Sermon Archive

Text: Amos 8:1-12 We have a habit of presuming that the prophets really don’t have a lot to say to us. Even when we see them as foretelling the coming of Christ, it’s still a “way back then” kind of approach, and that it really doesn’t mean much for us today. Yet the irony is, if we take that angle, we miss all of the subtleties, all the genuine power of what they have to say. As a prophet, Amos rarely seems to have anything good to say about Israel’s spiritual life. We started exploring him last week, and it reflected the times in which he lived. As I mentioned last week, Amos arrived on the scene, after the great empire of David and Solomon had broken into two smaller kingdoms, Judah to the south, and Israel to the north. While Amos lived on the border of these two states, his attention and anger was directed at the north kingdom of Israel. Yet the time in which Amos lived was not a time in which one would expect these kinds of rants. By any standard or measure, it would seem that I...

Text: Amos 7:7-17 Amos and Hosea are a couple of prophets that really don’t get a lot of attention, really. Considered to be the largest of the so-called “Minor Prophets” these two books can be really unpleasant to read if you don’t know the context. At face value they are a collection of angry rants, which provide lots of fuel for fire-and-brimstone kind of preaching… which as Presbyterians we tend to shy away from. But I think the reason that we shy away from these texts is that perhaps we understand them slightly better than the fire bellied preachers… It’s a terrible stereotype, but the image that we get is that this type of ranting sermon, was an odd, but misplaced source of comfort to those who liked to listen to them. The world is evil, and God’s judgement will rain down upon them, and destroy all those wicked people… out there. We’re safe in here, and let all that nasty stuff happen to other people. The problem is, neither Amos nor Hosea are talking about “other people.” They a...