God's Prophet. A Revolutionary!

Amos 7:1. This is what the Lord God showed me. Behold, He was forming locusts when the latter growth was just beginning to sprout, and behold, it was the latter growth after the king's mowing. When they had finished eating the grass of the land, I said, O Lord God, please forgive. How can Jacob stand?

He is so small. The Lord relented concerning this. It shall not be, said the Lord. This is what the Lord God showed me. Behold, the Lord God was calling for a judgement by fire, and it devoured the deep and was eating up the land.

Then I said, O Lord God, please cease. How can Jacob stand? He is so small. The Lord relented concerning this. This also shall not be, said the Lord God.

This is what He showed me. Behold, the Lord was standing beside a wall built with a plumb line and with a plumb line in His hand. And the Lord said to me, Amos, what do you see? And I said, a plumb line. Then the Lord said, behold, I am setting a plumb line in the midst of My people Israel.

I will never again pass by them. The high places of Isaac shall be made desolate, and the sanctuaries of Israel shall be laid waste. And I will rise against the house of Jeroboam with the sword. Then Amaziah, the priest of Bethel, sent to Jeroboam, king of Israel, saying, Amos has conspired against you in the midst of the house of Israel. The land is not able to bear all his words, for thus Amos has said, Jeroboam shall die by the sword, and Israel must go into exile away from his land.

And Amaziah said to Amos, O seer, go. Flee away to the land of Judah and eat bread there and prophesy there, but never again prophesy at Bethel for it is the king's sanctuary, and it is a temple of the kingdom. Then Amos answered and said to Amaziah, I was no prophet nor a prophet's son, but I was a herdsman and a dresser of a sycamore fig. But the Lord took me from following the flock. And the Lord said to me, go.

Prophesy to My people Israel. Now, therefore, hear the word of the Lord. You say, do not prophesy against Israel, and do not preach against the house of Isaac. Therefore, thus says the Lord, your wife shall be a prostitute in the city, and your sons and your daughters shall fall by the sword, and your land shall be divided up with a measuring line. You yourself shall die in an unclean land, and Israel shall surely go into exile away from its land.

So far, our reading. Thank you, Jordan, for taking those readings. Please leave your bible open if you would, congregation. I want to take you to a number of passages in Amos this morning, and I want to begin by singling out a few verses. First of all, back in chapter 1, if you would flick back to chapter 1, that would be helpful.

And let me read verse 1 of Amos, the very first words from that prophecy. Amos 1:1, The words of Amos who was among the shepherds of Tekoa, which he saw concerning Israel in the days of Uzziah king of Judah and in the days of Jeroboam, the son of Joash, king of Israel, two years before the earthquake. And then from chapter 7, I want to single out two verses there, verse 14 and 15, Then Amos answered and said to Amaziah, I was no prophet nor a prophet's son, but I was a herdsman and a dresser of sycamore figs. But the Lord took me from following the flock, and the Lord said to me, go, prophesy to My people Israel. Brothers and sisters in Christ, Christians are revolutionaries.

And maybe this morning when you hear me say that, you're inclined to say, no. That's not true. I don't see myself as a revolutionary. After all, a revolutionary is someone who is out to overthrow the established order of things, and that's not you, is it? And I have to say that's probably not me either deep down.

Okay, we as Christians, we do have a somewhat different outlook on life to people around us. Our opinions and our ideas differ from so many with whom we rub shoulders during the week. But that hardly makes us revolutionaries. If anything, we're just people with some rather old fashioned ideas about morals, and we're probably considered by most folk around us a little quaint in that we still believe in God. But basically, we Christians are just pretty harmless, just people to be ignored. If that's true congregation, then think of some of the things that have happened throughout history.

