Dream Word – CHANGE
Amos 4:6 "Also I gave you cleanness of teeth in all your cities. And lack of bread in all your places; Yet you have not returned to Me," Says the Lord. NKJV
The little term, ‘Cleanness of teeth,’ has always seemed to me to be a most humorous way to describe the ravages of famine! Yet, I think a most descriptive way as well, for after a fine Sunday lunch with friends, even after brushing my teeth, there is always an afternoon of tongue discovery and subsequent meal remembrance. Ah yes, there is always evidence of the previous meal hiding amongst my molars and refusing to be swallowed.
Since not so long after WW11, we in the West have eaten very well indeed, in fact, we have over-eaten substantially. The continued and very visual rise of obesity is a swelling testimony to that fat-fact seen daily waddling through all of our burgeoning cities. The cry of “Avast behind!” is no longer a quaint old naval term.
I have never gone hungry. Oh, I’ve missed a meal or two maybe, but never truly gone hungry. I have used the word starving, but I have never starved, no, nowhere near. I do not know either the chilling chase of a hunting-hunger or the forever-ness feeling of hunger that a finger-nibbling famine would bring. Throughout these very full times in the West, maybe that lack of a hungry experience, is a big problem for us all, rather than a blessing?
Our text for tonight in all its terrible dental examination never the less offers hope to a cared-for covenant people. God at the very least is saying, “Hey you have broken our contract and these are the consequences and they are now in effect, solely to cause you to come back to me, and gain the blessings of the other end of the deal!”We have none of that 'returning' in our Western world today, but rather, we are struck on all sides by the stunning indifference of God toward us, and of us toward God! It is as though God is saying by His lack of action, “Go ahead, eat yourself stupid and sin yourself silly. See if I care!” and so we sail on, super-sized and sick, settled on simply satisfying a cesspit of selfishness, that has quietly sold us into a seething, and self-serving slavery, leaving both us and our societies, foolish, foul, and fat, in all our festering forms, and God, well, as I said, God doesn’t seem to care one bit. Is this the truth?
Well, maybe not, for on the contrary, if anything, God has sent a worrying wind, scooping up in its angry path, ten billion quail, filling our waiting nets, whilst saying, “You want it? OK, here it is! Eat it until you are sick of it. Consume it with such a vicious voraciousness until you vomit it out of your growling and grunting, green, snot-dripping, piggy-like snouts. I’m past caring!” It’s a nasty and nauseating picture, isn’t it? I wonder then if famine would be better than this foul fatness of our society? I wonder if famine would be better than this overwhelming and blinding fullness? For, it seems to me, that being sick of fullness, is often a precursor to seeking God.
I think we need Elijahs. I think we need men and women anointed with the spirit of Elijah. I think we need people of great power who can command the heavens to withhold their watery goodness, for years if needs be, so that our crops would fail, so that our bones would become familiar with our skin once more, so that we would seek out the Divine dental floss, that we might eat only what is left between our hungry, little canines. Maybe, such a called for famine will foster a seeking that fatness never will? Maybe all this fatness is not the indifference of God after all, but rather, it is a sign of His judgment?
Where shall we get such Elijah-like people? For they shall not come from the church? Not from the 'church
