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Sermon Manuscripts
What Does It Mean
To Fear The Lord?
Part II
a sermon in the series:
The Holiness of God
A sermon delivered
Sunday Morning, January 18, 2009
at Oak Grove Baptist Church, Paducah, KY
by S. Michael Durham
© 2009 Real Truth Matters
Matthew 10:28
And do not fear those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul. But rather fear Him who is able to destroy both soul and body in hell.
The title of these messages may seem a little morbid to you: “The Fear of God.” It does sound morbid, I know. But they are exciting. The truth of last Sunday’s sermon, the truth of this message, is the key to life at its best – as best as it can be in this fallen world. To fear the Lord is what brings prosperity to life. It is what makes life livable, the fear of God. David said in Psalm 34:9, “Oh, fear the LORD, you His saints! There is no want to those who fear Him.” In Psalm 115:13, we are told, “He will bless those who fear the LORD, Both small and great.”
The Bible repeatedly warns us against not truly fearing God. For example, in the book of Proverbs, we receive three specific warnings. The first in 10:27:
“The fear of the LORD prolongs days, But the years of the wicked will be shortened.”
“The fear of the LORD is a fountain of life, To turn one away from the snares of death.” (Proverbs 14:27)
“The fear of the LORD leads to life, And he who has it will abide in satisfaction; He will not be visited with evil.” (Proverbs 19:23)
How does this work? Normally when we think of fear, we think of something negative. It is hard to understand how fear can be advantageous to us. How can fear be to your credit?
God created the ability to fear in order to promote well-being. For example, if you feared nothing, no phobias or fears whatsoever, you wouldn’t be here to learn why fear is good. You would have already died by now, because without natural fear of that which can harm you, you will be harmed. You would have had no reason to avoid them, and you would have been killed long before now because you would not have feared the danger to avoid the danger.
Though a small child has the ability to be afraid, but his knowledge of what he should be afraid of is so limited that without adult supervision, he would harm himself. He would ingest poison, he would touch hot stoves, he would play with poisonous snakes and spiders, or he would amble out into the street. So you see, fear is not always bad; it can be good. It is not always a sign of mental illness. It can be a sign of mental health. In fact, a man with no fear whatsoever is mentally deficient.
The Bible tells us the fear of God is also good. In Part I, we defined fear three ways: first, it is to biblically understand God. When you read in certain passages “the fear of the Lord” or “the fear of God,” it really means a biblically balanced view of God; a view of God that is sound and well thought through as you read the Scriptures. When you know God as He really is, as He is revealed in Scriptures, you will fear Him. Secondly, it is a deep awe and respect for God. We give great respect to people in prominence and positions of authority. The fear of God is giving God the highest regard because you realize who He is, and are awed by His magnificence. We are to be mystified and overwhelmed by His power and His beauty. That is also the fear of God.
Thirdly, the fear of God is to be afraid of God because He has the power and the authority to bring discipline or punishment on all those who disobey Him. This is what we see in our text. In fact, any time you read a verse about the fear of God, let the context tell you how to interpret it, whether it is one or all three meanings.
I believe in Matthew 10:28, you and I could say all three meanings are there. For example, first and foremost I believe Jesus is saying we should be afraid of God, in the sense that He could destroy us in hell. He will do that to all those who do not believe in Him, trust in Him, live for Him – that is clear in the text. But there is also the sense that we should reverence God and be in awe of Him because He has this ability and because there is no providence, power, or authority greater than His.
Therefore, we should honor Him on Tuesday, Inauguration Day. Men and women across our nation will give reverence and respect to the 44th President of the United States, Barack Obama. And rightly so. But I tell you, if the President of the United States should be given reverence and respect, how much more should the God of the universe! That principle is here in this text.
Thirdly, Jesus is also promoting a biblically balanced view. Doesn’t He have this in mind? His whole point here is to demonstrate an accurate view of God; you shouldn’t just love God, you should also be afraid of Him.
