“Behold, the days are coming declares the Lord God, when I will send a famine on the land. Not a famine of bread, nor a thirst for water, but of hearing the words of the Lord. They shall wander from sea to sea and from North to East. They shall run to and fro to seek the word of the Lord, but they shall not find it.”
– Amos 8:11–12
Whoa, Amos 8:11–12 is a sobering two verses of scripture for God to say to his people I’m going to send a famine that is worse than not having food, that is worse than not having water. Not a famine of bread, nor a thirst for water, I’m going to send a famine of hearing the words of the Lord. People will run to and fro, from sea to sea, from North to East, seeking the word of the Lord, but they shall not find it.
Amos 8:11–12 Reminds Us to Tresure God’s Word
As horrible as a famine with no food is, a famine of God’s Word is even more devastating.
That is the all ultimate picture of God’s judgment, for God to be silent, for God to not speak to his people. Even just think about it. We’re reading God’s word, this revelation of who He is that we have this gift we have, 66 books in the Bible that are the revealed word of God that you and I have, that we get to hear from God, that God speaks to us by his spirit through it. Were it not for God’s word we would be totally lost. We would be totally in the dark, especially as sinners deserving of God’s wrath. We would be totally hopeless if we did not have the word of God.
Amos 8:11–12 Leads Us to Think of the Unreached
Just think about this world with all of its evil and wickedness and injustice and no word from God about who He is, how to know Him, about hope that we have as we look to the future, we would be hopeless, lost completely without God’s word. And yet, even as I say that, I think about these unreached people that we pray for continually on this podcast, the Demari Ramani in Iran, 1.4 million of them. And you know what they don’t have? It’s what makes them unreached.
They don’t have the word of God. Nor do they have the hope that’s found in God’s word. They don’t have the revelation of who He is and what He’s done to save us from our sins so we can know Him and walk with Him and hear from Him and experience, relationship with them. And they don’t have that because nobody’s taken it to them. They’ve not had somebody go to the Demari Ramani people. Nobody’s gone there and shared the word of God with them.
This Verse Leads Us to Praise God
Oh God, we praise you for your word. We praise you for the gift that it is to us. We love your word. And we pray that you’d forgive us for any ways we might be in our lives, as those who are praying on this podcast, neglecting your word right now.
We pray that we would meditate on your word day and night and memorize it, that we would soak it in, that we would read it and study it and digest it and then do it, obey it, live according to it. God, thank you, thank you, thank you for not leaving us in a famine without your word. Thank you that we don’t have to run around seeking your word and not be able to find it. Thank you that we have access to it and we have your word in front of us anytime.
We can download it, we can look at it anytime, we can read it anytime. Thank you for your word in our language. God, we pray for the Demari Ramani people who don’t have your word. Nobody’s proclaimed it to them. Nobody’s taken it to them. So many people among the Demari Ramani who’ve never read your word, never heard your word.
This Verse Leads Us to Pray for Easy Access to the Bible
God, we pray that you would change that. And God, we pray for the thousands of languages where your word is either still being translated or has not even started being translated yet. So, we pray that you would change that cause, your church to rise up and give our resources to translate the Bible into every language in the world so that every single person and every single nation has your word.
God, we pray for the success of Bible translation. We pray that you would use our lives, even today, that you would move many of us to give toward Bible translation, to see your word spread among all the people of the world, we love your word. God, we praise you for your word. And we pray that you would use us to spread your word to people right around us, people far from us, to every person, people, group in the world, that they would have access to your word, knowing that we are totally lost without it. In Jesus’ name we pray. Amen.
David Platt serves as a pastor in metro Washington, D.C. He is the founder of Radical.
David received his Ph.D. from New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary and is the author of Don’t Hold Back, Radical, Follow Me, Counter Culture, Something Needs to Change, Before You Vote, as well as the multiple volumes of the Christ-Centered Exposition Commentary series.
Along with his wife and children, he lives in the Washington, D.C. metro area.
