Amos 5 November 3 PREPARE TO MEET YOUR GOD

Read Amos 4:12-5:25

1 Cor:10:1-5, 14-22

Acts 7:35-43

htc 16 Come with all joy to sing to God

htc 441 O come, our all-victorious Lord (ch 611 Metzlers Redhead

htc 439 What offering shall we give? (Not all the blood of beasts)

htc 202 You are coming O my Saviour vs 1,2 communion 3,4

Our reading in Amos began with the solemn warning from God, "Prepare to meet your God, O Israel."

As a nation they had continued in sin despite God's warnings by famine, erratic rainfall, etc. For those who reject God's warnings a time of judgement is coming. That final warning, "Prepare to meet your God" is a reminder that all must stand before God in judgment. "It is appointed unto men once to die, & after death the judgement" (Heb. 10)

God's solemn words of judgement are never intended to cause despair. Remember the way the men of Nineveh repented at the preaching of Jonah, & were spared from destruction.

That solemn warning should be heard as a gracious invitation to meet with God. It is a command to turn from the sins which have caused Him to declare His judgement.

I want us to use this time together to prepare our hearts to meet our God. To meet Him around His table & eat bread & drink wine together in remebrance of Him.

We will all meet God whether we are prepared or not. He commands us to return to Him. To face the fact that we are guilty sinners living under His condemnation for our sin.

We can see in this chapter many ways of preparing to meet God:

Before we look at these ways of preparing to meet God, let us consider the being & character of the God we will meet.

There is far more in this chapter that we can study properly this morning. There is a wealth of teaching in these "minor" prophets, as well as prophecies which are used in the New Testament.

The people of Israel never stopped being religious. The first commandment is "You shall have no other gods before Me." The constant rebuke is that they turned from the Living God to other gods. Worship at Bethel was false worship, where Jereboam set up the golden calf. He wanted the people of the Israel to worship within his kingdom, not to go to Jerusalem to worship the living God in the temple of God.

Stephen quotes from this chapter when he reminds the Jewish rulers of their history - the history of their rejection of God. The children of Israel in the wilderness were right to fear God & the signs of His presence among them.

They had heard the commandments from the voice of God, & trembled. But before Moses could bring the tables of stone down from the mountain they made a golden calf to worship instead of the LORD.

They worshipped star gods. Of all God's creation, surely the stars are the clearest evidence of His greatness. The more research is done into space, the more we realise how little we know of the vast universe, & how much more there is to find out.

Vast amounts of money are spent seeking out the mysteries of the universe. How little time & effort is spent seeking the LORD. Yet that is "the one thing we needful."

The Babylonians were specialists in the false science of astrology. Are the people of our own day, who can count & measure the stars, wiser that the Babylonians? All our newspapers have astrology columns. Even national leaders turn to astrologers for guidance.

Their sacrifices were not acceptable to God, because they were not offered in heartfelt repentance.

The songs of worship were not acceptable to God, because they were sung with unclean lips. (cf Isaiah 6)

Some of the most beautiful classical music is religious. Many people are uplifted & feel close to God as they listen to religious music. Such music is often blasphemous.

Gregorian chant sings of the Roman Catholic mass, that "blasphemous deceipt" where the priest offers the bread as a sacrifice for sin, and holds up a wafer for all to see, as he cries, "Behold the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world." The people are not allowed to share the cup, which our Lord speaks of as, "the New Covenant in My blood."

Radio 3's "this week's composer" is Hildegard. She described her music as "a feather on the breath of God" & sang to Mary, the queen of heaven.

In Acts 17, Paul notices that the Athenians are very religious. He ends his sermon by saying that "God commands all men everywhere to repent." For all their devoted religion they will be judged in righteousness by the Lord Jesus Christ.

The prophecy in Amos 9 concerning the "Tabernacle of David" was used by James in Acts 15 to show that God's purposes from of old were to save the rest of mankind, the gentiles, by the grace of the Lord Jesus, who was born into David's family as the true King.

They were not to be saved by making them Jews, adopting the Jewish religion with its circumcision, law, sacrifices & worship.

We must see that God is righteous in His condemnation of mankind. We cannot run away from His justice. Amos describes such foolishness as running from a lion into the claws of a bear.

In the story Jesus told, there was no hope for the prodigal son who had lost everything in staying away from home. He had to go back to his father & tell him his sin. He could do NOTHING to pay back what he had wasted, for he had nothing to bring. The sinner could only hope for a job as a slave.

His father welcomed him home as a son, & restored him to all the privileges he had once despised.

Sacrifices were commanded by God, so the sinner could see in the death & shed blood of an animal the death he deserves for sin. Supremely, those sacrifices spoke of the sacrifice of Christ.

God has no pleasure in the death of the wicked. He wants the sinner to turn from his wicked way and live. (Ezekiel 33)

God is not a miserable God, spoiling our pleasures. His commandments are not to stop us doing things we would enjoy. God's purpose for us is that we should enjoy Him, now & for ever. That our joy should be full.

The devil was a liar from the beginning. He told Eve that the forbidden fruit was delightful & desirable. God was depriving them of knowledge & wisdom by forbidding them to eat it.

When Adam & Eve ate the fruit, their joy in the presence of the Lord was turned to terror. They hid from His presence. They were afraid to meet God. Yet God in grace called them, & promised a Saviour. He shed the blood of animals & covered them.

If we continue in Adam, we all all die in our sin. If we turn to Christ we will live. We will have life in all its fulness. Life as God meant it to be, & amazingly better than it was for Adam & Eve.

For Adam & Eve, life in fellowship with God was dependant on their continued, perfect obedience. For us, life in fellowship with God is dependant on the perfect obedience of Jesus Christ.

We do not need the shed blood of animals to atone for our sin. We do not need animal skins to cover our nakedness before God. We have the shed blood of Jesus Christ to atone for our sin. We have His perfect righteousness as our covering. We can meet our God clothed with robes washed white in the blood of the Lamb of God.

We meet at the Lord's table to remember all that Christ has done for us, & prepare to meet our God, in a way given by our Lord Himself. The psalmist asks (& answers) the question, "What shall I give back to the Lord for all His benefits towards me? I will take the cup of salvation."

We will take this symbol of the cup of salvation when we eat & drink the Lord's supper. "This is the New Covenant in My blood." We rejoice in God's plan for eternal salvation, for "we proclaim the Lord's death until He comes." (1 Cor. 11:26)

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Amos 4: