The Straight to the Heart Series

60 bite-sized insights

Phil Moore

• Publisher: Monarch Books
• Year: 2017
• ISBN:
  9780857218384
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Biblical Commentary

Many people skim over the twelve Minor Prophets at the end of the Old Testament, assuming that their words are too obscure to understand. That's tragic, because both Jesus and the writers of the New Testament see them as pivotal. If we want to understand the Gospel then we need to understand how the prophets prepared Israel for its arrival.

The Straight to the Heart series of devotional commentaries allows people to get to grips with each book of the Bible one bite at a time.

In part one of the minor prophets we study Amos and Hosea, the two prophets sent by God to confront the northern kingdom of Israel.

In part two, Jonah and Nahum, two prophets who were sent to offer the same choice between blessing and judgment to the pagan superpower Assyria.

In part three, Joel, Micah, Zephaniah and Habakkuk, four prophets that the Lord sent to warn the southern kingdom of Judah.

In part four, Obadiah, Haggai, Zechariah and Malachi, four prophets that God inspired after the destruction of Jerusalem and the exile to Babylon, and who spoke glorious promises about a new hope for God's people.









Get ready to hear God speak to you as you read these twelve short books of prophecy. The arrival of Jesus to be our Saviour has amplified the urgent choice that they offer us. God still warns us: Blessing or curse - you decide. There will be 25 volumes in all. Although the tone is light, the text is full of useful application and backed by substantial scholarship.

Part One:

Israel

Sucker Punch (Amos 1:1–2:16)

The words of Amos, one of the shepherds of Tekoa – the vision he saw concerning Israel.

(Amos 1:1)

When Amos started prophesying, the Israelites were pleased. There was no way that such a man would ever dare to speak bad news against them. For a start, he was a common shepherd who had been forced to supplement the meagre income from his flock by tending sycamore-fig trees. Poor people knew their place in ancient Israel, so a prophet like Amos could be expected to kowtow to his betters.1

Even more importantly, Amos was a foreigner. The twelve tribes of Israel had split into two competing kingdoms after the death of King Solomon. The southern kingdom of Judah prided itself on the fact that it was home to God’s Temple and was still ruled by the dynasty of David. The ten tribes that had broken away to form the northern kingdom of Israel boasted that they were more progressive. They chose their own kings and their own priests and their own way of worshipping the Lord at their great shrines in Bethel and in Dan. There was no love lost between Israel and Judah. The two kingdoms were often at war. Since Amos came from Tekoa, eleven miles south of Jerusalem, that made him a foreign guest to the northern kingdom. I remember sharing the Gospel with a man in his home and being warned by him angrily, “May I remind you whose house you are in?” Amos must have lived under that threat all the time.2

Besides, it seemed obvious to the Israelites that God was exceedingly pleased with them. They had never had it so good. Amos started prophesying in around 760 BC, while King Jeroboam II was presiding over a golden age for Israel.3 The Assyrian Empire had greatly weakened the old enemy Aram. King Jeroboam had seized this as an opportunity to extend his borders and to pioneer trade links that turned Israel into one of the best economies in the region. When Amos opens his mouth to prophesy, the Israelites therefore expect that he will say the Lord is pleased with them and is about to set a day to judge their pagan neighbours so that they can expand their borders even further. They hope that he will tell them that the “Day of the Lord” is drawing near.4

The Israelites are delighted when Amos begins by prophesying judgment. He likens the Lord to one of the lions that used to attack his sheep, but with a roar that echoes right across the nations.5 They love it when he prophesies in 1:3–5 that the Day of the Lord is coming to the Arameans because of the brutal manner in which King Hazael and his son Ben-Hadad annexed Israel’s territory east of the River Jordan.6 God will destroy the Aramean capital Damascus and send their few survivors into captivity in Assyria.7

The Israelites are even more delighted when Amos prophesies in 1:6–8 that God is also going to judge the Philistines so thoroughly that there will be no survivors. It was about time that he punished the cities of Gaza, Ashdod, Ashkelon and Ekron for raiding and abducting entire Israelite communities in order to conduct a slave trade with Edom.8

As far as the Israelites are concerned, what Amos says gets even better when he prophesies in 1:9–10 that the Lord will also destroy the port city of Tyre for its role in this slave trade with Edom.9 They are delighted when he turns on the Edomites themselves in 1:11–12 and promises to punish them for forgetting that the Israelites are their brothers – descended from Jacob, the twin of their own ancestor Esau – by destroying their fortress cities of Teman and Bozrah.

