“Prepare to meet thy God!” (Amos 4:12). These words may have sounded through the green alleys of Paradise, and have caused no discord there, for the crown of Paradise was the presence of the Lord God. But they have not always that sweet ring. They are words of caution to the vast majority of men.
“Prepare to meet thy God!” You have seen others die; you have had sicknesses in your own body; you have already passed through many perils. What are all these but voices from the God of mercy, saying, “Consider your ways?” You are not such a simpleton as to think that you shall never die. Neither are you so insane as to think that when you die, your death will be that of a horse or a dog. You know there is a hereafter, and a state of being in which men shall be judged according to the deeds that they have done in the body.
“Prepare to meet thy God!” That summons will come to each, and when it comes it will mean that at such a time, and such an hour, and at such a moment, the spirit must return to God who gave it. You must assuredly meet your Creator, whose rights you have ignored; your Preserver, to whom you have rendered no kind of recompense; your King, whose Name, it may be, you have blasphemed. You have lived in open revolt against His righteous laws, but you will certainly meet Him. No exemption will be possible. Prepared, or unprepared, at the sound of the resurrection trumpet you must appear at His bar.
“Prepare to meet thy God!” It will be an inevitable meeting. From your fellow creature whom you do not wish to see, you readily withdraw yourself, but you cannot escape from God. You must meet face to face your God. What if there be angels, what if there be ten thousand times ten thousands of your kindred sinners? Yet to you, virtually, it shall be solitude itself. You must meet your God, you, YOU!
How can a man be prepared to meet God? We are, today, like prisoners who are waiting for the trial, and the news has come that the Judge is ready, and we, the prisoners, are to prepare to meet Him. Now, what is the right way to prepare to meet a judge? If any of you can plead “Not guilty,” your preparation is made; but there is not one man who dares think of that. We have sinned, great God, and we confess the sin. What preparation, then, can we make? Suppose we sit down and investigate our case. Can we plead extenuations? Can we urge excuses or mitigations, or hope to escape by promises of future improvement? Let us give up the attempt. We have gone astray willfully and wickedly, and it is of no use for us to set up any kind of defense that is grounded upon ourselves.
How, then, can we be prepared to meet our God? Hearken! There is an Advocate. “If any man sin, we have an Advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous” (1 John 2:1). Let us send for Him. We, poor prisoners, lying waiting in the cells, send for Jesus the Son of God to be our Intercessor and Advocate! Will He undertake our cause? Yes, He will accept the office; for He has said, “Him that cometh to Me I will in no wise cast out” (John 6:37). And what doth He plead? Here is His argument: “My Father,” saith He, “I stood of old in the room, place and stead of these who have committed their case to My hands, and who plead guilty at Thy judgment seat. I suffered for their sins. I bore that they might never bear Thy righteous wrath. I satisfied Thy law on their behalf. I claim, My Father, that they go free.” The infinite Majesty admits the plea. If your case is in the hands of Christ, and you confess your guilt, do you not see how He sets you free so that you may be prepared to meet your God? Because you can plead the blood of Jesus, the atonement of the great Substitute for sinners, and covered with that substitution you can stand accepted in the Beloved. You are justified by faith which is in Him, all your iniquities being blotted out.
Oh, see ye not what it is to be prepared to meet God! For now we have a good case, now we are not afraid of the last trials. Our case is in the hands of a blessed Advocate, whose pleading must prevail. All that you and I have to do now is to prove by our actions that we really have believed in Christ. Let us go on to justify our faith, if indeed our faith has justified us. Let us prove the sincerity of our confidence in Christ by the holiness of our lives, by the devotedness of those lives to His honor and glory.
—C. H. SPURGEON