Responding to Divine Threats

After preaching for some time through Amos, and specifically addressing the divine threat at the end of Amos 6 this morning, I found some peace in the following thoughts:

What are we to do with a threat from God, either through His Word or through some providence that seems threatening to us

What did Jesus do? - He faced the threat of God's eternal wrath against us, and took that wrather for our salvation. The right answer for us can not be to simply ignore the passages in the Bible that contain divine threats.

Some simple advice:

1. LOVE the Lord who threatens and do not despise Him.

2. DRAW NEAR to Him through Christ by the means of grace and do not flee from Him.

3. OBEY Him in all things and do not harden your hearts in to rebellious disobedience.

Conclusion: Habakkuk 3:17-19 and Calvin’s prayer (Amos 6)

Calvin: Grant, Almighty God, that since we are extremely deaf to those so many holy warnings by which you continue to recall us to Yourself, and since we ever harden ourselves against those threatenings, by which you terrify us, that You may break or at least correct our hardness, -- O grant, that we may, though late, yet in time, before final vengeance comes, attend to Your Word and submit ourselves to You, and in a teachable spirit take up Your yoke, that You might receive us into favor, and bestow upon us your fatherly kindness, and being at length reconciled to us, You might grant us Your blessings, which You have promised to all Your children, who are the members of Your only begotten Son our Lord. Amen.