Amos Week 4
Chapters 1-2 - God circles the map around Israel and then centers his message on them in the middle
Chapters 3-5 - 3 words
The Lord will devour Israel like a lion
The Lord desires Israel to return to him
Seeking the Lord is Israel’s only hope to live (I failed to share this one with you last week!)
Chapters 5-6 - the woes
Chapter 7 - three visions and a story
Today, we’re going to close out Amos. We have chapters 8 and 9 left. We just had three visions and then took a brief break with a story about Amos at Bethel with the false priest Amaziah. Now to finish off the book, we’re going to have one more vision and the arrival of the Day of the Lord.
So let’s go ahead and break up the next two chapters into sections. Remember, breaking things into sections can be a really helpful way of drawing connections and understanding the flow of the larger book.
8:1 - Box around “This is what the LORD God showed me” - this will be our vision
8:4 - Box around Hear this, put a line between 3 and 4
Line between 8 and 9.
8:9 - Box around “on that day”
8:11 - Box around “the days are coming”
8:13 - Box around “in that day”
9:1 - Box around “I saw the Lord standing beside the altar” - put a dotted line between 14 and 1
Line between 10 and 11
9:11 - Box around “In that day”
9:13 - Box around “Behold the days are coming”
Good. Now we have some sections, let’s work through them each one at a time.
8:1-3
If you like labeling the sections you can label 1-3 “The Vision”
Most of the time, the English Bible you hold in your hands is clear. Translations tend to be very faithful and anyone can understand the majority of a text without knowing Hebrew or Greek or anything like that. However, there are occasional times (few and far between) when you simply can’t see what he’s saying in English and this is one of them.
The Hebrew word for “summer fruit” is “kayeets” and the word for “end” is “kaits”. They sound very similar. God is making a play on words here where the summer fruit arriving means the end is arriving.
I tried to come up with a similar image that would work in English and it’s a little bit like if God showed Amos a pair of overalls and said “Amos, what do you see” and Amos replied “Overalls”. Then the Lord said, “I am over all of Israel’s sin.” We get it in English, but it certainly wouldn’t translate to another language.
To confirm the fact that this is in fact “the end” and that there is no more hope for repentance at this point, God says, “I will never again pass by them”. Circle that and put a backwards arrow and write 7:8 next to it. Last time we met, in chapter 7, Amos has 3 visions of God destroying Israel and for the first two Amos asks God to relent and he does. But in the third one God makes it clear that there is no more opportunity for mercy and he says “I will never again pass by them”. So this is the end here without any more mercy.
The temple being referred to here makes the most sense as being the false temple in Bethel to the golden calf. We know from earlier in the book that they were singing songs here and that God was not pleased with the songs. Here the songs are reversed into mourning.
8:4-8
This next section we could label as “The Indictment”
This is God making clear why they are being punished. He doesn’t just punish for some vague sins. He is specific here.
Vs 4 They abuse the poor
Vs 5 They want to get through the Sabbaths and the festivals so that they can get back to their wickedness. “Yes we have to keep doing these things to save face, but honestly we can’t wait to get out of here”
Vs 6 this is the same thing God has been accusing them of the whole book. Circle this verse with a backwards arrow that says 2:6
Vs 7 - God points out that every single one of their sins he will remember. None of it will be gotten away with. This will be important later on
Vs 8 - He uses the imagery of the Nile that floods every single year and recedes every single year in a very predictable manner. If you build a house in the flood zone, it is guaranteed that it will be destroyed when the Nile rises. Write “Guaranteed outcome coming” next to vs 8. The idea is that if you sin, the guaranteed outcome will be destruction. Settle in the area that gets destroyed, expect to get destroyed.
This is a little like the phrase “The house always wins” in gambling. People are told ahead of time, you will lose money, the house will win, but they go in thinking “maybe I’ll be the exception, certainly that rule is nonsense”. Then maybe not that day, maybe not that week, but eventually they lose all of their money to the house and you say to them, “You should have seen this coming. It literally happens every time.”
8:9-14
Vs 9 - “On that day”, who knows what day he’s referring to here? THE DAY OF THE LORD! And it’s confirmed because we have our friends the cosmic imagery surrounding it. Whenever we see a specific “day” and it’s surrounded by language about sun, moon, stars, earth, fire, smoke, blood, darkness, etc. It’s almost certainly the Day of the Lord. We learned that in Joel.
