Are you qualified for the job?

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' (Amos 7:10-15).

There was a Chinese pastor who always instructed new converts to begin speaking of their faith to others as soon as possible. Once, upon meeting a young convert, this pastor asked him how long it had been since he had become a Christian. The man answered that he had believed in Jesus for about three months now. Then the pastor asked him how many others this young man had since introduced to Jesus. The new convert replied, "Oh, I’m only a learner." Shaking his head in disapproval, the pastor said, "Young man, the Lord doesn’t expect you to be a full-fledged preacher, but He does expect you to be a faithful witness. Tell me, when does a candle begin to shine—when it’s already half burned up?" "No, as soon as it’s lit," came the reply. "That’s right," the pastor said, "so let your light shine right away."

We are often tempted by Satan to believe that we cannot speak about Jesus to others. We make excuses like "I wouldn’t know what to say", "my friends don’t like to talk about religion", or "I get too nervous talking to strangers." When we feel that we cannot be God’s representatives to others, it is good for us to look at the life of the prophet Amos.

Amos lived in the northern kingdom of Israel. After the death of King Solomon, the builder of God’s great Temple in Jerusalem, the country broke into two nations. Political squabbling resulted in most of the northern part of the country splitting off from Jerusalem’s leadership and setting up their own capitol in the city of Bethel. This created a religious problem for the Israelites of this new kingdom. God had provided forgiveness for sins through the Temple where the Ark of the Covenant was kept. Every year, sacrifices were offered on the altar at the Temple for all the people of Israel. Now that the country had split in two, the Ark of the Covenant and the altar for the sacrifice for sins was in God’s Temple in Jerusalem, and the new king did not want his people going to another country for forgiveness. So the king of the new northern nation set up his own temple in Bethel and appointed his own priests to offer sacrifices there. He had an idol of a calf made out of gold and told his subjects that they should worship it as their god. God’s people were now not only divided politically, they were also separated by the curse of false religion.

Over the next century, the northern kingdom of Israel angered God more and more as the wickedness of it’s people grew. God sent messengers to them to warn them to turn back to Him, but even great prophets like Elijah and Elisha were largely ignored. Finally, God sent Amos to the Israelites with a terrible prediction—the king would be killed and the nation taken into exile by a foreign power. These calamities were coming because the Israelites had turned their backs on God.

Who was Amos to bear such an important message from God? Amos was a nobody. Amos was not descended from anyone gifted with prophecy or trained in religion. Amos grew up a shepherd and a gardener. Nevertheless, God chose Amos to bring a message of critical importance to the nation of Israel—return to God for mercy before it was too late.

Was Amos effective? His message certainly stirred things up—the priest at the temple in Bethel got the king to try and send Amos away. Amos’ message was powerful, for all his lack of training or preparation. But Amos was pretty much ignored, and only a few decades later the Assyrian Empire conquered Israel, deported her citizens, and resettled the land with foreigners from across the empire. The descendants of the northern kingdom of Israel would never get their nation back.

Amos and his situation parallel you and your situation today. Amos lived in a country run by corrupt political leadership. Look at your country. We’ve had a president who had an extra-marital affair and lied about it, but he was not removed from office because he managed the economy well. Many congressmen are swayed by lobbyists with big wallets to vote not for what’s right but for who offers the biggest bribe. And periodically the leadership in Washington votes to give themselves raises, while cutting spending to agencies that serve the needy.

Amos also lived in a country where devotion to God and respect for morality had virtually disappeared. Look at your country. We’ve got legalized abortion, divorce on demand, and children who can successfully trump up charges of abuse against their parents for trying to teach them self-discipline. We’ve got pornography and offensive language protected as "freedom of speech", but Bibles and prayer are forbidden in schools. We have congregations all across this country where only 20 – 50% of the members show up to worship God on any given Sunday. And the fastest-growing religious bodies in America are the Muslims and the Mormons, neither of which acknowledge Jesus Christ as the only means given by God by which we can be saved from eternal condemnation.

The northern kingdom of Israel was in a state of crises, but her citizens did not see the danger that they were in. They needed to be alerted to the truth before it was too late. That is what God did through Amos. As much as God hated the corrupt society that Israel had become, He stilled loved His wayward people and He wanted them to abandon their evil ways and return to Him for forgiveness and a new start. Amos, though he spoke harshly, was God’s messenger of loving concern. It didn’t matter that Amos did not have a professional prophet’s pedigree; God can use effectively any person He has created, because Paul tells us in Ephesians 2:10, we are God's workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do.

