In the sermon 'The Lord God Has Spoken' by Peter Allison, the speaker reflects on the profound implications of God speaking against Israel. Using a passage from Amos, Allison highlights how God's intimate knowledge of Israel, as His chosen people, makes His judgment more severe. The sermon explores the terrifying nature of God's voice, citing biblical instances where God's commands caused creation to respond, from the formation of stars to the trembling of mountains. Allison emphasizes that God's voice is certain and powerful, and when He speaks against His people, it should be a cause for fear and introspection. The speaker uses rhetorical questions to draw parallels between natural phenomena and God's actions, urging listeners to recognize the obvious signs of divine intervention in calamities. The sermon concludes with a call to repentance, reminding the congregation of God's mercy and the possibility of redemption through turning to Him, as exemplified in the story of Nineveh. Allison underscores the necessity for personal and national repentance in light of God's warnings.

Chapter 3. We will read the first 8 verses. Hear this word that the Lord has spoken against you, O children of Israel, against the whole family which I brought up from the land of Egypt, saying, You only have I known of all the families of the earth, therefore I will punish you for all your iniquities. Can two walk together unless they are agreed? Will a lion roar in the forest when he has no prey?

Will a young lion cry out of his den if he has caught nothing? Will a bird fall into a snare on the earth when there is no trap for it? Will a snare spring up from the earth if it is caught? Nothing at all. If a trumpet is blown in a city, will not the people be afraid?

If there is calamity in a city, will not the Lord have done it? Surely the Lord God does nothing unless He reveals His secret to His servants, the prophets. A lion has roared, who will not fear? The Lord God has spoken, Who can but prophesy? May we long for His commandments as one who pants with an open mouth longs for air.

Heavenly Father, We thank you for your word. We ask that you would open our minds, our eyes, our heart to understand it, that it might be mixed with faith in us. May ask that you would sanctify my sinful lips this morning, that they may proclaim the riches of Your grace in Jesus Christ. In His name we pray, Amen. The Lord God has spoken.

I thought of titling this message the obvious and the terrifying. It is the two subjects that we would like to look at this morning in this passage. What are some terrifying things? Maybe it's driving on a winding mountain road. You know, The kind that have this 180 degree switchbacks.

Maybe it's driving on such a road at night, And maybe it's coming across suddenly a place where the bridge is gone. That would be a terrifying thing to experience. I remember driving on a windy road, but not a mountain road, and coming across a river across the road. There was no bridge. There never was one.

It was a surprise. And It can be a scary thing to realize you almost drove into a river or drive off a cliff. Or maybe it's coming around a bend on a mountain path you're hiking and finding a mama bear robbed of her cubs in front of you. That would be a terrifying thing. Maybe it's crossing a swaying rope bridge that's a thousand feet above a gorge beneath you and hundreds of feet across.

You know, there are such bridges in the world, in the United States. There are more of them than I realized. It would be a terrifying thing. And maybe you've walked across a fixed bridge that has glass in it. And you look down and it's hundreds and hundreds of feet below, and there's nothing around you.

It can get your adrenaline going. But I would submit to you that the most terrifying thing that one could possibly ever encounter that makes all of these other things, terrifying things, pale in comparison is for God to speak against you. That should be more terrifying than anything in the natural world that we could ever encounter. For God, the mighty one, to speak against you. What happens when God speaks?

Dead people start walking. Dead people that are bound hand and foot walk. Things appear out of nothing. Things that didn't exist before come into existence. Things like stars, like the earth, like the oceans, like galaxies, like light.

God speaks, and it comes into existence. Demons tremble at the voice of God. Mountains are split in two by the voice of God. They're cast into the ocean. Elihu tells us a few things, more things that happen when God speaks, he says to Job, Hear attentively the thunder of His voice and the rumbling that comes from His mouth.

He sends it forth under the whole heaven, His lightning to the ends of the earth. He thunders with His majestic voice. God thunders marvelously with His voice. He does great things which we cannot comprehend. He says to the snow, Elihu says, fall on the earth.

Likewise to the gentle rain and the heavy rain of His strength, He seals the hand of every man. The beasts go into dens and remain in their liars. From the chamber of the south comes a whirlwind and cold from the scattering of the north. By the breath of God, ice is given, and the broad waters are frozen." Why is there an ice cap across the North Pole? Very, very thick ice in salt water, which has a lower freezing point because God's breath froze it.

