SPIRITUAL DIRY FOR 10/5/2015 6:24 PM
My Worship Time Focus: PT-1 Woe to the Ignorant
Bible Reading & Meditation Reference: Amos 5:18-27
Message of the verses: "18 Alas, you who are longing for the day of the LORD, For what purpose will the day of the LORD be to you? It will be darkness and not light; 19 As when a man flees from a lion And a bear meets him, Or goes home, leans his hand against the wall And a snake bites him. 20 Will not the day of the LORD be darkness instead of light, Even gloom with no brightness in it?
"21 "I hate, I reject your festivals, Nor do I delight in your solemn assemblies. 22 "Even though you offer up to Me burnt offerings and your grain offerings, I will not accept them; And I will not even look at the peace offerings of your fatlings. 23 "Take away from Me the noise of your songs; I will not even listen to the sound of your harps. 24 "But let justice roll down like waters And righteousness like an ever-flowing stream. 25 "Did you present Me with sacrifices and grain offerings in the wilderness for forty years, O house of Israel? 26 "You also carried along Sikkuth your king and Kiyyun, your images, the star of your gods which you made for yourselves. 27 "Therefore, I will make you go into exile beyond Damascus," says the LORD, whose name is the God of hosts."
Perhaps we need to explain what the "Day of the Lord" is all about as it is seen many different times in both the Old Testament and the New Testament. It is a time when the Lord will judge His enemies and we know that the Day of the Lord will happen during the last part of the Tribulation period that is explained in Revelations chapters 6-19. However when we see this in the Old Testament prophets it can have a meaning that judgment is coming soon, but the ultimate judgment will happen during the last part of the Tribulation Period.
Dr. Wiersbe writes "The people Amos was addressing saw ‘the Day of the Lord’ as a time of great deliverance for the Jews and terrible punishment for the Gentiles (Joel 2:28-32), but the prophets had a clearer vision of this momentous event. They realized that ‘the Day of the Lord’ was also a time of testing and purifying for Israel (see. Isa. 2:10-21; 13:6-13; Jer. 46:10; Joel 3:9-17; Zeph. 2:1-2), when God’s people would go through tribulation before entering the kingdom of God."
Amos would look ahead and would give three descriptions of ‘the Day of the Lord.’ In 5:18 we learn that it would be a day of despair and also mourning "Woe to you who long for the day of the Lord (NIV)!" Here is the problem with the people Amos was dealing with, and that is that they had bad theology for good theology can lead to hope, however bad theology can lead to false hope. The people of Israel thought that the Lord was going to defeat their enemies and spare Israel, but because Israel had broken the covenants that God had made with them it was Israel who will be defeated, and God would use the Assyrians to do so.
Next we read in vv. 18b, 20 that the day of the Lord would be a day of darkness. Dr. Wiersbe writes "God warned that He was about to pass through their midst (v. 17), but not ‘pass over’ as He had in Egypt. This time He was coming to judge His own people; and as there was darkness for three days prior to the first Passover (Ex. 12:12), so ‘the Day of the Lord’ would bring darkness. In addition, what Israel experienced at the hands of the Assyrians was a small sampling of what will happen in the end times when the whole world will see ‘the Day of the Lord."
In Amos 5:19 we learn that the "day of the Lord’ would be a day of doom. No one was going to escape God wrath and the reason was that there would be no hiding place. We see the story that Amos writes to show the truth of this as he writes "19 As when a man flees from a lion And a bear meets him, Or goes home, leans his hand against the wall And a snake bites him."
It seems that some of the people of Israel knew what "the Day of the Lord" was about, and were eagerly expecting it, but because their theology was wrong what they expected to happen to them would not, but destruction would come upon them.
As believers in Jesus Christ we are to desire the second coming of the Lord in the rapture because we are to love His appearing "in the future there is laid up for me the crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous Judge, will award to me on that day; and not only to me, but also to all who have loved His appearing (2Tim. 4:8)." We are not to just know the timeline of the events that surround His appearing, but love His appearing and that means that we are not to have our roots sunk down deep in the world so that this will cause us not to love His appearing. There are people who are believers today that desire Christ to return so that they will not have to go through difficult times, but people today are being killed and even crucified for their faith in Jesus Christ today, so the hard times have truly begun. Paul writes the following to the Corinthian church to show them that we are to fulfill the works that God has for us to fulfill for "we must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ; that every one may receive the things done in the body, according to that he hath done, whether it be good or bad. Knowing therefore the terror of the Lord, we persuade men (2 Cor. 5:10-11)."
10/5/2015 7:07 PM
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