God and Calamities

I have a very solemn message for us today, friends, and most of you aren't gonna like it. Years ago, I was preaching in a church where the pastor approached me afterwards and said, when I preach to my people, they leave the church talking and laughing, but when you preach to them, they leave the church silent and with red eyes. Well, I didn't know how to answer that pastor, but I let my messages do the talking.

I felt led to preach to his people out of Amos, which I knew was a need to them because they were a divided church on the verge of a church split, and they needed to repent and return back to God. And I'm going to preach to us today, friends, out of Amos. And you can turn in your Bibles there now, friends, as I believe this book of Amos has a lot to say to us today.

The name Amos means burden, and that's what this prophet of God had, a burden for the people of Israel to return back to Almighty God, but is pleased to repent when unheeded because it was a time of peace and prosperity. Amos had an unpopular message that few wanted to hear. The Jews were enjoying a prosperous reign under Jeroboam II, and it was a time when the nation was at the peak of Israel's material and political success.

But this prosperity had caused the people to forget God. And this was the burden that Amos carried around with him, for he saw the destruction that would soon befall them if they failed to repent. This occurred through a series of remedial judgments from God.

The fiery prophet Amos burst on the scene right before a big earthquake shook that entire region of Palestine. In Amos 1, we read, The words of Amos, who was among the herdmen of Tekoa, which he saw concerning Israel in the days of Jeroboam, the son of Joash, king of Israel, two years before the earthquake. This earthquake must have been pretty severe because it is mentioned by Zachariah.

More than 200 years later, Amos had been preaching a message of repentance to the backslidden nation that refused to turn back to God. God first sent them a series of remedial judgments through some natural calamities as a wake-up call to them. Amos 3, 6 declares, Shall there be calamity in a city? And the Lord hath not done it.

God in his mercy sent a series of remedial judgments to his rebellious people in the form of several calamities which grew in their severity. We see this in Amos 4, beginning in verse 6. And I also have given you cleanness of teeth in all your cities, and want of bread in all your places. Yet have ye not returned unto me, saith the Lord.

Judgment number one was that God sent a famine in the land. In his mercy, he sent them a famine. But how did the people respond? Yet have ye not returned unto me, saith the Lord.

The next judgment is a little more severe. We see in verse 7. And also I have withholding the rain from you, when there were yet three months to the harvest, and that caused it to rain upon one city, and caused it not to rain upon another city. One piece was rained upon, and the piece whereupon it rained not withered.

God sent a drought to his disobedient people. You can go weak without food, friends, but man cannot live long without water. Did the people repent? No.

Yet have ye not returned unto me. So God sends them a more devastating calamity. Look at verse 9. I have smitten you with blasting and mildew, when your gardens and your vineyards and your fig trees and your olive trees increased.

The palmer worm devoured them. Yet have ye not returned unto me, saith the Lord. God sent them a financial collapse.

Our economy grows weaker by the day. The stock market is highly overvalued and overdue for severe correction. God could suddenly pull the rug out from our economy, and the markets could crash, and people could be wiped out financially.

Look at what happened in 2008, and our situation now is more fragile than it was back then because of the pandemic. But did Israel repent? No. So God sent an even more severe calamity among them.

Look at verse 10. I have sent among you the pestilence after the manor of Egypt. Your young men have I slain with the sword, and have taken away your horses.

And I have made the stink of your camps to come up unto your nostrils. Yet have ye not returned unto me, saith the Lord. God sent his death angel among them, to where things got so bad, because so many had been killed, that the stench of rotten corpses filled their nostrils.

Did they return to God? No. They refused to repent. God is telling America, I have sent you fires, and yet have you not returned unto me.

I have sent you America floods, and yet have you not returned unto me. America, I have sent you storms of wind and hurricanes, yet have you not returned unto me, saith the Lord. America, I have allowed the death angel to slay 200,000 by a plague, and yet have you not returned unto me, saith the Lord.

The modern church in America is so out of step with God, that they can't even hear his voice. We live in a day of moral depravity in society, and great spiritual declension in the church. The church has become nothing more than a dead institution, hell-bent on church growth.

Pastors fail to preach against sin, and warn their hearers about damnation and hell. All you hear today are nice little messages that don't offend anyone, or you'll hear an intellectual essay to be considered. The icy blast from today's church is deadening, but pastors in former generations spent all their time on their knees and in their Bibles, and not sitting in front of a TV screen watching ball games.

When a natural disaster hit their community, they were quick to preach a solemn message on repentance to their people, listened to a sermon titled by a leading pastor of Boston in 1755, when an earthquake shook that city, listened, friends, to the title of his sermon. Earthquakes, the works of God, and tokens of his just displeasure, being a discourse on that subject wherein is given a particular description of this awful event of providence made public at this time, on occasion of the late dreadful earthquake which happened on the 18th of November, 1755. The text of the sermon was Psalm 18, 7. Then the earth shook and trembled, the foundations also of the hills moved, and were shaken, because he was wroth.

When almighty God is wroth, he's trying to get the attention of a rebellious people. He will send natural calamities to them, one on the heels of another, in order to get them to return back to him. If the remedial judgments go unheeded and the people refuse to repent, then a glistening, blood-red sword of Damocles will hang over that nation, ready to descend at any moment.

Heaven help us all.