20040711ItCouldNotBeInJesusName

Good morning, church. My name is Amos and I am a prophet who lived more than 2700

years ago. No one knows much about my life except that I came from Judah and had been a

herdsman and a trimmer of sycamore trees.

However, who I was in history isn’t the important thing about me.

What is important was the message I brought to Israel and the God who gave me the

message to bring. My message (and I was the first of several prophets to bring it) was God’s

judgment on God’s people Israel for failing to live up to God’s standards.

And my words – words that claim the oppression of the weak and poor by the rich and

powerful stands under God’s judgment –these words were powerful but hardly unique in

Scripture. What made my message unique were the consequences: the threat of exile and the

possibility of loss of the Promised Land.

Now, something about prophets: we were called “seers” because we were able to see

things other people couldn’t see. There was a whole spectrum of things that prophets saw;

everything from very mundane things like the location of some lost donkeys to completely

supernatural such as Isaiah’s vision in the Temple. Mine were somewhere in between.

And when I told the people, “This is what the Lord God showed me,” I was talking about

seeing an ordinary thing – in this case, a plumb line that could be used to tell if something was

straight – but the experience itself was far from ordinary.

However, what you also need to understand about these things that I – and other prophets

– saw is this: the process of the inspiration of the prophets is a mystery. I don’t understand it

myself. And it’s fine for me to tell you about the vision, but my telling you doesn’t prove a thing.

You don’t know if I’m lying; you don’t know if I’ve somehow deceived myself (a very human

thing to do).

This means that you don’t look at who the person who speaks to know if the words have

really been inspired by God. You have to look at the effect of the words.

You see, there are a lot of people around who try to tell you, “God spoke to me” as a way

to justify their actions. How do you know?

Well, sometimes it’s clear as crystal that their actions are cruel or immoral and there is no

doubt that God couldn’t have spoken to them.