Lewis, Ralph L.

English

Asbury Theological Seminary

Four Preaching Aims of AmosRalph L. Lewis*Amos, the Old Testament prophet, aims to hit when he preaches.Four of his preaching aims seem to be: attention, authority, audienceappeals, and action. He clamors for instant and constant attention.He builds for accepted authority. He bombards basic audience emotions with his strong appeals. Mere mental assent or personal agreement is never his goal�he demands action.A. Attention. Amos is the prophet of the lion's roar. He beginsby bellowing:The Lord roars from Zionand utters his voice from Jerusalem.His outdoor preaching demands constant struggle for attention. LikeJesus, he seems concerned lest his hearers wander away. Amosearnestly contends for their primary attention. Taking little forgranted, he is casual about nothing. He risks sledge hammer blowsto crack thin-shelled nuts, never assuming his hearers are thin-skinned souls super-sensitive to his sermons.Amos seeks attention. He does not demand as an autocrat�heaims, he adjusts, he appeals, he wins attention. The laws of attention�intensity, movement, and change�are his sermon guidelines.His preaching is earnestly intense; it moves with variety and progress; its one constant element is change.Whether he preaches one sermon or ten in the Book of Amos,there is a constant bid for attention. In this quest his preaching is(1) visual, (2) vital, (3) vivid, and (4) varied.1. Visual. Amos paints a series of vignettes. See the colorful pictures of Hebrew life in 760 B.C.: The Queen's Tea for theupper 400, where, as a vagrant sheep-herder, he cries out against"You fat cows of Bashan" (4:1-3); the cheating merchant (8:4-7);Professor of Speech at Asbury Theological Seminary. Dr. Lewis'doctoral dissertation (U. of Mich., 1959) was on the speech style ofAmos, Hosea, and Micah.Four Preaching Aims of Amos 15the corrupt court at the city gate (5:7, 10-13); shameful, sham religious festivities at Gilgal, with God holding his nose and stoppinghis ears (5:21-24; 4:4, 5); Bethel's encounter of priest and prophetwhen Amaziah, the king's chaplain, calls Amos a stray bread-and-butter preacher, but Amos sees God standing by the altar of Bethel,and the temple crashing down upon the crowd worshiping there-Bethel is doomed-Israel shall fall (7:10-17); people fleeing fromdestruction (9:1-5); Israel's restoring, rebuilding, replanting in theirown peaceful land (9:ll-15)-these are the words Amos saw (1:1).2. Vital. Vital interests arouse attention. Amos relateseverything to persons. In our day he would not be afraid of the word"relevant." Vital issues are his only concern. Life as lived�thisis his only interest. Behavior is even more important than belief, hesays. Right actions and right attitudes are inseparable. Life anddeath hinge on righteousness. Justice has no substitute. "Prepareto meet thy God." This is major. This is vital. He has a passion torelate religion to right living. He makes his message v'tal, personal,relevant, individual, and contemporary.3. Vivid. From the opening roar to the concluding scene ofpeaceful abundance, Amos utilizes vividness and vigor to energizehis ideas with concrete, specific, graphic words and phrases. Hisvivid sentence structure includes balance (1:2, et al.), antithesis(5:llt>, 23, 24), repetition (1:3-2:4; 4:6-11), and progressive statement (1:2, 11, 12; 6:3-6; 7:17). Amos employs direct discourse 76times, analogy over 40 times, many vivid illustrations, 22 historicalallusions, 496 |>ersonal pronouns, 580 verbs (11 verbs in the firstverse of chapter 9 and an average of 6 verbs for each verse of thefinal chapter). He also uses suspense, climax, and movement forarousing attention and maintaining audience interest. There is intensity of the speaker, of the language, and of the style as hetranslates the divine word into a shepherd's vernacular. He employsvivid conflict when he dramatizes the classic clash between prophetand priest (7:10-17). Like other preachers in the Bible he is neverlinguistically remote. He is concrete�never abstract.4. Varied. Variety has been called "the foremost factor inholding interest." Amos achieves variety through his imagery,vocabulary, sentence structure, rhythm, illustrations, and his individuality. The graphic language of imagery Amos uses can beclassified as visual (21 times), auditory (17 times), gustatory (17times), olfactory (3 times), tactual (21 times), kinesthetic or musclestrain (59 times), and organic or internal (25 times). His variedstylistic devices include 19 similes, 85 metaphors, and 31 rhetoricalquestions, in addition to puns, personification, irony, sarcasm,hyperbole, euphemism, and synecdoche. By diversity in words heaims at holding attention. For example, as recorded in the King16 The Asbury SeminarianJames Version, he uses 52 different terms to speak of injustice, 42for judgment, 25 for redemption, and 64 for suffering. Sentence varietyranges from a five-word complex, "And I said, a plumbline" (7:8),to 102 words in one sentence comprising three verses of the secondchapter (2:6-8). Rhythm varies too, even in English translation. Forexample, note three accents in first and third lines, two accents insecond and fourth lines:Fallen no mc^re to rise,is the virgin Israel:Forsaken she lies on her land,with none to raise her (5:2).His varied illustrations are gleaned from history, other nations,nature, pasture, farm, and city. Individuality stamps the words of aprophet. Varied personalities give