260913 Amos 1:3-2:16

Well, as Joyce said, we're in a new series.

We're working through the Book of Amos.

Um, and today we're working through the whole of Amos 1 and 2.

Margaret read Amos 2, 'cause I asked her to, 'cause Amos 1's more of the same, and you can have too much of a good thing sometimes.

[laughs] Amos, as we've heard, was a manual laborer from the poor southern kingdom of Judah.

He was from a village called Tekoa about five miles outside Jerusalem.

And God had sent him to the rich northern kingdom of Israel or Samaria, um, in about 760 BC.

The north had their own version of the historic religion of worshiping God.

They kept a lot of the same laws and traditions as God had revealed through Moses and David and so on, but they changed some, and they'd added some new ones in, too.

Sometimes they'd added in worshiping other gods in ways that weren't always right or proper.

And we'll get there, too.

We also know from last time, um, from verse one, that there's a big earthquake coming in just two years' time, and we know it will lead to the collapse of the northern kingdom.

But they don't know that.

They're happy and prosperous and successful, largely, but sitting on the brink of a disaster they cannot see and listening to a prophet they don't want to hear.

And today, as I said, we're gonna look at the first couple of chapters of Amos.

And I've got three headings for us to help us to, to understand it and to get a clearer picture.