December 21: Amos 6-9; Psalm 141; 1 John 3-4

Amos 6-9

Woe to Those at Ease in Zion

6   “Woe to those who are at ease in Zion,
    and to those who feel secure on the mountain of Samaria,
  the notable men of the first of the nations,
    to whom the house of Israel comes!
  Pass over to Calneh, and see,
    and from there go to Hamath the great;
    then go down to Gath of the Philistines.
  Are you better than these kingdoms?
    Or is their territory greater than your territory,
  O you who put far away the day of disaster
    and bring near the seat of violence?
  “Woe to those who lie on beds of ivory
    and stretch themselves out on their couches,
  and eat lambs from the flock
    and calves from the midst of the stall,
  who sing idle songs to the sound of the harp
    and like David invent for themselves instruments of music,
  who drink wine in bowls
    and anoint themselves with the finest oils,
    but are not grieved over the ruin of Joseph!
  Therefore they shall now be the first of those who go into exile,
    and the revelry of those who stretch themselves out shall pass away.”

The Lord GOD has sworn by himself, declares the LORD, the God of hosts:

  “I abhor the pride of Jacob
    and hate his strongholds,
    and I will deliver up the city and all that is in it.”

And if ten men remain in one house, they shall die. And when one's relative, the one who anoints him for burial, shall take him up to bring the bones out of the house, and shall say to him who is in the innermost parts of the house, “Is there still anyone with you?” he shall say, “No”; and he shall say, “Silence! We must not mention the name of the LORD.”

  For behold, the LORD commands,
    and the great house shall be struck down into fragments,
    and the little house into bits.
  Do horses run on rocks?
    Does one plow there¹ with oxen?
  But you have turned justice into poison
    and the fruit of righteousness into wormwood²—
  you who rejoice in Lo-debar,³
    who say, “Have we not by our own strength
    captured Karnaim⁴ for ourselves?”
  “For behold, I will raise up against you a nation,
    O house of Israel,” declares the LORD, the God of hosts;
  “and they shall oppress you from Lebo-hamath
    to the Brook of the Arabah.”

Warning Visions

7 This is what the Lord GOD showed me: behold, he was forming locusts when the latter growth was just beginning to sprout, and behold, it was the latter growth after the king's mowings. When they had finished eating the grass of the land, I said,

  “O Lord GOD, please forgive!
    How can Jacob stand?
    He is so small!”
  The LORD relented concerning this:
    “It shall not be,” said the LORD.

This is what the Lord GOD showed me: behold, the Lord GOD was calling for a judgment by fire, and it devoured the great deep and was eating up the land. Then I said,

  “O Lord GOD, please cease!
    How can Jacob stand?
    He is so small!”
  The LORD relented concerning this:
    “This also shall not be,” said the Lord GOD.

This is what he showed me: behold, the Lord was standing beside a wall built with a plumb line, with a plumb line in his hand. And the LORD said to me, “Amos, what do you see?” And I said, “A plumb line.” Then the Lord said,

  “Behold, I am setting a plumb line
    in the midst of my people Israel;
    I will never again pass by them;
  the high places of Isaac shall be made desolate,
    and the sanctuaries of Israel shall be laid waste,
    and I will rise against the house of Jeroboam with the sword.”

Amos Accused

Then Amaziah the priest of Bethel sent to Jeroboam king of Israel, saying, “Amos has conspired against you in the midst of the house of Israel. The land is not able to bear all his words. For thus Amos has said,

  “‘Jeroboam shall die by the sword,
    and Israel must go into exile
    away from his land.’”

And Amaziah said to Amos, “O seer, go, flee away to the land of Judah, and eat bread there, and prophesy there, but never again prophesy at Bethel, for it is the king's sanctuary, and it is a temple of the kingdom.”

Then Amos answered and said to Amaziah, “I was⁵ no prophet, nor a prophet's son, but I was a herdsman and a dresser of sycamore figs. But the LORD took me from following the flock, and the LORD said to me, ‘Go, prophesy to my people Israel.’ Now therefore hear the word of the LORD.

  “You say, ‘Do not prophesy against Israel,
    and do not preach against the house of Isaac.’

