1. The first truth about the way God speaks concerns the man God speaks through
2. The second truth about the way God speaks concerns the days God speaks in
3. The third truth about the way God speaks concerns the Word God speaks
AMOS 1:1-2
There was a middle aged woman who had a heart attack and went to the hospital. They had to do surgery and while she was on the operating table, she had one of those near-death experiences. She saw a long tunnel with a bright light at the end of it. The light spoke and she realized it was God. When she realized it was Him, she asked Him if her time was up. God spoke to her and told her, “No. You have another 43 years, 2 months and 8 days to live.” The next thing she knew, she woke up in the recovery room. Knowing that she had that much longer to live, and wanting to make the best of it, when she recovered, she went to see a plastic surgeon about some cosmetic surgery. She got a nose-job, a face-lift, liposuction and a tummy tuck. She had the doctors unsag all the sagging places and tighten up all the loose places. When she recovered from all that, she went to the cosmetologist. She got her hair dyed, her new face painted, her new body tanned, and her nails done. After everything was coated, painted and dried, she left the shop. After she walked out of the door, she started to cross the street and got run over by a bus and killed. When she got to heaven, she questioned God. “I thought you said I had another 43 years left?” God squinted up His eyes and said, “Oh, that was you—I didn’t recognize you!” The moral of the story is, watch out if you think you’re getting a private word from God. It might change your life, but you’ll probably get run over by a bus anyway. People are hungering to hear a private word from God, aren’t they? Just turn on so-called Christian TV sometime. Most of the folks on there are talking about some private revelation they got from God. And they say you can get one too if you send your money to them. Look at all the shows on TV that deal with psychics and mediums. If you want to sell a book, say that your writing about some secret message you have from God. It’s a shame that even happens in Christian bookstores. Two of the biggest sellers in Christian bookstores over the past several months were written by people who claimed to have gotten extra-biblical personal revelation. One guy took a trip to heaven and came back to write about it. And another guy took a trip to hell and came back to write about it. And they sold like wildfire. Because people are looking to hear a word from God. The problem is, they’re looking in the wrong places. They’re looking for something new and novel. Some hidden secret or code. But that’s not how God works. The fact is that God speaks. And when He speaks, it’s not a mystery. It’s not a private thing. It’s not a secret or code you have to figure out. And it’s certainly not something you have to pay money for. Despite the fact that mankind continually rebels against God… He consistently displays His love and desire for personal relationship by speaking. The two verses we’re looking at tonight serve as the introduction to God speaking through His prophet Amos. It is an example to us of how God unambiguously speaks to get His message of grace and judgment of righteousness across to His people. I want each of us here tonight to see that God is still speaking that message today. And when we hear Him speak, I want each of us to avoid His judgment by responding to His message of grace and clothing ourselves in the righteousness of His Son Jesus Christ. In order to do that, we’re going to look at three consistent truths about the way God speaks. The first truth concerns the man God speaks through. Look at the first part of verse 1.
AMOS 1:1a
The first truth about the way God speaks concerns the man God speaks through. So, who was this guy, Amos? Well, first, he’s not mentioned anywhere else in Scripture. Everything we know about him comes from this book. He was from the little town of Tekoa. Calling it a town might be an exaggeration. Tekoa was about 5 miles southeast of Bethlehem. You know, the one we sing about: “Oh little town of Bethlehem.” Well, little tiny Bethlehem was where folks from Tekoa went when they went to town. Tekoa was rustic. It was back-woods. Nothing went there and nothing of any substance came from there. The name itself indicated it was just a stopping off point for sheepherders. Almost like a camp spot rather than a real town. We get more insight into who Amos was over in chapter 7:14-15. There he tells us that he was not only a herdsman, but he was also a gatherer of sycamore fruit. Some people have mistakenly taken this to mean that he had his own herds and orchards. Really, he was just a poor shepherd. He tended other peoples’ flocks and ate what the really poor folks of the time ate. He picked the figs off the wild fig trees. Where he was from made him a nobody. What he did for a living made him a nobody. And who he was kin to made him nobody. Back in 7:14, Amos told Israel’s leadership that before God called him, “I was no prophet, neither was I a prophet’s son.” He wasn’t related to anybody special. His name didn’t mean anything to anybody. Any way you want to look at it, Amos was a nobody. On top of all that, he wasn’t even from the same country he was prophesying in. He was from the southern kingdom of Judah and God told him to prophesy in the northern kingdom of Israel. And, even though Israel and Judah weren’t enemies, they were in pretty serious competition with one another. So, he was a nobody and an outsider. He didn’t fit in with people in his own country of Judah, much less the folks of Israel. So, if Amos was that much of a nobody and an outsider, why did God choose him to carry His prophetic message? Don’t you think God would have been better off choosing one of the big-named priests? Or even better yet, don’t you think He would have been better off choosing one of the kings? At least somebody from Samaria, the capital of Israel. Or if it had to be an outsider, at least somebody from Jerusalem, the capital of Judah. But, no. God chose Amos. An outsider who was a no-name nobody from nowhere. Why did God choose him? Because nobodies are who God likes most to choose. Turn over to 1 Corinthians 1.
