Sermon
based Upon Amos 8: 1-12
Dr.
Charles J. Tomlin
Flat
Rock-Zion Baptist Partnership
June
8th, 2014 (Prophets 1/10)
Some years
ago there was a widow in South Africa. Her husband had died and had left her
with eight children to raise—no easy feat, considering the fact that she poor,
making only about two dollars a week as a seamstress, and considering the fact
that she was black in a country where the apartheid system meant that blacks
had virtually no rights. But by working long and hard, she eventually was able
to save up enough money to buy 400 bricks, enough bricks to fix up the
dilapidated house that she and her children were living in.
But when the
truck pulled up to deliver her bricks, the man unloaded only 250 bricks. Right
away the woman asked when she would be getting the rest of her bricks—after
all, she had paid for 400 bricks. But the man told her to bug off, that 250
bricks were all the bricks she was going to get from him. The woman stared at
him and said, "I will never forget this. But that’s okay, you don’t have
to worry about the bricks. The God I believe in is the protector of the widow
and the fatherless. And somehow you’re going to know that."
Two weeks
later that same man pulled up in front of her house and unloaded the 150 bricks
he owed her. "What are you doing?" the woman asked. The man explained
that two other houses he was building had mysteriously burned to the ground,
and he was worried that perhaps God had something to do with it. As far as that
man was concerned, God really was with that widow, even if he might not have
thought so at first. (Jim Wallis, The
Soul of Politics: Beyond "Religious Right" and "Secular
Left" (New
York: Harcourt Brace, 1995), 187-88.
The God of
the Bible is a God who cares, but he is also the God who brings judgment on
those who don’t care. The renown Jewish
scholar Abraham Hershel once wrote, “The things that horrified the prophets are
still now daily occurrences in our world.
There is no society to which Amos’ words would not apply.” (The Prophets,
Abraham Joshua Herchel, p. 3).
Prophets like Amos are important to us today because
they were ‘truth tellers.’ It is wrong to think of the prophets as
fortune tellers, or predictors of the future, but they are ‘forth-tellers’ and
their words came true in the future because they told the truth. It is also important to remember that the
prophets were unpopular and practically unnoticed when they first
preached. Almost no one liked them. Few listened to them. Hardly anyone wanted them around, until long after
they were dead. Even though disliked and detested then, we
still read the prophets because they told the truth, the whole truth, and nothing
but the truth.
JUDGMENT:
THE GOD WHO ROARS
At the center of prophetic preaching was a
message of coming judgment or punishment sent by God. These words, more than anything else, were
words of warning. The ‘judgmental’
preaching of the prophets was not merely an opinion from the prophet, but it
was declared as ‘the word of the Lord”. Even though our first prophet, Amos, opens
by saying “The words of Amos…..”
(1.1), the ultimate heart, soul and source of his message is made clear in
verse 3 as “Thus says the LORD”….” There is no more important phrase
repeated throughout Hebrew prophecy than to come to understand what the LORD
has to say about the matter. Amos makes
God’s message more graphically clear, saying that when God speaks, “The LORD roars (like a lion) from Zion….” (v. 2). Worse than that, Amos says that when they try
to run from this roaring ‘lion’ they
only “run into a ‘bear’ (5.19). You can run, but you can’t hide.
Few want to hear negative
words like ‘judgment’. As one person told me once after the worship
service, “I come to worship to be lifted
up, not put down.”
In one church,
after I suggested we might have more people remember our announcements if we
put them at the end, one lady said she didn’t like it because she wanted to
leave the worship service on a high note, with a positive message ringing in
her ears. Of course, she had a point with which most of
us would agree. When we come to church,
we want to hear optimistic words of faith, hope, and love, and not negativity, judgment
or pessimism. We would rather have the
preaching of someone like Joel Osteen or Joyce Meyer than the preaching of an
Amos or Joel of the Bible. Recently, a
Huffington Post article told of a pastor who dared name Joel Osteen and Joyce
Meyer false prophets. Their versions of ‘prosperity
gospel’ overlook the prophetic aspects of Scripture. Speaking of the unobvious fallacy in the preaching of Joyce Meyer, Rick Henderson
writes: When
I first heard her tell her story I was deeply moved and impressed. She is an
amazing example of overcoming hurts and abuse. She will forever have my
admiration and respect in that regard. Furthermore, she gives spectacular
advice. If my wife or if one of my daughters went to her in a moment of crisis,
I believe they would return with magnificently helpful advice. If they went to
her for teaching, they would return with deadly heresy. (http://www.huffingtonpost.com/pastor-rick-henderson/osteen-meyer-prosperity-gospel_b_3790384.html).
