Amos

Wildfire podcast is an extension of Wildfire Ministries, an organization that has a focus of igniting men and women of God into a deeper discipleship with Christ, instilling them with a passion to radically and relentlessly pursue Christ wherever that leads, that God's truth will spread like a wildfire.

Hey guys, welcome to the Wildfire podcast.

We actually almost had a special guest on this week.

Looks like a brand new puppy, and I was trying to get to bring it along.

Oh, just the cutest little thing.

Oh, yeah, we will.

Yeah, it probably would have been too distracting, especially if you're going to do that voice the entire time.

Yeah, exactly.

It's probably best to just for everyone involved that I'm not with my puppy, so that doesn't happen.

Plus they can't even see the puppy anyway, so they just never hear the old growl or bark or something.

Oh, so cute.

Maybe next time.

It's a very cute dog.

Maybe next time on the podcast.

But this week anyway, we're going to be talking about Amos.

Amos.

So we've talked a few weeks ago about why we should read the Old Testament, because it's usually neglected.

And if you ask a lot of people what the most neglected part of that neglected part is, they would probably say the minor prophets, if you've even heard of it.

So the minor prophets is 12 of the kind of more smaller books of the Old Testament.

They're minor in size, but major in the message they have to teach.

So tonight we're going to be looking at one of those, which is the prophet Amos and what he has to tell the nation of Israel and us again today.

So look, could you just set up the context for Amos?

Yeah, of course.

Now I'll just pass the baton to you, halfway through here.

So what we know about Amos, verse one.

This message was given to Amos, a shepherd from the town of Tekoa in Judah.

I don't know if I butchered that.

No, the key to Old Testament words is just sound confident.

People never know.

Yeah, Tekoa.

I don't actually know if that's right, okay?

But I'm going to be confident with it.

And guys, just a lesson.

Don't let that worry you if you get names wrong.

Happens to me all the time.

Couldn't pronounce half of them, but that's okay.

And it also says, in not only chapter one but chapter seven, it talks about how he cultivated sycamore trees, okay?

And that's it.

That's all the background that we're given about Amos, okay?

So what does that tell us?

Well, it tells us the focus of this book, like any other book in the Bible, is not Amos.

It's not the prophet, even though that's what the book, that's the title that's ascribed to it, okay?

It's about the work that is going on within Amos.

And it's also about the content that is being given from above, okay?

So Amos, a sinner, through faith, saved by grace, and now, because he is sanctified, he has been able to be used by God.

And so that's the context.

It's not about the prophet, it's about what God is doing, and what God is doing in history, which we're gonna talk about.

Yeah, so we discussed who's gonna talk about the history, but it kept getting mottled up between the Assyrians and the Babylonians, so I decided I'd take the baton for this one.

But basically, if you don't know the history of Israel, there's the period of the Patriarchs, which is Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, and then Israel goes into Egypt for slavery.

They come back out.

There's the period of the Judges, and then you get the kings, which begins with Saul.

Then you get David and his son Solomon.

And after Solomon, Solomon's heart was divided between God and his hundreds of wives, who then divided his heart between other gods.

So because his heart was divided, God divided the kingdom from him.

And after that, the kingdom split into Israel in the north and Judah in the south.

So we pick up here about 750 years before Jesus comes on to the scene in the New Testament and with the prophet Amos.

And he is from the south, which is Judah.

Ticoa, Ticoa, if you want to be specific.

And the capital of Judah as well is Jerusalem.

He's from Judah and he's going to the north, so to the other country of Israel, whose capital is Samaria.

So his message is from the south to the north.

And Luke, do you want to just finish off then?

So just to emphasize, because I was getting confused, okay?

There's the Babylonian exile, then there's the Assyrian exile.

This is written before the Assyrian exile, yeah?

Well, before both of them, but yes.

Oh, well, that's right.

Okay, good.

Well, I'm glad.

Just in case there's any confused people like me, I just couldn't get that in my head, but I think I've got it.

You're a good teacher, Peter.

Okay, so both nations were eroding the religious and moral fiber of the people.

They were just focusing on money.

They were not focusing on worshiping God.

The rich kept on exploiting the poor.

The judicial system was corrupt, and injustice was just flourishing.

And so Amos gives warning, not only to pagan nations, but to Israel and Judah, to basically wise up, okay?

Because they were just forfeiting everything that God had for them.

And just important to also remember that this was, yeah, written 40 years before the Assyrian takeover.

That's right.