His voice froze it. People tremble when God speaks. At Mount Sinai, the people heard the voice of God, and they witnessed the thunderings and the lightnings and the mountain smoking and the lightning flashing and the sound of the trumpet. And when the people saw it, they trembled with fear and they stood away and they cried out to Moses, You speak with us and we will hear. But don't let God speak to us, for we will die.

When God speaks, whatever He says comes to pass. We might, with the best of intentions, say we are going to do something. Tell one of our children that we'll take them somewhere. Promise to do something for somebody. And we may have the best of intentions, yet all of us, I'm sure I know I have, forget, completely forget to do what we said we would do.

But with God, whatever He says comes to pass. There has never been a word that God has ever spoken that falls to the ground unfulfilled. Ever. And there never will be. Ezekiel told Israel, for I am the Lord, I speak and the word which I speak will come to pass.

That's not true of anyone else. If the voice of God is this terrifying, if it's this powerful, if it's this certain and sure that it will come to pass, And what a terrifying thing it would be for God to speak against us. What happens when God speaks against us? Christ is our advocate, our only advocate. But if God is testifying against us, we have no advocate.

We have no hope. God is the God who opens doors and no one can shut them. Who shuts doors and no one can open them. And when He testifies against us, there is no one that can counter his testimony. And that's what God says to Israel.

Amos came saying, Israel, hear this word that the Lord has spoken against you. But there's an aggravating factor that wasn't present in all the other nations whom God spoke against. And that is in verse 2. The aggravating factor is that God had known these people. You only have I known of all the families of the earth." Now our inclination might be if we saw a son come before a judge and that judge was his father, we might think, well, that father would be prone to not render the same judgment to his son that he knows than He would to somebody else.

But God says that's not the case. You only have I known of all the families of the earth. No is that word that the Bible uses to describe God's intimate knowledge of His people. It's that word that Genesis uses when it says that Adam knew his wife Eve and she conceived. It's referring to a very close and intimate relationship.

You only. God is saying to Israel, you are the only nation, you are the only family of all the families on the earth that I have known in this way, you are my people. They, as God's people whom God had known. Had a special place. So this is the language then that Scripture uses to speak about people who are saved, people who are elect.

But God in Amos here is speaking to the visible church. He's speaking to the visible church. And I don't think it means that everyone he is addressing is elect. And I'd like to take just a minute to show that. The Israelites that we've been reading about in Exodus were God's people that He delivered out of Egypt.

But this is what Hebrews says about them. These are the very people of whom God said, you are My chosen people. I carried you on eagles' wings. I bore you on eagles' wings. I delivered you from the Egyptians.

Hebrews says today, Hebrews 3.15, Today if you will hear His voice, do not harden your hearts as in the rebellion. For who having heard, rebelled? Indeed, was it not all who came out of Egypt, led by Moses? Now with whom was he angry forty years? Was it not with those who sinned whose corpses fell in the wilderness?

And to whom did he swear that they would not enter his rest but to those who did not obey. So we see that they could not enter in because of unbelief. Therefore, the writer of Hebrews goes on to exhort us, since a promise remains of entering his rest, let us fear lest any of you seem to come short of it. For indeed the Gospel was preached to us as to them." Who's the them? The Israelites that God delivered out of Egypt.

His people, the ones He called His peculiar people. The ones that He says here, I've known you. Hebrews says, the Gospel was preached to them as it has been to us. But the word which they heard didn't profit them not being mixed with faith in those who heard it. They heard the Word.

They had all the covenants, the promise, the blessings, the sacraments. But these things ultimately didn't help them. For we who have believed do enter into that rest. So as He said, so I swore in My wrath, they shall not enter My rest, although their works were finished from the foundation of the world." These are the same people that Paul said in Romans 9. For I could wish that I myself were accursed from Christ for my brethren, my countrymen according to the flesh or Israelites, to whom pertain the adoption, the glory, the covenants, the giving of law, the service of God.

These are all blessings that His people had. Of whom are the fathers? And from whom according to the flesh Christ came." But he goes on to say, "'But it's not that the word of God has taken no effect, for they are not all Israel who are of Israel. Nor are they all children, because they are the seed of Abraham.'" So yes, God is saying that these people are the only family that He has known, but He's not saying that every single one of every single individual to whom He's addressing is therefore elect. Paul goes into this in 1 Corinthians 10 where he says, Moreover, brethren, I do not want you to be unaware that all our fathers were under the cloud.

