THE GLORIOUS GOSPEL

Prepare to Meet Your God

“Therefore thus will I do unto thee, O Israel: and because I will do this unto thee, prepare to meet thy God, O Israel.”—Amos 4:12

     “Are you ready?” is a question that we often hear. Moreover we ourselves are constantly getting ready, making plans, or making preparations for our future, for our career, for our work, for our family. Often we make preparations referring to ten or twenty years in the future. But, alas! how little we know what the future holds for us! O, if only we knew, with what earnestness we would have made real preparations then! Yet the problem is that not only do we not know what the twenty or ten years ahead hold for us, but what the morrow has in store for us. But in spite of the uncertainty surrounding the future, there is one future event regarding which there is not the slightest uncertainty or doubt, about which, alas, man does not want even to think—and that is our meeting with God! And for this meeting we all ought to make ready. However, as certain is our meeting with God after death, so uncertain is the time of it. It may be after fifty years, or ten, or five or even after one year. It may be after a week, or even today. It may come when we will be old and gray headed, or it may be in one’s young and tender years. It may come naturally or through accident or calamity. The young die with the same ease and frequency as the old. And immediately after death every one of us shall meet God. Are you, therefore, ready to meet your God? Do not say, “I do not believe in life after death.” What you believe or do not believe does not alter the facts. And you do not believe according to what? What is your ground for not believing? How do you know that there is no life after death? Can you by searching discover, or scientifically prove that there is no life after death? Why do you believe those who say that there is no life after death? Did they go and by experience find out? Why do you believe those who argue for things of which they themselves are ignorant, and you do not believe God, who has both created it, and testified regarding it, and offers eternal life freely to every one who asks of Him in faith? Be prepared, therefore, to meet your God.
    But how can one be prepared to meet God? What can he do, especially while his sins testify against him, and his conscience condemns him, and the wrath of God is revealed against him from heaven? Ah, there is nothing that one can do or offer to God for his sin and to earn the favor of God, for “all have sinned and come short of the glory of God,” and “the wages of sin is death” (Rom 3:23; 6:23). We all have sinned. We all incurred the righteous judgment of God against us, and therefore, we all stand condemned before Him with whom we have to do. What then? If you love your soul, do not try to deny, to evade, or to escape from Him. Do not try to justify yourself. But go to Him owning your sin. Go to God as you are; go to the throne of grace to obtain mercy.
    Plead with Him: “God be merciful to me a sinner” (Luke 18:13)!
    “But,” you will say, “how can one obtain mercy, and find favour and acceptance with God? How can God be just and still justify the ungodly?” We answer; “For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son” (Joh 3:16), Whom “he hath made to be sin for us, who knew no sin; that we might be made the righteousness of God in him” (2Co 5:21); and “while we were yet sinners, in due time Christ died for the ungodly” (Rom 5:6), for without the shedding of blood there is no remission of sin, “who his own self bare our sins in his own body on the tree, that we being dead to sin should live unto righteousness” (1Pe 2:24), “that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life” (Joh 3:16).
    It is, therefore, through the Lord Jesus Christ, through Him, who came in the likeness of sinful flesh and for sin, and in that capacity He suffered and died in the stead of His people that God fully pardons every sinner that comes to Him in Christ, imputing unto him the righteousness of Christ.
Come, then, to God by faith. Confess your sins to Him. Plead that the Lord may be merciful to you for Christ’s sake.
    And if you truly come to Him, believing in the Lord Jesus Christ, He will most certainly accept you, for He has said, “him that cometh to me I will in no wise cast out” (Joh 6:37).
    Then, study the Scriptures. Meditate on the Word of God. Seek to know His purposes and His will. Walk humbly before Him according to all His holy commandments. Pray that the Holy Spirit may sanctify you and perfect in you the good work which He has commenced in you, for He says, “Be ye holy, for I am holy” (1Pe 1:16). Prepare, therefore, to meet your God!