Amos chapter 3 from verse 1 reads as follows, Hear this word that the Lord hath 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 except they be agreed? Will a lion roar in the forest when he have no prey? Will a young lion cry out of his den if he have taken nothing? Can a bird fall in a snare upon the earth where no gin is for him? Shall one take up a snare from the earth and have taken nothing at all? Shall a trumpet be blown in the city and the people not be afraid? Shall there be evil in a city and the Lord have not done it? Surely the Lord God will do nothing but He revealeth His secret under His servants the prophets. The lion hath roared, who will not fear? The Lord God hath spoken, who can but prophesy? Can two walk together except they be agreed? Can two walk together except they be agreed? That is the question which runs through this whole book, this whole prophecy of Amos. It sits behind it all the accounts of God's anger and judgement of the nations and of Israel. And the promise at the end of hope, deliverance and salvation is in the context of this question. Can two walk together except they be agreed? Can you, Israel, can you, my people, walk together except you be agreed? Can you walk with me, the Lord God says, except you be agreed? It is a question that we should ever be mindful of. not just regarding how we walk with others, how we walk with our fellow believers, how we walk in the church, how we walk with the friends and the acquaintances which we may have in the world around us, not just regarding how we walk with man, but regarding how we stand before a holy and an almighty God, who by nature we have offended and angered because of our sin. How can two walk together except they be agreed? You cannot walk with God except you be agreed with him. You cannot. You cannot walk with him. You can live in this world You can say many things. You can make a professional faith. You can speak of God. You can speak of his ways. You can take of his truths. You can take of the things in the Bible. You can attend church. You can attend meetings. You can hear the gospel preached. You can discuss the doctrine of the gospel. You can make a show of worship, you can be baptised, you can take of the Lord's Supper, you can do many, many things. But you cannot walk with God except you and He be agreed. Everything else, anything else is a sham, a show. A pretense. A charade of religion. A pretense to walk with God when the heart is far from Him. Claiming what is not true. As Amos in verse 4 presents to us. Will a lion roar in the forest when he hath no prey? Will a young lion cry out of his den if he have taken nothing? He will not. What folly, what foolishness! The lion roars when he's captured the prey, when he has it, when it's real. Why roar? Why make claims of that which is not there? Why would the young lion cry out of his den when he's taken nothing in it? He'd be a liar, he'd be a fool. But the lion roars in his triumph when he has his prey. Then why, O Israel, why, O Church, why, professing believer, do you claim to walk before God? Do you speak of Jesus Christ and His Gospel? Do you tell others to believe on Him, who you don't truly know, when He is not truly in your heart? You are as a lion who roars, who has no prey. You know about Him. You know about his salvation, you know about his gospel, you can reason it and discuss it, but you don't know him. You can argue about election. You can argue about the sovereignty of God. You can argue about the substitution and the manner and the means of the substitution. You can get your doctrine correct to the letter. To the letter. When there's no reality in the heart. and how many there are in the churches today who get their doctrine correct to the letter and go no further. They can stand up and they can debate, they can go into pulpits and they can preach their messages and say it's like this and it's like that and none, the foolish can't fault them. They say, but he knows so much, he's got it all spelled out, but it's in the letter. And what's absent is the experience to go with it. What's absent is the recounting of those realities of God's work of grace in the heart, which can only come forth from those who walk with God. It's one thing to know about Him and His Gospel. It's another thing to have Christ in you. In you, the hope of glory, to know Him, to know His ways, to love Him. How many there are who, as it were, go out and tell others that they are an associate, a friend of royalty, of the Queen, of the Prince, of the King. And because others don't know royalty, they can't game set. They say so many things about them. So many things about Buckingham Palace. So many things about this and that. Who could question it? When they're impostors. They've never been to the palace. They've never known the king, the queen, the prince. They don't know. They're liars. And there are so many like this in the churches who don't know Christ. They can talk about him because the Bible tells them about him. They can talk about where he lives, because the Bible tells you where he lives. They can talk about when he came, because the Bible tells us when he