Remember that cloud, That glory cloud, that pillar of fire by night directed them by the day. All were under the cloud. All passed through the sea. All were baptized into Moses in the cloud and in the sea. All ate the same spiritual food.

They received the food that God gave. They received the sacraments. They all drank the same spiritual drink, for they drank of that spiritual rock that followed them, and that rock was Christ. These people, Paul is saying, they drank of the spiritual rock that was Christ, but with most of them God was not well pleased, for their bodies were scattered in the wilderness. Now these things, Paul says, are written for our examples that we should not lust after the evil things that they lusted after.

And we don't become idolaters like they were idolaters. Where the people sat down to eat and drink and rose up to play. He said, Nor let us commit sexual immorality as some of them did, and in one day 23, 000 died. Nor let us tempt Christ as some of them did and were destroyed by serpents, nor complain as some of them complained and were destroyed by the destroyer. Now all these things happen to them as examples.

They were written for our admonition upon whom the ends of the earth had come. And then he goes into, therefore, that him who thinks he stands take heed lest he fall. These Israelites in Amos' day thought they were standing. They thought that they were God's special people that He had known. And they were unique from all the other nations of the earth and They were.

They were. They were God's covenant people. But God says that it's because of that. Because they had enjoyed all these blessings. Because they were the only family of the earth that God had known.

And He would punish them. These are the people that Jude writes, For certain men have crept in, unawares who long ago were marked out for this condemnation, ungodly men who turned the grace of God into lewdness and denied the only Lord, the only God, and our Lord Jesus Christ." He said, but I want to remind you, Though you once knew this, that the Lord having saved the people out of the land of Egypt afterward destroyed those who did not believe. Just because People are God's people in the visible church. It does not mean that they are then immune from God's wrath. Just because you were baptized.

Just because you grew up in a Christian home. And were taught how to obey your mother and father and how to live in accordance with God's Word and His commandments. Just because you're members of a Bible-believing church and you come every week. Just because you partake of the Lord's Supper every week. Just because you know the correct answer to all the questions in the Shorter Catechism.

And you know how to answer correctly all the theological questions. It does not mean that you are immune from God's wrath and don't have to be concerned with God's judgments. The New Testament writers often spoke of the church as God's elect people. But it doesn't mean that every individual in that church to which that letter was written was elect. That's why we are exhorted to give heed to make our calling and election sure.

We ought to fear God. We ought to be afraid of the Lord's wrath where our love has grown cold. We ought to be afraid when we find that God's commandments are restrictive or burdensome. And that we find ourselves chafing under them where we outwardly obey, but inwardly it's not what we wanted to do. Even though we might walk outwardly in compliance with them.

If the Sabbath ceases to be a joyful rest to which we look forward to, if it becomes an interruption to our plans. If our prayers are dull and repetitive. If our heart is enamored with the pleasures of this age, the toys, yes, adults can have toys just like children. If our heart becomes enamored with our toys and the pleasures of this age, the things that our money can obtain, while the fullness of pleasure that's found only in the presence of the Lord while that becomes dull and boring, then we need to be afraid. We need to fear that we are wandering from the Lord.

Israel wasn't terrified that God was speaking against her. You know, It's a really painful experience to touch a hot burner. I hope you never have to, if you ever have. If you haven't, I hope you never have to. But you know what's worse?

To touch that hot burner and not feel any pain. There's nothing to tell you to draw your hand back. There's nothing to say, danger, Stop. Don't touch that. If you don't feel any pain, you could leave your hand on that hot burner until it's burned up.

And you'd be completely insensitive to it. That's worse. And that's where Israel was. They weren't terrified that God was speaking against them. And that God then said, I will punish you because you have been a people that has enjoyed all of these privileges and graces because you are a part of the visible church and you have the blessings of the covenant.

You heard you hear the gospel preached. You see it lived exemplified in the people around you. You participate in the sacraments because you have all these things. And you have turned away. Therefore, God said, I will punish you for all your iniquities.

Then it looks like Amos changes the direction of the conversation. We saw earlier how Amos had very wisely adapted his message to the people to whom he was preaching. By starting out with addressing all the nations around Israel and pointing out all their sins. He was building some agreement with the people. He was saying things that the people would agree with.

They would easily agree with. They would be nodding their heads, Yes, yes, that's true. We agree with you on that. And as he identified all the national and cultural and ultimately personal sins of all the nations around Israel who were their enemies. He even preached against his own country, Judah.

