If you are like me, you like to make a good first impression. Many years ago a boss I had stressed over and over the truth of the statement, “You never get a second chance to make a first impression.” And so you try to put your best foot forward. Just think back to the last time you prepared your CV, or resume, you tried to impress whoever it was prepared for with your very best features and you tried to minimize any flaws you might have.
And so we begin to read the book of Amos with these words: Amos 1:1 This message was given to Amos, a shepherd from the town of Tekoa in Judah. Amos, a shepherd from the town of Tekoa in Judah. Boy that sounds impressive, not.
What Amos neglects to mention is that he was one of the most powerful preachers in Israel. He was a man who was a middleclass tradesman who was called into the ministry from his profession, kind of a second career type thing. Amos was from the Southern part of the kingdom, if we pull up a map here you’ll remember how the country of Israel had been divided into two kingdoms, however most of his prophecies were directed at those who lived in the Northern Kingdom, which must have made him popular. Kind of like when Michael Moore was up here giving us political advice before the election.
God seems to have a special place in his heart for shepherds. Able was a shepherd, David was a shepherd, Joseph was a shepherd Moses was a shepherd and it was to shepherds that the birth of Christ was first announced. Some of God’s greatest men were shepherds. The 23rd Psalm is probably one of the most popular Psalms there is and it is here that King David draws a comparison between God and a tender of sheep. Most of us can recite the first line from memory, “The Lord is my shepherd.”
I wonder why Shepherds seem to take on an extra special role in the bible? Maybe it’s because sheep are about the only creature God made that are more stubborn and ornery then people and keeping sheep is a good training ground to develop patience in one who would lead people. Or maybe not.
So we know the author of the 30th book in the Bible is Amos the Shepherd and he dates his letter in verse one by saying Amos 1:1 This message was given to Amos, a shepherd from the town of Tekoa in Judah. He received this message in visions two years before the earthquake, when Uzziah was king of Judah and Jeroboam II, the son of Jehoash, was king of Israel.
So he begins by giving us a general time frame. If someone said in the Days of Diefenbaker King of Canada You’d know that they was referring to a period between June 21 1957 to April 23 1963. Or perhaps in the Days of Trudeau, Emperor of Canada, we would think of the sixteen year span between 1968 and 1984. Or if you were speaking of a relatively short period of time you would speak of the Days of Joe Clark, pretender to the Throne May 22 1979 to February 18 1980.
So we know that Uzziah reigned from 787 BC to 735 BC and we know that Jeroboam II reigned from 790 – 749. So there is an overlapping period from 787 to 749 BC or a 38 year period. But he narrows it down by referring to an incident that everyone would be familiar with “The Earthquake.” If you were to say two years before 9/11 everyone in our culture would know of which you spoke and would immediately be able to date back to 1999.
The Jewish historian Josephus tells us that “The Earthquake” coincided with Uzziah’s leprosy, which historians tell us happen in 751 BC, so if we go back 2 years it’s 753 BC. Why was the book written? This prophecy was God’s last appeal to Israel, warning them to repent before it was too late. Did they take heed? Well it was only thirty years later that Israel fell to the Assyrians.
As a boy Amos may have heard the preaching of Jonah and Elisha. He would have been a contemporary of both Joel and Hosea and as he exited the scene Isaiah and Micah were just beginning their work. The particular portion of the book that we are focusing on today is the last part of the 12th verse where Amos writes these words. Amos 4:12 Prepare to meet your God. Now I know that isn’t the passage that Heather read from this morning but it ties in to that passage as it does with the entire book. The message that Amos is preaching is very simple, there will come a time that you will meet God, will you be ready?
When we lived in Truro, there was a sign on the Trans-Canada Highway, between Truro and Oxford, that boldly proclaimed Amos’ message for all to see “Prepare to meet your God.” Through the years it changed from a simple black and white sign to an upbeat colour job complete with an unsheathed sword to emphasize the judgmental nature of God. I always wondered what exactly the owners of the sign were trying to convey in that message. And whether or not they were trying to convey the same message that the prophet Amos was when he penned those words 2500 years ago?
To begin with Amos addressed his message to the nation of Israel, which of course can have two meanings. First it was a holy nation, chosen, called and set apart by God and for God. But it was also just a nation of people, good people, bad people and indifferent people. And so this message is addressed to God’s people as well as to those who have never embraced God and his message. The same five words and yet it speaks to a sacred nation and a secular nation, to the redeemed and to the unredeemed. Today we would say that it applies to Christians and pre-Christians, those who have embraced the message of Christ and those who have not yet embraced the message.
