God Almighty has always dealt
with men through his Son and upon the basis of his Son's sacrifice
for sinners, both in mercy and in judgment. If God is pleased
to bring us into union with himself, and to give us life and faith
in Christ. If he's pleased to forgive our
sin and to robe us in the righteousness of his Son, it'll be all together
because we have an advocate upon the throne of God who is the
Lord our righteousness. And when you meet God in judgment,
if you perish in your sin, It will be that man, our God, who
is our advocate, who sets in judgment over you, and sets in
judgment over you because you have despised him and rejected
him. We have a clear picture of this
in the ninth chapter of the book of Amos. Amos is a prophet of
judgment. Oh, what judgment! He calls on
us, prepare to meet thy God, O Israel. And the last vision
he has in this book, he says, I saw the Lord standing upon
the altar, and he said, smite the lintel of the door, that
the post may shake. and cut them in the head, all
of them, and I will slay the last of them with the sword. He that fleeth of them shall
not flee away, and he that escapeth of them shall not be delivered."
In that day when Christ is revealed in his When he comes in judgment
upon the children of men, men and women will cry to the rocks,
fall on us, into the hills, cover us, and hide us, what strange
language, from the face of the Lamb. Salvation is beholding the Lamb. But there's a day coming. when
men who will not behold the Lamb must behold him, and they will
cry in vain, and hide us from the wrath of the Lamb." 750 years
before our Lord's incarnation, the nation of Israel was a rich,
prosperous, thriving kingdom. During the days of Jeroboam II,
the nation was peaceful, stable, strong, very, very religious. Many enjoyed such wealth that
they had winter houses and summer houses. Others were even more
wealthy, living in ivory houses on great estates. But all was
not well in Israel. The nation was morally degenerate,
utterly so. The land was filled with greed
and corruption. The poor and the weak were mercilessly
oppressed by the rich and the powerful. Immorality was rampant
everywhere. Rebellion, disdain for authority,
contempt for authority, which is but a pretty way of saying
disdain for God and contempt for God, was widespread. Religion flourished. It had flourished
ever since the days back in 1 Kings when Jeroboam I built an altar
in Bethel and raised up two golden calves by which he led Israel
into idolatry while they pretended to worship the Lord Jehovah.
And the idolatry just got worse and worse and worse as the days
went on. At Bethel, that place which Jacob
called the house of God, That was the place where they raised
up their golden calves and sacrificed their children to Moloch and
to Kihon, and there was the place where they made the house of
God into a house of iniquity. And therefore the Lord God now
sends his prophet Amos to this nation. Into this great, great,
proud, prosperous, religious, secure society, God dropped a
bombshell by the name of Amos, a prophet wearing coveralls. Look at chapter 1. The words of Amos, the word means
burden bearer. The words of the burden bearer,
Amos, who was among the herdsmen of Tekoa, which he saw concerning
Israel in the days of Uzziah, the king of Judah, and in the
days of Jeroboam the son of Joash the king of Israel, two years
before the earthquake. And he said, The Lord will roar
from Zion, and utter his voice from Jerusalem, and the habitations
of the shepherds shall mourn, and the top of Carmel shall wither. Amos was a bit different from
the other prophets, particularly right in this context a bit different
from Joel. Joel was evidently a well-educated
man. Amos was a Ruthian. Joel was
a man with keen insight and perception and spoke with great eloquence
and delicacy. Amos was blunt. You see, Amos was a farmer, a
herdsman, one who took care of sheep and cattle and fig trees.
