The Blessings Of God

Amos 9:13 Behold, the days come, saith the LORD, that the plowman shall overtake the reaper, and the treader of grapes him that soweth seed; and the mountains shall drop sweet wine, and all the hills shall melt.

I have enjoyed coming through the Book of Amos. We have learned some great Bible truths as we have gone through this wonderful Book.

In Chapter One we learned that God expects EVERYONE to both HEAR and OBEY HIS WORD, the Holy Bible. The Herdsman Amos heard and obeyed God, and so was blessed when all others were cursed.
In Chapter Two we saw that God loves His Children whom He has saved – but if our hearts are thankless and wandering then we press Him down like a loaded wagon – though He loves us still.
In Chapter Three God asked the question “Can Two Walk Together Except They Be Agreed?” It Is God Who must lead us in this dance we call “life” if we want to be blessed.
In Chapter Four God asked “Are you prepared to meet your God?” Are you? Are you ready?
In Chapter Five God declared “Seek ye me, and ye shall live”. There is no real life outside of a living relationship with God the Father through Christ our Lord!
In Chapter Six God showed us the difference between Mount Zion (the City of God) and Mount Samaria (the city of idols).
In Chapter Seven we saw God’s Plumb Line, and learned that it is He that sets standards of right and wrong, of good and evil.
In Chapter Eight God showed us a Summer Bowl of Fruit. We as God’s Church are to be fruit producing for our Lord.

Today God as a Disciplining Father is the main subject of the text. Most people today don’t know what the word “discipline” means.

1 God Disciplines His People. As a child I hated “discipline”. My parents believed the Bible – at least the part of the Bible that said:

Proverbs 13:24 He that spareth his rod hateth his son: but he that loveth him chasteneth him betimes.

Now that’s Old English, so let me put it into Modern English. If you don’t corporeally punish your child you don’t love your child. If you love your child you will often (that’s what “betimes” means) discipline your child. Now I know there is a whole chorus of people – educated, smart, many with doctorates, who say that to raise a hand to a child is abusive and unnecessary. We prefer “time out” where the child is sent to a room to meditate on what they did, a room filled with toys, televisions, and technological games. Yet the Bible declares:

Chasten your son while there is hope, and do not set your heart on his destruction. Proverbs 19:18

The rod and rebuke give wisdom, but a child left to himself brings shame to his mother. Proverbs 29:15

Correct your son, and he will give you rest; yes, he will give delight to your soul. Proverbs 29:17

and even tells us in Hebrews:

And you have forgotten the exhortation which speaks to you as to sons: “My son, do not despise the chastening of the Lord, nor be discouraged when you are rebuked by Him; for whom the Lord loves He chastens, and scourges every son whom He receives.” If you endure chastening, God deals with you as with sons; for what son is there whom a father does not chasten? But if you are without chastening, of which all have become partakers, then you are illegitimate and not sons. Furthermore, we have had human fathers who corrected us, and we paid them respect. Shall we not much more readily be in subjection to the Father of spirits and live? For they indeed for a few days chastened us as seemed best to them, but He for our profit, that we may be partakers of His holiness. Now no chastening seems to be joyful for the present, but painful; nevertheless, afterward it yields the peaceable fruit of righteousness to those who have been trained by it. (Hebrews 12:5–11)

When I was a child I hated curfews. I hated that I had to be home by dark when I was a preteen, and had to be in bed by 8:30 PM. I hated having to be home by 9 PM as a teenager, and in bed by 10:30 PM. I never enjoyed the chores. I hated working the garden, shelling peas, or washing dishes. Raking leaves was horrible. And when I wanted to go swimming and mom said “no” I hated that, and her too! I didn’t know God, but my Father was SOVEREIGN in our home, and his word was law. I particularly hated being whooped.

Regardless as to what the educated people say, and regardless as to what you do or don’t do to discipline your children, God disciplines His children. Israel forgot that. The Church in North America has largely forgotten this. Chapter Nine starts out:

Amos 9:1 (KJV) I saw the Lord standing upon the altar: and he said, Smite the lintel of the door, that the posts may shake: and cut them in the head, all of them ….

God is standing upon the altar. He is deconstructing the Temple. Israel thought that because the Temple or House of God was where they were, and thought that because they occasionally came to that place, that they were invincible. The Temple – but a building – had become an idol to the people. They thought “because my name’s on the roll God won’t punish me like He punishes others”. Yet Peter warns us all:

1 Peter 4:17-18 For the time is come that judgment must begin at the house of God: and if it first begin at us, what shall the end be of them that obey not the gospel of God? 18And if the righteous scarcely be saved, where shall the ungodly and the sinner appear?

