Messages from Heaven Part 1, Tuesday

0:00Hey kids, welcome to Junior's for Jesus. Go grab your Bibles, we're gonna be digging in and learning some really exciting stories. Let's get started. We're in a section this week entitled Messages from Heaven. Our memory verse is from Amos, chapter three, verse seven. Surely the Lord God does nothing unless He reveals His secret to His servants, the prophets. That's Amos, chapter three, verse seven. Tuesday, Amos was a humble worker who took care of sheep and picked a sickamor fruit. He wasn't trained in the schools to be a prophet, but he had an unusual understanding of what God wanted to do for and through His people. And he could talk about it with clear and simple, yet forceful words. Of the people in Judah, he wrote, they have despised the law of the Lord and have not kept His commandments. Amos, chapter two, verse four.

1:00And to the people in Israel, he quoted God as saying, I raised up some of your sons as prophets and some of your men as Nazerites, but you gave the Nazerites wine to drink and commanded the prophets saying, do not prophesy, verses 11 and 12. God raised up a prophet for His people in these last days too. Amos wrote, surely the Lord God does nothing unless He reveals His secrets to His servants, the prophets, Amos, chapter three, verse seven. And He has done that through Ellen White, His prophet for our time, especially in the book The Great Controversy. God has told us many of His plans so we can understand what He is doing and not be surprised by what happens in the future. Because the people of Israel wouldn't listen to their prophets, God tried to wake them up so that they would listen. So how did He do that? Amos, chapter four, verses six through 12.

2:01Also, I gave you cleanness of teeth in all your cities and lack of bread in all your places. Yet you have not returned to me, says the Lord. I also withheld rain from you when there was still three months to the harvest. I made it rain on one city. I withheld rain from another city. One part was rained on and where it did not rain the part withered. So two or three cities wandered to another city to drink water, but they were not satisfied. Yet you have not returned to me, says the Lord. I blasted you with blight and mildew when your gardens increased, your vineyards, your fig trees and your olive trees, the locust devoured them. Yet you have not returned to me, says the Lord. I sent among you a plague after the manner of Egypt. Your young men, I killed with a sword along with your captive horses. I made the stench of your camps come up into your nostrils

3:03and yet you have not returned to me, says the Lord. I overthrew some of you as God overthrew Sodom and Gomorrah and you were like a firebrand plucked from the burning. Yet you have not returned to me, says the Lord. Therefore, thus will I do to you, O Israel, because I will do this to you. Prepare to meet your God, O Israel. God tried every way, didn't he? God tried every way, didn't he? Yet you have not returned to me, God said to Israel five times in those verses. He urged, seek me and live, aim as five four, but they refused. How he loved them and wanted them to love him and to make good choices. But finally, he had to say the end has come upon my people, Israel. Amos chapter eight verse two. And in the final day of the Lord, it will be too late to seek him. Lost people will seek even one word of hope from him,

4:04but shall not find it. Amos eight, eleven and twelve. The whole the days are coming, says the Lord God, that I will send a famine on the land. Not a famine of bread, nor a thirst for water, but of hearing the words of the Lord. They shall wander from seed to seed and from north to east. They shall run to and fro, seeking the word of the Lord, but shall not find it. God asked the Israelites, can two walk together unless they are agreed? Amos three three. How could he walk with them when their rejection of his prophets took them in the opposite direction? Now, let's apply it. Are your thoughts about God's prophets taking you his way or the opposite way? This podcast is sponsored by MyBibleFirst.org. Visit us for other great resources for children, youth and adults.