Amos, why don't you turn to Amos chapter six? And by the way, your assignment for Wednesday night,

if you want to read in advance chapters three, four, and five, we're going to tackle chapter six

right now because chapter six kind of stands by itself. And Amos has a message for the people of

Samaria and Bethel, the Northern Ten Tribes.

And we learned on Wednesday night, it's an interesting little challenge for Amos.

Amos is going to the hoity-toity, fancy, schmancy area of the Northern Ten Tribes.

Sort of the, you know, like if you could picture in your

mind's eye, Amos is a, he's kind of a hick. He's from sort of a hick town. The hick town's called

Ticcoa. And ticoa was where the hick herdsman would be. Why do you say hick herdsman?

Well, aren't all herdsman the same? Not necessarily. Well, the word for

herdman when it talks about Amos is used only twice in the entire Bible. And it's speaking of a

specific kind of shepherd of a specific kind of sheep. And we learned on Wednesday these sheep were

kind of unattractive, scrawny, sort of stringy hair. They don't have the nice

fluffy wool. They're just stringy-haired sort of hippie sheep. And they're not really the most

valuable sheep, and those were the sheep that Amos was a shepherd of. And not only was a herdman

of the hippie sheep, but he was also a fig picker. A what? He picked figs. So we got this

hick from Toccoa that's a fig-picking hippie sheep herdsman from Toccoa going up to Lake Oswego.

And talking to all the people in their Mercedes and their fancy. Like literally, you've got a kind of picture in your mind's eye.

This hick herdsman is going into Bethel and Samaria

where the wealth and the opulence and the, there's kind of an attitude like we're the best.

And who's this hick from Toccoa south of Jerusalem?

And that's the deal.

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