AMOS - THE AMATEUR BUT AUTHENTIC PROPHET
Amos had no intention of becoming a prophet. He’d never attended "the schools of the prophets" that were the conventional launch of a prophetic ministry. In fact he was a sheep breeder and a fig-tree grower who lived about 2,800 years ago in the Judean hill country. He lived in the small town of Tekoa, to the south of Bethlehem. That’s all we know about him. He made a brief appearance in the northern kingdom of Israel that some years ago had broken away from Judah, then part of the united kingdom of Israel. It was his business interests that took him periodically to the north. So why, how and where did Amos become a prophet? We’ll find out as we think, first of all, of how Amos was:
CALLED TO BE A PROPHET
Israel and Judah were enjoying a period of economic prosperity. The super-powers of Assyria and Egypt were going through a quiet phase so there was no danger from foreign powers. Superficially, everything seemed fine. The two Hebrew kingdoms, although they didn’t particularly like each other, were at peace. As far as religion was concerned they both had priests and shrines to fulfill their obligations to Jehovah. Yes, the authorities of church and state were quite happy, thank you, with the present state of affairs. But that’s where Amos comes on the scene.
Amos was a true believer in the God of Israel and as such he knew it wasn’t possible to isolate the sacred and secular parts of life into separate compartments and to say that the two don’t mix. As Amos went about his trading activities he not only had his physical eyes open but his spiritual antennae were alert to see what was going on in the world. This is important for us living in the 21st century. Jesus was constantly telling his disciples to be aware of the "signs of the times", to recognise the significance of what was happening in the world around them. As Christians we have a duty to be both spiritually and socially conscious, to evaluate what’s going on in our community. We must always ask ourselves if our lifestyles and the practices of our community are in keeping with God’s revelation in Scripture. In John Stott’s book ‘The Contemporary Christian’ he calls this ‘double listening’ – hearing what God says to us through His Word and being alive to what is happening around us. If we don’t like what we see, it’s no good just closing our eyes and, like the proverbial ostrich, burying our heads in the sand and pretending it’s not there.
It was on one of his business trips to the north that the Spirit of God began to move in Amos’ life. He was passing through Bethel and became aware that what appeared fine on the surface was far from what it should have been. The landlord classes had accumulated wealth but their characters and morals had decayed. There were fortunes to be made and those who had the means available were none too fussy how they made them. If it meant exploiting the peasant classes, well so be it! What may have triggered the call of God was the sight of merchants chafing impatiently as they waited for the sun to go down over the hills on the Sabbath so that they could get on with their shady trading practices. Money, money, money - that’s all that mattered to them! Nothing has changed in the 21st Century! Our newspapers tell us of scandal, fraud and scams.
But it wasn’t only the secular that worried Amos, it was the so-called sacred as well. Years before the people of Bethel had become jealous of Jerusalem as the centre of the worship of Jehovah so they had developed their own rival shrine. A splendid statue of a bull in solid gold with a striking similarity to Baal, the Canaanite deity, was erected so there was a grave risk of the worshippers being confused as to what or whom they were worshipping. The visible replaced the invisible God, the creature was bowed down to instead of the Creator.
A former Dean of St Paul’s Cathedral, W R Inge, famously observed that any church which enters into a marriage with the spirit of the age "will soon find itself a widow in the next". And it all happened so easily and no one had raised a voice in protest. One thing was crystal clear to Amos: the people of Israel had drifted away from God and it could only end in tears. God couldn’t be God if He allowed this nation which bore the hallowed name of Israel and were His representatives on Earth to go on in their excesses of luxury and immorality and debauchery.
As Amos brooded over what he saw, the Spirit of God began to burden him with the enormity of the sin into which the nation had fallen. Something had to be done about it. But what could he do? He didn’t even belong to the northern kingdom. How would the people of Israel react if he spoke out? It was rather like if someone from the other Island came over here to tell us how we’d got it wrong! It wouldn’t go down at all well! And what was more, he was a mere layman! The clergy wouldn’t be at all happy if someone not of the cloth was interfering in their province, particularly if he was being critical! He knew he wouldn’t be popular and it would almost certainly affect his trade. But speak out he must! Amos expressed his call to be a prophet in the words, "The Lord took me from tending the flock and said to me, ’Go, prophesy to my people Israel’" (7:15). That was his call but how was he to go about it? We must go on to learn of how Amos:
COMMUNICATED THE MESSAGE
When God calls his servants to do a particular job he doesn’t just leave them to get on with it. On the contrary, He’s with them in the task by His Spirit. Jesus called His disciples to take His message to a hostile world. He told them frankly that they would meet much opposition. Sometimes they would be hauled before the authorities and asked to give an account of themselves but they weren’t to worry because words would be given them. Now this doesn’t mean that careful preparation for Christian service isn’t important. Far from it, for why did Jesus take the original twelve disciples around with him for several years? What He meant is that when special situations arise, when it’s not possible to research a careful presentation, the Holy Spirit will supply the words we need. Jesus assured His disciples, "For I will give you words and wisdom that none of your adversaries will be able to resist or contradict" (Luke 21:15).
