What Can We Expect When We Serve the Lord?

8th Sunday after Pentecost Amos 7:10-15 What Can We Expect When We Serve the Lord? I. Don’t expect it to be easy. II. Expect the Lord to bless faithful service. Have you recently read a posting for an employment opportunity? I’m certain some of you have. If you haven’t read one in the past decade or so, you might be surprised at the details such postings include. They begin with requirements for experience and education. They often include some information on compensation, but that often depends on experience. There will be a description of the duties and responsibilities, and the higher the position, the more detailed the description. The posting will include some information on the work environment you can expect, as well as what the physical requirements of the position are, for instance, how much lifting can be expected. It will then list what, if any, accommodations will be made for those who have special physical situations. With all that information, you would think that you can get a fairly good idea of what your working-life will be like if you apply for that position and receive it. But, as you well know, you won’t know what it’s really like until you’ve been working there for several weeks or months. This morning’s worship focus is on our Lord’s calling his people into his service. Often, he extends that call through his people gathered in congregations such as ours. For instance, we call people to serve on our church council. We share with such people a position description so that they know what they can expect if they agree to serve. Other service situations are less formal. We have members volunteer to clean the church, provide refreshments, take care of worship items such as setting-up for Communion. But you don’t really know what it’s like until you’ve been serving in that position for a while. Is it more difficult than you thought it would be? Are you enjoying your service, or is it burdensome? And how is your service to the Lord going in your daily life, your daily vocation? Is it what you expect, or totally different? This morning we have before us some information about the service of Amos as one of God’s Old Testament prophets. In a way, through this narrative, the Lord is giving us a position description as he calls us to serve him. So, what can we expect? What can we expect when we serve the Lord? That’s a great question. Let’s keep it before us this morning. I. I’m going to share a personal observation regarding entering employment situations. See if you agree with me. And this tends to occur more often depending on the amount of preparation, training, and education you receive prior to entering that first position. You go in to it wearing rose-colored glasses. You’ve been waiting to do this perhaps for years and now the time has finally arrived. You’re convinced this is your dream position. But, a few years down the road, as you apply for a similar position somewhere else, you’re more realistic. You know there will be the good and the bad. And, as you enter the latter portion of your career, you’re jaded. You know that every employment situation has its difficulties, and, if you want to get paid, you simply have to suffer through them. You don’t expect a perfect work environment or experience. But now, let’s take this discussion into the church. When you’re asked to serve the Lord in the church, or, when you volunteer to serve the Lord in the church, what do you expect? Well, it’s the church. It’s directly serving the Lord. Jesus wants you to serve him and Jesus wants to bless you and others through you as you serve him. So, you might expect your service to Jesus here on earth to be close to life with him in heaven. If Amos were standing here before us this morning in person, he would likely give us a dose of reality. His service to the Lord was a burden to say the least. Let’s take a brief look at it. First, the Lord called him to serve the people of another country. Amaziah, the priest, told him, “Go back to the land of Judah.” What’s that all about? Amos was from the southern kingdom of the Jews called Judah. The Lord called him to be his prophet to the people of the northern kingdom of Jews called Israel. And even though the people of these two nations were all descendants of Abraham, there was no love lost between them. At times they even went to war against one another. Second, as Amos quickly learned, his message caught the attention of the big religious guns in Israel. Our text introduces us to Amaziah, who was a priest, and not just a priest at any location in Israel, but a priest at Bethel. Bethel was one of the two locations in Israel where a golden calf had been set up about 100 years earlier and declared to be a representation of the Lord. The Lord called Amos to preach against the idolatry there and it wasn’t well-received. What’s more, another one of his preaching targets was none other than the king of Israel at this time, Jeroboam II, and his family line. Amos foretold that Jeroboam’s dynasty would not last. It would come to a violent end. Imagine being called by the Lord today to deliver a similar message to a government leader in our country. The local authorities, the FBI, the CIA, and the Secret Service would descend on you in a flash. Fourth, Amos wasn’t prepared for this, at least not humanly speaking. He told 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.” He was trained in agriculture, not evangelism, and surely not dooms-day prophesying. And, did you catch the insult that Amaziah hurled at him? Maybe not. Amaziah told Amos, “Get out, you seer! Go back to the land of Judah. Earn your bread there and do your prophesying there.” He linked Amos to all those prophets throughout history who are only trying to earn a living by preaching. And, in the end, his words to the people of Israel largely fell on deaf ears. The people refused to change their sinful ways. They refused to return to the Lord. But the Lord was patient. He gave them about 30 more years to ponder what Amos had proclaimed. And then the Assyrians came and obliterated Israel, and those 10 tribes were never heard from again. That’s a brief description of Amos’ service to the Lord. So, what can we expect when we serve the Lord? Well, don’t expect it to be easy. But we actually DO expect it to be easy, at least easier than it turns out to be. We do expect that people will listen to us when we tell them that this is what the Lord says. We do expect them to accept the encouragement we give them from God’s word. But it doesn’t happen, at least not all the time. And how do we respond? Well, we tend to take it personally, as if they’re rejecting us. We tend to marginalize them immediately so that they fall out of the area of our service to God’s people. Or, we pull ourselves out of serving anyone, concluding that it’s just not worth the hassle. When one or more of those occur, the Lord reminds us that service in his kingdom is to his glory, not ours. And that glory is in the fact that Jesus didn’t sacrifice himself only for the people who liked him; he also sacrificed himself for the people who hated him, ridiculed him, and nailed him to the cross. He sacrificed himself for me, for you. And now he calls us to share that message with the world. And when we do, we’re facing constant opposition from Satan and our evil world. So, don’t expect it to be easy. II. But, you can expect the Lord to bless your faithful service. These are difficult words that Amos spoke. They were not the words that the people of Israel wanted to hear. But, in a way, they are beautiful words, beautiful because the Lord was still speaking to them through Amos. They are evidence of his love and concern for these sinful people who were heading for death in hell. And his word always accomplishes what he desires. As immoral and idolatrous as Israel was, the Lord still had some in Israel who trusted in him. Recall the work that the prophets Elijah and Elisha did in Israel decades earlier. The Lord assured Elijah that he still had 7,000 who had not bowed down to Baal. God’s word works! You see, ultimately any time the Lord is sharing his word with a person, he is preparing them—preparing them to meet him one day. His will for everyone is that they listen to his word, repent of their sins, and trust in Jesus as their Savior. That way, upon their deaths, they will be welcomed into the heaven that Jesus has prepared for them, and Jesus receives the glory. But if they will not listen, then Jesus still receives the glory. He warned them, but they paid no attention, just as the vast majority of the people of Israel reacted to the message that Amos proclaimed. So, what’s our role in the kingdom work we do as we serve the Lord? He doesn’t leave the results up to us. His word accomplishes what he desires. He simply asks us to proclaim his word faithfully. And then he blesses our faithful service. So, if serving Jesus isn’t easy, and people might not listen to the word we proclaim, and they might not appreciate the fact that we are serving and might even oppose our serving, tell me again why we should serve Jesus? Because he served us, even though he faced all of those reasons not to. He served us to death because he loves us with an eternal love. He served us and now he calls us to serve him faithfully. And when we do, he simply declares us to us, “Be faithful, even to the point of death, and I will give you the crown of life” (Rev. 2:10). That’s what you can expect when you serve Jesus. Amen.