came. They can talk about what he did at the cross, because the Bible tells us what he did at the cross. They can talk about penal substitution, because the Bible talks about it. But they don't know him. And he never told them about it. And he never made it known to them. They got it all from the Bible in the letter, or all from the books and the writings of men. but they never heard his voice and there is no true agreement in their heart, in their mind with him. They have a pretense to walk with God when their hearts are far from him. They are lions roaring in the forest making a great show when they have no prey. No prey. Is that you? Is that you? Well, there is a man called Amos who was sent to a people to tell them such things, to ask them such things, to ask of that people can two walk together except they be green. to declare unto that people that God is furious with their pretext, furious with their taking His name in vain, with their claim to be His, their claim to love Him when it's all in the letter and they do not know Him, furious with that people. He was sent to these people to tell them that the Lion, the Almighty God, hath roared, and will you not fear? The Lord God has spoken and I cannot but prophesy. He will judge you for your iniquities. He will punish you for your iniquities. You claim to be his and you're not. You're worse than those in their sins who know him not at all. You take his name in vain. He was sent with a bold message, a plain message, a cut-in message, a search-in message unto a people who, when they heard it, would have put him to death. And the man that God sent with this message, Amos, was a nothing. There was nothing about him, no qualifications, no learning, no grandeur. No great upbringing. There was nothing about him to add weight or authority to his message. When he comes preaching this message, those who heard it would have said, who are you? Who are you? Just a herdsman. What do you know to come telling us these things? Who made you a prophet? Who do you think you are? You come unto us in chapter one and say the Lord will roar from Zion and utter his voice from Jerusalem. Who are you to say these things to us? He was a nothing. He was a nothing. But he was a nothing because God was the one who spake. And he would not have this people. who had heard many others in the letter, and who were used to following those with great names and great learning, hear another, and take what he says because of who he is, and of what he had, and what learning he had, and not hear the one who sent him. God will be heard. It's he who speaks, and his message which is to be heard, not the man. So God sent them a nothing, a herdsman, to prophesy, to preach. And in this case, to preach against Israel. He's not going to be gladly received, is he? And if I were to prophesy against Israel today, the professing church, if I was to prophesy against them, if I was to prophesy against you, perhaps, then I wouldn't be gladly received either, would I? But Amos did as he was bid, and preached what he must preach, for he feared God, not man. And the same is true today. Who must I follow, God or man? Who must I fear, you or my Lord? Who must I offend? God or you? The preacher must preach what God lays upon his heart. Amos' name means burden bearer. He bore a burden. He bore this burden concerning the state of his people. And to preach like that is to carry a burden indeed. To go before a people like this, burdened over their sin, and with a message of condemnation, a message of warning, a message that sounds an alarm, to drive them to repentance, to cause them to cry out unto God for mercy, a message that sounds an alarm, is to carry a burden indeed. You can't go with this message freely and easily. But when God lays it upon your back and says, go and preach, you must preach. We see what Amos was sent to preach as he opens up in the first chapter. Verse three, thus saith the Lord, for three transgressions of Damascus and for four, I will not turn away the punishment thereof, because they are fresh Gilead with fresh instruments of iron. but I will send a fire into the house of Hazael, which shall devour the palaces of Ben-Hadad. I will break also the bar of Damascus, and cut off the inhabitant from the plain of Avon, and him that holdeth the scepter from the house of Eden. And the people of Syria shall go into captivity into Kheer, and serve the Lord. He moves on in verse 6 to Gaza, for 3 transgressions of Gaza and for 4 I will not turn away the punishment thereof. Verse 9, for 3 transgressions of Tyrus and for 4 I will not turn away the punishment thereof. Verse 11, Edom. Verse 13, Ammon. Chapter 2 and verse 1, for 3 transgressions of Moab. And for four I will not turn away the punishment thereof." And then in verse four, for three transgressions of Judah, and for four, I will not turn away the punishment thereof. Because they have despised the law of the Lord, and have not kept his commandments, and their lies caused them to err, after the which their fathers have walked, but I will send a fire upon Judah, and it shall devour the palaces of Jerusalem. Thus saith the Lord for free