Reform. I am departing this morning from our studies in the life of Moses to bring in some ways a contemporary message. Not that things in our studies in Moses do not apply to the contemporary setting. But I'm doing something I don't believe I've done since, well, several years back, I think. and all the hoopla and news coverage surrounding the death of Dale Earnhardt, I felt compelled to preach a sermon on that Lord's Day that was out of the news. And I, this week, have thought much about the prophecy of Amos, Amos chapter 4 in particular. If you have been with us for any season, you'll recall that I believe there have been two occasions in the past that I have sought to preach a message from the prophecy of Amos. On each occasion, that message turned into a four or five part series. I do not know that I'll be preaching a series from Amos again, but from chapter four this morning, I want us to read together the Lord's word. And just before we read, a bit of welcome to those visiting with us today. We do trust you'll know and seek the Lord's presence with us as we consider his word together. 4 Hear this word, ye kind of Bashan, that are in the mountain of Samaria, which oppress the poor, which crush the needy, which say to their masters, Bring, and let us drink. 5 The Lord God hath sworn by his holiness, that, lo, the day shall come upon you, that he will take you away with hooks, and your posterity with fishhooks. And ye shall go out at the breeches, every cow at that which is before her, and ye shall cast them into the palace, saith the Lord. Come to Bethel, and transgress. At Gilgal, multiply transgression. Bring your sacrifices every morning, and your tithes after three years. And offer a sacrifice of thanksgiving with leaven, and proclaim and publish the free offerings For this liketh you, O ye children of Israel, saith the Lord." Let me just pause in our reading there. This is an amazing section of God's Word, and it is in the midst of an amazing prophecy in which the Lord is so angry with his people that he, through the prophet, uses sarcasm. And you'll find later in the book even extreme sarcasm in his chastisement and in his rebuke of the nation. And these opening verses are a fitting example of that, as the prophet calls the women worshippers cows. Certainly not a very flattering term in any way. But as you come down to verse 4, Bethel and Gilgal, these were centers for idolatrous worship of the Lord's people. Remember Bethel in particular, where Jeroboam, the son of Nebat, had set up an idol to worship Jehovah at. He was concerned in the breach of the northern and southern kingdoms that if the northern tribes that were giving their allegiance to him would do as they were properly to do according to the scripture to travel for the feast to Jerusalem and worship there. Of course we know all of the types and the messages of those types where there was a gospel message, it was Christ focused. That if the northern people were to go down there to worship, that it would affect their political alliances and he would be weakened. And so he gave them opportunity and places to worship the Lord, but yet without going to Jerusalem, without going to Christ. And Bethel was one of those central points of worship. And here the prophet, under the inspiration of the Spirit, calls to them, come to Bethel. Transgress, multiply your transgressions. The Lord, I say in some amazing language, speaks to the people. But verse 6 now, I also have given you cleanness of teeth in all your cities, and want of bread in all your palaces, or all your places. Yet have ye not returned unto me, saith the Lord. And also I have withholden the rain from you, when there were yet three months to the harvest, and I caused it to rain upon one city, caused it not to rain upon another city. One piece was rained upon, and the peace whereupon it reigned not withered. So two or three cities wandered unto one city to drink water, but they were not satisfied. Yet ye have not returned unto me, saith the Lord. I have smitten you with blasting and milled you. When your gardens and your vineyards and your fig trees and your olive trees increased, the palmer worm devoured them. Yet ye have not returned unto me, saith the Lord. I have sent among you the pestilence after the manner of Egypt. You young men have I slain with a sword, and have taken away your horses, and I have made the stink of your camps to come up in your nostrils. Yet have ye not returned unto me, saith the Lord. I have overthrown some of you, as God overthrew Sodom and Gomorrah, and you were as a firebrand plucked out of the burning. Yet have ye not returned unto me, saith the Lord. Therefore thus will I do unto thee, O Israel. And because I will do this unto thee, prepare to meet thy God, O Israel. For lo, he that formeth the mountains, and createth the wind, and declareth unto man what is his thought, and maketh the morning darkness, and treadeth upon the high places of the earth, the Lord, the God of hosts, is his name. Amen. We trust the Lord's blessing to be upon the public reading of his inspired word. With that word open before us, let's do bow our heads again. and ask the Lord's help today as we consider his word together. Our Heavenly Father, we come again into your presence this Sabbath morning. Lord, we come reading a very sober portion of the scriptures