Wild Messengers

If you would, turn to Amos 7 unless you have it memorized, and we'll read together. Are you ready?

The Lord God showed me this. He was forming a swarm of locusts at the time the spring crop first began to sprout after the cutting of the king's hay. When the locusts finished eating the vegetation of the land, I said, Lord God, please forgive. How will Jacob survive since he is so small? The Lord relented concerning this. It will not happen, he said. The Lord God showed me this. The Lord God was calling for a judgment by fire. It consumed the great deep and devoured the land. Then I said, Lord God, please stop. How will Jacob survive since he is so small? The Lord relented concerning this. This will not happen either, said the Lord God. He showed me this. The Lord was standing there by a vertical wall with a plumb line in his hand. The Lord asked me, what do you see Amos? I replied, a plumb line. The Lord said, I am setting a plumb line among my people Israel. I will no longer spare them. Isaac's high places will be deserted and Israel's sanctuaries will be in ruins. I will rise up against the house of Jeroboam with a sword. Amaziah, the priest of Bethel sent word to King Jeroboam of Israel saying, Amos has conspired against you right here in the house of Israel. The land cannot endure all his words. For Amos has said this, Jeroboam will die by the sword and Israel will certainly go into exile from its homeland. Then Amaziah said to Amos, go away you seer. Flee to the land of Judah. Earn your living and give your prophecies there but don't ever prophecy at Bethel again for it is the king's sanctuary and a royal temple. So Amos answered Amaziah, I was not a prophet or the son of a prophet. Rather I was a herdsman and I took care of sycamore figs. But the Lord took me from flowing the flock and said to me, go prophesy to my people Israel. Now hear the word of the Lord. You say, do not prophesy against Israel. Do not preach against the house of Isaac. Therefore, this is what the Lord says. Your wife will be a prostitute in the city. Your sons and daughters will fall by the sword and your land will be divided up with a measuring line. You yourself will die on pagan soil and Israel will certainly go into exile from its homeland. — Amos 7

Let's pray. Lord Jesus, we pray that you would come and meet with us today. That you, who are the great prophet, would allow your word to be illuminated in our hearts so that we could understand this. This is another difficult passage for us modern readers. There's a lot in this passage and a lot for us to think about and to chew on. Lord, I pray that you would give us clarity of thought and insight into your word and that ultimately we would see you in it and you would be glorified by all that we do and say in this sermon and in this service. Please bless us, we pray in Jesus' name. Amen.

Historical Context

Okay, I have to give you some background. I'm a history teacher, so I'm qualified because there's a lot of names and a lot of concepts that took place in this passage that you're probably not super familiar with.

This passage mentions a king, Jeroboam the Second. King Jeroboam was the king of the Northern Kingdom. You might recall in past sermons I've talked about how there's a Southern Kingdom and a Northern Kingdom. The Southern Kingdom were the good people. They were the ones that remained in covenant with God. The Northern Kingdom were the poorly behaved people. I sit in the balcony and so I made the analogy that, all of you good people sitting down here, you're like Judah. All you rebels up there in the balcony, you're like the Northern Kingdom of Israel. I say that because I'm up there. That's where I belong up with the rebels. But the point is that Israel was divided. It wasn't one single nation at this point. The northern ten tribes had separated under a king named Jeroboam the first. But this is Jeroboam the second. This is years and years later.

In fact, Jeroboam was without a doubt the most successful king of the Northern Kingdom. Incredibly successful. If you take the entire history of Israel's time being a separated kingdom, Jeroboam actually reigned one fifth of that time. His reign lasted forty years. He was an incredibly successful ruler militarily. He expanded the borders of Israel to almost the extent that they existed under Solomon. He basically conquered everybody around them or subdued them enough or convinced them that Israel's might was strong enough to where he ushered in an incredible period of peace and tranquility within the land.

Not only that, he was known for his unprecedented national wealth and prosperity, again, something that people were comparing to the days of Solomon. There was peace and security on every side, and his name meant "contends for the people." On paper, this guy is it. He's the leader you want. But behind the scenes, what was happening was he was actually oppressing the people in order to achieve this incredible success. And the people who were impoverished in the land knew this intimately. His picturesque perfect kingdom, even with his picturesque perfect name "contends for the people," was all a sham. He was grinding the people into the dirt to make the wealthy wealthier, to make it a beautiful place—Israel—and he was not in any way following after the God of the Bible.