Yeah, and just, so the way we're going to break down this book is not on somewhere to how we did Titus.

We're going to take a chat, there's nine chapters.

We're going to take a chapter each roughly and talk about it very briefly.

Just summarize the chapter, the main points from it.

And at the end, we're going to talk about the two main themes of Amos and kind of the implications it was held for our lives today.

But Luke, do you want to start us off with what chapter one's about?

Yeah, chapter one, okay.

So Amos, Ezekiel and Zechariah all mention an earthquake, okay?

This is what the book begins with.

Amos is recording an earthquake, which is recorded in previous books, okay?

Which scholars agree would have been roughly around 760 BCE, okay?

Jucephus, which is Roman historian, also includes it in his works and geologists also attest it.

So this is just an example of how the Bible is historically reliable, okay?

It's got a testability to it.

The veracity of it is all in play.

And I'm studying history and to me, that's just pretty cool.

So that's why I've mentioned that and how that is then just included in all of the books.

So once we establish that, it then talks about how this is a verse.

The people of Damascus have sinned and sinned, okay?

So this is a pattern that is just included and repeated over and over again, chapter one, chapter two.

It talks about the place, in this case, Damascus.

It talks about how they have sinned and sinned, okay?

Then it gives an example of a specific sin, which again, we're going to talk about.

There's one specific sin that is just repeated over and over again, okay?

And then following that is God's resulting judgment.

So this framework can be applied with all the other places that are included in this chapter, such as Gaza, Tyre, set with confidence, Tyre, Edom and Amon, okay?

So these are all places and that same framework can be applied.

So the place, the example of the sin and God's resulting judgment as a result of the sin that was committed.

Yeah, Chapter 2 just picks up the exact same, along those exact same veins.

Look, it's just the sin and then the judgment that God's going to issue because of it.

And it's only this time there's different nations mentioned.

So Chapter 2 mentions specifically Moab, Judah and Israel.

And if you were able, if you've got a map out and drew all these nations that were mentioned, you'd end up with a circle.

And in the exact middle of the circle is Israel, which is the last nation that's mentioned.

And I think there's about three times as many judgments and sins mentioned of Israel than there are the other nations.

So some people would probably say God is biased towards Israel, but he's showing more of the sins of Israel than any other nation, really.

Yeah, that's the circle thing.

That's crazy.

Yeah, I learned that from the Bible project.

But it's just all it takes is a shout out to that project.

And then chapter three picks up just with verse three, it says, can two people walk hand in hand if they aren't going in the same direction?

So, you can just start with that.

There's no point coupling yourself to someone who's going the complete wrong way.

So, as Christians, we need to make sure we've got friends who are Christians and who can hold us accountable and are going in the same direction as we are.

And we're not getting tied down to things of this world.

Yeah, so, biblically, what's happening here is Israel is not walking hand in hand with God.

They're going, so you physically can't, it's just impossible.

You're in hand in hand, they're in union with God, Israel and God.

But Israel are going the exact opposite direction with their sin, and then Peter's just talked about how that relates to us.

Yeah, and also links to verse in James chapter 4, it says, those who are the world's friends are God's enemies.

Yeah, friendship with the world is hostility towards God, which is something that really should be a focus for people.

What is in your life that is hostility towards God?

Because that's a big thing.

You don't want anything that is hostile towards God, as your relationship with God is all that matters and all that is preserved.

But also, in this chapter, I'll pick up from there, is the judgment of Israel.

It talks about a verse, a shepherd who tries to rescue a sheep from a lion's mouth will recover only two legs or a piece of an ear.

So that verse in Amos in chapter three, is that it's a metaphor.

So the sheep in this case is Israel, and the mouth of the lion is the lion of Judah, that is God.

And it's talking about the irrevocable nature of God, just as the lion can't escape from the so-called, quotations, judgment of the lion, the Israelites cannot escape from the judgment of God, nor any nation that's showing the sovereign providence of God and his justice.

And so, chapter four?

Yeah, move on to chapter four.

Yeah, so Israel, in this verse, we read about how Israel was literally crap at history.

Okay, and that cost them, okay?

And I'm a historian, so you just need to know your history.

Is this so you can just get more people to sign up to history degree looks, so you're not the only one?

Basically, okay, history is a great subject, and God is clearly emphasizing it here, okay?

God points to everything, all the justice and punishment that God had brought upon Israel.

He talks about droughts, he talks about famines, he talks about wars and how young men are dying in these wars.

