Yet you have not returned to Me

Q: What does the Bible say about returning to God?

The Bible calls for sinners to return to God and acknowledges His sovereignty in bringing people back to Him, as shown in Amos 4:6-11. Returning to God is a theme deeply rooted in Scripture, where God calls His people to turn from their sinful ways and seek Him. In Amos 4:6-11, we see repeated admonitions from God stating, 'Yet you have not returned to me.' This indicates that despite God's efforts through various means, such as withholding rain and sending plagues, the people chose not to respond to His call for repentance. The passage underscores the sovereign grace of God in seeking out His people, reminding us that genuine turning to God is not just a matter of human effort but is initiated by God's love and action in a person's heart.

Q: How do we know God's love leads us to repentance?

God's love is demonstrated through Christ's redemptive work, compelling us to repent and turn to Him. The love of God is essential in the process of repentance, as it is not merely our own efforts that lead us back to Him but His sovereign grace that prompts our hearts to respond. Romans 2:4 teaches that God's kindness is meant to lead us to repentance, indicating that a true understanding of His love transforms our hearts. As discussed in the sermon, until God turns to a person, they will not turn to Him. This transformation comes from recognizing one's lostness and the glorious provision of salvation through Jesus Christ. Understanding this profound gift of grace instills a longing in believers to live in accordance with His will.

Q: Why is God's sovereignty important in salvation?

God's sovereignty ensures that He actively seeks and saves those who cannot save themselves. God's sovereignty is paramount in the doctrine of salvation as it affirms that it is ultimately God who initiates and secures our salvation. The sermon reveals that individuals do not turn to God on their own; rather, it is God's powerful calling and action that enables this change. As seen in Isaiah 65:1-2, God reveals Himself to those who are not seeking Him and calls them into relationship. This reminds us that salvation is not based on human merit or church attendance, but entirely upon God’s initiative, grace, and mercy. Recognizing God’s sovereignty in salvation leads to a deeper appreciation of His grace and our utter dependence on Him.

Q: What does it mean that God seeks those who do not seek Him?

It means God, in His grace, reaches out to individuals who are spiritually lost and unable to find Him on their own. The idea that God seeks those who do not seek Him underscores the gracious initiative of God in salvation. This is clearly articulated in Isaiah 65:1, where God expresses that He was found by those who did not ask for Him. This aspect of God's character highlights His mercy and love, extending beyond those who may appear deserving based on their actions or heritage. In the sermon, this truth is illustrated through the example of the Gentiles and the Israelites, reaffirming that no one has a monopoly on God’s grace. It affirms that it is God who first seeks us, revealing the depth of His love and the reality of our spiritual condition.

Good morning. Thank you for everyone's hospitality since we got here. It's been amazing. And yeah, like Eric said, the turnout yesterday was beyond what I would have imagined. You know, you think of this church being what most people would consider small. But, you know, everybody showed up. I can see everybody's face that was there yesterday. Let's not kid ourselves, you came for her. But no, it has been wonderful to see everyone again. And the church down in Jackson, Missouri says hi, sends their greetings. I know every time Drew gets back from him being called to preach somewhere, he's always talking about where he just was and the people there. He loves to see everybody. You know, they're so, I mean, they're tiny, we're tiny. It's a little church, 20 at most, I think. And he's just, he's tickled pink that anybody would ever ask him to come out, so he's always talking about everybody.

This morning, I'm gonna, we're gonna go through the book of, not a whole book, I'm gonna go through Amos chapter six, or sorry, chapter four, starting in verse six. And I've entitled this message, Yet You Have Not Returned to Me. And I generally preach out of the New King James. Those of you who have the NIV, the word order's a little, it's a little bit different, but don't worry, it'll come back around. Amos chapter four, starting in verse six. Also, I gave you cleanness of teeth, which is hunger, 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, and 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. And yet you have not returned to me, says the Lord.

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 are like a firebrand plucked from the burning. Yet you have not returned to me, says the Lord." And I came upon this, these verses, and got to thinking, when Does someone turn to God? What causes them not to turn? What causes them to turn?

And, you know, much of popular religion these days is about avoiding hell, that's number one, and gaining some sort of riches or notoriety here and in heaven. They think room size that you get in the mansion is gonna be based on what you were like here.

Their message is that God is good, and so are those who go to church, and he will save good people. And according, I had to look this up, according to some poll they did out there, or not a poll, but kind of like a census, the USA, the United States, has the most Christians compared to any other country on earth, the most Christians. We don't have the most churches per capita, but we have the most Christians, so that's something. But if going to church made you good, then we would be the most holy of nations, and we are most certainly not. We're a nation of idolaters. We worship anything except God.