The most dangerous
heresy is not whole lies, but half-truths. In fact, a Yiddish proverb rightly says that ‘a half-truth
is still a whole lie’. What’s so
dangerous about ‘half-truths’ is that tell us lies making us think we are
hearing the truth. This is why people did not like prophets: they
told the whole truth.
The prophecy of
Amos opens with God’s people with gladly listening to the truth about the sins
of other nations and the promise that God will eventually rain down judgments upon
them: “For three transgressions of
Damascus, and for four, I will not revoke the punishment…..” (1: 3).
The same goes for Gaza, for Tyre, for Edom, for the Ammorites, for Moab,
and even for Judah. But then, after Amos
names the sins of people surrounding Israel, he concludes by informing God’s own
people in Israel that the worst judgment is about to rain down upon them. It’s hardly any wonder religious leaders told
Amos, “Go home, prophet” (7.12). It was then Amos reminded them that he was ‘not a prophet, nor the son of a prophet’ (7.14),
but just a ‘cornfield preacher” who came to tell God’s people the truth they didn’t
want to hear.
The
truth no one wanted to hear was simple and direct: Remember
Sodom and Gomorrah? “I will do the same to you. Prepare to Meet Your God, O Israel! (Amos
4:11-12)…. The day of the Lord is coming!
(5.20; 8.9ff). Most Hebrews thought the day of the LORD was the day in the
future when God would send the Messiah to deliver Israel from all her
enemies. But because of Israel’s unacknowledged
and unconfessed sins (5.12), Amos envisions the day of the LORD as a day in the
not too distant future when God will deliver Israel into the hands of
her enemies. As Amos 8:9 says:
“On
that day, says the Lord GOD, I will make the sun go down at noon, and darken
the earth in broad daylight. I will turn your feasts into mourning, and all
your songs into lamentation; I will bring sackcloth on all loins, and baldness
on every head; I will make it like the mourning for an only son, and the end of
it like a bitter day. The time
is surely coming, says the Lord GOD, when I will send a famine on the land; not
a famine of bread, or a thirst for water, but of hearing the words of the
LORD. They shall wander from sea to sea,
and from north to east; they shall run to and fro, seeking the word of the
LORD, but they shall not find it (Amo 8:9-12 NRS).
Judgment
is coming, but this is still not what God wants. In the opening verses of chapter 7, Amos says
that God has attempted several times to plea before God on Israel’s behalf (7:
2-3; 5-6), but Amos now informs them with visions of a plumb line (7:7-9), a
basket of summer fruit (8: 1-3) and an altar where people are struck dead on
the spot (9: 1-3), Amos is convinced that God has had enough. Israel is so out of line, so spoiled, and
become so blind to what is good (3:10) that there is no way to avoid the destructive
judgment (9.10) that God is about to release upon them.
JUSTICE:
THE GOD WHO RULES
The ‘grounds’
for God’s coming Judgment upon Israel is not what you think. It is not because Israel does not worship,
nor is it that Israel fails to be sincere in her worship of the true God. The
religious festivals, the solemn assemblies go on, and the offerings ‘plates’
are full. The music of worship still fills the air (5.21-23). Still, something most important is
still missing.
The
most important word from Amos is not judgment, but justice. The world we live in is a ‘moral universe’ that demands that follow
the rule of justice. We will not keep
breaking this moral law and live, but these moral rules of life will finally
end up breaking us, if we do not follow them.
There is an ‘ought’ built into the world and if we try to avoid the
things we must, should or ought to do, we will not be able to avoid the God’s
righteous justice. As one writer has put
it, “God
is the good we are supposed to do”.
The truth of God may be more than what is just, fair and right, but the
truth of God is never less than doing the just, fair and right we should
do. God proves that he still rules this
world, because his moral laws cannot not be ignored nor taken for granted
without consequences.
In
his Les Miserable, Victor Hugo gives a graphic description of the battle of
Waterloo, indicating how the Duke of Wellington won this battle, not by his
superior generalship and not by his greater resources, but by the unexpected
and uncontrollable course of events. One
of several possible explanations for Napoleon’s defeat is single out by Hugo: “Was
it possible that Napoleon should win this battle? We answer, no! Why?
