July 30, 2019 - Suggested Reading 1 Samuel 11 and Judges 20 for the August 4th message on Amos 5 in our worship service at 10:00AM

“So all the people went to Gilgal and made Saul king in the presence of the LORD. There they sacrificed fellowship offerings before the LORD, and Saul and all the Israelites held a great celebration.”

1 Samuel 11:15 (NIV)

In the presence of the LORD and before the LORD are very significant OT phrases, for they mean that the people of God assembled together on the same place on earth that the Ark of the Covenant sat, for the purpose of hearing from Him and receiving His blessing. God promised to meet with His people and give them all His commands, above the cover of the ark between the two cherubim (Ex 25:22). Eventually, King David brought the Ark into Jerusalem, and King Solomon built a temple for the Ark to rest in, and Jerusalem became Mount Zion - the mountain of the LORD’s temple - the place where you gather before the LORD. Up until the time of David, the Ark moved from place to place- first in the desert for forty years and then it appears to have moved from Gilgal, to Mizpah and then to Bethel. Samuel’s ministry rotated between Bethel, Gilgal and Mizpah, no doubt because each of these places had a history of being places where the people gathered before the LORD, and because God spoke through Samuel, Samuel rotated through those places.

From what we read in Amos 4:4 and 5:5 it seems as if the people of the northern kingdom thought that these locations were still somehow sacred locations without the Ark. They continued to go there to observe their religious practices, pretending to be in the presence of the LORD. Amos’s point in chapter 5 is that the people are in for a bad time when God really shows up. What about us- we say we want God to show up in power, are we pretending or are we ready?

 I remember a speaker from my days as a teenage saying don’t do anything you wouldn’t do if our Lord Jesus was standing next to you. To my shame I can think of many times when I have been involved in something I would never have done if my Lord was standing beside me. The truth is He is beside me, He is inside me, and all I think, say and do should reflect that truth.

May we practice His Presence!