He was what folks these days would call a redneck. As a matter
of fact, in studying this, I kind of identified myself a little
bit with Amos. He was a southerner. He was from
the southern kingdom of Judah. and was sent to the northern
tribes of Israel as God's prophet. He was a man who was raised on
a farm in Tekoa, just a few miles south of Jerusalem, just a hayseed. He was a country bumpkin. But this man was sent of God. This poor, uneducated, southern
boy was sent from God Almighty with a message to deliver to
the children of Israel. And it was a message of divine
judgment. He came to Samaria with a message
of impending wrath upon a people who had long ago abandoned God
and his worship, crying to them, prepare to meet thy God, O Israel. And he spoke of drought, famine,
and pestilence, and judgment. that would come upon these people
because they had abandoned God. And the judgment would increase
and increase and increase until at last the nation was utterly
destroyed. And then he spoke in chapter
8, turn there for a moment just in case I don't get to it, of
a far worse, far more destructive famine than any man on earth
can describe. He spoke of a spiritual famine.
know how it applies in our day. He says in verse 11, Behold,
the days come, saith the Lord God, that I will send a famine
in the land, not a famine of bread or a thirst for water.
I sent that, and you paid no attention to me, but of hearing
the words of the Lord. Amos said, Now set up and pay
attention, I've got a word from God for you, but you're not going
to pay any attention. And because you will not hear
God's word, God's going to fix it so that you never hear it
again. Oh, what a warning. The hearing
of the words of the Lord. And they shall wander from sea
to sea, and from the north even to the east, and they shall run
to and fro, and seek the word of the Lord, and shall not find
it. So Amos comes to these people
with the burden of the word of the Lord. And the burden is a
burden of judgment. In chapters 1 and 2, the book
of Amos begins with Amos declaring plainly that God will by no means
clear the guilty. You see, God is righteous, and
because he is righteous, his rule of the world and all his
acts in this world are righteous and just and true. Because he
is righteous, God will by no means clear the guilty. He must
and he shall punish sin. He will punish sin in nations,
and he will punish sin in individuals. When nations sinned against him
as a social group, the Lord God punishes them accordingly. History has demonstrated it time
and time again. We live in a day must describe
by the words we just read in Amos chapter 8, when God has
sent a famine in a land upon a people who would not hear his
word. The judgment has come because
the people as a whole have despised God. And Amos' day when he came
with the word of God And Mosiah the priest and Jeroboam the king
joined together and said, Amos, we don't want to hear you. And
Mosiah accused him of conspiring against the kingdom and against
the king. Amos said, I didn't even go to
the school of the prophets. God sent me to you with a word
from God for you. But they said, get out of our
coast. We won't hear you. And so the Lord God took him
away. And that's exactly what's happened
in our day. When society generally as a whole
abandons God and his word and his worship, God abandons that
society. The wise man says, Righteousness
exalted the nation, but sin is a reproach to any people. But
when individuals rebel against God, when individuals despise
his when individuals walk in direct opposition to his rule
and his dominion, then God judges the individual and judges them
accordingly. We saw it in 2 Corinthians 5,
Sunday morning. There's a day coming when God
will judge every man according to his works. He's going to judge
us either according to that which we have done personally, or he's
going to judge us according to that which we have done in the
person of a substitute, the Lord Jesus Christ. Now in chapters
1 and 2, Amos begins his message to Israel by describing God's
judgment upon the nations around Israel. If you had a map, if
you wanted to look in the back of your Bibles and do so later,
don't do it right now, and you can picture the nation of Israel
and the nations surrounding it, the Lord inspires Amos to go
to the nation of Israel with this message of judgment, this
message of deserved wrath, this message of righteous indignation,
not on his part, on God's part. He begins by describing God's
judgment upon the nations. He begins with Damascus in chapter
1, verses 3, 4, and 5. Now Damascus is way up in the
northeast section above the nation of Israel. It's on the top of
the map. And he tells Israel that Damascus
must be judged because of Damascus' continual cruelty and barbaric
oppression of men. Then he speaks of Gaza, the ancient
region of Philistia, in verses 6 through 8. And this is in the
opposite direction. It's down here on the southwest
part of the nation of Israel. And he tells Israel that God
will destroy Gaza because they have enslaved Edom and because
they were idolaters. Then in verses 9 and 10, he moves
back to the coast of the land of Tyre on the northwest side
of Israel. And here he points out that God
has judged these people because these people had broken their
covenants, and they had treated their own brethren as their enemies. They failed to love their brethren,
and failing to love them, they abused them in every way imaginable.