varied expression to varied concepts. The mold is broken after a prophet speaks. Amos is Amos. Hediffers from all others. He stands alone with his individual differences. In all these ways this preaching prophet aims for attention.B. Authority. In his aim to establish authority Amos does notassume as adequate an ascribed or delegated authority based uponhis position or profession. He builds until he has achieved authoritybased upon intellectual and emotional proofs acceptable to hisaudience. He recites the refrain 54 times, "thus saith the Lord," or,"the Lord said" (as Billy Graham does in our day), and Amos alsocombines his personal authority and his authority as a prophet withthe inductive logic of experience, history, common sense, and themuch-lauded scientific method. He does not depend, as so manypreachers have, upon deductive reasoning from a major premise notaccepted by his hearers. He combines the authority of historicalexperience, authority figures, and divine decree with his own personal proofs (intelligence, character, goodwill); he builds on basichuman desires; he reasons by causal relationship from cause toeffect, from effect to cause, from effect to effect, from past to present to future.Amos does not hang all his proof on an assertion of authority.He diversifies, he undergirds, he builds logically and solidly. Hispreaching has the accepted and effective ring of reality, as if theHoover Commission of his land and time had said, "the most fundamental change in the intellectual life of the [nation] is the apparentshift from biblical authority and religious sanctions to scientific andfactual authority and sanctions."C. Audience Appeals. Amos is a vehement preacher aiming ataudience appeals or basic human needs. With fear-threats and faith-promises he bombards the wayward people. Building upon soundlogic of causal relationship and upon basic human emotions, heappeals to their fears and to their faith. He threatens loss; he prom-Four Preaching Aims of Amos 17ises benefits. He employs powerful motives to incite men to action.His subject matter is emotional; his language is emotional; hisappeals to action are largely emotional. By ten to one his fear-threats (91%) outnumber his faith-promises (9%), so Amos stands asone of the more negative prophets in his manner of expression. Hisappeals based upon audience emotions are these:Fear-Threats Faith-PromisesLoss of Security 54 Success 5Guilt 46 Satisfaction 4Suffering 25 Integrity 4Failure 7Indignation 1Total Verses I33 Total Verses 13Amos aims his appeals at deep-seated audience needs anddesires. He accents his own ethical appeal as a speaker with intelligence, character, and goodwill; he declares and demonstratesthe logical soundness of his reasoning, but his chief appeal isemotional�to the fears and to the faith of his hearers. Despite hisstrong negative appeals to fear, Amos is basically positive since(1) he begins on common ground in his classic "Yes-response"approach (chapters 1, 2) like a good salesman getting his hearers tonod their heads at their neighbors' inequities and iniquities, and(2) he concludes with a vital bright hope� "home at last."D. Action. Amos aims at action�right action. "Doom or discipline," Amos roars. "Do something about your injustices. Causeand effect are inseparably united� injustices bring doom. Be disciplined or be doomed!"Seek good, and not evil, that you may live;and so the Lord, the God of hosts, will be with you,as you have said.Hate evil, and love good,and establish justice in the gate (5:14, 15)-But let justice roll down like watersand righteousness like an ever-flowing stream (5:24).A specific plan of action, a detailed way of escape, a clearlydefined, concrete course of behavior-these seem outside the prophet's province. Justice in action�this is his plea. Be just. Liveright. He aims at reformed action�both individual and corporate. "1gave, I withheld, I sent, I sent none, I smote, I laid waste, I slew,I carried away, I overthrew. . . . Yet you did not return unto me,"says the Lord in a five-fold refrain. "Therefore prepare to meet thyGod!" (4:12). Act! Act right! Act right now! Positively his action-words are "seek and live" (5:4, 6, 8, 14), making Amos a leadingadvocate of repentance.18 The Ashury SeminarianConclusions. Today, amid a continuous barrage of words, menneed to hear preaching that aims at their attention by being visual,vital, vivid, and varied. Declining respect for authority necessitatesmore than deductive preaching. Our day demands an authority notmerely assumed or ascribed, but achieved by the preacher and accepted by the hearers. Preaching must be undergirded by strongpersonal ethos of the preacher and by the inductive proof of experience, common sense, and scientific method. Sermon appeals mustbuild upon basic audience needs rather than upon tradition, decree,analogy, or the preacher's whims. Emotional appeals based uponsound reasoning can be tailored to convince even a highly culturedcongregation. Preaching can transcend all lesser speech purposes.Besides informing, stimulating, motivating, entertaining, and persuading, preaching can move men to action. These are the preachingaims of Amos�attention, authority, appeals, and action. Today thevoice from the pew says to the preacher, "You aim, too, please"(don't aim to miss).

Four Preaching Aims of Amos

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Four Preaching Aims of Amos

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