From His Heart

Speaker 1

After today's broadcast, you should consider yourself warned. Warned about what? Here's Pastor Jeff Shreve.

Speaker 2

Nobody gets upset at warning signs because we know warning signs. They're not there to harm us. They're there to protect us from harm, from some kind of danger, maybe even from death.

Well, did you know that God gives many, many warnings in His Word? Warnings not to harm us, but to help us. Warnings to let us know that if you keep doing this, going in this direction, there are going to be consequences.

And so God has warnings in His Word. Warnings to say, hey, I love you. I don't want you to hurt yourself. Walk in this way.

Speaker 3

He can heal every scar with real truth, real love.

Speaker 1

Warning signs are important. They're given to protect us from harm and danger or possible death. Did you know that God gives many warnings in His Word? Warnings that many people disregard in favor of their own pleasures that are contrary to God's will.

This is from his heart with Pastor Jeff Shreve. Thank you for joining us today as he shares the warnings our loving Father gives to keep us from temporary disaster and eternal destruction. The message today is from Pastor Jeff's nine lesson series, "Life is Hard, but God is Good."

This series is also our special thank you gift for your support this month. You can find out more about that when you go to promisheart.org.

Now, though, open your Bible to the 81st Psalm. Here's Pastor Jeff to begin the lesson entitled "Consider Yourself Warned."

Speaker 2

Warning signs are something all of us are familiar with. When you drive in a car, you see warning signs. When you walk into buildings, you often have signs up. Warning signs. Warning signs are there to help us. They're there to protect us from potential danger, from potential harm. Nobody gets upset at warning signs because we know warning signs. They're not there to harm us. They're there to protect us from harm, from some kind of danger, maybe even from death.

Well, did you know that God gives many, many warnings in His Word? Warnings not to harm us, but to help us. Warnings to let us know that if you keep doing this, going in this direction, there are going to be consequences and proceed at your own peril. Because as it says in Galatians, chapter 6, do not be deceived. God is not mocked. For whatever a man sows, this he will also reap. And so God has warnings in His Word. Warnings to say, "Hey, I love you. I don't want you to hurt yourself. Walk in this way."

Well, in our series on the Book of Psalms, "Life is Hard, but God is Good," today we want to look at Psalm 81. Psalm 81 is a Psalm of Asaph, one of the priests. It's a psalm that is kind of interesting because it starts out with a festive celebration and then it changes gears to a solemn warning. God is warning His Old Testament people, but He's also warning us today, His New Testament people.

You might be somebody who has blown off God's warning signs. You're walking in a direction you know God doesn't want you to go. You're living with your boyfriend or girlfriend, you're participating in particular sins, and you're letting those sins be a part of your life. You know it's wrong, and yet you still do it. God wants to speak to your heart today because He loves you and He wants to give you yet another warning.

So this is how the psalm begins. Psalm 81: "Sing for joy to God, our strength. Shout joyfully to the God of Jacob. Raise a song, strike the timbrel, the sweet-sounding lyre with the harp. Blow the trumpet at the new moon, at the full moon on our feast day." We're not sure what feast this is, but it's one of the feasts that God's people celebrated that they were commanded to celebrate. It's very celebratory.

It says in verse four, "For it is a statute for Israel, an ordinance of the God of Jacob." They were supposed to do that. Now He established it for a testimony in Joseph. When He mentions Joseph, He's talking about Egypt. Joseph is connected to Egypt. "When he went through the land of Egypt, I heard a language that I did not know." God says, "I relieved his shoulder of the burden. His hands were freed from the basket," the shoulder of the burden of making bricks for Pharaoh's building projects.

He said, "You called in trouble and I rescued you. I answered you in the hiding place of thunder." There was thunder on Mount Sinai when God answered His people. He said, "I proved you or tested you at the waters of Meribah." That's where they complained and said, "We have no water to drink." And God brought forth water from the rock.

Then He says this in verse eight: "Hear, O my people, and I will admonish you. I will sternly warn you, O Israel, if you would listen to me." God's word to His people. God's word to you and me. Today I want you to notice from Psalm 81 three admonitions, three stern warnings from the Lord.

**Admonition number one:** The Lord is to be the one you listen to and obey. The one you listen to and obey. Now, in this passage, there's a Hebrew word used four different times. It's translated here. It's also translated "listen." It's the Hebrew word, very popular and very well-known, "shema." The Jews talk about reciting the Shema from Deuteronomy, chapter 6. "Hear, O Israel." "Shema" means "hear." "Hear, O Israel. The Lord is our God, the Lord is one, and you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, all your soul, and all your might." They would recite that every day. A good, faithful Jew would do that, called the Shema, because the first word is "hear."