Then in verses 11 and 12 he speaks of Edom, on the south of Israel,
that ancient country of Esau. He declares that God's judgment
fell on Edom as a nation because of their implacable hatred of
Israel. Then in verses 13, 14, and 15,
he speaks of Ammon. It's currently the nation of
Jordan. Matter of fact, the capital city of Jordan, Ammon, was the
capital city of this ancient land of Ammon. This land was
judged because they were a barbarically cruel people, greedy, lusting
after power, constantly warring. Moab, in chapter 2, verses 1,
2, and 3, on the southwest side of Israel, was to be judged because
of their hatred of Israel. And then he mentions the southern
nation of Judah. These two parts of the nation
had been divided, Judah on the southern part with two tribes
and the ten northern tribes of Israel, for many, many years
now. So he mentions the nation of Judah, and declares that Judah
must be judged, because Judah, too, had despised God's law.
So he goes all around Israel, and then at the end of chapter
2, beginning at verse 6, he speaks of Israel, that northern kingdom,
and says that Israel must be judged for her corruption, for
her injustice. Corruption and injustice greater
than any of the nations around them. Corruption and injustice
greater even than Judah to the south of them. As we read through
Amos' message, it's obvious that the people of Israel, as they
heard this declaration of doom against Moab and Ammon and Edom
and Judah and the nations around them, heard it with utter indifference,
total complacency. seem to have no regard for any
of them because they were comfortable and they were secure. God keep us from such horrid
pride and such horrid arrogance. But then the prophet comes home and drives his message home to
their hearts. He puts his message in shoe leathers
they couldn't miss and he shoots his arrows straight to the heart
of the nation. Before this, they looked at these
nations and they said, well, they got what they deserved.
They had it coming. And when God spoke by his prophet to them,
they were enraged. And they said, Amos, why don't
you just go back down to Judah? Why don't you go talk to somebody
else? We don't want to hear what you've got to say. And frankly,
that's the common response of men. to the message of God's
prophet in every age. You see, God's prophets always
come setting forth redemption and righteousness by Christ alone. God's prophets always declare
that the only way to God is by his altar, by his mercy seat,
by his sacrifice, the Lord Jesus Christ. Declare to men always
that salvation is altogether the work of God's free grace.
And men and women to stick their fingers in their ears and say,
We won't hear that. We won't hear that. Look in chapter
3. From the first verse of chapter
3, Amos begins to deal with the people of Israel exclusively.
He points out to them that they were the people who had been
the special privileged people above all people in the world.
Hear this word that the Lord hath spoken against you. children
of Israel, against the whole family which I brought up out
of the land of Egypt, saying, You only have I known of all
the families of the earth." Now, you stop and consider this. God
Almighty brings Israel up out of Egypt. He delivers them by
the hand of Moses. He delivers them by the blood
of a Passover lamb, picturing, of course, our Lord Jesus Christ
and His sacrifice on behalf of His people. He chose Israel to
give to Israel His Word, His Law, His Prophets, His Mercy
Seat, His Tabernacle, His Temple, His Holy of Holies, His Ark of
the Covenant. He chose to Israel and Israel
alone to reveal Himself. He said, I've known nobody else
in all the earth except you. And that's just what they wanted
to hear. We've always known that we're God's elect. We're God's
choice people. We're God's peculiarly favored
people. Favored above all the people
of the earth. And then Amos hit him right between the eyes with
a sledgehammer. Therefore will I punish you for
all your iniquities. Now hear me. God help you to hear me. If you and I perish, having heard
the gospel of His grace as we have heard it, having been favored
as no other people in this town are favored, having been favored
of God Almighty to hear the message of His Son set forth clearly
and constantly. then we shall perish with the
greatest damnation of any people in the pits of hell, whatever
they are. Now that ought to get your attention.
