Hello, and welcome to the Westside churches special Monday Morning Coffee podcast on this podcast, our preacher Mark Roberts will help you get your week started right. With look back at yesterday's sermon so that we can think through it further and better work the applications into our daily lives. Mark will then look forward into this week's Bible reading so that we can know what to expect and watch for. And, he may have some extra bonus thoughts from time to time. So grab a cup of coffee as we start the week together on Monday Morning Coffee with Mark.

Good morning. Good morning. Welcome to the Monday Morning Coffee podcast for Monday, January the 30th. I'm Mark. I have my Bible open. I'm thinking about yesterday's sermon. I've got a great cup of coffee in my hands and I am ready to roll all of that spiritual momentum from yesterday. What a great day. Just a great day. I'm gonna roll that into the work week. Let's get started. As far as the sermon yesterday, I don't really have a ton of extra things that I want to say about that. I love that kind of preaching. I love just getting the Bible out and just letting the Bible do the work that just resonates with me. I think it resonates with all of us. There's something to be said for explaining the Bible. I, there's no doubt about that. That's kind of what I do and what I'm about to do is we think about daily vibrating. So I like that. I love that, that I, it's all good, but sometimes the Bible just does the work in the best possible way and the thing to do is to get out of the way and let the Bible do that. And so yesterday we began the preaching theme for the year, having a heart for God. And when you start looking at the mass of material that deals with the heart, the Bible pretty quickly gets your attention and says, this matters. This is at the center of everything. Let's get this right. And so that's what I was talking about yesterday. If you haven't heard that sermon, you should listen to that sermon. And the only thing that I want to add to that is I want to hear from you. I want to hear from you podcast listeners, what do you think about the heart? What passages resonate with you about the heart? What do you want this series to cover this year? As we're talking about the heart, give me a Facebook message, give me an email, send me something. Talk to me at church. I want to know what you are thinking about when it comes to having a heart for God. Let me hear from you. And now let's think about the book of Amos. Let's talk about daily Bible reading. So it's Monday and today we're reading Amos chapter six, verse eight to 14. We are completing the reading from Friday when we began in Amos chapter six. Notice the whoa Oracle here, 61, 64 really coming out of five 18 as judgment is pronounced. And for the first time we get a note about pride in verse eight. That's important in all of the prophets. And we're hearing that now in Amos. There is an arrogance here. There is a pride and again, need to emphasize, these people have not abandoned God for bail or Molek or Kim Osh. They think they're still doing the right thing. Going to Bethel, going to Dan, worshiping God, the God of Israel, the God who brought us up out of Egypt, worshiping in the wrong way, wrong priest, wrong days. Everything about it is wrong except the object of that worship. But that makes it wrong and there is a pride about that rather than there is a repentance about that. So that is going to bring the destruction of God. Notice verse eight, I will deliver up the city. This is probably Samaria by the way. This is the second oath that God takes. Chapter four, verse two is the first one, and now there is a des, there is a description here of destruction, verse nine, verse 10. These are probably fighting units. The army has gone from thousands to hundreds to now just 10. And there is this kind of enigmatic statement at the end of verse 10. When someone comes to Barry and they say, what about the name of the Lord? We must not mention the name of the Lord. What's going on there? That may be that they are afraid of alienating God by mispronouncing God's name. We know that became a really big issue for Jews. Maybe they're concerned about drawing divine attention. Maybe they're just saying, God has departed. We can't even talk about God. God doesn't care about us anymore. Uh, God has brought this terrible destruction upon us. Then Amos turns his attention to the idea of things that are unnatural. Verse 12, horses on rocks and plowing there plowing, trying to plow a, a field full of rocks. No, that's not natural. You can't do that. And it's not natural what you have done with justice and with righteousness. Again, an emphasis on social oppression. And then look again at the emphasis on pride in verse 13, ye who rejoice and lo debar, this sounds like second Kings 1425 where Jeral, remember that's Jeral II had won some victories and had expanded the kingdom. And now they say, have we not by our own strength