Sunday 16 Nov 2014

November 16: Amos 7:7-9

Key Verse: Amos 7:7
Thus He showed me: Behold, the Lord stood on a wall made with a plumb line, with a plumb line in His hand.

Devotion:
I love the picture of a the wall being built using a plumb line that the Lord is holding; this is His plumb line and the wall has been constructed using it. In other words this wall (the people of Israel) has been constructed using God’s Word (the plumb line). God is the one who gave instruction for the children of Israel to live as a separate people and when they followed that word, they excelled in all they did and were protected all the time by God. But when they grew lax in the law and gave in to the local ways and idols, God made sure they listened to what was to come.

Amos was given a string of dreams showing Him how terrible things were going to get. Each time Amos pleaded with God to make the punishments a little less harsh! God, through His mercy and grace, was ready to forgive and move forward when they were strong enough and honest enough to listen to God’s word now.

Up to now God had shown the people His forgiveness and His grace by allowing the people of Israel to have their sins atoned for by sacrifices and other works. Now God was saying that they were no longer giving this from the heart by were just doing it to get closer to God, thinking that the better they did it the closer they could get; the same acts as the people of Babel earlier on in history.

When we leave our hearts out of our worship of God, we become ineffectual in all our deeds. God wants to hear from the heart and not from something done just because that is what should be done. God was going to put aside all the laws of sacrifice when Christ came to lay His life down. When we study to find out when this all started we find that God has been trying to make sure we love and obey Him from the heart. Allow God to work wonders in your own life!

Points to Ponder:
Do you apply God’s law into your life?

Are you doing it because you actually believe Christ?