Something that since the division after Solomon, they would have been a message that they would have agreed with as well. Well, he now employs another oratorial or rhetorical device by asking a series of rhetorical questions. Rhetorical questions are questions whose answers are obvious, but they serve to direct the listener to a certain perspective. And when rightly used, they direct the listener to the truth. Here's the question.

That's what he's doing here. He's starting out with some questions whose answers are obvious, so that he can direct our attention to a question whose answer ought to be obvious, but maybe has ceased to be obvious. Here's the first question. Can two walk together unless they be agreed? Everybody is obviously going to say, of course not.

They can't walk together unless they are agreed. If you're walking together, you had to have an agreement to meet somewhere and walk together, or you had to agree to walk together when you met somewhere. You can't walk together Unless that's the case, unless you have agreed. You can't have fellowship together, unless you can't walk together, unless you are both going to the same place. Or a similar place.

So the answer there is obviously everybody is going to say, well, no, you can't walk together unless you are agreed. Will a young lion cry out, What will a lion roar in the forest when he has no prey? Well, maybe the answer is not so obvious to us, not living around lions. But No, lions don't just roar when they haven't caught prey. If they roared when they hadn't caught prey, what would happen?

They would scare their prey away. It would all run. No, they're quiet. They stalk their prey. They roar after they catch their prey.

So is a lion going to roar in the forest when he has no prey? No, of course not. He would starve. Will a young lion cry out in his den if he has caught nothing? No.

Again, the same answer. Rhetorical question. Will a bird fall into a snare on the earth when there is no trap for it? Well, that should be obvious, right? Does a bird get caught when there's nothing to get caught in?

No. You don't even have to know much about bird snares. I don't know much about bird snares, but it's obvious if there's no snare, a bird's not going to get caught. It's not going to get trapped. Will a snare spring up from the earth if it has caught nothing at all?

Well, no. There has to be something to trip the snare. Something has to make it spring. Something has to spring the trap. So a snare doesn't spring up from the earth if it's caught nothing at all.

That's like these traps, they're spring loaded, and when they snap, there's enough energy they can jump up, spin around. It's not going to do that though unless something trips it. If a trumpet is blown in the city, will the people not be afraid? We don't live in a community that has a community siren. I did at one point live in a town, live in several towns that had sirens.

Community sirens. And if there was an emergency, they would go off. One city set it off every day at noon, just for what I don't know. But when you heard that siren, You noticed it. And there is a certain what happened.

What's the problem? Air raid sirens have been used in the past to warn people to seek shelter. And when you hear those sirens, There's a certain amount of fear. Is there a bomb going to fall on me? Even if you haven't lived in a town like that, I'm sure you've all seen a movie that has war sirens going off because of an air raid coming in.

If a trumpet is blown in a city, will not the people be afraid? Yes. When a danger alarm is sounded, if you hear the fire alarm go off, and it's not a drill, it catches you off guard. Now here's one though that should be obvious, that to many in our day has ceased to be obvious. If evil, if calamity falls on a city, will not the Lord have done it?

Amos posed that as a rhetorical question whose answer is obviously, of course, If there is calamity in a city, will not the Lord have done it? Yes, of course that's the case. But today, We like to distance ourselves from that obvious answer. When a hurricane destroys a city, the thought that this might be God getting our attention, that this might be God chastening us for our sins, it's entirely dismissed as irrelevant. As, well, who could presume to know what God is doing?

God says it's obvious. If there is evil in a city, if calamity has befallen, is it not the Lord who has done that? It should be obvious. And now he states the point of his message. Surely the Lord has done nothing unless he reveals his secret to his servants, the prophets.

Surely the Lord has done nothing unless He reveals His secrets to His servants, the prophets. God reveals His intentions to His servants, the prophets. The prophets are His servants. They function as His mouthpiece. God speaks through them.

In various words and expressions, Amos states that this message was God's message. Fifty times in this short book. Fifty times. Nine chapters, most of which are only 15 verses, only one is substantially longer. And yet 50 times Amos says that this was God's message.

It was God speaking. What happens when God speaks to one of His servants? They run with that message. God is merciful in this, in that God never does anything. Surely the Lord does nothing unless He reveals His secret to His servants the prophets.

