And please turn in your Bibles to Amos 7, which you'll find on page 769 in the Pew Bibles. We've moved on to a section in Amos that contains a series of five visions. Last week, we looked at the first three of those five visions. And the third vision was a vision of a plumb line in which God promised that he was going to measure his people Israel. And as we saw, since the people didn't measure up to God's standards, he promised that the land shall be laid to waste and that he will rise against the house of Jeroboam with the sword. And into this context we pick up in verse 10 of Amos 7 in what is a bit of a biographical interlude which recounts a conflict that Amos has with Amaziah. So again I'll be reading from Amos chapter 7 beginning with verse 10. Then Amaziah, the priest of Bethel, sent to Jeroboam, king of Israel, saying, Amos has conspired against you in the midst of the house of Israel. The land is not able to bear all his words. For thus Amos has said, Jeroboam shall die by the sword, and Israel must go into exile away from his land. And Amaziah said to Amos, O seer, go, flee away to the land of Judah, and eat bread there, and prophesy there, but never again prophesy at Bethel, for it is the king's sanctuary, and it is a temple of the kingdom. Then Amos answered and said to Amaziah, I was no prophet, nor a prophet's son, but I was a herdsman, and a dresser of sycamore figs, but the Lord took me from following the flock, and the Lord said to me, Go, prophesy to my people Israel. Now, therefore, hear the word of the Lord. You say, Do not prophesy against Israel, and do not preach against the house of Isaac. Therefore, thus says the Lord, Your wife shall be a prostitute in the city, and your sons and your daughters shall fall by the sword, and your land shall be divided up with a measuring line. You yourself shall die in an unclean land, and Israel shall surely go into exile away from its land." This is the word of God that he's graciously given to his people. Let's pray and ask for his blessing on it this evening. Our Father in heaven, you have taught us that man does not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of the Lord. And through the psalmist, you have told us to open your mouth wide and I will fill it. And so we come to you this evening asking for you to give us the grace to open our mouths wide that we might feed on your word. Fill us with it, for we pray this in Jesus' name. Amen. Well, in 11th grade English, my English teacher gave us a year-end assignment. We had to give a speech to the entire class on any topic that we wanted for essentially almost any amount of time that we wanted. And to give a few examples, he would name some of the things that people had done previously. And one thing that he loved to talk about was how the prior year, a student had given a discussion on his worldview, how he had explained to the class what he believed in and just articulated it. Now, I don't remember exactly what that worldview was, but it wasn't a Christian worldview. Well, my brother, who was a little bit bolder than me in high school, saw this as the perfect opportunity. And so he took his time in class to explain the gospel to the class, what the Bible actually teaches, what it teaches about sin, about our need for a savior, about Jesus who came to lead that perfect life, to die on the cross for our sins, about Jesus who is who was risen and is coming again and about the absolute necessity of believing in Jesus and Jesus alone to be saved. Well, to his credit, my teacher allowed my brother to continue. He didn't cut him off as perhaps some might have feared he would have done. But after the class, he took my brother aside and told him that he had put him in an awkward position, that it was an awkward position to have someone essentially proselytizing in the middle of class and sharing this Christian worldview. And I kind of had the sense that had he known ahead of time that someone might do this, he would have made it off limits. And who knows, maybe he did that in the future. But the irony struck me there in 11th grade that he had lauded and said how wonderful it was that someone talked about their worldview. But as soon as someone wanted to talk about the Christian worldview, he started to become very nervous. He didn't want to have anyone in class talking about this. Or perhaps some of you have similar experiences or similar stories at some point in your life. It's a fairly common thing, whenever the name of Jesus is mentioned, for people to maybe get uptight or to say, no, no, let's not talk about that. We can talk about anything else, but don't preach that. This isn't the place for it. We don't want to hear that. And Amos received that kind of pushback that we're reading in tonight's text, certainly to a higher degree than my brother faced. The stakes were certainly much higher for Amos. Perhaps even his life was in danger, not just a you put me in an awkward position kind of statement after class. And as we look at that, and as we look at this account, from this text we learn that we must preach the gospel even when it's unpopular, even when people are telling us not to do it. Or more