WHAT PRICE GOD’S WORD?
Opening Prayer
Lord, give me a deeper appreciation of Your Word.
Read AMOS 8:1–14
A Basket of Ripe Fruit
8 This is what the Sovereign Lord showed me: a basket of ripe fruit. 2 “What do you see, Amos?” he asked.
“A basket of ripe fruit,” I answered.
Then the Lord said to me, “The time is ripe for my people Israel; I will spare them no longer.
3 “In that day,” declares the Sovereign Lord, “the songs in the temple will turn to wailing. Many, many bodies—flung everywhere! Silence!”
4 Hear this, you who trample the needy
and do away with the poor of the land,
5 saying,
“When will the New Moon be over
that we may sell grain,
and the Sabbath be ended
that we may market wheat?”—
skimping on the measure,
boosting the price
and cheating with dishonest scales,
6 buying the poor with silver
and the needy for a pair of sandals,
selling even the sweepings with the wheat.
7 The Lord has sworn by himself, the Pride of Jacob: “I will never forget anything they have done.
8 “Will not the land tremble for this,
and all who live in it mourn?
The whole land will rise like the Nile;
it will be stirred up and then sink
like the river of Egypt.
9 “In that day,” declares the Sovereign Lord,
“I will make the sun go down at noon
and darken the earth in broad daylight.
10 I will turn your religious festivals into mourning
and all your singing into weeping.
I will make all of you wear sackcloth
and shave your heads.
I will make that time like mourning for an only son
and the end of it like a bitter day.
11 “The days are coming,” declares the Sovereign Lord,
“when I will send a famine through the land—
not a famine of food or a thirst for water,
but a famine of hearing the words of the Lord.
12 People will stagger from sea to sea
and wander from north to east,
searching for the word of the Lord,
but they will not find it.
13 “In that day
“the lovely young women and strong young men
will faint because of thirst.
14 Those who swear by the sin of Samaria—
who say, ‘As surely as your god lives, Dan,’
or, ‘As surely as the god of Beersheba lives’—
they will fall, never to rise again.”
New International Version (NIV)
Holy Bible, New International Version®, NIV® Copyright ©1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc.® Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide.
Meditate
“Oh, how I love your law! It is my meditation all day long.”
Think Further
It’s likely that those who read these notes have unlimited access to God’s Word in the form of the Bible plus preaching, books and perhaps even modern-day prophecy. Is this something we take for granted? What would it be like if all these were taken from us? That is part of what Amos is warning about. A famine is on the way—of hearing the Word of God (11,12).
Amos’s fourth vision, a basket of ripe summer fruit, centers on a wordplay in Hebrew. The words for “summer fruit” and “end” are very similar. For Amos it is a graphic illustration of how God will make an end of Israel’s life as the people know it. With some recapping on earlier themes, Amos declares that the nation is ripe for punishment because of its heartless commercial dealings. (Did you notice the hypocrisy of keeping the Sabbath while wanting it to end as soon as possible so they can continue in their questionable behavior?) This whole way of life will come to a screeching halt. Festivals will turn to fasts and singing to weeping. The end may be portrayed in terms of an earthquake and solar eclipse, but the worst outcome imaginable was a cessation of communication from God. God would be totally silent. A famine indeed.
The comparison of God’s Word to bread is a familiar theme in the Bible. Without food we die physically. Without God’s Word we die spiritually, because it is indispensable for spiritual life. Has it become overly familiar to us? Do we realize what a huge privilege it is to access it?
Apply
Pray for those who work tirelessly and sometimes in dangerous situations to translate the Bible into indigenous languages.
Closing prayer
Lord, we thank You for preserving Your Word for all generations, despite the devil’s many attempts to extirpate it from the earth.
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