We must PREPARE ourselves to MEET OUR GOD!
September
22 Bible Reading: Amos Chapters 4-6
We must PREPARE ourselves to MEET OUR GOD!
"Therefore thus will I do to you, O
Israel; because I will do this to you, prepare
to meet your God, O Israel! For behold, He who forms mountains, and creates
the wind, who declares to man what his thought is, and makes the morning
darkness, who treads the high places of the earth -- the Lord God of hosts is
His name." (Amos 4:12-13)
The
consequences of Israel’s disobedience were catastrophic. The people had
rejected God’s ever-increasing warnings. Now they would face God Himself: “Prepare to meet your God, O Israel.” When
God came in judgment, the people would finally understand that He is “the Lord God Almighty.” From this point
on, Amos stressed two key themes: the
coming of God in judgment and the
covenant name of God (namely, Yahweh).
God used
several means of discipline—drought, famine, crop diseases, locusts, plagues,
war, and local catastrophes (v. 11)—and yet the people of Israel did not get
the message. They had met with God’s disciplines, but the next step was to meet
God Himself (v. 12). He was personally coming to judge them.
It was a tragedy
that the people of Israel kept living in luxury (vv. 1–3) and carrying out
their religious duties (vv. 4–5) while ignoring the call of God. The text “prepare to meet your God” is not a
command to meet God in the sense of returning to Him. It was too late for this.
This was to be a confrontation in which Yahweh would pronounce sentence. The
phrase comes from Exodus 19:15–17, where, after three days of sanctification,
the people met the Lord at Sinai. Then they met a God who was graciously
forging a covenant with them. Now they would meet a God who was coming to judge
their covenant disobedience.
However, by
application this statement makes a great gospel warning. The evangelist D. L.
Moody found four things in this text:
(a) There is one God; (b) We are accountable to him; (c) We must meet him; (d) We
need preparation to meet him (Notes from
My Bible).
In our
comfort and prosperity, we may think that we are immune from God’s judgment,
but let us always remember that we will be judged by God one day. Are we prepared to meet our God? If not,
let’s prepare ourselves for that greater encounter with God one day!
"For we must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ, that each one may receive the things done in the body, according to what he has done, whether good or bad." (2 Cor 5:10)
