Fear of the Lord
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ANNOUNCEMENTS
Prayer focus of the month
Church UNDECORATING - next thursday at 10am
Youth and ladies studies are starting up the 13th
Fear of the Lord part 1 - Perfect Fear
STORY - Caleb getting me to run interference for him
Throughout the bible, there’s this idea called ‘the fear of the Lord’.
The fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge,
but fools despise wisdom and instruction.
We’re not comfortable with this idea of being afraid of God. I talked with katherine, and she asked, ‘do you think this word is better expressed as ‘awe’?’
Here’s the thing. I studied this word in this verse. And you know what I learned? It actually is best translated as this special word - called ‘fear’.
And we see this concept all over the bible.
, Isaiah sees the Lord and literally freaks out. He starts crying ‘I am ruined! I have seen the Lord!’
, it says that the Israelites saw the great power God used to free them from egyptian slavery, and they feared him
Even John in , he sees Jesus in a vision, and he’s terrified, he falls down as if he’s dead.
I think we are really missing a lot of the fear of the Lord in churches. BUT - do we really understand what this means?
I want to highlight some of the bible’s explanation regarding this ‘fear of the Lord’
The fear of the Lord leads to life;
then one rests content, untouched by trouble.
That seems a little at odds there, doesn’t it? But I really want to highlight this scripture:
There is no fear in love. But perfect love drives out fear, because fear has to do with punishment. The one who fears is not made perfect in love.
Now, the bible SOUNDS like it’s contradicting itself here. It’s saying, ‘Fear the Lord’, and also ‘God’s perfect love drives out fear’. A few verses earlier, it even says ‘God IS love’.
So often we equate this idea of ‘fearing the lord’ with ‘being afraid of punishment’. But if that’s why you act, does that mean you love God? Or that you just don’t want to make him mad?
CALEB - Started telling me whenever he snuck something
The bible literally tells us, fearing punishment means that God’s love hasn’t gone deep enough into us.
And this is a CRAZY idea. This to me is literally the definition of fear ‘i’m afraid of what’s going to happen to me’.
STORY - swimming in the lake in algonquin
Well, the second idea we have to fall back on, is this idea that the fear of the Lord means being afraid of God as some high master, like a slave. He’s our boss, and when he yells jump, we jump. We HAVE TO obey God, he’s the ultimate God of the entire universe. We BELONG to him. Fear means, we’re afraid to ever cross our master.
The Spirit you received does not make you slaves, so that you live in fear again; rather, the Spirit you received brought about your adoption to sonship. And by him we cry, “Abba, Father.”
And there’s a difference between a son and a slave. I could beat my kids into obeying me - but I’m not going to. They’re not my slaves. They’re my kids and i love them more than anything.
One day, my children are going to get in some kind of trouble. And I want to live my life so that when that day comes, my kids don’t say ‘Oh man, I’m in so much trouble, my dad is going to KILL me’. I want my kids to say ‘Oh man, I’m in so much trouble, I need to call my dad’.
CALEB - Started telling me whenever he snuck something.
The point here is this - the fear of the Lord creates complete dependence on God through everything
It’s not ‘I HAVE TO’. It’s ‘I NEED TO’.
So what does ‘the fear of the Lord’ mean? I’m going to read a scripture.
My son, if you accept my words
and store up my commands within you,
turning your ear to wisdom
and applying your heart to understanding—
indeed, if you call out for insight
and cry aloud for understanding,
and if you look for it as for silver
and search for it as for hidden treasure,
then you will understand the fear of the Lord
and find the knowledge of God.
So, the bible lays it out pretty clear - seeking wisdom, understanding, and insigh about God helps us to understand the fear of the Lord. And I have a working definition of how I think we’re supposed to approach this.
The Fear of the Lord means taking what you know about God seriously.
Following God is a BIG DEAL. He’s the almighty, all powerful God of the entire universe. Being who he wants us to be, doing what he wants us to do, that should be the most, MOST important thing to us.
But if there’s areas where God goes ‘hey, this here, this is important’ and we go ‘ya, i know, i know’. and keep moving on like nothing happened - maybe we don’t fear God enough.
