Today’s Scripture Reading [July 17, 2011]
Hear this word that the LORD hath spoken against you, O children of Israel, against the whole family which I brought up from the land of Egypt, saying, You only have I known of all the families of the earth: therefore I will punish you for all your iniquities. [Amos 3:1-2. KJV]
Often, during our social interactions with friends and colleagues, we heard them making comments like: “It’s now a different world;” “Time has changed;” “We simply cannot keep up with what’s going on in the world.” For instance, I just had a chance to meet up with one of my ex-colleagues and we started talking about the challenges that parents are now facing when raising up their children. Without hesitation, my friend’s wife who has three grown up children made exactly those comments. Her main point was that today’s children are very different from what children were twenty years ago.
I do not know to what extent you can relate this to what the word of God, the Bible has to say about such ‘changes.’ As for me, this is what makes reading and studying the Bible so exciting and relevant when we look around things around us and when we examine the conversations during our social interactions. As we read the Bible from the Old Testament to the New Testament, we discover that nothing is really new when it comes to people’s character. Although many of these writings were written years ago – and some as old as 3,000 years old – they are as relevant today. Though we all may feel that there are great changes around us but these changes are mainly in science, technology and commerce. The evilness and wickedness of man remains the same; the very sinful nature of man remains; the greed for gold made us to override our brotherly concern for one another, and just like the ancient days, it is one of the human quirks of human nature that the more we have, the more we want to hold to it. So, nothing changes, really.
Admittedly, things are changing every minute but we must take understand that these changes are simply part of the Satan’s deceptive plan. We see drastic changes from the way we read the news around us, the way movies are made, the way we communicate, the way we do business. From scripture perspective, I am inclined to opine that these subtlety of the changes is one of the most deceptive works of the devil in order to take our mind away from God . Slow but surely, the devil can devise changes from a seemingly an insignificant event and soon, without realizing it, it evolved into sometime so damaging that is beyond our wildest dream. Though the usual approach is far too familiar but we just simply chose to ignore it. First, the devil will just tell us “It’s ok. No big deal, after all this is what others are doing.” This will then progress to become a common practice that everyone later became comfortable with. Soon these practices penetrated right into our home and our society. From stage one, it leads to stage two just like cancer. When it came to stage four, it turns deadly. Let’s take of our most familiar events of national interest: the casino which government has sugar-coated it with the term “integrated-resort’. We are told that this is a very important industry for our long-term economic survival and if we refused to get in, we will not be able to sustain our economic growth. We are told by senior government officials that “with the casino we will be in trouble; but without the casino we will be in bigger trouble!” We are further sold to the argument that after all there are many other avenues for people to gamble – they can go to the cruise ship; they can go to Genting Highland; they can go to Macau; they can always gambled legally on Toto, 4-D, football. So what’s the big deal for having casino at our doorstep! We know by now, they are dead wrong!
Just few days ago, an article appeared in the Straits Times (July 14) with the headline: “More gamblers seeking help over debts.” It was reported that because casinos are accessible 24/7, all year round gamblers can chalk up hefty losses in just few months after trying and failing to win back money. The report further disclosed that the losses per adult resident here jumped 53 percent last year to over 1,400 dollars! By comparison, in the 2011 Growth Dividends that the government gave to all Singapore, the Finance Ministry has said that 80 per cent of Singaporeans has received $600 to $800 (or average $ 700) in these Growth Dividends. It follows that, on the average, each resident here has lost twice as much the amount of the 2011 Growth Dividends! We are grateful for the government's generousity and we wish that it could be more generous. We have see the Finance Ministry and many ministers joined in the ‘Big Bang’ announcing the 2011 Growth Dividend. But when it comes to the grim story like the negative effect that we are now witnessing because of casino, we have not heard much from senior government officials of how they could help to solve the problems. Instead, we hear only noises from the NGOs like the Credit Counseling Singapore, the Silver Lining Community Service, the One Hope Centre. These NGOs are taking the lead to provide counseling services to the gambling addicts. Rightly, people of authority like ministers should be now be taking the lead because they created the problem in the first place. To add salt to the wound, instead people in authority seemed to impliedly telling us that we are still in good-shape in spite of the integrated-resorts. We see often economic figures telling us that because of the integrated-resorts, thousands of jobs are being created; the revenue from the integrated-resorts has contributed to x% of the GDP; hotel occupancy rates are in the 80%; tourism industry is booming, etc but we hardly hear from these officials the harmful effect that are not taking the toll on people’s lives. For many older people like myself, it is really an eye-opener to see the ‘changes’ that are taking place. But please note that I am now contradicting myself. The ‘changes’ that we are now witnessing at the national level because of our need to survive, economically speaking – so they claimed – are something beyond the belief of anyone of my generation or my father’s generation, after all we were told by one of the founding fathers that Singapore could be allowed to have a casino only over his dead body!