God the Father disciplines His Children first. We must all remember this. Few Churches today have Sunday night or Wednesday night services. Why? Because many would rather go to ball games or watch television. Few Christians read their Bible daily, or even pray. Why? Because many have placed their jobs or family lives over the life of faith in Christ. When we lose reverence for God then the Lord takes action.

God disciplines or judges His people to wake us up to His Presence, to remind us that He is there and He is not silent. God disciplines or judges nations to wake them up and make them realize that WE ARE NOT OUR OWN GODS. There is a God in Heaven and a Savior to this earth.

2 God Is Sovereign Over All.

Too many people today believe that God lives in the Church building and that we visit Him just once in a while.

Yet that is not true. We have already read of the Lord standing on the altar. Because of disobedience He will destroy the Temple. But after destroying the Temple what happens?

Amos 9:1b (KJV) …. 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.

The Judgment of God takes life. I know what you’re thinking. Many people ar thinking “this isn’t the God of Love of the Bible!”. The same thought went out after the terrorist attacks of 9-11, and the more recent terrible attack that killed 49 in Orlando Florida just the other week. When these tragedies occur people cry out:

How could a Loving God have allowed this?

God does love His creation. He loves all that He has made. The Bible says:

Psalms 24:1-2 (KJV) The earth is the LORD’S, and the fulness thereof; the world, and they that dwell therein. 2 For he hath founded it upon the seas, and established it upon the floods.

Those who cry out against the discipline of God NOW had no thought of God in their hearts THEN. People are not looking upward with reverence to the One Who made them, saying “Lord, what would You have me to do?” They are living their lives without any thought of God. They think they can hide from the Sovereign God, yet He says:

Amos 9:2 (KJV) …. Though they dig into hell, thence shall mine hand take them; though they climb up to heaven, thence will I bring them down:

God says “you cannot hide from My Judgment”. You can did a hole deep enough to go down into Hell, and there God will be. You can climb to the highest penthouse, the highest Heaven, and there the Judgment of God will find you.

Amos 9:3 (KJV) …. And though they hide themselves in the top of Carmel, I will search and take them out thence; and though they be hid from my sight in the bottom of the sea, thence will I command the serpent, and he shall bite them: 4 And though they go into captivity before their enemies, thence will I command the sword, and it shall slay them: and I will set mine eyes upon them for evil, and not for good.

Oh My Beloved, there is never any good that comes of angering God. The Bible tells us that:

Hebrews 10:31 It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God.

I have had people say “Well, you’re a Preacher, so you have to talk about Hell and the Judgment of God. You’re trying to scare people into Heaven.” If I could scare you into Heaven I would. You cannot hide from God’s Sovereignty in the midst of your idols. Hide yourself in the top of Carmel, and the Sovereign God will find you there. Hide in the sea, and He will send the Sea Serpent to bite you!

Amos 9:6 (KJV) It is he that buildeth his stories in the heaven, and hath founded his troop in the earth; he that calleth for the waters of the sea, and poureth them out upon the face of the earth: The LORD is his name.

God is Sovereign. He is Lord. He made you, and He made me, and He has the right to what He has made.

God tells His people:

Amos 9:8-10 (KJV) Behold, the eyes of the Lord GOD are upon the sinful kingdom, and I will destroy it from off the face of the earth; saving that I will not utterly destroy the house of Jacob, saith the LORD. 9 For, lo, I will command, and I will sift the house of Israel among all nations, like as corn is sifted in a sieve, yet shall not the least grain fall upon the earth. 10 All the sinners of my people shall die by the sword, which say, The evil shall not overtake nor prevent us.

God uses the trials of life to sift His people – to remove the wheat from the chaff – but not to harm those who are obedient to Him. God’s sifting is very selective.

When I was a little boy I remember my Grandma Lillian making biscuits for breakfast. Grandpa Joe bought flour by the barrel, and grandma would take the lid off the barrel and take a big cup and reach down and fill it to overflowing with flour. There was usually something else besides flour in the barrel. Little critters would get in there. Flies. Weebles. Other stuff. Now grandma made wonderful biscuits – big as a cat’s head – but there was never any trash in the biscuit. You know why? Because she sifted the flour through a very fine screen. The trash stayed in the screen, the flour went to the bowl, and the biscuit went to our bellies. If she hadn’t sifted the flour the biscuits would have been ruined.

You can’t make good biscuits with buggy flour! The evil must go!