Now, I want to give a warning here. Jesus accused the pharisees of something - he said that they ‘strained out gnats but swallowed camels’. They focused on the law side of things (tithing, ritual purity, etc), but neglected the really big deals for God (justice, mercy). It’s possible for us to obsess over the things God thinks are minor impurities, and ignore the things God thinks will straight up kill us.
So I think the fear of the Lord involves also asking the question, ‘what are the things that God takes seriously? What are the really big deals to God?’ Because there aren’t a lot of areas that the bible straight up says, ‘If you miss this point, you’ve missed something REALLY BIG’. And I want to spend the next few weeks talking about those.
Working through the bible is a giant, lifelong exercise in trying to understand the will of God. But I think, a great foundational is just looking at these areas where God has gone ‘You REALLY need to get this’ and taking them seriously.
And I do believe that if we have this foundation - the other stuff will be a LOT clearer. I believe that a lot of the confusion and infighting over trying to make sure we’re not missing the will of God in the church is related to a lack of emphasis on some of these greater ideals.
I want to take a bit of an aside here. I’m going to talk more in depth about this later on, but I want to jump back to . Because I think it’s a really, really good illustration of this.
so in , John is talking about how God perfects his love in us, for the goal that ‘we will have confidence on the day of judgment’ - that’s verse 17- that is, that we’ll stand before God at the end of our lives, and be confident before Him that we served Him. This, this is the really big deal here. This is the end game - that when God comes in his full power and majesty to judge the earth, that we can stand before Him confidently.
Then John says something really powerful.
Whoever claims to love God yet hates a brother or sister is a liar. For whoever does not love their brother and sister, whom they have seen, cannot love God, whom they have not seen. And he has given us this command: Anyone who loves God must also love their brother and sister.
When I read this, it makes me wonder - do we REALLY have the fear of the Lord? Do we really take this idea seriously? If we did, we’d say that ‘If I don’t love someone else - I can’t love God’. And that’s scary. Do we see our role towards the other people in this room as, ‘no matter what, I have to, I HAVE to make sure everyone here feels loved’.
Because this is one that’s really easy to brush off. ‘But they’re not like me’ or ‘they’re really disruptive’ or ‘they are rude’. We have a hundred reasons to not have to do this. But if we really feared God - this would keep us awake at night. We’d desperately want to make sure this happened.
And let me tell you - there are people in this church who feel unloved. There are people in this room who feel unloved. There are people NOT in this room who feel unloved. I don’t say this to condemn anyone, or to make us afraid that God will simply judge us - I say this to open our eyes - we are missing something REALLY big to God. All over the world, we are missing this one.
If we really feared God, the reality of this verse would scare us - and consume us. Because following God is that important.
And it absolutely breaks my heart to see this not happening in a church. The bible says that the enemy’s goal is as simple as getting us to turn on each other and hate each other. The enemy’s goal is to make us look at this verse and go ‘ya, that’s.... not gonna happen here’. Because he knows how big of a deal it is.
Perfect Fear
The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom,
and knowledge of the Holy One is understanding.
The fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge,
but fools despise wisdom and instruction.
My son, if you accept my words
and store up my commands within you,
turning your ear to wisdom
and applying your heart to understanding—
indeed, if you call out for insight
and cry aloud for understanding,
and if you look for it as for silver
and search for it as for hidden treasure,
then you will understand the fear of the Lord
and find the knowledge of God.
The fear of the Lord leads to life;
then one rests content, untouched by trouble.
There is no fear in love. But perfect love drives out fear, because fear has to do with punishment. The one who fears is not made perfect in love.
Do not be wise in your own eyes;
fear the Lord and shun evil.
The Spirit you received does not make you slaves, so that you live in fear again; rather, the Spirit you received brought about your adoption to sonship. And by him we cry, “Abba, Father.”
Perfect Love Drives Out Fear
And so we know and rely on the love God has for us.
God is love. Whoever lives in love lives in God, and God in them. This is how love is made complete among us so that we will have confidence on the day of judgment: In this world we are like Jesus. There is no fear in love. But perfect love drives out fear, because fear has to do with punishment. The one who fears is not made perfect in love.
We love because he first loved us. Whoever claims to love God yet hates a brother or sister is a liar. For whoever does not love their brother and sister, whom they have seen, cannot love God, whom they have not seen. And he has given us this command: Anyone who loves God must also love their brother and sister.