Draw the Line

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I'm thankful you're here the very last Sunday of 2025.

If you're here, I told our serve team, that means you could have had perfect attendance.

So there's some people not here today, and you need to tell them next week.

That ruins your perfect attendance.

But uh, we want you to get started next week perfectly into the new year.

And I hope that you had a good week.

I hope that you enjoyed all of the things that Christmas is.

And I know that me and my family uh enjoyed and took it all in.

Um before we get started in the service, I do want to ask you as a matter of prayer to lift up uh Heather Moore, Dale Moore.

Heather lost her mother uh really quickly.

They knew that she had some sickness, but she went into the hospital, she got sent home, and when she got sent home, uh she died in hours of being home.

So it was shocking to say the least.

And uh we would appreciate your prayers for Heather as they walk through this funeral is tomorrow.

And uh, we'll be attending that funeral, but please be in prayer for that family this week.

Draw the line, Amos chapter 7.

Amos 7 · chapter mention

When I was a child in grade school, the teachers uh would tell us, here's a picture, color this picture.

And I always took what they said as a suggestion, keep within the lines.

That was a suggestion, right?

That wasn't a command.

And so I would color, but then one day I had children, we had children, and my kids would come home with a sheet, and they would bring it and look at me, Daddy, look at what I did.

And the sun would be purple, and the grass would be blue, and the people in the picture look like they must have been in a tornado or something.

And I'd look at it and I'd have to say something honest to my children, and I would say, wow, you're creative.

Translation in my mind was they didn't teach you about keeping within the lines, did they?

And so many of you have those.

If you want to see some fun ones, come by my office.

I have some drawings and coloring still.

But I want to talk to you today about drawing that line.

Would you pray with me?

Hallelujah, we thank you, God, for your presence here, week after week, God.

And we are just about to be done with 2025, and God, we thank you for your goodness in this year and your grace.

And as I'm met with almost every week, somebody in this church will say to me, I'm doing better than I deserve.

We're blessed, God.

We're thankful for all of the many decisions, and God, the way that you change lives right here in this building, right here amongst us, right here in many of our hearts.

And God, we just consecrate that and we say one more time together, thank you.

Bless you, God.

Now we ask that you would today just once again fill our hearts, fill our minds, open our hearts to what you have, and God, one more time this year, draw us to your presence.

We ask these things in your holy name.

Amen.

In Amos chapter 7, the first thing that I want you to see this morning, the line is revealed in God's warning.

Amos 7 · chapter mention

Amos 7, we're going to read verses 1 through 6.

Thus the Lord God showed me, behold, he formed locust swarms at the beginning of the late crop.

Indeed, it was the late crop after the king's mowings.

And so it was when they had finished eating the grass of the land, that I said, O Lord God, forgive, I pray.

Oh, that Jacob may stand, for he is small.

So the Lord relented concerning this, it shall not be, said the Lord.

Thus the Lord God showed me, Behold, the Lord God called for conflict by fire, and it consumed the great deep and devoured the territory.

Then I said, Oh Lord God, cease, I pray.

Oh, that Jacob may stand, for he is small.

So the Lord relented concerning this, concerning this, this also shall not be, said the Lord God.

Amos prophesies during Israel's economic peak.

A prophet that comes on the scene when things are wealthy and things are comfortable and things are good, and the warning comes when people are feeling their safest.

Church, there's this illusion that if we are economically rich, then we indeed are rich in always.

And Amos comes on the scene with a warning at this time.

And letter A, the first thing that we see in this vision is the cost of sin.

If you went back through the chapters of Amos leading to this point, Amos is a farmer who comes on the scene, seems a little bit like a reluctant prophet, but willing to stay the truth as he sees it.

And he comes on the scene.

I want you to just track back to Amos chapter two and look at verses two through four.

He begins speaking out against sin.

It says, But I will send a fire upon Moab, and it shall devour the palace of Caryoth.

Moab shall die with tumult, with shouting and trumpet sounding, and I will cut off the judge from its mist and slay all its princes with him, says the Lord.

Thus says the Lord, hear this: for three transgressions of Judah, and for four, I will not turn away its punishment, because they have, here's this, despised the law of the Lord.

What have they done wrong?

And they have not kept his commandments, their lies lead them astray.

And so he calls out these people for the wrong, the sin that's going on in the land.

He says they have hated God's law, they're not keeping God's law.

