Amos 8:11-14

Amos chapter 8, verses 11 to 14 for our text and study this evening. Behold, the days come, sayeth the Lord God, that I will send a famine in the land, not a famine of bread, nor a thirst for water, but of hearing the words of the Lord. and they shall wonder from sea to sea, from the north even to the east, they shall run to and fro to seek the word of the Lord and shall not find it. In that day shall fair virgins and young men faint for thirst. They that swear by the sin of Samaria and say thy God, God O Dan liveth, and the manner of Beersheba liveth. Even they shall fall and never rise up again. May God bless to us His sacred and holy word this evening. Because of a video on the internet and because of the television, we have now access to places where there are famines, and you can see firsthand accounts, you can see the pictures of the people suffering under a famine, whether it be in Ethiopia or Africa or Indonesia or wherever the case may be. And you see how devastating a famine could be in the lives of people. And it’s, you know, you get it up close and personal view of these things. You can see the little children with their bloated stomachs. You can see the rib cages protruding from starving bodies that men and women are literally reduced to skin and bones. You can see the fear that captivates the faces of these people who don’t have whether they’re going to have any need or not. Death is a certain reality. They don’t get some help and they don’t get some aid. Amos describes for us here a different type of famine. A famine of hearing the words of the Lord. For while a famine of the word of God is not as visible to the naked eye, we may not see the ribcages and the bloated. stomachs and all this stuff, it will still kill the soul. When God withdraws his truth from a nation, it’s almost certain doom is going to occur. And it becomes a mere skeleton, if you were. A nation whose people eventually all will perish in the everlasting fires of hell because they don’t have the word of God. sadly few people realize that this type of famine deserves our utmost attention. We should pay very careful attention to this type of famine, for it’s even worse than the famine that would affect the body. We’re dealing with the eternal soul. We have a famine of the Word of God here. Now Israel is forewarned of this. We read here in this verse 11. behold the days come said the Lord God they’re coming they’re just about here is in the habit of withdrawing good gifts that he gives people when they despise them when people don’t realize the value of God’s gift of hearing the word of God. It’s no wonder that he says okay you don’t want it you won’t have it and in this case god chose to announce his attentions that he’s going to take away the word from Israel and he forewarns amos of this behold take note of this this is what’s coming he tells them this that in the interim while amos is still there while Amos is still preaching, you better listen to what he has to say. Because you may not have it for a long, long period of time. When Joseph understood God’s dreams that he gave Pharaoh about the seven years of famine and the seven years of plenty, he took that to heart. He says, I better store up during the years of plenty because there’s going to be a famine coming. You better store up with the word of God now. You better take it in now because you’re not. not going to have it later. The famine’s coming. Stockpile the truth in your heart. Hide it in your heart. So Israel is forewarned here of this coming spiritual famine. Now Israel will experience a famine of the soul here. He says it’s not a famine in the land that affects the bread or the water supply. Not like a normal famine, but this is something it has to do with the word of God. Now you know it’d be terrible to starve to death. You didn’t have any to eat. And certainly dying of thirst is not a very pleasant experience either. But even more severe is the experience of having your soul die, so to speak, under these conditions. To be starved to death, so to speak. In other words, what God is saying is is you’re no longer going to be able to feed on the Word of God. Now, at first, you might look at this, well, that doesn’t seem like a very harsh judgment for many people. That would probably be a blessing in disguise. Great. We don’t have to listen to these crazy people talking about biblical things to us anymore. But it’s one of the most severe judgments a nation could possibly endure. What is one of the fundamentals of the faith? That man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God. Isn’t that a fundamental teaching of Scripture? Didn’t Jesus mention this in the New Testament and his temptation in the wilderness emphasizing that even though he was hungry, even though he was in need of food, wasn’t going to obey Satan’s command, because he had a higher command. He had something more important. That was God’s Word to obey God’s Word. When we go through Scripture, we see ultimately it’s God’s Word that makes all life possible. How did our world get here? God spoke the world’s in the being. His Word brought life, physical life, to our world. The animal life, the plant life, and certainly the human life. God’s God’s word is what was involved in the redemption of Israel from the land of Egypt where they were in bondage when God sent Moses and he sent Aaron and the message from God was, let my people go. And if you don’t, I will judge you. By God’s word, human beings can find everlasting life for it reveals Jesus Christ the Savior, from Genesis to