Well, God is saying in verse eight, "Hear, Shema, O my people, and I will admonish you, O Israel, if you would Shema to me, listen to me." That word means to listen attentively and obediently. Now they were supposed to listen to what verse 9 says: "Let there be no strange God among you, nor shall you worship any foreign God. I, the Lord, am your God, who brought you up from the land of Egypt. Open your mouth wide and I will fill it."

Hey, the Lord. This is stern warning number one. God is saying, "Hey, I am the Lord. I am to be the one that you listen to and obey." Now He gives three reasons why. First of all, He is the true God. Why do I listen to God? Why don't I follow some strange God, some foreign God? Because He is the true God. He says in Isaiah 46:9, "Remember the former things long past, for I am God and there is no other. I am God and there is no one like me."

Now, when God delivered His people from Egypt and they came into the promised land, one of the things that God told them is to drive out all the inhabitants of this land. Don't make friends with the inhabitants of the land. The Canaanites and the Jebusites and the Hivites and the Hittites and the Amorites and all the other "ites." Don't hang out with the "ites." Why? Because the "ites" worship a false God, and they have their particular gods.

You find in the Old Testament there's kind of a catch-all phrase for those gods. It's "Baal." They worship Baal, and Baal is a fertility God. Baal has a female consort, the Asherah, and they would have these symbols of Baal with his Asherah. It's a fertility cult. And how do you worship in a fertility cult? It's very sensual and it's very sexual. God knew, "Hey, my people, their flesh is going to go after that when they see those kinds of 'quote unquote' worship activities taking place, and they're going to be drawn to that."

I mean, in Paul's day in Corinth, you had the Acro Corinthus, the very top of the mountain, and the temple of Aphrodite was up there. I've been to Corinth a couple of different times. We've never gone up to the very top. But up there, they had a thousand temple prostitutes for the temple of Aphrodite. If you said you went up to worship, what did that mean? That means you went up to the mountain and had sex with a prostitute. That's how you worshiped. Attendance was good at the temple of Aphrodite because, you know, it appeals to the flesh.

And so God says, "Hey, when you go to the land, drive out all those people, because if you don't, then you're going to get polluted with their false gods." We find in 1 Kings 18, in the days of Elijah the prophet, what was happening? The people were polluted with the Baals. It's not that they said, "We don't follow Yahweh anymore." It's that they were saying, "Well, we're hedging our bets here. We got Yahweh over here. This side is Yahweh, this side is for Baal."

As Elijah the prophet said to them, "You're hesitating between two opinions. How long will you do that? How long will you hesitate between two opinions? If Yahweh is God, follow Him. If Baal is God, follow Him. But quit hesitating." The Bible says the people did not answer him a word. They were hesitating with the answer. I mean, they couldn't even answer him.

Elijah said, "Hey, let's have a contest. The prophets of Baal are 450, and I alone am the prophet of the Lord. Let's have a contest and we'll call on God. They'll build an altar and put a sacrifice on it. I'll build an altar and put a sacrifice on it. And we'll ask God, will the real God please show up? The God who answers by fire, that is God." The people said, "That is a good idea." They said, "Yeah, let's do that. Let's have a contest."

So they had the big contest on Mount Carmel. Well, Elijah let the prophets of Baal go first. They went first, and for hours they called on Baal. "Oh, Baal, answer us." But Baal didn't answer. Elijah had some fun with them, saying, "Well, maybe your God is on vacation. Maybe he's in the potty." He actually said that—"Maybe he's relieving himself." You know, you got to bang on the bathroom door. "Hey, Baal, come on, it's time." He was making fun of them.

Then he said, "Maybe he's deaf and you have to yell louder." So they cut themselves with lances and the blood flowed, and they cried out to Baal, but Baal didn't answer because Baal's not God. But then Elijah said, "Now it's my turn." He put his offering. He got 12 stones to make an altar, one stone for each of the tribes of Israel. He put his sacrifice on the altar with the wood there on top of the wood. Then he said, "Let's douse it with water." So they doused it with water. He said, "Do it again." So they did it again. He said, "Do it a third time." They did it a third time. The wood was wet, the offering was wet, and the stones were wet. They built a trench around the altar, and the trench was filled up with water.