generally, we could expand that principle to say that this text calls you to serve God faithfully instead of fearing man. It calls you to serve God faithfully in whatever he's called you to do instead of fearing man. And so as we think about that idea, we'll look at the pressure not to preach, and then we'll consider God's call to preach, and then God's judgment for those who refuse to listen. So first, Let's look at verses 10 to 13 where we see here the pressure. not to preach. Or again, we could say maybe more generally, the pressure to be unfaithful to God's calling on your life. Now for Amos, this pressure comes from Amaziah, the priest of Bethel. And as we look at this pressure that Amaziah puts on Amos, J.A. Motyer has identified several ways in which Amos is tested and pressured in this text by Amaziah. And so the first way we see in verses 10 to 11, first, Amaziah misrepresents Amos. He misrepresents his message. And look there again. Amaziah claims that Amos is conspiring against the king, and then he embellishes Amos' words. Look at how he summarizes it in verse 11. For thus Amos has said, Jeroboam shall die by the sword and Israel shall go into exile away from his land. Did you catch that exaggeration from what Amos is doing and saying? First of all, there is no conspiracy, is there? There's no plot to overthrow the king. Amos isn't conspiring with anyone. He's simply repeating God's message that he has given to him. Second of all, Amos never said that Jeroboam would die by the sword. He did say Israel would go out into exile, but he never said Jeroboam would die by the sword. If we look back at chapter 7, verse 9, which is perhaps where Amaziah is getting this from, he says that God will rise against the house of Jeroboam with the sword. A little different there. So God is going to rise against Jeroboam's house, not against Jeroboam himself. And in fact, it seems that Jeroboam did die peacefully. And in fact, after Jeroboam reigned, his son sat on his throne after him. But God did rise against the house of Jeroboam. Jeroboam's son only reigned for six months, and then he was killed. And so do you see that exaggeration there? That there's a twisting of Amos' words to put him in a worse possible light and to pressure him to stop preaching. And this pressure can still be applied today through exaggeration when people don't like what we're saying. And as I alluded to earlier, this pressure can be more broadly applied to any time that someone doesn't want us to be faithful to God's calling. Not just necessarily preaching the gospel. And I say this, the reason I say that and I'm broadening this principle is because Amos was called by God to preach. And God also calls us to do other things. And just as Amos was called by God to preach and someone opposed that calling for his life, so too sometimes you may be called to do something else. and someone might oppose that in your life. And so people can misrepresent what we say as they oppose us in being faithful to God's calling in our life. And I think that that's a particularly easy thing to do in today's day and age. I mean, we have 140-character tweets and, like, six-second talking points, right? And so it's very easy, I think, to twist and distort and label and exaggerate in today's day and age. And maybe you've heard that before. Have you ever listened to someone talking, maybe summarizing what Christians think? and they're saying what the Bible teaches and what Christians believe and you're listening to them and you're thinking, that's not what we believe. The Bible doesn't teach that. That's not the gospel. And that's what they're saying we believe. Or perhaps I think about in today's day and age when we articulate what we believe about marriage or someone else says what Christians believe about marriage. And it sounds like we're against love and we want people to be miserable. That's not the Christian view of marriage. It's very easy for people to distort, to distort and exaggerate what someone is saying, to try to silence them. Others may face a more personal form of misrepresentation, kind of like Amos did, where someone specifically doesn't like you, and so specifically twists or distorts your own particular words. God's word gives us comfort if you ever find yourself in such a situation. In Matthew 5.11 Jesus says, blessed are you when others revile you and persecute you and utter all kinds of evil against you falsely on my account. So God sees, God knows and God blesses his people as they are faithful even as people are unjustly twisting their words. So that's the test of misrepresentation. The second test, Monture says, is one of temptation in verse 12. In particular, there are two temptations here, self-interest and security, self-interest and security. Amaziah here tells Amos to flee away to the land of Judah and eat bread there and prophesy there. And implied in this response is the people in the south would make a better audience. Your stipend as a prophet might go up in the South. You might actually have people who are paying attention to you when they're speaking and not with angry eyebrows while you're speaking. Who wouldn't want to hear that? There