Today, I want to answer two more questions in regard to the fear of the Lord. First, why should we fear Him? Secondly, how are we to fear the Lord?
Why Should We Fear God?
Why should we fear God? I suppose I have partly already answered that just by defining “the fear of the Lord.” But I wish to go deeper.
Self-Preservation
First, we should fear the Lord for the sake of self-preservation. Often, self-preservation is presented as something selfish, but it isn’t. How can anyone deny here that in our text, Jesus is appealing to people to protect themselves? To do certain things so they won’t receive certain consequences. That is self-preservation! I know that our motives need to be pure, but evidently the motive to preserve oneself from harm or ultimate ruin is not evil; otherwise Jesus is encouraging selfishness and advocating something that would be evil, but we know that is not the case.
Now, I’ve often told you that if you profess to be a Christian primarily, mainly, mostly (got the idea?) because you do not want to perish in hell, then you are not a Christian. I stand behind that statement, and I’ll make it again: if the predominant motive for you to profess the Lord Jesus Christ is a fear of hell, then you are still lost. Love is to be the predominant motive for God. One is never truly converted because he fears judgment only; that would be a slavish relationship with God, and I fear that some of you in my audience would have to describe your relationship with the Almighty that way. A slavish relationship based upon fear only: you serve Him because He forces you with the threat of hell. That doesn’t magnify God or His grace.
The reason a man is converted and becomes a true Christian is because He believes Christ, period. “He that believes upon the Lord shall be saved.” A man or woman is saved because he or she believes! No qualifiers! “I believe, therefore I am saved.” Let me tell you what the word belief means: one who believes is so confident Jesus is who He said He is, that person sees Him as so loving and so forgiving and so merciful and so beautiful that he is willing to give himself up for this God. That is belief.
If you believe He is who He says He is, how can you do otherwise? If there is none greater, none with more authority, and you believe that, wouldn’t you obey Him? If you believe there is nobody that can satisfy the deepest longings of your soul, would you busily, hastily run through life ignoring Him? Or would you spend time at His feet drinking in the soul’s satisfaction and being blessed? To believe in God is simply to take Him for His word. Your heart is drawn to Him because you’ve seen Him as He is, and now love, not fear, is propelling you toward Christ. Love, not fear. Otherwise, how would the believer be able to obey the greatest commandment: “Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind.” You cannot love someone who is forcing you to love him. The allegiance cannot be forced; the slave cannot love the master who demands love with the threat of the whip, and neither can you.
If you can’t keep the commandment to love God, how can you keep the second commandment, to love your neighbor as yourself? I propose that you can’t. You’re not even doing that one. You think you’re good and treat people respectfully? If you don’t love God, you’re not doing that one either. It can’t happen. You would not love your neighbor for the sake of the neighbor or for God’s sake. All acts of kindness on behalf of a neighbor would be self-love to preserve you against God’s judgment, so in other words, whatever you are calling love is really love for yourself, not your neighbor.
With all that said, it is clear from the text that you cannot eliminate self-preservation altogether. You better not be afraid of the guy who can kill you, but you better be afraid of Him who can kill your body and soul in hell. That is self-preservation. So how is the motive to save yourself legitimate and holy, and not evil? The answer is, to fear God for the sake of self-preservation (because you don’t want to go to hell), is the beginning of God’s process and work in you to draw you to Himself. It is the beginning place. The sinner is so steeped in selfishness – his whole world revolves around him! He can’t help it; it is who he is! He may masquerade it and make it look good, or acceptable, or even religious, but he is still selfish. So if God is going to reach you, He must approach you where you are. (You never start out seeking God; God always approaches you. He is the Savior who is always about the business of seeking and saving that which is lost.)
He wants you, so He approaches you where you live. He addresses the very thing that you love the most: yourself. He speaks to that heart of selfishness, and again self-preservation is not evil, otherwise you’d be drinking poison, playing with snakes and wrestling with wild bears. It is a good thing. If you had no desire to protect yourself from harm, you would be harmed. God is a danger all sinners will face, and He is to be feared! So God begins the process of drawing you to Himself by alarming you and causing you to know your wickedness. He makes you to know you are sinful and hideous.
