Be God's Family
S3 E31. Amos: Silence in the Temple
This is the BeGod's Light Podcast with Ben Greenbaum and Mark Elsasser and here in 2024, we're continuing our journey through the Old Testament, and we've been looking at the patriarchs and the Moses stories, we've looked at the conquest of the Promised Land, and the establishment of the Kingdom with Saul and David and Solomon, and now we're in the time of the Divided Kingdom and all these prophets who are trying to speak to these kings and the people to draw them back to God, and we're up to the Book of Amos, the Book of Amos. I had a great, great, great something, some number of greats grandfather named Amos. I don't know how far back, but I remember that on some kind of family tree thing. Have you got any Amos's in your background there? Amos is a pretty good name. It is, not to my knowledge, though. You don't encounter Amos much these days. I had another one named Minus. Are you serious? I was probably going to see him in the math major. No, his name was Minus. Minus, was that like a family? I think it was M-I-N-O-S, maybe. That's some sort of Amish type name or something. Well, I don't know. It was a ways back in the old family tree thing. But I don't think there's a prophet Minus, but there is a prophet named Amos. Interesting enough, though, having, you know, we had Joel last week in Amos this week. I don't think I mentioned this in last week's podcast, but Joel and Amos were the two first Old Testament books that I studied. Crazy enough. Are you serious? I am. They might be the last two that I study. I don't know. When I first became a Christian, my buddy Mike, who had been a believer for a while, we started a Bible study and used some study from the navigators on Joel, Amos, and maybe Obadiah. I remember there was a third prophet, but I can't remember which one. It was a third minor prophet. But yeah, Joel and Amos, that was two of the first Old Testament books I ever studied. Ladies and gentlemen, we have a scholar on Amos with us today, and his name has been... That was 25 plus years ago, and I don't remember much from the study. Okay. Well, I'm sure it's in there somewhere. If we can rattle loose, we'll look at Amos. I mentioned last week that we have a number of aspects to help you go through this Old Testament study. And I'm telling you, especially now, as we're getting into at least these northern kings and southern kings, northern prophets and southern prophets and all those things, I encourage you to jump in on listening to the sermons that we do or reading the devotions and the things that are part of that. And from the devotions for this week on Amos, I wrote this, the prophet Amos ministered at a complacent period in the northern kingdom of Israel's history. Jerobo on the second was a very evil king who encouraged idol worship. He followed the ways of his namesake, Jerobo on the first, who was the first king of Israel, over 150 years before this time period when Amos ministered. So we've got somebody named Amos, who's the prophet, ministering at a time of a guy named Jerobo on, who was really named after somebody 150 years earlier. I guess we've had a George Washington and a George Bush and a George Bush. Any other Georges we had as presidents? I can't remember. So we have namesakes and we have names that hang on that endure through time and Jeroboam was one of those. What a rotten name to be given though because Jeroboam, the first, was not a good man. He was a bad king in the northern kingdom of Israel and his namesake followed suit. So are you named after anybody super important? Nope. A guy in the Bible? No. It was just a good Jewish name. Just a good, just a good name. Yeah. Just a good, good name. Okay. Well, we know Jeroboam was probably named after this king or it was just maybe it was a common name in that time period. And here he is following in Jeroboam the first pattern of idolatry, idol worship. Of course we see this over and over again. And Amos steps into this story and in Amos chapter seven, he uses all kinds of picturesque language. Let's just talk about these sort of in rapid fire or a little bit versus one through three. This is what the sovereign Lord showed me, Amos wrote. He was preparing swarms of locusts. We had locusts last week with Joel in the southern kingdom. Yeah, there was locusts this week in the northern kingdom. He was preparing swarms of locusts after the king's share had been harvested. And just as the late crops were coming up, when they had stripped the land clean, I cried out, sovereign Lord forgive. How can Jacob, which is the name for Israel, how can Jacob survive? He is so small. So the Lord relented. This will not happen, the Lord said. Any more on locusts? That story? No. There's a lot of locusts throughout the scriptures. Locusts all over the place. When you're an agricultural society, it's a pretty bad thing. Yeah, locusts are horrible. Yeah. Yeah, locusts mean you don't eat. So then it goes on with another imagery, verse four, this is what the sovereign Lord showed me. Amos wrote, the sovereign Lord was calling for judgment