Amos experienced both types of the leading of the Spirit in his ministry. His message was uncompromising. When he denounced evil, he aroused the bitter hatred of the religious and political leaders. The priest of Bethel, Amaziah by name, wasn’t a spiritual man. It wasn’t long before the two clashed. As a professional, Amaziah resented the intrusion of this upstart preacher on his patch. He didn’t recognise the voice of God in the prophet’s message. In fact he was so enraged that he reported Amos’ preaching in a smear letter to the King. Amos was falsely accused of conspiracy against the throne. Sadly, church history provides many examples of leaders who tried to muzzle prophetic voices. It was bad enough when Tony Blair’s spin doctor famously said, ‘We don’t do God’ but even worse when clerics in high places deny the plain Word of God. If you’ve seen the play by T S Eliot, ’Murder in the Cathedral’ you’ll remember the infamous words of Henry II who fell out with Thomas a Becket, the Archbishop of Canterbury, ‘Who will rid me of this turbulent priest?’
Lord Melbourne, Queen Victoria’s first Prime Minister had just heard a sermon from an evangelical preacher that must have convicted him. He countered it in a celebrated remark: "If religion was going to interfere with the affairs of his private life, things were coming to a pretty pass and he wasn’t having it!" Amaziah tried to run Amos out of town, "Get out … !" he said, "Go back to the land of Judah. Earn your bread there and do your prophesying there. Don’t prophesy any more at Bethel … " (7:12,13). Amaziah threatened the prophet as a trespasser on the King’s property. Amos answered with a dignified defence of his prophetic role. Yes, he was an amateur but also an authentic messenger of Jehovah, having personally had the commission, "Go, prophesy to my people Israel" (15). We must pray and support our spiritual leaders as they take their stand for truth and righteousness even if it goes against the ‘political correctness’ of our time and laws contrary to the teaching of the Word of God.
Amos plucked up his courage and stood in the market-place and said at the top of his voice, "The Lord roars from Zion and thunders from Jerusalem" (1:2); "The lion has roared - who will not fear? The Sovereign Lord has spoken - who can but prophesy?" (3:8). That quietened them. Amos daringly pictured the Almighty as a lion leaping upon its prey. The implication was clear. Jehovah was about to burst into human affairs in judgement. Previous warnings had been ignored, but now the day of reckoning had come. God’s roar would be heard in Zion. He went on to say, "The pastures of the shepherds dry up, and the top of Carmel withers." It was a picture of the Divine wrath sweeping over the pasture-lands of Israel in scorching drought, shrivelling up the food of the animals and bringing poverty to the people.
That was Amos’ opening sentence. He’d got the people’s attention but how was he to get the message across? After all, he was only a visitor to the kingdom of Israel. This is where his careful preparation was employed. Amos’ eyes and ears were alert to the world around him. One of the advantages of being a shepherd is that when the sheep were settled down on their grazing land, Amos would have time to think and commune with God. Of course, we’re living in a different age, when the pace of life is fast. But the same need is there. It’s vital that we have quality time with God, in prayer and Bible reading. How else can we learn God’s perspective of life? It’s important that we should relate the world as we see it to the world as God sees it.
The Spirit impressed on Amos that the strategy to follow was to use a little subtlety to gain the ear of the casual passer-by. It would be self-defeating to wade straight in against Israel. No, what he did was to review the nations surrounding Israel. Amos got his audience’s attention by starting with the neighbouring nations of Syria, Philistia and Phoenicia, and then moved a little closer to countries which were "cousins" to Israel - Edom, Ammon and Moab. Think of it this way: A Guernsey person isn’t going to worry too much if he hears some error of Germany or France being denounced, or perhaps, even if England, Scotland and Wales are criticised. What would get our backs up if some "foreigner" from Jersey ran Guernsey down! We’ve identified the strategy, so let’s think what Amos had to say as to the:
CRIME OF THE NATIONS
Syria and the other foreign nations were roundly condemned. What had they done wrong? There was the cruelty of Syria. Some generations back Syria had "threshed Gilead (another word for Israel) with sledges having iron teeth" (1:3). The reference is possibly to the barbaric practice of threshing instruments being drawn over the backs of bound captives. It was sadistic brutality - and God hadn’t forgotten! Then there was the Philistine’s slave traffic. God’s wrath was aroused, said Amos, "Because she took captive whole communities and sold them" as slaves (6). And then there was Tyre, the principal city of Phoenicia, which had acted as agents for Edom in selling the people of God to their sworn enemy (9).
