It’s in the Details

Amos 8:9-10

“And it shall come to pass in that day,” says the Lord God,
“That I will make the sun go down at noon,
And I will darken the earth in broad daylight;
10 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 mourning for an only son

For two weeks I have been reading the book of Amos and I feel as if God has given me strong sermon material from that text. Amos is one of those books we either flip over or simply breeze through when reading it. I am learning more and more to pay close attention to every book and every scripture. When we listen to the Holy Spirit, He has a way of speaking to us even in the seemingly insignificant books of the Bible.

I love the way the Bible intertwines the Old and New Testaments. Every time I find a reference from one to the other I get excited. It reminds me of the absolute brilliance of God. When I ran across the scriptures in Amos 8 my spirit came alive. Though I have read this scripture many times, I never picked up on the foreshadowing, or one might say the absolute prophetic nature of this text.

The Feast of Passover was taking place at the same time Jesus hung on the cross. The Passover was a major holiday in the Jewish culture. A religious holiday that would easily rival present day Easter. The timing of the holiday was determined by the patterns of the moon. The Passover was always scheduled at the time of the full moon. History and the Bible tell us that on the day Jesus died there was three hours of darkness from noon (verse nine) till three in the middle of the day. The irony of this occurrence is a further display of God’s infinite wisdom. It is physically impossible for an eclipse to occur at the same time of a full moon. Even if an eclipse were to occur, the event would never last for three hours. God wanted to disprove any notion of man that this phenomenon was anything but a divine intervention on His behalf.

Amos not only predicted the exact timing of the darkness, he also made mention of people’s feasts (the Passover Feast) being disturbed. The wearing of sackcloth and the shaving of one’s head are typical to patterns of mourning for the Jewish culture. Intense mourning ensued this day as the Savior of the world breathed His last breath. The last part of verse 10 makes the reference to the cross virtually undeniable….”I will make it like mourning for an only son.” Jesus, the one and only Son of God, changed the world by making the greatest sacrifice known to mankind. The Bible is a book we can read a thousand times over and yet find something new that speaks to us. Why? The answer is simple; it is the Word of God. He is always willing to speak if we are willing to listen.

When you study, remember God will speak through any book, and any scripture. His Word is alive and our interaction with it generates life within us. What are you reading? I challenge you to pick some obscure book of the Bible and see what God speaks into your heart.