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Let Justice Roll Down: Walking Through the Book of Amos

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Let Justice Roll Down: Walking Through the Book of Amos A shepherd from Judah walks into a prosperous kingdom and tells it the truth about its worship, its wealth, and its God. Walk through the book of Amos, the shepherd prophet who called Israel to let justice roll down and pointed ahead to the rebuilding of David's fallen booth. Let Justice Roll Down: Why the Book of Amos Still Shakes Us Some verses of the Bible have traveled far beyond the church. One of them was spoken by a sheep breeder from a small Judean village around 760 BC, and in 1963 it rang out from the steps of the Lincoln Memorial when Martin Luther King Jr. quoted it before a crowd of hundreds of thousands. The words come from the book of Amos: "But let justice roll down like waters, and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream." (Amos 5:24) Many people who can quote that line have never read the rest of the book. That is a loss, because the verse means the most when you know where it comes from. Amos spo...
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From Locust Plague to Pentecost: Walking Through the Book of Joel

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From Locust Plague to Pentecost: Walking Through the Book of Joel A ruined harvest, a call to return, and a promise of the Spirit that would wait centuries for its morning. Walk through the book of Joel, from a devastating locust plague to the Day of the LORD and the promise of the Holy Spirit fulfilled at Pentecost. When the Locusts Came: Why the Book of Joel Still Speaks Imagine walking out to your fields in the morning and finding nothing. The wheat is gone. The vines are stripped to bare wood. The bark has been peeled from the fig trees until the branches gleam white in the sun. Overnight, a living cloud of insects has eaten your year, and maybe your future. That is where the book of Joel begins. A catastrophic locust plague has swept through Judah, and the prophet Joel stands among the ruins and asks a question every generation eventually has to face: what is God saying to us in this? "Hear this, you elders; give ear, all inhabitants of the land! Has such a thing happened in ...
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The Prophet Who Married an Unfaithful Wife: What Hosea Reveals About God's Relentless Love

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The Prophet Who Married an Unfaithful Wife: What Hosea Reveals About God's Relentless Love A prophet's broken marriage becomes a living sermon on the steadfast love of God. Why would God tell Hosea to marry an unfaithful wife? Walk through the book of Hosea and discover the covenant love that pursues, redeems, and restores. Why Would God Tell a Prophet to Marry an Unfaithful Wife? Most prophets received a message. Hosea received a marriage. Somewhere in the northern kingdom of Israel, in the eighth century before Christ, the word of the LORD came to Hosea son of Beeri with an instruction that still makes readers flinch: "When the LORD first spoke through Hosea, the LORD said to Hosea, 'Go, take to yourself a wife of whoredom and have children of whoredom, for the land commits great whoredom by forsaking the LORD.'" (Hosea 1:2) Read that slowly and the shock settles in. God asked his prophet to marry a woman who would betray him, to raise children whose names a...
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