It is downtown Manhattan – the streets of New York City, or perhaps San Francisco, or Los Angeles. Here comes a man with an unkempt beard, long scraggly hair, army surplus boots & old ragged clothes. But there is a fire in his eyes which could be from passion – or bad wine or perhaps lack of sleep. Draped over his shoulders is a sandwich board with a poorly designed, hand-painted sign. On one side it reads, “The end is near, judgment is coming.” And on the back side there are the words, “Prepare to meet thy God.” Most Christians are ashamed to be associated with this kind of man. This is not our style of evangelism. This is not evangelism at all, and it is certainly not the “gospel” – “the good news.” This is bad news with no hint of any good – at least at this point. And as we look at the fella, we aren’t sure that he could ever offer us anything good.
Atheists, agnostics, satirists and other fools have been making fun of this kind of man for centuries. And they will be laughing at him – and at us – until about the middle of Great Tribulation. We are in the last days, when the scoffers, walking after their foolish lusts, laughingly shout: “When is that old, moldy promise of the judgment of God going to be fulfilled? “You Christians have been preaching the coming of Christ for two centuries now. “Don’t you think that it’s time to throw this boogie-man away and move into the real world?”
Personally, I don’t like being associated with naysayers and doomsdayers. I think of myself as a Christian realist, which means that I am more an optimist than a pessimist. I know how things are going to eventually end, despite what might take place beforehand. And something really radical is going to have to happen to make me wear that kind of negative placard. And yet that scruffy, fanatical man in the crowded street was all I could picture as I first thought about verse 12. But my question to you this morning is this: is that man’s placard all that there is to the story?
It is important to understand Amos and the rest of this chapter before we get to his most famous text.
Amos was one of Israel’s typical preacher / prophets prior to the fall of the nation to the Assyrians. He was one of these common men who were called of God to that ministry. He wasn’t raised in the palace or directly related to the temple. He wasn’t the son and the grandson of a prophet. He was not like some of the corrupted Jewish priests. Amos was from Tekoa which wasn’t very far from Bethlehem, Judah. He may have known some of the more distant parts of the family of David. David’s father, Jesse, was also an herdsman, or a shepherd from that same general area. David and Amos may have walked over some of the same meadows and hills – separated only by time but not distance. Amos was a sheep or goat rancher, and probably was sufficiently able to take care of his family. Language in the first chapter, implies he was more than a mere shepherd, but a master of shepherds. In addition to this, he appears to have had a grove of sycamore trees, with a little side industry going. When the Lord called him to preach, it meant some financial sacrifice for him to serve like this. But there was nothing he could do but respond affirmatively. So he began to preach judgment and grace – during the days just prior to the great prophet Isaiah. This was during the reigns of Jeroboam II in Israel and Uzziah in Judah.
Not only is it important to know a little about Amos, in order to understand verse 12, we must grasp the rest of the chapter. I don’t usually do this on a Sunday morning, but let’s review the Amos 4. Verse 1 – Bashan was perhaps the finest pasturage in all of Israel – perfect for raising cattle. It lay on the eastern side of the Jordan River and was occupied by the tribes of Ruben, Gad and some of the tribe of Manassah. And to speak of the “kine of Bashan” was to refer to the fattest and best cattle in all Israel. But when Amos refers to the kine of Bashan in Samaria, he is speaking proverbially. He’s saying that the people of Israel, especially her leadership, were fat, rich, lazy cows. The word “kine” is feminine, which may refer to the mannerisms of some of these people. And yet many of them were guilty of crushing, and financially destroying, their poorer neighbors. People like King Jeroboam demanded that the masters of the people strip them bare for the enrichment of the state.
Verse 2 – Everything which Jehovah does comes out of His holiness. But as Amos makes special reference to that holiness, it’s like using an exclamation mark. God says that He is going to use hooks and thorns to drag Israel into captivity for her sin. It is interesting to learn that the Assyrians, who eventually destroyed Israel, put rings in the noses of the leaders of her conquered nations in order to chain them together.
Verse 3 – Going out at the breaches refers to the devastation of Israel & especially of the city of Samaria. Its protective walls were going to be breached so badly that the fleeing Israelites wouldn’t have to use the gates, there would be a holes in the city walls just about everywhere. And just before fleeing the city, they would be throwing their dead into the palace of the king.
Verse 4 – This new paragraph begins with sarcasm. Bethel was the primary place for Israel’s idolatry; the place where they first began to forsake the Lord. It was in Bethel that the first King Jeroboam placed one of his two golden calves. Gilgal, on the other hand, had been one of the primary places of worship among the Canaanites. But many in Israel had joined the heathen Canaanites in their worship of Baal and others idols. So Amos was sarcastically telling the idolaters of Israel to go on and increase their foolishness.