I can remember as a teenager, Christian leaders getting shot in some South African, South American countries. Why is it that Assemblies of God pastors were the first to be liquidated in Iraq under Saddam Hussein? And why in more recent times did ISIS particularly single out Christians? Why were outspoken Christians sent to Siberia under the communist rule in Soviet, the Soviet Republic. See, congregation, it's all part of a trend that began way, way back under Emperor Nero when he threw Christians to the lions in a Roman arena.

Because they see Christians as revolutionaries, people who are not content with the status quo. This morning, we're considering the prophet Amos and the book by that name. It's a book that's going to drive home to us the revolutionary nature of God's kingdom. This morning, we especially want to look at the person of Amos, who he is, and we'll see that he is God's revolutionary prophet. That opening verse that I read from verse 1 tells us Amos lived during the reign of Uzziah in Judah and Jeroboam the second in Israel.

And Jeroboam the second, the king of the 10 northern tribes, had been a particularly effective ruler. In fact, he was the most powerful king that Israel ever had. He had completely subdued Israel's long standing enemy, Syria. And under Jeroboam the second, Israel again had a place of honour among the nations in the region. Archaeology, by the way, has helped us to fill some of the gaps in the biblical record, and it shows Jeroboam the second as a ruler who was at home in international politics.

So friends, these were good times. These were years of stability. It was a period when, to put it bluntly, people made lots and lots of money. Businesses flourished. Stock markets went well.

The economy was booming, to put it in modern terms. And from this book in which Amos records his prophecies, we get some glimpses of their society. Have a look at chapter 3 verse 15. It's a picture of a prosperous, satisfied society. Chapter 3:15, we say that mister and missus average Israelite had both a winter and a summer house.

So a nice brick townhouse in downtown suburbs of Samaria perhaps, or the holiday house somewhere by the beach on the shores of the Dead Sea or the Lake of Galilee. Or chapter 6 verse 4, we're given just a little glimpse into the homes of these folk, and we have spelled out for us luxuries that included beds that were inlaid with expensive ivory. And when you read on through Amos, you get the picture of a life of ease and eating and drinking and being merry. And you think to yourself, what a life, a recreational chariot in every garage. Every second weekend away, indulging your every wish, sport and fun and recreation.

People like that would have felt right at home in Australia, the land of the long weekend, wouldn't they? That's the kind of scenario that Amos paints for us in this book of his prophecies. But interestingly, congregation, all that prosperity went hand in hand with massive social issues, widespread corruption and social injustice. You know, if they'd had a police royal commission in Samaria, they would have dragged up some huge scandals. Here in Australia, we've had our corporate high flyers who lived a good life.

And people my generation and quite a bit younger will remember Christopher Skase and Alan Bond. Well, they had their counterpart in Israel under Jeroboam, entrepreneurs who took the battlers, the little battlers down with them when their empires crashed. Lord complains about these kinds of social injustice through Amos. The well-to-do, we're living it up by squeezing the wealth out of the poor. Flick back to chapter 2 verse 6 and notice there picture of what's happening.

The needy are said to be sold into slavery for a pair of sandals. Can you imagine that? Exorbitant interest rates were being charged to keep people poor. Merchants were doing their business with false weights and measures, and judges accepted bribes and decided in favour of those who paid the most. Then on a personal level, well, there was rampant immorality.

They'd already done what our governments increasingly do. They'd legalised prostitution, part of their temple worship, open sex shops, you can just imagine, and the massage parlours. Well, according to chapter 2 verse 7, fathers and sons would use and abuse the same girl. Again, congregation, these people would have felt right at home in our society, society that blatantly peddles pornography on the internet. And every so often on my Facebook post, there's something that I think, good grief, why do I need to see this to get rid of it?

Artificial intimacy is on offer. Give you a bit of a buzz for a few minutes. All you've gotta do is log on. So outwardly, success and peace and prosperity and affluence, but inwardly, immorality and injustice and corruption and violence. And then also a time congregation, by the way, when true religion is going through a major crisis.