1 CORINTHIANS 1:27-29
Throughout Scripture God consistently chooses the insignificant things of the world. The only thing on God’s qualification list is willingness. Isn’t it comforting that that is the only thing He requires in us. Can you speak well? Do you get nervous talking in front of people? Good! God might just call you to publicly preach His Word. If you’re looking for God to call you to your strengths, you’ll probably be looking for a while. Most of the time He’ll call you to your weaknesses. That way we can’t brag about it. That way He gets all the credit. That way He gets all the glory. That way we have to rely on Him. Remember Moses? “God, I don’t talk too well.” But God only wanted him to publicly address Pharaoh and the Egyptians. Oh yeah, and only about 2 million Israelites. But that’s not the way we want to do it, is it? We want to do like Israel when they chose Saul as their king. Remember that back in 1 Samuel 9? Why did they want Saul to be their king? Because he was tall, dark and handsome. 1 Samuel 9:2 says they chose him because, “there was not among the children of Israel a goodlier person than he. From his head and shoulders upward he was higher than any of the people.” That’s who the people chose, but who did God choose? David—the youngest, most insignificant son of Jesse. A nobody shepherd just like Amos. Nobodies just like you and me. That’s who God chooses to speak through. God shows His strength by speaking through us in our weakness. The first truth about the way God speaks concerns the man God speaks through. The second truth concerns the days God speaks in. Look at the rest of verse 1:
AMOS 1:1b
The second truth about the way God speaks concerns the days God speaks in. Unlike many of the books of the Bible, Amos gives us a great time stamp as to when God gave him this prophesy. He said that back in his homeland of Judah, Uzziah was the king. And in Israel, the land he was preaching in, Jeroboam was king. But Israel had two kings named Jeroboam, so this one was the son of Joash. In other words, this was who we know of as Jeroboam II. Then Amos narrows it down a little more. He says it was two years before the earthquake. If you wanted to talk about a trip you took to New Orleans in 2003, you might say: “I went to New Orleans two years before the hurricane.” Everybody in our timeframe would know what you were talking about. 2700 years from now, it might be a different story. Around the year 760 BC, there was a devastating earthquake in that area that served as a historical reference point for Amos and his immediate readers. Amos gave us a good time stamp so we know when those days were. What were they like? What were the days like when God spoke these prophesies? Judah, Amos’ homeland was experiencing unprecedented prosperity under Uzziah. During his reign, the borders were secure, and they were free from war. And because of that, their economy was booming. But for all of Judah’s success under Uzziah, Israel was having even more under Jeroboam II. Between the two of them, they had taken back all the land that they had lost since the days of Solomon. As a matter of fact, it was as if both nations were experiencing Solomon’s golden age all over again. They were at peace with each other and their neighbors. Their economies were booming. If the Wall Street Journal were around back then, it would have said that everything was wonderful. What does that sound like? Doesn’t that sound like America? I know we have the war in Iraq, but that’s really far from most people’s lives. 9/11 was an attack on our soil that got everybody in an uproar for a couple of years, but it didn’t really personally impact most people’s lives. Our national economy is the strongest in the world. Our military is the strongest in the world. We don’t live in fear that we are going to be in a famine. We don’t live in fear that we’re going to be invaded by a foreign country. We’ve got it good. And here we sit—fat, dumb and happy. The biggest thing most people have to worry about is who gets kicked off American Idol. Oh, how we’re like Israel in the days of Uzziah king of Judah and Jeroboam king of Israel. And it’s in those kind of days when God speaks to His people. Why? Because He has to get our attention. He had to get Israel’s attention because they had forgotten Him. They