Then he called upon God, and he said, "Oh God, answer so that these people will know that you are God. I have done all this according to your word." God answered, and the fire fell. It consumed the offering, it consumed the wood, it consumed the stones, it licked up all the water in the trench. The people said, "The Lord, He is God. The Lord, He is God." God is the only God.

Here's what is so horrible when God gives this stern warning: "You shall have no other gods before me." That's straight what He said in Psalm 81. It's also what He said in Exodus 20 when He gave the Ten Commandments. "Behold, I am the Lord who brought you up out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery. You shall have no other gods before me." No other gods that rival me, no other gods that come alongside me. I am God, and there is no other.

The Lord says with a broken heart in Jeremiah, chapter 2, "For my people have committed two evils. The first evil, they have forsaken me, the fountain of living waters. The second evil, to hew for themselves cisterns, broken cisterns that can hold no water." They reject me, the true God, and they follow after the false god. "Let there be no strange God, foreign God, among you," the Lord says, because He is the only true God.

Secondly, He is the redeeming God. "I am the Lord. I, the Lord, am your God who brought you up from the land of Egypt." He redeemed them from Egypt. They were slaves in Egypt. Egypt is a picture of sin. It's a picture of the lost state. Pharaoh is a picture of the devil. You're under the thumb of the devil when you're lost. And the Lord, how do you get out of Egypt? Well, the Lord has to deliver you out of Egypt.

How did God deliver His people out of Egypt? Through the blood of the Lamb. How does God deliver us today? You're here today, and you don't have a personal relationship with Jesus. How does that come about? You understand that Jesus died for you. Jesus, who is God in the flesh, died on the cross for your sins and rose again from the dead. He says, "Whosoever will call upon the name of the Lord will be saved." You call on His name and you ask Him to save you and deliver you from the domain of darkness and transfer you into the kingdom of His beloved Son, as it says in Colossians, chapter one. And He saves you. He is a redeeming God.

Now remember this about the God that says, "Listen to me." He is a God full of mercy and grace. He is a God full of love. Any God who would send His Son to die for me, God, who is worthy of my worship, who's worthy of my adoration, who's worthy of everything. As Isaac Watts, who wrote that great hymn, "When I Survey the Wondrous Cross," he said in the last stanza, "Were the whole realm of nature mine, that were a present far too small. Love so amazing, so divine, demands my soul, my life, my all." Jesus died for me, so I'm going to live for Him with all my heart.

So He is not only the true God, not only the redeeming God, but He's also the abundantly satisfying God. He says in verse 10, "Open your mouth wide and I will fill it." Open your mouth wide and I will fill it. Now, I still remember a sermon I heard when I was in college in the early 80s at the University of Texas, going to Allendale Baptist Church. We had a preacher in for the week named Bill Stafford. Bill Stafford is in heaven now. He was an evangelist.

Bill Stafford, some of you may remember in the movie "Fireproof" with Kirk Cameron, played Kirk Cameron's neighbor, Mr. Woodrow, or whatever his name was, that he always looked at Caleb. "Caleb's a weird guy. Stay away from that kid." That was Bill Stafford. He was a great preacher. Well, he preached on this verse and he said, "God is the God who satisfies." What does He say? "Open your mouth wide and I will fill it." He said, "That's a picture of a mama bird feeding the baby birds."

Have you ever seen when the baby birds get fed? What do they do? They open that mouth wide, like that picture shows. Then the mama bird, what does she do? She spits the food into their mouth. It's really pretty gross. I mean, none of us would really want mama doing that for us, right? You know, put it in the bottle, but don't spit it in my mouth. But that's how they do in the bird world. They don't have hands, so they just shoot it in there.

The birds, they don't just crack their mouth. They're not just like, "Okay, it's okay, just a little bit," you know, just like your jaw's wired shut. No, they open wide, as big as you can get it. Why? Because I want to be filled. I want to be satisfied. God is the satisfying God. He's not the God of barely enough. He's the God of more than enough. He came that we might have life and might have it abundantly, overflowing with good things. That is God.

I wrote a note in my Bible by verse 10, Ephesians 3:20: "Now, to Him who is able to do exceeding abundantly beyond all that we ask or think, according to the power that works within us, to Him be the glory." God is the God of abundance. And God is so good, the God who loves us, the God who gave His life for us on the cross. The Lord Jesus and the Father who gave His Son. He says, "Man, you open your mouth wide and I'll fill it. I'll satisfy you."