And he goes on further, if you read all the way through chapter 4, chapter 6, he calls them out for loving comfort and luxury and turning to idols.

Not that those things in themselves, minus the idols, but comfort are wrong, but they're living for it.

It's become their line.

He calls in Amos 4, 4 through 6, you need to read it.

He has scathing sarcasm, and he calls out their feasts, their worship services, and he says, Come to this land where you can transgress.

And he's using sarcasm.

Amos 6, he says, Woe to you for doing these things and then forsaking the needs of people who are needy.

He says, You're living in your comfort, you're forsaking my law, you're forsaking my commandments, you're hating the truth, and so God brings a vision because of this sin to Amos.

The first vision was locusts.

That's weird, right?

Anybody wake up over the Christmas holiday dreaming of locusts?

In Scripture, locusts almost always has to do with catastrophic means of devouring things.

And locust here, because of the pathway it takes towards starvation, is something that would have gotten attention.

And it says, you might miss this, after the king's mow.

That meant it arrived.

Locusts would arrive at the end of spring, rainy season, and it would have been more catastrophic because there would be no grass available for the people to feed their livestock.

It meant the locusts are going to come and there's going to be starvation.

Okay?

So this vision comes to him.

And the picture I want you to see is sin always eats what comes next.

Sin, the Bible even says, is fun for a season, but it says this be sure that your sin will find you out.

We don't get away with living in that wrongness.

The line that you or I draw or flirt with sin and temptation will impact the crop production of your spiritual life.

How's your spiritual life?

The second vision is fire.

Locust and then fire.

I know I'm starting off encouraging this last service of the year.

We'll get somewhere, I promise.

Amos did it, so I'm following his lead.

Fire often represents God's instrument of divine judgment.

The fire that God would use to judge his covenant people.

And it read that it was so strong that it would consume the great deep.

The fire was so strong that it would sop up, it would take up this great deep sea, a fire that would consume all of their land.

It's kind of like uh the imagery or the idea of credit cards, right?

We'll take debt now and we'll pay for it later.

They were gonna live this way now, and we'll just we'll just pay later.

It's okay, we'll just pay later.

We kind of live in that.

Home Depot sends me something every few weeks, and this is the offer that they spend two dollars, stamps, paperwork, color, imagery inside.

I open it up, an envelope, all of this.

Somebody, a machine, something does it.

It sends it to me about every month.

And inside the offer says, you can buy now.

This is a great offer.

The coupon says, buy now and don't pay interest for 12 months.

That's the coupon.

Buy now.

And you know, if I buy now and pay with cash, I actually get the price.

But if I buy now and wait 12 months, I can spend$1,000 and in 12 months 28% interest.

$280, though, charge me for breathing.

Just for breathing.

That is the great coupon that they're sending me.

Buy now, pay later.

Well, Israel was spending and spending, and their credit was coming due.

And you can be promised of this.

You don't get to choose when sin sends its bill.

Sin always costs.

And you know, I've never, never has there been something so sure as a credit card bill.

I've never had a credit card bill once, miss.

They have never missed sending me my bill.

Have they missed sending you one?

I mean, they're so faithful.

Nothing is faithful.

That's the credit card bill.

I want to tell you, sin never misses its bill.

Romans 6 23 says, For the wages of sin is death.

So we see the cost of sin letter B.

We see Amos' place, the cry of the servant.

Look down there at verse 2 and then 5.

He says, Oh Lord God, forgive, I pray.

In verse 2 and then verse 5 again, oh Lord God, cease, I pray.

The cry of a servant.

Amos does not excuse what God has said.

Amos doesn't try to justify or have a conversation.

He admits and then he prays.

He said, Lord God, please relent.

How can Jacob stand?

He is small.

Amos, as a prophet before his people, begged the Lord to cease from that judgment because Israel would not survive.

He uses an adjective here, small, and it might refer to one of two things.

It could refer to Israel's size as compared to Assyria being small, but it could reflect this that all human endeavors compared to an Almighty God are small.

This is a picture we see from this cry and this prayer.

Twice God relents.

God is merciful.

And God gives warning before he judges.

A few months back, many of you might kind of remember seeing James Spann all over your TVs, right in this area.

Why?

It was a warning.

Something was coming.

And as that warning became nearer and nearer, my family started to make preparations.

And I wish I could show you a picture of the family during preparation time.

I would get in trouble.

But we have a concrete closet, and everything was in that closet.

Four of our family, I was just outside the closet keeping guard.

