Indeed days are coming, / Declares the Lord Jehovah, / When I will send a hunger into the land, / Not a hunger for bread / Nor a thirst for water, / But for hearing the words of Jehovah…They will rove about, seeking the word of Jehovah, / But they will not find it. In that day the beautiful virgins and the young men / Will swoon because of thirst. (Amos 8:11-13)
These verses in Amos were prophesied during a very disturbing time of the minor prophets: the priesthood was failing, the kingship was corrupted, and the prophethood was despised and persecuted. It was nearing the 400-year period between the Old and New Testament when the Lord was silent towards His people. The famine mentioned in these verses is a famine not of bread or water, but of the words of Jehovah. Is this not the situation in the world today? Physical bread and water—the physical richness—cannot satisfy us. Even a good education, successful job, large income, marriage, family, or retirement never truly satisfy us. These things are support systems, but alone cannot stem the famine, perhaps making us feel happy for a time, but ultimately leaving us feeling empty inside. Today, as the worldly systems are crumbling, we see more clearly than ever how severe the famine is. What can really nourish us? What can truly sustain us—quench our thirst and satisfy our hunger? We may look to ourselves, philosophy, religion or other worldly pursuits to satisfy this hunger, but we ultimately always end up feeling unsatisfied. The real richness of life can only be found and heard from God’s word. When we don’t have this life, we begin to hunger and thirst.
So what will cause us to be in a famine of the Lord’s speaking, unable to hear Him? In this passage in Amos, the beautiful virgins and young men are left swooning. In the original Hebrew, the meaning of swoon in this verse (ʿālap̄) is to cover, to enwrap oneself, disguise oneself, or faint. The current of the world obscures through an extreme, dizzying motion. The world is filled with distractions, temptations, and idols, enveloping us in a dizzying wave of movement and activity and causing us to faint. Many other things speak to us instead of the Lord’s words. Our life is occupied with other things, and so when the Lord’s speaking stops, we may not even notice. The world gives us a sense of busyness—a false sense of purpose to live our lives, temporarily numbing us to the suffering of our true hunger and thirst.
What, then, is the result of such prolonged hunger and thirst as to constitute a famine? Human beings were created to take in and contain the Word, who is Christ as an expression of all that God is—this is the way we touch life and grow in life as time goes on. But when time passes without the Lord’s speaking to constitute and substantiate our life and living, our maturing in humanity and life is stunted; that is, when we deviate from our original purpose as human beings, vessels to contain and express God, we have no way to truly grow. In Amos, we see that the swooning from thirst happens to the beautiful virgins and young men. As we come to the prime time of our lives—when we are physically and mentally very powerful and should be pursuing the Lord’s word—we are busy, and miss the opportunity to be matured. The worldly busyness causes us to swoon, all the while stealing our being and time away. We’re taken over by our modern life, damaging our humanity and sacrificing our growth and maturity. What a tragedy it will be at the end of the road to realize that after so many years, we have been living in famine, never gaining a true substance or constitution to reach the purpose of our life on this earth.
Just as in Amos’ day, there is a famine in the world today. People are hungry for meaning, thirsty for purpose, and are roving all over the earth to find some satisfaction. The promising ones—the young people—especially will seek for their meaning in life, yet will never find it without the Lord’s speaking. They will swoon and spin and seek for the truth, but in the era of silence, there will only be famine and dissatisfaction. During the silent era, God comes in to cast down and remove that which is not life—anything that is not related to His ultimate building. But then He comes back to recover us in life. As we see, in the last portion of this book, God used Amos to prophesy about the restoration of the house of Israel and the rebuilding of the fallen tabernacle of David (Amos 9:11) to give hope to His people, restoring what had been lost and rebuilding what had been destroyed. How significant that this period of silence prophesied in Amos ended by the coming of the Lord Jesus to the earth, when He brought in a recovery of human existence. He came to replace fallen Adam, religion, and the value of the worldly culture. The Lord came declaring a new era, and His death and resurrection ushered in the new dispensation of the church—the dispensation of grace.
Today, we do have a reality in the church safeguarding and testifying the Lord’s Word—a recovered ground for His testimony on the earth. The Lord desires those constituted and those mature in life to become the proper material for His building. The recovery of life is the key to the building because, without life, there is no building. We need life to become the substantial content of this building; we—the ones mature in life—become the substantial content of this building—of the church. When the church came into being, she was the Lord’s ultimate expression and masterpiece. Thus, the church carries a testimony of the true redemption of God’s universal principle; actually, what happens in the church is a picture of what the whole earth needs—to be recovered back to the Lord’s sovereignty and authority. Even while this chaotic world is falling apart, the church is the beacon of spiritual richness, of God’s speaking, of the truth of human existence in a world devastated by lack of life and meaning. The church is the building out of our experience of God’s life as our Source, and from this we are able to uphold a very specific ecology where life can grow and mature unto a full expression. The church is not just about reading the Bible, fellowshipping with one another, or taking care of one another with love and forgiveness. Yes, we need these, but the church is more than this. The church is an ecology for us to be recovered back to God, to be matured in His life, and to be satisfied—to no longer thirst.
If we hear these sober words, we should wake up from the swooning of the world. Our focus in this timing should be gaining maturity in life. We should seek earnestly for the words from our Source: Him. He Himself needs to be life to us; the Word needs to become flesh in us today. Only in this incarnation of the Word in us can we begin to truly mature. True maturity is not outward; it’s not measured by age or the number of degrees we have. True maturity comes from finding and hearing our Lord and being recovered back to the Lord’s life. True maturity comes from the divine constitution of His life in us.
(Above are notes of fellowship taken from a gathering on 3/1/2020, not reviewed by the speaker.)