Therefore thus says the LORD:

  “‘Your wife shall be a prostitute in the city,
    and your sons and your daughters shall fall by the sword,
    and your land shall be divided up with a measuring line;
  you yourself shall die in an unclean land,
    and Israel shall surely go into exile away from its land.’”

The Coming Day of Bitter Mourning

8 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 end⁶ has come upon my people Israel;
    I will never again pass by them.
  The songs of the temple⁷ shall become wailings⁸ 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 shekel⁹ 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.
  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.
  “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.
  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.
  “In that day the lovely virgins and the young men
    shall faint for thirst.
  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.”

The Destruction of Israel

9 I saw the Lord standing beside¹⁰ the altar, and he said:

  “Strike the capitals until the thresholds shake,
    and shatter them on the heads of all the people;¹¹
  and those who are left of them I will kill with the sword;
    not one of them shall flee away;
    not one of them shall escape.
  “If they dig into Sheol,
    from there shall my hand take them;
  if they climb up to heaven,
    from there I will bring them down.
  If they hide themselves on the top of Carmel,
    from there I will search them out and take them;
  and if they hide from my sight at the bottom of the sea,
    there I will command the serpent, and it shall bite them.
  And if they go into captivity before their enemies,
    there I will command the sword, and it shall kill them;
  and I will fix my eyes upon them
    for evil and not for good.”
  The Lord GOD of hosts,
  he who touches the earth and it melts,
    and all who dwell in it mourn,
  and all of it rises like the Nile,
    and sinks again, like the Nile of Egypt;
  who builds his upper chambers in the heavens
    and founds his vault upon the earth;
  who calls for the waters of the sea
    and pours them out upon the surface of the earth—
  the LORD is his name.
  “Are you not like the Cushites to me,
    O people of Israel?” declares the LORD.
  “Did I not bring up Israel from the land of Egypt,
    and the Philistines from Caphtor and the Syrians from Kir?
  Behold, the eyes of the Lord GOD are upon the sinful kingdom,
    and I will destroy it from the surface of the ground,
    except that I will not utterly destroy the house of Jacob,”
      declares the LORD.
  “For behold, I will command,
    and shake the house of Israel among all the nations
  as one shakes with a sieve,
    but no pebble shall fall to the earth.
  All the sinners of my people shall die by the sword,
    who say, ‘Disaster shall not overtake or meet us.’

The Restoration of Israel

  “In that day I will raise up
    the booth of David that is fallen
  and repair its breaches,
    and raise up its ruins
    and rebuild it as in the days of old,
  that they may possess the remnant of Edom
    and all the nations who are called by my name,”¹²
    declares the LORD who does this.
  “Behold, the days are coming,” declares the LORD,
    “when the plowman shall overtake the reaper
    and the treader of grapes him who sows the seed;
  the mountains shall drip sweet wine,
    and all the hills shall flow with it.
  I will restore the fortunes of my people Israel,
    and they shall rebuild the ruined cities and inhabit them;
  they shall plant vineyards and drink their wine,
    and they shall make gardens and eat their fruit.
  I will plant them on their land,
    and they shall never again be uprooted
    out of the land that I have given them,”
      says the LORD your God.

(ESV)

Psalm 141

Give Ear to My Voice

A Psalm of David.

141   O LORD, I call upon you; hasten to me!
    Give ear to my voice when I call to you!
  Let my prayer be counted as incense before you,
    and the lifting up of my hands as the evening sacrifice!
  Set a guard, O LORD, over my mouth;
    keep watch over the door of my lips!
  Do not let my heart incline to any evil,
    to busy myself with wicked deeds
  in company with men who work iniquity,
    and let me not eat of their delicacies!
  Let a righteous man strike me—it is a kindness;
    let him rebuke me—it is oil for my head;
    let my head not refuse it.
  Yet my prayer is continually against their evil deeds.
  When their judges are thrown over the cliff,¹
    then they shall hear my words, for they are pleasant.
  As when one plows and breaks up the earth,
    so shall our bones be scattered at the mouth of Sheol.²
  But my eyes are toward you, O GOD, my Lord;
    in you I seek refuge; leave me not defenseless!³
  Keep me from the trap that they have laid for me
    and from the snares of evildoers!
  Let the wicked fall into their own nets,
    while I pass by safely.

