Amos Chapter 8 is a warning to Israel about their dishonesty in raising the prices of the wheat, meaning the hungry cannot afford it. God is always championing the cause for honesty, integrity and truth. In God's rebuke we can see that not only are the prices being raised but the wheat has the discarded parts also. In other words it is the sweepings or the chaff that are added to the weighed portion. If you bought 2 kilos of potatoes and when opening the bag it had half a kilo of soil, I would be contacting the supermarket! How does this become important to us today?
In the Old Testament we find God speaks to Israel about matters that will impact believers in the New Covenant. Often what we see as Old Testament pictures become principles for us. In this story 'grain' is the word of God. An ox is not prevented from eating the grain while it works and Pauls likens this to the worker deserving to be paid. So what we have is the ox is the worker and the grain is essentially what feeds the ox. Here the word of God is 'food.' Ezekiel, Jeremiah, Peter and John all use the picture of food being the word of God.
God's worker 'eating' the word of God and passing on 'food' for the hungry is the picture of the modern preacher. In turn he gets paid for doing so. When many of todays preachers pass on 'food' to the hungry, that 'grain' is full of discarded chaff and sweepings up: dust. Most messages will contain some element of grain: God's word. But there seems to be lots of chaff / dust in the form of things that are not going to feed people. On top of this there are appeals for love offerings that increase all the time.
5 saying, “When will the new moon be over, that we may sell grain? And the Sabbath, that we may offer wheat for sale, that we may make the ephah small and the shekel great and deal deceitfully with false balances,
So it does not escape God's scrutiny when the scales are off balance. Is this what we are seeing today? We definitely see preachers entertaining and talking about nonsense from the front. Those hungry for Gods word get hardly fed yet pay high prices for the ministry. I'm not saying humour and illustrations or being creative are wrong. I just wonder if these vehicles for a good message are now the message. Are you not entertained?
Gary Ward