by fire. It dried up the great deep and devoured the land. Then I cried out, sovereign Lord, I beg you, stop. How can Jacob that is Israel survive? He is so small. So the Lord relented. This will not happen either. The sovereign Lord said. So there's a second judgment that's coming into play. And somehow Amos is interacting with God and God is saying, okay, I'll back off. At least in what he's showing him. Verse seven is the third one of these here in chapter one. This is what he showed me, the Lord was standing by a wall that had been built true to plum with a plum line in his hand. And the Lord asked me, what do you see, Amos? A plum line, I replied, then the Lord said, look, I am setting a plum line among my people Israel. I will spare them no longer. So the wall must have been straight, but the people weren't lined up. And he says in verse nine, the high places and we remember the high places are where the idol worship took place. The high places of Isaac will be destroyed. The sanctuaries of Israel will be ruined. With my sword, I will rise against the house of Jeroboam. So you got these back to back to back pieces of imagery, locusts, fire and a plum line. And what's the basic message that God is trying to get through to the people of the northern kingdom of Israel? Here's God's exact standard and you've deviated from it. You stand in crooked. You do. You do. And so actually I was at a habitat build a couple of weeks ago and before they didn't let me near the saw, but before the circular saw was put to a board, they dropped the plum line to make sure that the cut was not crooked. And clearly the people of God within this time period had and over the last pre I mean, it really shows God's compassion that the people of Israel of the northern kingdom for a hundred and fifty straight years had just been constantly living in perpetual disobedience. And you see God's patience with them, but God has shown his standard to his people. He has given his law to his people. His people have deviated from that. They are essentially living crooked lives and disobedience to God. And God is going to judge them. So Amos calls them out and calls out the king Jeroboam because in this message from God with my sword, I'll rise against the house of Jeroboam. So he's and he's going against the priests. The sanctuaries of Israel will be ruined. He's going for it. I mean, Amos is not holding back from what God has revealed to him to say. And so, whether it's king or priest or people, they're all getting the full Monty of his prophetic word, which is a better stop doing what you're doing. And I'm going to say he doesn't exactly get love for his message because in verse 10, it says, "Then Amaziah, the priest of Bethel, sent a message to Jeroboam king of Israel." And he's taste-tattling here. Amos is raising a conspiracy against you in the very heart of Israel. The land cannot bear all his words, or this is what Amos is saying, Jeroboam will die but the sword. And Israel will surely go into exile away from their native land. Then Amaziah said directly to the prophet Amos, the priest speaking to the prophet, "Get out, you see her. Go back to the land of Judah, the southern kingdom. Earn your bread there and do your prophesying there. Don't prophesy any more at Bethel here in the northern kingdom because this is the king's sanctuary and the temple of the kingdom." So it's very confrontational back with Amos. Sometimes the person delivering, we see this almost always with these prophets, but the person delivering the hard truth, it doesn't go well for that person very often, does it? No, and to boot to make sure that we speak into this maybe a little bit, but oftentimes it's not simply coming from the king or the king's cabinet, for instance, pushing back against the prophet, it's the religious establishment as well that is pushing back against the prophet because many of the priests and many of the, there are a whole host of false prophets as well during this time, are giving and delivering a message that is contrary to God's desire and yet they claim to be God's spokesperson. They claim to be the ones that are presenting the true voice of God even in the midst of their false proclamation, and so that's one of those things where it's a reminder to us to make sure that even as Mark and I preach or others, Troy preaches, whoever it might be, and whatever setting you might be in does the word that is being preached and proclaim a line with the objective truth to God. And so scripture provides us our plumb line. It is God's self revelation to us as to what is true, right, good, whole and loving. Is the message that's being proclaimed that is said to be rooted in scripture? Is it truly aligned with the biblical witness because what we have in Amazonia and others is their witness is not in a line with God's word, with God's law? Yeah, you'd think that the priest would be, would be grateful like, yes, bring people back to God, bring people back to the truth, but that's not always the way it is. Nope. And so this priest is pushing against his prophet because the priest