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Source: https://www.sermonindex.net/speakers/greg-cliff/warning-signs/
Exodus chapter 15, please. In verse 1,. Exodus 15, verse 1,. Then sang Moses and the children of Israel this song unto the Lord. And spake, saying, I will sing unto the Lord, for he hath triumphed gloriously.
The horse and his rider hath he thrown into the sea. The Lord is my strength and my song, and he has become my salvation. He is my God, and I will prepare him in habitation. I think for the sake of time, I'm going to turn to Amos chapter 4, please.
Book of Amos, Amos chapter 4. And we'll read at verse 1. I may just pick a few verses here. Amos chapter 4 in verse 1,. Hear this, word ye kind of Bashan. Word kind, another transliteration of it is you fat cows of Bashan that are in the mountain of Samaria, which oppress the poor, which crush the needy, which say to their masters, bring and let us drink.
The Lord God hath sworn by his holiness that lo, the day shall come upon you that he will take you away with his hooks and your posterity with fish hooks. And ye shall go out at the preaches, every cow at that which is before her, and ye shall cast them into the palace, saith the Lord.
Come to Bethel and transgress. At Gilgal, multiply transgression and bring your sacrifices every morning and your tithes after three years. Let's skip down to verse 6. And I also have given you cleanness of teeth in all your cities, and want or lack of bread in all your places.
Yet you have not returned unto me, saith the Lord. And also I have withholden the rain from you. And there were yet three months to the harvest, and I caused it to rain upon one city and caused it not to rain upon another city.
One piece was rained upon and the piece whereupon it rained not withered. So two or three cities wandered into one city to drink water, but they were not satisfied. Yet you have not returned unto me, saith the Lord.
I have smitten you with blasting and mildew. And when your gardens and your vineyards and your fig trees and your olive trees increased, the palmy worm devoured them. Yet you have not returned unto me, saith the Lord.
Verse 10, I have sent among you the pestilence after the manor of Egypt. Your young men have I slain with a sword, and have taken away your horses, and I have made the stink of your camps to come up unto your nostrils.
Yet have you not returned unto me, saith the Lord. I have overthrown some of you as God overthrew Sodom and Gomorrah, and you were as a firebrand plucked out of the burning. Yet have you not returned unto me, saith the Lord.
Therefore, thus will I do unto thee, O Israel, and because I will do this unto thee, prepare to meet thy God, O Israel. For lo, he that formeth the mountains and createth the wind and declareth unto man, what is his thought, that maketh the morning darkness and treadeth upon the high places of the earth, the Lord, the God of hosts, is his name.
God will bless us reading of his word. Thinking about these portions when it comes to the thought of worship, you know, it reminds me of when we were first saved. Wasn't that a wonderful day? Wasn't that an outstanding day in our lives when we came to know our sins forgiven and heaven as our home?
We rested on the promises of our great God, and it caused us to sing like Israel sang when they were delivered out of Egypt, when they were delivered and rescued out of the bondage that they were in to serve the true and the living God.
Wasn't that a marvelous day? Didn't that cause our hearts to well up with worship? Didn't we rise to places in our hearts towards God that we never have probably experienced since? You know, God does intend for people to worship him.
We've been hearing about that. We're hearing about six points to aid in worship. I want to speak about six warning signs from this portion here that would cause us to take notice of where have we gone to in our spiritual lives?
Where have we gotten off track? I notice in John chapter four, this woman of Samaria, I just thought about her for a few moments here because even those relatives of hers had worshiped in that mountain, in the mountains of Samaria.
But right here, I notice too that in chapter four of Amos, that there were those that he addresses that are in the mountains of Samaria. Isn't that interesting? I want to just touch these things here for a few moments because of sometimes conditions are that which affect us to the point where is why we are not prone to worship.
I know it is in my own heart. We're surrounded sometimes by things that cause us to be prone not to worship. One of the things very first of all here, as long as I brought that up about the mountains of Samaria.
They were dwelling in the mountains of Samaria. They weren't in the mountain of God. I wonder sometimes where I was dwelling this week. Where are we dwelling sometimes? Are we dwelling in the presence of God?
Sometimes we maybe are affected when it comes to our worship, if you will please, that the places where I'm dwelling all week long might have a very real effect upon whether we are prepared to meet God with worship or not.