That ought to get your attention. This is exactly what Peter means
in 1 Peter 4, 17 when he declares judgment must begin at the house
of God. Judgment begins where light has
been brightest. Judgment begins where privileges
have been greatest. You see, while there are no degrees
of reward, because all of God's people are accepted through the
perfect righteousness and obedience and death of his Son, the Lord
Jesus Christ, there are great degrees of damnation. And the
scriptures make that clear. Our Lord said to the Pharisees,
yours shall be the greater condemnation. And we have greater light than
they have. We have greater privileges than they ever had. And the greater
our privileges, the greater our responsibilities. Light brings
responsibility, and the greater the light, the greater the responsibility. In chapter 3, the Lord speaks in verse 3 and
says, Can two walk together except they be agreed? you're called by my name. I've
separated and distinguished you from other people." He's not
talking about everlasting salvation. He's not talking about the eternal
election. That nation was a picture, and that nation was called by
the name of God. They were the people responsible
to follow God. There was an elect remnant among
these people whom God had chosen. Amos was one of them. But this
nation has God's name, and they claim to walk after God's righteousness,
and they claim to walk under God's favor, and God says, can
you and I walk together when there's no agreement between
us? He's not talking about you and I walking together. Now it's
true, men can't walk together except that they agree. But God
and man sure can't walk together except they'd be agreed. Will
a lion roar in a forest when he has no prey? Will a young
lion cry out of his den if isn't it taken nothing? Can a bird
fall in a snare upon the earth where no djinn is for him? Shall
one take up a snare from the earth and have taken nothing
at all? Shall a trumpet be blown in the
city and the people not be afraid? Don't you hear the glare of the
trumpet? Shall there be evil in the city
and the Lord hasn't done it? Don't you understand? that every
evil thing that comes to pass in this world comes to pass by
God's hand? Don't you understand that? The
earthquake, the pestilence, the famine, the judgment, it comes
by God's hand. Don't you hear the word of God?
Surely the Lord God will do nothing but he revealeth his secret to
his servants, the prophets. I'm telling you what God's doing. I could spend a good bit of time
here. The religious imbeciles who lead
the religious world around us, our political leaders who may
be very brilliant with political science and political knowledge,
are utter imbeciles when it comes to understanding the work of
God. The wise acres of this world, News, media, you hear them trying
to explain what's going on in the world? I understand, Lindsay,
every day I read the paper, exactly what God's doing. This is God's
work. This is God's work. The lion
hath roared. The Lord hath roared out of Zion. Who will not fear? The Lord God
has spoken, who can but prophesy." Now you remember those two golden
calves that were set up by Jeroboam I back in 1 Kings 12. Israel
was sent there to worship the Lord God by the image of these
calves. They worshiped and bowed down
before these golden images and said they were worshiping God.
You see, Jeroboam had taken the children of Israel away from
Judah, away from the temple, away from the sacrifice of God,
and he feared lest the people should go back to Judah to worship. And he set up another place to
worship. In that very place where Jacob had said, this is the house
of God, he sets up these golden calves. And these golden calves
were but idols that Jeroboam called Jehovah. They were but
idols which represented that which is the very basis of man's
corrupt nature, and represented that which men constantly worship
and adore. Materialism and sensuality. The two things by which men and
women throughout history are continually motivated and continually
driven to this thing and that is materialism and sensuality. These were calves of gold. God wants you rich. These were
calves of gold, thick, hard dust, that's all. They were materialistic
things. And all the religion of the promotes
materialism. And there were calves representing
might, and strength, and power, sensuality. It's amazing. If you read history, there's
a book in my library, you're welcome to borrow it if you want
to, called Two Babylons by a man named Hislop. You read history,
and then go, as we did a couple of years ago, by the land, some
