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THE LION HATH ROARED “Hear this word that the LORD hath spoken against you, O children of Israel, against the whole family which I brought up from the land of Egypt, saying, You only have I known of all the families of the earth: therefore I will punish you for all your iniquities. Can two walk together, except they be agreed? Will a lion roar in the forest, when he hath no prey? will a young lion cry out of his den, if he have taken nothing? Can a bird fall in a snare upon the earth, where no gin is for him? shall one take up a snare from the earth, and have taken nothing at all? Shall a trumpet be blown in the city, and the people not be afraid? shall there be evil in a city, and the LORD hath not done it? Surely the Lord GOD will do nothing, but he revealeth his secret unto his servants the prophets. The lion hath roared, who will not fear? the Lord GOD hath spoken, who can but prophesy?” (Amos 3:1-8)Our text likens God to a roaring lion and says, “The lion hath roared, who will not fear?” The implied answer is that God has been speaking very loudly and that no one should be ignorant of His existence, His presence, or His will. He’s called the Lion of the Tribe of Judah in Revelation 5:5, and God says in Jeremiah 25:30 that “. . . The LORD shall roar from on high, and utter his voice from his holy habitation; he shall mightily roar upon his habitation; he shall give a shout, as they that tread the grapes, against all the inhabitants of the earth.”When this happens, it certainly won’t be the first time that God has roared. He has been roaring from the very beginning, if only men would listen and take heed. But they prefer the evil and deceptive roarings of the other lion instead, the devil himself who, according to I Peter 5:8, walks about as a roaring lion, seeking whom he may devour.But God doesn’t lie and deceive when He roars. He declares truth loud and clear for all of creation, and He has been doing it from the beginning of time. For all who will listen, God has spoken. The Lion hath roared and made His will and His words known . . .I. THE LION ROARED THROUGH NATURELong before God inspired the first page of Scripture, He spoke to man though nature. He revealed His power and glory in the heavens. Psalm 19:1 says, “The heavens declare the glory of God; and the firmament sheweth his handywork.” The next five verses go on to say, “Day unto day uttereth speech, and night unto night sheweth knowledge. There is no speech nor language, where their voice is not heard. Their line is gone out through all the earth, and their words to the end of the world. In them hath he set a tabernacle for the sun, Which is as a bridegroom coming out of his chamber, and rejoiceth as a strong man to run a race. His going forth is from the end of the heaven, and his circuit unto the ends of it: and there is nothing hid from the heat thereof.”“Day unto day” and “night unto night” God is continually speaking and revealing Himself to His creation, if only people would listen. The sun comes up like clockwork every morning and sets every night to remind us of God’s superiority over us and His faithfulness to us, and it has three kinds of rays, because God is a Trinity. The sun goes away at night, but then it’s always present and on time every morning, and it’s red both times, because there was bloodshed before Jesus went away, and there will be bloodshed when He returns.Then, instead of leaving man in the darkness of night, the moon, the “faithful witness” of Psalm 89:37, makes its nightly appearance to the world by reflecting to it the light of the sun, just as the church reflects the light of Jesus Christ. Then the stars, all of which differ one from another in glory (I Cor. 15:41), make their nightly showing as they keep their places and obey the astronomical order under which God has placed them, each one being named by God (Psa. 147:4), just as Jesus knows His sheep and calls them by name (John 10:3). Even the zodiac, from Virgo the Virgin to Leo the Lion, continually echoes incredible truths about God and His amazing story of redemption. Nature declares the glory of God in the heavens, and that has been the case since the beginning of time.Almost all of us have cut ourselves at times and have witnessed redness and swelling around the cut and pus issuing from the cut, yet do we have any idea what is happening? Millions of white blood cells just received notice that the body is under attack, so they rushed like an army to fight off infection and give their lives for the good health of the body. Likewise, Jesus Christ, though pure and white as snow, gave Himself to fight off the infection of sin and make us whole again. That’s God speaking through nature, through your own body. The Lion is roaring, if only people will slow down and listen.It is presently early September, so over the next couple months we will see the leaves changing colors and then falling to the ground. The weather will become cold, the grass will stop growing, and the gray gloom of a cold winter will replace the pleasant and colorful days of fall. Then, to remind us of His goodness and mercy, God will bless us with another spring, complete with warm days, greenery everywhere, refreshing showers, flowers and singing birds. Once again, we will get to plant our gardens and crops and see life spring forth from the ground just as it has since the garden of Eden. God is telling us that He is FAITHFUL, my friend! Winter never lasts forever, and the troubles of this life won’t last forever! “. . . weeping may endure for a night, but joy cometh in the morning.” (Psa. 30:5) That’s why we don’t worry about Covid-19, the New World Order, 666 biochips, or Democrat socialists wrecking the country. We have a BETTER country, a whole new age and a whole new eternity where righteousness will flourish and blessings will abound! God reminds us of this every time the sun comes up, every time the grass turns green, every time a flower blooms and every time baby birds chirp from their nest in the spring. Nature is speaking and the Lion is roaring! Is anyone listening? God is speaking, and the Lion hath roared through the words of nature.II. THE LION ROARED THROUGH SCRIPTUREAfter about 2,300 years of human history and experience, God decided to give man written Scripture. First came the book of Job, then came Genesis through Deuteronomy, commonly known as a law of Moses. Over the next thousand years, man received the completion of thirty-nine books of inspired Scripture, and within another five hundred years the entire canon of Scripture was complete. By AD 400, the Holy Spirit had borne witness to 66 selected books that were to make up the complete revelation of God’s written word to man. God had spoken. The Lion had roared once again.And, boy did He roar! It is certainly no coincidence that the final written revelation of Scripture would end up in a volume known