Join us on a deep dive into the book of Amos, where we discover the historical context and timeless messages of this minor prophet. Here, Amos challenges the superficial pursuits of pleasure, illustrating through powerful imagery why true fulfillment can only be found in obedience to God’s word. Whether it’s through the vision of grasshoppers or the plumb line, Amos’s story is a poignant reminder of the path to genuine happiness. We’ll explore these themes and reflect on personal stories shared by listeners who have discovered renewed faith through biblical teachings.
Ask people on the street about the meaning of life, and you’re going to get a variety of answers. One of the most popular is, just do what makes you happy. Well, for some, that means following any and every road that they think will lead to happiness, like hobbies or self-actualization or travel or whatever they think is fun. And that’s what the nation of Israel was doing. They were pursuing pleasure and putting all their hope in their false gods until the prophet Amos came to town. And that’s where we are in our five-year journey through the Bible, the little book of Amos, at a point when God was still patient with the nation, but eventually he must judge sin. We’re going to begin our study today in Amos 6, verse 7, right after we visit with some fellow travelers on the Bible bus from the four corners of the country. The first one comes to us from a listener in the state of Washington, and he writes, As I study the Bible each day, I am forever coming across a verse that’s stuck in the middle of my brain, and I won’t go to bed until I’ve studied it further to get a better understanding. And most of the time, after Dr. McGee’s message, I will suddenly get the truth. I’m thankful for Through the Bible and for all those involved who keep God’s work alive and bring his plan of salvation into homes. The next letter is from a listener on the Bible bus. This one’s in North Carolina, and she says this. I was trying to find something on the radio and found some bluegrass music. After the music finished, to my surprise, Dr. McGee came on. I don’t usually listen to preachers on the radio, but I loved his voice. As I listened, I loved his attitude. As I listened more, I began to love the Bible. I don’t always understand a lot of it, but thanks to your program, I’m understanding more. I became disabled in 2012. I became very depressed, even thought about ending my own life. I had lost touch with God. Since then, I found through the Bible with Dr. McGee, I’m slowly trusting God more and more, understanding the Bible has helped. Isn’t that great? We all need the Bible to help us stay on the right track, don’t we? And then here’s an encouraging note. This is from a listener in Arizona. She writes, I am very grateful to all of you. I’ve told so many people about the Bible study that you deliver every day and have given away three handheld radios with the broadcast times all written out on an index card. But I haven’t heard of any fruit. This discouraged me, but my husband told me I needed to be like the Gideons. They don’t interview people who check out of motels and quiz them whether they read the Bible on the nightstand. They just sow the seed and go on with life. I know he’s right. And then I realized that is exactly what Through the Bible does all over the world. Sure, you get wonderful letters from some people who have found God and are living for him in the darkest places. But for the most part, as you say, we won’t discover the real impact until glory. Thank you so much for your good work. I’ll keep sowing the seed with you. Well, I love her heart, don’t you? And you know, she’s right. We won’t know the impact until glory. And what a celebration that’ll be. So keep flinging that seed wherever God has placed you. And finally, we have a letter from a fellow Bible bus passenger in New York who shared, I am excited, happy, and very grateful to God that he has led me to partner with such a wonderful God-fearing Bible teaching program. The Old Testament has come alive to me through the power of the Holy Spirit. This is one of the most exciting journeys I’ve ever taken, And to know I’m not traveling, it alone is awesome. God bless you and the ministry and my brothers and sisters in Christ around the world. I pray for you as I hear your letters read and know somehow we’ll meet in heaven. Thank God for Jesus, our Savior and Lord, who is our bond of unity. Well, let’s thank the Lord for this study and how he’s working in our hearts. Lord, thank you for your love and your forgiveness through your son, Jesus Christ. Thank you, Lord, for hearing everyone who comes to you by faith. Thank you for the lessons from your word, and then please speak to us through them now. In Jesus’ name, amen. Here’s our study of Amos chapters 6 and 7 on Through the Bible with Dr. J. Vernon McGee.