You have people that worship Mary, the mother of Jesus. You have people that worship money. They won't bow down to it. They won't, you know, set it up on a pedestal, but they think if you're rich, God must favor you. He must. They worship the cross. They worship a statue. They'll worship their baptism. And they'll worship their works. They'll put that really high up.

And of course they don't sing hymns necessarily to all these things as you would to God. That's not what I mean by worship. but they do believe in their importance to their salvation. And you can tell this because when you tell them that these things that they so highly esteem, that they think God highly esteems, when you tell them that that does not obligate God in any way to save them, they get mad. They get mad. They depend on these things. And it's as if they're holding them up to God in some vain attempt to get him to do something for them.

And some people even worship obedience to hierarchy. This was new to me. I had not heard it until I moved down there and I was working at a Some church, I used to work for a company that did IT for other companies, and I went to this church to do their IT, and these ladies that were running the nursery were gathered round, and they were talking about one other lady who wasn't there, and they said, how can so-and-so be a Christian when she doesn't do what the boss says? So what then?

What then makes a person turn to God? Well, before we answer that question, it's important first to know what does not cause a person to turn to God. It's not, for example, their history. or their false seeking, and I put that word there, their false seeking after Christ. It's not their calling out to the Lord, because remember, some cried, Lord, Lord, but he did not let them into heaven. And it's not their works. It's not their giving to the church. It's not their doctrine. It's not their good experiences or their bad experiences, and it's not their genealogy.

Some people believe, even this, that they are closer to God if they belong to a small church. You know, God saves the humble, and a small church must be humble. And as traps go, that can be a very easy one to fall into. I saw an article online from a woman who said one of the reasons that she loved her smaller church out in California was that the Lord's Supper felt more intimate, more like a family meal. And when she can't attend, she knows people miss her.

Because in a big, bigger church, they wouldn't even notice, right? And curiously, her first reason for loving a small church was that she could hear Christ preached every Sunday. A church size has nothing to do with whether you hear Christ preached every Sunday. Spurgeon preached to thousands. He preached Christ. And your church, it does not save you. Your church does not turn you. Whether it seats just enough for dinner or enough to fill a stadium, it doesn't save you. It doesn't turn you.

Turn with me to another thing, Isaiah 65, another thing that was a trap especially for the Hebrews, the Israelites. Isaiah 65 and verse one. Verse one and two. This is the Lord speaking. 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. And 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 or imaginations. That is something right here that is just as foolish.

If you're not sure what these verses refer to, or who, I should say, these verses are referring to, in verse one, he's referring to the Gentiles. And in verse two, he is referring to the Israelites. Who is more foolish, the one who thinks that God chose favoritism based on church size, or the Israelites who believed that God had made them basically undamnable? That because he chose them through Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, that they would never see his wrath?

Spurgeon once said, the Israelite 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. They dreamed that God was almost bound to bless them above all the nations that were upon the face of the earth.

They did. You can see it in the Gospels, in the New Testament. 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. But what did we just read in Isaiah? 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 the Gentiles.

Now how sad was the Israelites' message, which they proclaimed for hundreds of years. How would you like to be in one of their synagogues or temples? And they would say, grace and peace be upon you if you can trace your lineage back to Jacob. For the rest of you, good luck.

That's no message of hope. And as you can see, back in Amos 4, that didn't turn them, the fact that they came from Jacob. 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 declared that in Amos 4, that suffering and hardship do not lead a man to call upon his name. He struck them. He took water away. He killed them with a sword. And if it wasn't by sword, it was by disease. They did not turn.

And with a certainty, a man will walk away from God all his life, even when doing so causes hardship, negative consequences. So what then makes a person turn to God? It's very simple. It's God's love for that person through Jesus Christ followed by God's action. A person may not like that he doesn't add any value to that transaction. But when that person learns how lost and sinful he was, he not only loves God's way of salvation through the redemptive work of his son, he considers himself completely undeserving of it. A man won't turn to God until God turns to him.

It's always been that way. It wasn't different in the Old Testament. It's not different in the New Testament. It is God who seeks, God who reveals, it is God who calls. To the Israelites in Isaiah's day, to the entire blessed nation, The Lord had revealed himself to them.

That means he blessed them. They had, at times, his protection. The word that they had received continued all those many, many years. He protected that. He protected them. They had, at times, his strength. They went to war. They took land that, by man's standards, it wasn't theirs. They took it because God said so. He went with them in that power and that strength, and they had his care. How often were they up against a larger nation? How often were they up against just hardship in general? They had his care. He got water for them, for their herds, from a rock. Yet, sometimes, they did not love him. Now our English language doesn't always translate certain Greek and Hebrew words exactly, that's just the way language is. And it can be easy to misconstrue the word call to mean something that it does not.