You know, I think about my own prayer life. Am I praying big enough? Is my mouth open wide asking God for big things? The little poem says, "You're coming to a king. Large petitions with you bring, for His grace and power are such. No one could ever ask too much." Hey, God is a good God. And the Lord is to be the one you listen to and obey.

**Second admonition:** The Lord is to be the one you fear and revere. We listen to Him, we obey Him, we fear Him, we revere Him. Psalm 47:2 says, "For the Lord, Yahweh most High is to be feared, a great king over all the earth." Now, God is not somebody that we need to be afraid of. As His children, we don't need to be afraid of God. I don't think there's any good-hearted dad who wants his kids to be afraid of him. Like, "Oh, I can't come to Dad; Dad's going to whack me." God doesn't want you to be afraid of Him. He wants you to fear Him.

That means that you give Him utmost respect, the highest honor that you can possibly muster. That is what you give to God. Why? Because I fear Him. I'm not afraid of Him; I fear Him. He is God, and I give Him the utmost respect and honor. The utmost disrespect, dishonor is when God, the eternal God, the everlasting God, the God—the Bible says the heavens, not even the highest heavens can contain God—the God who spoke the worlds into existence, the God who parts the Red Sea, the God who brings water from the rock, the God who rains down manna from heaven, the God who can speak a word as Jesus did in the boat and say, "Hush, be still," and immediately the storm on the Sea of Galilee stops and the water stops in its tracks and it becomes perfectly calm.

That God speaks to you, and you blow Him off. You say, "No, I'm not going to do what you say." Look at verse 11: "But my people did not listen to my voice." Horrors! How can that be? "And Israel did not obey me." There's no fear of God before their eyes. Verse 12: "So I gave them over to the stubbornness of their heart to walk in their own devices."

Jeremiah, chapter 6, the Scripture says this: "Thus says the Lord, thus says Yahweh." Anytime "Lord" is in caps, that's the personal name of God, YHWH. It's called in seminary the Tetragrammaton, the four letters. YHWH. We pronounce that Yahweh or Jehovah. "Thus says the Lord: Stand by the ways and see and ask for the ancient path where the good way is—the things that I told you to start with, that's the good path. And you will find and walk in it, and you will find rest for your souls." But they said, "Uh, we will not walk in it."

"And I set watchmen over you." Those are the pastors and

Speaker 1

What a sobering truth. We really do reap what we sow. As we've learned in today's message from Pastor Jeff Shreve, consider yourself warned. We've learned today that warning signs are important, that they're given to protect us from harm and danger or possible death. And we've learned today that God gives many warnings in His word that a lot of people disregard in favor of their own pleasures.

This lesson and eight others are found in Pastor Jeff's new nine-lesson series, *Life is Hard, but God is Good*. In this series, we're reminded how hard times come our way, sometimes by just living in a sinful world and sometimes by living with decisions made from a sinful heart. The great news is God is a good God who sent His Son to die for our sins, and He'll help you learn about the power of forgiveness that is abundant to God's children.

This timely series, along with Pastor Jeff's companion booklet, *Strong Faith for Tough Times*, are both our gifts to you to say thank you for your support this month of any amount. To find out more, call 866-40-BIBLE (866-40-BIBLE) or go to fromhisheart.org to make that gift and receive the series and the booklet. You can get it immediately on an MP3 download, CDs, DVDs, or on a USB flash drive.

Remember, Pastor Jeff receives no income from this ministry. All the support you give to From His Heart allows us to broadcast this on hundreds of stations around the world each and every day. So thank you again. Call 866-40-BIBLE or go to fromhisheart.org to make your gift.

Well, we're going to pause right there for today, but next time Pastor Jeff will begin describing how God has great patience, but His patience is not limitless. I'm Larry Nelbles inviting you to join us next time for part two of the lesson, *Consider Yourself Warned*. Join us then when we'll again open up God's Word and share real truth, real love, and real hope. From His Heart.

Speaker 3

There is truth There is hope that you always dream of he can heal every scars of Real love, Real hope from his heart.

Speaker 1

From His Heart is the listener-supported broadcast ministry of Dr. Jeff Shreve, speaking the truth in love to a lost and hurting world.

Remember that no matter what, God loves you and He has a wonderful plan for your life.

Find out more about that when you go to fromisheart.org.