It's sad, but we see it so often in the minor prophets and also in our day and age, that society's good times are not always the best for the church, are they? Times like that, we, the followers of Jesus, so easily get sucked into materialism. We find it so easy to follow the world's agenda to make fun and entertainment priority number one. And the church and the kingdom of Jesus Christ, well, that kind of gets put on the back burner. Amos, friends, shows us a society that is so very much like ours, outwardly doing very well, thank you very much, but inwardly rotten to the core, like a piece of shiny mahogany furniture, beautiful on the outside, but inwardly it's riddled with dry rot.

Of course, that didn't mean by the way that a lot of religious activity wasn't happening. On the contrary, another passage you can look at is 4:5, where Amos tells us these people could have made it into the Guinness Book of Records. They're bragging about the number of their offerings, sacrifices. The value of their thank offerings has never been higher. And I can imagine their church treasurer would have easily balanced the budget, much, much religious activity.

But the point is, friends, it was religious activity that had lost the vision of the coming Messiah, Jesus. In fact, it was false religion. The formal state imposed golden calf worship at Bethel that had been put in place by the first Jeroboam, where even Amaziah, the priest, opposes Amos, the servant of the living God. And then these people would have felt right at home among us, wouldn't they? We too as a society, we're religious sometimes extremely so.

Psychics and astrology and new age and tarot card readers and television evangelists thrown in. Much religious activity, but religion that so often just keeps Jesus out. And I've seen televangelists that won't use the word sin because it doesn't sound nice, so Jesus becomes just our motivator rather than our Saviour from sin. Our congregation gets into that kind of setting, that God sends His servant Amos. Twice he tells us something about himself, first in that opening verse, the book he tells us he comes from Tekoa, so he's not actually even from Israel, he's from Judah.

And yet God sends this man from neighbouring Judah to this prosperous country of king Jeroboam the second. The second time, Amos gives us some information about himself is in chapter 7. There he's got to defend himself against the charges of that priest Amaziah. And in both cases, Amos shows us he's a very ordinary sort of fellow. This man's not a professional clergyman.

He doesn't belong to one of the schools of the prophets that we read about in the books of Kings with Elijah and Elisha. He's a self supporting businessman. Chapter 7 verse 12 shows that he's the kind of person seems to be living off his daily work. And the impression we get as we read this book is that Amos never gives up his ordinary job. He remains a worker prophet.

Today's terms, would say he's a lay preacher. Amos 1:1 spoke of him as one of the shepherds of Tekoa, but your bible may have a footnote there, because the Hebrew doesn't use the normal word for shepherd there. It uses a word that's used only in one other place, a Moabite king who was a sheep breeder. So he was a fairly significant sheep breeder. On top of that, he runs a small orchard of sycamore fig trees.

In other words, here is a man who knows what life is all about. He's a man with his both feet firmly on the ground. The calluses of hard work are on his hands. Amos is not an armchair philosopher sitting back dreaming of a new world order. No.

He's a man of the marketplaces, the business centres, a man who rubs shoulders every day again with very ordinary people. So why is it friends that the Spirit of God takes hold of this very ordinary man and calls him to be a prophet. See, in the case of Jeremiah, we know that he was set apart as a prophet from his birth. Elijah and Elisha, both professional prophets, but not Amos. Why?

Let me suggest two reasons. First of all, Amos is a man from the marketplaces and the business houses. As such, he's got his finger on the pulse of the affairs of the nation. He spends time in the marketplaces of society where people are gathering from all walks of life. He does the round of the sheep auctions, Bethel and Samaria and Jerusalem, and somehow he gets to see the sad state of society and of the people of God in particular.

Amos is the businessman who sees injustice and worldliness amongst his workmates and colleagues, the worldliness of Israel. He sees his fellow businessmen cheating the poor, keeping them in debt with extremely high interest rates. He hears in the sheep markets people boasting about their sexual exploits, and he sees the prostitutes doing their brisk business. He's been there when the beggars were being kicked in the shins and when workers were being mistreated and abused by the management. And this is supposed to be Israel?