of truth, a portion that speaks to a people that were in many ways materially prosperous and yet spiritually bankrupt. And Lord, what is this but the condition of this nation? And we ask today that you give us wisdom, that you give us grace, that you will give us honesty as we deal with your word and deal with our day. We ask and pray these things in Jesus' name. Amen. As I said, we're departing this morning from our studies in the life of Moses. And we're departing in particular that we might direct and turn our thoughts to a very serious, and I believe you'll agree, a very timely question. And that question is this, does God send calamity? Does God send disaster? We are in hurricane season that I guess makes news every year and we get our charts out and we watch the evening weather and we see these massive storms spinning out in the Atlantic and very often they just spin away. Sometimes they come in. But it has been very difficult not to note in this year the sequence of storms, the threats, then the actual disasters that they have brought upon our nation. I just received email last night from some, just word, news about some dear friends down in Florida that have had a relationship with a free church for many years, and their apartment building was destroyed in a tornado in the recent storm. They got out with a violin, I think another musical instrument, a few clothes, and that was it. They put a footnote in to us ministers. Thankfully, Ron's books were in another building. Books and water don't do very well. But here just one little story of millions in our nation and in this region and to the south of us that have experienced great disaster in recent days and weeks. The question that perhaps isn't on everybody's mind in all the aftermath and the fixing things up and the power trains and companies and the caravans of linemen going down and certainly the unending list of insurance adjusters and claim settlers. The impact though, perhaps here we are not feeling it and enjoying the good weather, the impact will be felt for months and years to come. I say the question then comes is, who's responsible for this? Well obviously God is. He has his way in the storm. And so, I say we need to look at the question today, does God send calamity? Does God send disasters? And the answer to that is yes. If you look here, you have your Bibles open to Amos 4, you're probably very near the text in Amos 3. But Amos 3 in verse 6, shall a trumpet be blown in the city, and the people not be afraid. Shall there be evil in a city, and the Lord hath not done it. Now, let me just, in looking at that text, remind you, as we've noted often in the past, in the Old Testament often there's a term translated evil. And even in the Old English, the word evil was used at times without a reference to moral evil. This verse is not saying somebody does some wicked sin, and it's actually the Lord that's sinning. That's not what it's saying. You can translate or interpose in these places one of our words like disaster or calamity. Shall there be a calamity in the city and the Lord hasn't done it? And the answer to that is obviously implied in the words of the prophet, of course the Lord has done it. Listen to the words in Isaiah's prophecy. Isaiah chapter 45 and verse 7. The Lord says, I form the light and create darkness. I make peace and create evil. Or again, calamity. I, the Lord, do all these things. Now that in itself is a great topic in our study of theology and the doctrine of scripture. We can't exhaust it today, I take it in friendly territory that I'm in, that we understand this. It is a given. But some thoughts before we proceed in this. If we agree that it's the Lord that sends disaster, how do we interpret it? What are we to take from it? Well, if you look in the scripture, there are really a multitude of ways that we can and should understand it, and we have to wrestle through at times. But there are times in which God, yes, sends the calamity, but he sends it indirectly. The whole story of the book of Job is an example of this, where Job underwent tremendous evils, tremendous calamities. There were, in so many areas of his life, in his family, the loss of life, his children, the loss of his prosperity, the loss of his home, the loss of his health, the loss of the respect of his friends, the loss of the respect of his wife, all of these things, they were heaped up upon him. And we know as we read that Satan had brought these things upon him, but he'd only brought them with the permission of God. So God sent the calamity. But he sent it indirectly. He sent it through the agency of Satan. And again, God overrules evil for good. So there are times, I say, when God does it indirectly by allowing Satan and evil people to work things. There are also certainly occasions where God does it directly Himself. He can do this lovingly. Hebrews chapter 4, you don't need to turn it up, but a familiar portion where the scripture says, whom the Lord loves, he chastens. It's interesting, as you look at that passage, we use the word chastening most often in a negative sense, that there's punishment involved, and that's obviously true. There are times where the Lord punishes. And He punishes those that He loves. It's as a loving parent. Sadly, we're living in days where people need a definition of what a loving parent is. We