Transcript

Our mainstay of the pulpit, do expository preaching here verse by verse, chapter by chapter through books of the Bible to get the intent of the original author and the application that is for us in our day and we’re looking at the writings of an Old Testament prophet by the name of Amos. Amos was a shepherd, a simple farmer. He lived out in the wilderness of Tekoa and God had been speaking to Amos about the condition of the country. Now, I’m convinced Amos who was a contemporary of Joel and some other prophets may have overlapped a little bit there, was a part of a godly remnant. He was actually a part of a reformation movement in Israel and that was very small and the powers that be had nothing to do with it, but he was burdened over the backslidden and quite honestly the wicked condition of the nation of Israel, and even the southern kingdom, Judah.

Now, primarily his prophecy is to the northern kingdom, Israel, but we’ll notice as we go through the text he often lumps them all together, the northern kingdom and the southern kingdom, Judah, and he speaks against the sin of both nations. Now, he comes to an area that I’m calling “A Lack of Agreement.” A lack of agreement. Amos is straightforward. He doesn’t pull any punches as he is fully committed to being obedient to what the Lord is telling him to say to the nation.

Look at it with me, Amos 3, beginning in verse 3.

3 Do two men walk together unless they have made an appointment? [Or you can translate that, or have an agreement] 4 Does a lion roar in the forest when he has no prey? Does a young lion growl from his den unless he has captured something? 5 Does a bird fall into a trap on the ground when there is no bait in it? Does a trap spring up from the earth when it captures nothing at all? 6 If a trumpet is blown in a city will not the people tremble? If a calamity occurs in a city has not the LORD done it? 7 Surely the Lord GOD does nothing Unless He reveals His secret counsel To His servants the prophets. 8 A lion has roared! Who will not fear? The Lord GOD has spoken! Who can but prophesy?

A lack of agreement. Now, when I talk about a lack of agreement here which I’m convinced Amos builds his whole message on, I’m not talking about two guys agreeing about a ball game or agreeing in politics. I’m talking about a lack of agreement in being. We just don’t fit with each other. I’m talking about a lack of agreement in nature, our natures are contrary to one another. And of course, coming out of that nature, a lack of agreement in conduct.

I. We see the principle issue between God and Israel, there is no agreement between them. No agreement between them. Amos begins this section by saying, “Do two men walk together unless they be in agreement?” Now, Amos is talking about how you and your God are not in agreement at all. As a matter of fact, you’re in contention with each other. You, Israel, have begun to embrace what God would never embrace. You have come to treasure and joy in things that God would never treasure or God would never joy in. You have come to praise what actually displeases God. You do not see eye to eye with your God. God is saying to Israel, “I contradict you and you contradict me.”

As someone said before, it’s not the difficulties of the Bible’s historical accuracy that really causes the skeptic to not believe the Bible, the reason the skeptic does not believe the Bible is because the Bible contradicts him. And by the way, it contradicts me. Every time I study this book, I find that I fall short of the holiness and the glory of God. God in essence is saying, “We’re not in agreement on so many things. You flaunt that you are one with me, you claim that you honor me and worship me.” Let me pause there for a moment, remember, they’re very careful to keep the ceremonial law in this day. They were checking off the boxes. They were jumping through the hoops. They were going through the external motions but it was an empty and outward ritual. It was but a sham. Their worship was empty words that didn’t come from a heart that loved God.

Isaiah 29:13 says, “Then the Lord said, ‘Because this people draw near with their words And honor Me with their lip service, But they remove their hearts far from Me, And their reverence for Me consists of tradition learned by rote.'” Could it be any clearer than that? You’re just going through the motions. Yes, these people in Amos’s day, these Jews, would go to the temple or the temple they had built, not the real temple in Jerusalem, the ones they set up in Dan and in Bethel, primarily those two, there were others. And they would bring their offerings, they would pay their tithes, they would perform the sacrifices and they felt good about themselves, but as Isaiah prophesied so accurately, “Yeah, you’re going through the motions but it’s just rote tradition.”

Jesus said this in Matthew 15:8, “This people honors Me with their lips, but their heart is far away from Me.” So the Lord pulls that quote out of Isaiah the prophet, and during his earthly ministry says, “That’s the same thing I’m seeing in my day.” By the way, that’s not only true 2,800 years ago in Amos’s day, that was not only true 2,000 years old in Jesus’ day, that is true today in our day. People are not living in agreement with the holy God, yet they proclaim that they are. It’s a powerful point that they had reduced their worship to what Isaiah calls rote tradition. They were in it for self-gratification, for self-pleasure and for worldly gain, not for God.

