JOHN182 - Not So Famous Amos

0:18 Hey everybody, it's Matt of the 10-Minute Bible Hour Podcast. We're on a side joint. We're on a historical quest to try to understand the tension between the Samaritans and the Jews. That was very prominent and even just assumed knowledge on the part of the New Testament authors. Jesus, where we're at in John chapter 4, is about to go into Samaritan territory, and he's about to have an exchange with a Samaritan woman at a well, and it's loaded.

0:48 The whole scene, the whole story is loaded because of this well-known at the time history between the Jews and the Samaritans. So we're trying to get ourselves back up to speed. We've been working on that for the last few days. Well, yesterday, we got to the point in the story in the probably 720-ish BC range, where the Assyrians decide they're just going to pick a priest from the recently defeated people of Israel and just bring them back into Israel to try to explain the religion to all of these newcomers that Assyria has forcibly resettled into recently conquered and emptied out Israel.

1:26 And yesterday we talked about how this is a pretty big inflection point in the history of religion and culture and society in the realm of Samaria, because whatever guy they pick and bring in, who is a former priest of sort of the God of Abraham from the now defeated northern kingdom, whatever priest they bring in, all of his flaws, all of his problems are going to be duplicated because he's going to be the new Adam of the entire religious tradition moving forward because of the power of the Assyrians and what they've done.

2:03 So yesterday I was saying, look, I'm pretty much sure that the Assyrians went and undiscriminatingly picked a very crappy priest to be the guy, to be this new Adam, the one dude to come in and teach all the newcomers here about what the religion was going to be moving forward. And I teased that there's a book of the Bible that gives us kind of a taste of what the priests were like just before the Assyrian conquest in the 700s BC.

2:35 And that book in question is the book of Amos. So, yes, we're working on John 4, but today we're in Amos. And the opening line of the book of Amos helps us locate everything that's going on chronologically. It says this the words of Amos, one of the shepherds of Tokoah, what he saw concerning Israel two years before the earthquake, when Uzziah was king of Judah and Jeroboam, son of Jehoash, was king of Israel.

3:03 Oh, well, there we go. Okay, that just tells us very neatly. We are 30-ish years before Shamaneser and Sargon II of Assyria conquer Israel. And as we read on a little bit further, we figure out that this complete no-namer, Amos, is just some guy who wanted to be left alone on his farm with his shepherding, with his figs.

3:27 He's living a normal, peaceful life in Judah. And then God apparently summons him out of that and tells him, No, you're gonna go not to Judah, you're gonna go to Israel, a rival neighboring kingdom, and you're going to prophesy to them. So right off the bat, Amos is gonna know that this probably isn't gonna go over super well.

3:50 But also we get the impression that Amos is like, Well, I mean, you're God, and I'm the fig farmer. So I guess I'll, yeah, I better go do that. It's kind of fun. It feels like one of those movies that you watch where you got a really competent dude who's sort of in exile or just wants to be left alone, working on his farm.

4:08 He's like Wolverine chopping lumber in the Canadian Rockies or Mark Wahlberg in that sniper shooter movie where he plays Billy Ray, Bobby Ray, swagger. I think that's actually his name in the movie. And of course, people show up at his at the remote cabin and they're like, You have to come do this thing.

4:29 No, I left that life a long time ago. Those days are behind me. You might not need your country anymore, but your country needs you. Dang it, okay. I'll go. So we don't know why God picked Amos of Tokoa. He just says that he's one of the shepherds of Tokoa, which is a small town. He's not even the best shepherd of Tokoa.

4:48 He isn't, I mean, he's a fig farmer as well. Just I don't know. There's nothing on the resume that says that this would be the right guy, but that's who God picks. And Amos goes on this journey, this adventure quest across the border up north to Bethel and into Samaria, into Israel, to issue these oracles of the Lord.

5:10 And the first oracle he issues isn't directed at anyone, it's just a quick prophetic statement about prophecy in general and what God is doing. This is pretty interesting. In Amos 1, 2, it says, The Lord roars from Zion and thunders from Jerusalem. The pastures of the shepherds dry up, and the top of Carmel withers.

5:35 And it's the idea of just the power of the Lord speaking, but listen to that first bit of imagery that's invoked. The Lord roars from Zion. How interesting that we're talking about a plague of lions and all that it sets in place. And the imagery that is used here is one that is reminiscent of lions. Maybe there's a connection there, maybe not.

5:58 I just think it's interesting. So Amos goes from there and he goes up north and he starts prophesying to Israel, to the king, to the priestly classes, to whoever will listen. And initially the prophecies are all against neighboring people groups, and they all kind of follow the same pattern. For three sins of Damascus, even for four, I will not turn back my wrath.

6:21 And then it says what Damascus did wrong. Then for three sins of Gaza, even for four, I will not turn back my wrath. And then it says what Gaza did wrong. And this is all Amos just quoting God. This happens with Tyre, Edom, Ammon, Moab, and then even Judah. Dang. So again, Amos is in Israel, the northern kingdom, and he shows up there as I don't know, like a goofball wearing farm clothes.

