Amos 7.7-21 "Plumb Line"

I. Not about Telling the Future

Usually, when you hear about prophecy in the Bible, the first thing you think of is someone telling the future. When we look at prophecy, and therefore prophets, we figure that we are going to find out something about what is going to happen. If you went to a class on “prophecy” this is what you would expect… especially if the class was called “end times prophecy”.

But I’m going to let you in on a secret of the Bible. Okay, it’s not really a secret, but it might as well be one because we sure don’t seem to get it as modern day Christians. The secret is this: the purpose of prophecy in the Bible isn’t to tell the future. Actually, getting the future told is something that is outlawed in scripture. It’s called fortune telling and it is not something that God wants his children to do. Instead, what God desires is for us, his children, to trust the future into his hands. Jesus’ words on this are very clear: “So do not worry, saying, ‘what shall we eat?’ or ‘what shall we drink?’ or ‘what shall we wear?’ For the pagans run after all these things, and your heavenly Father knows that you need them. But seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well. Do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself.” (Matthew 6:31-34)

So, if prophecy isn’t about finding out the future, what is it for? Well, first of all, sometimes prophets do predict the future. This is a part of their message to the people. But it is by no means the center of their message. Kind of like how Jesus healed the sick, but this wasn’t the center of his mission on this earth. And prophecy that predicts the future never does this just for the sake of doing so. No, the predictions are there to help the rest of the prophet’s message. And the rest of the prophet’s message is the important part. What is the rest of the prophet’s message? What is prophecy really about? It is about God communicating his will, his desire, his priorities to his people. The prophet comes to a group of people to tell them what God desires from them. Sometimes they listen to the prophet, other times they don’t. The prophet has many different tools that they may use. Some prophets would heal. Others would tell stories. And many would talk about what will happen to people if they don’t turn from their ways. A prophet doesn’t tell the future just to show off. No, they tell it so that people can know the consequences of their actions and they tell it so that people can know the love of God.

Amos does both these things. He prophecies horrible things that will happen to the nation of Israel if they do not turn from their ways. And at the end of the book, in chapter 9, he prophecies that God will save a group of them, bring them out of their time of trial and give them a wonderful future. Why? Because he loves his people. And so, we see a prophet in the midst of his prophesying, predicting the future, but this is not the center of his message. And yet, when we look at prophecy in the Bible, we often look at it to try to discover what it will say about the future or the present. By doing this we are missing the point. Yes, scripture tells us the future, but again it is made very clear that we cannot expect to understand prophecy until it has already come to pass. But God did want prophecy to show up in scripture, it has a place there, it has a reason. And the reason is to help us understand what it is that God desires from us, his people. And so, as we look at Amos, that we read a piece of today, we can see what it is that God desires from us.

II. A Shepherd Prophet

Now, Amos was by no means the first of the prophets to the people of Israel. We have Elijah, Elisha, Samuel and many more that came before him. And there were actually schools in Amos’ day where people trained to be prophets. Again, people weren’t being trained to tell the future, but to share God’s truth with God’s people. Basically, the prophet schools were like seminary and the “sons of prophets” were seminary students. But Amos did bring something new to his message. He was the first writer prophet. He shared his message orally, speaking it out to those who needed to hear it. But then he went back home and wrote down his message as well, perhaps realizing that the message God had given him was for more than just those who he had spoken it to. And it is a good thing, for when we look at Amos’ message we see that it speaks to us, here, today.

Amos was not popular with the religious leaders in his day. We read this morning about a priest who came to him telling him to go back home and make his living in his own town. This is where Amos made it clear that he wasn’t a prophet by his own choice. It wasn’t a living for him. Instead, it was a call that had been put upon his heart by God. He wasn’t giving his message to make money or to make himself famous. He hadn’t gone to school to become a prophet. No, God had given him a message, and as God’s follower, as God’s child, he could do nothing but share that message. And so a shepherd found himself preaching God’s truth to people who did not want to hear it.

We all aren’t called to be prophets, but God does put a call on our lives as well. I go back to 1^st Corinthians 12 where we are told that the Holy Spirit gives different gifts to each of us, his children. What are you doing with the gift God has given you? You could just go back to what you’ve done your whole life or you could step out like Amos did and use that gift, whatever it may be, to further God’s kingdom.

III. Measuring Up

Amos has an important question for the people of his day. And I think it’s an important question that we need to ask today. The question is this: Do you measure up?

Are you living the life that God has called you to? Oh, you’re here at church. You sing your worship. You make sacrifices. But are you measuring up? Amos has some harsh words for us. He tells us that God hates religious feasts and assemblies when the people are not living out God’s call in their lives. That’s a pretty harsh word, “hate”. He uses another one, “despise”. You see, the people of the day were worshipping God and doing the things they thought they should do with their spiritual lives. But they weren’t letting their worship of God carry over to the rest of their lives. They took advantage of the poor. They thought that since life was good it meant that God was blessing them and they could do anything they wanted. So they sold people who owed them money into slavery. They took bribes from the rich so they could do whatever they wanted. They treated the wealthy with justice, but justice did not extend to the poor. And because they did not let true justice rule them, their worship was meaningless to God.

Amos says that God is holding up a plumb line to us, to our structure to our faith, to our devotion. He is checking to see if we are built straight. Now, this is a dangerous message because it seems to go against our understanding of the gospel. It can possibly come across as some sort of works righteousness. But it is not. Works righteousness tells us that we are saved by doing things. Amos isn’t talking about our salvation. Rather, he is talking about something much more important. More important than salvation? How can that be? No, what Amos is talking about is whether we are truly following God. What Amos is checking us for is to see if we are living the life that God calls us to. The people in Amos’ day did not measure up. They were worshipping good, but they did not live out the justice they claimed to follow. Do we as individuals measure up? Do we as a church measure up? Do we as a society measure up? I don’t believe so. But I don’t think it is because of all the moral sins in the society around us. I think it is because we don’t allow God’s justice to rule our decision-making. I think we are making the same mistake that the people of Amos’ day made. We think that the stuff we have is proof that God approves of our lifestyle. It doesn’t. I move you back to that plumb line. Do you measure up? Are you built straight? Are you built on the rock that is Jesus? Many of us have faith in Christ but it is built on sand. You may ask how can that be, if the faith is in Christ how can it be built on sand? I think that a large part of it is that many people’s faith is built on fear, and fear is a sandy foundation, one that will not last. Perhaps we come to faith because we are afraid of some sin we may have committed. Perhaps we come to faith because we are afraid of the unknown. Most likely we come to faith because we are afraid of what will happen to us when we die.

But there is a much better call to faith than fear. Of course, this is God’s love through Jesus. When we realize that God loves us for who we are. When we realize that God loves all people, then our faith is built on the solid rock. Then we will find that we are sturdy and strong and we will find ourselves living out the life that God has called us to. Our response to Jesus, the rock, will be to love others as we love ourselves. We will be able to do this because we will know God’s love for us. And when our faith is built on God’s love then we will live the lives of justice that Amos, the shepherd prophet, calls us to. Amen.