I have counseled many good people, and not one of them has been saved. But when that good person comes back no longer saying he is good: “How bad I am! How wicked and despicable I am! I can’t even stand myself!” – they always get saved. I’ve never seen a good person converted. That is where He begins: He creates that desire to be saved because you know you need to be saved. The more the Holy Spirit causes you to see how grievously you’ve sinned against the Lord, the more amazing God’s love becomes to you. The more you see how much God loves you through the lenses of the death of His Son, the more amazing is that death on your behalf! And now love seems to push fear aside, and say, “Step away, fear! I want to know this God who loves me like this!” The more hopeless you see your case, the more you know you can’t set yourself free, the more you want a God who can.
When that moment of deliverance from sin comes, the bondage of fear is swept away by the tide of infinite love, the love of God. But self-preservation is preserved; it doesn’t go anywhere. It doesn’t get out of the way – it is still there, it simply yields to a greater motive: love. So, why should you fear God? Because if you don’t, you’re going to die and go to hell. I don’t want anybody to die and go to hell. I certainly don’t want my hearers, on my watch, for whom I love and care, to die and go to hell. I think of the children who have grown up under my ministry, and I think, “God, you can’t let them die and go to hell! I know You could, You’re just, but I plead with You – make them to fear You! Let them know that one day they shall stand before You naked without excuse, and not even their shame will hide their sins from You!” You should be afraid for your own sake. The second reason you should be afraid of God is for the sake of obedience.
Obedience
The fear of God works obedience in you. You may say I’m contradicting myself – I just said fear cannot motivate obedience, and now I say it can. But I am not contradicting myself. What I said a few moments ago is that fear cannot be the primary motive; I didn’t say fear was not involved at all. If we serve God only because we’re afraid of Him, then certainly not right with God. So my question is, cannot love and fear work hand-in-hand? I think they can.
For example, I loved my father very much. I so wanted to please him that most often, I did what he told me to do and then some, because I loved my dad. But when I was tempted to disobey him, the enticement of the temptation would be so strong and it would be always aimed against what he had told me to do or not do. The times I walked away from temptation were the times I thought about what I was about to do and the consequences that would be mine if my dad found out. Because I so loved my dad, I number one didn’t want to displease him, and secondly, was afraid of his response if he should find out. That was enough to keep me often in check. My love was strengthened by my fear, but my fear was strengthened by my love. The two don’t contradict each other; they really do work together.
The fear of the Lord is the greatest asset to our obedience besides love. The Lord acknowledged that fear helped Abraham when he was told to offer his son, Isaac. When you think about it, what would motivate a dad to kill his son on behalf even of God? This is a battle of love that I’m not sure love can win. Love for son, love for Heavenly Father. The thing God says tipped the scales in Abraham’s favor was not love. Notice what he says in Genesis 22:12, “And He said, ‘Do not lay your hand on the lad, or do anything to him; for now I know that you fear God, since you have not withheld your son, your only [son], from Me.’” The one thing Abraham had, as much as he had love for God, was fear of God.
Throughout the bible, the word “fear” is linked with obedience. One out of every four times, in fact. Proverbs 16:6 says, “by the fear of the LORD [one] departs from evil.” There is a degree of moral restraint that happens because we fear God. Without that moral restraint, knowing that I must confront and be faced by a God that will set everything right, without that fear, why, men have no hindrance to disobedience! Even a non-Christian can experience the fear of God that brings him to the light. There was a time in our nation that people knew they were not Christians, yet called themselves “God-fearing people” because they did fear God enough to behave decently one towards another.
