the fear of the Lord

Proverbs 1:7 says this “the fear of the LORD is the beginning of knowledge: but fools despise wisdom and instruction.”

So, we have been learning about how God is Holy, He is set apart and different than us. but what makes Him different is that He is very much like a father, that’s why He is referred as our heavenly Father many times. This means that we should be in reverence to Him and cling to His sovereignty as Lord. His power is beyond anything we can think of. When you go to NYC or any other city with huge skyscrapers, and you look up to the top, sometimes there is a feeling of dread, and just fear because of how huge it really is. That’s the way we should look at God, looking at Him and seeing that there is absolutely no end to what He can do, that alone should bring some level of fear to the point where we obey Him.

When I was a kid, and I did something bad, my dad would always bring out the belt, or my mom would say “oh just you wait until your father is home”

I was Scared… To… Death… because I knew what the belt meant, and I knew exactly what dad would do when he got home. I was afraid right? That fear motivated me to be better, and not hit my sister again.

If I was wise I would try not to disobey my parents or have a bad attitude towards them because my behavior would be punished. And they didn’t punish me because they enjoyed it, they punished me because I had to be taught the consequences of my actions. They were loving me by doing that.

God is so very much like a dad in that sense. God must punish sin. He is like a father who brings out the belt to teach us a lesson because He loves us.

Hebrew 12:5-11

12:5

And ye have forgotten the exhortation which speaketh unto you as unto children, My son, despise not thou the chastening of the Lord, nor faint when thou art rebuked of him:

12:6

For whom the Lord loveth he chasteneth, and scourgeth every son whom he receiveth.

12:7

If ye endure chastening, God dealeth with you as with sons; for what son is he whom the father chasteneth not?

12:8

But if ye be without chastisement, whereof all are partakers, then are ye bastards, and not sons.

12:9

Furthermore we have had fathers of our flesh which corrected us, and we gave them reverence: shall we not much rather be in subjection unto the Father of spirits, and live?

12:10

For they verily for a few days chastened us after their own pleasure; but he for our profit, that we might be partakers of his holiness.

12:11

Now no chastening for the present seemeth to be joyous, but grievous: nevertheless afterward it yieldeth the peaceable fruit of righteousness unto them which are exercised thereby.

chastise means to “rebuke or reprimand severely. To punish, especially by beating.”

Romans 6:23

6:23

For the wages of sin is death; but the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord.

That’s why proverbs say’s the beginning of knowledge is the fear of the LORD, if you truly fear God, you will strive to not sin, sin won’t be as trivial to you.

That’s the problem with a lot of Christians today, we take sin and trivialize it.

Trivialize means “to make something seem less important, significant, or complex than it really is.”

In this context when we trivialize sin, we JUSTIFY it and make excuse like “oh, it’s not too bad, everyone does it.”

And we trivialize sin to the point where we intentionally sin, because we don’t think there will be consequences. We’ve taken God, and we’ve completely re-imagined who He is, we made God into a loving all forgiving God who won’t punish sin!

Now why do we fear the Lord? I mean it’s not like he will strike down and kill me, I’ve sinned before and I’m still alive right?

In romans 8 it talks about living in the flesh. In romans 8:8 it says they that live in the flesh cannot please God.

God Hates sin.

When we sin, we are in a way going against God.

Imagine you have this beautiful car, very expensive, luxurious car. And your friend wants to take it on a ride, and you tell them not to go off the road into the grass, because rocks will kick up, or they’ll hit branches and scratch the car all up.

And your friend goes and does exactly that. they go, and they drive it through the grass, and just like you said it would happen, rocks and all sorts of stuff beat up the car, and completely ruins it!

and your friend says to you “well it looked fun, so I rode it off anyway.” Imagine how upset you would be, not just upset, but angry and disappointed because your friend completely ignored your instructions!

Now imagine God, who gives us direct instructions not to sin, and yet we go, and we do it anyway because it looked fun. Not only did we disobey God and do exactly what He told us not do, but we also turn our back on Him and completely disregard what He told us.

In Mathew it says that we should not be afraid of those who can kill our bodies, but we should fear the one who can destroy both soul and body in hell. That person it is talking about is God.

If you want to live your life as a Christian and say nah, I don’t fear God, I’ll be fine. You will lead a miserable and un-fulfilling life. You may be successful and have a good job and family, but it’ll all be wasted and when you get to heaven and stand before God you will be ashamed.

IGNORING JUDGEMENT DOESN’T CHANGE ITS REALITY. IT JUST MAKES US UNPREPARED FOR IT. FEAR NOW OR GREAT FEAR THEN - PAT

Romans 2:5-6 says this, “but after thy hardness and impenitent heart treasurest up unto thyself wrath against the day of wrath and revelation of the righteous judgement of God; who will render to every man according to his deeds”

And in romans 2:8-9, it continues on to say this “but unto them that are contentious, and do not obey the truth, but obey unrighteousness, indignation and wrath, tribulation and anguish, upon every soul of man that doeth evil, of the Jews first, and also to the gentile”

That’s why we need to fear God.

But what does that even mean? To fear God.

To fear God means to see Him as set apart, to see Him in his superiority to us, we should see His reverence and understand how Powerful He is, he can take everything away from you in a matter of seconds, but He could also give you everything in seconds.

(IT IS BECAUSE OF GOD’S MERCY THAT WE ARE NOT CONSUMED – Lamentations 3:22-23)

“ 22 It is of the LORD'S mercies that we are not consumed, because his compassions fail not.

23 They are new every morning: great is thy faithfulness.

A lot of people think if you want something take it, if you can grab it, grab it. That is a horrible way of thinking. The only way we get anything in our life is because God gave us it.

If you want sin, God will let you have it, but it won’t end well. Solomon realized this first hand. He had everything he could ever want. He had money, fame, status, pleasure, he had all of it. And at the end of his life he stated that it all brought him nothing. It was all meaningless.

To fear God in action, is to be confronted with a temptation and to say no to it, because you think back to God, and you remember how much it displeases God. Just like as a kid I slowly learned to obey my parents because I knew what would happen if I didn’t.

When we choose to disregard God, our lives are full of pain, and depression. We get so hopeless because we thought that what we wanted would fulfill and kind of satisfy us, but it didn’t. AND IT DRIVES US AWAY FROM GOD, WHO IS OUR SOURCE AND OUR HEART’S DESIRE

God brings true peace, and true fulfillment in your life.

In my life specifically, a few years back I had a huge problem with looking at inappropriate things, whether it be pictures, or crude jokes in general. It was not good at all. I would watch video son YouTube that had so much raunchy humor in it. When I spent my time watching those videos, that week or that day, I would be so depressed, and I’d just be sad, and angry and just irritable to everyone around me.

It absolutely tore me down. And I didn’t know why, I started blaming God, and that led to me not praying to Him and so on. (REMEMBER GOD IS HOLY, SEPARATE, HE CANNOT TEMPT US TO SIN BECAUSE HE IS SEPARATE FROM SIN, EVIL) But then I started to pray, I started to realize that the sin I was living in was hurting me so much, so I started cutting the videos out, and thought first before I looked at something. I started to get before God and literally cry, I remember one night where I was watching a video, and looking at some inappropriate stuff, and I went to bed, and just Cried, I opened my Bible and went to Psalms and just read through some of them, and I stayed up all night just reading, and crying until like 4 in the morning.

The next week, I felt truly at peace with God, and felt like my life had changed. I’d never felt that close to God in my entire life… because I was scared that night, I understood how much I had turned from God, and that He could strike me down then and their if He wanted. Thank goodness He didn’t. but that was His way of showing me the consequences of my actions. (FEAR LEADS TO GRATITUDE BUT WE HAVE TO GO THROUGH THE FEAR TO GET THERE. WE CANNOT UNDERSTAND OR APPRECIATE GOD’S MERCY AND GRACE UNTIL YOU HAVE FIRST UNDERSTOOD HIS HOLINESS, HIS RIGHTEOUSNESS, HIS JUDGMENT. UNTIL YOU’VE FEARED HIM)

THAT IS THE RESULTS OF FEAR

So how can we begin to express our fear to God.