What are the things that they didn’t agree on, you might ask? Well, try everything. You see, if you get God wrong and you get worship wrong, then all that follows of your service, even all that is in your life, has to be wrong. Now, remember that, friend. If a person has God wrong, they may make a good neighbor or a good friend because they’re basically trustworthy and kind people, but in God’s eyes if you start with getting God wrong, everything’s wrong. Everything’s wrong. If your heart is bad, everything that comes out of your mouth and behavior is bad.

So God declares to them, “We are not in agreement. We are in conflict.” You remember he’s already told them in several ways, “The way you treat one another and the way you abuse the poor and manipulate them and run roughshod over them for your own gain and advantage,” God says, “I’m no in agreement with that. The way you love wealth more than you love me,” God says, “I don’t agree with that. You’re in disagreement with me. The way you love to keep your power and your control more than be holy and righteous, I don’t agree with that. Your love of sexual immoralities and sexual perversions, you’ve even folded that into your worship of me and that’s the most perverse of all things,” God says, “I don’t agree with that. We’re out of agreement. The way you built my temple in Bethel and in Dan and brought Baal worship into it and you’ve mingled the two together to make it more exciting and to bring the sensual amusements and pleasures of the world into the church,” God says, “I don’t agree with that. We’re in disagreement. We’re in contradiction one with the other.”

This might ring a bell with most of you. It just seems like in my younger days as a young man, something would happen, we’d hear some new weird thing happening in our culture and some of the older men would say, “Oh, I’ll tell you what, I just don’t go along with that. I don’t go along with that.” Do you remember hearing things like that? I remember one day when George Bush the senior was getting on Air Force One and one of the press corp that flew with him, as he was getting on the plane stopped him, “Mr. President, I understand the Episcopal church is considering the ordination of homosexuals as priests.” And George Bush Sr. turned around and said, “No, I’m not ready for that.” And you could tell by his tone and the way he tilted his head that he was saying, “I’m not in agreement with that. We’re going down the wrong track.” Well, that’s what God is saying here. That’s what God is communicating through Amos. “You’re on the wrong track. We’re not in agreement one with the other.”

You ask the question, “But can anyone be in agreement with a true and holy God?” Well, yes. You see, in grace he has a provision. When we fail in our walk and when we humble ourselves and agree with God against ourselves, if you will agree with God against yourself, then there’s hope. If you will agree with God that, “I am a sinner and I’m not in agreement with you”; if you’ll agree with God that only Christ, Christ and Christ alone can save me from this predicament, then in grace if you agree on these things, God will view you as being in agreement with him on everything. But only then.

As the Psalmist said in Psalm 130:3, “If You, LORD, should mark iniquities, O Lord, who could stand?” If, Lord, the only thing you’re going to do is point out how justly we fall short, we’re all failures. Every one. The finest person you’ve ever known before a holy God falls short and is not in agreement with God.

So Amos begins by saying, “Here’s the principle issue.” He’s going to elaborate and amplify later as we’re about to see, but the principle issue is: God is God and he’s holy. You are not God and you are unholy. You are, in effect, the anti-God and since God is holy and just, he must crush and punish all that is contrary to him and you’re not in agreement in any way with him.

II. The certain consequence of this lack of agreement which is judgment and destruction. He uses a lion again here. We’ve seen that often through the text and he does that throughout his writings.

He says in verse 4 as his first illustration here, “Does a lion roar in the forest when he has no prey?” I mean, the mature lion roars only when he’s about to pounce on and kill his prey. “If you’re one with God,” he’s saying to them, “if you two are in agreement, then God would not come to you as a roaring lion, but the fact of the matter is, God is with you for sure, but he’s with you to devour you because you’re not in agreement with him. You’re walking contrary to him. You do not see him or hear him because you are spiritually blind and spiritually deaf.” Amos is saying, “It’s so very obvious. If you were in the woods, if you were in the forest and you heard the lion roar, you know what that means. It’s just clear to you. But God is on you in judgment and you don’t even see it. You’re not in agreement with God but you don’t discern it. It’s so obvious.” That’s Amos’s point.