Which means the message of Amos, those five words made up of twenty letters apply to you, not just to the person sitting next to you, but to you. Prepare to meet your God. Now in all actuality there is only one word there that you have any control over whatsoever and that is the word “Prepare”. You will meet your God that is not an option; it is out of your control. Regardless of who you are, what you do, how you live or your spiritual condition, there will come a time that you will meet your creator. Do you remember playing hide and seek as a child? Do you remember what you’d yell before you started to look for people? “Ready or not, here I come.” That is kind of the message that you will get when you arrive at the end of your life, Ready or not here you come. Prepare to meet your God.
You say, “You know Denn, I’d just as soon pass.” Doesn’t matter it’s not your choice to make. So we might as well concentrate on that word “Prepare”.
Collins English Dictionary defines prepare as 1) to make ready or suitable 2) to equip or furnish 3) to put together 4) To make oneself ready. If we use the last definition then Amos’ words read this way “Make yourself ready to meet your God.” Make yourself ready.
How do you get ready for people? Kind of depends on who’s coming over, doesn’t it. You prepare for different people in different ways. If you know the preachers coming over, you hide your National Enquirer magazines, take the TV guide off the family bible, dust it off and open it to an appropriate spiritual verse.
When my Grandmother Guptill was still living her visits would prompt pandemonium in our home. The tops of the door casings were dusted, the glasses were polished and everything that needed doing that you’d been putting off got done, because if they weren’t you could rest assured that Gram would notice. When the Queen comes to visit they fix up all the roads and streets that she travels on, kind of makes me long for a Royal visit.
If you knew that you had a chance to meet with the Prime Minister, you’d prepare wouldn’t you? For some people that would entail picking up rocks to throw but that’s preparation as well.
Prepare to meet your God.
How do you prepare or get ready to meet God, the creator and master of the Universe? Well I would propose that before you can meet your God you first have to Meet Your God. Did you write that down, I wouldn’t want you to miss that one point. Before you can meet your God you first have to meet your God. I’m sure that some of you are thinking, “Well it finally happened, he’s gone daft, he’s speaking in riddles, just talking in circles, round and round and round.”
If we go back to my good friend Collin, we see that he defines meet as 1) To come upon especially to come face to face with I don’t think there would be much argument from this group to the fact that each of us will meet God at our death. The second definition is 2) To be present at the arrival of Last week I spoke about the Day of the Lord and the return of Christ and to most people this is the message that Amos is trying to convey. He is telling us that we need to be ready for our ultimate rendezvous with God and for all that entails, both good and bad. So we need to make ourselves ready to come face to face with our God and we need to make ourselves ready to be present at the arrival of our Lord.
That’s pretty simple, in theory. But the question still remains, how do I make myself worthy to meet with God? Well you can’t. At least not in your own power. But to go back to my earlier ramblings you can be prepared to meet God only after you’ve met God. You see the third definition that Collins dictionary gives for the word meet is 3) To come into contact with. So Amos could be saying; Make yourself ready to come into contact with your Lord. So the first thing is that 1) You Need to Meet Your God. We need to meet Jesus as Saviour. We read in John 14:6 Jesus told him, “ I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one can come to the Father except through me. If this is the word of God, and it is, and if we believe it, and we do then the only way then to get into heaven is through Jesus Christ, he did not say that “I am one way” he said “I am the only way”
He did not say that some will get to the Father through Buddha, and some through Mohammed or Rev. Moon or by being sincere or a good person or going to church every Sunday or not beating their wife. Jesus said “I am it, I am the way, I am the Truth, I am the Life and no one, no one no one, not you or anyone else will ever come to the father except through me and me alone, understand?”
You say “Well that seems a little bit narrow.” Well not if you are God and Jesus is God.
Think about it if there were many different ways to get to heaven then why did Jesus have to come and live and die on a cross, it’s not some game where at the end they’ll count to see who got the most people to heaven. In 1 Corinthians 6:20 and 1 Corinthians 7:23 Paul says “You were bought at a high price.” To be more accurate your admission to heaven was bought at a price and that price was the blood of Jesus Christ.
To get into Disney World you need to buy a pass, it might be a 1 day pass or a 2 day pass or a 7 day pass or a season pass but you need a pass to get in. You cannot get into the magic Kingdom without a pass. Now imagine that the pass was priced so high that you could never afford to purchase even a one day pass. There is no way that you could ever earn enough and so there you stand looking across the lake at the Magic Kingdom, knowing that you can never go, ever. And then someone comes over to you taps you on the shoulder and when you turn they are offering you a lifetime pass to the Magic Kingdom and all you have to do is ask. But until you actually ask and then reach out and take that pass you wouldn’t actually have it.