He talks about Sodom and Gomorrah and their destruction.

And the whole point of that is Israel learned from it, learned from it.

And God repeatedly says five times in this chapter, you would not return to me, despite all of what God was doing.

Suffering, CS.

Lewis describes it as a megaphone.

Okay, suffering is a megaphone.

And God is literally screaming at his children, did you just return to me?

But they wouldn't, despite all of this.

And we read about this in Jeremiah 4 and Isaiah 6 about, if you wanted to return to me, you could.

That's in Jeremiah 4.

So God is using the suffering and affliction, and he's screaming, come to me, Israel.

But they just wouldn't.

So that's chapter four.

And chapter five is, there's a verse that says, come back to me and live.

So whilst we talked earlier about the judgment of the lion on the so-called sheep or the sheep in that metaphor, but God also, whilst he says judgment is unavoidable, it's unavoidable if you don't turn around.

If you turn around, then God's going to forgive you.

That's how judgment works.

You have to repent.

So he's obviously giving them this chance in chapter five.

He says, come back to me and live.

You can still avoid the judgment.

You haven't ended up in the mouth of the lion yet, because the series won't actually come for another 40 years.

So they have 40 years to turn back, and that just shows the mercy of God.

And then there's another re-verse we can learn from.

It says, hate evil and love what is good.

I don't really think we need to talk more about that.

That's just a nice re-verse.

And yeah, so there's also verse 18 says, if the world hates you, or sorry, this is of John 15.

It says, if the world hates you, know that it has hated me before it hated you.

If you were of the world, the world would love you as its own.

But because you're not of the world, but I chose you out of the world, therefore the world hates you.

So hate evil and love what is good.

That kind of feels contrary to what the world tells us what's good, because most people are pushing for subjective morality these days, which is just whatever society tells you is good, whatever society tells you is bad.

But we have a higher calling, we have absolute morality, which is from God's word.

And we need to do as Jesus says, and hate true evil and love what is true good.

So it's just sort of that pattern is just enthralled throughout Amos.

Just hate evil, love what is good, hold tightly on to the steadfast word of God, and then that New Testament verse is reaffirming that.

So it's again showing those parallels between Old Testament and New Testament, for sure.

And then that's chapter five.

Chapter six is just simply more sins of Israel and judgment, but we can't really go into more specifics than those with an entire sermon, so we won't bore you with that one.

But do you want to just pick up on chapter seven, Luke?

Yes, of course.

So in chapter seven, in verse three, it talks about how God will send judgment, but Amos prays, and God hears your response.

So the verse is from verse two and verse three.

When they had finished eating the grass of the land, I said, O Lord God, please forgive.

How can Jacob stand?

He is so small.

And then the Lord relented concerning this.

It shall not be said the Lord.

So the point is God here is giving what he is going to do, okay, which is obviously conditional, because then Amos prays and says, please God don't, and the Lord relents, and the Lord refrains from doing so.

And so the whole point of this is that God actually responds to our prayers.

God is in communion with us.

The God of the universe, he executes divine justice and judgment.

He hears your prayers.

And so we should come with, as Hebrews 4 says, with a boldness, that God is actually going to respond to what we're saying.

And then in the latter half of chapter seven, it talks about Jeroboam II, so I was the leader of the Northern Kingdom of Israel at that time.

And it says, I just looked at Peter's, is that right?

Please be right.

And it was.

Get in there.

Okay.

And then it talks about how Amos is saying, I'm a prophet from God.

I have been anointed.

Okay.

And Jeroboam says, just, we don't want any more of your prophecies.

Okay.

Now we sort of lose this whenever we read the narrative, but you know, this is a petrifying situation here.

Okay.

This is, you could die from this.

You could be executed.

You could be exiled, but Amos stands firm and strong for gospel because as it says in those chapters, hate what is even love what is good and how God has given us a higher calling to uphold his morality and his calling.

So that's chapter seven.

Peter, chapter eight.

Chapter eight is just God's judgment over sin.

And the specific sin in this chapter that talks about is the most is the oppression of the poor.

So we know a big theme of Amos is social justice.

And in Israel, in the north, they were abusing their slaves and their servants.

The rich were, actually, I think in one of ours, it talks about in your summer house and winter houses.

So some of the people were rich enough to have two houses, which was quite uncommon for the time.

So they were able to exploit the poor and get so much money.

And they obviously thought this worked out quite well for them until they realized, well, hopefully until they realized God knows what they're doing.