He continues on in verse 4 here, the second half of it, “Does a young lion growl from his den unless he has captured something?” Even the young male lion does not growl until the older male lion brings the prey back to the den, and you’ve seen that on television before. The older lion will bring in the prey and then the young cubs will jump on it and growl and they’ll bite their teeth into it and shake it around. Why do they growl and bite it and shake it around? Because it’s already done. The prey has been conquered and destroyed. It’s been brought back. He says, “You know what that means,” he says, “and that’s where you are. Do you not see where you are before the God with whom you find yourself in radical contradiction, contrast and disagreement?”

Amos is telling them that God is roaring and you, Israel, are the focus of his full attention. His eyes are bright, alert and focused on you. His eyes piercingly trained on you are like megaphones to proclaim he is fully intent on vindicating his holy justice. His muscles are strained to a tight readiness. The veins of his abdomen and legs are protruding as he has already tensed himself to strike. His muscles quiver with tense energy like a lit fuse on a stick of dynamite twitches as the flame advances to the explosive. And all of this can only mean one thing: you’ve been weighed in the balance of divine judgment and you are found wanting. You have proven to be out of agreement with God and just as a lion does not do these things unless death and destruction of the prey is imminent, so God would not be roaring against you unless you were fully guilty and your destruction was imminent.

Now he continues on. He uses a second illustration in verse 5. He says, “Does a bird fall into a trap on the ground when there is no bait in it?” The obvious answer is: of course not. No bird pays attention to a trap if it has no food in it. Birds just don’t do that. His point is that you’ve fallen into the trap. You’ve taken the bait. God warned you not to do so. The prophets faithfully tried to call you back but you loved the bait and have thrown yourself full on into the trap. God’s judgment is the trap and the springs on the trap are wound tight. You can hear the taut groaning as the springs are only a minute fraction away from releasing their energy and slamming the bars of justice upon you. In other words he’s saying you know these things in nature. It’s obvious. You see this and you know what it means. Why can’t you see where you are in disagreement to God? Don’t you know what this means? That’s the consequence, the certain consequence that is upon you.

The last part of verse 5, “Does a trap spring up from the earth when it captures nothing at all?” They’d say, “Well, no. Our traps are set so that it only springs if something triggers it. Something has to hit the trigger mechanism.” God’s point: well, there is certain judgment coming upon you because you’ve followed your lust and your sin and your idolatry right into the jaws of the trap of God’s judgment. The trap is tripped, the jaws are closing because you are guilty and you’re one now under the onslaught of divine judgment. Powerful preaching. No wonder only a small remnant were excited and grateful for Amos’s ministry. No wonder the powers that be and the king and the present priests and the religious authorities basically told Amos, “Go back to the country where you belong, O country preacher! We don’t want to hear this!” And folks, here’s what you need to understand: these are great days in Israel. They’ve never had such geographic expansion and they’ve never had such economic prosperity. Everything is going great. The people love where they are and they’d always interpreted prosperity and the expansion of their borders as God’s blessing. But the prophet said, “No, you’ve missed something very very very important. You understand what things mean when you see them in nature but you can’t see anything spiritually. Do you not understand the certain consequence of having hearts and a nature and a lifestyle that’s not in agreement with God?”

Verse 6, he gives another metaphor. “If a trumpet is blown in a city will not the people tremble?” Now, one thing has remained consistent over many centuries and that is when an abrupt trumpet blast is heard, it’s a call to attention or it’s the alarm of an impending attack. It’s the summons to give an account. It’s a summons to be ready. And this is the image Amos wants to bring to the minds of his hearers. His point is: God is upon you. The trumpet blast has sounded and you’re called to account. Nothing would be more terrifying to a walled city like they had in Amos’s day than for its people to be startled out of a deep sleep by a trumpet that was alerting them of the attack of an enemy. But Amos is not talking about just any enemy, unfortunately due to Israel’s sin and wickedness, God is Israel’s enemy and nothing will stop his advance.

What a predicament to find yourself in. “Pastor, as we think on this, it sort of leaves me humbled and despairing.” Good. You men need to be humbled before a true and holy God. You need to be despairing of your soul if not for his grace. That’s the right way to raise men, to teach them that in this world you be a man’s man. You have a backbone. You have some courage. Lead your families. Stand for truth. Be persecuted for righteousness. Be a man. But when you come before God, you’re a wretched worm except for his grace. Amen, men? That’s what we are. Amos is bringing them to their knees but they won’t hear it. They won’t have anything to do with it.

