Amos 7:8: “And the LORD said to me, ‘Amos, what do you see?’ And I said, ‘A plumb line.’ Then the LORD said: / ‘Behold, I am setting a plumb line / In the midst of My people Israel; / I will not pass by them anymore.'”

November 16th, 2021 by Pastor Ed in devotional

A plumb line is a simple tool that has been used for 1000s of years in construction. A string with a weight on one end, hangs straight because of the unchanging pull of gravity, and is used as a guide to keep walls vertically straight as they are being built. Without a plumb or reference line to stack one brick on top of another, a wandering, uneven, and crooked wall is built, which will eventually topple over.

God used a plumb line to show that the people of Israel, who had once been straight and true, were now, without the reference line of God’s word, building crooked lives. This still happens today, without a true, unchanging standard as a guide, our well-intended efforts produce an uneven and unsteady mess. What yardstick can we accurately use to measure and guide our lives? The prophet Amos pointed to a wall that was straight or “plumb,” according to God’s measure, the Scripture. That plumb line is still the only true, straight edge available thousands of years later. George Mueller, after having read the Bible through 100 times, with increasing enjoyment, wrote:

I look upon it as a lost day when I have not had a good time over the Word of God . . . It is a common temptation of Satan to make us give up the reading of the Word and prayer when our enjoyment is gone; as if it were of no use to read the Scriptures when we do not enjoy them, and as if it were no use to pray when we have no spirit of prayer. The truth is that in order to enjoy the Word, we ought to continue to read it, and the way to obtain a spirit of prayer is to continue praying. The less we read the Word of God, the less we desire to read it, and the less we pray, the less we desire to pray.

“LORD, give us a greater love for the plumb line of Your Word this day, in Jesus’ name.”