Even if you are not familiar with the so-called minor prophets, when you do a cursory reading of Amos, you know that you are at least familiar with some of his message in verses like:
Amos 3:3 Can two walk together, except they be agreed?
Amos 4:12 Therefore thus will I do unto thee, O Israel: and because I will do this unto thee, prepare to meet thy God, O Israel.
I enjoyed what I learned from Amos, the man. Amos made no apologies for who he was and where he was from. He was a farmer and a shepherd from the wilderness of Tekoa. Reading the book, you get the sense that he loved what he did and would have been happy spending the rest of his days honoring God in the fields tending sheep. What I love about Amos is that he didn’t stay; he got up and went when God called him as you see in the parenthesis of chapter seven, when the false prophet tried to shut Amos up, his response shows that he was on a mission from God. I suppose I can identify with Amos. I grew up on a 2,600 acre farm, and would have been happy working there all my life, but I was called to a different field.
Amos was a outdoorsman, a farmer and he talked like one. Amos 2:13; Amos 3:12; Amos 4:9 are some examples of how this plainspoken farmer delivered his message. In J.R. Grave’s book The Seven Dispensations, he has an excellent quote from H.H. Tucker on plenary verbal inspiration. Though every word Amos penned was inspired of God, it still incorporated the speech of Amos.
“A man does not cease to be himself when God uses him. His powers are not changed, they are merely controlled so as to effect the very purpose, and no other, which God would accomplish. It is as if a musician were to play first upon a flute and then upon a cornet; each instrument would give its own sound wholly different from the other, but the breath that makes the sound and the genius that inspires the music is the same. Moses, David, Isaiah, James, Paul, Peter, were some many different instruments, though not mechanical instruments, each with personal peculiarities of his own, but all were used by the same God as the media of communicating with men.”
The people of Israel to whom Amos was called to preach were rich and sophisticated. That is one of the sins for which God judged them. They were oppressive and covetousness. They were a materialistic society. Amos prophesied during the height of Israel’s economic success. This country man, this rustic farmer goes to the big city, to the well to do aristocracy and delivers a stern message of impending doom. Imagine a country preacher walking into a high rise in Manhattan and declaring the Word of God to the wealthy, influential men and women of New York. This was Amos’ calling.
One of my favorite passages is One of my favorite verses Amos 4:1 when he calls the ungodly calf worshiping women “Cows”. Could you imagine? Not very nice of God some would say, but true. These people did not need nice, they needed truth. This is why I like Amos, he was there to do his job, preach. The parenthesis I spoke of earlier is in chapter 7:10-17. The enemy prophet, Amaziah had the king’s ear. He was the well favored, well loved priest of the people, but hated and despise by God. The message of the false prophet was to Amos, not the people. “Go away ‘seer’ we are intellectuals here, we do not subscribe to your “old way” of preaching.” Amaziah was a lost man, had no spiritual understanding or knowledge of what it was to really be a prophet. He said “Go back to the country, Go back to your poverty, eat your meager bread with the sheep. Your over your head and no one wants to hear your message, go back home.”
We see the boldness of Amos, because he didn’t go home. “I didn’t ask for this, I would have happily served God in the field, I would have loved God with my family and friends back home. I didn’t ‘inherit’ this job, I didn’t ask for this job, but it is mine, and I’ll do it or die trying.” Amos stresses God’s call and God’s message. The Lord TOOK ME, He laid hold of me, He seized me to this work. “I didn’t send myself here, God sent me.” This isn’t what anyone would want to do, no one would like to preach such a message, but God sent him and woe to him if he did not preach. He sort of told Amaziah “You won’t tell me what to say, you won’t tell me when to leave, nor will you intimidate me as I am following God’s calling in my life.”
Amos wasn’t a seminary man. He didn’t go to the school of the prophets, proper. He went to the true school of the prophets, God’s seminary. We would be much better off with more men of God rather than more seminary students. More men who study God’s Word rather than more men who study other men. More men God calls and uses rather than homiletical machines. There is certainly nothing wrong with education, and I don’t want to seem that I am anit-education; however, if men took four years and studied the bible instead of four years studying at most seminaries they would be much better off.
Amos was a bold country preacher, and one of my favorites.
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Douglas Newell IV
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