Amos Hosea
thunders pleads
disloyalty dislove
social sin spiritual sin
universal national
wrath love

children from the marriage
Jezreel = “God scatters”
Lo-Ruhamah = not loved”
Lo-Ammi = “not my people”

Steps of decline
1. lack of true knowledge (4:6)
2. pride (5:5)
3. instability (6:4)
4. worldliness (7:8)
5. corruption(9:9)
6. backsliding (11:7)
7. idolatry (13:2)

Lessons from Hosea and Gomer
1. God suffers when His people are unfaithful.
2. God will not condone sin in any form by anybody.
3. God is actively concerned in restoring the sinner and seeking him out.
4. God's love for the sinner is not diminished by the fact that the sinner sins.

“half-baked faith”
1. orthodoxy without life
2. piety without principle
3. religion without morality
4. zeal without knowledge
5. enthusiasm without faithfulness
6. desire without decision

The Man
1. Two businesses: rancher and grower of sycamore fruit (7:14-15)
2. lived in the southern kingdom of Judah, called to preach to the northern kingdom of Israel.
3. He was not only a layman, but a foreigner.

The Historical Setting
760-750 B.C. The northern kingdom was at its peak.
exploitation and oppression of the common people
gradual elimination of the middle class
the courts became corrupt

The Message
Amos is often called the prophet of social justice.
Amos promises that there will be judgment for their immorality. (5:10-17; 2:6-8; 4:1-2)
God's morality is not relative.
God never overlooks sin.
God expects His people to be more sensitive to what is wrong in the world.


Famine of hearing- if we don't heed God's Word, it is only a matter of time before we no longer hear it. (8:11-12)
There will be a day of justice (5:18-24)
Morality is doing what the Word of God tells us to do.  

Mostly what a prophet does is to forth-tell, not fore-tell,

The time of Joel was a time when society could have gone either way.

Natural disaster- a plague of locusts
There was a definite connection between the tragedy and what God wanted them to understand.


1. Where there is God, there is judgment.

Jehoshaphat= “God judges.”

2. Where there is the judgment of God, there is also grace and hope. (2:12-14)

The Holy Spirit is a crucial component of God's judgment. (2_27-29; John 16:8ff)

3. There there is God's judgment, and therefore God's grace, there must be repentance. (2:16-18)

God sends His warning before it's too late.

Non-believers like to scoff at the notion that this age is coming to an end. (II Peter 3:3-13)