Because of Wellington? Because of
Blucher? No, because of God. For
Bonaparte to be a conqueror at Waterloo was not in the law of the nineteenth century. Another series of facts were preparing in
which Napoleon had no place. The
ill-will of events had long been announced.
It was time that this vast man should fall…. Napoleon had been impeached before the
infinite and his fall was decreed. He
vexed God. Waterloo is not a battle; it
is a change of front in the universe.” (Quoted
from Joseph M. Getty’s in “Hark the Trumpet”, p. 79).
In the same way, we can wonder why Adolf Hitler escaped so many
attempts on his life from many Christians and at the hands of many other moral
leaders who realized he had to go. They tried
so many times to take him out, but it always failed. Why did God allow so many innocent people to
die, and such an evil tyrant to continue to live until the final moments of the
war? Why would God allow that? What we often forget to calculate into the
picture is how Hitler’s own role had been part of the will and wish of the
German people themselves. People always
obtain the kind of leader they want. It
was the Germans themselves who voted and wished that madman into power. Only when God’s judgment fell down fully upon
all those who put Hitler into power, did God allow Hitler to finally take his
fall. Before Hitler could fall, Germany
had to fall. Before Germany fell, it had
to be completely judged to have failed.
As we
contemplate the strong, stern and sharp words of Amos, we must remember that the
real danger of becoming deafened by the noise of this world that we will not
only cease to hear God’s word, but we will cease to care to hear it, until it
is too late. Amos’ word is that: Our God, the God of the
Bible, is a God who cares for those who are widows, for those who are poor, and
for those who are powerless. “They sell
the righteous for silver and they sell the needy for the price of a pair of
shoes” (2.6) In their accumulated wealth
and luxury Israel has become the
very people they used to hate. The
prophet thunders: “Let justice roll down
like waters, and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream (5.24).
In Amos’ time, it was the best of times, and it was the worst of
times. The divide between rich and poor got wider and
the whole economic system became corrupt.
As people became more and more obsessed with money, they paid less and
less attention to God. Do you think
there’s any parallel between what was going on in Amos’ day, some 700 years
before Jesus, and what’s going on in our society today? Back in Amos’ day, it
was all about money, money, money. Back
in Amos’ day, it was all about greed, greed, greed. Back in Amos’ day, fewer and fewer people
really seemed to care about God.
Edward Bowen, tells how several years ago a
husband and wife went on vacation to the southern Mexican city of Oaxaca. One
warm afternoon they felt like taking a break from their sight-seeing, so they
sat down at a table at an outside café and ordered something cold to drink. A
table or two away from them they noticed another American couple. At one point,
they saw the man motion for some nearby children to come over to their table.
The little ones were somewhat dirty and rather malnourished, and they were in
the square trying to sell gum and small souvenirs to the tourists in hopes of
bringing in at least a little bit of money for their impoverished families.
The American tourist at the other table
proceeded to make the children this offer. He told them that he would pay them
so many pesos for every lap they ran around the square. So off the children
raced. Even though it was a very hot, humid day, they raced frantically around
that square, sweat pouring from their faces. All the time, the tourist kept
laughing at them and yelling, "Faster! Faster!" As long as they could
last, the children raced around and around the square because they and their
families needed money—they needed money to survive from one day to the next—and
that was the only way, they figured, they’d be able to get it. In the end,
after quite some time had gone past and the man finished making fools of the
children, he tossed a couple of American dollars in their direction and went on
his way.
Bowen continues: "In our day, just like in Amos’ day, we so
often assume that getting more and more money for ourselves is our number one
priority in life. We often assume our only
true responsibility is to look out for ourselves and to use our money to satisfy
our own pleasures, to satisfy our own desires. In our day, just like in Amos’ day, we so
often assume that if someone is poor, if someone has less than we do, then
that’s their problem—we don’t see the needs they face as being of any real
concern to us."
But the message that Amos brings to us, the
message that God wants us to hear, is that there is a limit to God’s patience. There is only so much greed, there is only so much mistreatment of the poor
that God is going to stand for. If we don’t change our ways, God says, then we
need to be prepared to suffer the consequences.
The consequences are going to be perhaps more devastating and
earth-shattering than anything we ever imagined. So let’s hear and heed the word we know is
true, and let justice come down." Amen.
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