SERIES: Major Profit from Minor Prophets
Amos, the Cowboy Prophet
SPEAKER: Michael P. Andrus
Note: This series, done in the summer of 1999, involved one sermon each on the Twelve Minor Prophets. Obviously, since these books are of varying lengths, from one chapter to fourteen chapters, these sermons are focused on the key message of each prophet, rather than a detailed examination of their words.
This sermon on Amos was a first-person sermon, the only one I ever preached. I even dressed up as I assumed the prophet may have looked.
Introduction: Shalom! My name is Amos. I am very old. In fact, to tell you the truth, I’ve been dead for over 2700 years, but God allowed me to come back here today and tell my story.
I was a rancher for almost my whole life. My home was near Tekoa, about 12 miles south of Jerusalem in the Kingdom of Judah. I loved the land; I loved the sheep and cattle; I loved my children and my grandchildren. But what I want to tell you today has nothing to do with all that. I want to tell you what happened to me when Uzziah was king of Judah and Jeroboam king of Israel. Probably most of you can hardly even imagine that long ago, but to me it seems like yesterday.
The best way I know to help you understand what things were like in my day is to compare it to your own time. I met your pastor last night, and he told me quite a bit about conditions in your country. He even jotted down a few notes for me. When you get my age, you know, the memory isn’t what it used to be. Neither are the eyes, but just before I came out here, he gave me some strange things he called “glasses” and said they would help me read his notes.
I understand your country is a very powerful and prosperous country. So was Israel in my day. I didn’t actually live in Israel. I lived in Judah. Israel, you may know, was the name of the Northern Kingdom that was formed after our civil war. Judah was the Southern Kingdom. Israel, our neighbor, was one of the superpowers of the world in my day.
I’ve also been told that a lot of secularism has been creeping into your culture. You used to have leaders who looked to God for wisdom and even quoted God’s Word regularly–people like George Washington, Abraham Lincoln, and others, but today I understand most of your leaders only pay lip service to God. If they mention Him at all, it’s just for political advantage. That’s the way it was in my day, too. We could read in our history books about great leaders of the past like King David and King Solomon, but they were only a distant memory. The political leaders of my day were more interested in power and influence than they were in doing what was right. Actually, I probably shouldn’t pick on the politicians. The same was true of the business leaders, the educators, and most of the other movers and shakers of our society.
There’s one more comparison I’d like to point out between your day and mine. I’ve heard that you’ve had some great religious prophets in the history of your country. Some of the names that have been mentioned to me are Jonathan Edwards, George Whitfield, John Wesley, Billy Sunday, Dwight Moody, and Billy Graham. I understand they’re all gone except Billy Graham, and that he’s really old. Well, it was kind of the same in my day. We had some really great prophets. Maybe you’ve heard of some of them–Moses, Joshua, Elijah, and Elisha. But all of them were gone by the time I was born. I often wondered whether there would be any more prophets of their character and with their courage to challenge the people of God.
The very last thing I expected was that God would tap me on the shoulder and ask me, an ordinary rancher, to be a prophet. But that’s exactly what happened. The Lord came to me one day as I was heading out to my herds and said, “Amos, I want you to go and preach to the Kingdom of Israel.” I said, “You want what?”
The Lord continued, “I want you to go and preach. This will be a short-term mission assignment–less than a year.” I responded, “I can’t. I’ve never been to the School of the Prophets.” (I think your pastor told me you call them cemeteries). I said to the Lord, “No one will listen to me. Besides, who will take care of my herds?” I gave the Lord every excuse I could find, but then He said again, “I want you to go and preach.”
I remembered another prophet who tried to run when God called him. He ended up in a real pickle–actually he ended up as a pickle, in a whale’s belly. I decided I’d better go ahead and do what God asked. I put my brother in charge of my land and my brother-in-law in charge of my herds, and I said to the Lord, “OK, what do you want me to preach?” He said He wanted me to deliver eight stinging judgments against eight wicked nations.
Amos and his eight stinging judgments (1, 2)
I was told to start with the pagan nations around Israel–Assyria, whose capital is Damascus, Philistia, whose capital is Gaza, Tyre, Edom, Ammon, and Moab. I began to think, “This isn’t such a bad job after all.” You see, I was glad to denounce these countries, because they all practiced false religions, their rulers were cruel, and their people were involved in gross sin.
God didn’t just tell me to denounce them–He told me exactly what to say. I was told to use the same formula with each country, just quoting God with these words: “For three sins, even for four, I will not turn back my wrath….” By the way, let me give you a little inside scoop. I wrote down the whole story I’m telling you before I died, and I was amazed to learn when I arrived here that my story has been preserved all through these centuries in a book called the Bible. To think that a rancher from Tekoa would have his diary preserved that way is almost more than I can imagine–it must have been an act of God. Some of you may never have read my little book, but if you’ll check out the first part of it, you’ll find the stinging judgments of God just as I delivered them against these six wicked neighboring countries.
