When the Church Ignores God — E.A. Johnston

God's Voice Through National Calamity

I have a solemn message for us today, friends, in a hope we can accept it. God doesn't always speak with words. I repeat, God doesn't always speak with words. At times when things get bad enough, he speaks through action.

America Ignores God's Warnings

I was a little boy in the 1950s and I've been around a while. And I can say this, friends, I have never seen a time in my entire life where God is speaking to the church in America and she is completely ignoring him.

God has been addressing the church in America by bringing one national disaster right on the heels of another. Why, you'd have to be blind not to admit that seeing an increase of natural disasters and calamities in the land from hurricanes and tornadoes, fires and flood, drought and pestilence.

Why, just watching it on the news is like reading a chapter out of the Old Testament. When a nation promotes evil and descends into moral chaos as we are as a nation right now, friends, and the God of the Bible sends us remedial judgments to get our attention, to humble us and get us to repent and return to him, if we fail to heed those warnings, then those judgments become the increased judgments of God, increased by number and increased by severity.

The Church's Responsibility for Ignoring God

Then the blame doesn't fall on the crooked politicians in Washington nor the corrupt judges in the courthouse, not even the liberal educators in the schoolhouse, but the blame for ignoring God falls squarely on the shoulders of every pulpit in America in the church house.

God's Holiness and the Punishment of Sin

Our trouble is we modern Christians today just don't believe in a God who must punish sin. Why, our little shrunken God that we served, that we've placed on man's level, wouldn't send anybody to hell unless they were really evil, like a Hitler, a sociopath, a serial killer, or a child molester.

Our God just wouldn't do that because he's just a God of love, but the God of the Bible would because the God of the Bible does and must punish sin. And when you have a runaway nation going to hell by droves that we have today that's running as far away from God or the Bible as it can, then a sovereign God in his providence will send that nation a series of remedial judgments to get the people to return to him.

But when the church at large is so sound asleep on pillows of conformity and compromise, then the church will ignore God even when he is obviously speaking to us through his actions. Pastors of former times were wiser than us today.

Historical Preaching on Earthquakes and Judgment

They recognized the voice of God in natural calamities as a great judgment upon the people. And they preached revival sermons to turn the hearts of the people back to Almighty God. Listen, friends, to a sermon preached by a leading pastor in Boston in 1755 when an earthquake shook that city.

Listen to the title of his sermon, Earthquakes, the Works of God, in tokens of his just displeasure being a discourse on that subject wherein he's given a particular description of this awful event of providence made public at this time on occasion of the late dreadful earthquake which happened on the 18th of November, 1755.

The text of the sermon was Psalm 18 .7. Then the earth shook and trembled. The foundations also, the hills moved and were shaken because he was wroth. The leading pastors in New England all preached similar sermons at that time.

They called their congregations to a time of fasting and prayer to repent of their sins, to fall on their faces in humility before the God of terrible majesty. Years ago, I was preaching at a church on a Wednesday evening and my subject was the remedial judgments of God based on the passage from Amos chapter four.

After I had dismissed the congregation and the people were filtering out, the pastor of the church approached me and said, when I preached to them, they leave here talking and laughing, but I noticed when you preached to them, they left in silence and their eyes were red.

I believe the modern church friends in America is ignoring God speaking to us by his actions through his remedial judgments upon us to awaken us from our spiritual authority and to get us to return to him before it's too late.

Amos's Message of Judgment

Turning your Bibles friends to the book of Amos, we're gonna tackle this head on right now. Pay attention, get the wax out of your ears. God's got a word for us. I must unburden my heart before you on this very subject.

Hear me now. Amos was a fiery prophet of God whose main message was judgment. God's timetable was up and the people of God would not return to him. So he sent a series of remedial judgments upon them, each one more severe than the preceding one.

Yet the people, the Jews ignored him completely. Is almighty God trying to get our attention in America today? Have we as a nation turned our backs on him? Even worse, have we legislated God right out of our country?

We don't want him anymore. Just like the Jews in the days of Amos, we refuse to heed the warnings. Look friends, in your Bibles at Amos chapter four, beginning in verse six, here now is the word of God.

The First Judgments: Famine and Drought

It made the spirit of the Lord attend the reading of his holy word. And I also have given you cleanness of teeth in all your cities, and want of bread in all your places. Yet have ye not returned unto me, saith the Lord?

Judgment number one, was that God sent a famine in the land? Well, how did they respond? They ignored him. We'll look at judgment number two, friends, in verse seven. And also, I have withholding the rain from you, when there were yet three months to the harvest, and I caused it to rain upon one city, and caused it not to rain upon another city.

Oh, one piece was rained upon, and the piece whereupon it rained not withered. God sent a drought to his disobedient people. You can go a week without food, but you can't live long without water, friend.

This judgment was more severe, more harmful, but do they hear his voice? Do they return to him in repentance? No, yet have ye not returned unto me. Notice how the unheeded judgments of God increase in severity.

Economic Collapse as a Further Judgment

Look at verse nine. I have smitten you with blasting and mildew, when your gardens, and your vineyards, and your fig trees, and your olive trees increased. The palmer worm devoured them. Yet have ye not returned unto me, saith the Lord.

God sent a financial collapse. Our economy is growing worse and worse by the day, and a global depression is on the horizon. Has America turned back to the God of the Bible? No. Has the church in America heeded the warnings of God's remedial judgments upon us?

No. She refuses to listen, because she's just too fast asleep. God may have to pull the rug out of us, out from under us, with a terrible stock market crash, and a terrible depression, and hit us where it hurts the most, in our wallets.

Pestilence and the Sovereignty of God

Now, look at Amos chapter four, to see the severity of the next judgment he sends them. Look, friends, at verse 10. I have sent among you the pestilence after the manor of Egypt. If you wanna say, friends, that COVID started in a lab in China, you just go on ahead, but you might wanna look up a little higher.

It's a sovereign God who sends pestilence to his people. I'm not saying that. The Bible's saying that. That's what the God of the Bible says. That's what my Bible says. God says, I have sent among you the pestilence.

You go chew on that for a while, because many of you don't believe in a biblical God who sends remedial judgments upon his people. You just refuse to believe in that kind of God. But many of you have gotten out your pocket knives, and you've carved out for yourself a God who won't get in the way of your daily living.

He just doesn't have any rights and claims on you. You don't believe in a sovereign Lord and the Lordship of Jesus Christ in your life. You surely don't believe in a God who will punish sin. That's the sleepy atmosphere in the church today, where the typical sleepy-headed pastor won't preach to his people on the remedial judgments of God.

He doesn't believe in that kind of God himself. What are we gonna do until the church in America wakes up and recognizes the voice of God in the calamities that beset our once great land? We will continue to suffer more and more increased judgments and violence in society until God just lets us fill our cup of iniquity to the brim so the only thing left is for him to bring a final destruction upon us.

Heaven help us all.