SPIRITUAL DIARY FOR 9/28/2015
10:58 PM
My Worship Time Focus: Introduction to Seek the Good
Bible Reading & Meditation Reference: Amos 5:7-15
Message of the
verses: “7 For those who turn
justice into wormwood And cast righteousness down to the earth." 8 He who made the Pleiades and Orion And
changes deep darkness into morning, Who also darkens day into night, Who calls
for the waters of the sea And pours them out on the surface of the earth, The
LORD is His name. 9 It is He who flashes forth with destruction upon the
strong, So that destruction comes upon the fortress. 10 They hate him who
reproves in the gate, And they abhor him who speaks with integrity. 11 Therefore because you
impose heavy rent on the poor And exact a tribute of grain from them, Though
you have built houses of well-hewn stone, Yet you will not live in them; You
have planted pleasant vineyards, yet you will not drink their wine. 12 For I
know your transgressions are many and your sins are great, You who distress the
righteous and accept bribes And turn aside the poor in the gate. 13 Therefore at such a time
the prudent person keeps silent, for it is an evil time. 14 Seek good and not evil, that you
may live; And thus may the LORD God of hosts be with you, Just as you
have said! 15 Hate evil,
love good, And establish justice in the gate! Perhaps the LORD God of
hosts May be gracious to the remnant of Joseph.”
We begin a new main point from the outline of Dr. Wiersbe
entitled “Seek the good” and just a casual look at these verses you can see why
he entitled this main point by this name.
I find the word “therefore” fascinating to me as I read
through the Word of God. This word is
found 902 times in the NASB and when we see this word we have to ask ourselves “what
is the therefore, therefore.” When we
see this word we know that we have to look back, but how far we have to look
back is sometimes a mystery. This really
does not have much to do with what we are looking at, but it is after all to me
an interesting thing to look at.
In our last studies of Amos we looked at seeking the Lord
and this is something that is a very difficult thing to do, and so Amos brings
it down to a practical level in giving the children of Israel some practical
ways of doing this as we will see as we look at these verses over the next few
days.
We see in this portion of Scripture that some of the
practical things that Amos speaks about in these verses are things like living
righteous, seeking justice, and the importance of telling the truth. We also see that he names some sins that
Israel is committing, and all sin is against the Lord. They were accepting bribes and charging the
poor too much for rent, and they themselves were living in luxury in their big
homes. These leaders were also helping
to sustain a crooked legal system.
I want to look for a moment at two verses that form a
parenthesis in the writing of Amos and that is verses 8-9, and these are verses
near and dear to my heart as they speak of the creation that God has created,
for we worship a God who has the ability to create and that is something we all
should praise the Lord for. God not only
created all we see, but he sustains all that we see even though at times that
may be hard to completely understand. It
was just a few days ago that we began the fall season as it began where I live
on September 23, at 4:21 in the early morning.
How can we know this so far in advance?
Well because God is in control and that is the way that he planned it,
and how He sustains it. We can tell when
the tides go in an out in different places because that is the way God created
it and also sustain it. As we study the
OT we see that the pagans worshiped the heavenly bodies, but the Jews worshiped
the God who made the heavenly bodies.
The apostle Paul when speaking to the Greeks who lived in Athens said to
them “22 So Paul stood in the midst of the Areopagus and said, "Men of
Athens, I observe that you are very religious in all respects. 23 “For while I
was passing through and examining the objects of your worship, I also found an
altar with this inscription, ’TO AN UNKNOWN GOD.’ Therefore what you worship in
ignorance, this I proclaim to you. 24
"The God who made the world and all things in it, since He is Lord
of heaven and earth, does not dwell in temples made with hands; 25 nor is He served by human hands, as though He
needed anything, since He Himself gives to all people life and breath and all
things; 26 and He made from one man
every nation of mankind to live on all the face of the earth, having determined
their appointed times and the boundaries of their habitation, 27 that they would seek God, if perhaps they
might grope for Him and find Him, though He is not far from each one of us;
28 for in Him we live and move and exist,
as even some of your own poets have said, ’For we also are His children’ (Acts
17:22-28).”
Dr. Wiersbe concludes his introductory commentary by
writing “But this God of creation is also the God of judgment! ‘He flashes destruction on the stronghold and
brings the fortified city to ruin’ (Amos 5:9 NIV). J. B. Phillips graphically translated verse
9, ‘He it is who flings ruin in the face of the strong, and rains destruction
upon the fortress.’ In the light of the holiness
of God and the terms of His holy covenant, the people of Israel should have
been on their faces, calling out for mercy.
Instead, they were complacently comfortable in their luxury and their sins. Amos named just a few of their sins.”
We will begin to look at these sin in our next SD on the
book of Amos.
9/28/2015 11:28 PM
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