What is required to speak for God? Do you have to have natural talent to speak to others? When God called Moses to represent Him to Pharaoh, Moses objected, "O Lord, I have never been eloquent, neither in the past nor since you have spoken to your servant. I am slow of speech and tongue." To this God replied, "Who gave man his mouth? Who makes him deaf or mute? Who gives him sight or makes him blind? Is it not I, the LORD? Now go; I will help you speak and will teach you what to say" (Exodus 4:10-12).

Do you need extensive training in religion so that you can talk about God with others? God chose David to represent Him as king over His people, but David was just a shepherd boy. Jesus selected Peter, James and John as the leaders of His disciples, but they were simple fishermen by trade. Jesus told them, "Don't be afraid; from now on you will catch men" (Luke 5:10).

Amos had no special qualifications to be God’s prophet. By his own words, Amos was a rancher and a farmer. He was born with no particular talent for religious work, nor had he been trained for the job. Nevertheless God chose him as His representative, His messenger. One wonders: wouldn’t it have been better had God chosen a man born of privilege, a man who was well-educated and well-spoken? Perhaps that would not have been such a good thing. If a man is from an important family—say, the Kennedys—more people might listen to him, but would they be interested in the message or the messenger? Would they value what he said because the words came from God, or because they came from a famous man? And what about God using a man renowned for his wisdom and learning? Would listeners attribute his teachings to God, or would they credit his natural wisdom and the quality of his education? Would a great man’s listeners credit his teachings to God’s wisdom or to his human wisdom?

It is important that people understand that the Good News about Jesus—that He loves us and forgives us—comes from God, not from man. Peter felt compelled to write, Above all, you must understand that no prophecy of Scripture came about by the prophet's own interpretation. For prophecy never had its origin in the will of man, but men spoke from God as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit (2 Peter 1:20). It is for this reason that it has often pleased God to use as His representatives men and women of humble means—Paul wrote, we have this treasure in jars of clay to show that this all-surpassing power is from God and not from us (2 Corinthians 4:7). Paul compares us to jars of clay—fragile, crude-looking containers typical of common people, not the elegant vases one would expect something valuable to be found in.

We are jars of clay, but our Lord has filled us with a magnificent treasure—the most valuable thing that any person could ever want. God has filled us with His Son, Jesus the Savior. God has filled us with the knowledge that we are imperfect jars of clay, unfit for use by our perfect God, but that He loves us anyway, loves us so much that He allowed Jesus to be put to death to atone for our imperfections. God has filled us with the wisdom to trust in that love, to despise the sins that we do every day, to ask Jesus for mercy, and trust that for His sake God forgives us and lets us start each day renewed, guilt free.

You are a jar of clay, filled by God with a wonderful treasure. It doesn’t matter if you don’t come from a family of ministers. It doesn’t matter if you never took religion classes in school. Amos didn’t come from a family of prophets; Amos’ only skills were in farming and ranching. But God used Amos so powerfully that the head of the false church was scared enough to try and get the king to shut Amos up. That was not Amos’ ability, that was clearly the power of God at work. The false high priest acknowledged as much when he called Amos you seer! The high priest saw quite clearly that the powerful words of Amos came not from a man, but from God Himself.

God desires to use you as His representative too. You live in a country that needs to hear what it is doing wrong. You live in a country that absolutely has to know that Jesus is the only means by which a man or woman can survive death and find everlasting happiness. It doesn’t matter that you don’t feel up to the job—even the great prophet Moses begged God, "O Lord, please send someone else to do it" (Exodus 4:13). But when you say "no" to God, you are saying that you don’t want to reach out to another person and offer them God’s rescue from a life of misery followed by eternity in hell. That isn’t what you really want, is it?

Dr. Wilfred Grenfell, a noted missionary, was a guest at a dinner in London. A number of socially prominent guests had been invited to the dinner. During the course of the evening a lady came up to the missionary and asked, "Dr. Grenfell, is it really true that you are a missionary?" After a moment of silence, this servant of the Lord replied, "Is it true, Madam, that you are not?" Is it possible that any of us who bear the name Christian are not witnessing for our Savior?