Friday, December
14, 2018
Listen to this, you who rob the poor and trample down the needy! You
can’t wait for the Sabbath day to be over and the religious festivals to end so
you can get back to cheating the helpless.
You measure out grain with dishonest measures and cheat the buyer with
dishonest scales. And you mix the grain you sell with
chaff swept from the floor. Then you
enslave poor people for one piece of silver or a pair of sandals. Now
the Lord has sworn this oath by his own name, the Pride of Israel: “I will never forget the wicked things you
have done! The earth will tremble for your
deeds, and everyone will mourn. The
ground will rise like the Nile River at floodtime; it will heave up, then sink
again. “In that day,” says the Sovereign
Lord,
“I will make the sun go down at noon and darken the earth while it is still
day. I will turn your celebrations
into times of mourning and your singing into weeping. You will wear funeral clothes and shave your
heads to show your sorrow—as if your only son had died. How very bitter that day will be! “The
time is surely coming,” says the Sovereign Lord, “when I will send a famine on
the land—not a famine of bread or water but of hearing the words of the Lord. People
will stagger from sea to sea and wander from border to border searching for the
word of the Lord, but they will not find it.
Amos 8:4-12(NLT)
Amos was a simple shepherd. God called him out of a little village called
Tekoa in the mountains of southern Judea to go
preach to the northern cities of Israel
News traveled slowly back then. Who knows how much Amos knew of Samaria Jerusalem Damascus
·
At Damascus
·
He saw
brothers killing each other in Edom
·
He saw
children ripped from mother’s wombs in Ammon
(Amos 1:13).
·
He saw pagan
worship rituals in Judah, people of God’s
own flock (Amos 2:4).
·
He saw
oppression of the poor and sexual perversion in Israel
Amos saw then and there, what we
see here and now in America
In Jerusalem Amos couldn’t believe
his eyes; in the midst of all the flagrant sinning, the total disregarding of
God’s commands, the people of Israel were still
holding their worship services and rituals…and God said through the prophet, I cannot
stand what I see…it doesn’t matter how many prayers you send up here…I’m not
having any of it…you get your lives straightened out, and do it now![2]
It is amazing how the people were
going to worship, praying, and counting on God to answer and provide for them,
all the while not giving the slightest attention to doing right, or being
obedient. Things have not changed!
God was not amused in Amos’ day,
and He still isn’t. In so many ways the
people to whom Amos preached were the stereotypical “Sunday-morning
Christians”. They were out hustling in
the world during the week, cheating on the stock market, short-changing an
employer, embezzling like an Enron specialist from 9 to 5. After hours and on Saturday nights they
populated the bars, brothels and honky tonks.
Come Sunday morning they were filling the pews at 11am, smiling and
“Amen-ing” with the best of ‘em. If ever
a house-cleaning was needed; it is no wonder God wanted justice to roll-down
like a Tsunami over that bunch…and maybe over America
And while politicians the world
over plot their strategies and move the chess pieces of armies, trade
embargoes, tariffs, border walls and more, the voice of God’s Word hangs heavy
over humanity: The time is coming!
For You Today
Heavy stuff here from Amos. What can a mere mortal do? The simple answer from a simple prophet from
Tekoa – be obedient, worship God, love your neighbor and do right; continue to
pray for revival in our land…because when it’s God’s move, the
game is going to be over!
No comments:
Post a Comment