1. Amos is a shepherd and fig farmer, not a professional prophet or preacher.

Amos was a shepherd from Tekoa (1:1), a little town South of Bethlehem, and a fig farmer (7:14-15) who was called by God to go and prophesy to Israel. He traveled north to Bethel, home of king Jeroboam II. Jeroboam II did evil in the sight of the Lord (2 Kings 14:23-29).

2. Amos is fed up with the injustice of politicians, merchants, and priests.

This non-professional shepherd and fig farmer sensed God’s calling and became fed up with the evil deeds not only of Jeroboam II but also of religious people and merchants against the poor and oppressed (Amos 5:10-15).

3. Amos has a message for the nations.

The first two chapters are specifically for nations other than Israel. God has expectations of all nations, not just Israel. These words to the nations are called “oracles” and in chapter one we don’t learn much about what they are doing but we know the Lord is against them and ready to punish Damascus, Tyre, Gaza, Moab.

4. Amos has a message for Judah and Israel.

Remember at this time Israel is the northern kingdom and Judah is the southern kingdom, and both are struggling. We begin to get a sense for what the nations are doing as Judah and Israel are accused. What kinds of things are the nations and Judah and Israel doing that displeases the Lord and Amos? In 2:4 we get a sense of the sins of the nations, “because they have rejected the law of the Lord, and have not kept his statutes, led astray by the same lies as their ancestors.”

Judah and Israel are accused of some terrible things. For example, father and son have sex with the same woman (2:7), laying down to have sex on coats that have been taken from the poor (2:7-8).

So God has brought pestilence and “cleanness of teeth,” a metaphor for famine (4:6). One of the key repeated phrases of Amos is, “Seek the Lord and live” (5:4,6, 14). The Lord speaks through Amos and says God hates the religious feasts and festivals (5:21) because of the way merchants use unfair scales to cheat the poor (8:5), the way religious people look the other way at injustices by kings.

So Amos uses several images, including a plumbline (7:7-9). A plumbline is a weight on the end of a rope or string to set a building straight while building or repairing. God has a plumbline in hand, and Amos is asked, “What do you see?” Amos says he sees a plumbline. “See,” God says, “I am setting a plumbline in the midst of Israel,” and he’s going to set a plumbline and sword against the house of Jeroboam.

5. Amos has a message for us today.

What is the message for us today? For Israel in the days of Amos, people had been oppressed by Egypt, enslaved. Now Israel was oppressing people in ways just as bad, in some ways even worse than how they were oppressed in Egypt. So today, the modern state of Israel in attempts to say “never again” to Holocaust, genocide, oppression and anti-semitism is overstepping with oppression and occupation of Palestinians. It’s not anti-semitic to speak against Israel’s oppression. What about the United States? It’s also not anti-American to speak against oppression of the poor in the United States.

Where is the modern day Amos who speaks against oppression and injustice, regardless of how unpopular? I’m going to tell you a story about one modern day Amos named Bryan Stevenson.

Ten Journeyers recently saw the movie Just Mercy. The true story of Bryan Stevenson, a Black Harvard trained attorney from Delaware who moved to Alabama in the 1980s to defend already convicted death row inmates from actually receiving the death penalty. At the time, no death row inmate had come off of death row. The movie follows the case of Walter McMillian, a Black man wrongly convicted of murder, and Stevenson’s courageous, faithful defense of McMillian.

We live in a country still today where the rich have the luxury of being innocent until proven guilty but the poor are guilty until proven innocent. Go down to the Tulsa County jail and see how many poor people are there who have not been convicted of anything yet are being held. This is blatantly wrong, and it’s the reality on the streets, in the courts, and in the prisons and jails today. In addition to economic disparities, we also disproportionately incarcerate people of color in the United States, and it’s not because people of color commit more crimes nor is it because they are more violent.

We incarcerate more people of color in the United States of America because we still have not stood up fully and boldly to systemic white supremacy. White people will say, “Well, they deserve to be in prison for some reason.” No they don’t. Read Stevenson’s book by the same title as the movie, listen to the audio.

Oklahoma Governor Stitt signing 774 commutations is wonderful and a start. Governor Stitt wants Oklahoma to be a top 10 state. This action moved OK one position to 2nd most incarcerator in the nation, next to Louisiana. This makes Oklahoma and Louisiana the epicenters of incarceration in all the world, since the U.S. incarcerates more people than anywhere else in the world.

After my son wrote a paper in high school about incarceration, then I read Stevenson’s book, then heard him speak at Oklahoma Christian (one of the best speeches I’ve ever heard), I was moved by these things to join groups in Tulsa trying through policy, legislation, advocacy, and activism to reduce incarceration in Oklahoma by half in the next 10 years.

So I decided I needed to take a step and do something in my own community. Would you take a step today toward re-thinking this issue? Ask some questions, donate to EJI or ACTION, go to an ACTION meeting (https://actiontulsa.nationbuilder.com/). You also have a few more days to see the movie in Tulsa while in theaters. Don’t wait.

Greg Taylor, M.Div.

Greg Taylor is the preacher for The Journey. He holds degrees in Print Journalism from Harding University and a Master of Divinity from Harding School of Theology. Greg is working on his Doctor of Ministry at Phillips Theological Seminary in Tulsa, Oklahoma, where The Journey is located. Greg is married to Jill, who is a math teacher at Broken Arrow High School. They have three adult children, Ashley, Anna, and Jacob, and of course they are very proud of each of what God has done in each one of their lives. Greg is author of several books you can order from your favorite bookseller.