Pentecost 8

What Do You Expect?

Amos 7:10-15 Then Amaziah the priest of Bethel sent a message to Jeroboam king of Israel: ‘‘Amos is raising a conspiracy against you in the very heart of Israel. The land cannot bear all his words. For this is what Amos is saying: ”

‘Jeroboam will die by the sword,

and Israel will surely go into exile,

away from their native land.’”

Then Amaziah said to Amos, ‘‘Get out, you seer! Go back to the land of Judah. Earn your bread there and do your prophesying there. Don’t prophesy anymore at Bethel, because this is the king’s sanctuary and the temple of the kingdom.”

Amos answered Amaziah, ‘‘I was neither a prophet nor a prophet’s son, but I was a shepherd, and I also took care of sycamore-fig trees. But the LORD took me from tending the flock and said to me, ‘Go, prophesy to my people Israel.’

A few weeks ago, I needed to put gas in the lawnmower, so I took the gas container that’s in the garage and I went and filled it up. Unfortunately, it didn’t have a cap, but it’s a five gallon container and I figured I could set it flat in the trunk of my car and get it home without a problem. Of course that didn’t happen. When I opened the trunk, the container was on its side and gasoline was pouring out of it. Two or three gallons ran down and washed through my wheel wells and onto the ground. My car still smells like gasoline. Any male here today would probably say, “Well, what did you expect?” Every time I smell that gas, I shake my head at my own stupidity. Of course, if you driving around with an open gasoline container, something is going to happen. Of course, if you walk around with an open container of the most combustible spiritual material we know of, something is going to happen. I’m talking about God’s Word. The open container for that Word is you and me. Sometimes, that word just spills out. When it does, what do you expect?

I.

God’s Word is mixture of two spiritual elements that together make it explosive. We call those elements the law and the gospel. When God’s mixture hits what do you expect from God’s enemies? We will face those enemies because there’re a whole lot more of them than there are of us. What’s going to happen? Well, the prophet Amos gives us a living example. He was preaching God’s Word in the heart of enemy territory. He was working in the city of Bethel in the Northern Kingdom of Israel. As soon as that Northern Kingdom broke away from the Southern Kingdom, their first king realized that he had a problem: the temple was in Jerusalem in the Southern Kingdom. He was afraid that if the people went to the temple in Jerusalem, before long they would want King David’s descendants to rule over them again. So he solved his problem by starting two new sanctuaries, one in Dan and one in Bethel. At these two shrines, he erected idols shaped like golden calves and he told them, “Here are your gods, O Israel, who brought you up out of Egypt.”

What the king did sounds like rank idolatry to us. But you need to be a little bit careful here. That Hebrew word “gods” is exactly the same as the word that the Bible uses to describe the one true God. The king probably meant, “Here is your God, O Israel, who brought you up out of Egypt.” In reality, he mixed the true religion with idol worship. He took parts of what God had told his people and then he added in a whole bunch of his own ideas and he called it the same ancient faith that Israel had always believed. Now by the time Amos lived, this had been going on for almost two hundred years. In that time, most of the kings had gone way beyond mixing the true religion with the false one. They were openly worshipping foreign gods and leading the people to do the same. But just thirty years before the end of the Northern Kingdom, God sent Amos to Bethel, the site of this hybrid religion, to say that God hated that mixing of his word with man’s word. He was about to punish the Northern Kingdom for two hundred years of perverting the truth with human lies.

Amos’mission was like trying to found a Lutheran church in the city of Rome. The leader of the cult at Bethel, a man named Amaziah, was galled at what he was doing. So he sent a report to King Jeroboam II and accused Amos of conspiracy, of predicting that the king would be murdered and of prophesying that Israel would go into captivity. Amaziah distorted the prophet’s message. Amos was not raising a conspiracy. But that was hot button in the Northern Kingdom because there had been so many. Jeroboam’s great-grandfather had become king by leading a conspiracy. Amos didn’t actually threaten the king’s life, either. He did predict that God would raise the sword up against the house of Jeroboam, but he didn’t directly claim that the king himself would be killed. We don’t know how Jeroboam actually died. But we do know that six months after his death his son was murdered and the throne taken. But Amaziah did get one thing right: Amos did preach that Israel would go into exile. That happened thirty years later, just as God predicted it would.

When the king didn’t silence Amos, Amaziah tried to expel him from Israel on his own authority. Amos wasn’t from the Northern Kingdom. He was from Judah, from a village near Bethlehem. So Amaziah told him to go back home and earn his bread from prophesying there. He seemed to imply that Amos was in it only for the money. Then he told him not to preach at Bethel, because it was the king’s sanctuary and the temple of the people. He told him to have a little respect. His argument definitely seems to make sense today. After all, most of us would be offended if someone insisted on camping out in front of the Vatican and telling everyone that passed by what was wrong with the Roman Catholic Church. It wouldn’t seem respectful. But Amaziah’s tactics should sound familiar to us for another reason: God’s enemies can’t stand to hear his word. They will use any lie and any form of persecution they can get away with to shut us up. Today, the visible Christian church, by and large, is more like the cult at Bethel than true religion of Jerusalem. Most Christian denominations today are willing to mix in human ideas to a greater or lesser degree. When we stand up and say that’s wrong and refuse to take part in it, well, then we get labeled as fanatics and trouble makers. The WELS is called a “one issue synod” and the issue is, of course, fellowship. Well, what did you expect? Of course God’s enemies are going to take that position. Jesus said that they hate us because they hated him first. He promised us nothing but hatred and opposition in this world. That’s exactly what we can expect.