others and I went down to Mexico, visited Mayan ruins, And you
look at the inscriptions on those ancient, pagan, heathen temples,
and they've got the same religious symbols folks have today. You
see them on churches all the time, the very same thing. Sensuality,
power, riches, worshipping of that which is nothing but sex
and the various organs of men, that which represents the breast
of a woman, all sensuality, materialism. And this is what Jeroboam stood
up and said, Here are your gods Israel! Let's keep a feast to
the Lord. He said, Well, nobody does such
things today. All the pretense of worshiping
God through the use of icons and pictures and images and symbols
is nothing but idolatry. It may not be called such. They're
not called such by anyone except the folks who recognize what
it is. But God is spirit, pure spirit, light in whom there's
no darkness at all. And they that worship him must
worship him in spirit and in truth. And they're the only ones
who can. Paul says we worship God. We're
the circumcision who worship God in spirit. and rejoice in
Christ Jesus and have no confidence in the flesh. We are the people
who have been born of God, circumcised in the heart, who worship God
in our spirits and worship God sincerely in truth in our spirits,
trusting Christ alone, having no confidence in our flesh or
anybody else's flesh. And we go on to chapter 4. The lesson here is clear. no matter how severe, no matter
how often repeated, will never produce repentance. Paul wrote
to the Romans in Romans 2, verse 4, it is the goodness of God
that leadeth thee to repentance. The goodness of God. The goodness
of God revealed in Christ leads to repentance, never judgment. It ought to. It ought to. If we had eyes to see and ears
to hear and a mind to understand, it would. But judgment never
leads to repentance. You were telling me about a man
just the other day, had a heart transplant, going through a tough
time, got so religious. And it lasts just about as long
as it takes to get out of the hospital and stand up again.
Just about that long. Sometimes call me and want me
to go see somebody, go visit them, because they expect me
to act like other preachers. Try to talk somebody into a profession
of faith because they got in trouble, because they're in the
hospital. God's servants are not ambulance
chasers. We don't deal with men in deceit. Brother Darrell McClung,
he's with the Lord now, I've heard him say it a hundred times,
I've heard him say it once. He said, anything built in the
storm will die in the cause. Our refuge is built in the calm,
and it survives the storm. We are built upon a rock with
a full knowledge of what we're doing, trusting the Son of God
because he's Lord and has the right to be trusted because he's
bought us with his blood. But judgment, it'll make folks
religious. It will make folks change the
way they behave, it will make them improve their outward conduct,
but judgment never produces repentance. Look at chapter 4, 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 you not returned
to me, saith the Lord? And also I have withholden the
rain from you, when there were yet three months to the harvest.
and caused it to rain upon one city, and caused it not to rain
upon another city. One peace was rained upon, and
the peace whereupon it rained not withered." God says, I did
this. I did it. I'm the one who sends
rain here, and sends dryness there. I'm the one who sends
an earthquake here, and sends a tornado there. I'm the one
who sends a hurricane here, and a fire there. I'm the one who
sends the locusts, and when the locusts leave anything, the fire
burns it to ashes. I'm the one who does this. We
don't. He says, verse 8, So two or three cities wandered into
one city to drink water. but they were not satisfied.
Yet have you not returned to me, saith the Lord? I smitten
you with blasting and milled you, when your gardens and your
vineyards and your fig trees and your olive trees increased,
and the palmer worm devoured them. Yet have you not returned
to me, saith the Lord? I sent among you the pestilence,
after the manner of Egypt Your young men have I slain with the
sword, and have taken away your horses, and have made the stink
of your camps to come up into your own nostrils. Yet have you
not returned to me, saith the Lord? I have overthrown some
of you, as God overthrew Sodom and Gomorrah, and you were as
a firebrand plucked out of the burning. Yet have you not returned
unto me, saith the Lord? Turn over to the book of Zechariah,
Zechariah 12. Well, where's the text I'm looking
for? It'll come to me in a minute.
