What It Means To Fear God

Transcript

All right, thank you very much. And hello again radio friends. How in the world are you?  This is your good friend, Bob Cook, and I’m delighted for the opportunity of sharing with you from God’s Word. 

We’re looking at 1 Peter 2. And it would be about verse 17, “Honor all men, love the brotherhood, fear God, honor the king.” Now we, we come then to this phrase, ‘fear God’. And we need to talk about that and see what’s involved. The Bible says, “The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom.” It also remarks that in the old days of the judges, people feared the Lord and served their own gods; so that the matter of complete commitment to God is involved as we talk about this. 

Fear God. Well, first of all you look up the, the original verb. And it is a verb that means, ‘to be afraid of’ or ‘to be terrified of’ or ‘to reverence’. Now you and I are not afraid of God in any craven sense. That is to say, if you know the Lord Jesus Christ as your Savior, you no longer fear coming into His presence for judgment because the Bible says that, “He that heareth my words and believeth on Him that sent Me hath everlasting life, and shall not come into judgment; but is past from death unto life.” 

So you’re not going to stand in the great white throne judgment and be judged for your sins because Jesus bore them on Calvary. And God has forgotten them. God is the only being in all of the universe who has the right to forget, and who can do so. You will have your memory throughout eternity. 

Abraham said to Lazarus, “Son, remember that thou in thy lifetime hadst thy good things, and likewise Lazarus his evil things.” You’ll have your memory in eternity. But God has forgotten every one of your sins when you trusted the Lord Jesus Christ. And day-by-day cleansing goes on in the same manner. If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. And God removes the sin from your heart, and the record from your record in the Book of Life. 

So, fearing God does not involve that craven, terrified ‘I want to run away from Him’ feeling that the unsaved has. See, if… Peter says, “If ye call on the Father past the time of your sojourning here in fear…” because you see, if, if you were, if you are depending on your own goodness, you’re in trouble, you’re afraid. You better, you better start running. But if you are trusting in the Lord Jesus Christ as your Savior and the one who has paid the penalty for your sins 

“God commendeth His love toward the sin that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.” Little word means ‘up’, ‘over’, ‘instead of’ – he took our place, died instead of us, on the cross. If you’re trusting the Savior that died in your place, and paid the penalty for sins, and who today is a risen Savior interceding for you – the Bible says, “He everliveth to make intercession for them that come unto God by Him” – well then you’re not terrified, you’re not running away from God, you’re able to say, “Our Father which art in heaven.” 

So for believers, what does that mean ‘to fear God’? “Be not deceived,” says Paul, “God is not mocked.” You can’t kid around with God. My father had a number of personality factors which some critics might call quirks, you know. He, he just had his own ways about things. But one thing that I remember about him, which I, I feel was, was creditable was he never believed in what he called ‘kidding’. He, he never said, as I remember him, I cannot remember his ever saying to me, “Oh I was just, I was just fooling you, boy. I was just kidding you.” No, he didn’t believe in that. He would look at me sternly and say, “Let your yay be yay and your nay, nay” you know. He didn’t believe in kidding. 

Well, bless him, a lot of the rest of us have enjoyed a hearty laugh at the expense of, of what we Americans at least, call kidding around. And intrinsically I don’t suppose there’s anything illegal, immoral or fattening in doing it. Sometimes it may get you in trouble with your friends. So you have to be careful, and judicious, and wise. But it says, “God is not mocked.” You can’t kid around with Him. 

Over in Ecclesiastics 5 he says, “When thou vowest a vow, differ not to pay it, neither say thou before the angel that it was an error. For God hath no pleasure in the death of, of foolish people” – I’m paraphrasing that a little just to give the sense of it. God isn’t… You, you can’t fool around with Him and say, “Well, I didn’t mean it. I was just fooling.” Don’t do it. Because he says, “Why should you die before your time? Be not rash with thy mouth, and let not thine heart be hasty to utter anything before God, for God is in heaven and thou upon Earth. Therefore let thy words be few. When thou vowest a vow unto God, defer not to pay it, for He hath no pleasure in fools. Pay that which thou hast vowed. Better is it that thou shouldst not vow than that thou shouldst vow and not pay. Suffer not thy mouth to cause thy flesh to sin; neither say thou before the angel that it was an error” – say, “I was just kidding, I didn’t mean that” – “wherefore should God be angry at thy voice and destroy the work of thine hands.” 