But if you could have seen the scene, we read everything.

We had things in there, Heather had things, blankets and flashlights and batteries, and all was in there.

And then they had helmets.

There's a picture I want you to see of me and my helmet.

Well, I can see it.

Maybe you can.

If you want to turn around to the back, you can see it.

We ran out of helmets.

And so I grabbed the closest pampered chef item.

And I'm walking around the house with a bowl.

But I remember as I'm picturing this tornado as it's coming.

Did we find it?

There it is.

A siren.

Church always comes before a storm.

There's a warning.

And God is telling Amos the prophet, sin has a payment.

You are the prophet to share it.

Now, God, throughout Scripture, hear me.

God is slow to anger.

Aren't you thankful?

Church, he's full of mercy.

Over and over and over and over in Scripture, he relents.

Before God ever draws the sword, he raises up a voice.

And that's what he's doing through Amos.

And I want you, when you think about where we are, where we are as a country, as a church, you need to make 2 Chronicles 7, 14, a verse for memory.

It says, if my people will humble themselves and pray, if they'll turn from their wicked ways, if they will call to me from heaven, I will hear from them and heal their land.

Amos is doing this, but sin has a payment.

Here's the problem.

He says Amos 5, 6, seek the Lord and live.

In Amos 5, 14, seek good and not evil.

The servant is crying out to the people.

But again, sin has a payment.

The locusts and fire shows the cost of crossing God's line.

Amos shows us that judgment is delayed because God's are his ears are open.

God is looking for someone.

You see it all through scripture.

You see it with Abraham and Lot.

You see it when people have cried out and asked God, would you relent?

You see it through Jonah, the reluctant prophet that went to Nineveh in a town that he wouldn't want to go to, but God relented from these people.

He gave a warning through a prophet and then he relented.

Well, the problem here with Amos, look at chapter 6.

I don't know where you are in your walk with him today.

Amos chapter 6.

Amos 6 · chapter mention

Look at verse 6.

He says, Who drink wine from bowls and anoint yourselves with the best ointments, but are not grieved.

Hold that right there.

Verse 8.

And then if you continue on, verse 9.

It says, It shall come to pass that if ten men remain in one house, they shall die.

It goes on and on throughout scripture.

And it talks about through Amos 5 and 6 that night that they would not repent.

They have not returned.

Over and over, he gives them this chance.

He gives them the prophet's word, and they have not returned.

They have not returned.

And I want to tell you, church, today, that sin has a cost to be paid.

And God's ear will be attuned to the cry of mercy.

But he wants his people to return.

There's a point, there's a line, there's a place where sin is going to have its payment.

Second thing I want you to see this morning is this the line that's raised in God's word.

Amos chapter 7, verse 7 and 8.

Amos 7:7

The next vision that Amos has, thus he showed me, Behold, the Lord stood on a wall made with a plumb line.

With a plumb line in his hand.

And the Lord said to me, Amos, what do you see?

And I said, A plumb line.

And the Lord said, Behold, I'm setting a plumb line in the midst of my people, Israel.

I will not pass by them anymore.

Letter A, we see a standard established.

Amos wasn't born a prophet, but a farmer.

And many farmers are pretty handy at building things.

Anybody here grow up doing a little bit of farming?

Good.

When we were in Indiana, we had lots of farmers.

And I learned that farmers are jacks of all trades.

Farmers, you guys that have been involved in that, farmers build things.

They put foundations.

You've probably built sheds.

I didn't know what this was until I moved here to Alabama.

You've built lean twos.

I didn't know what that meant.

I was like, what are you talking about?

Someone said they had a lean to.

I'm like, did they got a bad leg?

What is a lean to?

Right?

You have lean twos in Alabama.

You built things and made additions to houses and raised barns, and farmers have done these things.

Well, like most farmers, Amos knew something about building.

He understood the importance of a level foundation with walls that were plum.

If a building isn't plum, it isn't straight up and down.

Its walls will be weak, and a consequence of that will they begin to buckle and the foundation will fall.

It can't support the weight.

It's not the only place in Scripture you see this.

Isaiah 28, 16 and 17, listen to what it says.

Behold, I'm laying in Zion a stone, a tested stone.

I will make justice the measuring line and righteousness the plumb line.

God Himself in Scripture defines what is level.

He says, truth and justice and righteousness.

These are not ideals that God came up with.

They're based out of God's character.

God can define what is level because to define what is level, what is right, what is truth, you have to find something's inception.