is probably complicit with all this stuff going on in the idol worship as well as the worship of the one true God and like all mixed up and lost in this because the plumb line showing that he's standing crooked too. Yeah. Yeah, that's what I would see. In verse 14, Amos, the prophet answers Amazonia, the priest and Amos said, I was neither a prophet nor the son of a prophet, but I was a shepherd and I also took care of sycamore fig trees to care of fruit and animals, it was a farmer, but the Lord took me from tending the flock and said to me, go prophesy to my people, Israel, I just want to just stop there for a minute because I resonate with this guy a little bit, you know, I don't come from a ministry background, I was raised in the faith my entire life, but my dad was a truck driver and my mom worked for a radiologist when I was growing up as kind of took x-rays and secretary I worked on kind of stuff and so I didn't really come like from this line or this heritage, you know, kind of a thing and yet God called me and I remember specifically where and when that it became clear that I was supposed to become a pastor and I would hope and I remember exactly where I was when God called me to not just live into the faith of my childhood, but to proclaim Jesus as my savior. I was a kid, I was young, I was a church camp. I like this message of Amos, he's saying it's not because of my credentials or my heritage or anything else, it's because God directly called me to be a prophet. Yeah, it is and it is, I mean, it has direct practicality for our own time because you see within certain denominational context, are you, there's a sense of pedigree that exists within the non methodist church, there is in some ways a divide between, you know, the licensed local pastor and the ordained clergy or the ordained deacon or whatever it might be and then within other within other church context, you know, it's the pedigree of a particular degree from a particular seminary, whatever it might be that then grants you particular authority, whether, whether what you're saying or proclaiming is true or not. And so yeah, we can oftentimes fall into that kind of disposition of, well, what is your pedigree? And I love Amos, he's just like, man, I was, but I was content to be a shepherd and tend to my fig trees, but God came a calling. And so now I'm prophesying against the people of Israel, which includes this priest that has all the pedigree in the world. Sure. Yeah. Family and everything that was passed down, you know, he had to be the right tribe and all these kinds of things I'm sure in order to be able to do this. So he's basically saying, look, look, buddy, I've got authority and my authority is not my pedigree. My authority is the Lord himself who spoke to me. So then he goes into verse 16, now then hear the word of the Lord. You say, do not prophesy against Israel. Go back to Judah, stop preaching against the descendants of Isaac. Therefore, this is what the Lord says, 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 surely go into exile away from their native land. Now we know from when the most scholars think that Joel was doing his ministry that it was within 25 at the most 50 years after this, that all this came to be true. Assyria came and conquered the northern kingdom of Israel and wiped them off the face of the earth. And it's even today called the 10 lost tribes that they were gone. And so Amos gives this prophetic word and says, if you don't stop doing these things, it's not just locust or invading army here or there, you're going to be destroyed and that the cities are going to be flattened. You're going to be taking an exile, you'll die in a pagan land, buddy, like everybody should pay attention. This is the word of the Lord. Yet we know from historical context, they just put their fingers in their ears like nah, nah, nah, nah, nah, nah, nah, it's like I'm not listening to what you have to say. And we know that in the historical context, they continued their ways of idolatry until the bitter end when it all came to be true, why? Why they didn't repent. I had no clue. Well, I don't people listen. But when it's so clear, like, why are we so stubborn as human beings? Yeah. We are stubborn and again, in some ways, you see a parallel vision of this that occurs and happens within the church today. We see Jesus speaking in revelation to the churches, calling them to repent, where he says, I will remove my lampstand from you. And so the number of churches over time and not that every church that has died has been the result of unfaithfulness, it could have been the result of, you know, the GM factory closing in some town and everybody moving out of town. But there have been a host of churches, there have been a host of denominations that have ultimately withered on the vine and I mean, essentially died out because of a lack of willingness to repent, to turn their hearts to the Lord. And that's what we see with the people of Israel that God gives them warning after warning after warning and is incredibly patient with them over time and calling them