Amos chapter four, starting in verse six. Also, I gave you cleanness of teeth in all your cities and lack of bread in all your places. Yet you have not returned to me, says the Lord. I also withheld rain from you when there were still three months to the harvest. I made it rain on one city. I withheld rain from another city. One part was rained upon and where it did not rain, the part withered. So two or three cities wandered to another city to drink water, but they were not satisfied, yet you have not returned to me, says the Lord.

I blasted you with blight and mildew when your gardens increased, or sorry, I blasted you with blight and mildew. When your gardens increased, your vineyards, your fig trees, and your olive trees, the locusts devoured them. Yet you have not returned to me, says the Lord. I sent among you a plague after the manor of Egypt. Your young men I killed with a sword, along with your captive horses, I made the stench of your camps come up into your nostrils, yet you have not returned to me, says the Lord. I overthrew some of you as God overthrew Sodom and Gomorrah, and you were like a firebrand plucked from the burning, yet you have not returned to me, says the Lord. And then I'll ask you to turn to the book of Isaiah 65. We'll be there in a minute, but much of popular religion is about avoiding hell, mostly about avoiding hell. Nobody wants to go there.

And it's also about the promise of riches and eternity in heaven. And the message there is that God is good and so are those who go to church and he will save good people. He will save good people. I remember listening to a sermon, I think it was Dave Edmondson, I think. But, anyway, he said, in truth, bad people go to heaven and good people go to hell. Once you wrap your mind around that, you'll understand part of the gospel. Now, I had to look this up because of what their message is.

According to this Pew Research Center, the USA has the most Christians in it compared to any other country. The most Christians. It's up there also per capita of, or sorry, churches per capita. It's pretty high up there. But we have the most Christians out of all the countries. So if going to church made you good, we would be the holiest of nations. Yet we are a nation of idolatry. We worship anything except God.

Many of them have this way. They'll worship Mary, the mother of Jesus. They'll worship money. They'll think that is, if you've got money, that means you're saved. So they put that on a pedestal. They'll worship the cross. They'll put that up there wherever they can. Put it up on their walls. They'll worship a statue. They'll worship their baptism. Or works. They'll put those all up there.

And I know this because when you tell them that those things do not obligate God in any way to save them, they get mad. That's how you know. Now they depend on these things. They hold these things up to God in a vain attempt to make him do something for them.

Some even, they'll worship obedience to hierarchy. That might sound a little strange, but I overheard a woman who worked in a church nursery. She remarked, how can so-and-so be a Christian when she doesn't do what the boss says? They like that hierarchy.

So what then makes a person turn to God? We just read a whole bunch in the book of Amos about what doesn't turn a person to God. And before we answer the question of what does turn a person to God, it's important to know what doesn't. What doesn't. Because those are all traps. Examples of what doesn't turn a person to God, it's not their history. your experiences, whether good or bad. It's not their seeking. Remember, some cried, Lord, Lord, but he did not hear them. It's not their calling out to the Lord or their works or their giving to the church or their doctrine. That's a tricky one. And it's not their genealogy.

Isaiah 65, verses one and two. I was sought by those who did not ask for me. I was found by those who did not seek me. I said, here I am, here I am. To a nation that was not called by my name. I have stretched out my hands all day long to a rebellious people who walk in a way that is not good according to their own thoughts. That was the Israelites that he was talking about.

Some people They think they have turned to God or feel closer to God because they were part of a small church. Here we are, a small church. It's a trap. And it can be one of the easier ones to fall into. I saw an article online, this woman was writing from California, and she said one of the reasons that she loved her smaller church was that When they had the Lord's supper, it felt more intimate. It felt like a family meal. And when she couldn't attend church, she knew that the people missed her. In a big church, they don't even know you're gone. Curiously, her first reason for loving a small church was that she could hear Christ preached every Sunday.

Oh no, a church size has nothing to do with that. Spurgeon preached Christ to thousands. Your church does not save you. Just because someone who might be saved shares the pew with you, it does not save you. And the size of it doesn't matter either, whether it seats barely enough for dinner or enough to fill a stadium. God is no closer to you because the ratio of preacher to congregants is smaller. Yet, is this, is that idea, small church, is that no more foolish than the Israelites who believed that God had made them basically undamnable? That's what they believed.

Spurgeon once said, the Israelitish people thought that they had a monopoly of the grace of God, that the Lord who had chosen their fathers and had indulged them with a divine revelation would never deprive them of their advantages nor advance others to like privileges. As in, All of God's blessings were for the Israelites only, and he would never bless anybody else. He goes on to say, they dreamed that God was almost bound to bless them above all the nations that were upon the face of the earth. Not only did the Israelites believe that they alone had the favor of God, they believed that he could not show mercy to anyone else, anyone else.

But what did we just read in Isaiah 65? I was sought by those who did not ask for me and I was found by those who did not seek me. He made himself known to Gentiles. Now how sad is that message that the Israelites preached all the way up to Christ's day? It wasn't just here in Isaiah. all the way up to Christ's day.