Verse 5 – Under God’s law it was illegal to offer the sacrifices of thanksgiving with leaven. But the corrupted priests who were supposed to eat those sacrifices, didn’t like flat, tasteless bread. You could say that they wanted raised donuts and cakes filled with sugar and pieces of fruit.
Verse 6 – The cleanness of teeth was not due to good oral hygiene. The teeth of the average Israelite were clean because there was so little food to eat. As proverbs says, “Where no oxen are, the crib is clean” – where there is no food the teeth are clean. God had sent yet another famine to devastate the land of Israel.
Verse 7 – About three months prior to harvest was just about the most important time for rain. But once again there hadn’t been any. And then to make matters worse, there were a few spotty rain showers which teased the people but didn’t really help the crops.
Verse 8 – This sounds like America’s dust bowl days of the 1920’s and 30’s – with one exception: During that time in this nation there was great revival, with thousands of new churches started. The world had been devastated with war, influenza, the fall of the stock market and drought. These things and others, brought hundreds of thousands of Americans to their knees. But Israel’s dust bowl did nothing for her spirituality. And I doubt it would do anything to America today. We would just continue to laugh at the man with sandwich board – “Prepare to meet thy God.”
Verse 9 – Blasting refers to devastating winds.
Verse10 – God was sending trial after trial and judgment after judgment but Israel refused to repent.
Verse 11 may refer to the great earthquake to which Amos refers in chapter 1:1. There is certainly no reason to think that any of this needs to be figurative language.
Let’s skip our text for a moment and move on to verse 13. The Lord of hosts, is the one who has done these things in the past, & He will do these things again He is the creator of Heaven and earth, the mountains, the seas, the skies, and even the wind. It is He who makes the night disappear and the morning to arise. He is King of kings and Lord of lords. And this Jehovah has revealed His plans and His thoughts to the children of men. Is anyone is listening?
Therefore thus will I do unto thee, O Israel: and because I will do this unto thee, prepare to meet thy God.
In my preparation, it occurred to that the doomsday interpretation does not have to be our application. In my study I ran across this statement, and it got my mind to move in another direction. “How often have these words been turned into words of terror: How many noble discourses have been preached from this text which had no relation whatever to its meaning! This is the voice of love. All punishment has failed – what now is to be done? Something larger, nobler.”
Not long after the ministry of Amos, the Word of the Lord came unto Isaiah. You could say that the Lord was teaching “line upon line and precept upon precept.” The Book of Isaiah along with pronouncements of judgment is filled with wonderful images and promises. The Lord Jesus quotes Isaiah very, very often in course of His own sermons. It was one of His favorite sources for sermon texts. One of Isaiah’s most important ministries was in relation to the coming of the Messiah. For example, Ahaz, the son of Uzziah, was not a little depressed at the approach of the armies of Syria. Isaiah came to encourage him, but he was pretty resolute in his depression. He would not be comforted. So Isaiah passed on a promise from God – “The Lord himself shall give you a sign, behold, a virgin shall conceive, and bear a son, and shall call his name Immanuel.” This, we know, was ultimately fulfilled in the coming of the Lord Jesus Christ. A little later, Isaiah described a battle-field, filled with confusion and blood, but in the midst of it all was a very special bright light: “For unto us a child is born, unto us a son is give: and the government shall be upon his shoulder; and his name shall be called Wonderful, Counsellor, The mighty God, The everlasting Father, the Prince of Peace.”
As Bible students, we must strive to keep in mind the larger context. We who are Christians of the 21st century read Amos from a post-incarnation point of view. “The Word (the Messiah, the Lord Jesus) came unto His own, and His own received Him not. But as many as received him – (you hopefully) – to them gave He power to become the Sons of God, even to them that believe on His name. Which were born, not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God.” We must remember that Israel in the days of Amos had not yet been visited by the Messiah. They had heard the message of dozens of prophets, poets, priests and serious predicaments, but they had yet to truly meet the Lord.
There are exceptions, but as a general rule, the wrath and judgment of God are very poor evangelists. A good example is what the Bible tells us about the Tribulation. When the Lord’s unfettered wrath is poured down upon the earth in its undiluted purity, will the people of the world bow the knee and cry, “We surrender unto the King of Kings?” No! They will call on rocks and mountains to hide them from God’s wrath, but they will continue in their hatred of His grace and glory. And during the days of the old Judges, where was the long-term repentance of the nation? The pain inflicted by the Mideanites, Philistines and others didn’t bring Israel into righteousness. Amos teaches us in chapter 4 that earthquakes, locust plagues, pestilence, enemy armies, dust bowls, famines, cannot induce a wicked people into repentance. Repentance is the gift of God.