Do not mistake God's proclamation with a calling to salvation. They are two different things. The proclamation goes out to declare what people should do, but it has no action behind it. But the calling unto salvation is directed at the heart. And it goes with the power of the purpose of the Lord. You can tell kids, don't run at the pool, you're gonna get hurt. Don't run. But if you don't stop them from running, they'll get hurt.

There's always action behind God's call. In the book of James, chapter two, it says, faith without works is dead. And God is ever faithful unto his people, isn't he? If God said to us, be saved, just said be saved, but did not send his son, and did not reach out to go find us in the ditch, that's where we were. If he didn't do those things, where would we be? God is faithful, and he works. And I know the concept can be a little bit confusing to say that God can say something. and it not come to pass, so to speak.

But it's explained in the parable of the great supper in Luke chapter 14, and I'll just paraphrase it for you. A man, he makes a great supper and sends his servant to tell those who were invited, those who were invited, to come to the supper. And it was a general call. It was a general call to them all. As in, I have made good food. You should come. I want you to come and eat. Yet each one who was invited, they made an excuse not to go. There was even a man who had bought some land, sight unseen. He had to go check it out. Couldn't make it to dinner. Every one of the people had an excuse. They had better things to do than to go to the house that they were invited to. That's the same as saying, you should believe God. You should believe God. Everyone should. Absolutely. They should.

But the man who had made the supper declared concerning those who did not come, for I say to you that none of these men who were invited shall taste my supper. Instead, the man who made the great supper told his servant to bring or gather, fetch, to get those who were not invited and listen to how they were defined. The poor and the maimed and the lame and the blind. So consider that illustration real carefully.

The servant went out and fetched him and those who actually ate at that man's table could not afford to be at that table. They couldn't afford any of that food unless someone gave to them freely. And they were not even able to get to that man's house unless someone carried them. And they couldn't even find that man's house until someone told them where it was.

That's us. That's us. Blind. Lame. Can't get up. Can't even see if we could. None of them were getting there on their own. That's for sure. Now we see these types of people in real life. They're sitting by the side of the road. They're begging out there. We don't want them. Because what can they offer us? They are looked down upon, those people. And they are unwanted. But spiritually, those people, God wants them.

God wants those people because they have absolutely nothing. so that he, in turn, may give them everything and receive all the glory. There's no glory in it for us, this work of salvation. And one thing is for certain, if it's just an invitation, If salvation is just an invitation, we will not go.

Christ said it two different ways in the book of John. You will not come to me that you may have eternal life. And then he said, you cannot come to me. I don't know when I first heard my dad say it, but he argued it like this. He would say, you can't come to Christ. Well, why can't I? Because you won't. Okay, why won't I? Because you can't.

If God holds his hand out, so that all we have to do for salvation is just reach out and grab it. We don't even have to stand up tall. There's no height requirement. He's just right here in front of our noses. If that's all it took, we'd be putting our hands behind our backs like kids throwing a tantrum.

We wouldn't do it. The salvation of God will not come by our doing, our action. He must find, he must gather. This is what God meant in Isaiah 65, verse one. They were not seeking him, but he found them. And now with this comes a warning for our own hearts. If God does all the work for our salvation, it's easy to say to yourself, why should I concern myself then with leading a Christian life or with what God wants me to do? I don't want to give to the church. I don't want to go to church. I don't want to be meditating upon his word. I don't want to love this or that person. I don't want to. That is the heart of someone who has no understanding.

God must do all the work of our salvation because we are unwilling and incapable. But all his people have this in common after they are saved. Like the woman who anointed Jesus' feet with the fragrant oil and wiped his feet with her tears. They love much. because they were forgiven much. How can you not? We want to love God and do what he says because of how much he has given us and forgiven us.

And I will end with another quote from Spurgeon. He said, men are vexed when we declare that God is first in human salvation and seeks men before they seek him. And 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 pulls from a poem from Augustus Toplady No sinner can be beforehand with thee. Thy grace is most sovereign, most rich, and most free. May the Lord be glorified in his message.

Yet you have not returned to Me

Key Quotes

What does the Bible say about returning to God?

How do we know God's love leads us to repentance?

Why is God's sovereignty important in salvation?

What does it mean that God seeks those who do not seek Him?

Sermon Transcript

Comments

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Yet you have not returned to Me

Key Quotes

What does the Bible say about returning to God?

How do we know God's love leads us to repentance?

Why is God's sovereignty important in salvation?

What does it mean that God seeks those who do not seek Him?

Sermon Transcript

Comments

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