But then the Lord told me to turn my attention closer to home. He told me to denounce the sins of Judah. That’s where I lived. That made me a little nervous. I knew Judah wasn’t perfect, but it was sure a lot better than those pagan countries. Nevertheless, I went ahead and preached exactly what God told me. Finally, He told me to denounce the Northern Kingdom of Israel.
Each of these eight judgments was short and to the point. When I was done, I thought maybe I had fulfilled my responsibilities and would be allowed to return home, but God made it clear that He had more for me to say. He wanted me to focus my attention on the nation of Israel. In fact, I was given three sermons to preach against Israel that were much more pointed than the initial judgment.
It became obvious that God was more upset with what was going on in Israel than in any of the neighboring countries, and I soon realized why. After all, the pagan nations never had the advantages Israel enjoyed. I discovered a principle God has built into His universe, and it is this: “The greater the privilege, the greater the responsibility. And God had given incredible privileges to the Jews. For example, God told me to say to Israel:
“I brought you up out of Egypt,
and I led you forty years in the desert….
I also raised up prophets from among your sons
and Nazirites from among your young men.
Is this not true, people of Israel?” declares the Lord. (2:10-11)
Even more to the point. God told me to tell them,
“You only have I chosen of all the families of the earth;
Therefore, I will punish you for all your sins.” (3:2)
Amos and his three sermons (3-6)
My first sermon focused on Israel as a chosen people. You know, if we’re honest we must admit we tend to think that because we know God and have a special relationship with Him, He’s going to give us a few breaks and go easy on us when we blow it. But if there is any truth God hammered home to me, it is that God is impartial in judgment. There is no such thing as being God’s fair-haired boy. On the contrary, those who know God are held to a higher standard. Judgment begins at the House of God.
The second sermon I was told to preach focused on Israel’s women of leisure. Your pastor warned me this particular sermon might be very offensive to some of you. I’m not surprised–it also offended the women of Israel. Here’s what I said, “Hear this word, you cows of Bashan on Mount Samaria, you women who oppress the poor and crush the needy and say to your husbands, ‘Bring us more beer.’” See what I mean? But it’s interesting no one disputed my facts–they just accused me of hate speech. But the truth is the truth. A whole generation of Israel’s women had pretty much quit nurturing their children and caring for their homes. They were spending all their time power shopping, eating in fine restaurants, and bossing their husbands around. God told me to tell them that the time was coming when an enemy nation would lead them into captivity with hooks.
But that sermon wasn’t addressed exclusively to the women–the fact is, the whole nation was refusing to pay attention to God. And, believe me, He was making lots of attempts to get their attention. He told me to say:
“I gave you famine, yet you have not returned to me.”
“I withheld rain from you. In fact, I even sent rain on one town and withheld it from another, even rain on one man’s field and drought on his neighbor’s, but you still did not return to Me.”
“I struck your gardens and vineyards with blight and mildew and sent locusts to devour your trees, yet you have not returned to me.”
“I sent plagues among you and killed your young men in ill-conceived wars, yet you have not returned to me.”
“I even allowed terrible fires to come upon you, like I did at Sodom and Gomorrah, yet you have not returned to me.”
You see, God is in control of nature. When His people experience drought and tornadoes and volcanoes and hurricanes and forest fires, it only makes sense for them to ask, “Is God speaking to us about our spiritual condition? Are these warnings about worse things that are yet to come if we do not repent?” Yet, most of the time they just talk about natural disasters or say stupid things like, “Don’t fool with Mother Nature.”
Then God gave me a third sermon to deliver against Israel, and this one was about how they deprived the poor of justice. For example, listen to these charges I was asked to deliver:
“You trample on the poor
and force him to give you grain….
You oppress the righteous and take bribes
and you deprive the poor of justice in the courts.” (5:11,12)
“Hate evil, love good; maintain justice in the courts.” (5:15)
“But let justice roll on like a river,
righteousness like a never-failing stream!” (5:24)
Not surprisingly, I became popular with the religious liberals of my day. I understand you have some of those, too. Priests who couldn’t stand my fellow prophets like Isaiah and Hosea were always quoting me. They agreed with my calls for justice in the courts and my advocacy for the poor. But they always quoted me selectively. I also denounced other sins, like sexual immorality, pride, and religious formalism, but they never quoted me on those issues. You know, God hates sin, no matter what kind it is. People don’t have the right to pick and choose which of God’s laws they will obey. And when they disobey, He will judge them.
