Sunday, October 25, 2015

The End is Coming (Amos 8:1-3)


SPIRITUAL DIARY FOR 10/25/2015 10:24 PM

My Worship Time                                                                                 Focus:  The End is Coming

Bible Reading & Meditation                                                        Reference:  Amos 8:1-3

            Message of the verses:  “1 Thus the Lord GOD showed me, and behold, there was a basket of summer fruit. 2 He said, "What do you see, Amos?" And I said, "A basket of summer fruit." Then the LORD said to me, "The end has come for My people Israel. I will spare them no longer. 3 “The songs of the palace will turn to wailing in that day," declares the Lord GOD. "Many will be the corpses; in every place they will cast them forth in silence."”

            In today’s SD on the book of Amos we are looking at the second main point in the outline from Dr. Wiersbe which will cover the entire 8th chapter as he entitles this point “The Prophet Declares. 

            As we begin this section we remember that Amos had just gotten a difficult time from Amaziah and not the Lord will receive another message from the Lord.  Dr. Wiersbe writes “for it’s just like the Master to encourage His servants after they’ve been through tough times (see Acts 18:9-11; 27:21-26; 2 Tim. 4:16).”

            When our Lord Jesus Christ was on earth he would use different parables to bring forth truth that He wanted to teach us, things like the seed that fell on different soils is an example.  Well in this section God uses summer fruit to make a point and when the fruit in the summer is ripe it is time to eat it, and now since the sinfulness of Israel was “ripe” in His eyes it was time for judgment.  Dr. Wiersbe writes “The Hebrew word translated ‘summer’ or ‘ripe’ in verse 1 (qayis) to the word translated ‘end’ in verse 2 (qes).  It was the end of the harvest for the farmers, and it would be the end for Israel when the harvest judgment came (see Jer. 1:11-12 for a similar lesson).  ‘the harvest is past, the summer is ended, and we are not saved’ (Jer. 8:20).”

            As I have studied the attributes of God I find that long-suffering is one of them, but in the case of Israel, long-suffering had turned into His attribute of justice and now they would be judged.  The songs in the temple will be songs of mourning and not happy songs as they were before.  In the NASB we see that the songs were in the palace, and so in the palace of Bethel there would be sad songs to be sung.  Dr. Wiersbe concludes that “people would be so overwhelmed that they would be unable to discuss the tragedy.  Silence would reign in the land.”

10/25/2015 10:42 PM

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