Well like what happened to me, I got to a point where I broke. I got before God and I truly asked God to forgive me. Its understanding that I’m nothing in comparison to God, I’m like a grain of sand floating in the ocean. Its understanding how much you NEED God.

There are no great men/women of God. No super-spiritual person, only weak tiny humans, who have understood their need for God.

When you see a person who is on fire for God and you say “MAN, that person is so dedicated to God, they study and pray so much! And that’s why they’re so close to God!”

NO, that person you are looking at, is on fire for God, because they’ve come to realize who God is! And because of that realization they want to pray and study! The prayer and study and devotion are a result of knowing WHO God is and knowing who WE are in comparison!

I’ve been blessed by God because of my fear of God. The only reason I’m able to stand up here and give this message is because I know who God is.

A while back, someone asked me after one of our door-to-door days. He asked me how I was able to talk so well to a stranger, and how I knew so much about the Bible. I myself am not able to do any of that, I don’t have the boldness to go talk to a stranger and I don’t have all the answers to all the questions myself, but because I’ve surrendered to God and concluded that He is the only one able to provide the answer, He has used me to reach people.

Because of the surrender to Him and understanding His Holiness, He can speak, and I am able to listen.

You need to start seeing your sin for what it Is. And get before God and be scared for your life because of the amount of sin you have.

If you are saved and born again, it’ll be evident in your life, you’ll feel guilty, and you’ll feel ashamed when you sin. Because you are free from sin and that sin hurts God, you’ve got the Holy spirit (as a believer) so now you get convicted of that sin by the Spirit.

But a lot of the times we don’t do anything about it.

So, this right here is the main thing I want you to get. If you can only get one thing from what I’ve said, let it be this.

When you feel guilty in your life, you better act on it and get before God and repent to Him of that sin. If you feel guilty in your heart and choose to push it aside, you are pushing God out of the way.

That feeling of guilt is a warning from the Holy Spirit telling you “Hey! What you just did was wrong, you need to talk to God about that and you need to get that right with Him” (QUENCHING THE HOLY SPIRIT. EVERY TIME SIN IS POINTED OUT TO US, IT IS AN OPPORTUNITY. IT IS GRACE. IT IS FOR OUR GOOD. IT IS SOMETHING TO BE GRATEFUL FOR. THE FEAR THAT SAVES US FROM DEATH IS SOMETHING TO BE THANKFUL FOR.)

Ignorance may be bliss now but what will it do for us then? The reality of judgment does not disappear by our ignoring it or reducing it. And oh what terror awaits us should we try to do so.

For so long in my life like I mentioned before, I shoved God to the side and pushed that sin under the rug because I enjoyed It so much in the moment, but it wasn’t until I acted on my guilt that I truly felt at peace.

Stop shoving your sin under the rug and rationalizing it, God knows exactly what you’ve done, and His wrath won’t be hid from you.

Now what I just went through, is why a believer, a born-again Christian should fear God. But what about unbelievers?

There is a whole other level of fear that should be there for an unbeliever, as an unbeliever God is you’re Judge, and His wrath on you will soon be poured out at the day of Judgement. On that day where you are judged, you’ve got to realize that you haven’t been cleansed by the Blood of Jesus, and that means for you His wrath will abide on you at judgement, every single sin will be judged justly. He knows every intent of your heart, and every thought as well. Just like a judge, one day He will judge in “court” for you sins, and romans 6:23 says this “for the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our lord.” If you are not saved, or not born again. I ask that you get before God and fear truly go to Him in fear, acknowledge your sin, repent of your sins, call on His name to save, and confess your belief about Him. If you will do that, you are now saved from that judgement. And God can then justly forgive you of your sins.

if you have no clue what will happen to you at judgement day. You have no clue where you’ll go when you die, I ask that you raise your hand. No one is looking around. This is between me, you, and God. I want to make sure that before you leave tonight you can get right with God and know exactly where you’ll spend your eternity.

If you are here and you are saved, you are a child of God. But you have been trivializing your sin, the first step is to be able to acknowledge it, so if you are trivializing your sin, and don’t see God the way you should be, I ask that you raise your hand and acknowledge it before God…………Now if you raised your hand as a believer who needs to see God in reverence to Him, start tonight and get before broken, and confess your faults to Him.