But that third sermon was not all brimstone and fire. Several times God told me to extend an invitation to individuals to repent. The nation was doomed, for sure, but God was still willing to forgive those who would repent. For example, He told me to say,
“Seek me and live.”
“Seek the Lord and live.”
“Seek good, not evil, that you may live.”
“Perhaps the Lord God Almighty will have mercy on the remnant.”
I wish I could share more of these sermons to Israel, but I don’t have time. I do, however, want to tell you about some of the object lessons God showed me. You know, God generally doesn’t speak in abstract terms. He gets right down to the nitty-gritty and tells the truth in such a way that only a fool could miss it.
Amos and his five object lessons. (7-9)
The first object lesson was about a swarm of locusts. God prepared the locusts to attack the crops between the first and second harvest. I don’t know if you know what taxes are, but in my day the government took the first cutting of a crop as a tax, and then the farmer could keep the second cutting for himself. Well, just after the taxes had been paid and just prior to the second crop, these locusts came and stripped the land clean. I was a rancher, you know, and this was almost more than I could bear. I cried out, “Sovereign Lord, forgive! How can the nation survive?” And you know what? God relented and called off the locusts. I was so grateful, but sadly, it didn’t seem to make any difference to the people I was preaching to. They just chalked up the disappearance of the locusts to good luck.
The second object lesson was a combination of drought and forest fires. Most of the fires were caused by lightning, I suppose, but the creeks and rivers and even wells had dried up from the drought, so there was no way to put out the fires. So again I cried out to God, “Sovereign Lord, I beg you, stop! How can this people survive?” And once again the Lord relented. He stopped the fires.
The third object lesson is one I brought with me today and want to show you. Does anyone know what this is? Right, it’s a plumb line. Do you know what it is used for? It’s a tool used to make sure the walls of a building are square. If they’re not, the building is in grave danger of collapse. Well, I had this vision and there was the Lord standing by a wall with a plumb line in his hand. And he told me, “I am setting a plumb line among my people Israel; I will spare them no longer.” The nation was no longer true to His commandments. They were out of kilter and would collapse. So I preached that Israel would be destroyed and the house of Jeroboam the King would die.
Not surprisingly, none of the messages I preached were appreciated in Israel, but the message of judgment I preached after this plumb line object lesson really got to them. I think I should tell you this story, but in order to do so, I need to give you a little background. When our civil war occurred in 931 B.C. and the ten tribes of the Nation of Israel formed their own country, King Jeroboam would not allow his people to come to Jerusalem any longer to worship at the great Temple of Solomon. Instead, he built two new temples–one in Bethel and one in Gilgal. At Bethel, where the King himself worshiped, the head priest was a man named Amaziah. He was the most powerful clergyman in the whole country. When Amaziah heard that I had predicted God’s judgment against the temple at Bethel and against the king, he said to me,
“Get out, you seer! Go back to the land of Judah. Earn your bread there and do your prophesying there. Don’t prophesy anymore at Bethel, because this is the king’s sanctuary and the temple of the kingdom.” (7:12)
Do you know how I answered him? I don’t remember whether God told me this or I just thought of it myself, but I said, “I am neither a prophet nor the son of a prophet. I’m just a shepherd, and on the side, I cultivate fig trees. The only reason I’m preaching is because God commanded me to. This wasn’t my idea.’” (7:14-15) But then the Lord told me to prophesy against Amaziah himself. Believe me, it’s not easy to stand up to the #1 man-of-the-cloth in the country and say stuff like this, but I had no choice. Here’s what I was told to say:
“Your wife will become a prostitute in the city,
and your sons and daughters will fall by the sword.
Your land will be measured and divided up,
And you yourself will die in a pagan country.
And Israel will certainly go into exile, away from their native land.” (7:17)
You should have seen the look on Amaziah’s face when I said that. I didn’t wait around long to see what he’d do.
The fourth object lesson God gave me was a basket of ripe fruit. Do you see these bananas? They’re ripe. In fact, they’re over-ripe. What do you do with over-ripe bananas? You make banana bread, don’t you? They’re not good for much else. When fruit gets over-ripe, it usually needs to be thrown out. God said to me, “I’m ready to throw out the nation of Israel.” In fact, God said, “In that day the songs in the temple will turn to wailing. Many, many bodies–flung everywhere! Silence!”
