Listening Ears — Learning to Hear God in Amos & Luke
Amos, chapter 7, beginning of verse 1.
And this can be found on page 921 in the Pew Bibles.
So that's Amos 7, beginning of verse 1.
This is what the sovereign lord showed me.
He was preparing swarms of locusts after the king's share had been harvested, and just as the second crop was coming up.
When they had stripped the land clean, I cried out, Sovereign lord, how can Jacob survive?
He is so small.
So the lord relented.
This will not happen, the Lord said.
This is what the Sovereign Lord showed me.
The Sovereign Lord was calling for judgment by fire.
It dried up the great deep and devoured the land.
Then I cried out, Sovereign Lord, I beg you, stop.
How can Jacob survive?
He is so small.
So the Lord relented.
This will not happen either, the sovereign lord said.
This is what he showed me.
The lord was standing by a wall that had been built true to plum, with a plumb line in his hand.
And the lord asked me, What do you see, Amos?
A plumb line, I replied.
Then the lord said, Look, I am setting a plumb line among my people, Israel.
I will spare them no longer.
The high places of Isaac will be destroyed, and the sanctuary of Israel will be ruined.
With my sword I will rise against the house of Jeroboam.
When 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 king's 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 the sycamore fig trees.
But the Lord took me from tending the flock, and said to me, Go, prophesy to my people Israel.
Now then, hear the word of the Lord.
You say, Do not prophesy against Israel, and stop preaching against the house of Isaac.
Therefore, this is what the Lord says.
Your wife will become a prostitute in the city, and your sons and daughters will fall by the sword.
Your land will be measured and divided up, and you yourself will die in a pagan country, and Israel will certainly go into exile away from their native land.
This is the word of the Lord.
The Gospel reading today is from Luke, chapter 8, verses 1-10, which can be found in the Pew Bible on page 1037.
Luke 8, 1-10.
After this, Jesus traveled about from one town and village to another, proclaiming the good news of the kingdom of God.
The twelve were with him, and also some women who had been cured of evil spirits and diseases.
Mary, called Magdalene, from whom seven demons had come out, Joanna, the wife of Chusa, the manager of Herod's household, Susanna, and many others.
These women were helping to support them out of their own means.
While a large crowd was gathering and people were coming to Jesus from town after town, he told this parable.
A farmer went out to sow his seed.
As he was scattering the seed, some fell along the path.
It was trampled on, and the birds of the air ate it up.
Some fell on rock, and when it came up, the plants withered because they had no moisture.
Other seed fell among thorns, which grew up with it and choked the plants.
Still other seed fell on good soil.
It came up and yielded a crop a hundred times more than was sown.
When he said this, he called out, He who has ears to hear, let him hear.
His disciples asked him what this parable meant.
He said, The knowledge of the secrets of the kingdom of God has been given to you, but to others I speak in parables, so that though seeing they may not see, though hearing they may not understand.
This is the word of the Lord.
Let's pray together.
May the words of my lips and the thoughts of all our hearts be now and always pleasing in your sight, O Lord, our Rock and our Redeemer.
Amen.
Well, good morning everyone.
I hope you're well this morning.
So here we are in November, the fourth Sunday before Advent.
I'm happy to say the A word, Advent.
But as of yet, I refuse to say the C word that follows on from it.
When we actually get to Advent...
I might then use the C word, but not until then.
And now, as we run into November, we move towards the conclusion of our study of the Book of Amos.
This week, and two more to go, the quick break next week for Remembrance Sunday.
We've got two more to go after this.
And the good news, folks, is that there is some light coming at the end of the tunnel.
It is easy to think that Amos is a bit of a killjoy, who's out to just make everyone feel miserable.
Well, the truth is that
That is part of his purpose.
But he will also, at the end of things, hold out that promise of hope.
But the hope comes only when the people have been confronted with their deep need for God, for the God who loves them and treasures them as his people.
So let's very quickly remind ourselves where we've been so far.
Her we go.
The map shows us the picture there of the divided kingdom of the people of God.
Israel in the north, Judah to the south, and their neighbors all around them.