And when you track things back all the way throughout history, the inception of anything is in the beginning God.

So when you get to the origin of truth, the origin of level and right, you find God right there.

And so God, based out of his own character, says, This is my line.

God levels things out of his self.

Humanly, you and I, we struggle with this.

We almost always live slanted in our view.

Why is that?

Because you're you.

And to see things through God's eyes only works one way.

Through his scripture and through the work of the Holy Spirit.

But you will, by and large, for most of your life and me too, live with a slanted view.

Why are you mad at me?

I just need a little bit of mercy.

Why did you do that thing?

You just need a little bit of justice.

And everything is skewed by the slant that is me.

And looking through God's eyes, God looks down at us, and everything is based out of his character.

It's a difficult task we have.

We tested this this morning.

How many of you have a weapon like this that you carry around?

Lots of you?

I mean, this, when my kids get out of line, one of these, I'm telling you what, it works.

I'm just, I'm joking, joking.

Don't call people on me.

Anyone got one of these tools?

What's it called now?

That's a plumb bob.

I tested it this morning.

There was a farmer in the lobby.

And I said, first I said to Heather, you ever seen one of these?

By the way, I don't have one of these at home.

Okay?

And I've never seen one before until I started studying what a plumb line is.

But I asked Mr.

Larry, I said, You know one of these?

He said, That's a plumb bob.

He said, You use that for measuring what is straight.

So, when the Bible talks about this plumb line, we have this picture of something that he showed to Amos that was completely level.

Buildings, hear me, do not decide what is straight, but the line does.

God does not inspect for you and me.

Bible says, 1 Corinthians 6.19, what know ye not that your body is the temple of the Holy Spirit?

If you are a Christian, if you've got Jesus living in your heart, then this is a house of God.

And we're in a worship house of God.

The building does not decide what is the straight line, it is of the character of God that the line is drawn.

So what do we do with that?

Let it be, we see the straight expectation.

Plum, the word plum that we've seen, the Greek word is anak, and it means exactness.

There's no flexibility in a plum line.

Straight is straight.

And so what God has left for you and for me is the word of God.

The basis of all codes is right here.

Right here.

And in the Ten Commandments, God began to teach us how he wants people to respond to himself and half the Ten Commandments.

And in the other half, he teaches people how he wants them to respond to one another.

The Word of God, and we don't have time to look there, even tells us in Romans 1 why people fall away from the Word of God.

They get vile in their intentions and ideas, and they push aside the creator for the creation.

That's what it says.

And they look to the created thing instead of the creator, the one who has the plumb line, the straight line.

We turn away from that and look to everything in society that's crooked for our ideas, for our lines, for how we stand in our life.

Tells us what turns it away.

But I want to tell you today, church, that we don't need a new age hypothesis.

We don't need a new idea to determine what the line is.

God gave us 66 books.

He gave us 1,189 chapters.

He gave you and I a line.

It's this book.

So in order to hold the line, which is the vision of 2026, we first have to have the line drawn.

This book is that line.

And you can see it all through the book.

Let me read you some scripture that goes through every section of the literature of the Bible.

In the law, Deuteronomy 4.40 says, Listen to this, keep his decrees and commands, which I'm giving you, that it may go well with you.

That's what he said in the law.

In the history, Joshua 1.7 says, Only be strong and courageous, that you may observe to do according to all the law which Moses has written.

In the poetry, Proverbs 3, 5 and 6 says, Trust in the Lord with all your heart, lean not into your own understands.

In all thy ways, acknowledge him, and he will make straight your paths.

That straight line in the poetry.

In the prophets, Isaiah 48, 18, he says, Keep my law and you'll have peace that flows like a river.

He says in the Gospels, John 14, 15, if you love me, keep my commandments.

In the epistles, James 1.22 says, Be a doer of the word and not just a hearer only.

In Revelation 14, 12, it says, The endurance of the saint is he who keeps the commands of God.

And I'll sum it up with Solomon, the wisest man next to Jesus who ever lived in Ecclesiastes.

He says, This is the whole duty of man.

Fear God and keep his commandments.

This is the straight line.

Hear me today, church.

The standard does not move to accommodate the house.

God measures by the word of God.

He doesn't adjust the line to fit us, he calls us to align with the word.

How are you doing?

Because Matthew 7 says this: that the rains came and the floods came to the house.

The rains come for the just and the unjust alike, but it was the house that was built on sand that fell.