transgressions of Israel, and for four, I will not turn away the punishment thereof, because they sold the righteous for silver, and the poor for a pair of shoes, that pant after the dust of the earth on the head of the poor, and turn aside the way of the meek, And a man and his father will go in unto the same maid to profane my holy name. And they lay themselves down upon clothes laid to pledge by every altar, and they drink the wine of the condemned in the house of their God. So he reaches Israel. Judah, then Israel. These judgments begin with Damascus, with Gaza, with Tyre, with Edom, Ammon, Moab but they come in and to Judah and Israel they funnel down and to God's people they start with the other nations round about and how the Israelites may have looked and heard when they heard of the judgment of God upon the nations round about and said in their pious pride well rightly so What are they but Gentiles and dorks? How they've sinned, how the Lord should be angry. But with what horror they must have heard the Lord's judgment come down upon them. And what hypocrisy to rejoice in the judgment of those around them, with whom they'd consorted, with whom they'd agreed, with whom they'd wandered off from their God to go and to serve and to live with the nations round about. They'd taken the gods of the nations round about, of the Moabites, of the Ammonites. They'd made marriages with the nations round about when God told them not to marry the other nations. They'd taken off the thinking and the ways and the pleasures and the riches of the nations round about when they claimed to be gods. They turned from their god. And they'd been adulterous in going off after these other nations. And that's why God comes upon these nations in judgment. Because these nations had defiled his own people and led them astray. But his fury is with his own who should have known better. Those who should have walked in agreement with him, when they actually walked in agreement with the world around them. Why is he furious with them? Why does this judgment funnel in on them? Because they don't walk with God. they'd mixed with the world. They knew God's ways, they knew God's law, they'd have talked about it, they'd have talked about their worship of God, but they mixed it up with the world and the world's religion and the world's goals. And they bring upon themselves the judgement and fury of God. You can't mess around with God and you can't take his things and defile them and think that you can mess around and God's love will still be on you. You must search deep in your heart if you're truly his and you mix his ways with the ways of the world, then he'll chastise you and rebuke you but bring you back in the end. But if you've heard his gospel and live a life that's in this world and not walking in agreement with him and his ways, you must ask yourself seriously Have I ever truly known him? Or is it just a profession? Because if it's just a pretense, if it's just taking his name in vain, if it's just a profession and you haven't possessed Christ's love in your heart, then in the end the same judgment that comes upon the heathen nations will come upon you. The lion have roared, who will not fear? Don't play about with God. And don't play about with his gospel or his name. Don't take his gospel and publish it and tell it to others whilst dallying with the trifles of this world and the filth and the sin of this world and think that you are gods. God sent his son to deliver his people from sin, not to leave them wallowing in it. And only the most shameful wallow in sin and claim the blessing and the blood of Christ to cover them. They say, let us sin that grace may abound. Let us sin that grace may abound. Oh, we believe in grace. Let's do as we like because God will love us still. Paul, when he preached of justification by faith for low, when he preached of the grace of God, when he preached of deliverance from the law, said, Shall we then continue to sin? Shall we sin that grace may abound? Is that the conclusion that we reach from these things? God forbid. Romans 6 verse 1, what shall we say then? Shall we continue in sin that grace may abound? God forbid. How shall we that are dead to sin live any longer therein? And yet so many take the gospel and take salvation by grace and think that that covers them. For their wanton mixing of law and grace, their wanton mixing of the world and the things of God, their wanton mixing of sin and righteousness. Don't play the fool with the things of God and the gospel. Don't take it to suit your own selfish desires and to use the gospel and grace as an occasion for the flesh. As Paul says in Galatians, you stand fast in the liberty wherewith Christ hath made you free, but use not these things as an occasion for the flesh. Brethren, you've been called unto liberty, only use not liberty for an occasion to the flesh. but by love serve one another. We're dead to the law, but we're not antinomian, we're not lawless and we're not full of sin. We're dead to the law that we might serve the living God, that we might bring forth fruit unto righteousness, not mix God's ways with the world's ways. If we