However, the Northern Kingdom, part of what was unique about it was once they separated, once Jeroboam split off from the Southern Kingdom, they lost their center of worship that was in Jerusalem, in the Southern Kingdom. The temple was not a part of Israel. So what do they do? Do they tell their people to go to this other foreign country that they'd separated from in order to go worship God because that's where God said he was to be worshipped? No, that's not what they did. Instead, what Jeroboam the first had done was he set up not one but two centers of worship in the Northern Kingdom. We're gonna be better than those guys in the South. We're gonna have two essential temples, one in Bethel and one in Dan. And in them, he placed golden calves almost as though he didn't know what had happened with Aaron at Mount Sinai. He places golden calves and he literally says to the people, here are the real gods who saved you from your oppression in Egypt.

If you're not familiar, in Exodus when they come out, the people are all sitting around the bottom of Mount Sinai. They're waiting for Moses to come down. They get sick of waiting and Aaron says, okay, fine. Let's build a shrine to this golden cow and we'll worship it since God's taking his sweet time up there with Moses in Mount Sinai. It was a god of convenience that replaced the true God, and you know what they called it? They called it Yahweh. So it looked like real worship, but it wasn't. The people in the Northern Kingdom did the exact same thing.

Now Amaziah, who features prominently in this passage, he's the one that gets in the fight with Amos. Right? He's the priest of the temple at Bethel. He's a false priest who is essentially placed in charge of this false worship, which was designed to essentially secure the national identity of Israel.

Christian Nationalism and False Worship

Now there's something I just have to pause here and just make this point. Because a lot of people today have noticed that there is a tendency within our culture here in America to take the Christian faith and to in some ways put it under our national politics and to make the Christian faith essentially serve our political purposes here in this country. They call it Christian nationalism. Now there's a big debate about this, right? Because on the surface, it feels like Christianity. It feels like we're worshiping God. We're doing what is right and good, and we read the Bible, and we quote the Bible, and we do all the things. But if that religion is subjugated to our politics, is it the real worship of God? That's the question that's being debated.

It's important to understand that God is not satisfied with a worship that is false but looks good on the surface. And this has all kinds of application that goes beyond Christian nationalism because, of course, all of us in our various little ways, we would love to make our Christianity our own personal national religion where it effectively serves our wants and desires.

I heard a preacher once say that if what you're praying for in your prayers is something that you desire more than God, then it may be that that's what you're worshiping and you're using God to get it. We all need to be careful about this because we all have a tendency to do that. It is God who satisfies. It is him who is ultimately satisfying, and that was what was wrong with the worship in Israel. They were more concerned about their comfort, their security, their feeling of "we've done it. We've succeeded. We're a great nation" than they were about worshiping the actual living and true God.

If they had been confirmed in or sincere in worshiping the true God, they would know that the true God was full of all sorts of exhortations: don't just be about the rich. Don't just be about the powerful. Be about the poor. Care for the poor. Care for the other. God was always pushing them away from self-concern and towards the concern of others. That isn't what was at the heart of the true religion of Israel. But Israel had turned away from that to worship two golden cows. And Amaziah was the keeper of the cows. But God wasn't satisfied with that. He sends Amos, and Amos is up there.

Oh, by the way, Amaziah's name means Yahweh is mighty. Do you see the joke that Israel is at this point? You have Jeroboam, the guy who's oppressing the poor in order to achieve everything. His name means contends for the people. What a joke. Meanwhile, you have Amaziah, the worship high priest of the false worship of Yahweh, and his name is Yahweh is mighty. What a joke.

But there's another guy in this story. That's Amos. His name means burden bearer, carried by God. He's the only man whose life matched his name. He's burned with a message, but he's carried by the one who burdened him with that message. He's called from Judah. He's a northern farmer in Judah and he was dirt poor. The kind of farming that he references was the farming that was done for people who couldn't really afford really good food. He didn't get paid much. He was definitely on the low end of the spectrum socioeconomically in Judah. And he's called to go north to the Northern Kingdom, not his people, and deliver this message.