Hear me.

The rain came for both.

The storms do not determine the collapse of the house.

Misalignment causes the collapse.

A crooked line causes collapse.

You say, Pastor, all let's talk about lines.

Hear me.

You may not live by this line, but you live by a line.

Did you know that today?

You're living by a line.

You might not have decided to read this word five times this year.

That doesn't mean you're not living by a line.

You are living by a line.

How many high school students we got or junior high students?

You know, in your schools, every school has a school code of conduct.

And if you don't live by that line, guess what?

You get in trouble.

How many of you live in a neighborhood?

Oh, yeah.

We got a line called the HOA.

Sometimes I like to call them the letter line.

Okay?

You got an HOA, they'll start making demands and commands and sending out insults.

I mean, it's dirty business, the HOA.

You went outside, you drove today, you saw a speed limit.

Some of you even adhere to it.

There's lines.

There's lines that we live by.

I took, I took a two-hour almost course to be an unpaid assistant soccer coach.

You don't think there's lines in society that I want to be taking that two-hour course?

We have lines everywhere, and you're living by lines.

How many of you got an HR department at work?

I mean, you got entire offices dedicated to living by the line, the codes of conduct.

It's not just there in society.

But listen, as you go back through the ages and generations, here's a few you might not even see, they're still going on today.

People you know may not be living by this line, they're living by a line.

One of them is romanticism.

The line of romanticism says that as long as your feelings are doing okay, whatever feels good, that is best.

That makes emotions God.

It's going on all throughout the ages.

It hadn't passed away because it's not 17th century.

Pragmatism.

Pragmatism says the easiest thing must be the best thing, right?

Whatever's easiest must be best because it's smartest to do what's easiest.

That's why we have the rise, and you're seeing it, of AI and ChatGBT and all these things.

Now, those are tools, right?

But are they the line?

Are they the greatest good?

What is your line?

There's people that live within that.

Existentialism.

Nietzsche said that I am the line.

Me, and I believe atheism kind of, they'll say, you know, they'll use the absolute that there is no God.

It doesn't really matter, but to say there is nothing is an absolute, so you're admitting to at least one absolute, and so there must be something.

And so atheism kind of, I think, flirts with I am the line of morality.

And as you go on, here's a big one for today.

People are living in.

This is this is a mouthful.

Moral therapeutic deism.

What does that even mean?

I'll tell you what it defines.

Today, we're living in this.

And moral therapeutic deism means there is no offense to anyone.

You must avoid all confrontation.

You must have no hate speech.

And hate speech means that you must love and accept all opinions.

That's a line.

It's a line of garbage, church.

There's lines, and every generation seems to borrow recycled lines from secular philosophy year after year, generation after generation.

Church, we live by lines.

Israel didn't stop because it was sinning, living by standards.

The question is not if we are living by a line, but who gets to set the line?

Amaziah was a prophet who came.

And we hear from Amaziah and the verses that will follow.

And we'll see that Amaziah chose culture over covenant.

Israel chose success over submission, but God raised a farmer with a plumb line.

Look at verse 10 through 13.

The line resolution by man's will.

Then Amaziah the priest of Bethel sent to Jeroboam, king of Israel, saying, Amos has conspired against you in the midst of the house of Israel.

The land is not able to bear all of his words.

For thus Amos has said, Jeroboam shall die by the sword, and Israel shall surely be led away captive from their own land.

Then Amaziah said to Amos, Go, you seer, flee to the land of Judah, there eat bread, and there prophesy, but never again prophesy at Bethel.

For it is the king's sanctuary, and it is the royal residence.

Letter A, we see a compromising priest.

It's interesting if you go back in 1 Kings, you see that Jeroboam during this time appoints a priest out of his whim.

Not because he came from a line of priests, not because he had the credentials to be a priest, but he commits Amaziah to become a priest.

Amaziah represents state-supported religion, aligned with the interests of royalty.

He was not fit to be a priest.

They were not of God's order of priests, and this was Amaziah.

He represents compromise.

There are many priests, church, today, so-called prophets, so-called pastors, so-called that have not been called of God.

Recently I saw news of a pastor in New York who before his congregation, this is what he did in a sermon.

It was his coming out.

Before his congregation, he says, I'm not becoming a woman.

I'm giving up pretending to be a man.

Help us.

There's people today that will say, Everyone in the end are all going to be saved.

That's heresy.