I pour in the house of David the spirit of grace and supplication,
and shall they call on me? Jaguari 10. Okay. 1210. Thank
you. And I will pour upon the house
of David, and upon the inhabitants of Jerusalem, the spirit of grace
and supplication. And they shall look on me whom
they have pierced, and shall mourn for him." Now let me tell
you how God brings repentance. I know what it is to be terrified
of hell, justly so. And I know what it is to make
resolutions and determinations and to change the way you behave
because you're terrified of hell. I know what it is to make a profession
of faith because you're terrified of hell, but it never changes
a thing. Repentance comes when God Almighty
pours on you the spirit of grace and supplication. revealing his
Son in you and causes you to look on him whom you have pierced. And as soon as you look on him,
as soon as you believe him, you mourn for him, as one mourns
for his only child, and you'll plunge into that fountain open
for sin and for uncleanness. Folks say, well, I want to trust
Christ, but I haven't repented enough. I don't think I have
repentance right. You'll never get it right. You'll
never get it right. Repentance comes by the goodness
of God revealed in his Son. And yet, in spite of the fact
that these would not hear his word, God in wrath remembers
mercy. And in his providential judgment,
he gives men and women space for repentance. As God's ambassador,
the Lord God sends Amos and calls the children of Israel to repentance.
to turn from their idols, and to turn from their iniquities,
and to turn from their abominations. Look at chapter 5, verse 4. For
thus saith the Lord unto the house of Israel, Seek ye me,
and ye shall live. The Lord said, I know my thoughts
toward you, thoughts of peace, not of evil. I know my thoughts
toward you, and you shall seek me. and search for me, and seek
for me with all your heart, and when you do, you'll find me."
Seek the Lord, and you shall live. Seeking. Look at verse
6. and you shall live. Verse 8.
Seek him that maketh the seven stars in Orion, and turneth the
shadow of death into the morning, and maketh the day dark with
night, and calleth the waters of the sea, and poureth them
out upon the face of the earth. The Lord Jehovah, that's his
name? Seek him. Seek him. There was a lady who had been
praying for her husband for a long time, trying to persuade believe
on the Son of God. And he had no interest in the
gospel of God's grace, had no interest in religion, but he
didn't bother her much. And he had taken all of his crops
and sold them. And he was fooling around in
the barn and had the check from where he sold his crops, money
on which to live for the rest of the year. And he lost it,
lost his wife. And he came in and asked his
wife about it. I hadn't seen it. He turned the barn upside
down, ripped everything out. Finally, he found his wallet.
And sometime later, he began to have some concern about things
of God. And she said to her husband,
said, we'll seek the Lord. And he said, I've been seeking
Him, but I haven't found Him. She said, you seek Him. Just like you sought for your
wallet when it was lost in that barn, you'll find it. And when
you begin to seek him, you have found him. But men prefer a refuge
of lies. All men do. Look at chapter 5
and verse 18. Israel continued to rebel, continued
to resist the word of God, continued to despise his grace. And Amos
speaks of them in two categories. They just buried up deeper in
their refuge of lies. The first is spoken of in verse
18, the self-righteous. They are people to whom Amos
cries, Woe unto you that desire the day of the Lord! To what
end is it for you? These folks cry, Oh, we just
want the Lord to come and take us out of this place. I remember
the good days. I remember how things used to
be. I remember how Mama and Daddy were. I remember how my grandparents
were. I've heard them tell about the
old folks in the old days. But boy, things have gotten bad
now. We're just waiting on the day
of the Lord. We're waiting on the Lord to
come and take us out of this mess and to be good. Amos says,
Don't you know what that day is? You who have forsaken God,
you who have made yourselves righteous by your own works and
your own eyes, that day is a day of darkness, everlasting darkness,
and no light. And then he describes those in
chapter 6 in verse 1 who were carnally secure and presumptuous. He says, Woe unto them that are
at ease in Zion. These are the folks who, well,
we've gone through the rituals and we've gone through the ceremonies
and we've kept the letter of things and we're God's people,
we've been chosen of God and kept by God, preserved by God
all this time, and everything's fine, we'll eat, drink and be
merry, the Lord God will never judge us, everything's okay.
