No Small Parts - Amaziah
August 30, 2020 Sunday Evening Study

Competition can be a double edged sword. For those who are extremely competitive, competition brings out the best in their abilities, if not necessarily the best in their attitudes. The reason I love watching baseball and football and racing is because I love fierce competition - people performing to the absolute limit of their ability - often doing things we might not have thought possible.

Last week was the Indianapolis 500. I was loving the race as it came down to 3 laps remaining. There was a fierce race for the top 3 spots - all within 1 second of each other, and now caught up in traffic lapping other cars. It was amazing - then someone in the middle of the field crashed, and they ended up finishing the race under a yellow flag where there was no actual racing happened. 

Last year we learned that the 2017 Astros in their amazing World Series win over the Dodgers in 7 games were cheating - openly, for multiple seasons. That destroys competition in my eyes, as it is no longer a balanced game. As a result, I am vehemently against the Astros, and particularly the celebrated players on that team that do not deserve to play in my opinion, let alone still retain their awards, titles, and accolades.

Competition can bring out the ugly side in us as well, as we saw with the Houston Astros. When you come to a point where winning is more important than a fair game, you have lost the entire point of playing. This occurs outside of sports as well. In our professional lives, competition can make or break someone’s livelihood. In commission sales it causes a cutthroat approach to sales that it severely compromises service and care for the customer. In corporate america it causes under-handed scheming and even action to have the competition removed from the game, as happened to me at the state of Colorado.

Even in ministry this is true. One of the cornerstones of competition is pride. Pride does not always have to be sinful - there is such a thing as healthy pride, and it can lend itself to healthy competition. But when the pride becomes the center - the only thing that matters, ministry suffers. I told a story several weeks ago about when I was playing drums for our church in Chandler AZ and another drummer joined. Before I ever met him I disliked him, because the drums were my position in the church, and you could pry them from my cold dead fingers. And since you dare to compete with me, I will destroy you in any way I can.

When pride is the center, we become jealous of our position - fearful of losing it to someone else. This is not a new thing, as we will study this evening in the book of Amos. We are going to read in Amos 7, but before that, I want to set the stage a bit.

Amos the prophet is a good example of how in the Bible "prophecy" is more about forth-telling the truth about the present than fore-telling events in the future. Amos lived under the renowned king Jeroboam II, who reigned forty-one years (786–746 BC) and forged a kingdom characterized by territorial expansion, aggressive militarism, and unprecedented economic prosperity. Many people back then interpreted their fine times as evidence of God's special favor. Amos acknowledged that people were intensely and sincerely religious, but he saw things differently with respect to God’s favor. Theirs was a privatized religion that ignored the poor, the widow, the alien and the orphan. It was a type of religion that degraded authentic faith to cultural ritual. Worst of all, Israel's religious leaders were right on the front lines of promoting the government and exploiting the poor, reaping incredible levels of wealth for themselves and their officials.

Enter Amos. He preached from the pessimistic and unpatriotic minority. He was blue collar and refused to follow the party line. He admits that he was neither a prophet nor even the son of a prophet in the professional sense of the term. Rather, he was a shepherd, a farmer, and a tender of fig trees, a small town boy who grew up in Tekoa, about twelve miles southeast of Jerusalem and five miles south of Bethlehem. The cultured elites of his day despised Amos as a redneck. He was also an unwelcome outsider. Born in the southern kingdom of Judah, God called Amos to thunder a prophetic word to the northern kingdom of Israel.

Open your Bibles to Amos 7:10-17. Read Passage.

To the priests who defended, legitimized, and justified Jeroboam's corrupt reign, Amos delivered an uncompromising word of warning. As we take a look at this character of Amaziah, we see a man who was not only encountering someone defaming his king, but someone who potentially threatened his own position of power and influence.

Amaziah, the priest of Bethel - was probably the high priest, in imitation of the high priest of the order of Aaron and the Levites and of God's appointment. For the many high places around Bethel required many idol-priests; and a twisted copy of the ritual at Jerusalem performed by the God-ordained priesthood was part of the policy of the first Jeroboam. Amaziah was at the head of this imitation of worship, as the chief priest to the royal sanctuary of the golden calves at Beth-el, in a position probably of wealth and dignity among his people. Most likely he thought that the craft whereby he had his wealth was endangered. To Jeroboam, however, he says nothing of these fears. To the king he makes it an affair of state. He takes the king by what he expected to be his weak side, fear for his own power or life. "Amos has conspired against you."

