Mr. Duke Jeyraraj

How should we exactly go about preaching to young people? In my assessment, there is no better person to learn this than from Prophet Amos. Here are Amos’ secrets:

Supplicate! You cannot preach to young people or anyone using our own intellect or skill. We need God’s grace to do it. So we must sit in his presence and pray for grace to preach His Word. Amos prayed. ‘O Sovereign Lord, please forgive your people! Unless you relent, Jacob will not survive, for we are only a small nation!’ (Amos 7:2,10).

We too should spend unhurried times in prayer before we pick up our pen for youth sermon preparation. Search! There is evidence from the messages that Amos preached that he had sufficiently searched God’s word before he preached it. When Amos wanted to chide God’s people for preoccupying themselves with music when their nation was in a moral mess, he made a reference to, David, and his music-playing ability (Amos 6:5,6). Our sermons to youth too must be rooted in God’s Word.

That is why we must read and re-read the Bible time and again. Splash! Amos painted pictures with words. He splashed colours like an artist. The book of Amos – is basically a collection of few of his sermons. And it is full of word pictures. You can put it this way: ‘The Lord says…’ But this is how Amos put it ‘picturesquely’: ‘The Lord roars…’ (Am.1:2) In order to convey the message that Judgement was inescapable he narrated a Lion-Bear-Snake story (Am.5:18-19).

That is, a man thought he had escaped from a Lion, only to see a Bear chasing him. When he thought he had escaped from the Bear, he wanted to rest by taking the support of a wall. Out of the crack of that wall, came a snake and bit him. He thought he had escaped danger, but he hadn’t. Sculpt! Amos, like a sculptor, chiseled his message.

There was symmetry in his presentation. For example he used the phrase, ‘For three sins of (name of the place), even for four…’ seven times when he outlined the sins of various places that were to incur God’s judgement (Amos 1:3,6,9,11,13, 2:1, 2:4). Five times out he uses the phrase, ‘Yet you have not returned to me!’ after explaining each disaster that struck North Israel (Amos 4:6,8,10,11,12).

He jots three future day events using the link-phrase ‘in that day’ (Amos 8:3,9,13). He issues five ‘even if’s’ when he describes places one can run to without being successful in escaping from the Lord’s hands (Amos 9:2-4). Shoot! In order to make his message very personal to his listeners and to involve them in it Amos shot a series of questions. In Amos 3:3-6,8 we read nine of his thought-provoking questions he raised to drive home a point. ‘Can two people walk together without agreeing on the direction?

Does a lion ever roar in a thicket without first finding a victim? …’ You will notice that each question that Amos asks merits a loud ‘no’ answer. Prophet Elijah’s gripping question to his onlookers, ‘How long will you wave between two opinions!’ (2 Ki.18:21). When one asks questions while preaching it invites the involvement of the audience in the message and also makes the audiences think! Shock! We also see that Amos deliberately shocked his audiences so that they would pay attention to what he said.

The people of Israel he preached to for centuries had been told that are a ‘chosen’ ‘royal’ priest hood (Exodus 19:6). But guess what Amos shockingly told them: ‘This is what the Lord says; ‘You alone have I chosen from among all the families of the Earth. Therefore I will punish you for your sins!’’(Amos 3:2). They were stunned to hear Amos preaching to them, ‘Even the bravest soldiers (among you) will flee naked on that day, declares the Lord’ (Amos 2:16).

Rather than telling young people what they want to hear, we must tell them what they must hear. This might shock them. But at least they will wake up to listen. Spot! Amos spotted the issues that were deeply bothering his listeners. Then he proceeded to take up these contemporary issues. Social crimes were rampant when Amos preached in North Israel during the reign of King Jeroboam. Amos talked about this instead of pretending these things did not happen (Amos 1:13).

When father and son visited the same temple prostitute, He took that issue head on (Amos 2:6,7). We must spot the issues that young people are struggling with: pornography, reckless romances, etc. Then we must give them ‘truth takes’ on the issues from the Bible. If we pretend these issues don’t exist, they too will pretend that a preacher doesn’t exist when we preach to them! Smile! I can imagine Amos smiling wryly when he told his hearers, ‘Go to Bethel and sin; go to Gilgal and sin yet more!’ (Amos 4:4).

Surely, Amos was not serious here! Youth preaching cannot always go always on a serious tone. Humour should be used at appropriate places to spice up the sermon and to keep the audience’s attention. Show! Do you know when our youth talk will graduate from being just a nice speech to a heart-pricking message? It will be only when we show how that message can be practiced in the personal day to day lives of our listeners! Amos did that well. Amos recorded the words of some of the people of Israel that went like this: ‘When will the Sabbath…be ended so that we may market wheat?’ (Am.8:4).

By doing that he was going into area of how the Sabbath Rule in the Ten Commandments applied to the lives of his listeners. Even our youth preaching must go on to show how the Word of God will apply in a practical way in their lives. Stop! The book of Amos is full of pithy short simple messages from the Lord. Here are some samples: ‘Seek me and live!’ (Am.5:4). ‘Hate evil and love good!’ (Am. 5:15). He sufficiently and simply made his point. He did not go on and on. The sublime rule in youth preaching is this: if you don’t stop when your audience is wanting you to go on and on, there will come a time when you will go on and on, and they will want you to stop!