mix it, then the judgment will come upon us. As Paul makes plain in Romans 1 and 2, God's wrath and anger with sin is against all nations, Jew and Gentile alike. His judgment comes down upon all, religious or irreligious, Moab, Ammonite or Israelite. It doesn't matter what your profession is, sin is sin and judgment is judgment. What you need is the reality of the blood of Christ shed for you and sprinkled in your heart. And if it's really there, then you will not walk in agreement with this world, with its ways, with its religion, with its fashions and pleasures, with its thinking and morality. You will hate these things. and love the things of God, the things of Jesus Christ. We may think that God's judgment is something far off, something that won't come upon us now. But the reality is that throughout history God has sent forth judgment in this world. The world acts like it's immune. Like it's in power, like it's in control. Empires rise up and they think they can do what they like and in a moment God destroys them and brings them to nothing. Where is Rome now? Where is Alexander the Great now? Where is Egypt of old now? Where is the Third Reich now? Where is the USSR now? And where will America and these other nations today be tomorrow? who shake their fist in God's face. I read just recently that the doctors in this country are worried of the growing resistance in the people in our land, in our bodies, to antibiotics. So needful for the treatment of so many illnesses, so needful when we undergo operations. They're worried that in 10 to 20 years, we could all be dying from infections which come upon us when we have routine operations, that it could be absolutely disastrous. And so they should be worried because God can take things away in a moment. Many of the medical advances and blessings that have been granted unto Britain as a nation and the world around us were granted to believers, to Christian scientists, to Christians in the medical profession, who served God and loved God and God blessed them with their various discoveries and sent blessing upon the land when his name was honored and his gospel was preached. Well, those generations and those people have gone and those who have followed and taken of the blessings and the prosperity which they brought in, have turned from their gods. And God is not mocked, and God can in a moment take all these things away and send judgment upon a land and bring it to its knees. And so often we see it. So often. And here, in Amos, Israel, though it claimed to follow God, had gone off with all the nations round about, and here God sends his judgment. Don't take my name and claim to be mine when your heart is far from me. Can two walk together except they be agreed? They cannot. They cannot. And oh, the divisions we see when that agreement is missing. How we see those nations in the early chapters rebuked by God. Each nation different from the other. Each nation divided from the other. The world was scattered like the Tower of Babel into different tongues and different nations. All divided. How the nations are divided. And how often we see the professing people of God, the professing Church, divided. No agreement. One views things this way, another views things that way. One speaks of this baptism, another speaks of that baptism. One speaks of this way of gathering, another speaks of that way of gathering. One speaks of singing psalms early, another speaks of hymns. One speaks of communion in this manner, another speaks of it in that manner. One speaks of election, another goes against it. One speaks of the sovereignty of God, one speaks of the responsibility of man. All divided. Divided. One takes over scripture and preaches what it says, another says it means something else. And they argue and divide at the meaning. Division. Schism. How can two walk together, except they be agreed? We see them not walking together and we see the lack of agreement in the professing churches because only the agreement in the gospel as brought in by God and His Spirit as a reality of life, only that can bring agreement. Even if you get the words on the page right, if that reality is not there, you'll have strife. Two people can believe the same things on paper but in one there is the life of God and in one it's just head knowledge and there'll be strife. But worse than these things, worse than these disagreements amongst men is that disagreement that exists between man and God. between man and God, between you and me and God. Despite the words, the appearances, are we truly walking with Him? There is no agreement between false religion and God, between false Gospels and God. There is no agreement between that new man declared to be Pope in Rome and God. God is against him. He has another gospel. He is not agreed. There is no agreement between so many and God. They've taken his word and ripped it up and discarded it and turned a blind eye to it. They will not receive a love of the truth. But what of you? Is there agreement between you and God? Or is your religion, your worship, your profession just a show? Is it an appearance before men? Have you been brought up in it? Have