had been lulled to sleep by their prosperity and had completely forgotten God. They had gotten so caught up in their own personal comforts, they forgot His Law. They had gotten so caught up in selfishness and money, they forgot about the poor. They had gotten so caught up in their sin, they forgot about God’s prophets. If that doesn’t sound like today, I don’t know what does. It is so much like today, that when we have a tragedy on the scale of what happened at VT a few weeks back, the nation still doesn’t look to God. Many people look to a god, but very few look to the God. Very few look to our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. What are the days God speaks in? These are the days God speaks in. Just like he did in the days of Amos. The way God speaks concerns the man God speaks through, and the days God speaks in. But most of all, the way God speaks concerns the Word God speaks. Look in verse 2.
AMOS 1:2
The third truth about the way God speaks concerns the Word God speaks. What a picture this verse paints of God speaking. God roaring and speaking so profoundly that pasturelands would mourn and Mount Carmel would wither. That is an awesome picture, but what did it look like to Israel? It looked like some nobody named Amos coming from out of town to preach at them. But make no mistake about it, the words that Amos spoke were the very words of Almighty God Himself. Is that the way God works today? Does He have prophets that He reveals things to, and then have them to pass it along to everybody else? Turn with me to Hebrews 1:1-2:
HEBREWS 1:1-2
The Word of God says that God spoke to the fathers by the prophets—when? In times past. The days of God making fresh revelation to people has ended. When did it end? When the prophets wrote it down. Verse 2 says that in these last days He speaks to us through His Son. And the only way His Son is revealed to us is in the finished Word of God contained in Scripture. Isn’t it ironic. To the world, this just looks like a little black book. It’s structured funny because it has all the lines separated by numbers. And if it’s a King James, it has some old-fashioned, funny sounding words in it. But to them it’s just a book. To Israel, Amos was just a country shepherd. He wasn’t a prophet or a son of a prophet. But in his humility, Amos roared with the thunderous, eternal Word of God Almighty. Just like this simple looking Book roars with the thunderous eternal Word of God Almighty. In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus spoke of God’s Word. In Matthew 5:17-18, He said, “Think not that I am come to destroy the law, or the prophets: I am not come to destroy, but to fulfill. For verily I say unto you, Till heaven and earth pass, one jot or one tittle shall in no wise pass from the law, till all be fulfilled.” All the Word of God is filled in Jesus, because as John 1:1 tells us, He is the Word. He is the living Word of God who has given us and fulfilled the written Word of God. Hebrews 4:12 says, “For the word of God is quick, and powerful, and sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing even to the dividing asunder of soul and spirit, and of the joints and marrow, and is a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart.” When God spoke His Word through Amos, what was the reaction? Mourning and withering. But notice what mourned and withered. The fields and a mountain. Creation recognized God’s coming judgment on Israel. It saw that Israel would once again refuse God’s grace. It saw that Israel was too concerned with their prosperity and comfort to worry about God and His Word. Creation saw it, but the people didn’t. The people didn’t mourn their sin. The people didn’t wither and turn from their wicked ways. They just kept on the way they always did. It was if they put God’s Word in the back window of their cars and left it there till the next week. God still speaks His message of grace and judgment of righteousness today. He doesn’t do it through special individual revelation like He did in Amos’ day. He only does it through His Son Jesus Christ as revealed in His written Word. Our choice is whether we’re going to listen or not. Will we hear His Word, mourn our sin, wither and accept God’s grace through His Son? Or will we keep on the way we always do, and let creation do it.