Abraham lied about Sarah being his sister and not his wife because he was afraid they would kill him to take his wife. So in Genesis 20:11, he says, “And Abraham said, ‘Because I thought, surely the fear of God is not in this place; and they will kill me on account of my wife.’” He could recognize that in that environment, God and fear of Him were nowhere to be found, and he knew that would therefore cause them to have no restrictions on what they would do.
Sadly, like Abraham, we must face the fact the fear of God is not in this place – our beloved country. God has been pared down to our size. He has been stripped of His infinity, His might, His power, and He looks pretty much like anyone else. He is not the God that attacks all sin with all of His might, and as a result, we do not fear Him and therefore we do not obey Him, if He is even believed upon at all. When that happens to society, it will not be long before it self-destructs. We are on a collision course of self-destruction because of this fact: the fear of God has been removed. There is no longer the fear of God before their eyes. I am not a prophet and cannot tell you what the next 50 years hold in this nation, but it is not hopeful. To not fear God is to lead us to a course of self-destruction.
Some of you may yet still object to this presentation of God, and say, “I believe in God, but the God I believe in, I think is more biblical than your God, is a God that is loving and merciful and does not judge. He understands and wants everybody to come to Him, and therefore He makes all appropriate avenues open so there is more than one way to God.” I, too, believe in a culture of peace. I, like you, do not want war, strife, injustice and anarchy. I believe all men should get along. I believe we should pursue peace with everybody. But please listen to me: there can be no hope of peace in society if there is not a God who will judge every man. There can’t be. Even the fear of civil law is not enough.
What keeps society as much together as it is, even though it seems so slight? We seem to be on the precipice of being thrown into a thousand little bits, and then no more. What does keep us together is some innate knowledge that there is a God, and He is a God of justice who will make everything right. Otherwise, men will pick up rifles and handguns and seek retribution. What keeps a man from seeking revenge? The knowledge that God is eternal and will one day settle those accounts. That is how there can be peace and tranquility in society only if there is a God of justice. The third reason you and I should fear the Lord is because of the holiness of God.
The Holiness of God
The person who fears the Lord has gotten a glimpse of the holiness of God. Put another way, if I fear the Lord, it is because I have caught a glimpse of how holy God is. And I should want to see the holiness of God. Why should you want to see the holiness of God? It changes you. When you see the holiness of God, you’re transformed. Remember Isaiah 6, the beginning message in this series? Isaiah saw the Lord high and lifted up, with His train filling the temple, and what happened? This good man, who had prophesied prior to chapter 6, said, “Woe is me, for I am undone! Because I am a man of unclean lips, And I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips!” The holiness of God changes people.
There is a huge difference between a man who knows the truth about God and that God is holy, and a man who has seen that holiness. It is the difference between knowing God is holy and having that truth supernaturally revealed to you through and by the Word of God. The fear of God means you have seen the reality of God. May I beg you just a few more moments: this is the plight of some of you. You haven’t seen Him yet!
Let me explain what I mean. If you are listening and you aren’t saved, I think I can describe you. You have an infrastructure in your mind, and each piece you have placed there is a fact or knowledge or truth about God that construct your beliefs about God. Each stick of material is a fact about God that you place into your building, your edifice, your belief system. But you’ve never seen the beauty of those truths that you have stored up in your mind. It’s there, and you can point to it and say, “See, Michael, I do know God because I believe this about Him or know this about Him! I do know Him!” But dear friend, if you knew God, you would be afraid of Him to the point you’d be afraid of sin. When you really fear God, you fear sinning. You are scared of it. Otherwise, you have not yet seen God and His holiness. Why fear the Lord? Because if you don’t fear Him, you have yet to see Him and experience Him. If you disobey God, to which we must all say we have, it is because at the moment you give into temptation it is because you feared something else more than you feared God. You are afraid of your desires going unfulfilled more than you fear God. You fear your reputation in the eyes of someone else, so you go ahead and tell that lie so they will not reject you. Every temptation involves fear of some kind or another.
I pray that you will make the fear of God foremost and primary when you are tempted, so that you will always look and know there is a God who hates sin so much that He killed His Son for it. That ought to make you say, “I had better not mess with this.”