There are commentators who say that this meeting with God will take place in the days of Immanuel. Amos not talking about the Lord’s second coming, but rather His first coming. It is not “Prepare to be slaughtered and to meet your judge;” but “prepare yourself to meet the Saviour.” And even though, from our perspective, Immanuel, the Lord Jesus Christ, has already come, this exhortation can still be applied to the people of the world. “Prepare to meet thy God.”
But how should we prepare?
If we can discern anything from the entirety of the chapter, we ought to prepare by opening our eyes. The Lord has graciously been alternating between blessing and head-thumping for 6,000 years. A little volcano here, a little earthquake there, a little famine and a little financial distress. The Lord keeps saying, “Why do you have your hopes placed in the things of the world?” “And why do you keep bowing to the impotent gods of this world?” “Remember what happened on Mount Carmel, and the 450 prophets of Baal who died there?” “Remember Egypt and my fight with the gods of that heathen place.” And then He continues to give us things which bring us great joy. Jehovah is the God who created beauty, music, joy, the ability to laugh – even peace. He is the one who commands the sun to rise in the morning and to apparently sink in the west. He maintains the rotation of the earth and the seasons through its revolution around the sun. The Lord has set the bounds upon the tides of the sea & the Van Allen belt in the firmament above us. He determines if the winds are going to be calm or cyclonic; tepid or tornadic.
And mark it on your calendar, you ARE going to meet your God. In fact we are meeting with the Lord in one way at this moment. “God has at sundry times and in divers manners spoken unto us in times past.” And He’s speaking again today. We can meet the Lord as we look at Calvary, or we can meet the Lord at His Great White Throne. Men can refuse to pray; they can refuse to listen to the Bible, and they can spurn the House of God, but they are going to meet Jehovah. And preparation is imperative, because we are all sinners, and none of us know the hour and circumstances our next meeting. We can procrastinate when it comes to shoveling the snow, thinking that the Lord will melt it. But for man generally, “his days are as grass, as the flower of the field, so he flourisheth In the morning it flourisheth and groweth up, but in the evening is cut down and withereth.” And then cometh the judgment. We can put off paying our taxes until the last moment, but there is no putting off this meeting with the Lord. The interview between God and man is inevitable.
So how should we prepare? As you read this chapter do you get the impression that the upcoming meeting is 800 years away? The implication is that Israel should make preparation right now – as if the Lord was arriving in the hour. And I think that perhaps that is the plan for us as well.
Prepare to meet the Lord with humility. The humility of acknowledged unworthiness – dependence and need. We, who cannot make the sun rise or the snow to stop, are dependent upon the Lord who can. We can’t cork the volcano or put a vise around the San Andreas fault, but the Lord can. We need to humbly acknowledge our helplessness apart from God’s common and special grace. There is that special sense in which humility becomes repentance. We need to see the ways in which God has quarreled with our fathers for their sins. We need to prepare to meet the Lord by humbly recognizing our own wickedness. How can we meet the Lord while arrogantly flaunting our sins, and thinking that we are their masters. “Repent of this thy wickedness and pray God that the thoughts of thy heart may be forgiven thee.”
We need to prepare to meet the Lord by living in love. But I’m not talking about the insipid love for our fellow man which the liberals advocate. I’m talking about the love that Lord Jesus preached. “Thou shalt love the Lord thy God, with all thy heart, soul, strength and all thy mind.” I know that this is impossible to those who are dead in trespasses and sins, so why not seek for the heart and life necessary in order to make this a possibility. There is a sense in which this kind of love is related to faith. Prepare to meet thy God, O Israel. “Kiss the Son, lest He be angry and ye perish from the way when His anger is kindled but a little. Blessed are all they that put their trust in him. – Psalm 2:12. This is the kind of preparation that we need and God requires: repentance and faith. Repentance of sin and faith in the Christ Who sacrificed his Life as an atonement for your soul.
For every sandwich board preacher who rants and raves that the world is near its end… We need a hundred gospel preachers who can go on to say, “Prepare to meet thy God.” Repent before that God and put your faith in the Lord Jesus Christ. Are YOU prepared to meet the Lord? Your appointment with Him, might be as early as this afternoon.