I know there's going to be some applications here. I know most of you understand that. I think about God's order was way out of line here. His addressing these people that were certainly not moving in view of that, which is His pattern, His precepts, His principles.
We see here that their hearts had finally come to a point where they were oppressing, it says here, the poor and crushing the needy. There's a people that were so moved with self-gratification that they weren't prone to worship.
They weren't prone to worship, self-gratification. They lack compassion, they lack mercy, they lack love, they lack sensitivity, they lack spiritual understanding. There was no subjection here. They had moved far away from God.
You remember back that day when we were saved and we wanted to do whatever it was for the Lord, and yet these people were affected by so much that they were, you'd hardly recognize them as even being God's people.
Yet it was God's heart that they would return unto Him. It was God's heart that that worship would be restored. It would be God's heart that there would have been a desire to see them to be what God really wanted them to be.
God's holiness had been profaned here. They were coming to the house of God and with their transgressions. God's provisions had been despised. They thought little of. They brought their sacrifices every morning.
They were going through the forum. They were bringing their sacrifices or Thanksgiving sacrifices with leaven, that which would speak of sin. There was major hypocrisy amongst them. There was a refusal to repent, but yet they just carried right on.
Sometimes you just carry right on. But I want to just notice here for a few things because there were six things here that God had allowed to be placed in their way and yet they had not returned unto the Lord, six things.
The first thing I see here in verse six, it says here that He had given them cleanness of teeth in all their cities. Now that's a strange little metaphor, but yet there's that which speaks of something more than just what you have today of whiteness of teeth.
It's really the thought of whiteness of teeth here. It's not what we think of today when people are going out and getting their teeth painted and all that, I guess. That's not what it's speaking about here.
But there was absolutely whiteness or cleanness of teeth. What was He meaning? They weren't eating. They weren't feeding upon that which God wanted them to feed upon. And that was the very first illustration here of the fact that they were with lack of bread.
You know, one thing I see here when I consider these things when it comes to worship, if I'm not feeding on the Word of God and I'm away from God and I'm not reading the Word of God and I'm not spending time in the Word of God and appreciating the Word of God the way God intends me to, not only will I not be prone to worship, but it's a warning sign.
It's a warning sign that I'm getting pretty far away. I know what it is when I have to go and force myself to be in the Word of God. And then you start getting in the Word of God. And when you start reading and you start looking at the Word of God and getting something for your own soul, you start getting warmed up.
And you start getting a little bit more charged up. And the more that I get warmed up and the more I get recovered in a measure, the more I'm going to want to worship. The more I'm going to want to know something about being in the presence of God to be able to appreciate not only what He has accomplished in our lives, but what He desires from us.
I think about the famine that was there, this cleanness of teeth here. And then it seems to be progression because when you come to verses 7 and 8, there seems to be a drought. It says He withheld the rain.
God withheld the rain. Now, I know that He did this on purpose to help them to understand the fact that they were away from God and they needed to return unto God. But I wonder sometimes do we ever feel the drought in our own life?
Do we ever feel sometimes like just things just seem to be drying up? It's a warning sign. It's a warning sign that there's absolutely more than likely a need of restoration in our lives. And before we're ever going to be prone to worship to just that which is going to emanate from our hearts, there needs to be a measure of restoration.
And here we have warning signs. Cleanness of teeth. We're not feeding on the Word of God the way we should. And then we feel the drought coming in. We feel the dryness. Do you ever feel the dryness? I hate to confess how often sometimes I feel the dryness.
What got me thinking about this sometimes is I was speaking to a dear brother that I love dearly in the Lord. I love every brother and sister dearly in the Lord. You know what I mean? But sometimes you have a little special place and you visit about the things of God and things like that.
And I thought, I would have never dreamed this. I wouldn't have had a clue about this. But yet, he was expressing about his dryness and his being so away from God as far as when it comes to worship and his desires to worship and to do something for the Lord as of a pure heart towards the Lord.
I was shocked. But yet, why should I be? Because I know that and I experience it in my own life. You know, these are warning things to my own heart about my condition before God. And I certainly, if I am in need of restoration, I'm certainly not going to be prone to worship.
Yet it was a warning sign to them. And he says, and yet you have not returned unto me, saith the Lord, saith the Lord. Then there's a blight in verse nine, the blasting in the mildew, the problems, the little difficulties that start coming in.
Things just aren't the way that they seem they ought to be. And then in verse 10, we have the plagues and the war, the pestilences here that was, even as the plagues that were in Egypt. And so things start developing, they're progressing more and more.