6:49 Probably nobody's super impressed. And they're like, oh, this is interesting, you know, street entertainment. Oh, there's a bunch of prophecies about people we didn't like anyway. Oh, and look at this. The guy from Judah is now prophesying against Judah. I mean, it's kind of like whenever politically some celebrity says anything on Twitter that sides with the team you wouldn't expect them to side to, and then that team immediately just puts hands on them in a positive way and blesses them and welcomes them in as a new priest of their political religion.

7:22 And then, of course, inevitably it turns. Well, it turns here as well. The people of the north are one chapter into prophecies from Amos, and they're like, We love this guy. Like, keep going, dude. Keep saying, do your do another one of the for three sins of for four. This is awesome. But then Amos turns his pointing finger of judgment toward his hosts, toward Israel.

7:47 This is what the Lord says, Amos 2, 6. For three sins of Israel, even for four, I will not turn back my wrath. Now I have the luxury of having the book of Amos in front of me, so I can flip through the pages and just do a quick skim here, real quick. I've got one double page spread of prophecies against all these other people groups who aren't Israel.

8:11 And each of these prophecies is, I don't know, a couple of sentences long. But now here's the part about Israel, and it's uh that's a lot of page turning. We're still going. It's that many pages long. Once Amos turns his attention to Israel, he does not stop. It is a prophetic tirade against the abuses and uh injustices and evil of a people group who are at their apex.

8:44 The reign of Jeroboam II, during which this prophecy is occurring, or very shortly after which this prophecy is occurring, is the high point. It's the golden age of Israel. And at one point in the Bible, God is credited for blessing this wayward half of the family he's made here in the evil northern kingdom.

9:05 All this prosperity and blessing, it's not because you guys are geniuses, it's from God. How are you going to use it? Well, Amos, the fig farmer, the foreigner, shows up to say, Yeah, you didn't use it well. You were blessed by God, and now your doom is upon you. And he just in great detail lists out injustice and wickedness and pride and hubris and wrong attitudes of the women and the men, of wicked governance, of evil oppression, of the rejection of God.

9:42 And then in chapter seven, six crushing chapters later, Amos is given this vision by God of a plumb line. And this is sort of the visual image of Amos. There's a line, you know, like that you'd use to measure if something's vertical and true or not in construction. And God is showing this to Amos and He says, What do you see, Amos?

10:03 And Amos says, a plumb line. And then the Lord says, Look, I'm setting a plumb line among my people, Israel. In other words, I've measured them and I will spare them no longer. They don't square with what I have told them to do. And then after that, we get a detail that I think is very relevant for our conversation about the history with the Jews and the Samaritans, because we get some insight here for just a few verses.

10:25 How many? Uh, seven verses, about what the priesthood was like around the time of the Syrian conquest, and about what the pool would have looked like of corrupt priests of the north that the Assyrians could have chosen from to be the new spiritual guide for the people moving forward to get rid of the lion plague.

10:44 And tomorrow we're gonna look at this spicy, feisty exchange between the very self-assured Amaziah, who's on his home turf, surrounded by sycophants who love everything he's saying, and Amos, the fig farmer, who's not a prophet in the professional sense, nor a son of a prophet, just some guy who recently got roped into this and happens to be saying the things that are true from the God of Abraham and the God of all things.

11:12 It's gonna get real lively between these two, and it's gonna give us a really good sense of the caliber of priest, quote unquote, that the Assyrians would bring in to set the religious trajectory for basically all of time for the Samaritans moving forward. It's gonna be a good time. Also, hey, I had occasion this morning to go and read recent reviews that many of you have left for my book, The Lightning Fast Field Guide to the Bible, over on Amazon.

11:40 Golly, thank you. I'm glad it's working the way I wanted it to work. I just used this book in preparation for our conversation because I have a chapter in here on Amos. And it was very helpful to go back and get the distillation of my life's work on this book in very succinct language to get myself back up to speed.

11:59 I mean, it's a real life testimonial. It works, and I'm glad that it's working for you. Thank you so much to everybody who's bought a copy of this thing, and thank you to those of you who've been willing to put your name next to mine and vouch for it on the internet. Although, Caleb Rouse, what are you doing, man?

12:16 You wrote me a really nice review, but then you gave me one star, like a jokey one star. I'm gonna keep you humble. Okay, I'm humble, I promise. I'm sorry, whatever I did. Please don't give me jokey one star reviews. That's bad, man. Whatever. You all are awesome. Thank you for liking the book. Thank you for letting me know, and thanks for having a laugh with me about funny things.

12:37 All right, more on all of this business with the history of the Samaritan thing and where Amos fits into all of that next time around. Um Matt, this is the 10-minute Bible hour podcast. Let's do this again soon.