The last part of verse 6, he says, “If a calamity,” some translations say evil, you can use either one, “occurs in a city has not the LORD done it?” He’s saying there is this evil, this calamity coming against you. Now, calamity or evil as it’s sometimes translated, if it’s the evil of sin, that’s something that God knows nothing about. We’re not talking about the evil of sin here that’s coming against them. But what we’re talking about here is that evil or that calamity which God brings as a punishment to you for your sin. It’s what’s sent to you by God. Israel willed to commit evil and now God has willed to bring evil against Israel.

Can we go through this without deep concern for our nation? Deep concern for our nation. And here’s what you’ve got to remember: this has been going on for 150 years. When they first built the altars in Dan and Bethel and mixed Baal worship with Jehovah worship which is the cornerstone issue the prophet keeps bringing up, it’s been 150 years. That’s why we think we’re doing so good in America. That’s why we think we’ve perverted God’s laws and we’ve wallowed in wickedness and vileness and ungodliness and we’re getting by with it, and even our economy might be picking up and getting better and we think we’re doing okay and I can’t help but think that anybody who has ears to hear is hearing a lion roar. “Well, pastor, what’s our hope?” Here’s our hope: God always takes care of his remnant. I don’t know what may happen to America, but God takes care of his remnant. Come what may, he takes care of his remnant.

III. The neglected means of divine communication, the prophets. A third thing Amos points out. Now, obviously they’re not giving Amos a listening ear. They’re saying, “Amos, you need to go back to Tekoa. Our preachers don’t preach like this. It’s a lot more fun to go to church when you don’t show up. We feel blessed at the end of church with our other preachers. When you get through preaching, we want to go out and hang ourselves. We feel hopeful after the other preachers preach but, Amos, when you preach, we feel in desperation and in fear.” Better to have some desperation and fear and possibly find a small minute room for repentance than to live in “blessedness and happiness” and be caught by God’s judgment.

Amos’s point here is that, “I’ve shown you. You know what things mean, obvious things in the nature realm and in nature, but you’re totally dumb to the obvious spiritual truths that are all around you.” Look at it there in verse 7, “Surely the Lord GOD does nothing Unless He reveals His secret counsel To His servants the prophets.” Now, in every sin, the eye grows more dim. In every sin, the ear grows more deaf. You see, sin makes you stupid. You hold the sin, you embrace sin, you walk in sin, you begin thinking like a stupid idiot which is where they were. Just stupid. Going on the way they were going on, indulging in what they were indulging in, denying God the way they were denying God, mixing vile Baal worship with pure holy Jehovah worship and thinking, “This is the key to make it all work better.” How stupid they were.

The longer one walks in unrepented of sin, the darker becomes his understanding. To the sinful hypocrites who were leading Israel, the Lord Jesus in his day said, “You’re blind guides of the blind.” A people given over to sin and idolatry have no eyes to see, nor ears to hear the truth of their terrifying condition before the holy God. Jesus said in Matthew 24:37 and 39 the same type thing. He says, “For the coming of the Son of Man will be just like the days of Noah. For as in those days before the flood they were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, until the day that Noah entered the ark, and they did,” notice it, just like Amos’s day, “they did not understand until the flood came and took them all away; so will the coming of the Son of Man be.” They didn’t see it. They didn’t get it. They didn’t expect it. That’s where they are and God has told it to the prophet and the prophet is telling them but they won’t hear it.

Israel was responsible, by the way, for her own blindness. Each hardened rejection of God’s law and God’s call to repentance made them a little more hardened, a little more blind, and a little more deaf, so much so that now impending judgment is upon them. To anyone with any spiritual discernment, it’s as clear as the sky above them. The lion is roaring in judgment and they can’t hear it. The trap is set for judgment and is springing and they cannot sense it. The trumpet is sounding of calamity, judgment is upon them and they cannot hear it. And this setting reveals the truth that he does have a few faithful in every generation to preach his truth.

That’s what Amos is getting at here when he says, “Surely the Lord GOD does nothing Unless He reveals His secret counsel To His servants the prophets.” You’ve always been with a true witness. It may not have been the majority voice, it may not have been many of them, but God always has a faithful preacher of the truth in every generation. Israel was like those Jude warns the church about in his letter. In Jude 1:10 he says, “But these men revile the things which they do not understand,” they do not understand, “and the things which they know by instinct, like unreasoning animals, by these things they are destroyed.” They don’t get it, but God always has those who do get it for he makes sure he calls some and he reveals the truth to them.