And this also links to passages, if you want to look them up in Isaiah 58, Jeremiah seven, and also in Acts, it talks about the exploitation and the oppression of the poor by the rich.

And then it talks about, specifically in Acts as well, it talks about the response to the oppression and how we should engage and engage with that.

This is actually not relevant to chapter four, which I forgot to say.

It talks about Amos, I had to whenever I read this.

Amos says, listen you fat guys.

Wow, that's it.

There's no, he just said that.

He just said, listen you fat guys.

So I guess, you know, biblical principle from that, just go around calling people fat guys and tell them to listen to you.

Rich people only, though.

Oh, that is just epic.

Amos is just unrelenting.

I guess that's what we need.

A bit more bravery.

He was a farmer as well, so he probably wasn't as cultured as some of the people who lived in the cities.

Yeah.

That was kind of-

Listen you fat cows.

That's just an example of God using his own rhetoric to send this message.

That's so good.

But yeah, we should be, we should be as strong as that, you know what I mean?

Sometimes it doesn't need an articulated response.

Sometimes it needs a bit, you know what I mean, to wake people up from what they're actually in.

I feel like Northern Irish way to do it is just sarcasm.

That works right for most people.

Yeah.

You go to a country that doesn't do it, and it's just, you look like an absolute fool.

Yeah.

So chapter nine.

Yeah, last chapter.

Okay.

So this is the last chapter.

It talks about how God doesn't just deal with Israel.

This is just, this really blew my mind.

It was really interesting, because whenever I was reading the Old Testament, it's just a lot about Israel.

And I'm like, where do you, so are other nations literally just abandoned by God?

Like if you were to take a camera, okay, into Israel, and then you were to understand everything that was going on there, but that's like our lens and our focus and with the Bible documents.

But what about everything else that's happening?

What about all the other nations?

Okay, and here we get a brief little snippet.

Okay, it says, are you Israelites, verse seven, more important to me than the Ethiopians?

I brought Israel out of Egypt, but I also brought the Philistines from Crete and led the Armenians out of Care.

So God is clearly talking by Israelites, yes, you're my chosen people, because I entered a covenant with you through Abraham.

But don't think that that just means I abandon all the other nations, okay?

So you might think of a person, how this relates to us is there's people who you think like God is clearly just, they love them more, you know what I mean?

But that's not true.

God loves everyone.

He is engaged in it.

He is omnipresent.

He is in everyone's lives.

It's something that we can't even fathom.

So that was just an interesting verse.

God was present and taken into account all these other nations, and gives us a brief little snippet of history there again.

And then in verse 13, it says, they will never again be uprooted.

So that's the way the chapter ends.

That's the way the book ends with hope, restoration.

And it's talking about, this was repeated in like the prophets, and also in Isaiah 6, about this tree analogy, about even when a tree is cut down, it will regrow and its new roots will not fail.

So the whole point is there's purposes to God's suffering and God's punishment, and that is to get you back to him, and to get you stronger than what you actually were before, the tribulation and the trial.

And thus ends the chapter summary.

Chapter summary, very good.

So in the rest of the time, we're just going to be talking about the two major themes that Luke and I found when going through Amos.

So the first theme is social justice, and the second one is contemporary religion.

Yeah, and we've alluded to social justice, but I think it deserves a little bit more secondary explanation.

Yeah, so what do you think about when I say social justice?

Look, what kind of form does that take in society?

How do we interact with that?

Yeah, well, basically it's checked like this metamorphosis, this transformation over a period of history to what it is today, you know what I mean?

It's just like whenever people say the words social justice, I don't actually think they know the actual content of what they're saying.

So, you know what I mean?

There's a history lesson, there's basically about like Karl Marx, Marxism, just talking about, and then you've got other people who then take that and champion it, and you've got like cultural hegemony, and then you've got people in like the 60s and these students and these movements, and it talks about this idea of just like the oppressor and the oppressive type thing.

Critical theory.

Yes, so critical theory.

That's a huge thing that is brought with social justice and what society thinks justice is, and then we can talk about that loads more about.

But justice, as I see it biblically, is as simple as just looking at the poor and the oppressed and helping them and assisting them.

How do we do that as Christians?

Well, it can be expressed in various different ways.

You know what I mean?

It could be assisting those who are elderly, especially in this time of COVID, where they're more susceptible.

We can help them by delivering groceries, by doing errands that they can't.

It could be for widows, for those who are losing loved ones, just being present and abiding with them.

But you know what I mean?