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Now, friends, last time in the sixth chapter of the book of Amos, we considered in conclusion the three great sins that undermine every great nation of the world and has led to the downfall of all the great powers of the past. And we saw them in verses 4, 5, and 6. In verse 4, it was gluttony and sex. In verse 5, it was heathen music. And in verse 6, it was drunkenness. And we dealt with those three, and we’re not going into that again today, other than it’s the same old story, wine, women, and songs. That’s what a great many people think life is. But actually, that is not what life’s all about. That’s what death is all about. And this is the philosophy that says, eat and drink and be merry for tomorrow you die. Or the philosophy says, pick the daisies while you can. The day is coming when you won’t be able to pick them. In other words, satisfies self. But if a man goes down the line or a nation, he’ll find out that this does not lead to a pot of gold, but it’s a dead-end street with the emphasis upon dead. It’s led to the death of individuals and nations. And it reveals something quite interesting, that the heart is one of the most remarkable organs that God has put in the human body. It’s a very small organ, by the way. But you know, you can put the world in it, and when you do, you can’t even fill the heart. Remarkable, is it not? Now, we move on here, and we begin today at verse 7. He says now, because we’re in this sixth chapter, where Israel is admonished now in the present to depart from iniquity. And the reason, of course, is that it’s going to lead to the destruction of the nation. And he makes this remarkable statement, Amos does, in verse 7. Therefore now shall they go captive with the first that go captive, and the banquet of them that stretch themselves shall be removed. Now, this is a remarkable statement. And because of these three great sins, he says, therefore, and as we said last time, that we just heard a new one about that little word, therefore, that when you come to it in the Bible, you better investigate and see why it’s therefore. And so, therefore here leads to this great statement, and it is that the northern kingdom will go into captivity first. And that is the direction in which they were moving, and they were moving rapidly. They were much closer to it than they could really believe. Now, verse 8, and we’ll continue to move on down now. The Lord God hath sworn by himself, saith the Lord, the God of hosts, I abhor the excellency of Jacob and hate his palaces. Therefore will I deliver up the city with all that is in it. Now, God hated all of this. If you want to know God’s attitude today to the present-day philosophy of the new morality regarding sex and gluttony and the music and drunkenness, why, God makes it very clear here. God says he hates it. And they had become, as a result, a godless nation. Now, these things take you away from God and will not bring you to God at all. Verse 9, And it shall come to pass, if there remain ten men in one house, that they shall die. In other words, there’d be no defense for ten men to get in one house. They might think that would be protection that no one could take them. Well, God says they all are going to die. Verse 10, “…and a man’s uncle shall take him up, and he that burneth him to bring out the bones of the house shall say unto him that is inside of the house,” Is there yet any with thee? And he shall say, No. Then shall he say, Hold thy tongue, for we may not make mention of the name of the Lord. Now, this is a strange statement, but it just simply means this, that it was a day when there was no freedom of religion. They could worship among idols and go into idolatry, but they could not even mention the name of the Lord. Verse 11, For behold, the Lord commandeth, and he will smite the great house with breeches and the little house with clefts. High and low, great and small, are going to be affected by this when the Assyrian comes down and takes them into captivity. And verse 12, “…shall horses run upon the rock.” Well, if you’ve ever ridden horseback in a mountain country where there’s a great deal of rock, you know a horse can slip and fall. Among the many things that I did as a young fella, I belonged to the National Guard and to the cavalry. That’s the horse cavalry. And we were out on patrol duty, and I was riding a big, tall, red horse. And the section I patrolled was very rocky. It was up in middle Tennessee. And my horse slipped out from under me, not necessarily from under me, but because I went right down with the horse, and he fell on the side of one of my feet. And as a result, why, it got me off of patrol duty, and I was actually sent back home because they didn’t want me hanging around. And I never regretted that because it cut me out of a great deal of hard work. Very frankly, and probably I’d ended up peeling potatoes, but I got out of it because of that. And I always appreciated that old red horse. But this is the same thing. Shall horses run upon the rock? Well, they better not. They’ll slip and fall. Will one plow there with oxen? You couldn’t run a plow over a rock. For ye have turned justice into gall, and the fruit of righteousness into hemlock. In other words, you’ve done that which is contrary to reason, that which is contrary to that which is right, and that which is righteousness. That is the thing that he’s saying to them. In other words, you’ve acted very foolish. As foolish as I was, and maybe not so foolish, in riding that old red horse over that rocky terrain. Now, verse 13, “…ye