Of course, behind all of this verse is the rejection and the persecution that Amos is receiving for preaching the truth. Isn’t it true that from time immemorial, the wicked, especially the religious wicked, have hated, rejected and tried in every way to destroy God’s faithful preachers? Amos’s point is the exact same point our Lord Jesus makes when in John 10:26-27 he says, “But you do not believe because you are not of My sheep. My sheep hear My voice, and I know them, and they follow Me.” He did not say, “You do not believe, so you’re not My sheep.” That’s not what he said. He said, “You do not believe because you’re not My sheep.” As Amos is preaching in Israel, the great majority do not want to hear it. “Get away from us! Go away! Go back to Tekoa! Go back to the woods! Go back to the farm! Leave us alone!” But there was a godly remnant that were rejoicing, “Finally, a preacher of holiness and righteousness has come.” Not many of them, but some did that.

So he says, “You are blind and deaf spiritually speaking, and it’s your own choice to sin and to chase after idols in your fleshly lust that has brought this blindness and deafness to you. God has chosen to reveal the truth to me, his prophet,” Amos would say, “but even more thoroughly, this seals your doom.” Do you understand that? A great part of God’s purpose is likely not to turn them at this point but just to further seal and permanently establish their undeniable guilt. “You had the truth and you wouldn’t receive it. Amos preached it to you.”

Look at verse 8. Amos concludes this little section. We’re talking about why he must be faithful in what he’s doing. He said, “A lion has roared! Who will not fear?” He said, “You haven’t heard it but to me it’s like a lion’s roaring in my face. I have to preach it. I have to proclaim it.”

He said, “The Lord GOD has spoken! Who can but prophesy?” You keep telling me to shut up, you keep telling me to go away, you keep telling me to preach to you pleasing things,” Amos would say, “I can’t. The lion has roared. Do you not understand? No, you don’t understand but I do. For me this revelation is loud and clear. For me this revelation is overwhelming. God has spoken and I must tell what he has made known to me. You can reject me, you can ridicule me, you can persecute me, or like they did to many of the prophets you can kill me, but the lion has roared and I’m going to preach what he’s told me to preach.” Like Paul said in 1 Corinthians 9:16, “For if I preach the gospel, I have nothing to boast of, for I am under compulsion.” Do you know what Paul is saying? “The lion has roared to me. I’m under compulsion, for woe is me if I do not preach the gospel.”

Now, the wicked will never admit that it’s their own fault that calamity and evil has come upon them. The wicked will use 1,001 different high sounding excuses for the bad that comes upon them rather than humbly admitting that their own sin and rebellion is the cause. But God sends a faithful preacher to declare the truth, to shine the indisputable light of truth, further sealing their guilt and their responsibility. Romans 3:19, “Now we know that whatever the Law says, it speaks to those who are under the Law, so that every mouth may be closed and all the world may become accountable to God.” The lion hath roared.

Now to close, I want to take the balance of biblical truth and I want to re-visit this concept of our lack of agreement with God. “Man, what are you going to do when you don’t line up with God? When you contradict him? When you’re in contrast to him? And because he’s holy and righteous, his justice demands that – listen – everything that’s not in perfect alignment with him must be judged.” We do not walk in agreement with God, in fact, there is one and only one person who has ever been in full agreement with God the Father and that’s his Son, Jesus Christ. God is righteous and holy and we are the unrighteous and the unholy. We walk in contradiction of him. We walk in contention with him. We walk in contrast to him. Our nature and our walk is offensive to him and God says, “Your walk does not agree with me.”

You say, “Well, pastor, what about the godly remnant? You’ve talked about the godly remnant, those few people who rejoiced in Amos’s message, who longed for reform and revival in Israel. Do they walk in agreement with God?” Well, on one hand, no. They also were out of agreement with God. Now, they could compare themselves with others in Israel and have felt that they were doing good, but when they come alongside God and measure themselves there, they fall short. They find they’re in disagreement with God. So you ask, “Then who can be righteous? Will any avoid the wrath and the judgment of God?” Yes. The truly righteous remnant will. “But you said their behavior was lacking, they too were out of agreement with God and with God’s law?” Yes, but understand God is not just a God of holy justice and wrath, he’s also a God of holy mercy and grace. While you have no natural capacity to align yourself and find agreement with God, you can be – listen – you can be in full agreement with God’s grace. Did you hear that? You have no natural capacity to change your nature or your walk to line up with God but you can be in full agreement with God’s grace.