There's people today that will get up in a pulpit like this and say, I don't like to say the word hell.

What is their line?

If they don't like to preach God's truth.

Amaziah was a figurehead.

He was a mascot for Jeroboam.

People felt better to have a prophet, so he said, Let's have a prophet, and we'll just make him think like we think and speak like we speak.

So they superimposed a prophet.

And I'm gonna tell you, there's churches across this land today that have superimposed prophets.

I'm not a doom and gloom person about that.

I want to stay focused on what God has me and what God has me to do.

But I want to tell you, there's people out there.

And here's the thing for Israel, as long as wealth was growing, everyone was content.

But when Amos said there is a line, and you've crossed that line, and God is judge.

Amaziah came on the scene and says, We gotta shut that one up.

We don't like this message.

And that may feel uneasy because I this is what I believe.

There's a lot of talk about America today.

And a lot of the talk is this, man, America's in good position because we're gaining wealth.

And because we're gaining wealth, it makes us feel comfortable.

But I want you to know this.

I'm obviously not anti-wealth.

We need finances to do things.

We need people with big jobs and big money, and as a church, it takes wealth.

I'm not anti-wealth, but make no mistake, prosperity is not wealthiness.

Prosperity is godliness, church.

Godliness.

I listen to Dave Ramsay sometimes, not saying all of what he says is dead on, but Dave Ramsey says people buy more than they need, thinking it will bring fulfillment, only to find more stress, more debt, less margin, and less joy.

Amaziah's line was crooked because it was perverted by the idea that as long as we're comfortable, as long as we have wealth and comfort, we're gonna be good.

So this prophecy that all the land is about to be burned up and ate up was really uncomfortable.

And so Amaziah said, don't let him speak another word.

I don't care if it is God's line, we don't want to hear God's line because that makes us, we're gonna have to get up off our recliners.

We might have to get off the hammock tomorrow.

I don't like this line.

Church, hear me.

God is not against prosperity, He just defines it differently than most.

Joshua 1.8 said, day and night.

This book, day and night, then you'll have success, and then your way will be prosperous.

He said, This is the way of prosperity.

It's not this, it's not that, it's this.

But we're living under a mask often that if I have to get uncomfortable, if I have less money than I have right now, if something's different about my life, I've climbed this far and hear me.

I'm not telling you to go throw your notice in.

Work hard, work all the hours you can work.

Be a good steward of what God's given.

Give.

Be a blessing.

But this is the line.

You make sure it runs through this.

Your pros and cons runs through this.

Let him speak.

So that's the compromising priest.

Let her be, let's see, the courageous prophet.

After Amaziah says, Be gone with Amos, verse 14.

Then Amos answered and said to Amaziah, I was no prophet, nor was I a son of a prophet, but I was just a sheep breeder and a tender of a sycamore fruit.

Then the Lord took me as I followed the flock, and the Lord said to me, Go prophesy to my people Israel.

Now, therefore, hear the word of the Lord.

You say, Do not prophesy against Israel, and do not spout against the house of Israel.

Therefore, thus says the Lord, your wife shall be a harlot in the cities, your sons and daughters shall fall by the sword, your land shall be divided by survey line.

You'll die in a defiled land, and Israel shall surely be led away captive from his own land.

Amos says, Man, I didn't even sign up for this gig.

I wasn't born to this gig.

My dad wasn't a pastor or prophet.

I just, God said I had to do this, and you know what?

I believed enough in that God and his voice that I have obeyed.

You know the word Amos, it means burden bearer.

Amos could have chosen to stay home to tend to his trees and care for his sheep.

A simple farmer's life would at the very least have been easier than a prophet who was called to deliver bad news and give warning to a reprobate system and a king who didn't want to hear from him.

But Amos heard from God and he gave the warning, heeding the call from God, even though could have had him put in prison, could have had him killed.

He could have fallen back on his lack of qualifications.

Hear me, church.

Some of you need to hear this today.

Could have looked at his lack of qualifications and said, This is reason enough that I'm not right for the job.

But he strapped on his sandals and he trusted that God would provide his needs and give the words.

Look at it again, verse 15.

The Lord took me as I followed the flock.

And the Lord said to me, Go prophesy to my people Israel.

This was enough for Amos.

God said, So I went.

I wonder if God hadn't said to some people here today, and have you gone?

I just have to believe in a church this size.

God is speaking to some people here today, even the end of the year.

Last time you say, Pastor, come on.

Couldn't you have read a psalm today?