Instead of facing the competition - the truth - head on, he tells on him, much like 5-year-old me would have done to my perfect brother. Yet he gives legitimacy to Amos’ words by recognizing the power Amos has when he tells the king "the land," that is, the whole people, "is not able to bear his words," being shaken through and through. Amaziah recognizes a real and credible threat.

He then goes after Amos with all the bluster he can muster, yet comes off as a bit whiny. He tells Amos to stop what he’s doing, and to go home, because this place is supposed to be a refuge for the king. But notice something here - Amaziah recognizes truth when it is given. At no point does he try to argue with Amos, or defend the king, or even pretend he does not believe the truth of Amos’ words. He does not want to win - he wants Amos to leave so that he does not have to play at all.

There is a TV show called Parks and Recreation - many of you have probably seen it. There is an episode in the show where the main character Leslie is running for city council against a spoiled candy factory heir who has had everything handed to him his whole life. There is a scene where the guy comes to Leslie and her team and tells them that it would be really great if they dropped out of the race. When they refuse, he has a tantrum - “But I want it! Just Give it to me. Give it to me!” This is exactly how I see this scenario with Amaziah and Amos playing out.

Amaziah had said something that reveals just how completely he had identified religious faith with establishment power. It ought to send a chill up the spine of every religious leader who ever considered sucking up to power: "Don't prophesy anymore at Bethel, because this is the king's sanctuary and the temple of the kingdom.” With those words the religious justification of political empire is complete, and faith is reduced to patriotic cheer-leading.

Imagine the picture - a high priest, decked out in robes and wearing the jewelry of his considerable station, attended by acolytes and servants. Here he is, approaching a humble shepherd, probably dirty and unkempt, not dressed well, with very little to his name, and it is the priest who can barely conceal his panic. This is not unlike the scenes we see across the whole of the scripture - Moses before Pharaoh, most of the prophets before their reigning rulers, Jesus before the Pharisees, Herod, and the Sanhedrin, even the apostles before governors, magistrates, and judges. 

Amos wouldn't be bullied; he had a word of his own for every priest who prostituted religion for empire: "Your wife will become a whore, your kids will be violently murdered, enemies will carve up the country, you will die far from home, and pagan Assyria will devour the political and economic empire you have tried to sanction in God's name." 

Amaziah was not the only priest who was affected by this prophecy, though he is the one singled out in this telling of the life of Amos, likely due to his exalted position and his direct contact with the prophet.

What sets Amaziah apart from other priests? Obviously, they were worshipping the wrong God, and violating God’s law at every turn. So it seems like the warning of Amaziah’s life is easy to discern, but I want to suggest that it goes deeper than this.

If someone were to approach you and badmouth God, faith, and everything you personally stand for, what would be your response? I can think of a few things for myself. I would defend my faith, defend myself, and try to win the argument. That is my nature. For you, it may cause you to withdraw, to avoid contact. For someone else, they are going to lose their mind and verbally destroy the other person - I also run that risk myself. But ultimately, for those of us who have a foundation of faith that is rooted in the gospel, our faith is not likely to be destroyed by the encounter. It might be shaken, but the Gospel is made up of stronger stuff.

What did Amaziah do? Did he say even one word that defended the faith on which his entire life was based? Was there ever an argument that Amos’ message and, by extension, Amos’ God was more powerful than anything Amaziah could conjur? Did Amaziah even defend himself personally? Amaziah was so reliant upon the prestige and position given to him by political power that the only thing he defended was his own position. It is in this response that we say where his faith was - in position and prestige and not in things greater, despite holding the title of High Priest.

Amaziah teaches a powerful lesson today, especially for those of us who find ourselves in positions of influence in ministry. It can be so easy to focus on the work and lose sight of the relationship. Often ministry becomes about the result - the picture we paint - rather than about God and our pursuit of him. Use Amaziah’s story as a litmus test for your own approach to ministry - if your ministry is under fire, are you quick to defend the ministry or quick to defend the faith and purpose behind it? Remember that God is the life blood of this Kingdom and should be the center of all that we do.