Revelation. Remember that Jesus illuminates this whole issue of the divine word. When he talked at the woman at the well, remember at Samaria, and his disciples had gone into the city, evidently, to get some food to eat, and they come back out of Jesus sitting on the well there, talking with this woman, which surprised them because she’s a Samaritan woman, and they don’t have any dealings with, Jews don’t have any dealing with Samaritan. But when she goes back to the city to tell the men of the city, hey, this man, you know, it’s told me everything about my life. Isn’t this the Messiah? And so while she’s back there, the disciples say, why don’t you get something to eat? And you remember what Jesus said? He said, my meat, my food is to do the will of him that sent me that sent me. and finish the work. That’s what he counted as a priority. So feeding the word of God here, feeding on it is to learn the truth and live by it. Now, God is saying here, I’m going to take away the food. You’re going to starve to death, spiritually speaking. So Israel’s going to experience a famine of the soul. Israel will be unable to find God’s truth. Verse 12 is interesting. They shall wonder from seeing. to see from the north even to the east. They shall run to and fro to seek the word of the Lord and shall not find it. Somewhere along the line when people perhaps realize that they no longer have the word of God, there’s going to be perhaps a search by some for the hearing of the word of God. in the land. They want spiritual bread to eat. Time is going to come when the people of Israel would wonder here, far and wide. The wonder means you don’t really know where you’re going. You’re just going about here and there and everywhere trying to find the Word of God. Yet in spite of the search, it has disappeared completely. They traversed the land to discover what once was so lightly regarded is now long. You can see them hastening from sea to sea here. From the Dead Sea in the South to the Mediterranean Sea in the West. And then he talks about the North and the East, also in this passage. What does that tell us? He said, you can go in all four directions and you’re just not going to find it in this land. All the compass points are covered here in this. And search as they may. God’s truth has evaporated. It’s gone. There is no prophet to listen to. There is no message from God for them. No Amos. Not even a harsh word of rebuke. Nothing. Silence. When it comes to God’s message to them. Now Israel’s youth will receive the hardest blow according to verse 13. and that day shall the fair virgins and young men faint for thirst. It’s interesting that the Word of God is not only portrayed to us as bread, but it’s also portrayed in a sense as the water of life. It is what gives us life through Christ. And so Amos sees here young men and women fainting and perishing because the Word of God is not found. Now the strength and the future of any nation really is in its youth. Well, what this means is the future is doomed. They will faint with thirst. This word faint is the same word we find in the prophet Jonah’s account when the son, when he was out there waiting for God’s judgment and he’s sitting out there trying to build a little booth that just sort of get a little coverage out there and the sun’s beaten down on him and the Bible says Jonah fainted under all the heat and so forth. This is what he’s talking about. That’s a situation. The removal of the water of life. They are, however, experiencing a thirst of longing for something. Perhaps I don’t even know what it is, but something’s missing. And look at this. The error, the evil of one generation has deprived the next of the Word of God. think about that in a minute. The sins of the father are visited on the children. They didn’t want to hear it. Their children aren’t going to hear it either. Boy, that’s pretty sad, isn’t. As I thought about this, I thought about the story of Isaac, and he had the dig again the wells of water that had Abraham had dug years before. Because the Philistines filled him in with dirt and debris. And so he was deprived of their benefit by someone else. So he had to redig them. My friends, this is what’s happening. They have caused the dirt and debris to fill up where they could get the water of life, so to speak, and then they can’t get it. So Israel’s youth will be received the hardest blow. Israel’s people will be entrapped by error. Verse 14. They that swear by the sin of Samaria and say thy God O Dan liveth and the manner or the way of Beersheba liveth. Even they shall fall and never rise up again. You find this happening all the time. When truth is withdrawn, error fills the void. Now the light of God’s truth is removed and total darkness looms over the nation. They have no spiritual guidance. Israel is so caught up in its false worship, there is no way to escape the spiritual quagmire that they’re in. The sin of Samaria’s allusioned to probably the idolatrous golden calf that’s set up in Samaria for worship. The sin here of Dan or the reference to Dan, probably the temple or the shrine up in the north, that probably alludes to the bull image that they had up there. In the way of Beersheba here, Beersheba once belonged to the southern kingdom, but evidently the northern kingdom had conquered it, and at this time. And here, the same kind of worship is set up there. People swear by these false gods. People are leaning on them for guidance and direction. God says they’re going to perish in this. It will not help them. Air is a very deep pit. And when God