UNBLOCKING THE WELL OF THE LIVING WORD

DAY 15 MORNING Read Mark 12:28-34

AMOS: JESUS CHRIST IS THE CASCADING JUSTICE POURING DOWN FROM ABOVE

Jesus Christ is revealed in the book of Amos, as the one who will bring justice rolling like a river, righteousness like a never-failing stream!

Amos was a shepherd from Tekoa, an honest businessman from the Southern kingdom and he brought a stinging judgement to 6 nations, before bringing judgement to Judah and Israel. Israel was rich self-satisfied and indulgent but had  oppressed the poor with social injustice incurring the wrath and judgement of God. He says “The Lion has roared, who will not fear?” Amos uses the grim and disturbing image of a lion to describe the impending judgement that will take place for Israel and to describe gods anger against Israel’s guilt of social injustice. Israel will be punished. There will be economic consequences and religious ones too. Altars will be cut off and great houses destroyed. As Jesus Christ would emphasize centuries later (Mark 12:30-31), at the heart of the covenant that God had made with his people is love for God and neighbour. Neglect of love for neighbour was a serious omission, in following God’s commands, and would have betrayed a lack of compassion for the poor and would lead to judgement. Amos uses a lament to express emotionally the sadness of God at the disaster that will take place for Israel. Amos describes the impending disaster that would befall Samaria as a result of Israel’s self-satisfied and hard-hearted oppression of the poor. In 722 BC the prediction of doom and was fulfilled. The people of Samaria went into captivity. Pride went before destruction. Amos then brings a vision of a plumbline that the Lord is setting before Israel and judgement was predicted. Amos said that King Jeroboam’s wife would become a prostitute and his sons and daughters would fall by the sword. God’s judgement on the house of Israel was final. Never again would it be restored in the same way.

The only hope for the people of Israel and Judah is found in Jesus, the saviour redeemer and restorer. God is a God of redemption and restoration. Just as the author of Chronicles clearly believed that the future for Israel lay in a restoration of a heart of worship to Israel, Amos also clearly foresaw a day when the Lord would restore 24/7 worship, day and night prayer (Amos 9:11). Amos promises that he will restore the fortunes of Israel but ultimately Jesus is the fulfilment of this hope for the future. He will bring justice rolling like a river, righteousness like a never-failing stream.

MISSIONARY MONKS: WILFRID 633-709[1]  

Wilfrid is most remembered for the role he took at the Synod of Whitby, a significant gathering which effectively decided the pre-eminence of Roman custom over the Irish custom, for the future. The Celtic date for Easter and the Roman date were different. Wilfrid, who could speak the Anglo-Saxon language, was successful at the Synod of Whitby for bringing acceptance across the British Isles to the Roman custom for dating Easter. It was the influence of Wilfrid, and probably the prestige with which the Pope had gained by association with the Roman empire, that the Roman party gained a victory in England over their Irish rivals at Whitby. The conversion of Anglo Saxon England was effectively completed in 686-7 when Wilfred carried out an evangelistic mission among those living in Sussex who were still pagan, and he Christianized Sussex, founding a monastery in Selsey. He remained steadfast in his adherence to Rome and refused to be Bishop of York because he would have been ordained by Celtic Bishops.  

CLICK ON BOLD and you will be directed to Joshua Project website with more information for prayer.

PRAY  for “the Bosniak in Germany, the fifteenth largest unreached people group in Europe, whose language is Bosnian and whose primary religion is  Islam.  There are 435,000, 0.4% Christian and  0.1% evangelical.”[2] The Bosniaks fled as refugees throughout Europe including Germany, following the ethnic fighting in the Balkans that erupted in 1995. May justice roll down like a river and righteousness like a never-failing stream in the former Yugoslavia and we pray for the refugee Bosniaks in Germany who feel alienated… bring redemption and restoration we pray. 

DAY 15 EVENING  Read Psalm 71-75. Re-read Psalm 73

PSALM 73: LIFE IS BUT A DREAM, BUT JESUS CHRIST  IS MY PORTION FOREVER.

