A Proper Fear of God

Well, good morning. It's good to be with all of you. This is going to conclude the short series that I've done through the Ten Commandments. I've been thinking for a long time on how to wrap this up. And the Ten Commandments, as we're going to see, ends with a section on Israel's response, which is a mixed response. There's a lot of good in how they respond to the giving of the Ten Commandments, and yet there's also bad. And this is something that I've been meditating on for a long time. I feel that the passage today speaks of the fear of the Lord. And I think that in many ways our lives demonstrate a lack of fear of God. And that we have a misunderstanding of what it means to fear.

and maybe an overconfidence that is unhealthy. And so as we read this passage, I want us to think about the Ten Commandments and how we should respond to them. And my hope for us is that we will grow in a proper fear of the Lord and that the fear of God would help us to grow in wisdom and obedience and in a hatred of our sin and in the defeat of it. Now, before I read the passage, I want to remind you of the setting. that the Ten Commandments come because it's really important. At the point of this Ten Commandments are given, if you were to rewind the clock three months, Israel is a slave in Egypt. And Moses comes back and he does the, warns the Egyptians and calls on Pharaoh to release the Israelites. And they refuse again and again. And so God performs ten.

mighty plagues upon the land of Egypt. And they're powerful. They're terrifying. And yet in the plagues, God creates a distinction between his people and the people of Egypt. So you imagine being the Israelites, watching Egypt be destroyed by no visible hand, by the hand of God alone. So you have the 10 plagues. And then the Egyptians kick the Israelites out. They beg them to leave. pay them to leave. They give them all their stuff and they leave. But God leads them into a trap. They're surrounded by mountains and a red sea. And all of a sudden, Pharaoh's army has come up to them. And now Israel's afraid. What's going to happen? And the only thing protecting them is a pillar of cloud separating them from the army. And then God opens up the sea. And imagine being there and seeing a sea open up and walls of water.

on either side, and having to walk through. And then that which divided you from your enemies is gone. The cloud, the fire is gone. The Pharaoh's army follows them into the sea. And then with a thunderous crash, it collapses and kills their enemies. We're told in chapter 19 that the Lord gave them wings of eagles. They crossed this wilderness incredibly fast. And the Lord protected them. They had men, women, children, and flocks. And yet the Lord preserved them and brought them. And where was he bringing them? Well, he was bringing them to his holy mountain, the place that he had promised to meet them. But as they come up to the mountain, they don't just get to go to the mountain and see God. So the Lord talks to Moses and he says, I'm going to come down in thunder and in lightning.

but you have work to do before you can enter into my presence. And so he gives them the commands. They have to first consecrate themselves and they have to do all their laundry. They can't have dirty clothes. They're also supposed to build a fence, a big barrier around the mountain of God. Why? Because God is so holy that if they got too close, they would die. And this is For anyone, whether you're a man, a woman, a child, or just an animal, anyone who got too close to the mountain was to die. And then they were finally told they weren't to have any sex leading up to this, but they were to remain pure and undefiled in any way. So this is a context of the Ten Commandments. And as I read them, imagine being there. This is, all these things are within.

short time span. We're talking three months. This is intense. Then they come up to this mountain, which God descends. So it came about on the third day when it was morning, there was thunder and lightning flashes and a thick cloud upon the mountain and a very loud trumpet sound. So all the people who are in the camp trembled and no wonder. This is a terrifying setting. Now, please stand for the reading of God's word. And I want you to keep that scenario, all these events in your mind as I read through this, because it informs how Israel responds to this. We are so used to the Ten Commandments. I think we can just read them and think, oh, these are the Ten Commandments. And yet, that is not how we should approach God's Word. This is the Word of the Lord, and it's eternally true. Then God spoke all of these words, saying, I am the Lord your God who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery. You shall have no other gods before me. You should not make for yourself an idol or any likeness of what is in heaven above or on the earth beneath or in the water under the earth. You shall not worship them or serve them, for I, the Lord your God, am a jealous God.

visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children, on the third and fourth generations of those who hate me, but showing loving kindness to thousands of generations of those who love me and keep my commandments. You shall not take the name of the Lord your God in vain, for the Lord will not leave him unpunished who takes his name in vain. Remember the Sabbath day, keep it holy. Six days you shall labor and do all of your work. But the seventh day is a Sabbath of the Lord your God. In it you shall not do any work, you or your son or your daughter, your male or your female servant, or your cattle or your sojourner who stays with you. For in six days the Lord made the heavens and the earth, the sea and all that is in them, and rested on the seventh day. Therefore the Lord blessed the Sabbath day and made it holy.

