#DailyDevotion All Bad Things Must Come To An End
Amos 3 12 The LORD says: “As a shepherd snatches from a lion’s mouth two leg bones or a piece of an ear, so the people of Israel living in Samaria will get away with a corner of a bed or a couch from Damascus. 13 “Listen and testify against the people of Jacob,” says the Lord GOD, the God of armies: 14 “On the day I punish Israel for its wrongs, I will punish the altars at Bethel, and the horns of the altar will be cut off and fall to the ground. 15 I will strike the winter house and the summer house, and the ivory houses will perish, and the big palaces will come to an end,” says the LORD.
This is not good. The curses the LORD had the Israelites speak at Mt. Ebal which were perscribed by the LORD in the last chapters of Deuteronomy are coming to pass and that right quickly. The Israelites have become worse than their pagan neighbors and the people they displaced because they had the word of the LORD and rejected it.
The threat is large and looming. The people of Israel are about to lose almost everything. The Assyrians, the hand of the LORD, were coming for their destruction. The Assyrians are going to devour the wealth and the people of the country. Only a remnant will remain and they will be absorbed into the nations they are sent only to be heard of in distant memory. They will never be recognized as the people of God any longer or have an identity of their own.
The LORD will use the Assyrians to punish Israel for all their wrongs. They will tear down the altars at Bethel, where the idolatry of making the LORD into a golden calf was instituted by Jeroboam to keep the Israelites from worshiping at the temple in Jerusalem. The horns of the altar (they represent power) would be cut off and fall to the ground. This would demonstrate the God they worship isn’t coming to help them out. The Assyrians would be thinking their god was greater not realizing it was the LORD the God of the Israelites empowering them.
All the wealth, the mammon, the Israelites, particularly the upper classes amassed at the expense of the people who were the apple of His eye, the poor, the widow, the fatherless, and the foreigners, was now going to be taken away. Like the most expensives homes in the resort county I live in, they had summer and winter houses (the summer houses are here), these all would be destroyed by Assyrians. Can you imagine a home with inlaid ivory? It would be something like the palace at Versailles, France or the homes of the rich in Newport Rhode Island. The LORD has even taken these away from those who worship Mammon in the not too distant past. You can see the rubble of these places today mainly because archaeologists have dug them up and restored them to some extent. The LORD’s word came to pass.
Paul tells us in 1 Cor. 10:11, “These things happened to them to make them a lesson to others and were written down to warn us who are living when the world is coming to an end. 12 So if you think you stand, be careful that you don’t fall.” We too have been given God’s Word. The LORD has rescued us from sin, death and the power of the devil and given us eternal life. We have His instructions on how He wants us to live. He has given us His Holy Spirit that we may conform our lives to His will. What will happen to us if we despise all these things like the Israelites despised what the LORD had done for them? Let us live in daily repentance.
Merciful God and Father, You have given us all good things. Let us learn from the Israelites how we are not to act and rather live our Your life in our daily lives to Your glory. In Jesus’ name we pray. Amen.