Now, here’s the dictates of grace. Today do you agree that you are woefully sinful, guilty and condemned before God, that you are hopeless and helpless to save yourself and fix this predicament you’re in? Do you agree with that? Do you agree with God against yourself? “God, I agree. I agree, guilty, condemned. I don’t line up and within myself I am hopeless and helpless to fix this problem.” Do you agree with God against yourself? That’s one of the dictates of grace. Do you agree that God sent his Son to die on the cross and your faith is resting in him as the only solution to save you from this problem of being out of agreement with God? The moment you agree with these dictates, then you come into full agreement with God, even God’s law. Jesus, the only one to walk in full agreement with God, has made you to become one that is in full agreement with God and his law. You see, it’s all through Jesus.

You’ve got to understand something. God didn’t just decide to make some people his people who were not in agreement with him, God had to make all those who would be his people to be in agreement with him and he performs it through the merits of his Son Jesus Christ. In fact, in grace, God does not really accept you as a perfect man. God does not now look at you as if you’ve never sinned. No, it’s better than that, God now accepts you as one who has the righteousness of his one and only Son Jesus Christ. If you come to God on the dictates of grace, he doesn’t just say, “Now I’ve made you like Adam and Eve were before they sinned in the garden.” No, no, that’s not good enough. He says, “No, I’ve made it even better this time. I’m making you of the standard of holiness and righteousness that comes from my one and only Son Jesus Christ. His righteousness is your righteousness. His holiness is your righteousness. His agreement with me is your agreement with me.”

Our salvation is due to the fact that God finds full agreement with Jesus. Did you hear that? Amos says to these Israelites, “You are in radical disagreement with God.” But there’s a way for those in radical disagreement to find themselves in radical full agreement through Jesus Christ. When Jesus was being baptized, the Father spoke out of heaven and said, “This is my beloved Son in whom I am well pleased. I find full agreement with him,” he was saying. God is thoroughly and joyously in agreement with his Son and equally so with all those who believe in his Son. Did you hear that? The infinitely holy God who should crush you as a worm in hell, through the merits of his Son now looks on you with radical joyous agreement. What you owe Jesus. What you owe Jesus. What you owe Jesus. My, my, my.

Now, let me conclude with this hypothetical illustration for the sake of understanding the concept. Here Jesus is speaking to God the Father and he says, “Father, I was one with you for all eternity past. We were one together in holiness, in righteousness and in eternal love.” And the Father replies, “Son, I fully agree.” And Jesus says, “Father, I have always fully kept your law.” And the Father replies, “Son, I fully agree.” “And Father, I gladly embraced your plan to save for yourself a people and these people would be saved that they might know you, love you, enjoy you and glorify you for time and for eternity.” And the Father replied, “Yes, Son, I fully agree. That was my plan.” “And Father, I followed that plan by dying on the cross and bearing the wrath that those people deserved. I bore it in my body on the cross for them.” And the Father replied, “Yes, Son, I fully agree.” “And Father, according to your plan, I tasted and conquered death, hell and the grave in their place so that these no longer have a hold on them.” The Father replied, “Yes, Son, I fully agree.” “And Father, you raised me from the dead and I now live at your right hand to ever intercede for them, thus securing their eternal salvation.” And the Father replied, “Yes, Son, I fully agree.” “Well now, Father, if you find my performance on their behalf agreeable to your holy and righteous demands, then do you now find them in full agreement with yourself and accept them as fully as you accept me?” And the Father replied, “Yes, Son, I do wholly and with great joy now find them in full agreement with me and accept them fully just as I accept you.” Jesus makes up completely for our lack of agreement with God.

Sinner, you listen to me: you may be one breath away from the lion sinking his fangs into the marrow of your soul and crushing you for eternity. You may be one brief moment away from the trap ensnaring the bird and crushing eternal life out of you. You must turn to Jesus in faith and agree with God against yourself, “I am a sinner. I have no hope. I have nothing to bring but I believe your Son died for me and I ask you in faith, save me.” And I promise you, everyone who believes in him will not be disappointed.

Now, Amos was faithful to what God told him to do and what God told him to preach – now listen to me, don’t rustle around too much yet, I’ll put your picture on the screen – but aren’t you glad in God’s providence he didn’t end the Bible with Amos 3:8? Thank God through Jesus we can find ourselves in full agreement with God.