live in days where you have to tell people in the world, if they confront you with a question, would you believe in spanking your children? You give them the biblical answer, yes, but given the world in which we live, can I talk to you for about a half an hour about this? We need lovingly to do this. But the Lord chastens those he loves. And the word in Hebrews has the idea of disciplining. It's not always just the negative of the chastening for doing wrong and redirecting. There's also the positive aspect of discipline and chastening where we are given to walk in the way of his commandments and the Lord would disciple us, discipline us. But the Lord will at times, I say lovingly, send calamity. sin circumstances, as we sang from Cowper's hymn, that for those that he loves and those that walk with him, they seem to us a frowning providence. Disagreeable circumstances, but behind them there's a smiling face. It's the love of a Heavenly Father that sends it, and even directly sends it to us. There are occasions as well where God sends calamity, and He sends it for the purpose of rebuke. This is, I believe, the occasion that we find in Amos chapter 4. We'll come to these words shortly. But even when this is true, we have the difficulty of wrestling through, because there are times and circumstances such as are described in Amos, and circumstances such as our nation has experienced in recent weeks, where the calamity comes upon the evil and the good at the same time. I mentioned our friends that had such loss of their possessions in Florida in these storms. It may very well be that those that lived next door or a block away did not have the disaster that they had and adhere to these that are godly. And these neighbors down the way could be of the most wicked people in the city. God has his way and has his purpose in these things. And there are times, I say, when the same event can come upon the righteous and the unrighteous at the same time. There's an example of this very powerfully in the prophecy of Habakkuk. Years later, where that prophet to the southern kingdom was, in similar circumstances to Amos, preaching a very near, soon-coming captivity for the people. Habakkuk had to say, Lord, I've heard your speech and I was afraid. Here is a godly man, one of the few of the remnant that was faithful in Jerusalem and Judea. And he's given the awful task of preaching a calamity that's coming and a calamity that God is sending, a calamity that is going to be of a horrible nature. There's going to be much loss of life. And he doesn't know exactly where he will stand when that comes. I believe, as you read your Bible, there are times where the Lord preserves the faithful. as he sends calamity upon the unfaithful. It is very clear from reading your Bible and from studying history as well, there are times where the Lord allows the faithful to suffer the same disasters and fates and even death that come to the ungodly. That in itself though is always coupled with the mercy of his believing people. That the worst can come upon them, even as the Lord told his disciples, fear not them, they can kill the body. Who will allow them to do that? Who will orchestrate the circumstances in which ungodliness comes to such power and such prominence in the world that they will have the liberty, they think at their own whim, to take the very lives of God's people? Well, God gives them that. As Christ said to Pilate, you could have no power over me at all unless it were given to you from above. Who was ruling and reigning when Christ was slain? Christ was. And so there are occasions, I say, even when the Lord will let the godly perish in disaster and calamity that He brings. But He rules and reigns. And as they perish, as they even would come under those that can kill the body, that they're not to fear. Yet with the fear of God, they have a far greater resurrection. They like the one whom Christ said today, thou shalt be with me in paradise. They pass from an awful but yet very temporary earthly calamity into the eternal bliss of the redeemed. God can use calamity to rebuke and warn the wayward and there are times even in such a case that that calamity comes upon the just and the unjust at the same time. I guess if we think upon these things We can also add, and have to add, that calamity and disaster can be God's pure and righteous judgment upon the ungodly. And wrapped up in this truth is the very doctrine of hell that we read in scripture, where the godly, the faithful, will be completely removed from that, and his wrath will be without measure and without any hindrance poured out upon the ungodly. There are occasions of which A little harbinger of that comes even in this life. It may come as we continue our studies in Moses to the gainsaying of Korah, the rebellion of those that gathered with him. The Lord made it very clear on that day, and through his servant Moses told the people, come away from them. Separate yourselves from those sinners. Because the Lord, even at the word of Moses, did a new thing that day, and the earth opened up her mouth and swallowed those men and their possessions. Swallowed them all. The staggering things you read the story, the families of the rebels went into. times where sin has an impact upon others, particularly those that we would lead. God can send calamity as his pure