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Introduction
Amos is one of the most readable, relevant yet neglected portions of God's
word. It deals with social injustice and religious formalism- it tends to
scratch us where we itch.
It also shatters our purring pussycat image of
God but presents us with a God who can be
roused to act as a roaring lion. God is not
indifferent to the social injustices in our
world, his failure to immediately respond
does not argue in favour of his indifference
or, as the atheist would argue, against his
existence, but it is a measure of his patience
with sinful men.
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Dan
Amos The Prophet
We begin with a little historical background.
After Solomon's death the kingdom was torn
into two. The Northern Kingdom retained the
name Israel and was composed of ten tribes.
The Southern Kingdom, Judah was made up of
two tribes. At the time of Amos' ministry circa
750 B.C., the people of God were a divided
nation. We will begin to appreciate something
of the difficulty which Amos encountered as we
realise that God sent him from his home in the
South to preach in the Northern Kingdom. It
might be compared to an English minister
coming to Scotland to tell the people what was
wrong in their lives.
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Israel
Samaria
Bethel
Jerusalem
Judah
Egypt
Moab
Edom
Amos The Prophet
Why was it necessary to send Amos into Israel?
Well, the church in the North had become a
puppet of the state. It is important for the
church not to side with one particular political
party.
Where moral permissiveness and social injustice
is being condoned by the government of the day
then the church has a duty to speak out. And it
was because no churchman living in the North
would speak out fearlessly against the state, that
we find God sending Amos from the Southern
kingdom.
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Amos The Prophet
Amos had no formal religious training. He had no theology degree from
Jerusalem University. And so not only was he a Southerner ministering in the
North, he was not even a part of the recognised religious establishment! He
was a shepherd and a pruner of trees. God often uses the most ordinary and
unsophisticated of people to challenge the complacency, coldness and
formalism of his church. Cf John the Baptist. He chooses to work through
weak, frail, human vessels in order that he might receive all the glory and
credit for what is accomplished through them cf. 1 Cor.1v27.
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Amos The Prophet
Think of the influence which D. L. Moody, the
American evangelist, had on both sides of the
Atlantic in the C19th . He had no formal training
and as a result many churchmen resented his
activity. Nevertheless, his ministry was clearly
blessed of God and thousands were converted.
This is not to say that anyone can set himself up
as a minister. A Lack of training is not an
automatic qualification! Amos, Moody and
countless others knew the unmistakable call of
God. It is a dangerous thing to enter the
Christian ministry without a very definite
awareness of such a call.
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Amos The Prophet
Some set themselves up as preachers because
they want a personal following. Others have
entered ministry in order to exercise control over
others. Some have thought that the ministry could
give them some kind of job security.
A young man came to Spurgeon, the famous Victorian
preacher, and said that he believed that God wanted
him to be a minister. Spurgeon began to test the call
and asked the young man what had led him to this
belief. The young man cited a long list of jobs he had
tried but had failed to make any headway in. He
concluded that God must want him to be a preacher
because he had failed in everything else he had tried!
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Amos The Prophet
Jonathan Edwards, perhaps the greatest theologian America
has produced lived during the famous C18th evangelical
awakening. The revival stopped quite abruptly on
the eastern seaboard of America. Edwards
attempted to analyse the reasons for this.
He considered that a major reason was the
number of self-styled preachers, who split and
divided the church because they had zeal without
knowledge and were immature in their
understanding of the faith! With good reason the
N.T. gives prominence to the role of the church in
testing the call of God to a preacher and missionary
alike. We should be suspicious of those who do not
welcome such testing.
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The Drift Of Amos’ Message
In 1v2 we are given a clue to the direction which
Amos's preaching will take. God is like a roaring lion
poised to pounce. But before he does so he will
pronounce his judgements on those guilty of social
injustice. The lion roars once it is committed to
attack. Its roar is calculated to paralyse its victim
with fear.
Now if a lion’s roar is a spine-chilling experience,
how much more will be the intervention of God. God
is thundering from Jerusalem a message that will
have devastating results . Note the language of v2..
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The Drift Of Amos’ Message
We must understand this message of
judgement however in its proper context. You
will notice that each of God’s judgement
begins with the formula,
"for three sins of....even for four I will not turn
back my wrath". cf v3, 6, 9, 13; 2v1.