The nation in partnership with God almighty? You see friends, sometimes farmers can see these problems far more clearly than we who are pastors and ministers. In fact, let me say this morning that you in the workshop and the office so often experience firsthand what your pastor only reads about. And so God is using this man caught up in the thick of life to be His messenger. I think there's another reason why God calls Amos the sheep breeder and the orchardist.

Isn't it usually our farmers who are most willing to call a spade a spade? I mean, I'll be frank with you, sometimes we pastors contend to waffle on and never quite get to the point. The farmers, they generally mean a few words and they say what they have to say and they get on with it. In any case, Amos wasn't afraid to say it. Stern words of God's judgement, and they're there in that chapter we read.

And some of what he says, congregation, certainly took a lot of courage to say. Just listen to him a moment in chapter 4 where he's talking to the blue rinsed of Samaria, and he dares to call those prim and proper matrons of society, cows of Bashan. First word first verse of chapter 4. In chapter 7 this morning, we saw him standing eyeball to eyeball with the arrogant Amaziah. Makes us realise this morning that if you're gonna be God's spokesman, that's not a job for a wimp or a sissy, but it's a job for which Amos's work has well equipped him.

The farmer who sees things as they are and says it as they are and calls a spade a spade. For Amos the farmer, this calling as a prophet involves him in both special risks, but also special opportunities. And to bring out both the risks and the opportunities, let me make a comparison for a moment. Because you see, I think there's another reason why the Lord chose Amos, the farmer, to be the prophet. Because in some small way, it's a fitting picture of you as a New Testament Christian.

Amos, you see, is the ordinary everyday believer called to serve God in a prophetic office. Moses, way back in Exodus, expressed the wish that all of God's people might be prophets. Well, that wish of Moses was fulfilled when Jesus came. That's why we said the words of Lord's Day 12 this morning, because all who believe in Jesus share in His anointing with His Spirit, with prophets with Him. It means brothers and sisters, you are called to be a prophet with Christ.

Sheep breeders and orcharders, even while having a prophetic calling. Nurses and welders, mechanics and carpenters, who are at the same time prophets. And that's got risks, but it's also got some wonderful opportunities. On one hand, friends, there's the risks and the risk is that the farmer's not taken seriously as a preacher. That was basically Amaziah's problem, wasn't it?

Says to Amos, Amos, and I'm paraphrasing, Amos, why don't you just go back to being a cow cocky in Judah? You just stick with your sheep dip and your pruning shears and let us priests sort out people's spiritual problems. That's a risk you face in the office tomorrow or in the workshop. You speak the word of God and you talk about Jesus, or you talk about some moral issues, and people will say, why don't you just get back to work, leave the preaching to the church? On the other hand, congregation, there's not only the risks, there's also the special opportunities.

In fact, let me say that you in a business world and you in the workshop and the office have opportunities that I will never have. I've so often found that nothing kills the conversation as quickly as when someone asks you, so what do you do for a crust John, and you say you're a preacher, end of story, and they become very quiet all of a sudden and disappear. One of my colleagues once put it well, he said, pointing out that preachers are suspect, he said, we as preachers are paid to be good you or good for nothing. But the point is that you in the workforce have opportunities that preachers and pastors don't have. Many who will not listen to a preacher will listen when an Amos comes along.

Someone with the dirt of honest work under their fingernails. Someone with the smell of the stable or the factory in their clothes. Because here are people who speak their language, people who have exactly the same battles and struggles as they have. Do you see how Amos, friends, typifies the New Testament Christian? God's spokesperson in the marketplaces of society, God's people in the public square of today, the one in the office who sees things so very differently from everyone else, the one in the workshop just stands out from the other workers.

