A Plumbline and a Famine

God is speaking to this nation today, friends, but God doesn't always use words to speak. Actions speak louder than words, and God is speaking by his actions, through judgments upon the land and the people. The nations of the world stand like great dominoes, ready to fall with just one breath from the divine nostrils.

Destruction and utter chaos are on the way because man has forsaken the God of the Bible. The sins of this land reach the throne room of the Almighty, and he is wroth. That's an old-fashioned good Bible word for angry, for God is angry with the wicked every day.

The final curtain of the drama of humanity is ready to fall once and for all on this sin-soaked, corrupt world system that we call society. I repeat, God is speaking to us today, friends, and I want to bring before you two ways in which God is speaking to us today. The title of my message is, A Plum Line and a Famine, and my text can be found in the book of Amos.

You can turn in your Bibles there now, friends, we will be in chapters 7 and 8. Amos was a fiery prophet of the Lord who was commissioned by God to call the people of God back to him through repentance and reformation, and here in the book of Amos we find that the Jews had turned their backs on the Almighty and were living for self and pleasure, yet maintaining at the same time a form of religion in the center of a pagan society. The Jews had ceased being a godly influence upon society. Rather, they had allowed pagan society to influence them to infiltrate their very lives to such a sad degree that God had to bring swift judgments upon them for their disobedience and flagrant sins.

The Jews were enjoying their peace and prosperity by building lavish pleasure palaces and lying at ease in Zion upon beds of costly ivory as they indulged themselves with sin. God visits them with a plum line in his hand and drops it right in their midst to prove to them how crooked they had become. Look at chapter 7, friends, and verses 7 and 8. Thus he showed me, and behold, the Lord stood upon a wall made by a plum line, with a plum line in his hand.

And the Lord said unto me, Amos, what seest thou? And I said, a plum line. Then said the Lord, Behold, I will set a plum line in the midst of my people Israel. I will not again pass by them any more.

And this brings me, friends, to the first point of my sermon to you today, and that is God is speaking us today by his divine displeasure with us through his withdrawn presence from among us. Notice God declares in her text, I will not again pass by them any more. Let me ask you, friend, when was the last time you saw the power of God in a meeting? When was the last time you were sitting in church and you felt the awful presence of the Almighty and that it was so real that you trembled in humility and repentance? God is surely speaking to us today by withdrawing himself from our midst.

I go around to churches like many you do, and I am embarrassed for what is called church on Sunday morning. We have turned the house of God into a house of entertainment. We wanted to reach the world, so we foolishly brought the world into the church and corrupted the house of God.

Let me ask you, friend, how can the Holy Spirit of God dwell with rock music and offensive humor and man-centered teaching? He cannot. Ichabod is on our church doors because the glory has departed. God is speaking to us very loudly today by his withdrawn presence, but the music is so loud in our sanctuaries that we cannot hear him.

And this brings me to the second point of my sermon today, friends, and this can be found in Amos chapter 8 and verses 11 and 12. Listen to how God is speaking to us today. Behold, the days come, saith the Lord God, that I will send a famine in the land, not a famine of bread, nor a thirst for water, but of hearing the words of the Lord.

And they shall wander from sea to sea, and from the north even to the east. They shall run to and fro to seek the word of the Lord, and shall not find it. Listen to me, friends.

This is not the case at our hour. Where can you hear solid biblical preaching today that is God-centered, whereby the preacher is preaching up the great doctrines of the gospel, which are ruin, redemption, repentance, and regeneration? I'm contacted by believers all the time all over this country and across this world, and they're singing the same tune where they live. They find it very hard to find solid preaching in a bible-believing church.

Truly, we have a famine today of hearing the preached word of God. And this proves and demonstrates to us right now that God is speaking to us at this sad and tragic hour in these last days, and he's speaking by his divine displeasure of us in two dramatic and terrible ways through two remedial judgments upon us. Number one, the withdrawn presence of God, and judgment number two, the withdrawn preached word of God, a plumb line and a famine.

Oh friends, how we've grieved away the spirit of God from among us. How foolishly have our prideful denominations built lavish pleasure palaces to please sinful man. How tragically have our pulpits fallen into base humor and funny stories that soothe and entertain rather than preach hard messages that alarm and awaken a sinner to his danger.

How we fill our church roll with the unconverted just to pay our big utility bills. How we've cheapened the gospel message and diluted it to make it easier to swallow to sinful man. Heaven help us all.

The only hope we have is a heaven-sent revival, but I fear we have become too hard-hearted and too deaf to hear God speaking to us today, to repent and turn from our wicked ways and seek him earnestly with humiliation and desperate prayer. I pray God's mercy upon us so he won't destroy us for our arrogance and pride. Let us pray.