judgment upon evil as well. So, the question, does God send calamity? And the answer is a resounding yes. There are various circumstances and reasons And there is a time, great variations among, there are variations among the people upon whom these evils come and how it affects them. But behooves those upon whom calamity comes to act with wisdom, not jump to conclusions, but not to be unmindful of the hand of God and to search their souls as to where they stand with God. I want to take the occasion then this morning to look at Amos chapter 4, particularly if you look with me in verse 6 and following. I'm sure that you noticed as we read the passage that there is a phrase that is repeated five times in the remaining verses of this chapter, from verse 6 down to verse 11. There is a statement of some particular calamity, some particular disaster that the Lord said He had sent upon the people. And after the statement of that disaster is the phrase, yet ye have not returned unto me, saith the Lord. All of these things were given to gain the attention, to rebuke the ungodly of the nation of Israel. And yet in every case, as the Lord repeatedly sent disaster, the response was that they had not returned unto the Lord. I want to look this morning at this passage of scripture, understand it in its context, and just to share with you these three thoughts. We need to look at the reason for the calamity, why the Lord sent it, because here's an occasion where we have the answer. I want to look for a few minutes at the response of the people to the calamities, and then, Lord willing, thirdly, to look at the report that the prophet was to give concerning the calamity. So these three thoughts this morning, as we use the historic example of Amos to search our own hearts, I ask the Lord to give us wisdom with reference to our own nation. First, the reason for the calamities. Like Senator Hall ago, it's difficult for me to get into the book of Amos and not just preach the book. If you were with us, I think some five years ago now, the last time we visited this prophet, I shared with you at that time It was as a teenager and reading through the prophecy of Amos that my attention was arrested about some things that just didn't seem to make sense to me. They were things that upon Arminian thinking, upon fleshly wisdom, were difficult to reckon with. So I began just to repeatedly read the book to try and get some understanding of why God would do what he was doing in the book of Amos and why he would do what he was doing to the nation of Israel. I remember in particular, chapter 8, the prophecy of the famine of the Word that overwhelmed me. The Lord said at that time, Behold, the days come, saith the Lord God, that I will send a famine in the land, not a famine of bread, nor of thirsting for water, but of hearing the words of the Lord. He said they will wander in the north and the east from all the directions to seek the word of the Lord and shall not find it. And that passage is the one that set me on a lot of soul-searching, because that just didn't quite jive with my particular understanding as to how we were to go forth with God's Word to sinners. We were always taken to sinners. It was always God's desire for His Word to be given to sinners. And there would never be any occasion when God would take His Word back, when He would make it so people couldn't hear and couldn't see His Word, if that's exactly what God said He was doing. You see, that has to bring us to a complete re-evaluation of our understanding of God and who He is, and our understanding of men and their sin and who they are. The Arminian mindset and the fleshly mindset is God owes sinners a chance. And if He doesn't give them that, then something's wrong. That's bad theology. You don't put That subject and that verb together, in an orthodox theology, God owes sinners. I guess we have to get the object in there as well, but God doesn't owe anybody anything. If you want to use the word owes, then you need to rearrange your sentence. Sinners owe God obedience. and in their disobedience and even their incapacity to obey as a result of their sin and their rebellion. They deserve, if God owes anything to the sinner, He owes him the just penalty of His broken law, which is eternal death in the lake of fire. It is in His mercy that He even gives this window of time. and space to repent as the gospel is preached. But you see, as you understand that, and as you go back to the prophecy of Amos, that was the whole problem. It wasn't just merely that Israel were a bunch of people that deserved God's wrath. They were those that in deserving God's wrath had been given God's Word. They were those that had been given tremendous mercy, tremendous grace. Turn back with me, if you would, to chapter 2. Chapter 2, verse 10. The Lord says unto his people also, I brought you up from the land of Egypt, led you forty years through the wilderness to possess the land of the Amorite. I raised up of your sons for prophets, of your young men for Nazarites. Is it not even thus, O ye children of Israel, saith the Lord? You mark it down. Temporal earthly blessing and provision. God gave it to them. spiritual provision, the preachers of his word, the proclamation of grace, the unfolding of the gospel. You read Exodus, you read Leviticus, you read Numbers, you read Deuteronomy. Christ was preached to these people. He had come to such condition that they didn't care. You read verse 12, following it says, But ye gave the Nazarites wine to drink, and commanded the prophets, saying, Prophesy not. Oh, we're finished with this stuff. We've got our own prophets now. They preach comfortable messages to us. Let's just enjoy that stuff and forget about these stick-in-the-mud prophets that are going against the tide. Well, you just continue to read through the prophecy and you read the history and the reason for the calamity is clear. Again, one of the reasons that the prophecy of Amos comes so much to my mind is I think the parallels of the circumstances are so amazingly parallel to our day. This was a day of material prosperity. You look in the last verse of chapter 3, right before our reading in chapter 4. He said, I will smite the winter house with the summer house. The houses of ivory shall perish, and the great houses shall have an end, saith the Lord. These were people that were living in a time in which material blessing was part of their normal lives. They were people that had winter houses and summer houses. Vacation homes and their regular residence. You read later they drank wine and bowls. They were very prosperous. We won't take time to look back at the history and the reason for that. The reign of Jeroboam II was a little window in between the strength of the emerging empires surrounding this people. And as one empire began to wane, Egypt was losing its dominance and its power, the Assyrians were just beginning to come onto their own. And so there was a period of time where nobody was the top dog, and the trade routes went right through the nation of Israel. And so they were able to collect on all the goods going through. It was a great time for them. And people thought they had everything going for them. But yet where were their hearts? It's amazing as you read the calamities that were here. The disasters that the Lord sent. That their prosperity was of such a nature that it didn't really impact them that much. They didn't pause to take notice. You know, there may be a day where we can't handle this kind of thing. Look at the things that have come. It's amazing if you pause to think about the circumstances and how powerless we are to deal with them. I remember when I was probably 16 or so, putting a note in my Bible at verse 8, so two or three cities wandered unto one city to drink water. We're going to come to that a little bit later. But the thought was to me, rather than wandering rather than going to the source of rain, asking God to send water to their city. They just wandered and meandered about to other places that had plenty. Oh, we'll get other men to help us. They wouldn't seek to come face to face with God. I say if you just go through the circumstances, and as I see the time the threatenings of the series on Amos come upon us again. You look at every circumstance. You look at the condition of his people, and they were a people that were in apostasy. Apostasy, friends, is worse than pure paganism. The pagans have gone after their own inventions. They have been allowed of God to do that. Now paganism always begins with apostasy. Somewhere down the line, in the past, there were those that knew the truth and forsook it. Whether you go from the descendants of Adam and Eve up to the flood, or whether you go from the power of Babel back to the children of Noah, there's some point at which there were those that knew the truth. and they cast it off and generations came up where there hadn't been any care for the truth for so long they were ignorant of it and all they knew was idolatry and we're approaching those days in our nation but we're still close enough in our nation with enough witness and heritage of the church that we are a people that are still casting the truth off and you can see that in the attitudes that prevail in our nation So I say, you just come to look at the picture, and the reason for the calamity becomes very clear. One of our ministers, as I've been making many calls and correspondence of late in preparation for the week of prayer, just asked, how are you folks faring down there with the remnants of these hurricanes? And I spoke to him about floodings in our state and whatnot, and he said, well, it is amazing, with what ease. God can put a hole in our economy. We need to be a people that are awake to the circumstances in which we live. We cannot be a people and say, well, as the Philistines were going to say, chance happened upon us. Even the Philistines at one point, if you remember the story, as they had in God's chastening of Israel, had been allowed to capture the Ark, and they brought the Ark into the house of their god, Dagon, and of course his image was cast down before the Ark, and they sought to set it up again, it was cast down again, and it was broken. And then they just started sending the Ark to the different cities among their little collective there, in what's today called the Gaza Strip. Five cities of the Philistines. They just kept moving it, because every time they sent it to a different city, everybody got sick, they got plagued. They finally said, we have to get rid of this thing. The God of the Hebrews is dealing with us. They had enough understanding to know the calamities we are having are for a reason. But