Honor your father and your mother that your days may be prolonged in the land which the Lord your God gives you. You shall not murder. You shall not commit adultery. You shall not steal. You shall not bear false witness against your neighbor. You shall not covet your neighbor's house. And you shall not covet your neighbor's wife or his male servant or his female servant or his ox or his donkey. or anything that belongs to your neighbor. All the people perceived the thunder and the lightning flashes and the sound of the trumpet and the mountain smoking. And when the people saw it, they trembled and stood at a distance. Then they said to Moses, speak to us yourself and we will listen, but let not God speak to us or we will die. Moses said to the people, do not be afraid.

For God has come in order to test you and in order that the fear of him may remain with you so that you may not sin. So the people stood at a distance while Moses approached the thick cloud where God was. This is the word of the Lord. Thanks be to God. You may be seated. Can you imagine the intensity of this event? Some people think that after each command, there was a thunder and a clap and a lightning strike. to confirm the veracity of what was just commanded God's people. What's the most powerful storm you've been in? Have you ever seen an earthquake or felt an earthquake? I mean, is there anything more solid to us than the ground on which we stand? Is there something less moving than a mountain? So imagine the terror of when that starts shaking. The most firm thing we can imagine, the most stable thing we can imagine.

is no longer stable. Given the intensity of this event, it is no wonder that Israel draws back in fear and comes to Moses with a proposition. They don't want to speak to God directly. They want Moses to intercede for them. They want to have a mediator between them and God. And we might think that that's a bad request. Maybe that's sinful of them to request to have a mediator to not deal with God. I mean, shouldn't we want to be intimate with God and to know him that closely? I think part of that is foolishness on our part and that we don't actually understand the terror that's involved with dealing with the holy God. In Deuteronomy 5.22, it says, These words the Lord spoke to all your assembly at the mountain from the midst of the fire of the cloud and the thick gloom with a great voice. And he added no more. He wrote them on tablets of stone and gave them to me. But then after that, what he says is that the Lord actually said that Israel did not sin in the words that they spoke. That actually they were right to request a mediator to be between them and God. They were right to fear God because God is all powerful.

And that was displayed on the mountaintop. The clouds and the thunder and the lightning flashes and the trembling of the earth. The noise, the trumpets. They also were getting a picture of the holiness of God. That if they were to approach too closely to his presence, they would have been struck dead. There was good reason to fear. God's just. And in his justice, he must punish sinners. And this is part of the reason that the law is given to us, right? There are three things that we understand the law has been given for three purposes. It's a mirror. What does a mirror do? It reflects. And so the law of God, these 10 commandments are given to us for us to look into and to reflect on and to show us who we are, how we compare to what God desires, what his holiness requires. But the law is not just a mirror, it's also a map. It teaches us how we should act, how we should move, what we should do. And those two things are tied to each other, right? It shows us that it's a mirror that shows us how we're failing and where we're at, but it also teaches us how we should act and where we should go. It's also a muzzle. It's made to restrain sin.

to curtail it. And so as Israel comes before the mountain of God and they're given these commands, these commands are calling them to live a righteous and a holy life. It's also exposing who they are because to the extent that they don't measure up to what God's calling them to, they are in danger of death from this holy God. Now, Moses' response may seem a bit confusing to us. Did you catch what he said? When the people come to him and they say, Moses, this is scary. We need you to mediate. Moses' response is, do not be afraid, for God has come in order to test you and in order that you may, or that the fear of him may remain with you so that you may not sin.

Do not be afraid. And then he's saying that the Lord's testing you so that you will be afraid. Seems a little contradictory. Well, clearly what Moses is getting at is that there are two types of fear that we can have. One is a sinful, slavish fear, and the other is a godly fear. And so it's incumbent upon us to know and think what is a proper fear of God. What are some marks of an ungodly fear, a slavish fear? Well, one of the marks is in fear of death, and a specific kind of a fear of death, because there's a proper fear of death. But the Israelites thought that they would die by coming near to the mountain, and so they fled away from God. There is a fear of death that causes us to reject God.

that can cause a person to want nothing to do with God because they're afraid that by being associated with God, they will die. And what that reveals about that kind of fear is that this physical life is what's real to them. What they have is the life that they've been given here. We should remember what Jesus says, that we should not fear those who can just kill the body. but him who can throw body and soul into hell. And so there's a certain ungodly fear, which is just a fear for the physical life, that our fear doesn't go beyond that. And so we want nothing to do with God because we're afraid for our physical well-being. The part of an ungodly fear is a fear that leads us away from God. It's a fear that is sheer terror, like a kid who's in the dark.

