Amos chapter three for tonight.

Amos chapter three.

A 19th century industrial baron once said to Mark Twain,

before I die, I mean to make a pilgrimage to the Holy Land.

I will climb to the top of Mount Sinai and read the Ten Commandments aloud.

Twain replied, he said, why don't you just stay home and keep them?

I think that's good.

You know, the problem is oftentimes we can have the appearance of religion or religiosity.

But the idea of just doing what the word says and being real and genuine in our faith

and not just kind of poser Christians or, you know, in the Old Testament times, poser believers in God,

the only true God at least. And the Jews were kind of at that place where they really wanted

to sort of act like, yeah, we're good Jews. You know, we're practicing Jews. We do the temple stuff

and we make sacrifices. Ah, so we worship some other gods and goddesses, but whatever.

And they really didn't care about the true and living God or his word at this point. And that's

why God sends this unsuspecting, you know, goat herder, fig-picking dude from Toccoa

to come and speak to the, know the upper echelon the

wealthy the you know the elite people of bethel and samaria and the northern ten tribes

kind of an unlikely prophet but it does seem like the lord does that oftentimes he uses

powerfully the unlikely the the people that you think, oh man, I can't even

believe God could use that person. And I love that the Lord chooses to use the weak and the foolish

of the world to confound the wise. And that's what I see in the book of Amos. Amos is this guy who just

comes out of nowhere. Nobody even knows him as a prophet.

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