also seems to be an implicit threat here, an implicit threat. The call to flee away is a way of saying his life is in danger. You know, like, look, get out of town because you're not safe here. And so if Amos wants to be safe, he needs to go back home, back north. Or rather, back south, I'm sorry. Back south. So a similar pressure can be applied today. So perhaps for you, your relationships aren't safe, right? Many Christians throughout the world have had their families cut them off or disowned them for coming to faith in Jesus. Some of you may not have been cut off, but you still face that subtle relationship, that relational pressure in your families, at least pressure not to take this Jesus thing too seriously, right? Or not to talk about him. If you want your relationship with your family to be good, then we need to have an understanding that we don't talk about Jesus here, right? And if you want to really ruin this relationship, go ahead and talk about Jesus. For others of you, it may be your job that's not safe. If you are faithful to the Lord, maybe they want you to do something that you feel like you can't do or to work on Sundays. Or other people may even have pressure to conform to the cultural norms and maybe even face lawsuits for standing up for biblical views and standing on biblical principles. So when God calls us to be faithful, there may be those who put pressure on us and tempt us essentially with our own self-interest and security. So there's those two tests, the test of misrepresentation and the test of temptation. There's the third test here, and that's a confrontation with authority, a confrontation with authority. Amaziah here tells Amos to never again prophesy Bethel, for it is the king's sanctuary and it is the temple of the kingdom. So Amaziah here is appealing to the king's authority, and he's appealing to the authority of this religious site, this temple where actually Amaziah serves as its priest. Kind of like saying, hey, I'm the religious guy in town, don't speak that message here in my house. Now, if you'll remember, we've looked at, in previous weeks, the prior references to Bethel, and we saw that Bethel was a significant place in the history of Israel. So after the Northern Kingdom and the Southern Kingdom split apart, King Jeroboam I, not the same Jeroboam who's king now while Amos is preaching, but King Jeroboam I had a problem. The problem is if people continue to go to Jerusalem to worship, to worship God as he had commanded, he was afraid that their hearts, their allegiance might go back to the Davidic king. And so he had a politically savvy solution. He was going to set up new temples in Dan in the northern end. and in Bethel on the southern end, and he would make golden calves and place them in both of these sites and tell the people that these are the gods who brought them out of Egypt, and the people could go worship there, and their hearts wouldn't be drawn back to the Davidic king. And I suppose from a political perspective, that might seem like a shrewd, maybe even wise move to some. And yet these actions were actually directly forbidden by God's law. God's people were never, under any circumstance, to make carved image, and they were also required to worship in the place that the Lord, their God, had chosen to put his name, which was Jerusalem. And so God sees these, and these are clear violations of God's law and completely unacceptable actions. And so do you see what Amaziah is doing? He's appealing to a completely illegitimate authority when he appeals to the temple in Bethel. And even the king's authority itself is subordinate to God's authority. So when the Lord God sends a message, you can't appeal to the king and say, be quiet, the king says so. No, God is over the king. And so we see that confrontation with authority that Amos had. And Amos isn't alone, is he? Throughout the Bible we see Christians and God's people confronting authority. The disciples experienced this in the book of Acts when they were told not to preach in Jesus's name. And at several points the apostles were arrested and sometimes even beaten and thrown in prison for preaching the gospel. And they were told to stop it, to cut it out. Throughout the church's history, Jesus' call to preach has been encountered by opposition from governing authorities. It's been encountered opposition from false gods claiming religious authority, claiming that this is the true God. Even in other parts of the world today people are forced or they try to force Christians at least to convert to their false religion or face death. Some have had to flee as refugees as they have this confrontation of authorities. So these are all various kinds of temptations and trials that we face and that Amos faced as people tell us not to preach and as Amaziah told Amos not to preach. But when we see these kind of things happening, we shouldn't be surprised. This shouldn't shock us that this happened to Amos. It shouldn't shock us when we're confronted. 