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Amos & Obadiah Amos & Obadiah, the Roar of Jehovah Memory Verse Amos 1:2a; 3:2; 4:12b; 5:6 {<The Lord roars from Zion,> and from Jerusalem He utters His voice. <“You only have I chosen among all the families of the earth; therefore, I will punish you for all your iniquities. [Prepare to meet your God.> (Seek the Lord) that you may live.”] Obadiah 15 As you have done, it will be done to you.} (NAS) Portion for each class as marked: (PS), [PM], <MD>, {SR} Introduction Today we will study the next two minor prophets, Amos and Obadiah. Amos and Hosea were contemporaries (living at the same time). They were both sent to the Northern Kingdom of Israel, but their messages appear to be direct opposites of each other. Hosea tells us of the love of God, but Amos tells of the roar or wrath of Jehovah. As Romans 11:22 tells us, those who fall and refuse to repent can wait for the severity of God, but those who abide in Him will find the goodness of the Lord. Whether it is severity or goodness, both come from the loving heart of God. So we need the message of Amos just as much as that of Hosea, as well as Obadiah’s. Lesson and Application for the SR and MD Classes (1) Amos was called to be a prophet. (Amos 1:1; 7:14,15) The prophet Amos was an ordinary man. He did not come from a priestly family, like Jeremiah. He was a shepherd from a town called Tekoa (Te-KO-ah) in the southern kingdom of Judah. He also had a second job, taking care of sycamore-fig trees. Amos was quite content with his life. But the Lord had something more for him. The Lord called him to be a prophet and sent him to the northern nation of Israel. Amos obeyed, even though that meant leaving his home and friends. So we see that an obedient person is one whom the Lord can use. At that time, there was peace and prosperity in the northern kingdom. Because of this, the people thought God was pleased with them and had blessed them with many material things. But that was not true. The first words which Amos spoke were, “The Lord roars from Zion.” The Lord was angry. The people had no idea that punishment would be coming on them soon, if they did not repent. The Lord repeatedly said, “I will not turn back My wrath (anger).” The Lord began by naming the sins of the nations around Israel and then He listed their sins. The eyes of the Lord are in every place, watching the evil and the good. (Proverbs 15:3) (2) The words of warning. (Amos 3, 4, 5) All those nations were under the Lord’s anger and judgment. Even though God was angry, He was still merciful to His people and sent Amos to warn them. The Lord had Amos say again and again, “Hear this word.” “Hear this word the Lord has 1 Amos & Obadiah spoken against you, O people of Israel. You only have I chosen, of all the families of the earth. Therefore, I will punish you for all your sins.” What were their sins? The people had turned their hearts away from the Lord and worshiped idols. They were also very unkind to each other. The rich lived luxuriously, while the poor suffered. Some of the poor even became slaves to their rich relatives. God was very angry with them. Sometimes we may be just like those people of Israel. We think that everything is fine because we have believed in the Lord Jesus and have become God’s children. God is love, and He loves us very much. We may think that we can do whatever we like, even things which we know do not please the Lord. This is not true. Because God loves us, He cares very much about what we are and what we do. He will not spoil us and let us do what we want. As Hebrews 12:6 tells us, “The Lord disciplines those whom He loves.” So He told the people of Israel, “Because you belong to Me, I will punish and discipline you.” Therefore, we should not be careless, as they were. The Lord is patient, as we can see in Amos. He tried again and again to get the attention of His people in order to turn them around. He said through Amos, “I gave you empty stomachs in every city, yet you have not returned to Me. I sent plagues among you. Your young men were killed in war, yet you have not returned to Me.” Five times in Amos 4 the Lord said, “Yet you have not returned to Me.” How patient the Lord was! How deaf His people were! They refused to turn back to Him. The Lord did not desire His people to suffer and die. He told them again and again the way to life. He said, “Seek Me that you may live. Seek the Lord; seek good and not evil, that you may live.” But the people did not listen. Finally the Lord had to say, “Prepare to meet Your God, O Israel.” They had to face God’s judgment. Some children can be very stubborn and rebellious. Are you like that? Do you refuse to listen to warnings? Do you ignore your parents when they are angry with something you have done? When your parents give you a scolding or a small punishment, do you resent them and continue to do the thing which made them angry? The Israelites were like that. God wanted them to turn away from doing all the bad things. The Lord showed them the way, which was to seek the Lord. If they had turned to look for the Lord, they would have turned away from their evil way. That was what God was after. But they refused to listen and repent. Don’t be like those people. Let us learn to be children who are pleasing to God and to our parents. (3) Five visions of God’s judgment. (Amos 3:7,8; 7:1-9; 8:1-3; 9:1-4) Amos said in 3:7, “Surely the Lord God does nothing without revealing His plan to His servants, the prophets.” The Lord gave Amos five visions of what He planned to do to His rebellious people. In the first vision, Amos saw the Lord preparing swarms of locusts just when the wheat crop was coming up. When he saw the locusts stripping the land clean, Amos cried out, “O Lord, please forgive your people. How can they live when all the food crops are eaten up?” Because Amos prayed, the Lord said, “This will not happen.” In the second vision, the Lord showed Amos that He was calling for judgment by 2 Amos & Obadiah fire. Amos saw the whole land burned up. He cried out again, “O Lord, please stop. How can the people survive?” Then the Lord said, “This will not happen either.” Then Amos saw the Lord with a plumb line in His hand. A plumb line is a string with a weight on one end. It is used by carpenters to check if something is straight or not. The Lord said, “I am putting a plumb line among My people. They are so far out of line that I will spare them no longer.” What God found was very true. Amos knew that God had to punish His people, so he did not ask God to withhold His judgment. The Lord also showed Amos a basket of summer fruits. His people were like those fruits; they looked nice and ripe on the outside, but they were really rotten on the inside. They were ready to be thrown out. In the last vision, Amos saw the Lord standing beside the altar. He told Amos to smash the tops of the pillars and shake the temple until the roof crashed down upon the people. The Lord said, “Not one person will get away. No one will escape.” What Amos saw and heard was very frightening. That was why he said, “You should tremble because the Lion has roared. The Lord has spoken, I have to tell you about it.” The Lord is King, like the lion. (The Lord Jesus is called the Lion of Judah.) The roar told the people that His judgment was coming; none could ignore it. (4) Promise of restoration in the future. (Amos 9:7-15) The Lord seemed to be very severe with His people because He had to punish them for their sins. However, His dealings with them were not for destruction but for restoration (restoring). Therefore, He said through Amos, “I will destroy the sinful kingdom from the face of the earth; but, I will not totally destroy the house of Jacob. I will bring My people Israel back from captivity.” From 2 Kings 17, we know that within 50 years after the Lord spoke those words through Amos, the Assyrians came and destroyed the Northern Kingdom and carried all the people away as captives. They never saw their homes again; they all died in the foreign land. About 200 years later, a small group of the people did return. Some were probably descendants of those from the northern kingdom. This is recorded in the books of Ezra and Nehemiah. The Lord sent Hosea and Amos at about the same time to give His message to the nation of Israel.
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