Prepare to Meet Your God

​Amos 4:12 ~ “Therefore thus I will do to you, O Israel; because I will do this to you, prepare to meet your God, O Israel!”
 
Are you prepared to meet your God?
 
This day I have long been dwelling on the character of God. Much is made of His love and tenderness, for so He is beyond measure. Many softly speak of His mercy and grace, for they are of His most noble and profound attributes. There are proclaimers who long tell of His acceptance of sinners—and truly in Christ, sinners are received. In fact, God Almighty is perfect in all His ways. There is not one attribute of God that is incomplete, unrefined, or dimmed against a brighter light. All His ways are absolute, both His love and justice, both His mercy and wrath are fully and totally faultless.
 
Dear ones, remember the words of the psalmist in Psalm 115:3, “Our God is in the heavens; he does all that he pleases.” This does not mean that God is arbitrary or random in His dealings with man. He does whatever pleases Him, and God is always pleased with that which will magnify His own goodness. Whether in the execution of His wrath, or in the deliverance of His mercy, God will show Himself to be good, righteous and holy. Even our LORD Jesus said that there is only One who is good (see Matthew 19:17).
 
So… let me ask again… are you prepared to meet your God? For, dear reader, He is your God. You may be reading this today and are not a born-again Christian. It matters not, there is only One God—and He is it. He is your God whether you wish Him to be or not. You may have hearkened unto all manner of other gods of this world, they are all of them a deception. You may have come to believe that you are the god of your own life, declaring for yourself what is good and right. If that is the case, you are self-deceived. There is only One who is God—One who is Creator, Sustainer, Savior and Judge of all creation. God Almighty is His name. Consider the words of Amos 4:13, “For behold, he who forms the mountains and creates the wind, and declares to man what is his thought, who makes the morning darkness, and treads on the heights of the earth—the LORD, the God of hosts, is his name!”
 
Feigned religious behavior will not suffice in the confrontation you will have with the Almighty LORD. Israel participated in their prescribed duties with little to no desire for God. Read all of Amos chapter four and you will hear God’s chastisement against them, declaring five times that though God disciplined them, they would not return. And I fear that it might be said that there are some today who are called by the name of Christ and yet come to the gatherings of the saints with no real desire to worship the LORD.
 
How does God show Himself? The Scriptures tell us in 2 Samuel 22:26-28, “With the merciful you show yourself merciful; with the blameless man you show yourself blameless; with the purified you deal purely, and with the crooked you make yourself seem tortuous. You save a humble people, but your eyes are on the haughty to bring them down.” The proud man will never associate with God, for it will require humility and the fear of the LORD to draw near to the King of kings. The boastful man will merely sniff contemptuously at the notion that God is to be His judge. Arrogance cannot fathom any sense of personal guilt before a Holy God. Yet that one will also meet with God, and it will not go well for him. God will seem tortuous to the crooked man, to the arrogant and boastful man. But to the merciful, God shows Himself merciful. For our LORD Jesus said Himself, “For with the judgment you pronounce you will be judged, and with the measure you use it will be measured to you” (Matthew 7:2). And what a wonderful promise given, that God will save the humble.
 
Let us close this reading with the question we began—are you prepared to meet your God? Israel had fallen into idolatry and the feigned worship of God. They had forsaken the LORD and not returned to Him. The LORD God, who brought them out of Egypt, who carried them into the Promised Land, who defeated their enemies and forgave their rebellions, this is the God they forsook. Let us, then, consider all that Christ has done for us. He has died for our sins and suffered His Father’s wrath on our behalf. Clothed us in His righteousness. Delivered us from sin. Confirms our adoption. All this and more has Jesus done for His church. Let us not forsake the LORD our God, but be prepared to meet Him with joyful anticipation, and not dreadful apprehension at His return.
 
In His Grace,
Pastor Michael

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