you been brought to attend and you dare not go back because of the shame it would bring? You know there's nothing within, you know the reality's missing, but you said so many things that your pride prevents you owning up and saying, but there's something you've got, my friend, that I haven't. I know that I must be born again. I know that Christ must be in me. I know that there must be an experience of the conviction of sin. I know that there must be a knowledge and an awareness of the presence of God and I know those things are missing but I can't possibly admit before others well forget about others and think about where you are before God because you can hide from others and you can put on a pretense before others and you can fool them to the last of your days. But you won't fool God who searches the heart. And you can't hide from His eyes. He has seven eyes that go searching throughout through this world as Revelation tells us. He sees all. And in the end you will stand before Him and answer to Him. And a pretense and a profession and a show won't answer for much. How can you walk with God when your heart is far from Him? Professions of faith are worthless if your heart is fixed on this world. If when you get up in the morning your thoughts are on this, that and the other but never on God, where's your heart? You walk with Him if you're agreed with Him. If you're of one mind, one heart, what He desires, you desire. What He wills, you will. What He loves, you love. People speak of knowing the will of God. Well, if you're His, you're walking in Him, with Him. You soon know the will of someone who you're bound to, wed to, one with. If you're married to someone and you love someone, Increasingly you know them, you know their thoughts, you know their ways, you know what they like. Increasingly you find yourself in situations where you know what they're thinking in response to something without even asking them because you know them. It's not a mystery to you. You don't go out of a situation and have to ask them, well what did you think? And it comes as a total surprise. You begin to know what they will think because you're one with them and you love them. You're united. And as you walk with God, you know what his will is. It's not a total mystery. You're of one mind. Can two walk together except they be agreed? Having asked this question, having declared God's anger at the state of Israel and the nations round about. God, through Amos, calls this people to seek Him. In chapter 5, verse 4, we read, For thus saith the Lord unto the house of Israel, Seek ye me, and ye shall live, but seek not Bethel, nor enter into Gilgal, and pass not to Beersheba. For Gilgal shall surely go into captivity, and Bethel shall come to naught. Seek the Lord, and ye shall live, lest ye break out like fire in the house of Joseph, and devour it, and there be none to quench it in Bethel. This seeking of God must be real. not a seeking of the world and the things around, and not a seeking of the church and of religion itself. You may have a love for the gathering of the saints, you may have a love for the church, you may enjoy going to the meetings, you may like singing the hymns, you may enjoy reading the Bible, but these things in themselves aren't enough. Don't seek the church. Don't simply seek to be gathered in it. Don't seek religion for itself. Seek the Lord. It must be real how God despises hypocrisy, the coming into his presence when the heart is far from him. That's serving him out of duty. Because that's what you do. Because every Sunday morning you come into His presence, every Sunday morning you gather. He despises it. He's looking for the heart that comes because it longs to be with Him, that longs to hear Him, that longs to hear His voice in the Gospel, that loves Christ and seeks Him. He hates that outward appearance which is done to be seen of others. The works and the will of man. says in verse 18 of chapter 5, Woe unto you that desire the day of the Lord. To what end is it for you? The day of the Lord is darkness and not light. And he then goes on to reject the feasts, the sacrifices and the worship of Israel here because he knew it was all outward, all a show. They said they desired the day of the Lord. They said they desired the worship of God. They said that they longed to offer up their feasts and be with him when they didn't. And there are those who speak of their desire to gather on the Lord's day, the day of the Lord, to gather and to keep the Sabbath, to gather and to worship God, when they don't. It's all outward. They like the outward appearance, they like the routine, they like that calmness. There can be an appeal in religion to the separation and the difference that there appears with the gathering of God's church. There can be an appeal to go in and stepping aside from the things of this world and to gather and to hear in the scriptures and praising God. But the outward things are nothing. And these, in Israel in that day, may have spoke of desiring the day of the Lord, may have spoke of being with him, may have spoke of his presence, But for them it was darkness, not light. They knew not