Your greatest Enemy

Amos 3:9-15

Israel has two enemies that seem to have been around for many years, the Philistines and Egypt.  Often, God allowed them to be used as His tool to bring Israel back to seeking God’s protection, and yet Israel had one enemy that was much greater than the two listed and that was Israel.  Because they chose to live independent from God’s precepts and commandments and forgot that God had promised them blessing or curses as He spoke through Moses when they came out of Egypt. This was Moses’ final warning: “See, I have set before you today life and good, death and evil. If you obey the commandments of the LORD your God that I command you today, by loving the LORD your God, by walking in his ways, and by keeping his commandments and his statutes and his rules, then you shall live and multiply, and the LORD your God will bless you in the land that you are entering to take possession of it. But if your heart turns away, and you will not hear, but are drawn away to worship other gods and serve them, I declare to you today, that you shall surely perish. You shall not live long in the land that you are going over the Jordan to enter and possess. (Deuteronomy 30:15-18 ESV)

Have you ever wondered why Israel did not believe God, and if you have wondered why, then have you looked in the mirror and asked yourself the same question?   And are we that much different than the people of Amos time, for they were sure that if an enemy attacked them, God would come to their rescue.  Amos spoke words of sarcasm to them and in that the Bible is a living book and the written word of God, is that also a word to you and me?  This is what the Lord spoke through Amos: “Thus says the LORD: “As the shepherd rescues from the mouth of the lion two legs, or a piece of an ear, so shall the people of Israel who dwell in Samaria be rescued, with the corner of a couch and part of a bed.

(Amos 3:12 ESV)  If you look closely at the lamb, it is not dead when the shepherd rescues it from the lion, and it seems that, once more, a people who instruct God on what part He must participate in; government, schools, business are setting themselves up to be destroyed.

When God tells them in verse 14 that he will punish the altars of Bethel on the day He punishes Israel, is that not referring to the religious leaders and their followers, for their sins.  All over the world we have people of great wealth, as they did in the time of Amos, and they may have supported the Synagogues and even attended worship services, but their trust was in wealth, much like some who support Christian programs in 2013.  And the Lord is telling Amos to proclaim that your wealth will not save you from God’s judgment.  The people, who have been blessed to live a prosperous life in the U.S.A. or anywhere in this world, should take to heart what God has said to the people of Israel.  Verse 15, “I will strike the winter house along with the summer house, and the houses of ivory shall perish, and the great houses shall come to an end,” declares the LORD.

For as in the time of John the Baptist, where he proclaimed to the people of Israel, the chosen people, that they must repent of their sins, they must return to the Lord, is that not what we who claim to be Christian must do?  Is it not time to bow our knee to the Lord Jesus Christ and seek Him with a pure heart?

From the Back Porch,

Bob Rice