Amos then turned his attention to nations that had Abraham but not Jacob as their forefather. They too had "stifled all compassion" (1:11). They had violated the common rights of humanity, they had broken the basic principles of human conduct. What a catalogue of evil deeds! These countries had never known a revelation of Jehovah as had the Hebrews. They weren’t judged for spiritual light they hadn’t received, but were condemned for their failure to act as human beings made in the likeness of God and the evil they did to God’s people. Perhaps this gives us a clue as to how the nations of the world will be judged at the end of the age. We can be sure that the Judge of all the earth will do right (Gen 18:26).
Amos had dealt with the foreign and the relative nations. So far so good. Such is human nature that one can imagine the listeners nodding their heads in cheerful agreement, "They deserve it!" But now with relentless logic Amos places the home nations under hostile divine scrutiny. The southern kingdom of Judah, Amos’ homeland would suffer God’s wrath. Why? "Because they have rejected the law of the Lord … been led astray by false gods" (2:4). The listeners wouldn’t have been too upset over this; they might even have said, "Serve them right!" But now Amos went straight for the jugular! It was Israel’s turn to hear, "This is what the Lord says" (6) about you! And what a catalogue of evil it was! Corruption in the courts, exploitation of the poor while the rich lived extravagantly, blatant immorality even in the sanctuary … you name it, they did it! Why was this so deserving of God’s judgement? It was because of their :
CONDUCT UNWORTHY OF GOD’S PEOPLE
"O people of Israel," said the Lord, "(you) … I brought up out of Egypt. You only I have chosen" (3:1,2). They were the "church". Amos makes his message relevant to his hearers by reminding them of their history and their shortcomings. They were no better than the heathen nations. God, in His sovereign grace, had chosen Abraham and his descendants to be His nation, the church, through which He would reveal Himself. They had been redeemed by the blood of the Passover Lamb, provided for and given a land. And yet they had done this to Him! They had broken their covenant with God. It was inexcusable.
Amos’ listeners would protest that they’d been regular in religious observance but the prophet replied caustically, "Go to Bethel and sin; go to Gilgal and sin yet more. Bring your sacrifices every morning, your tithes … and brag about your freewill offerings - boast about them, you Israelites, for this is what you love to do" (4:4,5). The people went in for religion in a big way but it was only playing at religion. It may well have been emotionally satisfying, giving the worshippers a false sense of righteousness. But all God heard was a lot of noise, and through Amos He expressed Divine distaste, "I hate … despise … take no delight … will not accept … I will not listen" (5:21-23). It was quite abhorrent to God. How important that we examine our motives when we come to worship Almighty God. Reverent gestures aren’t enough, for God has no place for unreality and insincerity. Sadly, Israel took little notice of God’s faithful messenger and only 50 years afterwards their time for repentance had run out. The Assyrian army swept over and devastated the land and the people taken into exile. That won’t happen to us but at the last day we’ll have to give account of our stewardship. Will it be found to be "wood, hay and stubble" and be burned up, or will it survive the fire of God’s scrutiny as "gold, silver and precious stones"? (1 Cor 3:12,13).
Christians are part of the unbroken line of the people of God, the church of all ages. We’ve been chosen as God’s elect entirely of His grace and mercy. We’ve been redeemed by a greater Passover sacrifice, that of the Lamb of God, the Lord Jesus Christ, as He shed His blood at Calvary. What does this say to us? Special privileges bring special obligations; special grace calls for special holiness; special revelation inevitably leads to special scrutiny, and special love requires special responsiveness. The church of God can’t escape the perils of its uniqueness. It’s the responsibility of each Christian believer to give himself or herself a spiritual check-up. Do we have a personal walk with God - through Bible reading, prayer and fellowship with other believers? Are we living a life which is glorifying to God?
The challenge that Amos brought to God’s people so many years ago is valid today. "Seek good and not evil, that you may live … Hate evil, and love good" (5:14,15). This is a commitment to holy living, starting in the heart and reaching out to all life. Amos’ clarion call to the church of his day and ours is in his well-known words, "But let justice roll on like a river, righteousness like a never failing stream" (24). That’s the message that God wants us to hear and to live out.