to repentance. It wasn't like all of a sudden, I think as you mentioned earlier, you know, it wasn't like all of a sudden God delivered this message and said, what are you doing? Repent and boom, just like drop the hammer on them. I mean, he's called them to repent over, you know, hundreds of years really. And yet they have just persisted in their disobedience. It was almost like association with God, you know, as the people of God as God's nation was enough rather than we need to live into his call upon our lives. I think that sometimes we get, I think sometimes within our current environment, within our own, again, context, there is that sense among some who are in vocational ministry and some who, you know, are a part of the body of Christ universal that have this sense that, well, you know, God's on my side. And we don't take the word of God seriously. We don't take God's call upon our life seriously. We don't take God's mission, stated mission to go and make disciples of all nations. We don't take that seriously. And when we fail to live into God's call, what we're going to find is that the church will become a specific church, not the church universal, but we'll find that, you know, it has a lifespan. It has a lifespan. I think too many times we treat ourselves like we're the chairman of the board, the CEO and our board members are the father and son and Holy Spirit. And they're here to support my vision and my ideas and my way of life, whether that's on a personal level or a larger level, like a local church or a denomination or a nation or whatever you want to say. And we almost look like God's here to support me rather than saying, no, my, it's my job to line up with the plumb line that he's dropping, like, if I don't line up with that, I'm in trouble. He goes on to another imagery, which we've looked at locus and fire and a plumb line in chapter eight. There's yet another one. It's a basket of ripe fruit. This is what the sovereign Lord says, chapter eight verse one, that's what the sovereign Lord says showed me a basket of ripe fruit, which is good for a guy that grew figs. What do you see? Amos. He asked a basket of ripe fruit. Then the Lord said to me, the time is ripe for my people Israel. I will spare them no longer so that the message gets super hard here. And here's the part I think they should, they should make them sad. It's in verse three, in that day, declares the sovereign Lord, the songs in the temple will turn to whaling. Many, many bodies flung everywhere, silence. This concept of silence in the temple, that the temple will go from a place where people gather to sing the songs of God to whaling to the bodies, the humans being forced out of there to complete emptiness. The temple is silent. I take this bend to be like the people won't be there, but God may even withdraw his presence from what they're currently doing, which is like, I'm going to go to the temple of God and worship. And then when I get done, I'm going to stop on the way home with the high place and worship an idol or whatever else. It's a warning shot sort of to me in my life and I think us more corporately as a church or Christians in our lives when we go to our churches on Sunday morning and we sing the songs of faith and pray the prayers and listen to the sermon or whatever we do and then we immediately leave there and we're back into the idolatry of consumerism or the social and moral ills of our day and we just say, it's okay and I wonder at times if God is saying that is just not an okay way to live, it seems to be what Amos is driving at here, like you living this duplicitous life and saying, I got the temple here with my priests, but I've got this over here and it's all okay and I'll merge them together that at some point there's silence in the temple. You referenced, you know, empty churches or churches that have closed and I'm not saying God has withdrawn from that church or the community or anything like that, but there's a warning bell here. What do you make of this aspect of what Amos is driving at? I do think there is that element of, hey, you know, I mean, God is, as we've talked about compassionate, he's abounding in love, we see even him in the midst of his declared discipline and relenting at different points and patiently calling and mercifully calling the people to repentance and so understanding that God wants us to experience the fullness of his goodness and love and an aspect of experiencing that is living as he has called us to, because that's where true joy is found, our identity in Christ should be the root of our joy, which is going to lead us to cherish all that he cherishes, it's going to lead us to love what he loves, it's going to lead us, as I think it says earlier in Amos, to hate that which is evil. When we don't live in alignment with God's will and desire when we corporately, as the body of Christ, do not live in alignment with God's will and desire, you know, make no mistake, we are withering on the vine. We have become ultimately a social club of our own creation rather rather than the body of Christ and in