Bad Dreams

Remember the message of the book of Amos.

Big Idea of Amos:

Sin has consequences, responsibility accompanies privilege, God is faithful, and whether your circumstances are from your choices or outside forces, there is hope for the hopeless.

In the Bible, visions and dreams are often revelatory in nature. I say “often,” because not all dreams are revelatory. But when they are, they are used by God to communicate truth about Himself for the purpose of guiding, warning, comforting, encouraging, or even pronouncing judgment on His people or His enemies.

When it comes to revelatory visions and dreams, they differ only in that the visionary does not need to be asleep to experience what God wants him so see and the dreamer is most often asleep when he experiences a revelatory dream. However, there seems to be some exceptions like in the case of Daniel 7:1 “In the first year of Belshazzar king of Babylon Daniel saw a dream and visions in his mind as he lay on his bed; then he wrote the dream down and related the following summary of it.” Was he sleeping in his bed for all of these, or awake? We cannot say for certain. What we do know is that God uses both to guide, warn, comfort, encourage, or even pronounce judgment on His people or His enemies through both revelatory acts of dreams and visions in the Bible. This He did during a time when the full corpus of the Bible had not yet been completed.

In the book of Amos, there are five distinct visions that Amos records (they are called visions in Amos 1:1). These visions are recorded in the third theme of the book, chapters 7-9 about the future restoration God has planned for Israel.

Of the five, three end with the hope of future restoration, the third and fourth ones seem to have no hope. When we come to those visions, pay close attention to them with me so that we can understand why they are different than the other 3.

Main Idea:

Hope for God’s unique restoration of full joy and peace can only come through the redirection of His people from what they are to what they are meant to be.

The difficult part of this book is what tremendous pressure it takes for God to redirect His people. These visions really do play out like bad dreams, like Israel’s worst nightmares. Come with me to Amos Ch. 7 so we can explore together, these 5 visions of Amos from God.

Consuming Locusts (Amos 7:1-3)

++God can consume all mankind produces to change their direction (i.e. Nebuchadnezzar Dan. 4)

++But God is the God of second chances (Amos 7:3)

Consuming Fire (Amos 7:4-6)

++God can consume all mankind’s resources to change their direction (i.e. the plagues of Egypt Exodus 7-11)

++But God is the God of second chances (Amos 7:6)

Leveling Sword (Amos 7:7-9)

++God sets the standard (Amos 7:8)

++God will cut away that which is out of “plumb” (Amos 7:9)

Rotting Fruit (Amos 8:1-3)

++God’s heat rots the work of man’s hands

++God will put to death, man’s ways

Inescapable Judge (Amos 9:1-6)

++God will judge all who reject Him

++But God is the God of second chances (Amos 9:9-10)

The 4th vision of the Leveling Sword is cutting away all that does not meet God’s standard and the 5th vision of the Rotting Fruit destroys all mankind can produce on their own without Him. All of those things are produced under the curse and dark shadow of sin. This life that one who rejects God now lives without God is the nightmare, the bad dream. God does not desire this nightmare of living under sins oppression to last for eternity. He wants to wake us up, to revive us through faith, and bring us to His restored favor and blessing where the curse of sin is removed forever and all that remains is the wonder and beauty of His glory.

Are you at a place in your life where you need redirecting? Are you struggling to accept God as God in the life you now live? Do you find it hard to trust God in the circumstances of life you walk through?

How much pressure will it take from God to redirect you to the reality of Who He is?

You see:

Hope for God’s unique restoration of full joy and peace can only come through the redirection of His people from what they are to what they are meant to be.

The difficult part of this book is what tremendous pressure it takes for God to redirect His people. These visions really do play out like bad dreams, like Israel’s worst nightmares.

How about your life? Is it playing out like bad dreams, like terrible nightmares?

God will do whatever it takes to redirect His people to His standard, so that they might find full joy and peace in His glorious eternity.