Couldn't we just sing kumbaya?

But there's some people here today, and God has been all on you.

And I just gotta believe, listen, I'm not qualified.

I am not qualified.

Dave Roper's not qualified.

Eli's not qualified.

There's not a person here that's qualified.

God doesn't call the qualified, he qualifies the called.

And that's what he did with Amos.

And he sent Amos, and Amos obeyed.

And I have to wonder if there's some people here today that there's more than whatever secular world is feeding you.

There's more than this climbing outside of God's will for your life.

He's got a plan for you and a call for you.

You may in the new year have a ministry God wants you to start.

You may need to branch out into a different way of ministering.

You may have talents and gifts that have been quietly faded in the background, and God's saying, Why?

Why one more week?

Why one more month?

Why another year when I've given you this?

Amos said, The Lord said, Go.

Here I am.

God wants to use you.

I see Amos, just a good old boy, an old farmer.

They say, I may not know much, but when God speaks, that's when this farmer's gonna go.

What about you, church?

He's a picture of a courageous prophet.

Let me tell you about some lines of some other prophets and good men, heroes of the faith.

Joshua had a line.

You know what his line was?

He said, Fear God or worship idols, but as for me and my house, we are going to serve the Lord.

That's my line.

Do you remember Elijah?

Elijah said, How long will you falter between two gods, either God is God or Baal is God?

Let's call on the one that brings down fire.

And his God threw down fire and he said, That's my line.

That is God.

You remember Daniel twice as a teenager, and then an old man.

Daniel, as a teenager, said, I will not defile myself with the king's meat and his customs.

He resolved in his heart to follow God's word.

And then they said, Let's make anyone who prays to any other God be thrown in the lion's den as an old man.

He said, You're not getting me to stop praying to my God.

That's my line.

I'm gonna pray to my God.

Remember Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego?

They said, Bow, when the music hits, bow to the statue of Nebuchadnezzar.

We're gonna pull off the curtain, bow down, or you will burn.

And they said, Let it be known to you, O King.

Our God can bring us out of the fire that's about to burn, but even if he don't, we're still not gonna burn bow before your statue.

That's my line.

That's their line.

You know what Jesus said to Satan when he was tempted?

He said, Satan, man, shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God.

He said, That's the line.

That's the line, church.

When Heather and I were in Connorsville, Indiana for six Sundays, they asked us to move the youth ministry to where whatever I came up with.

If I wanted to have youth group on Sunday nights, it was six, eight weeks.

We had to move.

So it was, you know, 50, 60 kids sometimes.

I'm like, where are we taking these kids?

I don't want to stop having youth group for two months.

That loses all the momentum.

So I'm like brainstorming.

Well, they had an old, crusty boys and girls club downtown.

This thing was 500 years old, it seemed like creaky, it was loud.

I'm like, I asked the pastor, could we rent the boys and girls club?

And it was, you know, in an old town like that, you'd be surprised like$50 a night.

It was nothing.

And so we took the kids down there.

We I can't remember if we bust them or, but anyway, we took kids down to the boys and girls club.

And youth group was terrible.

It was terrible.

The loud everything that I had wanted to accomplish on normal weeks couldn't be accomplished.

We didn't have worship.

You know, they'd play games, and I kind of orchestrated, you know, it became me watching kids playing games.

And then I tried to preach to them in a loud environment with basketballs, and you know, they wanted to play.

And I'm like, all right, guys, and I knew I had like five minutes.

Five minutes of attention in a building like this.

So we did that.

But why did all that happen?

Well, we started looking at the top of this building, and it was street side, and at the top of the building, the roof and the concrete weren't looking right, things weren't driving, and then there were some cracks coming down, and the concrete got on the wall.

And so the last thing you want to do, but you have to do, this building's over 60 years old.

We called a building inspector to come look at Calvary Baptist Church.

And from the outside, everything looked right.

Paint looked right, the bricks looked right, from the roof, straight roof line, looked solid.

But during one of the inspections, as they looked over all of this, they found out that one of the walls had drifted several inches off.

We were shocked at what we were told.

Nothing to us from the outside looked as bad as what we found out.

The inspector said, what you're looking at is gonna cost$60,000.

And if it's not fixed, this building, these walls will not be able to withstand the pressure.

The wall's gonna fall, and the building will begin to fall with it.

He said, You have to be willing.

He said, We can fix it, but you gotta be willing to open up the walls.

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