God. It was all darkness, it was all just outward. There was no light, there was no revelation, there was no reality in it. They didn't truly come unto God, they didn't see a thing. They thought all was well. when in reality God was furious with their hypocrisy. So he says to them in chapter 6, Woe to them that are at ease in Zion, and trust in the mountain of Samaria, which are named chief of the nations, to whom the house of Israel came. Are you at ease in Zion? Do you come and go, and all is well, and you're saved by grace? You've made the profession. Oh, God loves you. when in reality if you looked a bit deeper and examined your motives and where your heart truly is, your heart set on this world, oh you love a God that loves you whilst you love this world. That God suits you. It suits you to worship a God of grace who lets you indulge your sin in this world. It irritates you to think of a God that might not like those sins. Oh, that's legalism, is it? How easy it is to take things that are real. How easy it is to take true errors, like legalism, like will worship, like works worship, and apply those labels to that which it is not. And to take the grace of God and apply it as a sort of cover to your sin that you indulge in. Now the grace and the blood of Christ in the Gospel does cover the believer from every sin, but the believer covered by that grace does not walk therein. He turns from it, and he turns to worship and to serve the living God. And those who indulge their sin, those who sin that grace may abound, have never never known that grace. Woe to them that are at ease in Zion. In chapter 7 as Amos moves on he speaks of a plumb line. He showed me and behold the Lord stood upon a wall made by a plumb line with a plumb line in his hand and the Lord said unto me Amos what seest thou? And I said a plumb line. Then said the Lord, Behold, I will set a plumb line in the midst of my people Israel. I will not again pass by them anymore. And the high places of Isaac shall be desolate and the sanctuaries of Israel shall be laid waste. I will rise against the house of Jeroboam with the sword. God's long suffering, but he has a plumb line. And he won't let things go on, unwatched, unchecked forever. You can't take his name in vain and think that you can go on like that forever. But he will come in judgment and in the alarm of his gospel, if you're his, he'll sound a note of rebuke and chastisement. If you're not his, he'll make it known that you are naked yet, that you are darkness within, that all you have is a sham, a profession, that you know him not. and that you should get on your knees and seek Him before it's too late. There's a judgment and a plumb line. And that judgment comes down, as we see in the early chapters, upon the nations who walk not before God, who are not agreed with Him. And it will come down upon the false professor. But for God's true people, it came down in judgement, in justice, upon another. Because Amos, as with all the prophets, is not just sent with a message of God's wrath. God's wrath against the sin of men. God's wrath against the hypocrisy of men. God's wrath against the hypocritical worship of men who take his name in vain and know not him. But ultimately he comes with a message of the gospel, that says God's own have been justified. Judgment has fallen. Justice has been exacted. The price has been paid, but not by you. Though you deserve to pay it, not by you. I've sent one to pay the price. I've offered up a sacrifice. I've shed blood. I've poured out my wrath and my justice. upon that sacrifice, and I have answered every transgression. I've set my love upon you that you might be spared. Yes, God comes upon His people, His own in judgment, but He comes upon them in His Son, the Lord Jesus Christ. He takes their hypocrisy, He takes their vainness, He takes their vanity, He takes their adultery as they dabble with this world and its ways and its religion. He takes their idolatry. He takes their taking off His name in vain. He takes every sin, every breaking off His law, every despising of His name, every turning aside from Him and His grace. He takes it all. And He takes it and places it upon his own son, as his wrath burns against him and their sin, as his wrath burns against that sacrifice because of their sin. Chapter 80 speaks of this. It shall come to pass in that day, saith the Lord God, that I will cause the sun to go down at noon, and I will darken the earth in the clear day. and I will turn your feasts into mourning and your songs into lamentation. I will judge these things. Now for those outside of Christ, these things will come in judgment upon them, but for those in Christ, that judgment came upon Him. When the sun went down at noon, and when the earth was darkened in the clear day because at noon God laid upon his son the sins of his people and made him to be sin for them and the light of the sun in this world was taken away because the light of the son of God was obscured by the filth of their corruption which God judged in him. He took it away, justice was exacted. And when he took it away, the light shone again. Oh, the hope that there lies in