With that persecution comes a terrible temptation. At best, the devil and our own sinful flesh tempt us to just be quiet. Why invite a conflict with people who aren’t going to listen to us anyway? At worst, we actually begin to agree with the world around us. So many people in those other churches are sincere believers. Why can’t we be a little more reasonable? Why can’t we be just a little bit more tolerant? Well, God isn’t tolerant. And he hates fearful silence. He tells us to stand on his word and nothing else. When we don’t, we commit the sin of Bethel. For that -- for even wishing that we could get away with that -- God should send us to hell forever. But God loves us too much. Instead of the exile in hell that we deserve, God gave us new homes in heaven. Instead of slapping us down because we want to avoid conflict, God gave us Jesus, who never kept silent to stay out of trouble, who never let an attack on the truth go by without correcting it, who never even wished that he didn’t have to stand up for the truth. God gave that devotion to us. Then God gave us Jesus hanging, bleeding, thirsting on the cross. But before he let him die, God made Jesus suffer all that we have coming -- even hell -- so that he wouldn’t have to make us suffer. When Jesus rose from the dead, God declared once and for all that we are forgiven for our willingness to tolerate lies. We are forgiven for our lust for peace. We are forgiven for the sinful weakness of our hearts. Now forgiven doesn’t mean we have permission to ignore all that God has said. On the contrary, we truly died with Christ and we truly rose with Christ when the Holy Spirit taught us to trust in Christ. In our baptisms, God changed us forever. As his changed children, we must stand on the Word of God alone, because anything else is a denial of Christ. But we stand there because we have been forgiven for all the times we didn’t take our stand before.

II.

When I put that open gas can in my trunk, I should have expected that something would happen. Considering how dangerous gasoline can be, I should have been especially careful about it. God’s Word is far more explosive than gasoline. When God fills up a container, we should expect something is going to happen. Every one of us is a container for the word of God and we come here to be topped off and to have our cap loosened so we can spread that word. Some of us, though, God makes a special effort to fill up and then spill. I’m talking about workers in the church. In one sense, our entire ministerial education system is about filling young men and women up with the word and then letting God put them in the right place to spill. When he does that, what do you expect from God’s messengers?

Amaziah clearly did not get what he expected from Amos. He thought that Amos should have conformed his preaching to what the vast majority of the people of Israel thought was right. When Amos didn’t do that, Amaziah attacked. Amos replied to his attack very simply and directly. It was never his ambition to become a prophet. He didn’t do it because he thought it would be nice to have the faithful suppport him. Amos was a farmer. He tended cattle and sheep and raised figs. He would have been content to stay a farmer all his life. He never even trained to be prophet. When he says, “I was neither a prophet nor a prophet’s son,” he’s not talking about the family business. At that time there were schools of the prophets -- seminaries, if you will. The sons of the prophets were the students in those schools. Amos never enrolled. But God called him anyway. He he took him out of his fields and he made him his messenger. If Amaziah didn’t like that, it was just too bad.

When God appointed Amos to be a messenger that meant that Amos had to speak God’s message. That’s really the rub today. It’s still true that God is the one who sends his messengers. By a miracle of his grace, he does it through voters assemblies and the call process, but it’s still the Holy Spirit who brings the men who preach and teach to you. The messenger doesn’t get to make up his own message. He may only say what God has sent him to say. That’s unpopular in America today. We live in a “live and let live age.” Most church bodies today want less controversy, less name calling, less “I’m right and you’re wrong.” Do you ever feel that way? Name calling isn’t appropriate and certainly controversy for the love of argument is a sin. But in the end, God calls us to stand firmly on his word. He calls pastors to set the example in that area.

What do you expect from your pastors? Let other churches do what they want. What do you want from this pulpit? Do you want less controversy? Do you want fewer attacks on other people’s doctrines? Do you want to let little things slide? We all have a part of us that wants those things. Every pastor has a part of him that wishes he didn’t have to say those things. But you know that part of us isn’t the part that pleases God. That part is the sin that still lurks in our hearts. And make no mistake, sin is waiting in every human heart hoping for to seize control. God wants us to want our pastors to be his messengers, no matter how hard it is for us to hear what God has to say. God wants us to call men who will be faithful to his word. God even wants us to discipline our pastors when they don’t stand firmly on the word of God. Are we ready to do that?

When our expectations don’t match God’s, that’s sin. Even when it comes from ignorance, it’s sin, because if our hearts were perfect, we’d know what God wants and we’d want the same things. Since we don’t always want his message, God should just wash his hands of us. But he doesn’t. God still sends prophets to make us feel uncomfortable. He still reminds us how far from him we are and then he reminds us how close to him has made us. Amos didn’t only preach the law, although he preached a lot more law than anything else. He also preached the gospel. He held out hope that God would restore his people if they repented. God holds out hope to us. Hope in Christ. Jesus’ own hopes and dreams and desires for his human ministers and priests perfectly matched God’s. That desire is now ours. Jesus paid for all the times we wished our pastors would lighten up. He paid for all the times we struggled with the truth as God reveals it. He paid for all the times we just wanted something else. And then he rose and wiped those sins out forever. We are forgiven. We are renewed by the working of the Holy Spirit in our hearts through the promise of Christ. That means that little by little, as grow in our knowledge of God’s Word, God is teaching us to want to hear the truth and to want what he wants.

What do you expect? If you fill a gas can and don’t close it properly, you’re car is going to stink. I know that now. If you fill yourselves with the Word of God and it spills over, God’s enemies are going to think you stink. They’re going to hate you for it. They will probably try and make you pay. But God will always be there to give you the strength to let his Word spill over and cover everything and everyone around you. When God fills your pastors and teachers with his Word, you can bet it will spill over onto you in their preaching and teaching. May that Word never stink to us. May we always rejoice in hearing it. Amen.