Again, you could do a whole podcast about that.

Yeah, and even recently, look, I remember your family's gone through a bit of a difficult time and quite a few people dropped round to your house, so that was very, I think, for social justice.

Exactly, that is just, yeah, social justice is not this whole idea of like cultural hegemony and you know what I mean, white fragility and everything, these big, big terms.

It's, you know, leaving an apple pie at someone's door who's stroving as an expression of kindness.

Yeah.

That's it, but it's beautiful.

And then something else you and I talked about recently in our community group over the summer was how, in terms of sin, sins don't necessarily have to be the things you do wrong.

Sin is missing the mark, so sins can be the things you feel to do right.

So you'll see if you study more into the minor prophets, lots of minor prophets talk about how Israel and Judah as well for some of the prophets are neglecting the purr, which Amos has picked up on, the widows, the orphans, those who are lesser in society, and they're neglecting these people.

And that's one of the main reasons God sends them into the exile.

It's not for the, obviously there are many, we'll talk about later in contemporary religion, but there are many other sins going on.

But God draws a lot of focus, especially in Amos, to these other issues, the things they feel to do right.

So as Christians as well, we need to obviously make sure we're not sinning as actively neglecting God, but also to make sure we're doing things that are right and glorifying God in the things we do.

Yeah, so sins of commission, and then what's called sins of omission is what you're talking about there.

Yes, that's a good analogy.

Things that you don't do.

But briefly, because I just want to pick your brain a little bit on this.

What do you think of social justice briefly, as in society's lens on social justice today?

Well, whenever you say social justice, people mainly think of the social justice warriors, which is your feminists with purple hair.

That tends to be what comes to mind.

So that's the role it's taken in society, and you could have an entirely different podcast about whether that's the right thing to do or the wrong thing to do.

In terms of critical theory, that all comes from Mark.

Yes.

You mentioned that kind of theory before about Marks.

I think where Marks got it wrong was, well, 100 million people were dead.

So he obviously got it wrong in many more places.

And Peter's referring to, again, history, okay?

So the amount of people that were just executed in the 20th century under those types of regimes that focused on this idea of social justice or this idea, this ideology that they aligned themselves with.

Yeah, you can maybe do a dissertation on it, look, some time we can...

Yeah, nope.

In terms of Marx especially, the one point from what we've talked about about the poor and the rich, Marx thinks if you're rich, then you've exploded someone to get there.

And if you're a poor, then you've been exploded.

Whereas if you see through the Bible, the love of money is the root of all evil.

Just because you're rich doesn't make you evil, just because you're poor, that doesn't make you good.

It's more complex than that.

Yeah, it's a lot of ownership on the actual, you know what I mean, that you're just restricting people's identity to those things, to these concepts.

And that does not then mean to follow that this doesn't take place, because of course there is.

As well, Amos, there is oppression from the rich to the poor, and there is this idea of hereditary succession, that you gain more money and the rich stay rich and the poor stay poor, but not in the exaggerated level that it's talked about today.

It's just, you know what I mean, it's a lot of misrepresentation going along.

There needs to be an intersectional case.

A lot more needs to be talked about.

There needs to be more detail.

It's not as simple as a lot of people make it out to be.

Yeah, there needs to be more factors.

So again, you know what I mean, this is the social justice of today and the problems.

Again, there's a lot of terms there, but we're going to talk about another podcast about that.

Yeah, and finally, to make it, if you're using actual political terms in terms of communism versus capitalism, Marx thought communism was everyone being equal in value in terms of their wealth, but capitalism itself is, it's a voluntary exchange of goods.

If you're doing capitalism right, you don't exploit someone, they voluntarily give you money for a service you're offering them.

So it's not exploitation.

It's not the evil it's made out to be, I think, just as a final point.

Maybe you should do a dissertation on it.

We're really just advocating a lot of politics here, Peter.

This is getting very, this is getting very political.

Just trying to make it practical.

So we see, yeah, but that's what we're saying.

Amos talks about the justice of his time and talks about what was the justice that was perceived then in that, and that nation, how they got it horribly wrong, and how they distorted it.

And then, of course, how that applies today is the same principle, people are destroying the justice, but it's just different ways, which is what we've alluded to and talked about.

And then the other major theme is contemporary religion.

So contemporary just means like modern day, like how the other, how culture influences religion.

Yes.

So, and it just, to give the example of Amos' time, because I don't think we actually talked about it overly much in the chapter breakdown, but the culture of Israel in the north was they thought they were worshiping Yahweh.

