Thursday,
April 29, 2021
Then the Sovereign Lord showed me another vision. In it I saw a basket filled with ripe fruit. “What do you see, Amos?” he asked. I replied, “A basket full of ripe fruit.” Then the Lord said, “Like this fruit, Israel is ripe for punishment! I will not delay their punishment again. In that day the singing in the temple will turn to wailing. Dead bodies will be scattered everywhere. They will be carried out of the city in silence. I, the Sovereign Lord, have spoken!” 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! Amos 8:1-7
There is enough about judgment in Scripture to have a true
echo to this picture Amos has seen of harvest songs (usually a very happy time)
turning into wailing in Jerusalem’s temple.
Jesus’ teaching in the Gospels is enough to make one sit-up and shudder
over the Great Judgment Day coming. The list
is too long and discomforting for bedtime reading:
· The Barren Fig Tree (burying your talents Luke 13)
Now that’s just an uncomfortable list of parables, little stories
with multi-level lessons. Greater
stories of judgment that cut right to the chase have mountains crashing down on
heads, stars falling, war with rivers of blood flowing deep enough to drown a
horse. Then, there are the results of
judgment, everlasting torment, weeping, gnashing of teeth (as an ongoing
expression of torment), irrevocable banishment into the darkness, never to
experience God’s love, being cut in two, and on, and on.
The natural objection to all of this is to point to the fact
that it has been two-thousand years since Jesus died, and the earth rocks-on. So, where is the judgment? And the traditional response to that is, so-what…justice
delayed is a sign of God’s mercy, giving those who reject him time to repent
and be saved.
The Lord isn’t really being slow about his promise, as some people think. No, he is being patient for your sake. He does not want anyone to be destroyed, but wants everyone to repent. 2 Peter 3:9
But whether people want to forcefully object to Scripture’s
warnings, or simply ignore them and hope they’re not true, there is an
undeniable discomfort level with the whole subject. This, in itself, is a measure of proof that
there is, placed deep within each of us mortals, an understanding of our
accountability to God, and the culpability of our sins. For those poor souls who want to object to God’s
judging the world and everything/person in it is like a flea having an argument
with an elephant. It just will not
change the outcome.
For You Today
There is a harvest
song that will never be sung off-key – that of the singer who recognizes what
Jesus called the fields white unto harvest. It is God calling the lost who need to hear
the Good News that Christ will save all who come to Him in repentance. When you work in that field, your song is
echoed in Heaven, and you will return to Him someday, rejoicing and carrying
with you sheaves of joy. That is another
of God’s promises:
They weep as they go to plant their seed, but they sing as they return with the harvest. Psalm 126:6
You chew on that as you hit the
Rocky Road; have a blessed day!
[1] Title Image: Pixabay.com Unless noted, Scripture quoted from The New Living Translation©
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