I don't know if there's any wars in your life. But you know, that's a good indication that we need to return unto the Lord. I don't know if there's any wars in the assembly, in the assembly wherever we make up a part of.
But that's a good indication that we need restoration. We need to be brought back unto the Lord. We need to know something of restoration, not only just individually, but even as assemblies. I remember one time John Gray gave some ministry and I was at a conference in that.
And he says, when was the last time did you ever see an assembly repent? I don't know if anybody here, if you know of one, let me know. But it begins with the individual. But yet when we see wars and fightings and strifes and problems that have come in as a result of blight and plagues and so on, and there's a bickering and a pulling and one's got to have it this way and one's got to have it that way and all these things, that's a clear sign of we need restoration.
We need restoration to the point where when we are restored, it will cause us to be prone to worship. We see here in verse 11, the destruction that comes into. And he says, yet you have not returned unto me.
Sometimes we don't look at, we think of destructions of Katrinas and tsunamis and things like that. But sometimes destruction is slow. Sometimes destruction of relationships, destructions of assemblies, destruction of a lot of different things within our Christian realm and our Christian experience are those things that are coming in and yet it's a very great warning sign that we need to return unto the Lord.
We need to get back to first principles, first precepts, the pattern of God. Yes, we want to be a worshiping people, but we need to have that joy of our salvation restored in our souls. He delivered us.
He says, prepare to meet thy God, O Israel. I understand and my understanding of it anyway is that yes, they're not going to understand the judgments that were before them that they need to be prepared about the judgment that He's going to still bring upon them, if I understand it right.
But I want to apply it this way because we're living in a day of grace. And God is not bringing these things into our lives to cause us to return unto Him. They are in our lives. They are in our lives and it ought to cause us to return unto Him.
Christ is the only motivating factor that we should ever have to want to know something of the restoring hand and to be exercised about being restored unto the Lord. You know, Israel, when they were brought out of Egypt, they had a song in their heart and that was worship.
Sometimes we think of worship as when we gather here on Lord's Day morning. And yes, it is. That should be a culmination and the peak of it. But when we come here on Lord's Day morning, you know, that's wonderful.
But what about during the week? Every meeting that we gather together should be a measure of worship in it. And every time we even are at home in our closets at home, there ought to be an emanation of worship of our hearts, of our great God, our great loving God that has saved us and put us on the road to heaven.
And He does desire that we would be worshipers. And He does desire that we would be serving Him. When I'm thinking about prepare to meet thy God, I also think as well of preparing to meet God in worship.
We have these warning signs. We have a restoration of our hearts that is needed, but also the preparation. And I thought I look back over my long experience or not as long as many here, but 28 years in the assembly.
And I remember many times, I didn't feel like going to meeting. I didn't feel like going. And when I knew that that's where the Lord wanted me to be, so I went, but you know, when you get to a breaking of bread meeting and worship starts rising, you know, your heart gets changed.
I got warmed up and I tell you, I went home different than I came. So worship has an effect because when I got warmed up, I was good for many days. Next week, I might've been in the same condition, but one of my points here is don't stay away from the breaking of bread meeting because our hearts will get warmed up if we're listening and we're occupied and taken up with our beloved Lord Jesus Christ.
And then maybe these warning signs during the week will might become more real to us. And we might know a measure of restoration. And then again, it will cause our hearts to be prepared to worship, prepared to meet our God when we come together.
I think of the Lord Jesus Christ when he instituted the Lord's supper. It was that which was designed to remind us afresh all the time of his death and the cost, the price that had to be paid that we might be delivered and that we might be fitted for his presence in heaven above.
That alone should cause us to well up with worship and all the many other spiritual blessings wherein we've been blessed and the heavenlies in Christ Jesus. I think of that verse for God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son.
That's amazing, isn't it? He gave his son that whosoever believeth in him should not perish. We're not perishing any longer, but have everlasting life. You know, it's wonderful to be saved. I just hope that a few of these things here, warning signs, drought, famine, not eating right, where we're spending our time, all these things that ought to cause us to get back to God, get on our knees and get our relationships restored, relationship with God, and then we will be able to worship.
And worship, we won't be able to hold it back. We won't be able to stifle it. I remember back again to Exodus 15. Sometimes we just need to get back to that day when God reached and saved us.