That's our cast of characters, our background. I now want to talk about how unlikely of a prophet Amos is. Because we've talked about prophecy and being called as prophets, but so far we've talked about Isaiah who was probably a member of the aristocracy, the royal family in Judah. And then we've talked about Ezekiel who was part of the priestly class during the exile. You might expect a member of the royal family of Judah to be the spokesperson for God, and a member of the priestly class from Judah, you might expect him to be a spokesperson for God. But now what we're talking about is a dirt farmer essentially who is the spokesperson for the people of God.

Here's what I want you to see: that is not that unusual for scripture. In fact, I would say that Amos is in the top five of least likely prophets, but he's really number three. Here's my top five.

Number five is probably Moses, the prophet that God called to free the people from Egypt who was in fact adopted by the Egyptian royal family—surprise number one. Surprise number two, he was also a convicted murderer in exile. And surprise number three, he didn't think he was that good at speaking. He gets into an argument with God where he's like, "I'm slow of speech and song. Send somebody else." Pretty surprising honestly that Moses makes the top five.

Then there's Jonah. Jonah the prophet who doesn't want to go. God says, "Hey, go" and he goes the other way. The whole book is kind of a comedy about how Jonah thinks he's going to run away from his call and God keeps bringing him back, and he eventually delivers it. Jonah, who didn't want to do it, is pretty unlikely. You would think that God would just find somebody who actually wanted to be called. There's plenty of others you could call, God. Why the guy who stubbornly refuses to do what you want him to do?

Then there's Amos, and we'll get to him.

Then there's Huldah. Huldah's a woman who lived around the time of Isaiah. When the book of the law was found and the king needed somebody, he sent for her instead of Isaiah to come and speak on God's behalf. Now you might be thinking, "Oh yeah, pick the woman as number two." But actually, I'm not picking her because she's a woman. In fact, a woman prophet is not that uncommon in the Old Testament. There are three of them that are named in the Old Testament. In the New Testament, there are at least five who are named. Women prophets are not that unusual. They're actually fairly common. But what is surprising is you have Isaiah, the major prophet, the first one in the book of major prophets who's part of the royal family. You have him at your beckoning call. You could call him, but instead you call this woman that we don't see anywhere else. She's surprising.

And then perhaps the most surprising of all is in Numbers. God spoke through a donkey. I thought about using that as the passage, but then I thought if I did that, some of you would think that was making a political statement. It is what it is, folks. God spoke through a donkey. I don't think that has anything to do with American politics.

But the point is, God can speak through whomever he wants. That is very clear throughout scripture. And oftentimes, he picks the least of these to proclaim his message to others so that everybody knows that it's him.

In fact, Amaziah comes at Amos and he's like, "What are your credentials?" And Amos is like, "I'm a dirt farmer, but God called me." Your status as someone who is called to be a prophet of the Lord God rests on one thing and one thing only: that God called you and gave you his word. You all have his word.

It's in the Bible, and he has called all of us to go with it to preach the gospel. All of us are called. But I think we have a tendency to think about this a little bit more like Amaziah. Imagine the scene, right? They're in the temple. It's like this beautiful temple, because there's all the wealth of Jeroboam II backing this thing. I mean, this is a beautiful, beautiful place. And suddenly a dirt farmer shows up and he says, "Y'all are wrong. And let me tell you why you're wrong." And he's got a whole book about it. I mean, you read Amos, and Amos is known for being a very bold, very direct talking, very justice and mercy oriented kind of prophet. He called it like it was, and he called them out in bold and in no uncertain terms. And we see a little bit of that right at the end of the passage. But the whole book is full of that. So a dirt farmer shows up and starts talking trash. Can you imagine if while I'm preaching, some guy from the street comes in here and starts calling me out on my sin and starts calling all of us out on our sin? I'll tell you the first thing I'll do: "Where did you study theology? I studied at Reformed Theological Seminary under some of the greatest Reformed minds of our time. I have a Master's of Divinity. Well, who are you to come in here and speak to me like that?"

We have a tendency, don't we, to look at things other than just whether someone is called by God. Now let me pause here for a minute because I'm not saying don't be discerning. I'm not saying that anybody that comes off the street is necessarily carrying the word of God. You need to discern whether or not they are actually speaking God's word. But we need to be careful about who we write off.

