"Behold, the days are coming," declares the Lord GOD, "when I will send a famine on the land- not a famine of bread, nor a thirst for water, but of hearing the words of the LORD. They shall wander from sea to sea, and from north to east; they shall run to and fro, to seek the word of the LORD, but they shall not find it."
Amos 8:11-12
When we imagine the worst thing that can happen in a society, we tend to focus on the ravages of war, or a natural disaster. But God made it clear to the Jews that the worst judgment that He could send upon them would be a spiritual famine. It would involve a scarcity of His Word. When God is quiet, nearly silent, then how can any human hope to make sense of anything in life?
This is the sort of thing that God's people ought to dread. But the Jews at this point in their history were led by selfish aristocrats who did not care about either God or man. In context, chapter seven dealt with a priest intent on shutting down the prophet Amos, effectively wanting to stop hearing from God altogether. The first half of Amos 8 deals with the actions of an oppressive system that drudged through Sabbath and festival observances, anxious to resume commerce rather than worship the Lord. And when they got down to business, they overcharged and underpayed the poor. God was going to take care of both problems. He would give them what they wanted: no more messages from God. It would be a spiritual famine. But along with it, He would permanently end their abusive practices by sending them all into foreign exile as slaves, where the abuse they had dealt out would return to them.
When people reject God's truth, they should not be surprised when their society implodes. When God's truth is despised, it will eventually be unheard. And human beings left to their own inner "moral compass" will inevitably increase their sufferings and the evil they commit toward one another. Sometimes the worst judgments come when God leaves us alone to do as we please. Certainly humans are incapable of utopian realities by any human efforts. We need a guiding reality. We need the Word of the LORD!
- Posted on an original iPad.
prepare your minds for action...
1 Peter 1:13
No comments:
Post a Comment