The Israelites can hardly contain their excitement when Amos prophesies in 1:13–15 and 2:1–3 that the Day of the Lord will also extend to the Ammonite and Moabite descendants of Lot and his daughters. The Ammonite capital city Rabbah will be destroyed to avenge the brutal way in which its people tried to annex the Israelite territory east of the River Jordan. The Moabite stronghold of Kerioth will be destroyed for the nasty way in which it defiled the corpse of the king of Edom in a superstitious attempt to ruin his afterlife.10 The Israelites can hardly believe their ears when they hear what Amos has to say. They knew that God was pleased with them, but not this pleased!

Their smiles turn to laughter when Amos prophesies against his own nation of Judah in 2:4–5. The Israelites hated their southern relatives, with their snooty insistence that their ruler was God’s true king and that their Temple was God’s true place of worship. To hear the news that the Lord considered the people of Judah to be Law-breakers and idolaters was music to their northern ears. If the Lord was about to destroy Judah because of its sin, it meant happy harvest time for expansionist Israel.

Amos has been building up to this moment. He wanted to get the Israelites smiling and laughing, nodding that God’s judgment was entirely deserved, in order to land a sudden sucker punch in their own midriff. Having spoken the same curse over seven nations – “For three sins… even for four, I will not relent” – he now repeats the curse an eighth time to deal a heavy body blow to the northern kingdom of Israel! He has reserved the last, and by far the longest, oracle of judgment for them. “For three sins of Israel, even for four, I will not relent.”

The Israelites are winded. It takes them a moment to catch their breath. Having nodded at the rightness of God’s judgment towards Aram, Philistia, Tyre, Edom, Ammon, Moab and Judah, they cannot argue that it is unfair when God’s judgment is directed towards them too. Suddenly their smiling faces turn to anger.

Amos may be a poor shepherd. He may be a foreigner. But he hasn’t come to tell the Israelites what they want to hear. He has come to land a sucker punch on them. God has seen their sin and he is issuing them a final ultimatum: Blessing or curse – you decide.

Notes

1 We know little about Amos other than what he tells us in his book, but in 7:14–15 he uses his poor background to assert his authority to prophesy, since it means that God alone appointed him to such a role.

2 Although both kingdoms spoke the Hebrew language and shared a common history, Amos was very much a cross-cultural missionary. In 7:12, he is told angrily to “Get out!… Go back to the land of Judah!”

3 The Minor Prophets are not listed in the Bible in chronological order. We can date the book of Amos from 1:1. The earthquake of 758 BC was so severe that it is still mentioned over 200 years later in Zechariah 14:5.

4 See 2 Kings 14:23–28. Amos will address their self-delusion about the “Day of the Lord” in 5:18–20.

5 Jerusalem was built on Mount Zion. The Lord wanted to be Israel’s shepherd (Genesis 49:24; Psalm 23:1; Psalm 80:1), but since they rejected this he would become a lion bent on slaughtering them. Mount Carmel was in Israel and was so well watered by the rainclouds that blew in from the sea that its name meant Fertile Garden. God had disciplined sinful Israel at Carmel in the past through lack of rain (1 Kings 18:16–46).

6 2 Kings 10:32–33. The prophet Elisha had wept as he warned Hazael not to be so brutal in 2 Kings 8:7–15.

7 Aven means Wickedness and Beth Eden means House of Delight. The Lord has seen the best and worst of Aram. They had originally come from Kir (9:7), so he would take them back there in 732 BC (2 Kings 16:9).

8 This slave trade is mentioned in 2 Chronicles 28:17–18. The Lord also promises in Isaiah 14:28–32 and Zephaniah ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• About the "Straight to the Heart" Series
• Introduction: Blessing or Curse – You Decide
• Part One: Israel
• Part Two: Assyria
• Part Three: Judah
• Part Four: A Better Israel