they left a little window for it, so they fashioned a cart. Put two new oxen there, harnessed them, put the ark on it, and said, well, we're going to send these guys loose, and if they head toward Israel, we'll know that God brought these things upon us, which they knew already. And they say, if they go another way and down another road, we'll know that chance happened to us. Well, they put the ark on the cart, slapped the oxen, started them on their way, and they headed straight for Israel. And I love the phrase, lo and as they went. Even the pagan Philistines had enough understanding to know that God was behind the disaster. If you look at the prophecy of Amos, it is very clear the reason for the calamity was the chastening of God. God showing, giving the people that didn't even want it, clear evidence of His power, of His ability to snuff them out in a moment. It should be that which produces a fear of God. And friends, God is not limited by anything. He's not limited even to use calamities that are atmospheric disturbances. He is not limited to use calamities that are produced by what we call nature. God brings calamity. You read the prophets. You read the history. God brings calamity by evil men. Belshazzar's Envious Feast. Drinking wine and reveling, using the vessels from the temple of God. A finger came and wrote upon the walls. Even today, though we're losing it in our scripturally illiterate, in just about every other way illiterate society, the writing is on the walls. God is able to use the ungodly. And we don't need to get in the trap either. I have to be very careful here of launching beyond Amos into political commentary. But we don't need to get into the trap of thinking, as trouble comes to this earth, that there are always good guys and bad guys. We've got to figure out who the good guys are and get on that team. Very often in history, and very often according to the Bible, that all the big fighting is between bad guys and bad guys. We cannot say, because of the evil brought upon us by other men that are evil, that we have the favor of God upon us. It could very well be just exactly as it was for Judah later than him. If I could look down the corridors of time as the Babylonians were going to be sin of God, an evil people, and were going to bring atrocities upon the people. Well how can this be? That these people that are named by God's name, that God would let such people as the Babylonians do all this havoc, bring all this calamity. The Lord had to take her back, as you recall, back to Doctrine 101. God is of pure eyes and to behold evil. Whatever God does is right. And there were reasons why God sent the Babylonians to destroy Jerusalem. So I say there are reasons for the calamities. I want you to think with me secondly this morning about the response to the calamity. This is an interesting thing. You read the story. You say in verse 8, as I pointed out a while ago, two or three cities wandered unto one city to drink water, but they were not satisfied. We have the interesting circumstance that As calamities come, there is a coming together of people. I want you to listen to me very carefully. I know we've gone somewhat long already this morning, but I don't want to be misunderstood. Here, I say in response to the calamity, those upon whom the calamity came bonded together. There was a unity. It was a fellowship that they enjoyed and that they built up in response to the calamity. It didn't rain upon one city. It was drought in one place. So two or three cities wandered into another city to drink water. Now, is that necessarily an evil thing? As I said, when I read this, even as a teenager, my thought was, instead of wandering here and there to try and get water, why don't they just pray for rain? Why don't they just come face to face with the God of Heaven? But you see, the natural inclination for people that are pleading from the God of Heaven is not to run to Him. It's to get help from somewhere else. That's why you see repeatedly for both the northern and the southern kingdoms, as in their apostasy, God strengthened their enemies and there were threatenings from the nations that surrounded them. Very often, in their unbelief, they would go and ask somebody for help. The Egyptians, look, you guys, you don't have anything for the Assyrians or the Babylonians. You guys don't like them. You don't want them to get strong and get all the money from around here. Why don't you come help us and we'll pay tribute to you a little bit later instead of to them. So they seek to lean upon Egypt. You find other occasions where the circumstances are even far graver for the Lord's people, and yet in His mercy, when their leader would cry out to heaven, God would intervene, and without any help of men, their enemies would be destroyed. I say very often the response to calamity is for those upon whom the calamity is coming to bind together. Coming together is a phrase that recurs pretty consistently in the news coverage and in the comments of people in our day when calamity comes. It's brought the community together. Neighbors who were never together before didn't even know each other's names. It's a sad commentary on our age. It's a commentary, well I won't go there, but a different society and the ways we live, an urban setting versus a rural setting, all these things. But yet