who either won't move or runs away. That's an ungodly fear. An ungodly fear when you fear God in such a way that rather than running towards him, you run away from him. You hide from him. This is Adam in the garden who feared God and tried to hide. And part of this fear is that it is a distortion of God's attributes where we harp on one aspect of who God is and we don't... look at God as a whole. And so they take the wrath of God and that is all that they understand about him. And so they want to run away, forgetting that God is also merciful and also shows compassion. And the Israelites should have known, right? Because God begins this by drawing them to his mountain. And the fact that God is calling them to him to learn is an indication that he's not calling them there for their own destruction, but he's actually calling them to teach them. If he wanted to destroy them, he could have done that in the land of Egypt. Also, he begins by saying, I am the Lord, your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery. And so there's this idea that when God is communicating his law to you and calling you to follow him, and he's saying, I am your God,

I have saved you. I have brought you out of death and slavery into life. That should cause us to run towards God, not to run away from him. He's holding out life and hope. An ungodly fear of God holds dishonorable thoughts about God. For a despondent sinner to think thus with himself, that God will exact perfection from a man answerable to the measure of an angel. or that God will triumph in the mere torments of his creatures, or that he delights in the ruin, is a sin equal to atheism. Yea, and in some respects worse than atheism, is what a Puritan pastor named William Bates said. That you can look at the law of God, and you can see the holiness of God, and you can have a despair. That there's no hope.

that you would ever be able to attain to anything that would be pleasing to God. And so you turn away from him. That is an ungodly fear. Another form of ungodly fear is demonstrated by the parable that Jesus tells in Matthew 25 about the servants who are given talents. And he says, and the one also who had received the one talent came up and said, master. I knew you to be a hard man reaping where you did not sow and gathering where you scattered no seed. And I was afraid and went and hid your talent in the ground. See, you have what is yours. And there is a fear of God that's ungodly that causes you to take the gifts that God's given you and to bury them, to not use them for the kingdom of God because you're afraid of failure. You're afraid of man. You're afraid of whatever.

and you don't use it in obedience to him. If you find no joy in obedience to God, but it's all dreary misery to do what he says, you want the sin, but you won't do it because you know God would be mad, but you just don't like God because he would be mad at you for you indulging in your sin. That's an ungodly fear. Someone who's in the grip of a slavish fear of God is focused on themselves. They're not concerned about God or God's glory, but they're rather just focused on his judgment that he'll give on them. It's sort of a navel-gazing fear. And what it does is it drives you away from God. At the heart of it, I think that is what an ungodly fear does.

is it causes you to flee from him, to want little to do with him. It's like a dog who's afraid, who's been mistreated. And every time you move towards it, it just cowers. And if that's our approach to God, we have an unhealthy fear of him. Well, what are the marks of a godly fear? Many today want to say that the fear of God has nothing. or very, very little to do with actual fear. That really, when the Bible says that we have to fear God, all it's saying is reverence, maybe awe. Probably what we should really say is we need to respect God. And a godly fear does include reverence and awe and respect, but we should not lightly dismiss the necessity of actually fearing God. I mean, think about what we started talking about in the beginning.

how God has revealed himself to Israel so far. He's been revealed in plagues and the Red Sea crossing, and now he's on a mountain full of fire with lightning and thunder and trumpet blasts. Do you not think that this is meant to inspire fear and a little bit of trepidation in the people as they approach God? It's not meant to cause them to run away. God has brought his people to him, Two, be afraid. Psalm 33, 8 and 9 says, let the earth fear the Lord. Let all the inhabitants of the world stand in awe of him. For he spoke and it was done. He commanded and it stood fast. The author of Hebrews says, therefore, since we receive a kingdom which cannot be shaken, let us show gratitude by which we may offer to God an acceptable service with reverence.

and godly fear. Why? Because our God is a consuming fire. So the author of Hebrews is warning us that our worship should be informed by the fact that we are worshiping a God who is a consuming fire. Consuming fires are not warm, comfortable things. Jesus warns his disciples, and through them, he's warning us that we should not fear man who can merely destroy our flesh, but that we should fear God who can not only destroy our bodies, but put our souls into eternal torment, which should be a terrifying thought. And it should inspire a fear that is more than just awe or respect. Christians do not merely respect God. They know of God's awesome holiness and his justice.

and what that means for sinners. A Christian knows their own sin, and so there's a certain fear that is appropriate because of an acknowledgement that we're sinners, and God's not, and he's holy. But with that fear, it is tempered by the fact that we've already seen God's mercy displayed to us. And that he's drawn Israel out of the bondage of slavery. He's drawn them to himself. He's teaching them the appropriate way to approach him. That they must be consecrated. They must be made holy. God has rescued them from the bondage of slavery in Egypt. And that's true of everyone who's a Christian. This is a picture of you lost in the land of slavery and bondage to your sins. And then when you believe.