The Book of Hebrews talks about how we need to be careful about this because it says:

Some of us have entertained angels unaware. — Hebrews

The word "angels" is "messenger." God sends messengers to us all the time in forms that we are unaware of. They don't necessarily have the credentials that we look for when we think about someone that we want to take criticism from or we want to speak God's word to us. There are all sorts of people in your life whom God has placed, who have God's word. And I think that we can be very closed off to that in the same way that Amaziah was. Because we've built our own little national worship center, and we've decided who gets to be the high priest of that and who doesn't, and it's not dirt farmers. It's not those people.

And maybe that's something that you decide politically. It's not the other side of the aisle. They're never going to have anything good to say. Or maybe it's something that you decide socioeconomically. That person doesn't have the success that I do, so I should probably not listen to them. Or maybe it's an age thing. Maybe you're like, "I've been around this sun a few times. This person hasn't. Shut up."

God calls who he calls. And if he talks to you through a donkey or someone that you're not accustomed to listening to, that's probably because he's really just trying to get your attention. But we need to be open to that. We sometimes dismiss the voice of God that he sent. But even more important, I want you to see this: sometimes the voice you dismiss is your own.

Called as Prophets

How many of you think of yourselves as prophets called to go and speak into other people's lives? I'll tell you, I struggle. Every time I get up here and preach, every single time, I'm like, "Man, what is God going to do with me? A broken, messed up guy. I'm supposed to preach? Jeff, are you sure you're not free?"

We have this tendency to think that our own ability to do this is resting upon our own résumés and abilities. And just like I can be prideful, I can be self-deprecating. I can see all of my brokenness and all of my weaknesses, and I know you can too. But that doesn't mean that God hasn't called you.

Amos sees his dirt farming heritage as a part of his résumé. Do you see that when he responds? When Amaziah's like, "Go back to Judah and work for a living." That's what he says. Did you notice that? He's like, "Get a job, man. Go back to Judah. Prophesy down there and earn some money, and then you can come back and talk to me." And Amos says, "No, no, no. I was a dirt farmer. I was minding my own business. I was working, and then God called me to come do this. It was God."

So if God has called you, then you go. He calls the most unlikely prophets. And what? You might be the most unlikely prophet. I might have to revise the list. Below the donkey is me. Maybe that's how you feel, yet he's called us.

Amos's Example of Intercession

I want to spend a little bit of time talking about how Amos shows us how to be a prophet. Notice his intercessions at the beginning. Amos 7:1–6, we'll just look at two of them at first. There's three, but through verse six. So there's two visions and two disasters. Did you notice that?

The first one's locusts. He sees these locusts coming and they're eating the crops and everybody's gonna die from famine. That's the vision. And then the second vision is like fire coming down and consuming everything, including all the water. Did you notice that? It consumes everything. It's just this terrible fire and devours the land. So these two absolutely awful visions. Right? Imagine you're just sitting there and you see these things. That would be horrifying.

And Amos, in both of these sections, he intercedes. Do you see that? He prays to God and he says, God, don't do this to Jacob. He's too small. He could barely handle it. Like you can't let this happen. Please don't let this happen. And both times, God relents. There's something very instructive to us here, those of us who would be prophets. Notice how much time he spends praying and how gut wrenchingly honest and sincere his prayers are for the people that he's about to go prophesy against. I think we are so quick to want to mouth off against the things that we see, the problems that we see, the issues that we see, and so slow to pray for God to actually care for the people who are actually doing those wrong things.

On Pastoral Prayers and Prayer in Divided Culture

Now I'm going to go somewhere a little risky with you this morning. Okay? It's a little bit transparent. And I'm gonna be honest. I mean, I'm trusting you with this. We do pastoral prayers in this church. Most churches I know do pastoral prayers. And most pastors that I know, when they talk about doing pastoral prayers, they are scared right now. Because the tendency in our divided culture is for people to look at pastoral prayers and try to figure out if they are a political statement. Like they're praying for this group of people, not for this group of people. Or why didn't you pray for this instead of this? All of those concerns by the way are legitimate. Some of you have approached me and asked those questions. Keep them coming because they're good questions. We need to be praying for everybody. I want to be pushed on that. I want to be pushed on that. We need to be pushed on that.