as the KING James Bible. After all, what else COULD you call the Book of all books that contains the words of THE roaring Lion, the KING OF KINGS from on high (Jer. 25:30)? He spoke to us in a Book, and it is, indeed, the KING of all books.It is tragically sad that so many Christians never really learn the Book. In most Christian homes and churches, the word of God is spiritualized and devotionalized to the point that the Bible is little more than a religious feel-good book. They have no idea that the Bible reveals God’s spoken will concerning not only salvation and spiritual issues, but also His will concerning finances, moral behavior, dating, marriage, training up children, divorce, racial issues, health, science, psychiatry, psychology, sociology, medicine, oceanography, government, criminal justice, world peace, the 21st century, the Mideast, the Arab nations, China, Russia, Turkey, the European Union, the Vatican, the next world war and the inevitable nuclear war (just to mention a few). The Book is absolutely LOADED with crucial information, and people ignore it at their own peril.Modern medicine now understands the health benefits of male circumcision, yet God commanded circumcision some 3,500 years ago. He also commanded running water for proper hygiene, but the bath houses of the Dark Ages spread more germs than they washed away, causing much sickness and death. The “scientific” world of the past thought the earth was flat, but the Book has told them differently since 700 BC. Many also thought that the earth was hanging in space on a large rope or chain, or perhaps resting on the back of a large elephant or turtle, but the oldest book in the Bible told them differently. The Book even hints of such modern advancements as automobiles, aircraft, television and computer chips, but who cares? It tells us what the future holds, but world leaders press right on into catastrophe, as if there is no God telling us anything at all. A lion can roar in the jungle and capture the respect of every human and animal within its hearing. Yet, God roars from on high and gets ignored!III. THE LION ROARED THROUGH INCARNATIONSince God is a Trinity and He likes two or THREE witnesses and a strong THREEfold cord (Ecc. 4:12), He chose not only to show up in nature and in Scripture, but also in literal flesh on this earth. When the wise men came from the east looking for Jesus, they knew exactly what to say: “Where is he that is born KING of the Jews?” (emphasis added) The Lion had roared again, literally IN THE FLESH.Never had it happened before and never would it happen again, but God Himself was born in the flesh, lived thirty-three years in the flesh, and then died and rose again in the flesh for the sin of the world! That’s quite an undertaking! For anyone to attempt to make any comparison of true Christianity to any other religious system in existence is just ludicrous. Every religious founder to ever live is now DEAD, except for one. Why in the world would you follow anyone who is now dead and probably in hell? If I’m headed to a grave, I want to follow someone who has the power to raise me up out of it someday! Amen? I’m with Job, who said, “For I know that my redeemer liveth, and that he shall stand at the latter day upon the earth: And though after my skin worms destroy this body, yet in my flesh shall I see God.” (Job 19:25-26) A dead redeemer can’t help anyone! We need a LIVING redeemer, and that’s why God came down and took care the job Himself.Look at John chapter one, verse one: “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.” Alright, the Word was God. That’s not the written word, but rather the INCARNATE Word. God calls Himself the Word because that how people communicate. Animals don’t use words, but people do, so God calls Himself the Word because He came into this world to communicate to man the good news that He would die and rise again to settle the sin issue. Jesus Christ is the Word. He is what God has to say to humanity. In fact, Jesus Himself said, “I am Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the ending . . .” (Rev. 1:8) The beginning and ending of WHAT? He’s referring to the Greek alphabet, the beginning and ending letters. He’s saying that HE is God incarnate, God in the flesh, and that He encompasses everything that God needs to communicate to man, from A to Z. No other man could possibly make such a claim without being stark raving mad. Yet, that’s exactly what Jesus claimed, and that’s exactly the truth. John 1:1 says that He was the Word.Now, drop down to verse fourteen: “And the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us, (and we beheld his glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father,) full of grace and truth.” That’s the incarnation. That’s what Paul talked about in I Timothy 3:16 when he said that “God was manifest in the flesh,” and that’s the verse that all the new Bible perversions change. The Lion roared, but folks didn’t like what they heard.Jesus lived a sinless life as God manifest in the flesh, and then He laid down that life for the sin of the world. Then, on the third day, He took it up again! He said, “Therefore doth my Father love me, because I lay down my life, that I might take it again. No man taketh it from me, but I lay it down of myself. I have power to lay it down, and I have power to take it again. This commandment have I received of my Father.” (John 10:17-18) WOW! Let those words sink in! “I have power to lay it down, and I have power to take it again.” There’s that Lion roaring again! Is anyone listening? No other human being has ever been able to say that! Yet, when God showed up in the flesh, HE SAID IT! Then He DID it! If you have any sense, you’ll put your trust in Him. You sure aren’t going to find a better deal.People like to kid themselves and pretend that Christianity is just about going to this or that church and signing on to this or that belief system. No, that’s only something that comes later. True Christianity, at its core, is when a sinner acknowledges that Jesus Christ has paid for his sins and is his only hope for salvation. It’s not about where you go or what you know. It’s WHO you know, and if you don’t know Jesus Christ, then you’re like a man lost in the jungle who ignores the loud roaring of a vicious lion.God has made His presence and His will known, and He has done it so strongly and loudly that the whole world will be silenced and without excuse in the day of judgment (Rom. 3:19). The Lion hath roared. He roared in nature, He roared on the pages of Scripture, and He roared in the person of Jesus Christ for thirty-three years in the flesh. He even roared up from the grave when they tried to get rid of Him! You CAN’T get rid of Him! You can face Him now through faith and receive Him as your Saviour or you can face him as a lost sinner without excuse in the day of judgment.“The lion hath roared, who will not fear?” (Amos 3:8)