"Let The Lion Roar: Reclaimed and Renewed” | Rev. Vicki Harrison
At New Hope This Sunday
New Hope gathered this Sunday — Mandy New noted that the volunteers had finally gotten a little rest from VBS. Week three of Starting Point met after the service in Social Hall C, and the morning closed with an extended time of prayer and response at the altar as the church brought the "Let the Lion Roar" series to a close.
A few things coming up:
July 5 — Celebrate America: a regular 9:30 AM worship service, plus a special 11:00 AM service of prayer and celebration for the nation's 250th anniversary.
Baptism Sunday — July 26. Baptism 101 classes meet on Recharge nights, Wednesday July 15 and July 22 (same content both nights); stop by the lobby for information or to ask about taking the next step.
Reclaimed and Renewed
The Book of Amos has been roaring with hard words for weeks. This Sunday it ends not with a threat, but with a promise.
In the finale of the "Let the Lion Roar" series, Pastor Vicki Harrison opens the final chapter of Amos — Amos 9:11-15 — and lands on the glimmer of hope God leaves at the end of a difficult book. After chapters of judgment, the prophet's last word is restoration: God will rebuild what has fallen, bring back what has been scattered, and refuse to abandon His people. It is, Pastor Vicki says, a message that sounds an awful lot like the gospel.
Three Questions the Series Keeps Asking
Amos has pressed three questions all the way through, and Pastor Vicki names them as the series closes. Does God care about injustice, about the poor and the vulnerable? Yes — God sees everything, misses nothing, and there will be a day of reckoning. Are our worship and our daily lives connected, or can they be separate? They are not separate; God sees them as one piece, and worship on Sunday paired with mistreating people on Monday is worship He rejects. And what does this mean for us at New Hope? That is the rubber-meets-the-road question. What is God's plan for justice in the world? Just us. We are plan A, and there is no plan B.
When All Seems Lost, Spring May Arrive
To picture the turn the book takes, Pastor Vicki reaches for C.S. Lewis. In The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, Narnia lies under the White Witch's spell — always winter, never Christmas, a land where grief and evil have taken over and everything is not as it should be. But as Aslan the lion, the Christ figure of the story, makes his way back, the snow begins to melt, the birds begin to sing, and leaves return to the trees. All is not lost. That is exactly how Amos ends: when everything seems totally lost, spring may actually arrive.
A Promise to Rebuild What Has Fallen
The first half of Amos 9 outlines destruction — the northern kingdom will fall, though a remnant will remain. Then the tone changes. "In that day," the prophet says, and that phrase points to the Messianic age, to Jesus. "I will restore David's fallen shelter. I will repair its broken walls and restore its ruins, and will rebuild it as it used to be" (Amos 9:11). It is not the temple or the kingdom of David but the shelter of David — nothing grand, because the point is that what God restores has become weak, powerless, and damaged, and it needs Him to rebuild it.
The promise reaches wider than Israel. Edom, a historic enemy, and all the surrounding pagan nations will be brought into God's kingdom (Amos 9:12). Centuries later, at the Council of Jerusalem in Acts 15, James stands up and quotes this very passage to settle whether Gentiles must become Jews before following Jesus — proof that including the Gentiles was God's plan all along, written 750 years in advance. The chapter ends in overflowing abundance: new wine dripping from the mountains, ruined cities rebuilt, vineyards planted, and God's people brought back from exile and planted in their own land, never again to be uprooted (Amos 9:13-15).
We Are Not So Different From Israel
It would be easy to read about the northern kingdom and assume we are nothing like them. We tend to think we are so removed, so different. Pastor Vicki admits this is part of why the book has been so hard for her — because we are not different at all. We have sinned against God in countless ways, ignored His commands, and worshiped at the altars of so many idols: success, security, popularity and prosperity, pleasure, personal comfort. We have ignored injustice in our own community. Like Israel, we deserve judgment. And yet the whole shape of Amos sounds like the gospel: you have fallen away, you have done some terrible things — but come back to a life of abundance, come back to the Lord and live. There is hope and salvation waiting.
The Restoration We Need, Not the One We Expected
The Jews waited centuries for a Messiah, but they expected a warrior who would overthrow Rome by military might. Instead Jesus rides in on a donkey, humble, and comes to save His people from their sin — offering not the restoration they expected but the restoration they needed. Our problem, Pastor Vicki says, is often the same: we do not understand the restoration we really need. We may attend church while still going our own way, functioning separately from God — which is what the Bible calls sin. Our greatest need is to have our sins forgiven and cleansed.
In the Old Testament, sin was atoned for by animal sacrifice — and not just any animal, but the best of the best. But the sins of the world were too many; the animals could never be enough. So God made another way. Jesus, God in flesh, the second person of the Trinity, came to demonstrate the fullness of God's love and to be the final sacrifice. Perfect and sinless, He gave His life on the cross so that no more sacrifices would be needed. He bled so that our brokenness could die there with Him. No amount of being good, doing charity, donating money, or holding the perfect worship service gets us close to God — only the blood of Jesus. And if we have said yes to Him as Lord and Savior, God no longer sees our sinfulness; He sees the blood of Jesus, and we live as free people, at peace, walking hand in hand with a holy God.
The Lord Will Never Leave You
This is the bottom line: there is nothing we can do to make God abandon us. Israel was horrible, and God did not abandon them — He created a way. He has done the same for us. The Lord will never leave us or forsake us. He sees our fears, our doubts, our anger, our bad choices, our hardness — and He will never leave. The last word from Amos is a word of hope: "I will bring back my exiled people and restore them. I will restore you."
Have You Been in Exile?
Pastor Vicki closes with a question worth sitting with: have you personally been in exile — disconnected, lost, dry, parched? To restore something is to bring it back to its original condition, to return it to its original owner. Every person carries a God-sized hole in the heart, and we try to fill it with everything but the only thing that fits, which is Jesus. Maybe you have been going through the motions. Maybe you have worshiped on Sunday and lived a different life on Monday. Maybe you are in a season of grief or bitterness and know you need to be made whole again. Or maybe you have never said yes to Jesus at all. Whatever it is, Jesus is waiting to meet with you today, to restore the places in your heart and soul that only He can fill.
As Amos closes, so does this season of seeking. New Hope is moving into a guided season of prayer, discernment, and fasting through July and August — with Thursdays set aside as a day of fasting — asking the Lord together where He is calling the church to act on injustice and to go deeper in faith (see A Season of Fasting & Prayer). Pick up the prayer calendar, find a seat at the altar, and let the God who restores meet you again.
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More Sermons in this Series
Other Sermons from Pastor Vicki
Amos 9 brings the Let the Lion Roar series to a close with a hard word and a hopeful one: judgment is real, but God is not finished. Next Sunday, Pastor Vicki Harrison opens the final chapter of Amos with a message about rebuilding, restoration, and the kind of renewal that reaches all the way into the future.