The Good News And The Bad News About God Series

- Opening image: the result explosion of Facebook avatars. They are cute and fun and I don’t have a problem with them. But if I may make a gentle observation: some of you don’t look like you think you look!

- I’m sure some people intentionally upgraded their appearance, but there are others who got done and thought it was a solid match when in fact it’s wildly off base.

- I’ve teased about it before. A while back when there was a challenge going around Facebook to post a picture of you as a high school senior beside a current picture of you, I posted a current picture of me beside a picture of a young Brad Pitt. The obvious disparity brought a lot of amused comments.

- There is a similar idea I want to discuss this morning with what we think God looks like. Do we have an accurate picture of Him?

THE GOOD NEWS AND THE BAD NEWS: God is merciful and patient; God is sovereign and just.

- Amos 7:1-9.

- Unpack where each of the four shows up in the passage:

a. Merciful.

- vv. 2-3, 5-6.

- Twice there is deserved punishment that God threatens. He gives Amos visions of what He intends to do.

- The first (v. 1) sees swarms of locust devouring the harvest. The timing is particularly bad. It’s the “second harvest,” which means that it’s at the end of the growing season. There would not be another chance to plant and grow that year. There would be famine.

- Why is God doing this? We’ll talk more about it when we talk about God’s sovereignty in a moment, but let’s just suffice it to say here that Israel’s repeated sin demanded judgment.

- The second (v. 4) sees judgment by fire. It is not immediate clear what exactly this was. It could have been wildfires. It could have been drought. It could have been an apocalyptic “fire from heaven.” It could be some combination of the three or something else. We are told that it devoured the land and dried up the great deep. What the great deep is a reference to is uncertain. Perhaps the Mediterranean? Perhaps one of the major lakes in Israel? Whatever it would have been it sounds sufficiently bad to be a major catastrophe.

- In both cases, though, Amos pleads for mercy. He asks God to forgive and stop. He declares that Jacob (another way to speak of Israel) is to small and weak to handle such punishment.

- In both cases, God is merciful.

- They deserve the punishment because of their sinful actions, but God heeds Amos’ cries and shows mercy.

b. Patient.

- vv. 1-9.

- We also see God’s patience in theses verses. I think it’s safe to presume that these three conversations didn’t happen back-to-back-to-back. Rather, I expect that there was some time elapsed between them.

- And so we see God’s patience in allowing Israel to have yet another chance to straighten up and pursue Him.

- He has two opportunities to lower the hammer, but is patient toward them.

c. Sovereign.

- vv. 1, 2, 4, 5, 6.

- When we look at the several places where the NIV calls God the “Sovereign Lord,” it raises the question of what “sovereign” entails. It brings to mind ideas like the fact that God rules the world, that He has the discretion to decide the direction of history, that He has the ultimate power.

- God is the ruler of all. He is the most powerful being in the universe.

d. Just.

- vv. 7-9.

- And, fourth, God is just. In the third part of our passage, God speaks of the plumb line. How does a plumb line work? Well, you hold it up and there is a weight on the end of the string. It definitively shows whether a wall is built straight. It’s definitive because gravity is always right. Even if you thought you’d built the wall correctly, if the plumb line shows it off, then you eyed it incorrectly.

- God too is the final standard of judgment.

WHY IS IT BAD NEWS THAT GOD IS JUST? It’s bad in that I know that I’ve done wrong.

- First, let me note that God being just is a good thing because most of us have a deeply-seated desire to see the world set right at some point. The thought, for instance, that Hitler would “get away” with what He did and have no punishment strikes most as simply wrong.

- Why is it bad news that God is just? Well, despite our desire for some level of cosmic justice for those we deem to be the “bad people,” the uncomfortable reality is that we are all “bad people.”