The Day of the Lord

Intro: This morning we looked at the funeral service for Israel. Though it had not happened yet nor have they been carried away yet, it was certain to happen. Just like we have not died yet, but it is certain to happen and there is a funeral waiting for us. Tonight we are going to look at what is called “The Day of the Lord.”

The Day of the LORD is a theme that occurs in many of the prophetic books [Amos, Joel, Isa., Jer., Ezek., Obad., Zeph., Zech., Mal.]. It refers to times in history when God carried out acts of judgment. The phrase also describes the day of God’s ultimate judgment at the end of history.

Joel 2:11 NKJV

11 The Lord gives voice before His army, For His camp is very great; For strong is the One who executes His word. For the day of the Lord is great and very terrible; Who can endure it?

Isaiah 13:9 NKJV

9 Behold, the day of the Lord comes, Cruel, with both wrath and fierce anger, To lay the land desolate; And He will destroy its sinners from it.

Zephaniah 1:14–18 NKJV

14 The great day of the Lord is near; It is near and hastens quickly. The noise of the day of the Lord is bitter; There the mighty men shall cry out. 15 That day is a day of wrath, A day of trouble and distress, A day of devastation and desolation, A day of darkness and gloominess, A day of clouds and thick darkness, 16 A day of trumpet and alarm Against the fortified cities And against the high towers. 17 “I will bring distress upon men, And they shall walk like blind men, Because they have sinned against the Lord; Their blood shall be poured out like dust, And their flesh like refuse.” 18 Neither their silver nor their gold Shall be able to deliver them In the day of the Lord’s wrath; But the whole land shall be devoured By the fire of His jealousy, For He will make speedy riddance Of all those who dwell in the land.

1 Thessalonians 5:1–3 NKJV

1 But concerning the times and the seasons, brethren, you have no need that I should write to you. 2 For you yourselves know perfectly that the day of the Lord so comes as a thief in the night. 3 For when they say, “Peace and safety!” then sudden destruction comes upon them, as labor pains upon a pregnant woman. And they shall not escape.

The Hebrews believed that Yahweh was both a God of mercy and a God of justice, rendering people their due: salvation to the righteous and damnation to the unrighteous.

In our text tonight, Israel was looking for “The Day of the LORD” to come and render damnation to the unrighteous, unfortunately they had fallen so far in sin, they didn’t realize it was them the day was coming for!

Text; Amos 5:16-27

Amos 5:16–27 NKJV

16 Therefore the Lord God of hosts, the Lord, says this: “There shall be wailing in all streets, And they shall say in all the highways, ‘Alas! Alas!’ They shall call the farmer to mourning, And skillful lamenters to wailing. 17 In all vineyards there shall be wailing, For I will pass through you,” Says the Lord. 18 Woe to you who desire the day of the Lord! For what good is the day of the Lord to you? It will be darkness, and not light. 19 It will be as though a man fled from a lion, And a bear met him! Or as though he went into the house, Leaned his hand on the wall, And a serpent bit him! 20 Is not the day of the Lord darkness, and not light? Is it not very dark, with no brightness in it? 21 “I hate, I despise your feast days, And I do not savor your sacred assemblies. 22 Though you offer Me burnt offerings and your grain offerings, I will not accept them, Nor will I regard your fattened peace offerings. 23 Take away from Me the noise of your songs, For I will not hear the melody of your stringed instruments. 24 But let justice run down like water, And righteousness like a mighty stream. 25 “Did you offer Me sacrifices and offerings In the wilderness forty years, O house of Israel? 26 You also carried Sikkuth your king And Chiun, your idols, The star of your gods, Which you made for yourselves. 27 Therefore I will send you into captivity beyond Damascus,” Says the Lord, whose name is the God of hosts.

1. Wailing and Mourning; 16-17

Amos reveals the terrible time approaching Israel because of their sin. God will pass through His people as He did when He passed through Egypt to execute judgment and killed all the firstborn of Egypt.

I believe something like what happened over a period of 40 years during the wilderness wandering will take place at the carrying away of Israel by Assyria because Assyria laid seige to the city for three years.

It is stated in scripture [Num. 2:32] that there were 603,550 fighting men [20 yrs. and up] in the nation of Israel when they started for the Promised Land. When the refused to go into the land they wandered for 40 yrs [480 months]. If you divide 603,550 by 480 = 1257 people died every day on average while they wandered.

This is multiplied at a one time event, “The Day of the LORD”, and it will be that they will have to get farmers to come in from the field to lament because there won’t be anyone left in the town!

