Digging in Deeper: Amos 7:7-8

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“He showed me this: The Lord was standing there by a vertical wall with a plumb line in his hand. The Lord asked me, ‘What do you see, Amos?’ I replied, ‘A plumb line.’ Then the Lord said, ‘I am setting a plumb line among my people Israel; I will no longer spare them.” (CSB – Read the chapter)

This morning will be a bit of a different kind of reflection than we usually have together. This is a pair of verses that have been preached many times by many preachers over the years. And in nearly all of these sermons the point has been roughly the same. God is going to hold us accountable to His righteous standards, and if we don’t meet them, judgment is going to come. This is all based on Amos’s using the imagery of a plumb line. It makes for a compelling sermon, but the trouble is that it is almost certainly not the imagery he was actually using. Let’s talk about it.

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Morning Musing: Amos 6:1-3

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“Woe to those who are at ease in Zion and to those who feel secure on the hill of Samaria – the notable people in this first of the nations, those the house of Israel comes to. Cross over to Calneh and see; go from there to great Hamath; then go down to Gath of the Philistines. Are you better than these kingdoms? Is their territory larger than yours? You dismiss any thought of the evil day and bring in a reign of violence.” (CSB – Read the chapter)

There is a terrible disease wreaking havoc on our culture right now. It passes easily from person to person and young people are especially susceptible to catching it. Once you have it, it is tremendously hard to get rid of it. The medicine you need to fight it is costly and often feels enough worse than the disease itself that some people refuse to take it in favor of either trying to fight it on their own or else simply living with its effects. Curious what this scourge is? I’m talking about the disease of comparisonitis. Amos here talks about a particularly tragic case in Israel. Let’s take a look at this and talk about how it can infect us as well.

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Risks of Faith

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This week we continued our journey through the story of Ruth by hearing from yet another character in it. Hear this week from Boaz as he marvels at the incredible risk of faith Ruth took and the gift of life brought about because of it. Thanks for reading and sharing.

Risks of Faith

For two weeks now we have been working our way through the story of Ruth in a teaching series I am simply calling, “A Love Story.” This hasn’t been quite our normal journey, though. Rather than merely telling you about the story as I normally would, we have been looking at the events described in the pages of Scripture through the eyes of the people who experienced them. Naomi took us through the awful events of the first part of the story. Then, last week, we heard from Ruth as she unpacked her incredible first day gleaning to provide food for Naomi and her, and how she stumbled upon the field of a distant relative named Boaz. This morning, we are going to jump forward a few weeks to the end of the barley season to hear some more of the story…

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Morning Musing: Luke 14:28-30

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“For which of you, wanting to build a tower, doesn’t first sit down and calculate the cost to see if he has enough to complete it? Otherwise, after he has laid the foundation and cannot finish it, all the onlookers will begin to ridicule him, saying, ‘This man started to build and wasn’t able to finish.'” (CSB – Read the chapter)

Sometimes a thought about one thing can lead to an idea with an entirely different focus, which serves to take you back to the first thing after all. It’s a nice, little circular journey. If you do it right, though, you wind up a little further down the road than you started. Let me share a quick jaunt I’ve been on recently with you this morning.

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Digging in Deeper: Amos 5:24

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“But let justice flow like water, and righteousness, like an unfailing stream.” (CSB – Read the chapter)

Karl Marx is infamous (or perhaps famous depending on your perspective) for his observation that “religion is the opium of the people.” As you can perhaps guess, he wasn’t a fan of it. That disdain lives on in our culture today in a variety of places including the church on occasion. It is trendy for some churches to talk about how religion is bad, but a relationship with Jesus is good. In this passage from Amos, God seems to agree. Let’s talk about why and what’s really going on here.

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