Right there you have two awful results of God’s judgment–human grief and divine silence. It would be worth our time to look at these a bit more closely. First, God made it clear why He was bringing grief on these people. If He hadn’t given enough reasons already, He added these:
“Hear this, you who trample the needy and do away with the poor of the land, {5} saying, “When will the New Moon be over that we may sell grain, and the Sabbath be ended that we may market wheat?”— skimping the measure, boosting the price and cheating with dishonest scales, {6} buying the poor with silver and the needy for a pair of sandals, selling even the sweepings with the wheat.” (Amos 8:4-6)
Have any of you ever said, “Boy, when will church be over so I can go do what I really want to do?” Have any of you businessmen cut corners on your products or services to make a little more money? You know something, just this morning your pastor told me something very encouraging along this line. He told me that a man in your church quit his job just this week because the product he was selling did not measure up to it claims. And this man needed that job; he had just gone through an extended time of unemployment. But his integrity meant more to him than a paycheck. Sadly, there were very few businessmen in my day who would do that. They were only interested in getting richer, and while they were getting richer, the poor were getting poorer.
Well, God said He would not forget what they had done. He would turn their religious feasts into mourning and their singing into weeping. But there would be another result of God’s judgment besides human grief. That would be divine silence. Here’s the word God told me to deliver to Israel:
“The days are coming,” declares the Sovereign LORD, “when I will send a famine through the land— not a famine of food or a thirst for water, but a famine of hearing the words of the LORD. {12} Men will stagger from sea to sea and wander from north to east, searching for the word of the LORD, but they will not find it.” (Amos 8:11-12)
What this tells me is that people can ignore God to the point that God begins to ignore them. That’s a very dangerous place to be.
The Lord gave me one more object lesson–really a vision. I saw Him standing by the altar with a sword, and He said, “Strike the tops of the pillars so that the thresholds shake. Bring them down on the heads of all the people; those who are left I will kill with the sword. Not one will get away, none will escape.” Can you imagine an earthquake so strong that the wooden beams holding up the roof of this auditorium would splinter and the ceiling would fall down on all of us? Now imagine further that the roof was made of huge stones instead of wood.
He went on to say He would destroy the Northern Kingdom of Israel from the face of the earth. And you know something? Just one generation after I passed on those warnings, God did exactly that. Why do you think they are called “The Ten Lost Tribes of Israel?” There is no Jewish person today who can with certainty trace his ancestors to one of those tribes. That’s how thorough the destruction was.
By the time I delivered the message of that last object lesson, I was very depressed. I was thinking to myself, “Let me go back to my herds and my fig trees. This preaching assignment is not my thing. Who wants to be the bearer of so much bad news?” But then God gave me one last message.
Amos and his final word of hope
It was so encouraging to me, and fortunately I wrote it down, so I can share it with you exactly:
“In that day I will restore David’s fallen tent. I will repair its broken places, restore its ruins, and build it as it used to be, {12} so that they may possess the remnant of Edom and all the nations that bear my name, ” declares the LORD, who will do these things. {13} “The days are coming,” declares the LORD, “when the reaper will be overtaken by the plowman and the planter by the one treading grapes. New wine will drip from the mountains and flow from all the hills. {14} I will bring back my exiled people Israel; they will rebuild the ruined cities and live in them. They will plant vineyards and drink their wine; they will make gardens and eat their fruit. {15} I will plant Israel in their own land, never again to be uprooted from the land I have given them,” says the LORD your God.” (Amos 9:11-15)
In talking to your pastor just before this service, he told me he visited the Holy Land last year. He told me that the exiled people of Israel have returned to the Promised Land. They have rebuilt the ruined cities; they have developed their agriculture to the point that it is some of the finest in the world. Israel is once again a very prosperous nation. But sadly, he said there wasn’t much evidence of spiritual revival yet. I don’t understand that. Do they think their revival as a nation is their own work? Can’t they see that God is the one who has brought them back to the land? I hope they see it soon.
But before I go, I feel I must say a word about your country. Talk about prosperity! Talk about military power and influence in the world today! You have surpassed anything the ancient Israel or modern Israel experienced. Do you think the message of judgment which I delivered to Israel has no relevance for you? Do you think because your nation was founded on God’s principles that therefore you are immune to trouble and tragedy?
I want to tell you something. No nation in the history of the world has survived the kind of moral and spiritual deterioration you are experiencing. When people turn a deaf ear to God, He will eventually turn a deaf ear to them. I know it’s hard to believe that any nation on earth today could defeat your country. But sometimes defeat doesn’t come from other nations. Sometimes it comes from within. When the foundations collapse, the building falls in on itself. I believe that is your greatest danger.
Frankly, it may be too late for your nation. But it’s not too late for you as individuals. The best news your pastor shared with me was that the Messiah whom God promised through all His prophets finally came in the person of Jesus Christ some seven centuries after my day. He was the Suffering Servant that Isaiah spoke of. He paid the penalty for all our sin. Put your faith and trust in Him.
Friends, God has always been looking for a remnant, a faithful group who will stand for truth no matter what the majority does. I want to encourage you to be part of that faithful remnant. Thank you for listening. Shalom!
DATE: June 13, 1999
Tags:
Judgment
Women of leisure
Hope