When Christ sends the Holy Spirit and he regenerates you and awakens you, you're pulled out of that slavery. And so there's an appropriate fear because we know that while we're clothed in this flesh, we're still sinners and God's still holy. And yet that, and it's a genuine fear because God is holy and you can't have light and dark. And yet that fear is tempered with the fact that we know that he's merciful and compassionate and that. He is provided a mediator. A Christian fear of God does not flee from God, but runs to God. It's like when your children sin and you discipline them. And then what do they do? Well, they ought to turn to you and get comfort from you. If discipline has gone well, after the spanking, they turn and they get a big hug and a kiss.

And they apologize, but they turn to you because they know there's no comfort anywhere else. There's fear. I'm going to get a spank from mom or dad. And yet after the discipline's finished, they don't run. They come back. Why can they come back? Well, the Israelites were right. They needed a mediator. They said, Moses, we need you to intercede. But guess what? We have it better than they do. We don't have to go to the foot of Sinai. We have Christ. So there's fear that's engendered from people who still have sin and are dealing with the holy God. And yet there's comfort knowing that we can approach God through Christ and that we are God's children by adoption. And because of that, we have every right of a child to come before God. And so we can see that joy and love are not at odds with the fear of God.

In fact, joy and love are intimately connected with fear. Fear keeps hope from degenerating into presumption, and hope keeps fear from sinking into despair. If you take fear from hope, the soul will be lazy. And if you take hope from fear, the soul will sink into despondency. Love without fear would become secure. And fear without love would be slavish. Love is the dearest companion of this fear. There is nothing more fearful than an ingenuous love and nothing more loving than a filial fear. The fear of God qualifies our joy. If you subtract fear from joy, joy will become light and wanton. And if you abstract joy from fear, the fear will become slavish. Now I'm concerned.

I'm concerned for us, for this congregation. We don't have a great enough fear of God. And we're all more parts of our culture than we think we are. See, American Christianity is all about love, right? And in our culture, we pit love and fear against each other. We misunderstand what John is talking about when he says that perfect love casts out fear. And we're taught that God is all about love. And what does that breed? Well, it breeds this idea of cheap grace. This idea that God will give us grace and that God doesn't require much of anything from us. God is love. And because they divorce love from a godly fear, they don't think that God actually requires anything from us. Now, I would imagine that if I were to ask you, every one of us would disavow this worldview. It's not what...

The Bible teaches. After all, in our church, we do preach about sin. We talk about sin a lot. We have a prayer of confession. We talk about God's requirements of us. We're ending a series on the Ten Commandments, which is all about the things that God has required of us. But I have some questions that I want us to consider. Are you a sinner? Like you. Are you actually a sinner? Are you... almost good enough to get to heaven. Like we're pretty good. We're almost there. We just need Jesus to like take care of that last little bit that we need help with, but we're pretty good. Now, I don't know that any of us would cop to feeling that way, but what's more real to you? Can you detail more clearly to me your sins or the sins of the people out there of our culture?

Can you tell me more thoroughly about your problems or the problems of the Democrats? Can you tell me about your friends' problems or your sins? It's shameful for us who claim Christ to think so little of our own sins and to know so little of our own sins and to be experts in everybody else's sins. It demonstrates that we do not know our God very well. Our fear is lacking. Paul said he was the chief of sinners. He didn't say the Pharisees were the chief of sinners, the Sadducees were the chief, the Romans. He said he was the chief of sinners. Are you more concerned about woke ideology than your own wandering eyes and lust, than the pornography that you looked at or the masturbation that you've done? Do we spend more time trying to advance conservative causes than encouraging our brothers in good works or evangelizing the lost? What do you really think?

fear. Can you tell me more about your sports heroes than the heroes of faith in Hebrews 11? Have you memorized more of their exploits? Have you meditated more on their accomplishments than the heroes of the faith? How well can you explain the rules of your favorite sport to me versus the rules that God says should govern your life? Are you more concerned about Instagram or whatever social media drug is your choice? than you are about God's law? Are you more concerned about what they tell you to fear when it comes to how your body looks or how you dress or how clean your house should be or how you should raise your kids or what food you should be feeding your kids or the best way to educate your kids than what God teaches you on these things? So much of our lives are lived theoretically.

