The Twelve Minor Prophets: Amos
Dr. James Smith
Amos
18 September 2005
(Usually we offer a link to a recording if one was made. However, this Sunday microphone trouble led to a very bad recording. You can still listen to this sermon, but it may be hard to understand.)
This morning, we continue in our fall sermon series on the 12 minor prophets. Over the course of the fall until Advent, we will take a look each week at a different one. And I want to strongly encourage you to read each book in preparation for each Sunday message.
This morning we come to the Book of Amos. This book is unique in that Bible scholars believe that it is the earliest prophetic book that we have in the Old Testament.
And two striking characteristics of this book is the power of its language as well as its passionate concern for the oppressed. In fact, Christians of the 19th and 20th centuries who were particularly concerned with social justice, frequently appealed to the Book of Amos.
And yet on the other hand, we find that this book was rarely if ever quoted by Jews or Christians over the centuries . . . why?
Over the years, both Jews and Christians have frequently sought out messages of hope and comfort and yet even a casual reading of the Book of Amos fails to produce such things.
Instead, Amos offers the shocking message of the death and end of the Northern Kingdom of Israel, without any real hope of its restoration.
This message is strange coming from a man who didn't even claim to be a prophet in any professional sense of the term. Instead, God's sudden call came on Amos in the midst of his work as a herdsman and trimmer of sycamore fig trees.
Amos lived in the last good days of 8th century Israel and during the reign of King Jeroboam II, the rich got richer and the poor became ever more in their debt.
And it was not as though the people of Northern Israel had completely forgotten God. In fact, the Book of Amos tells us that they were careful to offer sacrifices and formal worship (along with their other gods).
And so when Amos delivered his message of doom, the people must have been both shocked and intensely annoyed.
In fact, we are told that Amaziah, the priest of Bethel told Amos to go ply his prophetic trade down in Judah and that he was guilty of conspiring against the king and his sanctuary.
Amos's frustration is evident in chapter 7. Like so many prophets after him, Amos had never asked nor even desired to have such a terrible prophetic calling. He would have preferred to stay with his flocks and his fig trees.
But God for His own strange and mysterious reasons called this man to speak a terrifying message in His name, "Israel must die and that the 'day of the Lord' would not be about God taking vengence on the enemies of Israel, but rather on His own people."
The people of Northern Israel as well as Amos could not foresee the events that would rapidly take place later in the 8th century B.C.
King Jeroboam II would die and a series of 6 weak and vicious kings would follow, crippling the nation, while the brutal Assyrian empire was on the rise and would become the very agent of Israel.s destruction and deportation just a few short years later.
The book of Amos does not make for light or particularly encouraging devotional reading and I have yet to meet anyone for whom it was a personal favorite.
Dr. Donald Gowan, a specialist on the Book of Amos puts it into perspective for us. He writes:
Consider any of the small nations of the world today, and imagine being a citizen of a neighboring country and going to that small nation to inform its people that soon they would no longer exist as a nation.
Worse yet, imagine trying to convince them that this was the will of their God. How could such destruction and death be the will of any god? And yet God caused Amos to recognize that the daily life of Israel has completely given up the ethical standards of God.
He saw the treatment of the poor in Israel as a fundamental rejection of the relationship that God had established with Israel. It was an unhealthy society, so sick that it couldn't survive much longer and it's death would not be from natural causes but would be God's work. (The New Interpreter's Bible, vol. VII, p. 395)
"Justice" is the word that has often been associated with the Book of Amos because of 5:24, "let justice roll on like a river, righteousness like a never ending stream." (NIV)
Amos, however, cannot be reduced to a platform for the .social gospel,. which are so frequently linked to liberal mainline Protestant concerns nor is it a piece of liberation theology because Amos was not a reformer. He had no program for change because it was simply too late for change.
And yet, any interpretation and particularly, application of the book of Amos should be a careful one. Because rarely has there been a darker time for any particular people in history than in 8th century Israel.
But during that time, something very dangerous had occurred that should cause us to pause and ponder.
Religion served only to reassure the people that everything was okay. As long religious services were observed and places of worship were keep in good working order, somehow that would guarantee God's favor.
Somehow through it all, Israel had kept the formal aspects of religion rolling along just fine, but lost those standards of decency and public morality that had once existed and allowed the people to live, more or less, harmoniously together.
Amos 8 further offers the disconcerting picture of a spiritual famine; a time when men and women would hunger for and seek the words of God, but not find them.
When encountering this passage, the great Protestant reformer Martin Luther said:
This is the last blow. It is the worst, the most wretched of all. All the rest of the blows would be bearable, but this is absolutely horrible.
God is threatening to take away the true prophets and the true Word of God, so that there is no one to preach even if men were most eager to hear the Word and would run hear and there to hear it.
The contemporary church of Jesus Christ in America with its wealth and apparent well-being would do well to remember that it is not its programs, its financial assets, it efficiency, nor the attractiveness of its buildings or services, but the clear and faithful preaching of God's word from which is derives its true health.
And somehow we as evangelicals need to be reminded of this most basic of messages as proclaimed in the Book of Amos.
According to Dr. Gowan, the way for us to read the book of Amos today then is "as long as we are convinced that it in not too late and believe that we still have a chance, we also should read the book the way those exiles read Amos — as a challenge not to make the mistakes that ancient Israel had made."
Let's Pray