If God has spoken to you this day, and that infrastructure has lost a plank and the system is beginning to shift, if there is now doubt and the structure is threatening to collapse, I pray that God with a blast of His nostrils will blow it to hell. Because that belief system will damn you, friend. It isn’t believing about Him. It is believing in Him. Trusting in Him. Why should you fear God? You know the answer. It is the answer you avoid, ignore, or excuse. You rationalize. But it must be confronted: You should fear God because you will stand before Him and there will be no lawyer at your side, nobody with a silver tongue and reasonable arguments to defend you. There you will be all alone, with the books of God opened up before you and on every page will be the record of how, in spite of what you knew about God, you still wouldn’t believe in Him.
Isn’t it sad that people can come and listen to the message of grace, and go away depending on the arm of flesh? Why is that? How can you listen right now and think, “How can I survive this one more time? Why does he pursue me with his words? Shut up, preacher! Teach the Christians here and leave us alone! Why do you hound me like this?” Because of the fear of God. I’m afraid for you! I am literally scared for you. Because I, too am afraid of God, I do not want Him to turn to me (though I am secure in Christ) and make me answer, “Why did you not plead with them? Why did you not in the name of Jesus Christ beseech them?” So I am beseeching you in His name, in His stead. Please listen.
You will stand before God, and you will give an account, and then you will tremble like you have never trembled before. You will fear as if the very foundation of your physical being and the rafters of your soul will collapse upon you and you will be left as nothingness as you stand before God. Teeth chattering, knees knocking, hands shaking – you know what I am saying to you is right. Would you come to Him now; give your life to Christ. Ask God to open your heart and show you the glory of His majesty. How can you look upon the beauty of the coming spring, with the roses and trees blooming, the majestic mountains and clear springs, and say, “God? I can handle Him. I’ll have an answer. I can squander my time and enjoy my sin in this season. I can.”
All I am asking you is to stop depending on you and your own wisdom, and lay yourself on the cross of Christ, and hope that in your place He died.
Lastly, why should you fear God? Because Jesus died. Simply put, you ought to be afraid of God and afraid for your soul’s sake because Jesus died. I mean by that, number one, if God for the sake of sin (your sin, my sin) would slay His son, you ought to understand how God feels about your sin and my sin. The moment that sin was placed upon the dear Savior, the moment Jesus willingly said, bring their sins and lay them on my head, God hated His Son and rejected Him, bringing infinite wrath upon His head. All because He hates sin. You ought to be afraid of God because Jesus died. If you ignore such selfless love, what other defense will you call on your behalf? What will you say to a God who killed His Son on your behalf and you rejected it? How will you argue your way out of hell? There are no arguments, defenses, or strategies that will overcome the wisdom and knowledge of God against you. The death of Christ stands now not your hope or salvation, but your damnation. Judgment, justice. “All that you made Me suffer, they rejected it. You must condemn them.” Can you imagine Jesus saying that? He will, because He will be the one on the throne judging and passing the sentence. The Father will turn the judgment seat of Christ over to Christ; the Son will take the seat of judgment, and the One who died for you whose hands will still be scarred from the nails will pass the sentence. You ought to be afraid, because there is a day of judgment.
Friend, I don’t want to leave you without hope. Today is the day of salvation; now is the acceptable time. Right now, He doesn’t sit in the seat of judgment. Now He is seated at the right hand of the Father in the royal robes of a priest who will intercede on your behalf. He will plead your case today if you will bow before Him in humility and brokenness and faith. If you would just relinquish the rights of your life – oh, I know I am asking you for much, but He gave you much in return – He will give you life eternal that will begin today, not just when you die and go to heaven. Life more abundant will come to your soul, because there is One pleading on your behalf. Can you not hear Him calling your name? Bow before your High Priest and let Him argue your case before God. Do not wait for Him to be your judge. In Jesus’ name I pray, Amen. |
