Chapter 3
Amos
Our journey
through the books of the Minor Prophets now brings us to the book of Amos. He
was unusual among the prophets for a couple of different reasons. First of all,
Amos lived in the Kingdom of Judah, but that is not where the Lord called on
him to minister primarily.
The second
unusual thing about Amos is he has not in the ministry so to speak. When God
called on him to carry the message up north, Amos was working as a shepherd and
a tender of sycamore trees. He was a working man not someone of high status. He
was not a full-time prophet like Elijah, Elisha or Isaiah.
This leads
me to the first important thing that we need to learn from Amos. God can and
does use people from all walks of life to do and accomplish His will. Amos was
a shepherd. The Bible doesn’t describe him as a person of great learning. God
still used him because Amos was willing to do what God wanted him to do.
God know
what He is doing. If He calls you, He knows in advance that you will be able to
accomplish the task. Our part is to answer the call of God in our lives in the
affirmative.
Also, I
want to mention is a good lesson for others who think that origin is destiny.
By this I mean that it doesn’t matter where you come from, your race, your
ethnicity nor any other factor. You have the ability to do great things. Others
may try to put you down, but you are able to do all things through Christ who
gives you the strength.
Going
through the book of Amos, one thing that you are sure to notice right away is
that God is very concerned about social justice. Time and time again, Amos will
the people and their leaders know that God was greatly displeased with the way
that the poor and the vulnerable were being treated within the Kingdom of
Israel.
One thing
that God is not happy about is that the rich people in the nation were gaining
more and more wealth for themselves through the exploitation and the oppression
of the poor. They weren’t satisfied with what they had, they had to take what
belonged to someone else who could barely feed himself and his family.
Amos has a
lot to teach us in this regard. I live in what is considered to be one of the
most well-off countries in the world. Even though there are a lot of people
here who have a lot of money, there are many in poverty. Many live on the
streets, and others are a single paycheck away from financial disaster. Broadening
it out from just one country and looking at the scope of the world, we see that
some countries are very prosperous while others live with next to nothing.
Amos lets
us as followers of the Lord know that God is not happy with the current state
of this world. When greed, oppression and injustice give one group of people
wealth while others are left in poverty, sickness and despair, God is not pleased.
We will do well to do all that we can to help others and to work for justice in
order to honor God and His word.
Just as in
other prophetic books, God tells His people that He will judge sin. This is
graphically illustrated in Amos chapter 8. However, God says that He will bring
restoration upon repentance. Amos 9:13-15 gives us a great vision of the Lord
restoring His people to a land of abundance and prosperity when they decide to
come back to Him.
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