That word is secret counsel. God is saying that He does not come in judgment. He doesn't do anything unless he first reveals his secret counsel and what he is intending to do. That is grace. There's no reason God would have to do that.

He's not obligated to do that, but He does. He's merciful. He is slow to wrath. He is patient, waiting for us to hear His message, for us to tremble at His warnings, for us to turn from our wrong ways. But when God reveals His secret counsel to His servants, the prophets, they run with that message to God's people.

The Lord has spoken. Who can but prophesy? Amos is saying he's under compulsion. The Lord has spoken to him. Fifty times he says the Lord has spoken to him.

Who can but prophesy? A lion has roared. The lion has roared, Amos is saying. Remember, it doesn't roar before it's caught the prey, it roars when something has happened. A lion has roared.

Who will not fear? The Lord has spoken. Who can but prophesy? See, these are some obvious things. If we were to apply them to our culture, There are some obvious things that are happening in our culture.

If a bearded man identifying as a woman, or more properly, posing as a woman, can enter a competition of weight lifters for women and be allowed to do that and break every record, what does that say about our army? If our military assumes that men and women are the same, and that women can pose as men and men can pose as women, the reality doesn't change the reality. What does that say about us? The answer ought to be obvious. It means we're in trouble.

Our army, our armed forces are weak. They're ineffective. Just like all those women trying to compete against the male weightlifter who was doing so with a full beard, and no pretense other than him stating that he was identifying as a woman that day. That's absurd. That's where we are.

The consequence of that should be obvious to us. We have no military protection. For the first time in its history, it's a hundred and, see, 1913, a hundred and ten year history. The Federal Reserve is now losing money. They're going bankrupt.

I read one article just the other day that said if the same situation were true of any other commercial bank, that bank would be called insolvent. The Federal Reserve is insolvent. Their liabilities exceed their equity. That means you owe more than you have. That's called being bankrupt.

And yet this writer goes on to state that but the rules are different for them. Because they can just create money. So they can simply create money. And that's why they're not insolvent. But here's the irony.

Here's the obvious thing that should be real obvious to us, but maybe isn't. Why are they in trouble? Why are the first time in their 100-plus history are they losing money? Because they're raising the interest rates. And their cost to paying interest is higher than the cost of the interest they're getting.

And why did they raise the interest rates? To fight inflation, because prices are going up. So they're raising interest rates. They are now insolvent. But they can solve that problem by creating more money.

What does that do? It creates more inflation. They're caught. It should be obvious to us that our economy is in trouble. Our central bank is bankrupt.

And the only way that they can get out of it is to create more money, which is exactly why they're in the situation they're in. That should be obvious to us. But it's not. They tell us day after day, the economy is fine, just a little bump in the road. We're in good shape.

But we're not. Now here is one more thing that we need to remember, is that God is merciful. And God offers salvation to all those who repent. He's sending Amos to the Israelites. And He's given us His Word.

And He brings it to us with His messengers, because He always reveals His secret counsel. We don't have to be surprised when God moves in judgment. But there is forgiveness. He's merciful in telling us that there is forgiveness for those who repent. In Deuteronomy 20, Moses was giving instructions to the Israelites as they went to war.

And he said, when you go near a city to fight against it, proclaim an offer of peace to it. And it shall be that if they accept your offer of peace and open to you, then all the people who are found there in it shall be spared. They'll be placed under tribute and they'll serve you. To all those who repent at the Lord's offer of peace because He does come to us. And He does offer peace to us through Jesus Christ if we repent and become His servant.

To all those who do tremble at the word of the Lord which He brings. The Lord offers peace, a real peace. He offers redemption. You remember the message that He brought through Jonah. In forty days, God will destroy the earth, your city.

But they repented. They turned away from their wickedness. And God made peace with them. And we serve the same God today as proclaimed that message to Nineveh. May God have mercy upon us and grant to us the grace to repent of the sins of our nation and as well the sins of our own heart.

Let's pray. Father, we ask that you would be merciful to us. That you would be merciful to us as a land, as a nation. A nation that has ignored the obvious. That has thought that because you have placed such great privilege upon us, that because You have made us such a great and mighty nation at one time and so wealthy and prosperous that no evil could come upon us.

Lord, we ask that we might tremble at Your warnings, that we might be terrified that You have spoken against us. And we ask, Lord, for Your mercy, for Your Holy Spirit to shine forth and send forth your light and your truth that they might lead us. We ask these in Jesus name. Amen.