that, you know, over time, sadly, I've seen and encountered a multitude of churches that have withered away, clearly, clearly, because of their lack of faithfulness to God's word. And again, that's not to say that every church that has closed its doors, that it's because of that, but we would be lying to say that for some churches, in fact, for many churches, whose doors have shut down or who have shut, that that hasn't been at the root of it. And maybe even on a more personal level in some of our own lives, I mean, COVID exposed some things when most churches in America dropped attendance by 30% or something like that, I don't know what the exact numbers are, but why? Why would something cause people to say, yeah, I really don't need to foster my faith anymore. It's this sort of like a very personal, tangible levels on this and the bigger ones for churches or communities or nations that we have to look at this chapter moves on in chapter eight of Amos, and he talks about people who want to do their religious thing just to get it over with. And verse five, they say, when will the new moon be over so we can go out and sell grain? When will the Sabbath be ended? So we can go to them back to the market and saw our wheat skimping, he says, on the measure, twisting the price, cheating with this on a scales, buying the poor with silver and the needy with a pair of sandals, selling even the sweepings with the wheat, the dirt that gets swept up and you put it in the scales and you sell it and you're ripping people off. Like, again, it's a smudge, like, you can't just say, I'm going to the temple. I'm going to the church. I'm going to do my religious duty. And then I'm going to go live any way I want. It's not good with that. It's just, I mean, it's like throughout Scripture. That is not the way for the people of God to live. And so he says there's, it goes on in this chapter in verse seven, says the Lord won't forget and then in verses nine through 11, God's going to bring forth mourning and famine and then an invasion, and that invasion, again, 25 or 40 or 40 years later would be the Assyrians who come in and utterly end the Northern Kingdom forever. I mean, it's, it's, it's gone. It's only restored when the Southern Kingdom in a future time come a remnant comes back and then they kind of repopulate the North and, and, and all those things, but it's, it's gone. And to me, this is a, a call to all of us to not lead this life of, well, I'm sort of in with God, but I'm sort of into myself too. And the, the story of Amos, this farmer guy who was called by God is maybe a story that's pertinent for all of us. Is that what you studied all those decades ago when you studied Amos? Actually, it was a navigators Bible study. So odds are that was at the root of it. I have no doubt. Yeah, I remember doing some navigators stuff when I was in college and it was pretty solid stuff. It is. It is solid stuff. It was funny because I was, you know, doing stuff. I was the president of our campus crusade for Christ chapter at the University of New Orleans. And how long have you been a Christian at that point? A hot second. Yeah. It should not have been, I shouldn't have, I shouldn't, I was a Christian for a hot second. I was made youth director at a church and like literally didn't know anything biblically or otherwise. I just knew that Jesus, you know, had redeemed me. And then, uh, yeah, at University of New Orleans, like, why don't you be our, our campus crusade for Christ president? I'm like, uh, okay. What does that entail? Not much. We just need a name. I'm like, okay. You can use mine. But we did. We use navigators Bible studies. That's awesome. Yeah. Yeah. Well, you know, God can use a shepherd. He can use a son of a trucker and a son of a New Orleans. What was your dad's job? My dad was a special ed teacher and then became a special administrator for our, uh, for our school board and kind of headed up the special ed department for school. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, you know, God uses all kinds of people. And so those of you listening, you think, well, you're disqualified. Nope. You're not. You just might be made president of navigators before you know it. So, so hang in there. Well, next week we're going to take a look at yet another prophet. This guy is more famous. His name is Isaiah and he prophesied about Jesus 700 years before he was born. So we'll take a look at some of those prophecies. If you want to jump in deeper, go to our church's website, fishers, UMC.org or find the church app and click on the be God's light link that'll take you to more elements in this year long study of the Old Testament, including we have daily Bible readings, devotions and poems and weekly sermons and weekly podcast episodes. So if you want to stay up to date with all of that, we encourage you to rate and follow wherever you get your podcasts. Until next time, thanks for listening and God bless. [MUSIC PLAYING]
Mark Ellcessor and Ben Greenbaum look at the ministry of the prophet Amos, and his picturesque warnings to the people to turn back to God.