I have written several messages concerning the evilness of casino but for my message today, I am trying to relate to the message to that of the book of Amos. It is not my intention to keep bringing up the issues and the problems of casino because I think we all know by now of its severe negative effects, and it can only take a miracle for the government to have a heart change to close down the casino. Furthermore, we have already journeyed so deep into this previously uncharted gaming industry and short of a miracle, economic common-sense tells us that the amount of investments that went into the building of the two integrated-casino-resorts just simply cannot turn back the clock to make Singapore a casino-free nation as it was before. Rather than keeping sharing with you of the obvious of the sin of gaming in general and casino in particular, the purpose of bringing up the issues of casino is to relate to what Prophet Amos has prophesized: God holds the nations of men accountable whether they are in positions of authority or just merely average citizens. In the book of Amos, we are told that God was not just concerned with His covenant people of Israel. Together with the story told in the book of Jonah, God’s judged the surrounding nations as well. In a Bible commentary on Amos that I happened to read, the Amos message centres in the common prophetic conviction that God is the sole and righteous Governor of the world, judging the people righteously, and when they rebel, dashing them to pieces like a potter’s vessel. God condemned sinners whether we are believers or non-believers. We cannot save ourselves from our wickedness, evilness and cruelty. The big difference is the standards to which the people and their nations were held accountable. The non-believers or the heathens were judged for their violation of basic principles of righteousness, but the people of God, the believers, were judged by their faithfulness (or unfaithfulness) of God’s revealed word. These standards of accountable that were prescribed in the Old Testament are consistent with what we find in Paul’s writing in the book of Romans (1:17) “For therein is the righteousness of God revealed from faith to faith: as it is written, The just shall live by faith;” and Romans (2:11-16) For there is no respect of persons with God. For as many as have sinned without law shall also perish without law: and as many as have sinned in the law shall be judged by the law; (For not the hearers of the law are just before God, but the doers of the law shall be justified. For when the Gentiles, which have not the law, do by nature the things contained in the law, these, having not the law, are a law unto themselves: Which shew the work of the law written in their hearts, their conscience also bearing witness, and their thoughts the mean while accusing or else excusing one another
In the day when God shall judge the secrets of men by Jesus Christ according to my gospel.”
Another important lesson that we can learn from Prophet Amos is that we do not need to be educated, nor be in high position of authority nor be in high social standing to be God’s messenger. Prophet Amos was chosen by God to be God’s messenger and he was merely a shepherd. Shepherds in those days were people of the lowest social standing and so it was very unlikely that Prophet Amos had gone into seminary, attended prophet school nor did he come from a ministry family. But these did not stop him from being chosen to serve God. Regardless of who were are, if we are saved then we are called, and God’s has a purpose for all of us to be His messenger wherever we live, work or go to school. We need to be available where we are at, and given the current state of internet communication that we have, there is no excuse for us not to take part in declaring the Gospel of Jesus to the world. Since all scripture is God’s word and useful, we can look forward with great excitement when we open His word - whether it’s Leviticus, Amos, Habakkuk, Luke, Romans or Revelation. We can approach God with great expectation because we know God has promised that “For as the rain cometh down, and the snow from heaven, and returneth not thither, but watereth the earth, and maketh it bring forth and bud, that it may give seed to the sower, and bread to the eater: So shall my word be that goeth forth out of my mouth: it shall not return unto me void, but it shall accomplish that which I please, and it shall prosper in the thing whereto I sent it (Isaiah 55: 10-11).”
shocking right!)
