November 20, 2008
Amos 7 : 14 and 15
14. Then Amos answered and said to Amaziah, “I am not a prophet, nor am I the Son of a prophet; for I am a herdsman and a grower of sycamore figs.”
15. “ But the Lord took me from following the flock and the Lord said to me, go prophesy to my people Israel.”
Until Jesus returns in the clouds, the Gospel of Jesus Christ will always be counter culture. No culture, society or government will ever amount to anything close to what the Lord considers righteous. Yet revival and reform keep occurring among us when the unrighteousness of this world and of its inhumanity is confessed. Of late, at least the last 500 years, the Bible has played a significant role in this reformation process, through its truth the proper access to God is set before the people and our co-operation expected.
The other way God touches every culture is through the fire of men or women called out to speak for Him. Amos was such a man through whom God confronted his culture. The culture of Israel was eerily similar to 21st century America. Success was their God, they took the current blessings for granted and assumed they had somehow earned them. Wrongly they licensed themselves to be a “taking” culture. Business takes, unions take, ministers take, politicians take, wall street (small w) takes, government workers take, teachers take, corporate executives take, and the list goes on and on. Self interest is the rule of the day.
To these excesses, Amos relayed God’s message, return to me and my ways. This message included a warning that if change, reform or revival did not happen, their circumstances would change. Today we have all of biblical and modern history, to document how consistently God required that His people treat each other with what is called the golden rule. This is not Sunday school stuff, it is the meat of the Gospel which is extremely difficult to live out, most of us don’t even bother trying.
A prophet can either be a sanctioned station within a culture or a direct empowerment from God. Hopefully every person operating in the prophetic sphere has more of the later, sadly this is rare. However, almost every time great changes need to be made, God sets apart a specific man to convey his message of change. Amos sets these two mandates in contrast in verses 14 and 15, denying his sanctioned status, almost relishing in that reality, and extolling his calling to “go prophesy to my people Israel.” Are we listening?
G. Goslaw
