Day of the Lord - Amos 5-9

 Amos 5:18-20 (ESV)

Woe to you who desire the day of the LORD!

Why would you have the day of the LORD?

It is darkness, and not light,

as if a man fled from a lion,

and a bear met him,

or went into the house and leaned his hand against the wall,

and a serpent bit him.

Is not the day of the LORD darkness, and not light,

and gloom with no brightness in it?

Amos was the first, but not only, of the writing prophets to mention the “Day of the Lord.”   Israel falsely thought that the “Day of the Lord” was a time when God would come and deliver them from their enemies by destroying their enemies.   This was true, but the Day was not limited to God punishing their enemies.   The “Day of the Lord” would also include judgment on those within the nation who did not worship and honor God.   They mistakenly thought that God would punish other nations for their treatment of them but ignore their treatment of Him.   Those in the church age have a similar thought pattern.  This is why Peter wrote in this second letter the following:

2 Peter 2:4-10 (ESV)

For if God did not spare angels when they sinned, but cast them into hell and committed them to chains of gloomy darkness to be kept until the judgment; if he did not spare the ancient world, but preserved Noah, a herald of righteousness, with seven others, when he brought a flood upon the world of the ungodly; if by turning the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah to ashes he condemned them to extinction, making them an example of what is going to happen to the ungodly; and if he rescued righteous Lot, greatly distressed by the sensual conduct of the wicked (for as that righteous man lived among them day after day, he was tormenting his righteous soul over their lawless deeds that he saw and heard); then the Lord knows how to rescue the godly from trials, and to keep the unrighteous under punishment until the day of judgment, and especially those who indulge in the lust of defiling passion and despise authority.

Bold and willful, they do not tremble as they blaspheme the glorious ones,

God does not ignore anyone’s sin.   Those who are “in Christ” have no condemnation (Romans 8:1).   However, this is NOT because God ignores their sin.  It is because His wrath for their sin was poured out on His Son, Jesus.   God ignores no man’s sin.   Sin must always pay the penalty of death.  It is just a matter of who’s death.   The nation of Israel desired the judgment of God at the “Day of the Lord” but failed to realize they were crying out and praying for their own judgment as well due to their rejection of God in their day-to-day lives.