We argue about things that we have no control over. We want to revise how we understand history. We know so little about it. We're going to go seek out a guru who's going to stroke our intellect and teach us how smart we are. We have special knowledge. And all the while, our families are neglected. They're not growing spiritually. We're not growing spiritually. We're so worried about all the sins out there and how we have to correct them. And what are they going to think? Brothers and sisters, are you not afraid of what God might think? This should not be. This is an indication that we do not actually fear God. If we feared God as we should, he would never be far from our minds. He would never be far from our tongues.

He would inform everything we do and everything we say. The man who fears God sees and fights the sins in his own life and is more concerned about that than everyone else's sin. He's more concerned about getting his house in order than in railing about the disorder that prevails in our culture. And here's a beautiful thing. If you will fear God and live like it, our culture will change. Your family will change. Your life will change. But it will begin with you fearing God and ordering your own life according to that and working outward from there. It will begin with you knowing your own sin and putting it to death. Do you fear God? Do you fear God? If you want to grow in the fear of God, what do you need to do? You have to know God. You cannot fear or love God if you do not know God.

You have to know him. And if your knowledge stops at the fact that God hates sin, then you will have an ungodly fear of him because you'll only see a God of wrath and you'll never draw near. Well, how do we get to know God? The first thing is we ought to pour over scripture. Don't make excuses for not reading God's word. Devour it. In Scripture's pages, you will learn of God's holiness and his righteousness and his wrath. But you will also learn of God's love and his mercy and his compassion for sinners. We're just saying, Jesus, what a friend of sinners, right? Pour over Scripture. That is so neglected by us. We shove it in a few minutes before we get about the important work of the day, right? We shove it in a few minutes before we go to bed.

Maybe. Unless we have a really busy day. We stayed up really late. Well, I read a couple verses. We must devour scripture and know God. You will not fear God if you don't know him. And you won't know him if you don't read his word. Second, you must pray and pray and pray. Speak with God. You cannot know God if you do not speak with him. You should cry out to God. And ask for him to give you the Holy Spirit so that you can understand his word and you can understand him better. And in doing so, we must repent and draw near to him, not withdraw. We have this wicked lie that comes in our heads that we'll fight with a sin and we give in to the sin. And then what do we do? We have to clean up before we can get to God.

That's the work of Christ. He cleans us up. Don't withdraw from God until somehow you've made yourself clean enough to get into his presence. You can't do it. Confess your sins. Seek forgiveness from him. Draw near to him and he will draw near to you. A third way for you to grow in the fear of the Lord is to read what people who know God and are close to him have said and let them guide you. Let them instruct you. Read them. If you want an obscure guru, Go find the work by Pastor William Bates on the fear of the Lord and read him. That will do you far better than any other gurus out there. You want to grow in fear of God? Then encourage one another in the fear of the Lord. Let's have conversations that are real. Let's have conversations about things that we can affect, that we can change. Let's have conversations about our families. How are you doing with disciplining your children?

How are you leading your wife? How are you submitting to your husband? How are you thinking about evangelizing the people around you? About sharing the great God we serve with the people who are in and out of our lives every day. Brothers and sisters, we're taught in scripture that the fear of the Lord is clean and enduring forever. That it actually revives our souls. We must grow in our fear of God. Our fear of God is going to be shown by his mastery over every aspect of your life. It will be demonstrated in the way you think and in the conversations that you have and in the things that you do. And what I can promise you is that if you grow in the fear of God, your life will change. And you will have greater love, greater joy than you can imagine. We think that, oh.

We're going to hear a sermon on the fear of God. Now we're all going to be depressed. That's not true. Because a proper fear of God will bring you closer to God. You'll have sweeter union with Christ and with each other. Sweeter union than you thought was possible this side of heaven. More joy than you thought you could ever have. Stop living a shallow life consumed by the things that don't last and strive for something greater. And here's the thing. cure for your anxiety is to fear God. Because if you have a proper fear of God, you won't fear anything else. A proper fear of God removes all these other fears from our lives because we draw near to him and part of the fear of him is wrapped up in knowing that he's sovereign and that he's in control of all things and that it's with him alone that we have to deal. And so if you actually fear God, your life, will become so much more simple. So I encourage you to seek out a greater and godlier fear of the Lord. Pour over your Bible. Pray. Draw near. Read the people who know God and are close to him. And make yourself a student of them. Know them. Let them guide and instruct you. And let us encourage one another in this work.

Let's challenge each other to have meaningful conversations. Encourage each other to strive after God more fully. Let's pray.