imagine.

Speaker 1: 23:13

Lord, as we dive deeper into the book of Amos, there's gonna be some challenges and, lord, for some of us we're going to be convicted. For others of us, we're possibly gonna be energized. We wanna be that Amos in the world around us. We wanna wave that yellow flag. We want to be that Amos in the world around us. We want to wave that yellow flag. We want those things.

Speaker 1: 23:31

I pray, holy Spirit, that you will help us. Number one, to soften our own hearts first, to go first in getting closer to you. And then, number two you will help us, lord, to check our motives. And then, number three we pray, holy Spirit, right now, that you will begin to work on that person in our life that came to our mind as we were talking together. Maybe it's a family member, maybe it's a friend, maybe it's a loose acquaintance. We work with Holy Spirit, we pray you'll begin working on an opportunity for us to speak life, not judgment, to that person and that you, holy Spirit, will do what only you can do Prepare us, prepare them, so that healing can happen for both of us. In Jesus name, we pray Amen and amen. Well, the theme verse for Amos is going to be Amos, chapter 5, verse 24, and it says this instead, I want to see a mighty flood of justice, an endless river of righteous living. That's what God wants is he wants justice and he wants righteousness in our life. I love you, I'll see you tomorrow. For Amos, chapter two