The Famine of the Word

When Famine Strikes

Amos 6-9

“Behold, days are coming declares,” the Lord God, “When I will send a famine on the land, not a famine for bread or a thirst for water, but rather for hearing the words of the Lord.”

                  In an age of the internet, podcasts, and social influencers, it is easy to find people who say what we want to hear and affirm what we want to believe. The vast amount of information available online has ushered in a new phase, “confirmation bias.” Confirmation bias is when we seek out information that affirms what we want to believe and reject or ignore information that challenges what we believe. But confirmation bias is not new; it has plagued people since the beginning of time and afflicted the people of Israel during the time of Amos. When Amos warned the people of God’s judgment because of sin, instead of listening to him, they accused him of promoting insurrection against the king (7:10). Instead of changing and turning from their sin, they accused Amos of being a charlatan who was not fit or called to be a prophet. Because of their refusal to listen to Amos’s warning, God warned the people that if they continued to reject His prophets, He would send a famine on the land, not a famine of food, but a famine of the prophetic message of God. God warns the people that if they continue to reject His message and warnings about sin, there will come a time when God will no longer send a prophetic message at all. Instead of having the word of God to give them guidance and direction, they will be left to their own sinful and distorted thinking.

                  However, the greatest tragedy is not when God sends a famine on the land, but when we create our own famine by failing to listen to His word. In the TV show “Alone,” which follows the plight of individuals who seek to live off the land in harsh environments, one contestant was pulled from the competition because he was suffering from severe starvation and malnutrition. Yet he had 33 halves of dried fish left unconsumed. He lost the game not because he lacked food, but because he did not eat the food he had. The same is often true of us today. We have unlimited access to hear God’s word. According to surveys, 88 percent of American households have a Bible, and the average home has 4.4 Bibles. The Bible is not just available in print but can be accessed through the internet and a number of free apps for our phone. Like the contestant on Alone, we have an abundance of Bibles accessible to us, yet we are spiritually dying from spiritual malnutrition. We are facing a spiritual famine of our own making. Even when we do read the Bible, we accept only the teachings that conform to our thinking and ignore those that confront us with our sin. We affirm the verses that speak of the existence of heaven while ignoring the warnings about the existence of hell. We fall prey to the greatest deception of all, the deception of our own spiritual bias.

                  The challenge we face in our spiritual lives is not only reading the Bible but also accepting its message. Amos warns that part of God’s judgment is that “they will go to and fro to seek the Word of the Lord, But they will not find it” (8:12). But even more tragic is when we stop seeking, when we ignore the Bible even when we have access to it. Make it a habit to dig deep into the Bible, not to confirm it to our own views, but to allow it to change and mold us to conform to God’s standard.