Now we’ll see that repeated in verses 11 and 13. It keeps telling us this is the day of the Lord.
Label this section as “Day of the Lord judgment experienced”
Now I’m using the word “experienced” because you’ll notice that the judgment is very “street-level” here. It expresses how the people will feel on this day. They’re crying. They’re wearing sackcloths. They are famished and thirsty. God is showing what his judgment feels like to the people on the ground.
Vs 11-12 highlight an interesting aspect of the Day of the Lord. They will no longer have access to the word of the Lord. There are no more prophets being sent to speak to them. There is no more scripture telling them who God is and what they ought to do. There are no more calls for repentance. Remember? The time for mercy was extended over and over again, but now it has come to an end. God’s time of mercy expires.
Vs. 13-14 those who should be the strongest are weak. Remember Bethel is the home of the false temple, but the other one is in Dan. Beersheba seems to be a place they also practiced some sort of idolatry. The idolaters will fall and never rise again. This is the complete end of all idolatry. It will never return.
Now we made a dotted line here between chapter 8 and 9. This is because 9:1-10 is the same Day of the Lord as 8:9-14 was, but it’s different angle.
9:1-10
We can label this section (9:1-10) as Day of the Lord judgment executed
This is God’s perspective on the Day of the Lord. It’s like the camera changes from the people being punished to the one who is doing the punishing.
It is very clear that God is hunting them down in every place. Now before we walk through this, let me tell you what/who God is hunting down here. Look at verse 8. Read it. Circle “the sinful kingdom”. Then look at verse 10. Read it. Circle “All the sinners of my people”
In this text Israel symbolizes sin itself and all of those who hold on to it refusing to let go. So in this final Day of the Lord, we see God hunting down sin in every single place it can be found so that it cannot escape.
Vs 1 - not one of them shall escape. Circle that. Also we see earthquake imagery here. The foundations are shaking and the building is falling on people. The day of the Lord is a day of darkness, but also a day of earthquakes.
Where might sin and sinners run? Vs 2 if they dig into Sheol - underline that. Vs 2 if they climb up to heaven - underline that. Vs 3 if they hide themselves on the top of Carmel underline that. Vs 3 If they hide from my sight at the bottom of the sea. Underline that. Vs 4 If they go into captivity underline that.
There is no place for sin and sinners to hide on the Day of the Lord. Vs. 4 I will fix my eyes upon them for evil and not for good. Circle that.
Listen. It’s super easy to look at this and see how mean and horrible God is. He is mercilessly hunting people and slaughtering them. This sounds terrible. But zoom out a little bit, map it on to real life, and consider it. There is horrible evil in the world we live in, in 2026. There are terrible atrocities being committed all across the globe which are too horrific to speak of. Wickedness so bad that people look at it and because these evils exist they conclude that God could not possibly exist. And we say over and over, God when are you going to end these atrocities? When will you put an end to sex trafficking? When will you put an end to child slavery? When will you put an end to genocide? When will you end the starvation of the innocent because of the gluttony of the powerful? God tells us here. Every single bit of it will end. He will search the whole earth for sin and eradicate it entirely. If sin was a literal microscopic virus, God will search every atom of this universe to destroy it.
But what about the people? God loves people. He gives opportunities to repent over and over and over. Amos simply has to say, “please God don’t destroy them” and he is so ready to relent. If they would but let go of their sin, they would be saved. Yet, the time of God’s mercy has an expiration. A judgment will come that has no mercy mixed in with it. And for those who refuse to let go of their sin, they will be destroyed along with it. And so all sin will be eradicated along with those who love it.
VS 5. Read it. Do you recognize these words? Write guaranteed outcome arrives. If you build your house in the flood zone. Your house will be destroyed.
However these promises of judgment are simultaneously promises of deliverance. If you pass through the judgment, on the other side you are saved.
Vs 8 - I will not utterly destroy the house of Jacob. There are some that will pass through this judgment and survive. He says it again in vs. 9. I will shake everyone. The worthless ones will fall through the sieve, but the pebbles will be caught. The shaking ends up being what frees them from the mud and sand they were caught in.
This is a demonstration of one of the high level themes we see throughout Scripture. It’s referred to as “God’s glory in salvation through judgment”. Basically God receives glory by saving people through his judgment. Why does God receive glory this way? He receives glory because the full extent of his character is on display.