Now you could debate the ethics of taking the pass, you could ponder the obligation of taking the pass, you could reflect on your future responsibilities if you took the pass but until you acknowledged your need and accepted the gift, it wouldn’t be yours and you’d remain on the outside looking in.
If you are going to meet God as Judge, it would be good to meet him first as saviour. And if you are going to do that then first you need to acknowledge that you need a saviour. Mark 2:17 When Jesus heard this, he told them, “Healthy people don’t need a doctor—sick people do. I have come to call sinners, not those who think they are already good enough. ”
So step one in preparing to meet your Lord is to meet your Lord.
There is a fourth definition that Collins gives for meet and that is To get acquainted with And so Amos would be saying make yourself ready to get acquainted with. Now that you have met your Lord as Saviour it’s time to actually get acquainted with him. John 15:14 (Jesus said) You are my friends if you obey me. 2) You Need to Meet Your God
When I was in High School we performed the musical the King and I, and I still remember one of the songs that Anna sang to the King’s children, it was “Getting to know you, getting to know all about you, getting to like you getting to hope you like me.”
How many of us know all about the Jesus we call Lord, all about the Jesus we call Saviour and all about the Jesus who wants to call us friends? Have you read the gospels and discovered the Jesus whose heart broke for those who were sick, whose anger burned over those who simply played at their religion, have you discovered the Jesus who defended the woman caught in adultery and praised the widow when she gave the last of her merger possessions to God.
Have you laughed with Jesus when he told his disciples funny stories, like the one about the man who strained at a gnat out of his drink but then swallowed a great hairy camel. How well do you know Jesus? The very Jesus who bled and died for you?
How do acquaintances become friends? When I went to work for Toyota in Saint John back in 1984 my boss told me to make a list of all my friends in Saint John and I did and we sent a letter to each one of them. There were pretty close to 150 all told, but truthfully how many of them were really friends.
And I’m sure that with concentrated effort that after 10 years in Bedford that I could probably list several hundred people that I could call by name. And who if Rev. Denn Guptill was mentioned would say, “oh I know Denn.” But would there be handful of friends amongst all those acquaintances? Possibly. Most of us know many, many more people then we are actually friends with.
Now the question is: “In your life is Jesus an acquaintance, someone you’ve met and see occasionally or is he a “Friend”? Which my buddy Collins defines as a person who one knows well and is fond of . . .”
My best friend is Reg Thomas and I covet the time that I spend with him, we have been best friends for 30 years and we are like brothers, except we don’t fight, much. There isn’t anything I wouldn’t do for Reg or him for me. But that friendship didn’t just happen, it grew and matured as we spent countless hours talking and being with one another. We’ve been there for each other through good times and bad, we’ve stood at each other’s wedding, we’ve spoken at each others churches, we’ve prayed together, and cried together and laughed together.
Do you talk to Christ in prayer? Do you let Him talk to you through his word? If the only time Reg heard from me was when I needed something or wanted something the friendship wouldn’t be very deep would it? And yet that is the quality of many peoples relationship with God, the key words in their prayers are I want or I need or help. And that isn’t a lot to build a relationship on.
Finally the Bible tells us in Hebrews 9:27 And just as it is destined that each person dies only once and after that comes judgment, 3) You Need to Meet Your God. And so after you have met God and become acquainted with God then and only then are you truly prepared to come face to face with God. And that preparation needs to happen long before you actually need it. You see death is a certainty, it may come early for some of us and later for others but rest assured it will come. Robin Williams summed it up when he said “Death is nature’s way of saying, your table’s ready.”
And it’s at the point that you will meet your God. You have very little control over how you die or when you die, but it is your decision and yours alone how prepared you will be to meet you God when you die.
You may be asking, “How can I know that I am prepared to meet my God?” One of my favourite scriptures is 1 John 5:13 I write this to you who believe in the Son of God, so that you may know you have eternal life. Not think, or hope but that you may know that you have eternal life. When I die, if I catch anyone saying “Well we can hope he made it.” I will come back personally and haunt you. When I die, and someday I will die I will die with the knowledge that I have met Jesus Christ and that I am ready to meet Him face to face and that he will say “Well done my good and faithful servant.” And he will put his arm around my shoulder and escort me through those pearly gates, down the streets of God to the mansion he has prepared for me in His father’s house.
And if you don’t have that assurance then you are not ready to meet your God.
For the next little while we are going to sing about meeting our God, and if you have not met him personally you really need to think about what has to happen in your life before you come to that point.
PowerPoint may be available for this message, contact me at denn@powerpoint4preaching.com