when calamity comes, there's a coming together. Now hear me. I'm not saying that it's wrong for people to help people when something's happened. I'm not saying it's wrong, even for us as Christians, to feel for people that have been hurt in disasters, even unsaved and ungodly people. If we have means to help them, if we have skills, if we have linemen that can go put their power lines back up, if we work for a power company or we have skills that we can volunteer for a medical group or whatever. I'm not saying it's wrong for a Christian to volunteer to go and help in these situations. That's not the point at all. The point I'm making is this. For a people to say what we need is just to come together. What we need is to help one another and to completely leave out of the picture God's relationship to the whole thing. The condition of our society, the sin that prevails in our world, to just ignore it. Everything will be fine if we can just fix the calamity, put the buildings back together, get the power on, get the water running, so we can go back to our sin and our rebellion against God. It's a wrong response to the calamity. In a sense, this is the spirit of Babylon. I've made various attempts in the past to give a definition of Babylonianism. If you know anything about your Bible, the theme, the character, and the thread of Babylon runs from cover to cover. The Tower of Babel. It was, if you look back in the very inception, a society coming together, building a unity while in rebellion against God. And I submit to you, that's the spirit of Babylonianism. Human attempts at unity among ourselves. while happily cut off from the God of Heaven. And that's why believers in Jesus Christ are separate from the world. They're brought into unity, into union with the God of Heaven. While this world is at enmity with God. And this spirit of saying, I want to be in union with my fellow man, and it doesn't matter where I stand with God, is the spirit of Babylonianism. And I ask you to analyze our society and answer the question, are we not living in that spirit today? And here I say is the response to the calamity. Various things come and the people say, we must help each other. We must help ourselves. This is coming a day where God's going to send calamities of such a nature that men can't even look and say, well, another 10 years and we'll have this fixed. Another generation and this community will have outlived this disaster. See, we're still in a time where our insurance companies and our abilities seem to be able to deal with things. It's not bad enough to panic. We can come together and deal with this. We can help one another out of this. Friends, the greatest help we can be to our fellow man. You want to donate blood? You want to volunteer your services and go to some of these places and help cut tree limbs out of roads and do whatever? Hallelujah! But be a faithful witness of the cause of Jesus Christ as you go. Speak the truth and love to people. Don't ignore the need of the hour. Don't ignore the things that are of far greater importance. and getting power back on, getting water running, rebuilding homes. Where will people live? What necessities will they have in eternity? That's far more important to get fixed than these other things. I say as you read the story and the repeated refrain, I sent this disaster, you tried to fix it yourselves and you didn't return to me. I sent another disaster, you tried to fix it yourselves and you didn't return to me. I sent another disaster, you tried to fix it yourselves and you didn't return to me. It's most probable that it was more than just the five disasters that are listed in Amos. This is a book filled with poetry and the refrains come just to give us enough understanding that things were coming in heaps. The response to the calamity among the ungodly, I say very often, is this feel-goodism coming together, the spirit of Babylon, and it's a dangerous thing. The third thought this morning, and we have time but rarely to mention it, is the report concerning the calamities. Here's where Amos came in. What a job the Lord gave to Amos. He had to go and tell people what was going on. He had to go and tell people the thing they really needed to be concerned about instead of their little disasters. They needed to be concerned about their hearts. They needed to be concerned about their sin. They needed to be concerned about their apostasy. The Lord gave Amos an unusual message and perhaps an even more unusual methodology. We won't take the time, You go back to chapter 1 and chapter 2 is Amos, who was from the south, you remember. He is from Judah. He was not even a professional preacher. He was a shepherd. He was a farmer. He was an old, you know, Bible-thumper kind of guy that was coming up to the north in their prosperity and just didn't understand, didn't fit in. But when he first showed up, they listened for a while because he began to enlist the ungodliness of the nations that surrounded them. He began to look at the social evils, the military atrocities and crimes that had been committed by various other nations. And there is a refrain that if you read through, it says, Thus saith the Lord. In chapter 1, verse 6, verse 9, verse 11, verse 13. You cross over to chapter 2 in verse 1 and verse 4. Thus saith the Lord. For three transgressions of such