This morning, congregation, I don't want to spend much time on the message that Amos brought. At this stage, I just want to sum it up briefly. Basically, Amos tells Israel that God's judgement is coming. He uses some very, very vivid images to bring that home to people. We saw it in chapter 7.

There's that picture of God holding that plumb line against the wall, and that wall which represents Israel is so crooked, it needs to be demolished. The very next chapter, there's a picture of some baskets of summer fruit, and the fruit which represents Israel is overripe, so overripe, it's destined for the compost heap. So for the first part of this prophet's message is a call to repentance. Sin needs to be dealt with. And it's not just a matter of saying, God, I'm sorry.

No. What God wants is He wants change. He wants reformation. The people of God needed to begin again to live like the people of God. Their lifestyle needed to be a powerful rebuke to the godless and the immoral around them.

Here, the name Amos, I find very significant. His name literally means one who bears a burden. And for Amos, that burden was especially the burden of God's anger, His wrath against His covenant breaking people. But friends, the burden that Amos carries in his prophecy is the burden that Jesus ultimately carried to the cross of Calvary. He took the judgement of our sins upon Himself.

There's a little more though to Amos's message, and here I wanna come back to what I began with. Amos was a revolutionary. He was dissatisfied with society, with the status quo. He wanted society to change, to be the kind of society that God wanted it to be. Do know, friends, there is a big difference between change and overthrow.

Reformation is not the same as revolution. What God wanted and what He gave Amos to preach was repentance and reformation. But you see the problem is Israel did not want to change, and that's why Amos becomes the revolutionary, the society in which Jeroboam was king. That didn't want a repent. It didn't want a reform.

And so Amos brings instead the message of revolution. We heard it in chapter 7, the overthrow of society, the pulling down of that wall, the people sent into exile, and he predicts the end of Israel as a nation, something that happened very soon afterwards when Israel was defeated and sent into exile by the Assyrians. Find it interesting congregation that Amos sets these prophecies in the context of the earthquake. Verse 1 of chapter 1, predicting God's judgement on the nation. I don't know if Amos actually predicted that earthquake.

He may have, but it certainly made an impression on the minds of people, so much so that it's mentioned a couple of times in the bible in different books. Here, Amos simply refers to it as the earthquake. And isn't that congregation a very vivid sign of God's intervention in this world, especially in the fears of unrepentant people? And it makes Amos particularly relevant for us this morning and for our day and age. Today, we're living in a society congregation that is headed to the day of the great earthquake.

Because you see, that's how the bible talks about the end times when God will once more shake creation. And that will be the day of God's revolutionary overthrow of our world. But it will also be the day of Jesus' return. I wanna ask you this morning whether you're ready for that revolution. God calls us to be ready for it by repentance and reformation to deal with the things in our life that need to change, and to take that out into our society and work for change there, to embrace that revolutionary kingdom of our Lord Jesus Christ.

It's only as we embrace that congregation that we can then also work at transforming our culture and change our society. It's revolutionary. It's radical, but that's what Christians are. We're called as we go out of the doors of this church to go into another week with God's agenda for social change in our places of work, in our neighbourhoods, wherever God calls us to be. But as we do that friends, we take with us the good news of Jesus, the gospel of Christ, His finished work on the cross, to redeem and save, and He's coming to make all things new.

Let's pray. Our Father and our God, we thank You for the reminder this morning that there's nothing new in our society, Lord. It's all there in the book of Amos already in so many ways. And Father, just as You called Amos, the sheep breeder and the orchardist, to speak into that situation in Israel, so You call us to speak into our situation today. Father, when You give us opportunities this coming week, help us to grasp them with both hands and point people to the truth of Your word and the wonderful news of the gospel of Jesus.

Father, pray for courage, don't always have that Lord, so often we think of what we should have said later, and we just pray that Your Spirit will inspire us to give us the wisdom and to give us the courage that we need to be revolutionary life changers in our society today. We pray that through Jesus Christ our Lord, in His name we say together, amen.