abandoned you and you fall into this error, it is a sad situation. and they’re going to perish in their false worship. That’s the message here. A famine on the Word of God. Now let me draw a few practical thoughts tonight from this passage. And the first is this. Society owes much more to the presence of the Word of God in their midst than they realize. There is a strong resistance today, the biblical truth. The godless, the atheist, are attempting to remove all religious references from public life. The Bible and prayer certainly have been purged from our schools. The nation is being trained up in humanism. There are people today who would love to shut down all the churches of this nation. And we got a taste of that. And some of the governors of the various states that have really clamped down on churches, arresting people, finding them for even trying to gather at a distance on the Lord’s Day. And making it hard for us to worship when we have the right, the freedom to worship in this country. They have freedom to assemble. There are major mainline churches. They also would like to remove any type of evangelical element, reformed element, if you would, from society too. because those are pesky people. They’re always pointing out error, always pointing out wrong. They’re always saying, no, we’re not doing it right. Many churches have jetsened the truth of God’s word already. My friends, you can go to churches where they don’t believe in the virgin birth or the literal resurrection of Jesus Christ, or the necessity of the new birth, or salvation by sovereign grace through faith in the Savior Jesus Christ. or blood atonement, or totally poverty, or God is the creator of the universe or the miracles of Scripture. They deny them all. People would be happy if they could just purge all biblical truth, and Christians were non-existent. Others want to maintain their liberal views, but they don’t really want any conservative Christianity around. And yet these same people, don’t realize the value of the word of God in their midst. There is no thankfulness that the word of God can be obtained and you can own a copy of it and read it for yourself. There were times when you didn’t have, nations didn’t have the Word of God. The average person didn’t have access to the Word of God. And here we have, you know, 50 million translations of the Word of God. although supposedly the Word of God. Not that I would count them all as useful. But you can buy, you can go in a regular bookstore and buy Scripture. A Bible. There’s no appreciation for the preciousness of having believers like Amos in your midst as salt and light who speak the Word of God to you. Believers, wherever they go, try to promote the Word of God. God. Losing the truth of God’s word is a terrible famine, and yet there are people who have a who cares attitude. It is the Christian that is a preservative in our society. Christ says that we are the salt of this world. We are the ones that are a preserving element in the world. You take away the Christian? You take away the Word of God, and all you got is decay and rottenness. Look at the example of Lott and Sodom and Gimor back in the book of Genesis. They thought they could do without Lott. They considered him an outsider. Now, this guy’s come in here and he’s always telling us what to do and he’s a bit irregular. He didn’t fit in. He certainly didn’t agree with their homosexual lifestyle. He was a bit too conservative, too spiritually minded his conscience was bothered by the things he heard and saw there in that city. And yet, when the Lord spoke to Abraham and talked about the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah, what was the one thing that would spare that nation of that city? Abraham says, will you destroy the righteous with the wicked? And he’s out if there’s 50 righteous it gets it down to 10 righteous sadly he could have got down to five and it still would have been destroyed when you think about it the only hope for Sodom and Gamaura was Lott’s presence. You remember when Lott lingers he doesn’t he don’t want to leave right away and the angels grab a hold of him and his wife and his children two two daughters and whisked them out of the sea they said we’ve got to get you out of here we can’t destroy the city while you’re here. Now think about that a minute. Their presence was a preservative in that society. It was a small flicker of truth, not much, but a little, glowing from lot that was not appreciated at all. When he’s gone, destruction comes. The withdrawal of the Word of God is actually withdrawal of a good gift from a nation. One of the greatest gifts a nation can have is the presence of the Word of God being proliferated throughout the land. There are many good things that a wicked society receives because of the righteous in their midst. Perhaps you haven’t given this much thought, but think about this a minute. It is God’s truth in believers that is important. And while believers are there, God may keep a company solvent, so it doesn’t go chapter 11, because there’s a Christian worker in that company that he’s going to take care of. God may rain upon certain areas, and others have drought for the purpose of providing food and income for the Christian farmer. Others in that area around the farmer benefit from that. A nation may be preserved for military defeat merely because of the Christian farmer. God’s truth is faithfully proclaimed in that nation. We can talk about a country’s economy, political stability, their income level, their freedoms, all these things really are