We spent a long time at our last elders retreat talking about how do we pray? How do we deal with this dynamic that is our culture? And how do we absolutely, like, how do we justly pray for everybody? So we need to have those conversations. So if you're concerned about our prayers, keep coming. That's not the point of this. But I do want you to see this. We're not largely doing these prayers like for you, you know? We're praying for the people that need prayer, right? And we're not picking our favorites. And we're not doing it to make some sort of political statement. As a church, we are in the business of virtuous virtue signaling. You know that? That's what we do. But that's not what we're doing in prayer. In prayer, we're not signaling to you virtue mostly. We're just getting on our knees before God and asking him to intercede. Please, Lord, Jacob is so small. And we need to be doing it more than just in pastoral prayers. We need to be doing it more and more. And I think if we do it enough, maybe the questions will subside. We need to be praying more. We need to be on our knees before God asking, begging for him to have mercy on all of the people around us. That's what prophecy looks like to begin with. It's not the end of this passage. It's the beginning.

The Plumb Line Vision

I want you to see too the second vision or third vision rather, the second section of visions, there's a plumb line. Right? And this is incredibly important for this passage because, right, he sees this destruction and he prays, please don't let that happen. Then this plumb line comes in and notice he doesn't pray. God, please don't let the plumb line come. That's interesting and very notable, that difference. But also notice the difference. A plumb line isn't going to cause destruction. Usually, I mean, anybody out there in fear of a plumb line? It's a measuring device to measure whether something is upright or not. It's a different kind of judgment than it is foreshadowing. Like, I am coming, and I'm going to show Jacob that he ain't right.

It's like that scene in Mary Poppins. You remember Mary Poppins? She shows up with a tape measure. She starts measuring the kids and it tells you what kind of, like, all about what's wrong with them. Then she measures herself and she's like practically perfect in every way. Mary Poppins. Right? That's the plumb line. What's it pointing to? It's pointing to the one who came who was upright. It's pointing to Jesus. He's talking about Jesus himself coming and notice Amos isn't saying, like, don't do it. He can't. He can't deny the fact that they're crooked. He himself is crooked. He's like, bring on the plumb line. And this is something that I think is very important for us to remember too. Amos can't intercede for God there because only Jesus could.

Only Jesus is the one who could come as the perfect one and say, spare the crooked wall. I'll take the punishment for it. Amos can't do that because he himself is crooked. He's not the plumb line. Brothers and sisters, we as prophets, we are echoes in the same way that the former prophets were foreshadows of the real prophet who is Jesus Christ. He's the only one that could intercede in that kind of way. He's the only one that could bring about the salvation of the world. He is the only one that could both intercede on a level far above Amos and bring about salvation and reconciliation and bring about the writing of the wall without the judgment of fire and locusts. Amos was a lesser prophet. He was a foreshadow. Jesus Christ was the real prophet. Do you see that? All of the prophets wind up here. He's the centerpiece, the one that really matters. He's the living word. There is no way you can come with the word of God more greatly than the living word himself. And we who are called to be prophets were echoes. We echo that. And so we are similar to our forebearers who foreshadowed him. We have limitations. We can pray that God intercede for the people who are lost, but we can't save them. Only Jesus can. We should pray and we should call out injustice. We should call out where things are wrong. But we should always do that with the hope and the mind that there is one prophet who actually can write everything. The one who actually comes, who is the plumb line, who actually brings about salvation.

You notice that the passage ends with a confrontation. The one with, your wife is gonna be a prostitute. That's a real winsome statement, isn't it? Amos comes with the fire with the heat. And I think a lot of times Christians, we look at the Old Testament passages and we say, we're supposed to be bold. That's true. That's right. We should be bold. We should be bold in calling out injustice after we've prayed. And we should be bold with the knowledge of the plumb line, the greater prophet, our King Jesus. Our boldness isn't meant to just tell people to go to hell. Our boldness is meant to warn them of hell so that they will go to Jesus. That is what a prophet is, especially in the New Testament. You are called to do this. We are called to do this. All of us together.