Yahweh was one of their gods among many, and some of the practices that they were using to quote unquote worship him were what he told them to do.

But other things, they had temple prostitutes.

So it's obviously in Amos about a father and a son going into the same woman.

So temple prostitutes, they had child sacrificing, all these terrible things that were in their mind, they were using that to worship Yahweh, who was God.

So in terms of the link to today, what should that tell us about how we influence culture and how Christians deal with culture?

Well, it's that whole thread again.

Love what is pure, hate what is evil.

We need to hold tightly on to God's word.

We need to hold tightly on to what he says.

So often you see in society that people undermine the authority of God's word over and over again.

They don't actually know how important it is.

Every truth that is in the Bible should be taken with seriousness.

Like me and Peter don't know everything.

Uh, duh.

Especially me, specifically.

I just don't know everything, but my desire is to learn more and more and more each day about God's word and about what he commands.

Because I can think of nothing worse than me infringing on God's law, than me disobeying God, than me seeking this independence from God.

I need to know what his word says about every little thing, about what I should think, about what I should say, about how I should act.

And that's what we're talking about here in contemporary religion.

It's just, what does God say about other religions?

What's the approach that God takes in the Old Testament?

And here we're reading it.

God's executing justice.

He's using other nations to bring down other nations.

And we can't conform.

The Bible says, do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed in Romans 12.

And this is what's happening.

We're sort of compromising, which is what Amos is telling us not to do.

So it's like history is repeating itself.

History, again.

But what is you, what do you think of that?

Contemporary religion, how do you see it having an effect?

I mean, obviously, I agree with everything you said.

We should learn.

We need to know our Bible's best.

We know how to interact with society, with culture, but Christians should be the ones influencing culture, not the other way around.

Where the Bible's followed, culture will thrive.

God knows how society should work, and that's why we need to know how he tells us to act.

That doesn't mean telling other people what to do, because if you're not a Christian, you won't want to follow what God says, but you need to be setting an example for those around you, and not just letting them influence your church.

Like, oh, they say that...

I don't know what I'd mention.

I'll just use this as an example, but we'll talk about it in more detail at the time.

But just as an example, with feminism, saying, oh, because men and women are equal, then women should teach in church.

And then whereas the majority of you from churches would be that women shouldn't teach in the church, that men should have that position of authority of teaching over a woman.

So we can talk about this probably in more detail in our podcast.

Dropping an absolute bomb there at the end of the podcast.

That was the first example that came into my head.

I apologize.

No, but it is, it's something, again, I don't want to do you apologize.

We're basically inside our heads.

It's like, do I mention that?

Do I not?

But the whole point is that it should just, we shouldn't be reactionary to that.

You know what I mean?

If you believe women should teach in church, if you believe women shouldn't teach in the church, there should be open discourse about that.

And it should be based on the Bible.

We all want the same thing.

We all want the same thing.

We have no chickens in this race.

That's not even a phrase by the Jews.

I know, it's definitely not.

But we have nothing to gain from this except our full obedience to God.

That's the whole point of why we do this.

We want to learn more about God's truth and what he says, and that's what we're talking about.

I was listening to John MacArthur earlier, and he was saying that he actually sets out to offend people.

Because if you don't get offended by something, it means you're not wrong.

So you need to try and make things clear on what should be right and what should be wrong.

The truth offends people.

That's what it does.

And then just two more passages that I linked to was 1 Peter 4, God talks about judging the church before he judges the world.

So we actually held a higher standard.

Israel was held a higher standard than the other nations, and the church is held at a higher standard than non-Christians.

So we need to keep that in the account.

And also in Revelation, that we're not going to go into eschatology.

I've already dropped one bomb shell for this podcast, I need to drop another.

But Jesus is speaking to the Apostle John, or to John, and he says about, there's seven letters to seven churches, and in one of those letters, he says, you're neither hot nor cold, so I will spit you out of my mouth.

So we can't be neither hot nor cold.

We need to be on fire for God.

We need to be not just apathetic towards the things of the Bible.

We need to be truly doing what the Bible says and not letting culture influence us, so that we're actually worth something to God and not just useless.

Amazing.

So that's Amos.

That's a breakdown, chapter breakdown, some of the main themes.

And as you can see, from the time of this podcast, there's loads, but well done if you got to the end.

I hope that there's a lot of fruit that you can reap from it.

And we'll end it there.

Thanks for listening, guys.