connected with God’s people being present. There is an impact made by the presence of the Word of God through God’s people. They are sort of living the truth in the presence of a wicked and perverse society. Society owes much more to the presence of the Word of God in its midst than it realizes. Secondly, tonight, you should prize the presence of the faithfully taught Word of God. Now, you can go all over this world and you’ll always find false worship. You know, the gods of Samaria and Dan and Beersheba, they’re everywhere. Places where God’s word is faithfully proclaimed are not so prominent. If they’re not present, there’s no spiritual food for the soul. You can go to many places, many churches, seeking spiritual bread, and get a stone or a serpent. Nothing that will do your soul any good. There are places of so-called worship that will kill your soul, because the Word of God isn’t proclaimed there. On their, On the other hand, there are churches which still proclaim the Word of God faithfully. They may not be very prevalent, but they exist. In today’s society, there is a lethargy, however. I hate to say this. But a lethargy among those who proclaim to be following Jesus Christ about being in a place where the Word of God is faithful. proclaim. But they don’t have a youth group for my children. They don’t have a gymnasium for my children. Think about that a minute. What are you counting as important for you? Oh, well, it’s too far to drive to go to that church. We’ve got one down the street. Yes, but the one down the street is not proclaiming the Word of God. Is that satisfactory to you? When God, removed his word from Israel. It’s a fatal blow. It kills the nation. People don’t seem to realize the danger here. It’s scary to me. That people would be satisfied to go to places where there’s just a mediocreness to it. There’s no seriousness seriousness to the preaching of the Word of God. And my friends, hearing the Word of God, is not an in alienable right, it can be taken away. It grieves my soul that those who claim that they’re Christians would go to a place where they’re getting chaffs, chaff and stick in stones instead of wholesome bread. And I got news for you. If you don’t count the Word of God faithly proclaimed as precious, eventually you won’t have it. If you don’t support the work that is faithly teaching the Word of God, eventually, you will will not have it in your midst. It’ll be gone. It’ll evaporate. You’ll look for it, but you won’t be able to find it. We live in an age of convenience. There are many who are too lazy to seek out the faithful preaching of the Word of God. My friends, it is very easy for God to remove the candlestick, the light of His Word from one place and put it somewhere else. It’s just like if you had a candlestick in one room and you lift it up and carried it away and put it in another room, and now the room you formerly were in is now dark. And God can do that and take away the Word of God from the midst of an area. If the Word of God is faithfully taught in your church, appreciate it. Prize it. Love the Word of God. Love to hear it proclaimed. The urge and about bringing up. others into the earshot to hear it too. It’s not a guaranteed privilege. You have a Bible in your hands. Spurgeon once said that he visited people. He said if you ask them for their Bible and they gave it to you, he said there’d be enough dust on the jacket. You could write the word damnation on it. If we have the Word of God, read it. Appreciate the fact that you have it in print. And you can study the scriptures. Do we have time for the Word of God? I read an interesting story about a Christian man. He was severely burned in a fire. And because of that, he lost his eyesight. And somehow, I guess he wasn’t able to use his fingertips to read Braille. But he taught himself how to read Braille with his tongue. And he had read through the Bible something like five times with his tongue. Now there’s a person who appreciates the Word of God. We should meditate on the Word of God because it reveals to us Jesus Christ, who is the true bread of life. Finally. Thirdly tonight. And finally, what many young people are knowingly thirsting for today is spiritual truth. Yeah, young people today, they’re restless. They really don’t know what they’re missing. They’re missing something. Something’s missing in their life. They’re up. utterly confused. They don’t know what the meaning of life is. They don’t know why they’re here. Whether they know about worshiping God, whether they know about God’s truth, nothing. They give themselves over to drugs, sex, alcohol, the accumulation of possessions, and yet, when they do this, they’re still empty and unfulfilled. Something’s missing. Young people don’t even know where to look for the answers. What they need is spirit. truth, that’s why they’re starving spiritually. That’s why they’re dying of thirst. They don’t have the Word of God. You and I who’ve raised children, now we may have grandchildren, we have to take care of and so forth, remember this. If we’re raising children or taking care of grandchildren, may we not fail to train them up in the Word of God that they would appreciate the Scriptures. Let’s not, neglect our own generation that’s coming up and think that somehow rather they’ll be all right. They need the training up in the things of the Lord too. And we need to attempt to show young people today that Jesus Christ is the real answer to all things that are missing that make them restless in life. Well, let us close with a word of prayer tonight. Thank you.