What we can learn from the prophets - Amos

With our present global financial crisis perhaps we can learn something from the Old testament Prophets. Here is my sermon from Sunday when we were looking at Amos. Particularly referring to Chapter 8.

Amos:

This is the third sermon in our short series of looking at the prophets and seeing what they have to say to us today.

In many ways the prophets are quite hard to come to terms with, they appear quite strange people even to their society of the day and yet, when we look at prophecy we see so clearly God speaking not only to the people of that day but to us now.

Think for a moment what you think is the key to the problems we have in our society today and in the financial system?

I’m not talking about complicated fiscal issues here – I am just thinking about basic human issues – what do you think?

Answers included: Greed,  materialism, spending more than you have etc.

Then look at that reading we had from Amos this morning – verse 4-5

The basic problems of society, stem from the same problems centuries on – greed and the desire for more and more…

So when we look at Amos and the other prophets we see some basic similarities between people and we can be challenged from what they have to say to us.

So lets think for a moment who this person Amos was.

Well what we do know about him is that he was probably quite an ordinary person, he wasn’t amazingly well educated, he wasn’t one of the prophets officially associated with the temple,

He grew up within an agricultural community and it is likely that he worked on the land in some way – some argue that he was infact a shepherd.

But we do know he had a call from God to speak out to the people of the time over a period of some 2 years, in around 750 BC.

So what is his key message in this small book.

Well it seems that a key theme within the book is that of the justice and righteousness.

He speaks to the people clearly on these subjects, and as he speaks to them there is a sense that they should know what he is talking about.

He doesn’t have to spell out why these themes are important – they just are.

The people should know why – because the need for both is so steeped within the history and experience the Israelite people have in their relationship with God.

The people of Israel knew their relationship with God was based on the covenant they had with him.
And this covenantal relationship was based upon the principles of justice and righteousness, they were central to this relationship.

And particularly the themes of justice and righteousness in the book of Amos are seen with reference to how they treat each other.

In many ways in this book we see God’s anger and it appears like his patience is wearing thin with the people of Israel.

The passage we read this morning speaks very clearly like this. – the time is coming says the lord, when things will change..

And of course we have the ability of hindsight and know that it was not long after this book was written that the people of Israel were taken off into captivity by Assyria.

What is important though when we look at this book and other books where we see God’s judgement clearly indicated is that we see this also in relationship to God’s forgiveness.

When we look at the old testament we see it through the eyes of the new testament and the love and forgiveness shown to us by Jesus Christ on the cross.

So within the book of Amos generally there is a  sense of God getting very inpatient with the people because of their constant falling away from him.

And in response to that he speaks of the consequences.

One of these is clear from chapter 8 and I think this speaks very clearly to us today as well.

God says through Amos in verse 10:

The time is 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.

A famine of hearing God’s word – let’s think about that for a moment.

If we did not hear God’s word what would that mean to our society or world.

Not hearing God’s words would mean that there would no longer be a moral compass with which to guide our lives.

What would that result be:

            Breakdown of family life,

            Breakdown of community life

            Lack of concern for others,

            Self- interest abounding.

            Distrust of each other and violence,

            An individulalistic culture  and the list would go on and on.

And as we look at that list we see how much of that sort of thing goes on today.

Has God given us a famine – or actually are we causing a famine of God’s word.

If we live without reference to him then how is God going to speak out- will there be a famine of God’s word in our world.

God calls us to be his body on the earth and we have a duty then to also speak God’s word to others.

That’s not by standing on street corners – though some of us may be called to do this.

But by living our lives in such a way that God speaks out through our actions and through our words.

How often do we give a Christian viewpoint on a situation?

How often are we led to write a letter, to speak out in a conversation, to go and do something that we know is right.

If we are called to be Christ’s body on earth then we are called to be his voice box as well.

If we don’t speak then just as in Amos there will be a famine of hearing the words of the Lord.

So for me this is my first challenge from this passage today in Amos.

Then there are a few more that I want to suggest to us.

And the next concerns our worship.

            Verse 3 Amos says- the Songs of the temple shall become wailings in that day…

            Chapter 5: 21- I hate, I despise your festivals, and I take no delight in your solemn assemblies.

It seems quite strange to us that God seems so anti – worship,

After all is that not what we are called to do.

But God recognises that the worship is not truly of the heart because it doesn’t inform their behaviour.

This comes back to what worship is truly about.

Worship is not something we do once a week – but worship is about our whole lives.

We worship together to draw close to God and to encourage each other, to spend time with God,  but this is just one day one hour even of the week, for the rest of the week then our worship is in different ways.

We worship in how we serve God in serving others, we worship in our quiet times of prayer, we worship in how we have that conversation with another person who is in need, we worship in how we support each other and our families.

As we grow in our relationship with God we begin to see more and more of our lives as worship – we offer our bodies as a living sacrifice we say in the post communion prayer in our common worship liturgy.

For the people of the time of Amos they were getting it wrong because they were seeing worship as something separate – do we fall short in the same way.

Then we also see a challenge concerning justice and self interest.

The people were criticised for their attitudes to the less fortunate in their society.

Verse 6: buying the poor for silver and the needy for a pair of sandals.

What is our attitude to justice.

We may say we care for the poor and marginalised in our society in the world but do we actually do anything about it.

We hear a great deal of talk about justice in our society – we hear talk of what I really want is justice – when some injustice has been done to someone else.

But actually do we really care about justice.

If we did then we would care about fair trade,  we would concern ourselves with issues of human trafficking, of the plight of the homeless, and many other issues.

Do we need to be reminded like the people of Israel of God’s concern for justice and act accordingly.

And how do we fare on a scale of one to ten of self interest?

What about how we view our money – do we give away to charity at the start of the month as a priority of our spending or the end when we see what is left.

I am sure we could all be challenged in many ways when it comes to thinking about self interest rather than thinking what God would want from us in principles of justice and self interest.

So we can see how even a book written to a people many thousands of years ago is still just as applicable today – we need to let Amos speak to us and challenge us once more.