These are the nations who came under God's spotlight in chapters 1 and 2 of Amos.
They have all been wicked, and they were all up for judgment before God.
But then, we remember in chapter 2...
God suddenly turns his spotlight on Judah, where Amos came from.
And then finally, onto Israel, to whom he had been sent.
The people were out of whack with God.
Their lives weren't as they should have been.
They were not listening, nor did they want to listen.
We have seen over the last few weeks how this has manifested itself in their rejection of God, them failing in their call to worship him as the Lord their God.
They were failing to follow the first four of the Ten Commandments.
And then, because of that failing, they were not keeping the call to love their neighbours as themselves, breaking the final six commandments.
And as we've unpacked chapters 3 and 4 and 5 and 6, we have seen that as a consequence of all this,
They had fallen into complacency and into pride, which is where Amos left us last week at the end of chapter 6.
And as a result of all this, the horrible reality is that judgment is coming, and it's coming soon.
So, to chapter 7, and if you have it open in front of you, that will help enormously to keep with where Amos is going.
And the chapter begins with two visions.
First vision.
Amos 7, verses 1-3.
This is what the sovereign Lord showed me.
He was preparing swarms of locusts after the king's share had been harvested, just as the late crops were coming up.
When they had stripped the land clean, I cried out, Sovereign Lord, forgive.
How can Jacob survive?
He is so small.
So the Lord relented.
This will not happen, the Lord said.
Locusts.
What a frightening thought.
I get grumpy when, during the summer, those little caterpillars appear on your roses.
And they start chomping their way through all the leaves, and the leaves end up looking like skeletons, don't they?
And you have to go round and pick them all off one by one.
It's a horrible job.
But this that Amos is talking about is a swarm of locusts.
Do you remember a few years back in the BBC series Planet Earth 2, they filmed a swarm of locusts?
Sir David Attenborough narrates as they swarm, eggs coming alive that have been dormant in the sand for years.
These creatures have got accelerated development cycles and they quickly form massive swarms.
And then these swarms merge to form colossal swarms of over a billion individual creatures.
and covering an area up to 40 miles wide.
And they devour everything, green and growing in their path.
That is what the vision Amos had is like.
And it comes at the most critical point in the year for the agrarian culture of the day.
The king has taken the first crop from the fields by way of tax.
And now the second crop, the one the people would rely on for their food security for the rest of the year, that is nearing harvest.
And then it's decimated by this plague of locusts.
It will be catastrophic for the people.
There's likely to be famine.
How are they going to survive?
And into this desperate scenario, the prophet prays back to God.
He prays for mercy for the people.
Sovereign Lord, forgive.
How can Jacob survive?
He is so small.
This is a despaired cry.
This is too much, Lord.
Amos intercedes for the people, and in his grace, the Lord hears the prayer of faithful Amos, the one who is listening to God.
And the Lord relents.
This will not happen.
A merciful and patient God.
Secondly, there's fire.
Fire.
Versets 4 to 6.
This is what the Sovereign Lord showed me.
The Sovereign Lord was calling for judgment by fire.
It dried up the great deep and devoured the land.
Then I cried out, Sovereign Lord, I beg you, stop.
How can Jacob survive?
He is so small.
So the Lord relented.
This will not happen either, the Sovereign Lord said.
Do you remember back in the early chapters of the book, it was with fire that the Lord was going to judge the peoples in his crosshairs.
I will send fire on the house of Hazael.
I will send fire on the walls of Gaza.
I will send fire on Judah and consume the fortresses of Jerusalem.
God has already promised that he is going to bring fire to judge.
And this will be a terrible, otherworldly fire.
It will be so powerful that it will boil away the oceans.
So powerful that it will devour the land.
It is hard to imagine the horrific nature of this.
The only thing of this nature that I can relate to locally is what goes on here during the summer.
This last summer has been very, very dry out on the heathlands of Dorset.
There have been a number of flash fires that erupted.
And when they do, they sweep away everything before them.
They move with incredible speed, and nothing in their path...
will survive.