won these victories? It's about us. We are so amazing. We're so incredible. No, I'll raise up a nation against you. Verse 14, notice that bookends this message. Six one begins with nations and now you have nations again in six 14. So judgment is coming. This is a strong judgment passage, a terrible passage that says prideful people are going to be torn down. See, tomorrow we'll talk about Amos the seventh chapter on Tuesday. Welcome to Tuesday. Today we read Amos chapter seven. This is a little bit longer reading in our reading schedule. Hope you don't feel overwhelmed by having to read 17 whole verses. Not very, not a very long reading is it? What we get here is a series of visions. God shows something, seven, one, then God shows something, seven, four. Then God shows something seven, seven and ask Amos about it. And there's dialogue about that. So that begins with seven, one to three the vision of the locust plague. The king would get the first cutting and then these locust come and they eat what the people would get for for the livestock. And Amos pleads for mercy. Then there is the image of fire. And again, the Lord relentless says Amos pleads for mercy. And then there's the vision of the plum line. A plum line is a string with a heavy weight on the end, and carpenters use it to get a perfect perfectly straight wall. And so the plum line is being held there to measure what Israel is doing. Once we have those visions, then we get kind of a little bit of history. This is the really the only part of narrative that goes on in the book of Amos where Amaziah comes and says, I want you to stop. You need to just stop. We're telling everybody that it's okay. God is pleased with them. And you're saying the other, you're telling a different story. We want you to go home. Amos says, I'm not a professional prophet like you people, you will say anything for money. And then he pronounces judgment on Amaziah in verse 17. This is a packed chapter. Lots to think about, lots to work with, particularly those questions on the back of your reading schedule. Work with that and think about being part of our zoom tonight. Uh, Westside zoom on Tuesday nights at seven, and we'll unpack more of this and talk about the application of it. Then see tomorrow we'll be in Amos chapter eight. Welcome to Wednesday again. It's Amos chapter eight, verse one to eight that we read today. Amos one, Amos eight, one to eight. And again, this idea of the Lord showing me something and then commenting on it. And the Lord and Amos go back and forth resumes. We saw that in chapter seven. Now a basket of summer fruit and there is a word play here. You may have a marginal note in your E S V or other Bible to talk about how the expression, the word for summer fruit and the word for end sound the same in the Hebrew, a basket of summer fruit is Chaz. And the term for end is cas. I'm probably not saying that right, not great in the area of Hebrew, but that's what I have written down here. And so there's that word play, and that's the kind of thing that's very popular in the Old Testament, particularly prophets use that to get attention to, to make that alliteration work or to make that, um, make that rhyming work or to make that word play work and and hold people's attention. So here's the end coming. The end is going to to be here. Remember, it's not far off when Amos is writing this, preaching this. This is about seven 60 and the full income for the northern kingdom in 7 22. Notice verse five, once again, the emphasis on social justice. These people can't even worship because they are so interested in money and in cheating people. They can't even go to a feast without thinking about how can we get more, how can we exploit exploit people more? And their verse seven is the emphasis on pride. Once more, consider how pride and arrogance cut us off from God. That's worth thinking about. That's the emphasis in chapter eight. Amos eight, one to eight on Wednesday. See tomorrow on Thursday, we'll complete the eighth chapter of Amos. It is Thursday and today we finish the eighth chapter of Amos. We're reading Amos eight, nine to 14. This may be the most terrifying section of the entire book. God brings judgment, turns feast into mourning. AMO eight verse 10. It's going to be sack cloth. It's just going to be terrible. But the worst part is verse 11, a famine for the word of God. People wandering and they can't find it. They're seeking the word of the Lord. Verse 12, they cannot find it. There's tremendous irony here. They reject the word of the Lord. Now, Amos says, but you will go looking for it. You will want the word of the Lord and you won't even know where to go to find it. This is what happens when we harden our hearts. This is what pride and arrogance does for us. As it cuts us off from God, we end up in the situation that Amos is detailing here where we're lost and we don't even know how to get found. We are so far away from the Lord. We don't even know