IIT UBF - University Bible Fellowship at IIT

Daily Bread

Spiritual Consequences for Sin

Date: Aug. 25, 2014

Passage

Amos 8:1-14 (ESV)

This is what the Lord GOD showed me: behold, a basket of summer fruit. And he said, “Amos, what do you see?” And I said, “A basket of summer fruit.” Then the LORD said to me,

  “The end has come upon my people Israel;
    I will never again pass by them.
  The songs of the temple shall become wailings in that day,”
      declares the Lord GOD.
  “So many dead bodies!”
  “They are thrown everywhere!”
  “Silence!”
  Hear this, you who trample on the needy
    and bring the poor of the land to an end,
  saying, “When will the new moon be over,
    that we may sell grain?
  And the Sabbath,
    that we may offer wheat for sale,
  that we may make the ephah small and the shekel great
    and deal deceitfully with false balances,
  that we may buy the poor for silver
    and the needy for a pair of sandals
    and sell the chaff of the wheat?”
  The LORD has sworn by the pride of Jacob:
  “Surely I will never forget any of their deeds.
  Shall not the land tremble on this account,
    and everyone mourn who dwells in it,
  and all of it rise like the Nile,
    and be tossed about and sink again, like the Nile of Egypt?”
  “And on that day,” declares the Lord GOD,
    “I will make the sun go down at noon
    and darken the earth in broad daylight.
10   I will turn your feasts into mourning
    and all your songs into lamentation;
  I will bring sackcloth on every waist
    and baldness on every head;
  I will make it like the mourning for an only son
    and the end of it like a bitter day.
11   “Behold, the days are coming,” declares the Lord GOD,
    “when I will send a famine on the land—
  not a famine of bread, nor a thirst for water,
    but of hearing the words of the LORD.
12   They shall wander from sea to sea,
    and from north to east;
  they shall run to and fro, to seek the word of the LORD,
    but they shall not find it.
13   “In that day the lovely virgins and the young men
    shall faint for thirst.
14   Those who swear by the Guilt of Samaria,
    and say, ‘As your god lives, O Dan,’
  and, ‘As the Way of Beersheba lives,’
    they shall fall, and never rise again.”

Daily Bread

Key Verse: 8:11

  “Behold, the days are coming,” declares the Lord GOD,
    “when I will send a famine on the land—
  not a famine of bread, nor a thirst for water,
    but of hearing the words of the LORD.

First, the time was ripe for judgment (1-6). "Ripe" here means ripe for the harvest of judgment. The people were so ripe they were rotten and falling from the tree. They had become so materialistic that they were impatient for worship to end so they could oppress the poor. Money had become their god. God's judgment would come in the form of an earthquake, confirmed by an eclipse.

Second, the judgment was more than physical (7-14). The people would suffer on a spiritual level because of their sin. Their attempts at worship will become times of weeping. They will be in perpetual mourning. They will not be able to hear the word of the Lord and thus grow faith. They will spiritually thirst and stagger in life. Those who should be lovely will appear gaunt and on death's door. Such is the fate of any who ignore God's grace and mercy. We need the Lord. He is our life and our all.

Prayer: Lord, I repent of my sins that cut me off from you. Without you I would surely stagger and fall. Help us to hold onto you and share your word with a people staggering in a spiritual famine.

One Word: The Lord saves from spiritual famine

Daily Bread

King of Kings and Lord of Lords

Revelation 19:11-21

Key Verse: 19:16

On his robe and on his thigh he has a name written, King of kings and Lord of lords.

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