The consequences for the local species, reptiles, insects, ground nesting birds, small mammals, are terrible.
But what Amos is looking at here is to a whole different scale.
But again, we see him pray for mercy to the Lord.
How will God's people survive such a judgment?
And again, in his great mercy, the Lord hears the prayer of the prophet, and he relents.
This will not happen either.
Judgment is put on hold, at least for the moment.
Now I'm going to jump forward a few verses and look at the next section and I'll come back to the plumb line section in a minute.
So, I now want us to turn our attention to the next section, and it's the dialogue between Amaziah the priest of Bethel and the prophet Amos.
And I think this dialogue is really interesting, and it's really pertinent for us as we sit here in the 21st century West.
It is such a contemporary exchange between these two
Let's start with the first two verses of the section.
Verses 10 and 11.
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.
Israel will surely go into exile away from their native land.
So we see Amaziah starts a propaganda offensive against Amos.
He sends a message to the king, Jeroboam, and tells him that Amos is starting a conspiracy.
There's nothing better to get a king's attention than to tell him there's a conspiracy going on.
He's acting subversively towards the throne.
He's telling everyone the king is doomed.
Amazar is looking for the powerful in the land to stand behind him and oppose this upstart from Judah and deal with him.
And if the king believes Amaziah's fake news, Amos' future is likely to be pretty short-lived.
But then Amaziah goes further.
Verses 12 to 13.
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.
Amaziah confronts Amos directly.
I picture Amos there at the sanctuary at Bethel.
He's sharing his words, he's sharing his visions with those who come to the shrine.
Amaziah doesn't want this guy on his front lawn preaching the things that Amaziah doesn't want to hear, that the king doesn't want to hear, and that the people don't want to hear.
Go home.
Earn your living back in your own country.
Amazar is part of what we might call today that cancel culture.
He doesn't want to listen, so he is intent on taking away Amos' platform to speak.
Amos, not surprisingly, will have nothing of it.
He will not be silenced.
Our resolute prophet responds, and he responds by restating his credentials.
He's not a prophet by trade, neither was his father.
He's a shepherd, a gardener.
He's an ordinary bloke.
But he has been called by God, called from the sheepfolds and from his fig trees, to proclaim a message to God's rebellious, unhearing people.
So what else is he expected to do but to follow the Lord's command?
Do you remember, it's a bit like Peter and John.
before the Sanhedrin in Acts chapter 4.
They've healed the guy at the temple.
Big investigation.
They get hauled into the Sanhedrin and told that they're not allowed to speak in Jesus' name.
And then in 18-20 of chapter 4, Then they called them in again and commanded them not to speak or teach at all in the name of Jesus.
But Peter and John replied, Which is right in God's eyes, to listen to you or to listen to him?
You be the judge.
As for us, we cannot help speaking about what we have seen,
and heard.
The word of the Lord will not be silenced.
Amaziah doesn't want to hear.
The king doesn't want to hear.
The people don't want to hear.
But the word of the Lord will not be stifled.
The faithful of God will proclaim it when they are called to do so.
And if we read the last few verses of chapter 7, Amos finishes by pronouncing judgment directly on Amaziah himself, and his family, and then the people.
So, where does that leave us this morning, some 3,000 or so years later?
The problem we have here is Amaziah doesn't want to hear, the king doesn't want to hear, and the people don't want to hear.
But are we any different?
When I looked at the visions earlier, I skipped the plumbine one between verses 7 and 8.
Why, you may ask?
Well, it's an interesting little pair of verses.
particularly following the previous two visions.
The locusts and the fire are pretty straightforward.
We get an idea of what is going to happen.
Judgment is terrible, and it's coming.
Then we get to verses 7 and 8.
This is what the Lord showed me.
The Lord was standing by a wall.
It had been built true to plum.
With a plumb line in his hand.
And the Lord asked me, What do you see, Amos?
A plumb line.
I replied, Then the Lord said, Look, I'm setting a plumb line amongst my people Israel.
I will spare them no longer.
Now,
We all get, perhaps, the plumb line picture.