Matthew 24:21 (NKJV)

21 For then there will be great tribulation, such as has not been since the beginning of the world until this time, no, nor ever shall be.

2. Woe the Day of Darkness; 18-20

Woe is a word for despair and great sorrow. Foolishly Israel was looking for the day of the Lord to come, but it would be a dark day for them not their enemies.

In the Bible, light and darkness are images. Light is good because it is associated with God. God is said to dwell in the midst of unapproachable light (Ps. 104:2). Jesus is “the light of the world” (John 8:12; 9:5). Things thrive in the light.

By contrast, darkness is bad. Evil grows in the dark. So when Amos says that the Day of the Lord is going to be a day of darkness, he doesn’t necessarily mean that the sun’s not going to shine and the earth is going to get dark. He means that God’s blessing will be withdrawn and people will be without the Light of life.

Isolation will be the worst thing about hell. The torment will be horrific, but being tormented without the hope of God hearing you will be devastating anguish that never ends.

Mark 9:44 (NKJV)

44 where ‘Their worm does not die And the fire is not quenched.’

[19-20] The Day of the Lord is an inescapable day. Amos says its like a man fleeing from a lion but runs into a bear. Then he escapes the bear only to get home, where he thinks he’s safe, and get bitten by a poisonous snake and dies.

You cannot find brightness in the wrath/judgment of God when you are not covered in the Blood of Jesus Christ! There is no way of escape and there’s no light at the end of the tunnel.

No wonder Amos said, “Prepare to meet your God, O Israel”

3. Rejected by God; 21-27

Israel had come to the point that God rejected all their sacrifices, offerings and worship.

Amos 5:21–27 NLT

21 “I hate all your show and pretense— the hypocrisy of your religious festivals and solemn assemblies. 22 I will not accept your burnt offerings and grain offerings. I won’t even notice all your choice peace offerings. 23 Away with your noisy hymns of praise! I will not listen to the music of your harps. 24 Instead, I want to see a mighty flood of justice, an endless river of righteous living. 25 “Was it to me you were bringing sacrifices and offerings during the forty years in the wilderness, Israel? 26 No, you served your pagan gods—Sakkuth your king god and Kaiwan your star god—the images you made for yourselves. 27 So I will send you into exile, to a land east of Damascus,” says the Lord, whose name is the God of Heaven’s Armies.

Amos used strong words of hate, hypocrisy, reject, away with/I cannot stand. Those are not words of endearment but of condemnation! Their worship and ways had become a stench of death instead of a pleasing aroma to the LORD.

Matthew 23:27–28 (NKJV)

27 “Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you are like whitewashed tombs which indeed appear beautiful outwardly, but inside are full of dead men’s bones and all uncleanness.

28 Even so you also outwardly appear righteous to men, but inside you are full of hypocrisy and lawlessness.

[25-26] This had been going on since the Wandering in the Wilderness some 700 years earlier.

[27] God would send them away to another wilderness, but this time a wilderness without His mercy.

Close;

The day of God’s judgment on the nation of Israel is now past, but our “day,” the day of the final judgment, is still pending. It too is inescapable. Still there is hope for those who will turn to Christ and by him be made into those who will worship God in spirit and truth, as Jesus said (John 4:24).

If judgment is inevitable, as Amos (and the entire Bible) says it is, then the only logical thing is to flee to the place where it has already been poured out, that is, to the cross of Calvary. Only there may a guilty sinner find shelter.

Augustus Toplady knew this secret and expressed it in one of the best-loved hymns in the English language, “Rock of Ages.” Toplady lived in England in the 1700s and wrote this hymn in the first year of the American Revolution, 1776. He was in a field in England when suddenly a storm swept down out of the sky. He was far from a village and had no shelter, but he saw a large rock ahead of him and thought that, if he leaned against it, he might escape some of the storm’s violence. When he got to the rock, he saw that it had been split open. There was a crack into which he could fit. He went in and was sheltered from the storm. While waiting there, he thought of God’s coming judgment and of the fact that Jesus, the Rock of Ages, was broken by God so that sinners like ourselves, who hide in him, might be safe. Struck by this thought, he found a playing card that had been lying at his feet and wrote, “Rock of Ages, cleft for me, let me hide myself in thee.”

Are you hiding in that Rock? There is no other shelter. It is only there where you can safely meet God.

Boice, J. M. (2002). The Minor Prophets: an expositional commentary (p. 203). Baker Books.

The Day of the LORD is coming to America. We are a nation under judgment and there is no shelter from God’s wrath except in the Cleft of the Rock, Jesus Christ!