But no faith. they presume they know God when
they know him not. Presume they believe when they
believe not. And Amos says, Woe unto you that are at ease in
Zion. And the worst of judgments to
precede that is what we read in chapter 8, verses 11 and 12. I urge you men and women in this
assembly, that you continually thank God
for his grace to us, and that you seek God's grace upon us,
that we may ever bow to, believe, and obey his word, lest he take
it from us. In my brief lifetime on this
earth I've seen churches where once the gospel was preached
and loved and embraced, abandoned God and are now abandoned
by God. They're like the nation of Israel,
an aimless day, they still flourish. They have what they didn't have
before. They enjoy greater prosperity
than they've ever had before, and greater peace than they've
ever had before. But God speaks not his word in
their midst. And then in chapter 9, the Lord God promises grace,
in spite of all that men do. Though some believe not, God's purpose isn't thwarted. His covenant shall stand. He will save his people. Look
in chapter 9, verse 9. The Lord says, For lo, I will
command, and I will sift the house of Israel among all the
I want to scatter my elect among all the nations. I want to sift
them. I don't know much about using the sieve. I've watched Shelby a few times
do so. You use the sieve and you sift
the flour and you catch in that real fine basket anything you
don't want to be in your brain. Well, the Lord uses it just the
opposite way here. He says, I'm going to sift you
among the nations, like as corn is sifted in a sieve. Yet shall
not the least grain fall upon the earth. Not one of God's Israel
will perish. Not one of God's elect will be
lost. Well, how do you know that's what he's talking about? When
they come to the council at Jerusalem, our Lord's brother James stood
up in the midst of them and said, this is what the prophets said. He didn't say prophet, he said
prophets. And he quotes from these very
next verses. He says, this is what the prophets said. This
is the message of the prophets. God's got a people in this world
scattered among the nations of the world whom he shall save
and he will build his house and build his kingdom and nothing
shall stop it. Read on, verse 10. All the sinners
of my people shall die by the sword, which say the evil shall
not overtake nor prevent us. All those who profess to be mine,
they're going to perish, but we don't. In that day, in that
day when the Lord Jesus comes, in that day when Christ sits
on his throne, I will raise up the tabernacle of David that's
fallen. And I will close up the breaches thereof, and I will
raise up the ruins, and I will build it as in the days of old."
Oh, thank God! He raises up ruins. Ruins! I had ruined myself, and
I had ruined everything I ever And I was thoroughly convinced
I was so ruined that God in heaven could never save me by his grace,
but God in heaven in the person of his Son raises up the ruins
from the dunghill and builds his kingdom. Read on. That they
may possess the remnant of Eden. Thank God He still deals in remnants. He still deals in remnants. You
know what a remnant is? You go to the cloth shop and
buy remnants, you can buy them real cheap because they're worth
nothing. You can buy them real cheap because
everything purposed and planned by men for which they were to
be used has been consumed and now we've got to do something
with it. You give me a dime on a dollar, I'll take it. The remnants
are the scraps. The remnants are what's left
over. In Noah's day, there were eight souls, but they were God's
remnant. In Abraham's day, there was one man, but he was God's
remnant. In the days of Elijah, though
Elijah didn't know it, there were 7,000 who hadn't bowed their
knee to Baal, but they were God's remnant. And the Lord God says
by his servant Paul in Romans 11, there is still a remnant
according to the election of grace. Oh, Israel has been destroyed,
never to rise again, that nation. Judah destroyed, never to rise
again, that nation. But God's nation is not destroyed.
He will build the kingdom of David. He will build his Israel.
He will save his remnant. He's not cast off his people
whom he foreknew. Read on. Verse 13. Behold, the days come,
saith the Lord. The time is coming. This may refer to the new creation
when God makes all things new. It may be referring to this gospel
age. He's talking about a time of great prosperity and fruitfulness. He says, The plowman shall overtake
the reaper, and the reaper, or the trader of grapes, him that
soweth the seed. And the mountain shall drop with
sweet wine, and the hill shall