how to go home. Again, this is a truly frightening prospect. Need to pray about that and meditate on that. Let this work on your heart. Amos eight. Then verse 14, those who swear by the gu, the guilt of Samaria as your God lives. Notice here, they're swearing by idle Dees. They are going further and further away from God. They've replaced the right worship of God, the right priest, all of those kinds of things with the wrong worship of God. And ultimately that's going to lead to more and more steps away from the Lord. You don't ever get closer to the Lord with apostacy that just opens the door for more and more apostacy and now idolatry. We talked about that earlier this week. That's not been in the picture. Look at Amos eight 14. That's starting to get there. That is starting to happen. See tomorrow will complete the book of Amos. On Friday we read Amos nine. Hey, you made it. It is Friday. It is Friday. And we're reading Amos the ninth chapter. This is the last chapter in the book of Amos. And we are completing that book today. Once again, we get the imagery of the Lord showing something. This time it begins. Nine one, I saw the Lord and the vision here is of tremendous judgment. Even if you dig down to the place of the dead, verse two, God would still find you there and bring judgment there. And then verse three, Carmel Mount Carmel's, a very high mountain, 95 to 10 brings us then a discussion of the sovereignty of God, the power of God from God's creative power. And this may actually be quoting from a hymn in Amos's time. Finally then nine 11 to 15 presents a vision of a better day. It's a message of hope. Most of Amos is judgmental, well, not judgmental, it is about judgment. And we have that question. Question two is today's text criticizing a word of judgment or energizing a word of hope. And the answer all through Amos has been, this is a text criticizing, this is a word of judgment, but now this is a word of hope. Nine 11 to 15 where Amos looks forward to a better day. And in fact, the Booth nine 11, the booth or tabernacle of David harks back to second's, Samuel seven, and the wonderful promise there, and then all nations will be called by Na. My name verse 12 reminds us of the great promise in Genesis chapter 12 to Abraham. And there's just just an abundance imagery here in an agricultural nation. This is the way to say things are gonna be as good as they possibly can be. Everything is just going great. The plowman overtakes the reaper because everything is growing so fast. It's just wonderful and it's peaceful and calm. Verse 14, it's the promise of a better day in which God's people are restored. And you may be thinking, now, what exactly is that talking about? When exactly is that gonna happen? Well, there are three basic ideas, three basic interpretations of Amos's restoration and when that is going to happen, one would be that this is the restoration after the exile a couple of hundred years after Amos, but, but he's talking to Israel to the northern kingdom and they never are restored. They are carried away into captivity and they end up intermixing with other nations and they don't ever come home. Then some have said that this is a promise yet to be fulfilled. Ultimately in the state of Israel. These blessings will be received and all of this will come to pass. But beginning in the nation of Israel in 1948 and all that goes with that politically in the United Nations and so forth. But the third idea is that this is fulfilled spiritually in Jesus and the church. And that is the correct interpretation. And the way we know that is that Acts 15 uses this text. James quotes from this in Acts chapter 15, to say, Gentiles receiving the gospel is what Amos talked about, and that we can't burden Gentiles with the law of Moses. This is what God has always wanted to do, is to bring all nations to him. So right out in the margin there, acts chapter 15, that is the correct interpretation because that's the interpretation the Holy Spirit puts on Amos chapter nine and this word of hope that concludes what has been a dark and very yes, very difficult book to read as we read again and again of God's judgment falling upon his people cuz they're not treating people right and because they're full of pride and arrogance. That's the book of Amos and I'm glad you read it with me. Well, thanks for listening. If you love the Money Morning Coffee podcast, you know what to do. You need to follow, you need to subscribe. Please give us a review on iTunes or whatever app you're listening on. Best thing to do, what's the best thing to do? Tell somebody about the show that really gets the word out. So until next week, may your coffee be delightful. May your Friday be wonderful and I pray that the Lord will be with you today all day. Hope to see you Sunday at the West Side Church of Christ. And for you podcast listeners, yes, I will see you on Monday with a cup of coffee.

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