By saving people he receives glory for his mercy, his kindness, his grace, his love, and his faithfulness to keep his promises
By judging sin and those who hold onto it he receives glory for his holiness, his justice, his power, and his concern for even the smallest oppression.
Now maybe you’re still not convinced. A God that seeks people out and finds even the tiniest sin and annihilates them for it doesn’t seem good. Let’s look at perhaps the coolest part of all of Amos.
Look back at chapter 8:9-10. We said this is Day of the Lord judgment right? It has that cosmic language. Later it’s a day of earthquakes. But look at the specific words - the sun will go down at noon and darken the earth in broad daylight. If you have your Bible this is a great time to turn to Matthew 27:45. This is the story of Jesus’ crucifixion. There was darkness at the sixth hour. Do you know what the sixth hour is? It’s noon! Then what else happens in Matthew. Look at Matthew 27:51. There’s an earthquake! At Jesus’s death, we have the sun darkened at midday and we have earthquakes. What is Matthew (someone who is intensely familiar with the OT) trying to communicate to us? At the cross, the Day of the Lord occurs. But who is destroyed? It’s not us. Rather, Jesus absorbs the Day of the Lord. All of the wrath of God that ought to be poured out on sinners everywhere is poured on him instead. He passes through the judgment so that his people can experience the salvation!
Write Matthew 27:45 next to Amos 8:9. That’s something you don’t want to miss.
Is God good? Is he just and gracious and kind and fair and loving and holy all at the same time? Absolutely! And it’s seen most clearly at the cross of Jesus where his judgment and his salvation come together in one person and he gets great glory.
9:11-15
The phrases “In that day” and “Behold the days are coming” remind us that this is also the Day of the Lord.
Remember that the Day of the Lord has two parts. We also learned this in Joel. There is the judgment and there is the salvation. Amos just wrote a long portion of the judgment and now we will see the salvation.
Write “Day of the Lord salvation” next to this section
Vs 11 we see that he is talking about the typical restoration of the people of Israel and Judah, it’s the house of David or here the “booth” of David. We expect this kind of thing as a prophecy to the Jews
Vs 12 here’s where we want to read closely, “all the nations” circle that, Do you see it’s plural? That’s more than one nation. That’s many nations. After this final judgment on the Day of the Lord, God is going to restore people from everywhere who have followed him. This is mindblowing for the Jews. They thought it was just them. They were the only ones called, but over and over in the OT God says, actually this salvation is for everyone.
Now, if you think, I’m crazy and I’m seeing things that aren’t there, turn in your Bibles to Acts 15:12-17. James points out that the Gentiles being included in the promises of God was something predicted by the prophets. Then he quotes our passage here as proof.
So write Acts 15:12-17 next to vs 11-12.
Why does this matter? It matters because it means that the blessings God promised to provide for the people of Israel are not only for them, but they are also for us. We have been included or to use the language of Paul, we have been “grafted in”.
Vs 13 - I’ve talked a lot about how Amos is connected to Joel, and I’m really glad we looked at Joel first. Here we see another quote from Joel. Circle “the mountains shall drip sweet wine and all the hills shall flow with it” and point an arrow back to Joel 3:18.
I think the frequent Joel references like the one at the very beginning of this book, the one at the end of this book, and the Day of the Lord themes in the middle are suggesting that we read these two books together. Amos isn’t presenting something new. He’s expanding on what Joel has prophesied.
In Joel we talked about a “super abundance” of harvest and that’s what Amos is saying here too
Vs. 14 and 15. God will give them all the blessings he promised to give his people back in the books of the Law. He’s keeping his word. And they will never again be disturbed by evil.
These last chapters almost remind you of the book of Revelation. The day of the Lord arrives and there are scenes of intense judgment, but it ends with ultimate forever deliverance.
I don’t think these words were very comforting to the people of Israel that Amos preached to. In fact, we know they tried to kick him out. But I think for generations afterwards and for people who are “called by God’s name” they should be a great comfort. All sin that plagues this world will be eradicated. God loves his creation and he will purify it entirely. All sin that plagues you will be finally and forever eradicated. He won’t miss any of it. It won’t come back.
And for those who have not called on God for salvation but instead hold onto their sin, God says repent. He does everything to get your attention to repent. He is gracious and merciful over and over and over again, but one day that grace expires.