Christ for his own. Behind all this judgment and anger in this book is this hope, the fact that God for his own laid that judgment upon another. laid it upon Christ who was laid upon the altar for them. In chapter 9 we see, I saw the Lord standing upon the altar, Christ was laid upon the altar for his own, and the fury we see here, The fury we see in these words recorded, the fury of God, the depths of his anger against that sin, and that depth of anger, and that which he poured out upon his son, demonstrates the love he had for his own. The love he had for that bride that went off as an adulteress, with other men, strange men, other nations, other ways. The love he had for that one for whom he must suffer. Do you realise the depths of God's anger against sin? Do you think that God would slay his own son except that his fury against sin is so great that he had to judge it? Oh, the burden! that Christ bore. The burden of sin, the burden of God's wrath against him, the burden he bore. He was a burden bearer indeed. Amos by name was a figure of him. But Christ was the burden bearer for his people. He bore the burden of their sin. He bore the burden of Israel's sin, because he loved Israel. He loved his own. What a burden! What fury was poured out upon him! But what salvation there is in the end. Chapter 9 concludes from verse 11 with this tremendous account of the consequences, the fruit of Christ's death. 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, 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. Behold, the days come, saith the Lord, that the ploughman shall overtake the reaper, and the treader of grapes him that soweth seed, and the mountain shall drop sweet wine, and all the hills shall melt, And I will bring again the captivity of my people of Israel. And they shall build the waste cities and inhabit them. And they shall plant vineyards and drink the wine thereof. They shall also make gardens and eat the fruit of them. And I will plant them upon their land. And they shall no more be pulled up out of their land which I have given them. Sayeth the Lord thy God." Oh, what a hope. And this hope is brought in because Christ died for sinners. Christ died for his own to reconcile them unto God. It's this death which brings these two divided parties together as one. How can two walk together except they be agreed? God agreed his people with himself. They came together. in agreement in Christ at the cross. It's this death which makes peace. It's this death which makes these two walk together, of one mind, of one heart. It's this death, as Ephesians 2 tells us, which united Jews and Gentiles together in Christ. All sinners As Romans 2 tells us, all sinners, all proven to be sinners, but in Christ, all those who were washed in the blood of Christ, in the blood of the Lamb of God, all these of Jews and Gentiles, once divided one from the other, men and women divided one from the other, they're brought together, they walk together, they're agreed, those who were once enemies made one in Christ. made one with each other, and made one with Him. Oh, what a death that can take such a people from the four corners of this world, such enemies, Jews and Gentiles, and make them to be one in Christ, and make them all to be one with God in Christ. Oh what agreement! Are you in that agreement? Do you know that agreement? Has God come unto you in his gospel, you who are so far off, you who were a rebel against God, you who despised him, you who rejected him, you who hated him and his people, you who maybe professed and made a profession when your heart loved this world. Oh, can you speak of hearing that gospel and being brought upon your knees before God to say, yes, Lord, I'm a sinner. Yes, Lord, thou art just to judge me and send me to hell if thou wilt. But oh Lord, I thank and praise you for that blood that washed me clean. I thank and praise Thee for free grace, for the sovereignty of God in choosing me when I chose not Thee. I thank Thee for a free justification, for a death which made me to be the righteousness of God in Christ even though I was utterly unrighteous. I thank Thee for the Spirit of God which entered into me and quickened me unto life. I thank Thee for Thy righteous ways, and I love for Thy people. I thank Thee that it is Thou that buildest Thy church, not me, not man. I thank Thee for that love which was shed upon Thy people, shed abroad in their hearts, placed upon them from before the foundation of this world. I love Thee, Lord. I love Thy ways. I agree with all that Thou hast said. Thou art the way, the truth, and the life. Can you speak of him in that way? Can you speak of his gospel that it's true? Come see a man who told me all things whatsoever I am. Come see a man who knows me inside out. Come see a man who laid down his life for me. It's true he rose again and I rose again in him. It's true he washed my sins away. God said he would. God said he has and now I know it for real for myself. It's true. Can you say it from your heart knowing the reality of it? Can you? For how can two walk together except they be agreed? How can two walk together except they be agreed? Oh, man.