SPIRITUAL DIARY FOR 10/26/2015
9:35 PM
My Worship Time Focus:
Why the End is Coming
Bible Reading & Meditation Reference: Amos 8:4-6
Message of the
verses: “4 Hear this, you who
trample the needy, to do away with the humble of the land, 5 saying, "When will the new moon be over,
So that we may sell grain, And the Sabbath, that we may open the wheat market,
To make the bushel smaller and the shekel bigger, And to cheat with dishonest
scales, 6 So as to buy the helpless for
money And the needy for a pair of sandals, And that we may sell the refuse of
the wheat?"”
I suppose that this is a good question to ask that is why
is the end coming for the Northern Kingdom of Israel. As we look at these verses we can see in
verse four that there is a good reason for God to be angry with Israel for in
His Law He states that people were to take care of the poorer people and not to
take advantage of them, which is what the rulers were doing. I mentioned that Israel was not keeping the
Law and so let us look at the Ten Commandments remembering that the first five
had to do with or relationship with God and the second five have to do with or
relationship with others, and we will find out that Israel pretty much broke
all of them. “1 Then God spoke all these
words, saying, 2 “I am the LORD your God, who brought you out of the land of
Egypt, out of the house of slavery. 3
"You shall have no other gods before Me. 4 "You shall not make for yourself an
idol, or any likeness of what is in heaven above or on the earth beneath or in
the water under the earth. 5 “You shall not worship them or serve them; for I,
the LORD your God, am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on
the children, on the third and the fourth generations of those who hate Me, 6
but showing lovingkindness to thousands, to those who love Me and keep My
commandments. 7 "You shall not take
the name of the LORD your God in vain, for the LORD will not leave him
unpunished who takes His name in vain. 8 “Remember the sabbath day, to keep it
holy. 9 "Six days you shall labor
and do all your work, 10 but the seventh
day is a sabbath of the LORD your God; in it you shall not do any work, you or
your son or your daughter, your male or your female servant or your cattle or
your sojourner who stays with you. 11 "For
in six days the LORD made the heavens and the earth, the sea and all that is in
them, and rested on the seventh day; therefore the LORD blessed the sabbath day
and made it holy.
“12 "Honor your father and your
mother, that your days may be prolonged in the land which the LORD your God
gives you. 13 “You shall not murder. 14 “You shall not commit adultery. 15 “You
shall not steal. 16 “You shall not bear false witness against your neighbor. 17
“You shall not covet your neighbor’s house; you shall not covet your neighbor’s
wife or his male servant or his female servant or his ox or his donkey or
anything that belongs to your neighbor."”
Other things that Amos tells them in our verses today has
to do with their business practices, and they were not right according to what
the Lord had set up for them. They set up their practices to rob those that
they were doing business with. We read
in Lev. 19:35-36 “35 ’You shall do no wrong in judgment, in measurement of weight,
or capacity. 36 ’You shall
have just balances, just weights, a just ephah, and a just hin; I am the
LORD your God, who brought you out from the land of Egypt.” We can see that Amos is accusing them of not
following these laws that the Lord gave to them.
Next we see that they were not following the laws that
had to do with the Sabbath, for the Sabbath was a day in which they were
suppose to not work, and to take time to worship the Lord. Now when we get to the NT time of Jesus we
see that the Pharisees were going the other way something Jesus had to speak to
them about.
Dr. Wiersbe concludes “These evil vendors would not only
alter their weights and measures and inflate their prices, but they would also
cheapen their products by mixing the sweepings of the threshing floor with the
grain. You didn’t get pure grain; you
got the chaff as well. ‘For the love of
money is a root of all kinds of evil’ (1 Timothy 6:10 NIV).”
10/26/2015 9:55 PM
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