who rejoice in a thing of nothing, who say, Have we not taken to us horns by our own strength?” Now, they’ve taken nothing. Actually, both the Old and the New Testament treat idols as nothing. But the very interesting thing that they recognized that back of idols are demons. The Greeks were probably as intelligent a people as ever been upon this earth. And for a period of time, there was a glory that was Greece. It manifests itself in many ways. And one, of course, was interdependence. intellectual. They were highly sophisticated and intellectual people during that particular period. Now, they worshipped idols. You remember Paul. He says, why, you’ve got so many of them that you even made an idol to the unknown God. They were an intelligent people, but they worshipped idols. And somebody says, well, there’s nothing to an idol. Why in the world would an intelligent people do that? Don’t you believe that the Greeks worshipped nothing? The idol’s nothing, but back of the idol was a demon. And I will go along today with many of these people who are in cults who tell me that some remarkable things take place in the cult. I’ll go along with you and say the remarkable thing takes place, but whodunit. That’s my question, whodunit. And the one that did it, I’m confident, is Satan, and demonism is back of a great deal of this today. Now, let me move on down, verse 14. But behold, I’ll raise up against you a nation, O house of Israel, saith the Lord, the God of hosts, and they shall afflict you from the entrance of Hamath, that is, all the way up into Syria. This was the chief city under the river of the Arabah. And that, of course, is the river that was on the other side of the Jordan River. In fact, it flowed into the Dead Sea. So that God says, through the whole extent of your land, this enemy is coming down from the north. That enemy was not Ben-Hadad of Syria. But it was the king of Assyria, and he took these people into captivity. Now we come to a new division in the book of Amos, the last division. And this is the third major division that we have. And here we have visions of the future. And that’s chapter 7 through 9. And these visions are, I think, very remarkable. And they reveal the fact that though this fellow Amos could be called a clodhopper, country preacher. He could soar to the heights. And some of the visions that the Lord gave him are quite remarkable here. Now, as we come to chapter 7, we see that first vision in the first three verses are the vision of grasshoppers. are locusts, if you want to call them that. They’re called grasshoppers in our translation, but they were, of course, locusts. Let me read now, beginning with verse 1. “‘Thus hath the Lord God shown unto me, and behold, he formed grasshoppers in the beginning of the shooting up of the latter growth. And lo, it was the latter growth after the king’s mowings.'” Now, there were two crops that could be gotten off of the land in that day, and it’s true today. And the first crop went to the king as taxes. The people actually in that day paid more than one-tenth as a tithe. It’s estimated they paid in all about three-tenths, about 33% of what they took from the land. And here you see an example of it after the king had gotten his, then came in the plague of the grasshoppers or the locusts and got theirs. So there was nothing left for the people who had really done the work. Now, that is a judgment that should have shaken them and waked them up. Verse 2, “…it came to pass that when they had ceased eating the grass of the land, then I said, O Lord God, forgive, I beseech thee, by whom shall Jacob arise? For he’s small.” In other words, we have been cut down to size. You have already cut us down, and now this has so weakened us, we’ll not be able to stand.” And he calls out to God to forgive and help them. And notice, the Lord is still patient with them. Verse 3, “…the Lord repented of this, it shall not be, saith the Lord.” The Lord says, well, I won’t do it. I’m not going to weaken you this way. So he gave them a good crop. He got rid of the grasshoppers, got rid of the locusts. Then you would think that the people would return to God, that because of His tender mercy, they’d return to Him. But they did not. Notice now you have the vision of the fire. And that’s in verses 4 through 6. And a great many who believe that the fire here represents actually a drought. Well, I’m perfectly willing to say a drought has to go along with it. When we have dry weather here in Southern California, why, the mountains start burning. And here on the West Coast, I don’t know how many more years it’ll be before we’ll burn off everything that we’ve got out here on our mountains, to my judgment, due to the carelessness of the public today and of cigarette smokers. They say that a great deal has been started by a cigarette. But regardless of that, evidently, it’s caused by a drought. But the thing that did the destroying, I think, is a literal fire, and I think he makes that clear. Verse 4, “‘Thus hath the Lord God shown unto me, and behold, the Lord God called a contend by fire, and it devoured the great deep, and did eat up a part. And now notice, then said I, O Lord God, cease I beseech thee, by whom shall Jacob arise? He small. And again the Lord repented of this.’ This also shall not be, saith the Lord God. And apparently he sent rain and the fires were put out. And again, God heard them. And when it says God repented, it’s because of the fact of the prayers of the people. And God is tenderhearted and would not go through with it. The awful thing today, friends, in rejecting Christ, And being lost eternally is the fact that you have to do it against a God who is tenderhearted, who’s gracious and loving, and he loves you. And sin against that is the awful, dreadful, terrible thing of the present hour. Now, will you notice we have here the vision of the plumb line, verses 7 through 9. Thus he showed me, and behold, the Lord stood upon a wall made by a plumb line, with a plumb line in his hand. Now, you’ll find that used many places in the Word of God. I’m just going to lift out one today, over in Jeremiah 31, verse 38. It says here, “…behold, the days come, saith the Lord, that the city shall be built to the Lord from the tower of Hananil unto the gate of the corner, and the measuring line, or the plumb line, if you please, shall go forth against it upon the hill Gerib, and shall compass about the Goab.” And you’re going to find that when we get to the book of Revelation. And every time that you have this vision and this one in Zechariah, that means God is getting ready to judge. In other words, he’s measuring up now. Or, as it was in the book of Daniel, you’ve been put in the balances and you’re found wanting. When God begins to measure, either in length or in weight. You can be sure of one thing, judgment is the thing that he has in mind. Now, will you notice verse 9 says, “…and the high places of Isaac shall be desolate, and the sanctuaries of Israel shall be laid waste, and I will rise against the house of Jeroboam with the sower.” Now, in other words, God says, that Jeroboam will not have peace. God’s principle is, there is no peace, saith my God to the wicked, and Jeroboam’s not going to have peace. Now, that is the vision of the plumb line. Now, we have wedged in here that little historic interlude that was very personal. that introduced us to Amos. And I considered that at the very beginning. Now it fits into the story here very well. Then Amaziah the priest of Bethel sent the Jeroboam king of Israel, saying, Amos hath conspired against thee in the midst of the house of Israel. The land is not able to bear all his words. For thus Amos saith, Jeroboam shall die by the sword, and Israel shall be led away captive out of their own land. Now, if you read back here, you’ll find out that Amaziah lied. And to me, one of the tragic things that is in the church today is the way that you’re misquoted. I try to make it as simple and as plain as I possibly can. And then I discover that people misquote and maybe say something you have not said at all. Now, sometimes this is done through just not really understanding or failing to comprehend. Again, it’s done deliberately. Now, Amaziah here just went in and deliberately lied about Amos. Amos did not say that Jeroboam would perish with the sword because he didn’t. He said, and I will rise against the house of Jeroboam with the sword, which means there would come warfare. And it did come. And they were finally taken into captivity to Assyria. And then this liberal preacher, for that’s what he was, this priest here of the altar of the golden calf, why, he came to Amos. And we’ve seen that. And he insulted it. He tried to call him an ignoramus. And I’d like to know where the books are that Amaziah wrote. We’ve had one preserved now for a little over 2,500 years written by Amos. But he calls him a country rube. He told him, well, you’re not fit to speak here in the king’s chapel. We want soft words said here. We don’t want to offend anybody. And as a result, well, Amos answered. And we’ve already seen that. And he did it in such a proper manner. It shows he’s a moderate man. He wasn’t giving out wild utterances of a prophecy monger. He was no fanatic at all. He says, why, no, I’m no prophet. I never claimed to be a prophet. I never went to your seminaries. I was just a herdman, a gatherer of sycamore fruit. And the Lord took me, and the Lord told me. And I’m here because the Lord put me here. You know, when a man has that kind of confidence, he’s got confidence. And Amos now is going to make the strongest statement that he’s ever made. But we got to wait till next time to see what that is. And I tell you, the bus ride’s still rough. Maybe you want to get off and maybe walk through this section. Until next time, may God richly bless you, my beloved.
SPEAKER 03 :
That’s confidence. Amos came to Bethel because the Lord put him there. He certainly was an unusual man, just a simple farmer, with confidence that he was speaking for God. To learn more about Amos, the man, and his message, you can download Dr. McGee’s booklet, The Country Preacher Who Came to Town. It’s available anytime at ttb.org. And to share today’s study with a family member or friend, have them download our app or visit ttb.org. And then another great option is our Bible bus flash drive, which contains all of Dr. McGee’s messages in our five-year journey, plus all of his notes and outlines and more than 100 of his booklets. To purchase the Bible Bus Flash Drive and find another resource that will deepen your personal study of God’s Word, just visit us over at ttb.org or call 1-800-65-BIBLE. Now to send us a letter, you can mail it to Through the Bible, Box 7100, Pasadena, California, 91109, or in Canada, Box 25325, London, Ontario, N6C 6B1. Well, as Dr. McGee warned us, we’re still on rough road. So next time, we’ll hear the strongest statement that Amos ever made. I’m Steve Schwetz, and I’ll save a seat on the Bible bus just for you.
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All to him I owe. Sin had left a crimson stain. He washed it white as snow.
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