To Fear the Lord
What does it mean and how do we live it out?
READ OF THE WORD
PSALM 112:1, 6-9
Praise the Lord! Blessed is the man who fears the Lord, who greatly delights in
his commandments!
For the righteous will never be moved; he will be remembered forever. He is not
afraid of bad news; his heart is firm, trusting in the Lord. His heart is steady; he
will not be afraid, until he looks in triumph on his adversaries
Let’s pray
Father, you have prepared our hearts through song and scripture. Now as we sit under the teaching of your word, mold how our hearts feel for you and think of you and see you. May we submit to your commands in gladness and delight in your ways over our own. In Jesus name, amen
Warming Up.
Good morning. For those who don’t know me, my name is Eric Mattie and the elder council has asked me to step in this week as both our pastors were out this week. It is my privilege to bring the Word to you this morning.
Introduction:
This morning I want to talk about a biblical concept found in today’s reading. If you’ve grown up in the church at all you’ve heard it time and time again. Yet it’s a concept that for many of us is hard to nail down. When Scripture continues to bring it up over and over again, after a while you realize- “God’s trying to say something and perhaps I need to consider what he’s saying a little more intently.”
Today I want to answer the question “What does it mean to fear the Lord”
Let me start with a large look at the overall Psalm first. In Psalm 112 we run into another one of those acrostic Psalms, where the first letter of the sentence is a letter of the Hebrew alphabet. If we did this in the American alphabet this first verse may sound like what Dr. William Binne suggested back in the 1800’s when wrote about this psalm. He wrote
“Hallelujah! {that stayed the same}
A- All blessed is the man that feareth the Lord.
B- Being filled with delight in His commandments
And so on… you get the picture.
But this Psalm extolls the benefits of those who fear the Lord and it’s quite a list to go through. Some of the more comforting benefits includes in verse 6-8 (staying with Binne acrostic … yet I encourage you to read it in your Bible…)
L -Lo, he shall not be moved forever:
M- Memorable shall be the righteous man forever.
N- No evil tidings shall he fear:
O-On the LORD depending, his heart is fixed.
P- Planted firmly is his heart, he shall not fear:
Q- Quake shall he not, until he see [his desire] on his foes.
With such a firm stability of faith and a heart that is firm and virtually free of anxieties- this concept of the fear of the Lord needs to find its footing here in us- the 21st century Christian-
If the Fear of the Lord is the beginning of Wisdom as God word says it is, than we want to be wiser than yesterday. We want to walk better and deeper in these concepts- not just by academically understanding the truth of them. But to allow them to take root in
how we feel as Christian,
how we think as lovers of God.
And how we worship in spirit and in truth our holy heavenly Father Creator Redeemer and Judge
Whole Bible Concept
Many people feel when they read the Bible it shows a wrathful God in the Old Testament and a Loving God in the New Testament- as such we can mistakenly think the OT main command is to Fear God and the NT is to Love God.
Nothing can be further from the truth.
First, look at one of the earlier mentions of the phrase “Fear the Lord” in the OT
Deuteronomy 10:12-13
12 “And now, Israel, what does the Lord your God require of you, but to fear the Lord your God, to walk in all his ways, to love him, to serve the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul, 13 and to keep the commandments and statutes of the Lord, which I am commanding you today for your good?
• Note fear, walk, love, serve- all of it is here and emphasized in the commands of relating to God not just fear.
Secondly, we see the continual command to Fear God in the NT.
• Colossians 3:22 – Bondservants are encouraged to work with sincerity of heart ”fearing the Lord”
• 2 Corinthians 7:1- we are encouraged to cleanse ourselves from every defilement of the body and spirit bringing holiness to completion in the “fear of God”
• 1 Peter 2:17 Show proper respect to everyone: Love the brotherhood of believers, fear God, honor the king
• Acts 9:31 Luke accounts that after Saul conversion, the church was strengthened and grew in numbers “living in the fear of the Lord”
• Jesus was said to have a delight in the fear of the Lord- Isaiah 11:3
The Fear of the Lord is not just an Old Testament phrase of piety or devoutness. Scripture shows it is actually a blessing of the new covenant.
In Jeremiah 32:38–40 while talking about the new covenant God says:
38 And they shall be my people, and I will be their God. 39 I will give them one heart and one way, that they may fear me forever, for their own good and the good of their children after them. 40 I will make with them an everlasting covenant, that I will not turn away from doing good to them. And I will put the fear of me in their hearts, that they may not turn from me.
• In summary, we carry in us by the Holy Spirit a planting of Fear of the Lord.
• The BLESSING of being born again believers is not only a heart of stone turned to a heart of flesh, not only the spiritually dead coming to life, not only orphans that have been adopted, the lost, found, and sinners forgiven, but a fear will be put in our hearts that will not make us runaway afraid of God, but a fear will be put in our hearts that is actually to keep us from turning away him.
• The feels counterintuitive to how we view fear
In Jeremiah 33:8-9 the Lord continues:
8 I will cleanse them from all the guilt of their sin against me, and I will forgive all the guilt of their sin and rebellion against me. 9 And this city shall be to me a name of joy, a praise and a glory before all the nations of the earth who shall hear of all the good that I do for them. They shall fear and tremble because of all the good and all the prosperity I provide for it.
• Let’s pause here for a minute. Is fear the right word? I mean to define that there is a fear we experience when we see the goodness of God- is that even the right way to say it?
• All words have shortcomings and the word fear definitely has its baggage. Culturally, we know it as being afraid. But listen to what Matthew Henry says in his comments about Psalm112 and the fear of the Lord. He sums up two different types of fear
“He that fears the Lord, as a Father, with the disposition of a child, not of a slave, delights greatly in his commandments,” Matthew Henry
• The word picture Henry puts before us is we are to have the disposition of a child’s fear of his Father. Not the disposition of a slave afraid of an angry master.
• A slave is afraid of his harsh and unyielding master. A lot of people feel that describes God. That his wrath is actually an evil driven motivation. And anxiety describes that kind of fear As believers, we can feel that way if we live our Christian life under a performance based obedience, that our good must outweigh our bad to be saved or even favored. Other wise suffer the consequences of the judgment of God- whose character we don’t trust and feel he is evil.
• Now the picture of son’s fear of his father, can carry its own burden of sinful baggage as a word picture. But simply stating A good son in a good relationship with his loving and kind father has a fear of offending or dishonoring the one he loves. Why? Because in the eyes of that child his Father is his world! A source of security and love
Like King David, we need to pray Psalm 86:11 “Give me an undivided heart that I may fear your name.”
• We need that singleness of heart when it comes to living our lives in the fear and love of the Lord.
Working Definition
So now that we understand that we are called to fear the Lord, as New Testament Believers let me give you a working definition of what the fear of the Lord is and from there I’ll break it down for our main points to ponder.
This definition come from Christian Teacher Paul David Tripp. He says
“Fear of the Lord means that I carry around with me such a deep awareness, awe, and reverence for the power, holiness, wisdom, and grace of God that I would not think of doing anything other than living for his glory.”
This is such a good working definition. Because it reminds us as mentioned in Jeremiah, the Lord gives us a fear of him, so that we actually don’t turn away from him. Not in a sinful “afraid of His wrath” type of fear. But in delighting in living for Him, His glory and behaving in way that acknowledges him.
This definition not only identifies three elements of a godly fear we are to exercise, but also pinpoints attributes of God that we are to grow deep in.
So lets look into that.
To grow in the fear of the Lord we, are to exercise 3 things