Straight lines and all that.
Not measuring up and all of that.
But if you look closely at the text in your Bible, there's probably some kind of footnote marker next to the words plumb line in the text.
And it says that the meaning of this phrase is unclear.
The word in Hebrew, in the Hebrew text, is anak.
And it's only used in these two verses in the entire Bible.
Nobody really knows what it means.
The plumb line has previously been the translator's best guess.
But it is very unclear.
And perhaps that is the point.
Amaziah doesn't want to hear.
The king doesn't want to hear.
The people don't want to hear.
So frighteningly, God says...
Suit yourself.
I'll make it more difficult to understand what I'm saying.
You're going to have to have a change, a change of heart, and want to hear what I'm saying.
And this is where we are at the end of the gospel reading that Judy read for us.
If you would please turn briefly to Luke chapter 8.
This is a familiar passage to us.
Many of us have heard many a sermon on the parable of the sire.
But I think that lures us into a false sense of security.
And I think that is because we see it
from the other side of the curtain, so to speak.
We've heard the parable, we've heard the answer, we've heard the explanation, and it all becomes very, very clear.
But when we left our reading today, the crowd has only heard the account of the four types of sown seed.
They've been left
with the rather enigmatic words of Jesus at the end of verse 8.
When he had said this, he called out, whoever has ears to hear, let them hear.
Now, when Jesus and the disciples get indoors following this cliffhanger, they ask Jesus,
what he's just been on about.
They don't understand.
They need to ask Jesus.
But before he explains the parable, he tells them that they're in a privileged position because they have been chosen to be those who want to listen.
They are the ones who are wanting to know what the parable meant.
Verse 10, he said, the knowledge of the secrets of the kingdom of God has been given to you, but to others I speak in parables, so that those seeing, they may not see, though hearing, they may not understand.
Jesus quotes words from God to the prophet Isaiah in Isaiah chapter 6.
Just as Isaiah has been commissioned to speak for the Lord, God tells him that the people are going to be hard-hearted, that they won't want to understand or to listen.
This is the reality of the human condition
That we find it hard to listen to God's word, to respond to it because we don't want to.
So, where do you sit this morning?
Do you want to listen to God?
We have in our hands...
before us in the pews and online and in countless forms and sources the spirit inspired word of God to all humankind his revelation of himself to us all the question is are we listening?
Or are we like a bunch of petulant schoolchildren, clamping our hands over our ears and refusing to listen?
If you already know the Lord Jesus as your friend and saviour, I challenge you, and as I challenge myself, are you, am I truly listening to what God is saying in his word?
If you're finding it hard to understand, be like the disciples.
Go to someone and ask.
Commit time with them to sit and read the words so you can help each other understand what God is saying to you.
Want to listen.
If you've been coming here regularly for weeks or months, or maybe even years, but are unsure where you sit with the Lord Jesus, if you're still wondering, or perhaps resisting putting your life in Jesus' hands, despite having heard the word preached regularly, ask yourself this morning,
Am I resisting listening properly?
Is everything not clear?
Because in my heart of hearts, I don't want it to be.
Remember, God might just say, «Sit yourself».
Or finally, if you're here for the first time this morning, or if for the first time you're in your hearts of hearts saying, I hear you speaking to me, Lord Jesus, for the first time in real clarity, then don't leave here straight away this morning.
Talk to someone afterwards.
Don't leave it there.
Talk to Dan.
Talk to me.
Talk to someone else around you.
And they will be oh so happy to help you listen more and understand more.
The question before us this morning is God speaks but are we listening?
Do we really want to listen?
To answer that.
Let's be ready.
As a certain small person in our household is invited to do daily, please, everyone, let's use our listening ears.
And listen to the one to whom we should be really listening to hard.
Let's pray.
Right from the beginning, Lord, you have wanted to communicate with your creation, with your people you have made for yourself.
You have given us your word as a precious gift to enable that to happen.
Help us wherever we are to listen to you.
And once we have listened to follow what you are telling us.
For we ask this
In the name of Jesus, the Word made flesh.
Amen.