Psalm 73: 16-20 “When I tried to understand all this, it was oppressive to me till I entered the sanctuary of God; then I understood their final destiny. Surely you place them on slippery ground; you cast them down to ruin.How suddenly are they destroyed, completely swept away by terrors! As a dream when one awakes; so when you arise, O Lord, you will despise them as fantasies.”

It is easy to pick up a newspaper today and read of totalitarian leaders who seem so evil.  ‘The evil conceits of their minds have no limits” (verse 7). Wicked leaders today seem to be well described here. In Psalm 73 we read how God sees pride and what the destiny of wicked rulers will be. Below is a summary of a sermon John Wesley preached on Psalm 73 [3]. “Anyone that considers these verses will easily observe that the Psalmist is speaking directly of the wicked that prosper in their wickedness. It is very common for these utterly to forget that they are creatures of a day; to live as if they were never to die; as if their present state was to endure forever…. How miserable a mistake is this… …but I would at present carry this thought further. I would show how near a resemblance there is between human life and a dream. What is a dream? It is a series of persons and things presented to our mind which have no being but in our imagination. It seems to be an echo of what was said or done when we were awake… a fragment of life, broken off at both ends, having no connexion with the real things which either precede it or follow it.

Let us illustrate rather than prove the resemblance between transient dreams and the dream of life. Suppose we have before us someone who has just passed into the world of spirits. We talk to this person, before us and we say to them “You have been living on earth for 40, 50 or 60 years.” God has just spoken and said to you, “Awake you who have been sleeping.” Look around you. What is the difference? Where is your body. Where are your limbs, your hands your feet, your head. They lie cold insensible. How different now you are thoroughly awake, are the objects around you. Where are the houses and gardens and fields and cities which you lately saw? Now suppose this to be the case with any of you and that you are now present before God. It may be so tomorrow; perhaps tonight. Perhaps this night your soul “may be required of you;” the dream of life may end and you may wake into broad eternity. See there lies the poor inanimate carcass shortly to be sown in corruption and dishonour. But where is the immortal incorruptible spirit? There it stands, naked before the eyes of God! What profit have you reaped of all your labour and care? Does your money follow you? Do your clothes follow you? Where is the honour the pomp, the applause that surrounded you? All are gone; all are vanished away, “like as a shadow they depart.” See on the other hand, the mansions which were prepared for you before the foundations of the world! O what a difference between the dream that is past and the real scene that is now before you! Look up! See Jesus! Look down! What a prison is there, its inhabitants gnashing their teeth at Him! We might wish that we had a friend with us always whispering in our ear, “Wake up O sleeper rise from the dead and Christ will shine on you.” Soon you will awake into real life. You will stand a naked spirit, in the world of spirits, before the face of the great God! See that now you hold fast to that “eternal life which he has given you in his Son”.

In the 2023 Wonka film, Willy Wonka encourages us to dream of “A world of your own a place to escape to, where you can be free,” but John Wesley 250 years ago challenged us from Psalm 73 to hold fast to what is real, that eternal life which the Father has given us in the Son. How do we do this? We need a transformed worldview.[4]The psalms help us re-orient to that real world. Life is but a dream. We need to wake up out of our slumber, and as John Wesley says, we might wish that we had a friend with us always whispering in our ear, “Wake up O sleeper rise from the dead and Christ will shine on you.”

PRAYER Lord, open my eyes Lord Jesus Christ to see that you are my portion forever. So many in our celebrity-focused consumerist nation today are lost in temporal fantasies and have no thought of the age to come. Wake me up Lord Jesus out of my slumber, I pray!

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[1] Neill, S. The history of Christian missions, Penguin, 1964, 61-63.

[2] Data provided by Joshua Project https://joshuaproject.net/people_groups/10953/GM

[3] Wesley, J. Sermons Volume 3, addresses, 325.

[4] Wright, T Finding God in the Psalms, SPCK, 2014.