This is a very significant phrase. God is saying,
“I don't pounce immediately you step out of
line. No! I have been patient with you but
time after time after time you have behaved
in an abominable manner. You have abused
my patience. [cf 2Pet.3v9]. Time has run out.
Now is the time for me to act.
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The Drift Of Amos’ Message
These judgements include judgements against the surrounding heathen
nations. What does that imply? God is the God of the whole earth, all are
accountable to him not just his own people to whom he has revealed
himself in history and through his Word. God does not judge only those who
have Bibles but all men! Someone asks, is that fair?
As we read through the lists of these nations crimes
note that God does not take them to task for not
worshipping the God whom they did not know
nor for their abominable idolatrous religious
practices. But he does condemn them for the
way in which they have treated their fellows.
They had sinned against their conscience given that
the law of God is written on their heart. cf Rom 2.14-16
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The Drift Of Amos’ Message
A preacher denounced the awful effects of alcohol upon family life and a
woman turned to her neighbour in church and said, "Now that's what I call
preaching". The preacher then challenged the values of
the permissive society and the woman again
said, "That's what I call preaching".
Then the preacher began to speak about
the danger of gossiping. But his time the
woman was heard to say, “That's not
preaching, that's meddling.”
Its easy to commend preaching when the
finger is pointing elsewhere but it is
disturbing when we find it aimed right at us.
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The Drift Of Amos’ Message
That story echoes Amos’ experience. He draws
his congregation in as he begins to publicise
the sins of the surrounding heathen nations
and pronounces impending judgement. Even
the denunciation of Judah to the South would
have had a favourable response. But last of all
in 2v6 the spotlight falls on Israel’s national life
and they are outraged. Amos had spread his
net wide but Israel are stunned to find that
they too have been caught in the net.
This begs the question, “What do we consider
good preaching?” Is it that which exposes the sins
of others or that which addresses our own hearts.
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The Judgement Of Damascus:
People Or Things?
The first judgment of God is directed towards the Syrians
in the North whose capital was Damascus and whose
King was Hazael. Hazael’s philosophy of War was
quite simple, “There's only one way to make war;
you hit the enemy with everything you've got in
every way you can.”
If anyone raised a voice in protest against such
extreme warfare and torturing of captives, then
back would come the reply, “There's a war on!
Don't you know that exceptional circumstances
justify exceptional measures.”
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The Judgement Of Damascus:
People Or Things?
That's a view God doesn't share. War or no war, Hazael had no right to treat
people as if they were things. The first absolute moral principle in Amos’
manifesto is: "People are not things!" Even if the description of Hazael's
conduct as ‘threshing Gilead’ doesn't literally mean that he used animals to
drag flint-studded, weighted platforms of wood back and forth across the
bodies of the inhabitants of Gilead, even if its a just a metaphor, then we're
told that he treated people just like a grain crop, that is
threshed to extract profit from it.
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The Judgement Of Damascus:
People Or Things?
That's precisely what Hazael did in Gilead. He treated people as things. That
is what you are doing when your armies destroy whole villages! Did Hazael
behave in this way simply massacring all these people simply to fulfil his
expansionist dreams? Notice it is the man who drew up the rules of
engagement who bears the brunt of God's anger v4... At the same time the
nation who supported him and fuelled his megalomania would also be
punished by being subjected to captivity. cf 2 Kings 16v9
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The Judgement Of Damascus:
People Or Things?
This is all very contemporary. Some today say that in war there is only one
rule; hit the enemy with everything you've got, in order to win an absolute
and unconditional victory.
It may appear good logic from a twisted human
perspective. Many contemporary world leaders
have made use of it. But God condemns it!
He says that even in warfare there are certain
obligations which mercy imposes, and
victors must not be ruthless neither,
after the victory nor, in the way they
go about achieving it.
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Conclusion
God places great value on human life. To treat
people like things, in order to advance ones
personal ambitions, is to stand on very
dangerous ground. Today medical science
wants to use the human embryo in a whole
variety of ways. A newspaper recently reported
a technique pioneered in Mexico to employ the
human embryo to develop a cure for Parkinson's.
But surely that is treating humans as things and is
surely no less culpable than the Nazi experimentation
on Jews prisoners in the concentration camps during WWII.
God requires us to value all human life and to treat humans
as humans not as things!
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