(ESV)

1 John 3-4

3 See what kind of love the Father has given to us, that we should be called children of God; and so we are. The reason why the world does not know us is that it did not know him. Beloved, we are God's children now, and what we will be has not yet appeared; but we know that when he appears¹ we shall be like him, because we shall see him as he is. And everyone who thus hopes in him purifies himself as he is pure.

Everyone who makes a practice of sinning also practices lawlessness; sin is lawlessness. You know that he appeared in order to take away sins, and in him there is no sin. No one who abides in him keeps on sinning; no one who keeps on sinning has either seen him or known him. Little children, let no one deceive you. Whoever practices righteousness is righteous, as he is righteous. Whoever makes a practice of sinning is of the devil, for the devil has been sinning from the beginning. The reason the Son of God appeared was to destroy the works of the devil. No one born of God makes a practice of sinning, for God's² seed abides in him; and he cannot keep on sinning, because he has been born of God. By this it is evident who are the children of God, and who are the children of the devil: whoever does not practice righteousness is not of God, nor is the one who does not love his brother.

Love One Another

For this is the message that you have heard from the beginning, that we should love one another. We should not be like Cain, who was of the evil one and murdered his brother. And why did he murder him? Because his own deeds were evil and his brother's righteous. Do not be surprised, brothers,³ that the world hates you. We know that we have passed out of death into life, because we love the brothers. Whoever does not love abides in death. Everyone who hates his brother is a murderer, and you know that no murderer has eternal life abiding in him.

By this we know love, that he laid down his life for us, and we ought to lay down our lives for the brothers. But if anyone has the world's goods and sees his brother in need, yet closes his heart against him, how does God's love abide in him? Little children, let us not love in word or talk but in deed and in truth.

By this we shall know that we are of the truth and reassure our heart before him; for whenever our heart condemns us, God is greater than our heart, and he knows everything. Beloved, if our heart does not condemn us, we have confidence before God; and whatever we ask we receive from him, because we keep his commandments and do what pleases him. And this is his commandment, that we believe in the name of his Son Jesus Christ and love one another, just as he has commanded us. Whoever keeps his commandments abides in God,⁴ and God⁵ in him. And by this we know that he abides in us, by the Spirit whom he has given us.

Test the Spirits

4 Beloved, do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits to see whether they are from God, for many false prophets have gone out into the world. By this you know the Spirit of God: every spirit that confesses that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is from God, and every spirit that does not confess Jesus is not from God. This is the spirit of the antichrist, which you heard was coming and now is in the world already. Little children, you are from God and have overcome them, for he who is in you is greater than he who is in the world. They are from the world; therefore they speak from the world, and the world listens to them. We are from God. Whoever knows God listens to us; whoever is not from God does not listen to us. By this we know the Spirit of truth and the spirit of error.

God Is Love

Beloved, let us love one another, for love is from God, and whoever loves has been born of God and knows God. Anyone who does not love does not know God, because God is love. In this the love of God was made manifest among us, that God sent his only Son into the world, so that we might live through him. In this is love, not that we have loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins. Beloved, if God so loved us, we also ought to love one another. No one has ever seen God; if we love one another, God abides in us and his love is perfected in us.

By this we know that we abide in him and he in us, because he has given us of his Spirit. And we have seen and testify that the Father has sent his Son to be the Savior of the world. Whoever confesses that Jesus is the Son of God, God abides in him, and he in God. So we have come to know and to believe the love that God has for us. God is love, and whoever abides in love abides in God, and God abides in him. By this is love perfected with us, so that we may have confidence for the day of judgment, because as he is so also are we in this world. There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear. For fear has to do with punishment, and whoever fears has not been perfected in love. We love because he first loved us. If anyone says, “I love God,” and hates his brother, he is a liar; for he who does not love his brother whom he has seen cannot⁶ love God whom he has not seen. And this commandment we have from him: whoever loves God must also love his brother.

(ESV)