Not staying home to prophesy
This week's verses are Amos 7:10-15:
Then Amaziah, the priest of Bethel, sent word to Jeroboam king of Israel, saying, “Amos has conspired against you in the midst of the house of Israel; the land is unable to endure all his words. For this is what Amos says: ‘Jeroboam will die by the sword, and Israel will certainly go from its land into exile.’” Then Amaziah said to Amos, “Go, you seer, flee to the land of Judah; and eat bread there and do your prophesying there! But do not prophesy at Bethel any longer, for it is a sanctuary of the king and a royal residence.”
Then Amos replied to Amaziah, “I am not a prophet, nor am I the son of a prophet; for I am a herdsman and a grower of sycamore figs. But the Lord took me from following the flock, and the Lord said to me, ‘Go prophesy to My people Israel.’
In these verses, the prophet Amos is asked by Amaziah to leave the royal sanctuary at Bethel. As the priest, Amaziah should have been supporting Amos. Amos was delivering God's message, and Amaziah's only job was to support the work of God. Instead, as it turns out, Amaziah is basically a tool of the state, a political officer whose job it is to support the power of the ruler.
Amaziah is more afraid for his comfortable position with the king than he is for the safety of Israel. He sends a message denouncing Amos, and then tells him to leave the region. "Get out of here! This is government property. You can prophesy all you want, but you can't do it here."
On the surface, this looks like some unimportant scuffle between corrupt clergy and the iron age version of that sandwich board preacher guy who yells at everyone to stop fornicating. But really it's a great illustration of the conflicts that rise up inside of us, and in our church and society, between the inconvenient word of God and the comfortable world we've built for ourselves.
Like Amaziah, we can sometimes begin to serve another master while claiming to be servants of God. Maybe our social circle depends on us bowing to the politically correct moral fashions of our age. Maybe our job demands certain hours of us that happen to eclipse any worship we might try to participate in. It can be anything. Sometimes we get very comfortable with a nice paycheck. Sometimes we get particularly stressed over not rocking the boat.
Then someone like Amos comes along. It may not even be a someone. It may be a nagging thought, or something we read. It may be a sermon or a signboard. It makes us uncomfortable. It makes us worry that we will be called out for supporting it. So we do what Amaziah did and we ask it to go away. "I don't want to think about that right now." We tell ourselves to be wary of it. We become wicked like Amaziah, while reassuring ourselves that we're just being reasonable.
Amos reminds Amaziah that he is not some itinerant religious careerist who earns his money by stirring up drama. He is a farmer and was happily farming before God called him to go preach the gospel to Israel. There is only one reason for him to be there, and it's not a fat paycheck or an easy life. He is the opposite of Amaziah.
It is said that Amaziah ultimately puts a hit out on Amos and has him killed. This too is us sometimes. Maybe we stop going to church or end a key relationship or make a lifestyle change in order to become more "authentic." We kill the voice of God in order to keep the thing we love more.
Instead let's be more like Amos. He was interested enough in the voice of God to leave his safe career and go to a dangerous place to follow him. His actions demonstrated that he did not have any higher master than God. While Amaziah demonstrates for us what not to do, Amos is the more Christlike of the two, and the one we should follow.
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