I read that from Ecclesiastics 5 so as to get the exact wording of it. I think the first thing in this matter of fearing God is to realize that God is almighty, He is sovereign, He is supreme, He’s the creator – you’re the creature, He’s the potter – you’re the clay. You don’t have any claims; when you come to God, you come as a supplicant for mercy, not asking for your just deserts. “Everything,” Wendell P Loveless used to say, “everything outside of the lake of fire is pure grace.” 

So when you come to an almighty, sovereign, holy God, you come as a supplicant for mercy through Jesus, not deserving anything but receiving by faith His grace and His mercy. Let’s be straight about that: you have no claim on God except His divine love that reaches out to save you in mercy and in grace. So if, if I’m going to fear God as a Christian, that’s where I start. I start realizing that He’s sovereign, and that He could if He wished, turn away from me. All it takes to destroy me is if God turned away from me and, and, and forsook me – that’s all it takes. 

But He’s faithful. The Bible says, “I will never leave thee, not forsake thee.” So you don’t have to worry about God turning His back on you because of your own human weaknesses and shortcomings. Fear God – where do I start? You start while you kneel at the throne. “Let us therefore come boldly to the throne of grace, that we may obtain mercy.” So you come for a, as a supplicant for mercy. Every place you turn to the Word, you find that talk you… That we may obtain mercy and find grace to help in time of need. 

Where do I start if I fear God? Start on your knees at the throne of grace, realizing that God is Almighty God, and He has the right to control every part of all of my life. Then what? Fearing God, as we reminded ourselves, is not abject terror, but is reverential awe. Reverential awe. You fear Him in a sense of being reverent and of being awed in His holy presence. You don’t come rushing into God’s presence any more than you would come rushing into the Oval Office at the White House, and greet the President by his first name – you don’t do that. 

God is on the throne. “God is in heaven, and thou on Earth, ever let thy words be few,” said the wise man. Choose your words, monitor your attitude, reverential awe and trust is wrapped up in this idea of fearing God. There is a certain exclusivity that’s involved as well. I quoted a verse just a moment ago, from the Old Testament: “They feared the Lord and served their own Gods” – one of the tragic, tragic verses of the Bible, where there was a dualism. And in that kind of a dualism, God always loses out and people always gravitate toward idolatry. 

If you’re going to fear God, there’s an exclusivity that is involved, that means “the dearest idol I have known, whatever that idol be, help me to tear it from Thy throne and worship only Thee,” as the hymn writer says. Have you dealt with that in your own life? That’s so difficult and so painful. I don’t like to do that. And yet, every one of us needs day by day, to, to evaluate his or her own life, and to see if there’s anything there that, that could possibly take the place of God in the focus, the focal center of your soul, the throne of your spirit. 

See, to fear God means there’s nobody else on the throne of your life but He. And then of course it seems to me that if you fear God, there has to be obedience, has to be obedience. “I fear God,” said Joseph, when he was under pressure in temptations hour. He was, he was more aware of the will and the sovereignty of God than he was in the pressures of temptation in that dark hour. Now his obedience to God landed him in prison, but later brought him into the position of the ruler of Egypt. 

So, there you have the illustration – ‘I fear God’. “How can I do this great wickedness,” Joseph said, “and sin against Thee.” See? How much do you fear God in terms of doing what He wants, as over against what you might want? That really is the acid test of whether I fear God. In the pressure situations of life, yes even under temptation of one sort or another; in the situations where my own desires – perhaps legitimate and perfectly all right – would seek to supersede the will of God. In all those different kinds of situations, how important is God’s will to me? Now that’s a question that you have to, you have to settle in your own life. 

Love the brotherhood, fear God. Know you’re not terrified of Him because He’s now your loving heavenly Father. And like your Savior you can pray, “Abba, Father, Papa, God.” And yet there’s reverential awe that is combined with that filial and loving father-child relationship. And so you recognize His authority, you recognize His greatness, you recognize His right to control you, you recognize the rightness of His will. And you are willing then, to put His will first, before anything else in all the world. That’s part at least of what it means to fear God. 

Dear Father, today may we love Thee, may we fear Thee, may we obey Thee. In Jesus name I pray this. Amen.  

Till I meet you once again by way of radio, walk with the King today and be a blessing!