1 Peter 4.12 says, beloved, do not be surprised at the fiery trial when it comes upon you to test you as though something strange were happening to you. This isn't strange, this isn't unusual when you get some kickback. Likewise, in John 15, 18, Jesus says, if the world hates you, know that it hated me before it hated you. If someone hates you on the account of Christ, know that the world first hated Jesus. So we see here in verses 10 to 13 that pressure not to preach. Well in contrast we see in verses 14 to 17 the call to preach, the call to preach. And the focus here shifts from Amaziah now back to Amos and how Amos is going to respond And in Amos's response, we see two basic ideas. One, that God calls actually ordinary people to preach and ordinary people to lead faithful lives. And this supports the second and perhaps the bigger idea that Amos must preach God's message even if it's unpopular. or again if we kind of expanded that principle, we must be faithful to what God has called us to do instead of fearing man's opinion. Amos begins his response by observing that he was only an ordinary shepherd. Look again at verse 14. I was no prophet, nor a prophet's son, but I was a herdsman and a dresser of sycamore figs, he says. See that? A prophet wasn't his chosen vocation. He didn't fill out some aptitude test and come out with a prophet preacher, this is what you should do. No, he was just an ordinary person who worked with sycamore trees and worked with taking care of sheep. It seems like he had no formal education, nothing that would have qualified him for this position. This identification of him as a shepherd echoes the introduction to the book. In Amos 1.1 we read that he was among the shepherds of Tekoa, which was a small town in Judah located about five miles south of Bethlehem and ten miles south of Jerusalem. So he has an ordinary vocation in a small town. There's nothing significant about Amos, nothing significant about his hometown, nothing significant about his upbringing that would make him a natural fit to be bold enough to go to the northern kingdom and preach to the king of Israel this kind of message. So nothing made him fit. except the person who was giving him the call, except the God who called him. Look again at verse 15. But the Lord took me from following the flock, and the Lord said to me, go prophesy to my people Israel. You see, Amos is preaching on God's authority and in God's power. That is what equips and enables him. And this calling of ordinary people is actually the way God ordinarily seems to work throughout the Bible. We read in Acts 4 of a time when Peter and John are arrested and they're brought before the rulers and the scribes. And as these leaders listen to Peter speaking and they observe his boldness, Acts 4 says this, that when they saw the boldness of Peter and John and perceived that they were uneducated, common men, they were astonished. It's not what people expect, but yet it's often the way God works. Likewise, 1 Corinthians 1 says this. Consider your calling, brothers. Not many of you were wise according to the worldly standards. Not many were powerful. Not many were of noble birth. But God chose what is foolish in the world to shame the wise. God chose what is weak in the world to shame the strong. God chose what is low and despised in the world, even things that are not, to bring to nothing things that are, so that no human being might boast in the presence of God. That's the way our God works. And so the fact that God would take an ordinary shepherd like Amos from following his sheep and call him to preach is what we would expect as we read the rest of scripture. And it should humble us. It should humble us if we're ever tempted to become proud. Are you ever tempted to be proud? It's something that many of us struggle with, right? We begin to think too highly of ourselves any time we give anything resembling a good answer or a good piece of advice to someone, any time that we seem even remotely useful to someone else. We can begin to think that it's because of our own wisdom. And when we begin to become proud, And yet, as we look at God's word, we see that God chooses the weak and works through the weak, so he leaves us no room for pride. It should also comfort us when we are tempted towards feeling inadequate or a temptation of self-loathing where we think, I can't do anything. I'm no good. I could not possibly be used by God. And yet here, in those moments, this word gives you encouragement to know that God takes ordinary people like you and uses you to serve his kingdom purposes. So Amos is called to preach despite his lowly background, or maybe even because of his lowly background, to show that this message is truly from God. Which leads to the bigger idea here, that if the message is truly from God, then it must be spoken. It must be preached, even if it's unpopular, and even if it has to be preached through a weak human vessel. You see, Amos hears this word from man not to preach. He hears Amaziah telling him, do not preach. And yet he has a call from God to preach. So what's he gonna do? What's the conclusion gonna be? Earlier in Amos 3, 8, it says, the lion has roared. Who will not fear? The Lord God has spoken. Who can but prophesy? There's the answer, and that's what Amos does. Look again at verses 16 and 17. Now therefore, hear