Do you want to go to heaven?

Are you ready to face the Lord Jesus Christ?

Dear reader, the lives which we live down here are to be tested, and it is pious nonsense to pretend to be so interested in the coming of Christ when the truth is that some of us will get to heaven and think that we did not miss the Great Tribulation.

Notice what the apostle Paul went on to say after speaking of our judgment at the bema of Christ:

"Knowing therefore the terror of the Lord, we persuade men …" (2 Corinthians 5:11).

Our lives, the way we conduct ourselves in business, in the work place in the neighborhood, in the church and in our homes is what is to be tested. The way we treat our families is our witness for Christ in this world. Our social life, our conduct with the opposite sex, are the things which are going to come before the judgment seat of Christ - it will be for the things we did in our bodies (2 Cor. 5:10).

We are told to glorify God in our bodies. 

"For ye are bought with a price: therefore glorify God in your body, and in your spirit, which are God’s" (1 Cor. 6:20). 

"According to my earnest expectation and my hope, that in nothing I shall be ashamed, but that with all boldness, as always, so now also Christ shall be magnified in my body, whether it be by life, or by death" (Phil. 1:20). 

"Always bearing about in the body the dying of the Lord Jesus, that the life also of Jesus might be made manifest in our body" (2 Cor. 4:10).

By an act of the will we place our total personalities at the disposal of God.

This is our "reasonable service," our rational service, and it is well-pleasing to God.

Do you really want to go to heaven, now?

Do you really have everything, straightened out?

Apostle Paul writes,

"For if we would judge ourselves, we should not be judged" (1 Corinthians 11:31).

This is the reason I strive to keep everything confessed to the Lord.

I want to run short accounts with Him every day.

If I do not.

He will one day straighten them all out.

When I lose my temper or give a poor witness. Gossip  -  surmise something about another believer or  demeaned their character or criticize their God-given personality  -    I  CANNOT SLEEP.

I do praise our Lord for this as His Holy Spirit in me brings to mind all the wrong things I do  -   that have not been made right immediately  -   when I lay down to go to sleep at night.

I know for sure that all the things I refuse to handle, do not repent of, or acknowledge the truth about, because I simply  cannot face the truth here upon this earth, I will have to face them in His Presence one day because He has said that He will bring everything concerning my life, after I was born-again, up for judgment to see if I will gain a reward or not.

All things must be made right in heaven, and that is the purpose of the judgment seat of Christ.

The prophet Amos really put it on the line for the people of his day

He told them,

"Cut out this nonsense that you desire the Day of the Lord. It is not a day of light but of darkness. There will be a Great Tribulation that you will go through."

Believers  do not go through the Great Tribulation but they will still go before the judgment seat (Bema) of Christ.

I do not think that it is going to be as pleasant as many people think it is going to be.

"As if a man did flee from a lion, and a bear met him; or went into the house, and leaned his hand on the wall, and a serpent bit him" (Amos 5:19).

Amos is one of the most dramatic preachers that we find in Scripture. He uses such figurative language. He uses the idiom of the earth and draws his illustrations from nature. Here he describes a man who is out in the woods, and suddenly there is a lion on the trail in back of him. As he runs away from the lion, he sees a bear coming toward him.

In other words,

if you say you want the Lord to come so that you can get out of your troubles down here, it may be like jumping out of the frying pan into the fire.

Seeing the bear coming toward him, the man takes off over the hill and reaches his home. He puts his hand upon the wall to rest and get his breath, only to have a serpent come out of the wall and zap him. It might have been better if the lion or the bear had gotten him than to have the poison of a serpent in him!

Amos is saying that we had better be very careful about the life we are living for God down here upon this earth.

As believers, our salvation is not in jeopardy  - 

Christ has paid the penalty for our sins,

but if our sins as believers are not dealt with and made right, He will make them right.

God is omniscient, knowing our thoughts afar off. And He is omnipresent  -  He 

"treadeth upon the high places of the earth." 

No matter where we go, even to the moon, we will not be able to get away from Him. 

Perhaps you have been able to keep up a pretty good front so that your friends and neighbors (and maybe even your spouse) think you are a fine person but in your own heart you know that you are living in denial in the land of PRETENCE.

But in heaven, the psalmist says, 

"Thou hast set our iniquities before Thee, our secret sins in the light of Thy countenance" (Psalm 90:8).

\God knows each one of us.

There is just no use trying to keep up a front. 

God knows all our transgressions. 

Dr. Louis Sperry Chafer used to say, secret sin on earth is open scandal in heaven. 

God not only knows us through and through, He also knew personally the people to whom Amos was speaking. 

With intensity of feeling Amos urged them,

"Prepare to meet thy God, 

This is a message to every individual even today.

