“A handful won’t hurt!” As a night owl by nature, late night snacks are a powerful temptation. All too often I believe the lie about “a handful.” As if! While throwing away the empty bag is a silent monument to my lack of self-control, the almost empty bag of chips carefully clipped and put back in the cabinet is an openly disgraceful declaration. It is a monument to my failure, along with the bulging belly I lament the next morning.

While eating more than a handful is lamentable, there are much worse indulgings in life that deserve monuments to remind us of the consequences of failures. We’ve been discussing one such indulging in Amos 4 where God declared judgment on the women of Samaria for their failure to care for the poor and needy. In chapter 5 He declared a dirge to lament Israel’s fall. The nation would fall and not rise again. Its people would be reduced to a mere pittance of their former number (Amos 5:1-3). Samaria and Israel stand as a monument to man’s failure to seek God. Today’s Throwback Thursday edition of Morning Minutes in the Bible on An American Missionary looks back at some of those:

Monument To Masses by Jim Everett. From PLAIN TALK Magazine, September 1971.

In the annals of history are recorded the infamous deeds of the masses. A monument should be erected to mark their works. An eternal epitaph should be chiseled to describe their deeds that when men are inclined to garnish the tombstone the words should warn as do the sun-bleached bones beside the poisoned waterhole.

Eight righteous souls loved and served the Lord amongst the multitudes whose “every imagination of the thoughts of their hearts were only evil continually.” A preacher proclaimed God’s righteousness, but to no avail. There! There beneath the mire we see the mass of human flesh. With muddy finger inscribe for all to see fallen man is lower than the beasts of the field.

And a righteous man’s soul was vexed daily as men burned in their lust for men. We see a bargain made with God to spare the cities, but sin is heaped upon sin. With the stench of burning human flesh in our nostrils we gingerly lift a smoldering, charred stick from amongst the ashes and ashamedly write, “There were not even ten righteous souls here.”

A leader temporarily departs and the mob which has murmured and complained against God clamors for gods which shall go before them. Submission to the masses means that a golden calf is born. Swords flash and blood is shed. Later, 23,000 died, and eventually only two of the original ones over the age of twenty enter into the promised land of rest. Their epitaph must be written with blood-stained sword in hand — Rebellion, murmuring, idolatry, fornication, and unbelief.

Religious multitudes who shouted “Hosanna to the son of David: Blessed is he that cometh in the name of the Lord; Hosanna in the highest,” later cried, “Crucify him, crucify him!” Blood seeps from his wounds and an agonizing cry is wrenched from his lips — “’Eli, Eli, lama sabachthani?’, that is to say, ‘My God, My God why hast thou forsaken me?’” Will they not spare him? But with nail in hand we sadly write — Murderers!

But this righteous one is raised from the dead so that repentance and remission of sins might he preached in his name. Surely the multitudes will believe and obey now. But apostles are beaten and told not to preach in his name. And when a preacher speaks plainly of their uncircumcised in heart and ears condition, they gnash on him with their teeth and beat his defenseless body to death. Mark it well with stone chisel —“As your fathers did, so do ye.”

Man thinks of following the crowd and doing because others do it, but Jesus said. “Enter ye in at the strait gate: for wide is the gate, and broad is the way, that leadeth to destruction, and many there be which go in there at: Because strait is the gate and narrow is the way, which leadeth unto life, and few there be that find it.” Here lie the masses beneath the epitaph of murmuring, immorality, idolatry, hate and murder, which have always characterized public opinion. We must not live as they lived; we dare not die as they died.

We can add the people of Samaria to Jim’s list of monuments to the masses. Disobedience leads inevitably to destruction. Thousands of years later are we trying to live as if a handful of sins won’t hurt? We all leave monuments. What will be the monument to your life? Will it be one of disobedient failure or one of obedient faith?