the word of the Lord. You say, do not prophesy against Israel and do not preach against the house of Isaac. Therefore, thus says the Lord. Amos is not going to be quiet just because some guy tells him to be quiet. The Lord has spoken, and what can Amos do but prophesy? And this response of obeying God rather than fearing man has been followed by many of God's people throughout the ages. Again, returning to the apostles in the book of Acts. In Acts 5, the disciples were brought before the Jewish council and they reminded the apostles that they had been strictly charged not to teach in Jesus' name, yet they had filled Jerusalem with their teaching. And they're asking the apostles about why they're doing this. And the apostles didn't get scared. They didn't back down, but they said, Peter said for them, we must obey God rather than man. We must obey God rather than man. So as we think about applying it to our own lives, applying this call to our own lives, I think it may help, as I've suggested earlier, to think in terms of faithfulness to God's calling in your life, just as Amos was called to be faithful to God's calling for him to preach. And some people, again, are telling him not to preach, and likewise, you may sometimes have people telling you not to share the good news of Jesus. So we can see ourselves in that situation sometimes. So let's think specifically first about times when we're called to preach or teach. The church must preach the whole counsel of God, even when there are people in our society clamoring for us not to preach. Even if there are people within the church clamoring for us not to preach or saying that we should change our doctrine, that we should get more with the times. No, we must preach everything that God's word says, even if it's not strategically wise for church growth. Even if you were to bring in the church growth experts who were to say, if you want your church to be big, You need to cut that out. No more talking about sin. Less sin, less hell, less socially unpopular things. Here's what you need to preach, right? No. That's not how the church does it. We must preach God's word and trust Him to bring fruit. And of course, that's the most loving thing we can do for anyone, right? If we really love people, we're going to teach and preach the whole counsel of God. If we refuse to do that, we're actually harming people. We're actually like that watchman that Ezekiel talks about, the watchman who sees the danger coming and just kind of sits on his thumbs and he doesn't do anything. He doesn't warn the people. Doesn't a good watchman ring the alarm? Doesn't a good watchman do that even if it's gonna disturb people from their nice night's sleep? That's what a watchman does and that's what God's church and God's people are still called to do today. While all of us may at times be called to do this in various ways, perhaps to teach it to our children, we may be given at times providential opportunities to share the gospel with a friend, with a family member, maybe even with a stranger. At those times, we must be ready and willing to receive those God-given opportunities and to be faithful with the opportunity that he's given. But many of us aren't called to preach regularly the way Amos was or the way perhaps a missionary that we send out might be called to do. But God still calls you to be faithful to his calling on your life no matter what he's asking you to do and no matter what people are saying to you. So for example, maybe you have an opportunity to pay someone back against some wrong that they've done to you, and maybe you have some people who are encouraging you to do it, and instead you refuse to take that opportunity, and instead you turn the other cheek. For young people, perhaps a common example would be dating relationships. Perhaps some of your friends can't understand the reason why you're going about looking for a spouse in a certain way or why you're only looking for another Christian. Doesn't that seem kind of narrow-minded after all? Maybe it could be in your faithfulness in the way you talk, in the faithfulness in the things you joke about or think about, or in the faithfulness in the way you spend your time or your money. All these things are ways that we can be faithful to God's calling and we may receive some pushback from others or maybe even temptation from within as we would rather perhaps be tempted to do other things. However, as we think about this calling to be faithful, the sad reality is each and every one of us, if we're honest, falls short much more often than we'd probably like to admit. That sometimes we really do fear man or long for the praise of men more than for the praise of God. That we long, we're more afraid of men than we desire to obey God. And so as we think about that, our minds are drawn to one who was and is always faithful. The Lord Jesus was tempted by Satan with all the wealth of the world, and he wouldn't take it. He wouldn't bow down to him. He was faithful throughout all his temptations to sin in his life. He was faithful to preach the message he was called to preach, even as opposition against his word mounted. And he was faithful unto