Levels of Prophecy

Now I'm aware that there's a passage in the New Testament. Someone brought this up to me recently, and I've been thinking about it all week. Where Paul says, some are called to be prophets. Do you notice that? That implies not all of us are. So I've had to wrestle with that and I've thought about it. And here's my conclusion on that. Because Joel two says all of us will be. All of us are called to it. All of us have the capability of it. And actually, if you read Corinthians, Paul's saying, I would that all of you would be prophets. He wants everybody to be a prophet. He's just saying the reality is not all of you are doing that.

I think there are stages of prophecy. There's probably three levels biblically. What I'm doing is one level, preaching. The bible talks about those who are called to steward the mysteries of God on a regular basis. That's what we do as teaching elders when we come up and we teach. And we're held to a very high standard because of that. The passages about that are actually pretty scary to me. Those are the things that make me feel like, man, I've got to pray a lot that God would work through sinful me.

Then I think there's a bottom tier where I think all of us who are in Christ, we have been given the word. At the very minimum, all of you prophesied today when we read this passage together. You went to church and prophesied. Tell your charismatic friends that you go to a Presbyterian church and everybody in the whole room was prophesying. They'll be so excited because we all are. When you go to someone and you preach the gospel, when you read God's word, you are bringing God's word. You are a prophet.

And then I think there's kind of a middle level. Have you ever experienced this where you're talking to somebody and they skillfully, maybe even beyond explanation, speak to you a word from the bible and apply it to your life and you're like, whew. You're knocked on your butt. Have you ever experienced that? I experience it all the time. And you know who the group that does it the most to me? You. You guys. I'm supposed to be the preacher, but so often you come to me and I hear a word from the Lord because you're reading a passage of scripture and applying it to my life. That is that second tier, I think, that Paul is talking about the gift of prophecy where God supernaturally enables someone to help apply the word to you and your life, and it's really powerful.

Brothers and sisters, you do it all the time. You can do it. You're capable of it. God has called you to it. You have his word. You have Christ Jesus. You have the spirit.

The Rocks Will Cry Out

Last point to wrap things up. We're going to come into Holy Week here not too long. On Palm Sunday when people were coming in, when Jesus was coming into worship for the Passover feast, people were shouting, "Hosanna, Hosanna. Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord." And the Pharisees and the Sadducees, they show up and they rebuke Jesus. They're like, "Tell your people to be quiet." That's Amaziah, right? "Go back to Judah with this garbage, you Nazarene, worthless person. You can't be the one who's come to be the Messiah. You can't be the one who's the real prophet. These people need to be quiet."

What does Jesus say? He says, well, if they're quiet, you know what's going to happen? The rocks are going to cry out. The rocks. That would make number one on the list, right, if God started speaking through inanimate objects. He's done that too, by the way. I suppose the burning bush should have made the list.

The point, though, isn't, "Hey, it doesn't matter if these people do this or not." The point is, don't let the rocks do it. Take it upon yourself to be the one that worships Jesus publicly in a way that brings him glory and calls attention to him being the plumb line, the salvation of the world, the one whom we can trust. Don't leave that to somebody else.

Do you believe that God calls wild messengers? He does. He's calling all of us. He's called all of you. He's called me. Let's go to the living word and ask him to empower us to do this faithfully.

Prayer

Lord Jesus, we don't want it to be the rocks. Let it be us that cries out. Lord, we are all kinds of unworthy. But Lord, you are all kinds of worthy and have made us your messengers. For whatever reason, Lord, in many ways rocks would be better. But Lord, what a privilege it is to be called to minister your word, to proclaim the hope of the gospel, to go and warn people of the danger that they're in, to tell them that if they reject the word of the Lord that they're headed towards exile.

But also to remind them that there is one who longs to relent from any punishment, who wants to make them right, who sent you the plumb line, the perfect one to bear the brunt of the judgment that they deserved so that they might be made perfect in him. Lord, help us to preach that boldly. Help us to preach that everywhere. Help us not to hold back and think that just because we're sinful or broken that your overwhelming goodness can't work through us.

Lord, sweep us up in an amazing wave of your spirit's work. Lord, because there are people, all kinds of people, not just my kinds of people, not just that occupy my heart and mind, but the people that I don't even know about that are suffering that need to hear your gospel. Lord, empower your prophets to speak. Mobilize us and use us. We pray this in your name. Amen.