Our God is holy, He is righteous and He is just, and heaven is a place where all things are right.

God makes all things right according to the truth.

Therefore, we will have to be right when we get there.

This is something that a great many people do not want to accept.

They refuse to hear the Word of God.

"Shall not the day of the Lord be darkness, and not light? even very dark, and no brightness in it? (Amos 5:20).

"The Day of the Lord" begins with a period of judgment that is yet to come upon the nation of Israel. There is more than a period of judgment that is included in the Day of the Lord, however. The Day of the Lord also includes the 2nd coming of Christ to the earth and the time of the millennial kingdom here upon earth.

God says,

"I hate, I despise your feast days, and I will not smell in your solemn assemblies. Though ye offer me burnt offerings and your meat offerings, I will not accept them: neither will I regard the peace offerings of your fat beasts. Take thou away from Me the noise of thy songs; for I will not hear the melody of thy viols" (Amos 5:21–23).

Behind their going through the rituals were lives that were dishonest.

God’s people are to realize that their faith must be real.

Faith is not fake or fable; it is reality.

Faith must lay hold of a Person.

The Person of the Lord Jesus Christ.

Suppose at this very moment you went into the Presence of God  -  perhaps both you and I will be going there shortly. Suppose this life is past. The things that were so important to us down here will have no importance any more, I can assure you of that. Life on earth is over, we're done and we are ushered into God’s Presence. 

How are we going to stand before Him? 

We have nothing to offer to God  -    we are bankrupt.

We were dead in trespasses and sins. 

The only way we can stand before God is in Christ. He

"was delivered for our offences, and was raised again for our justification" (Romans 4:25).

that you and I might stand before Him justified. 

We stand before God in the righteousness of Christ.

Have you accepted Christ as your personal Saviour?

"Jesus answered and said unto them, This is the work of God, that ye believe on Him whom He hath sent" (John 6:29).

Believing is not deceiving.

Many people say,

"If you believe, it is because you are blind.

You have a blind faith."

May I say dear reader that if you have a blind faith, forget it, because God does not accept that.

Faith must have an effect upon the life;

James says,

 "… faith without works is dead" (James 2:20).

The apostle Paul said that we have been saved in order that we might produce good works.

All of this is very important.

The people of Israel were living lives of sin.

They were engaged in idolatry; yet they were going through all the Mosaic ritual.

God says here,

"I despise it. I have no use for it."

In some of our song services which we consider to be so enthusiastic, if the hearts of the people are not in it, if there is nothing but a big mouth in it,

do you think God accepts that?

If He came to your church or my church, what do you think His viewpoint would be?

"But let judgment run down as waters, and righteousness as a mighty stream. Have ye offered unto Me sacrifices and offerings in the wilderness forty years, O house of Israel? But ye have borne the tabernacle of your Moloch and Chiun your images, the star of your god, which ye made to yourselves (Amos 5:24–26).

The people of Israel offered sacrifices in the wilderness, but when they met a heathen people, they wanted to take on the worship of their gods as well. The worship of Moloch was that in which small children were put into the arms of a red-hot idol and made human sacrifices.

The screams of those children were terrible.

God heard them.

God is saying to us, today

"You come to church on Sunday and you go through the motions of worshiping Me, but during the week you worship Moloch, you worship the idol of covetousness."

Are you willing to make Him the Lord of your life? 

My dear reader, the Lord Jesus Christ must be the Lord of your mind, the Lord of your heart, and the Lord of your will. 

If He is not the Lord of all, then He cannot be the Lord of your life.

The Lord Jesus is the One who died on the cross and rose again from the dead.

He is the eternal God, our Savior.

O what a wonderful, wonderful day—
Day I will never forget;
After I'd wandered in darkness away,
Jesus my Saviour I met.
O what a tender, compassionate friend—
He met the need of my heart;
Shadows dispelling, with joy I am telling,
He made all the darkness depart.

Refrain:
Heaven came down and glory filled my soul,
When at the cross the Saviour made me whole;
My sins were washed away, and my night was turned to day—
Heaven came down and glory filled my soul.

Born of the Spirit with life from above
Into God's family divine,
Justified fully thro' Calvary's love,
O what a standing is mine!
And the transaction so quickly was made,
When as a sinner I came,
Took of the offer of grace He did proffer—
He saved me, O praise His dear Name!

Now I've a hope that will surely endure
After the passing of time;
I have a future in heaven for sure,
There in those mansions sublime.
And it's because of that wonderful day,
When at the cross I believed;
Riches eternal and blessings supernal
From His precious hand I receive.

Author:     John W. Peterson.

Musician: John W. Peterson.

Thanks:    SermonAudio.com

Amen! 

Home.         To read other  pages.