Imagine a preacher saying, grace and peace be upon you if you can trace your lineage back to Jacob. For the rest of you, good luck. Some think that if God has made them suffer so much in life, it must be that he loves them and will save them. But God shows that suffering and hardship do not lead a man to call upon his name.

That was in Amos chapter four. He battered those people. He strikes them and they have not returned to him. He buffets them like a crashing wave. Yet they have not returned to him. He makes them utterly miserable. He kills a bunch of them with plagues, with sword. Yet they have not returned to him.

And with a certainty, a man will walk away from God all his life, even when doing so causes negative consequences. So what then makes a person turn to God? It is God's love for that person through Christ Jesus. That's what makes him turn. It's really simple. A person may not like that he doesn't add any value to this transaction, but when that person learns how lost and sinful he's been all his life, He not only loves God's way of salvation through the redemptive work of his son, not through his works, not through what he gave to the church, not how often he went, but through the redemptive work of his son. When he learns that, he considers himself completely undeserving of it. A man won't turn to God until God turns him. is the actor. He is the actor. He seeks, God reveals, God calls.

And to the Israelites in Isaiah's day, to the entire nation, the Lord had stretched out his hand. Remember, they were, I'll put it in quotes, the blessed nation. He had revealed himself to them. He had saved them, took them out of Egypt, gave them land that you could say by the laws of men wasn't theirs. He said, no, this is my land and you're going to have it. He had blessed them. They had protection. They had his strength and his care, yet they would not love him.

Do not mistake God's call with a calling. One goes out as a proclamation to declare what people should do, but has no action behind it. And I'm trying to be very purposeful with the language I'm using here. The other, a calling, is directed at the heart and goes with the power of the purpose of the Lord.

You can tell people, don't run at the pool, you're gonna get hurt. But if you don't stop them, they'll get hurt. Faith without works is dead. If God said to everybody, be saved, but did not send his son, did not reach out to them and find them, no action, where would we be? God is faithful and he works.

Now I know that was a bit confusing, the wording of it, but it's explained in the parable of the great supper in Luke. And I'll just paraphrase, a man makes a great supper. and sends his servant out to tell those who were invited to come to it. He's got this great feast. It can hold everybody he wants to invite. He's got enough food. There will be plenty of leftovers and no one will leave hungry. It was a general call, as in, I have made good food and you should come and eat.

Yet each one who was invited made an excuse not to go, including a man who had bought a parcel of land sight unseen. Just had to go check it out yet. They all thought they had better things to do than to go to this house where they were invited. And the man that made the great supper declared, concerning them, for I say to you that none of those men who were invited shall taste my supper." Instead, the man who made the great supper told his servant to gather those who were not invited. He said, the poor and the maimed and the lame and the blind. Now consider this illustration very carefully. The servant went out and got him. He fetched him.

And those who actually ate at this man's table could not afford to, unless someone gave to them freely, were not able to get to this man's house unless someone carried them. and could not find the man's house unless someone told him where to go. They weren't getting there on their own.

Now we see these types of people, we don't want them. We don't want them. What do they got to offer us? But God does. God wants those people because they have nothing. They have absolutely nothing. And because they have nothing, he may give them everything and shall receive the glory. And one thing is for certain, if it's just an invitation, If salvation is just an invitation, we will not go. If God holds his hand out so that all you have to do is just reach. You don't even have to go on your tippy toes. It's like right in front of you. You just reach out and grab it. We'll hold our hands back here like kids throwing a tantrum. Nope.

The salvation of God will not come by our doing. He must find, he must gather. This is what God meant in Isaiah 65 verse one. He sought and he found those who did not ask for him and those who weren't even looking for him. And as an aside, this comes with a warning for our own hearts, because it's easy to say to yourself, if God is doing all the work, why should I concern myself with what he wants? Why should I care what he wants me to do? I don't want to help others. I don't want to go to church. Let me live how I want to live. This is the heart of someone who has no understanding. God must do all the work because we are unwilling and incapable. That's why he must do all the work of our salvation. But all his people have this one thing in common, after they are saved.

Like the woman who anointed Jesus' feet with that fragrant oil and then wept on his feet, washed his feet with her hair and her tears. The people love much because they were forgiven much. You don't come to be a believer without knowing that. We want to love God and do what he has said because of how much he has given us and forgiven us.

I will end with one more quote from Spurgeon. Men are vexed when we declare that God is first in human salvation and seeks men before they seek him. Many grow red in the face if we testify that the Lord in his gracious sovereignty meets with persons who have never sought him and brings them to himself, changing their hearts by his own eternal spirit while he leaves others to perish in their sins because they resist his spirit and refuse the invitations of his mercy. Yet we shall not cease most joyfully to sing unto our God, and here he quotes a poem from Augustus Toplady. No sinner can be beforehand with thee. Thy grace is most sovereign, most rich, and most free. May God be praised. Bruce, would you close us please?