When God’s people are saved God wants them to walk with Him. When God’s people fall into sin God calls them to come out from sin, to bind to Him and be blessed. God cannot bless you with sin in your life. God tells His Church, just as He told His Israel:

2 Corinthians 6:14-18 (NLT) Don’t team up with those who are unbelievers. How can righteousness be a partner with wickedness? How can light live with darkness? 15 What harmony can there be between Christ and the Devil? How can a believer be a partner with an unbeliever? 16 And what union can there be between God’s temple and idols? For we are the temple of the living God. As God said: “I will live in them and walk among them. I will be their God, and they will be my people. 17 Therefore, come out from among unbelievers, and separate yourselves from them, says the LORD. Don’t touch their filthy things, and I will welcome you. 18 And I will be your Father, and you will be my sons and daughters, says the LORD Almighty.

3 The Purpose Of God’s Sifting Is To Restore And Bless. God loves His Creation and loves His Children. He genuinely wants the best for us all. This is why He directs us to flee from sin. When we become willful and unrepentant then God has to address that – because God loves us. The Scripture says:

Galatians 5:19-21 (ESV2011) Now the works of the flesh are evident: sexual immorality, impurity, sensuality, 20 idolatry, sorcery, enmity, strife, jealousy, fits of anger, rivalries, dissensions, divisions, 21 envy, drunkenness, orgies, and things like these. I warn you, as I warned you before, that those who do such things will not inherit the kingdom of God.

Sin is a verb, a bad verb. It is a hurtful verb. Pharaoh sinned against God, and the Bible says that the Lord sent locusts to consume all the green things in the land. What did Pharaoh do?

Exodus 10:16-17 (KJV)16 Then Pharaoh called for Moses and Aaron in haste; and he said, I have sinned against the LORD your God, and against you. 17 Now therefore forgive, I pray thee, my sin only this once, and intreat the LORD your God, that he may take away from me this death only.

Sin brings death. Sin brings a curse on the land and on the people. It is sin that wraps God’s creation in it’s cold dead hand. Sin is not a dalliance. Sin is death. The wages of sin is death (Romans 6:23). And God tells us to reject sin and run to His arms. God tells His Israel that once the judgment was past that …

Amos 9:11-12 (KJV) In that day will I raise up the tabernacle of David that is fallen, and close up the breaches thereof; and I will raise up his ruins, and I will build it as in the days of old: 12 That they may possess the remnant of Edom, and of all the heathen, which are called by my name, saith the LORD that doeth this.

Separated from the fallen God’s people are restored. Listen Beloved – we cannot compromise with sin. We cannot mix light with darkness. God calls His people to be members of HIS Kingdom, not members divided between Heaven and Hell.

Our allegiance is to Him Who died for us, and rose again, bringing us into His glorious Kingdom. Salvation is by faith alone in Christ alone – but there is never any blessing without obedience. Let me say that again:

There is never any blessing without obedience.
But with obedience comes tremendous blessing!

God tells His people:

Look what God promises those who follow Him:

The plowman shall overtake the reaper

You cannot outgive God. Generally you reap, then the plowman tills the field and plants a new crop. But to those who obey the Lord the plowman will overtake the reaper. God will bless abundantly, as the Scripture says:

Luke 6:38 Give, and it shall be given unto you; good measure, pressed down, and shaken together, and running over, shall men give into your bosom. For with the same measure that ye mete withal it shall be measured to you again.

Give the leftovers to God, get only leftovers. But give God your all and God will give all to you.

… the treader of grapes him that soweth seed

Give God your broken lives, and God will mend them and make you kings and priests unto Him. You cannot out give God. Give Him your all! Give Him your love. Give Him your prayers. Give Him your allegiance.

… the mountains shall drop sweet wine

Mountains normally drop rocks – no vineyard grows on a mountaintop. But God will bless, if you will give your lives to Him.

… all the hills shall melt

The mountains that were against you shall supply your needs, and even the hills will be level ground when the Lord is your God. Obey the Lord!

I want to end with this quote from Dr. Charles Stanley’s Life Application Bible: “One day a large crowd pressed around Jesus while He preached (Luke 5:1-11). The Lord wanted to use Peter’s boat as a floating platform from which to address the multitude, so He asked the future apostle to push the vessel out a little way from shore (v. 3)—not in itself a particularly remarkable request. But Peter’s compliance to His request paved the way for a life-changing blessing. From his example, we also learn how essential it is to obey God in even the smallest matters.”

What if Peter had not allowed Jesus on his boat – nor pushed it off shore so that Jesus could speak? If he had not, then the crowd would not have heard His Word – and we would not have this Scripture in our Bibles. After Jesus finished speaking He told Peter in Luke 5:4 “Go out further and cast your net”. Peter said – and I paraphrase him – “Lord we have fished all night and found nothing. Nevertheless we will do what You say.” The Bible says that when Peter did as Jesus asked “they enclosed a great multitude of fishe – and their net broke!” Peter called out to his partners but there were so many fish that both boats nearly sank.

God will bless you – but only if you obey Him. Obey the Lord in all things. Give your lives to Him.

May God touch your hearts with His Word.