SPIRITUAL DIARY FOR 9/16/2015
4:14 PM
My Worship Time Focus:
Obstinacy (Destruction of Crops)
Bible Reading & Meditation Reference: Amos 4:9
Message of the
verse: “9 “I smote you with
scorching wind and mildew; And the caterpillar was devouring Your many gardens
and vineyards, fig trees and olive trees; Yet you have not returned to Me," declares
the LORD.”
I would suppose that every time that we look at the
phrase “Yet you have not returned to Me” that we will have another sub-point to
write something about and in this SD we will try and look at this one and
another one.
As we did yesterday we want to take a look at the
covenant that God gave with Israel just before they went into the Promised Land
to see what God had to say about the destruction of their crops and what it was
that would cause it. “38 “You shall
bring out much seed to the field but you will gather in little, for the locust will consume it. 39 “You
shall plant and cultivate vineyards, but you will neither drink of the wine nor
gather the grapes, for the
worm will devour them. 40 “You shall have olive trees throughout your
territory but you will not anoint yourself with the oil, for your olives will drop off.
41 “You shall have sons and daughters but they will not be yours, for they will
go into captivity. 42 “The cricket shall possess all your trees and the produce
of your ground (Deut. 28:38-42).” I have
mentioned that Deuteronomy 28 is what has been called the “Palestine Covenant,”
which is a covenant that God made with Israel when they were about to go into
the Promised Land and as long as they kept up their end of it then God will
keep up His end, but if they failed to keep up their end then God would keep up
His end to discipline them, which is what He is doing, or is going to do in the
time of Amos.
I
wonder how it is that the Lord knew that Israel would break this covenant that
He made with them. I realize that God is
all knowing, but perhaps another reason is also true, and that would be that
man, since the fall in the garden of Eden are all born with a sin nature, in
other words man sins because he is a sinner.
Question: Did you ever have to
teach your children to do something wrong?
Well the answer is no for they do wrong things on their own because they
were born with a sin nature. I believe
that this is one of the reasons that Israel continued their downward spiral and
eventually God would have to keep His covenant and punish them by taking their
land away from them.
Dr.
Wiersbe writes “Even when God did allow them to grow fruits and vegetables,
they weren’t grateful. So He destroyed
the crops with blight, mildew, and locusts.”
Sickness (Amos
4:10a): “"I sent a plague among you
after the manner of Egypt.”
We
read about this part of the covenant in Lev. 26:23-26; Deut. 28:21-22, 27-29,
25, 59-62. We will copy these verses in
the above order. “23 ’And if by these things you are not turned to
Me, but act with hostility against Me, 24
then I will act with hostility against you; and I, even I, will strike
you seven times for your sins. 25 ’I
will also bring upon you a sword which will execute vengeance for the covenant;
and when you gather together into your cities, I will send pestilence among
you, so that you shall be delivered into enemy hands. 26 ’When I break your
staff of bread, ten women will bake your bread in one oven, and they will bring
back your bread in rationed amounts, so that you will eat and not be satisfied.” “21 “The LORD will make the pestilence cling
to you until He has consumed you from the land where you are entering to
possess it. 22 “The LORD will smite you with consumption and with fever and
with inflammation and with fiery heat and with the sword and with blight and
with mildew, and they will pursue you until you perish.” “27 “The LORD will smite you with the boils
of Egypt and with tumors and with the scab and with the itch, from which you
cannot be healed. 28 "The LORD will
smite you with madness and with blindness and with bewilderment of heart;
29 and you will grope at noon, as the
blind man gropes in darkness, and you will not prosper in your ways; but you
shall only be oppressed and robbed continually, with none to save you.” 35
"The LORD will strike you on the knees and legs with sore boils,
from which you cannot be healed, from the sole of your foot to the crown of
your head.” “59 then the LORD will bring
extraordinary plagues on you and your descendants, even severe and lasting
plagues, and miserable and chronic sicknesses. 60 “He will bring back on you
all the diseases of Egypt of which you were afraid, and they will cling to you.
61 “Also every sickness and every plague which, not written in the book of this
law, the LORD will bring on you until you are destroyed. 62 “Then you shall be
left few in number, whereas you were as numerous as the stars of heaven,
because you did not obey the LORD your God.”
We
know from our study in Exodus what the Lord did to Egypt with those ten plagues
that He brought upon them, and now He says that He will do similar things to
Israel. From the reading of the books of
Kings we know that this did happen to Israel by the Assyrian army and they were
thrown out of their country in 722 BC.
9/16/2015 4:41 PM
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