death. God had called him to preach the gospel, the good news of sins forgiven. And he called him to be the one who would atone for our sins. And Jesus did all this at great personal cost. Jesus faithfully obeyed all of his father's desires and commands. And so as we hear this calling to be faithful and we're disappointed at ourselves and we're grieved by the times that we so fall short, we can be thankful that we have such a great high priest, one who knows our struggles, one who was tempted in every way that we are and yet was without sin and who died for all our sins including all our unfaithfulness. So we see here in verses 10 to 13 this pressure not to preach, and in verses 14 to 17 we see this call to preach. Finally, and more briefly this evening, I want to look again at verses 16 to 17 and see God's judgment for those who refuse to listen. God's judgment for those who refuse to listen. Again, Amaziah had told Amos not to preach, and Amos responds with this pronouncement in verse 17. You can look there again. Your wife shall be a prostitute in the city, and your sons and your daughters shall fall by the sword, and your land shall be divided up with a measuring line. You yourself shall die in an unclean land, and Israel shall surely go into exile away from its land." You see, for Amaziah, denying God's judgments didn't change the outcome one little bit. Closing his ears and refusing to listen didn't make a difference. You know, maybe you've seen a child do this kind of when there's an argument and they just think they can stop their ears and the argument goes away, right? Maybe you did that when you were younger, right? It doesn't matter if you try to stop your ears up, the outcome is going to be the same either way. No matter how loudly he cried, do not preach, the message was every bit as true. And so the sad reality for Amaziah and for the nation of Israel as a whole is that God was bringing this judgment on them because they refused to listen to his warnings and repent of their sins. And likewise, today, the message of God's judgment isn't popular, is it? I don't think that's something people like to talk about a lot. When one speaks about hell or gives warnings of God's coming judgment, that just seems too extreme to some people. God is a God of love. But the outcome is just as certain today as it was in Amos' day. Just because people say you must not preach or say we don't want to talk about that or think about that doesn't mean that these judgments won't come to pass. There will be a day when God judges all the earth. You can't whitewash that reality. You cannot scrub it away. And so the question for you is will you listen to God's warning? You see, the intent of all these prophecies, as we've talked about before, is to cause the people to repent. And the first two visions in Amos 7 show God's mercy and compassion. And if you look, if your eyes glance back up there, you'll see that twice Amos sees the land about to be devoured and cries out for God to forgive or to cease. And twice, the Lord relents, saying, it shall not be. If Amaziah had been listening, He could have and should have cast himself on God's mercy. Instead of telling the king that Amos has conspired against him, he should have told the king that Amos has a warning for us and potentially a message of salvation for us. Like the Ninevites, they could have torn their clothes, they could have repented of their sins, they could have humbled themselves and appealed for God's mercy, which he would have given to them. And yet, Amaziah didn't do this. King Jeroboam II didn't do this. The Israelites didn't do this. And so the only thing left for them was to receive God's judgment. And there's a lesson in that for us today. When we hear God's word, the question is, will we really listen to it? Will you receive God's message and will you believe his message? Like the people in Amos's day, these warnings are given to us for gracious purposes, for the opportunity for us to repent of our sins. And if we refuse to listen, then only judgment remains for us. But if we do repent, then we can have our sins forgiven, our sins washed clean by the blood of the Lord Jesus Christ. This reality of God's coming judgment not only should cause us to repent of our sins, but it should also spur us on to sharing the good news with others. It should spur us on to preaching this message, even when people tell us, do not preach. You see, if God really punishes sin, and if salvation is really only found in the Lord Jesus Christ, then people need to hear this message. It is something they must hear, even when they're telling us to cut it out. And so we're faithful to God's calling on our life rather than fearful of man knowing that God will one day execute final judgment and justice knowing that God will judge us and everyone else and so that can free us of our fear of man and free us to serve him obediently out of love for him out of gratitude for him out of knowing that he will judge and also out of our love for other people who must hear this message. and must repent if they want to be spared from God's wrath to come. Let's pray and give him thanks for this word from Amos.