and such a nation, I will not turn away the punishment thereof. Actually, the refrain reads, for three transgressions and for four, I'll not turn away the punishment thereof. And then there's some description of the transgression. It's a poetical device, basically to say, for the overflowing of these people's sins, I'm not going to turn away their transgression. They're going to get punished for it. For the overflowing of these people's sins, I'm not going to turn away their punishment. They're going to receive it. And the people listen. And they say, yep. Those Philistines, those Amorites, those other people, all these things, yeah, boy, they've been doing some bad stuff. And could it be that in a nation such as this, a prophet could come and say, for the transgressions of communism, for the evils of the Nazi empire, for all the horrors of the ongoing present-day terrorists and their companions and those that help them, there'll be a reckoning with God someday. And there will be many in America that will say amen, preacher on preacher. But the last of these poetic descriptions Amos gave was right in the face of Israel. Here you are too, with three transgressions and four. You have an overflowing of transgressions. To have it both ways. You want to say God's happy with you, but you won't obey his law. You want to say you belong to Him, and you give allegiance to idols. And I say, is that not our nation? It is exactly our nation. And it's not even those unchurched in our nation that just have some heritage a few clicks back. There are people sitting in churches this very minute. There are people sitting even in evangelical churches this very minute. And the rebuke applies to them. Because they have more in common with their idols than they do with the person and work of Jesus Christ. They have more concern with their careers than they do with the condition of the church. It is true of us. There is an overflowing of transgression. And our God has shown How with but the flick of his finger, with one thought, he can send a disaster. Tremendous proportions. We even begin to comprehend the power of one of these storms. And yet they're nothing. They're nothing to a God who can but speak. And the universe comes into being out of nothing. A God who one day will come and speak. And all those that are outside of Jesus Christ will be cast into hell. There will be no window of opportunity anymore. No stick-in-the-mud prophets to come and plead with them for their souls. There will be nothing but exactly what the Lord said to His people. You look with me in verse 12 of chapter 4 in our text and I close with this. This is a text we've preached before. It's one of those giant texts in scripture that has a context that is huge. You read the phrase in the close of verse 12, prepare to meet thy God. I believe those are words that we can take to any man. Prepare to meet your God. But the immediate context here is most amazing. The Lord has said, I've said calamity after calamity after calamity, yet you've not returned them to me. He says, verse 12, therefore thus will I do unto thee, O Israel, and because I will do this unto thee. Prepare to meet thy God. You, O Israel, have called yourself by the name of God? You, who have wanted to have your cake and eat it too, to be called Christian and yet live as pagan? You, who have wanted the privilege of redefining God's will and fashioning and building a church after your own liking? This was Israel, this is America. The prophet says to Israel, This, actually it isn't the prophet, it is God that says to Israel, through the prophet, prepare to meet me. Come and learn what your God is really like. God is going to punish sin. God who is slow to anger and plenteous in mercy, does come through the expression of anger. He does come to pour out wrath against sin. And it is far more than a hurricane. It is far more than a tornado. It is far more than a flood that men will have to face. It is the God of Heaven that men have to face. May God give us wisdom. May God give us love. Love such as the love Amos had to have for those people, to say the things he said. Let us be a people that ask the Lord for wisdom, for grace, for spiritual power. We live in days of apostasy. We live in days where the logic isn't easy to follow because fleshly logic says one thing and the logic of the Bible says another. Let us pray then for people to have discernment in reading our Bibles. To see the hand of God. Preach what needs to be preached. Say and do what needs to be done. Call the people to repentance. People might prepare to meet their God. Let's bow our heads together. Heavenly Father, we ask Thee today. Give us wisdom. Lord, we confess we do not live in days as the days of the prophets, where by inspiration You gave an immediate interpretation of events. And yet, Lord, we believe we have sufficient warrant from Your Word to give words of caution such as we have given today. Lord, we ask, look upon our nation. We pray with the words of the prophet of a later day, in wrath remember mercy. Lord, be pleased in your will to bring revival to the remnant of your heritage. Take us from this place, a people ready enough to help others in their need, but willing enough, even if it's uncomfortable, to speak truth that needs to be spoken to such people too. We ask these things in Jesus name. Amen.