Fear of the Lord #1 – Keeps Us from Sinning
Fear of the Lord #1 – Keeps Us from Sinning
Throughout the entire bible we are commanded to fear God.
“Thou shalt fear the Lord” Lev 22:17; Due 6:13; 1Pt 2:17
This is a command, it is not a request or suggestion.
What is it to fear God? At its essence, fearing God is to obey him, because we fear the consequences. That is good! I fear to disobey my boss, because I do not want to be fired. I fear to disobey my coach, because I do not want to run extra laps. A child fears to disobey his/her parents, because they do not want to be punished.
In these next 3 Blogs I want to address:
1) Fearing God keeps us from sin, which is good
2) Fearing God what Jesus said
3) Fearing God a Positive
“The LORD said to the Satan, “Have you considered My servant Job, that there is none like him on the earth, a blameless and an upright man, who fears God and so he avoids evil?” Job 2:3
And Job himself says, “And unto man he said, Behold, the fear of the Lord, that is wisdom; and to depart from evil is understanding.” Job 28:28
Fear God, be wise, do not sin; this applies to Christian and non-Christian alike!
Solomon, the wisest man who ever lived says, “Let us hear the conclusion of the whole matter: Fear God, and keep his commandments: for this is the whole duty of man.” Ecc 12:13
Our duty, our whole duty to God is summed up in fearing him and therefore obeying him; and obeying him means, we do not sin.
And in the book of Proverbs, the book intended to give us practical wisdom for life, the statement “fear the Lord” is written 15 times in various forms.
The fear of the LORD is the beginning of knowledge, …” Pro 1:7
“The fear of the LORD is the beginning of wisdom, …” Pro 9:10
“ … and by the fear of the LORD men depart from evil.” Pro 16:6
Do a search for “fear of the Lord” and “fear the Lord” and “fear God” and the like, and you will find almost 100 references.
And this is not only an Old Testament concept. The God of the Old Testament was not a mean and hateful and angry God, while the God of the New Testament is love. There is only one God, the same God in both the Old and New Testaments; remember, it is the God of the Old Testament who “so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish, but have eternal life. For God did not send His Son into the world to condemn the world, but that the world through Him might be saved.” Jhn 3:16-17
Jesus clearly says, “Fear not them which kill the body, but are not able to kill the soul: but rather fear him which is able to destroy both soul and body in hell.” Mat 10:28
And why would God destroy both body and soul in hell? Those who do not repent of their sins and believe in the Lord Jesus Christ, will be punished eternally in hell, because they remain in sinful rebellion against God.
And it is not just the un-saved who are told to fear God; Paul says to Christians in
2Co 7:1 “Having therefore these promises, dearly beloved, let us cleanse ourselves from all filthiness of the flesh and spirit, perfecting holiness in the fear of God.” Having promises of good things to come, of heaven forever, we are told to motivate ourselves to obey, in order that we might obtain the things promised to us; obedience is called “perfecting holiness”; it is “obeying … working out our own salvation with fear and trembling” Php 2:12
And the book of Hebrews, again a book written to Christians, in Heb 12:28-29 says, “Wherefore we receiving a kingdom which cannot be moved, let us have grace, whereby we may serve God acceptably with reverence and godly fear: For our God is a consuming fire.” Having ALREADY received an eternal kingdom, that which we are promised to receive in the FUTURE, we told to serve by obeying NOW.
It is a fearful thing, a thing to be feared, to fall into the hands of the living God.
Heb 10:30-31 says, “For we know him that hath said, Vengeance belongeth unto me, I will recompense, saith the Lord. And again, The Lord shall judge his people. It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God.” God shall judge his people. i.e. Christians. That is a thing which we Christians should fear, and that fear should motivate us to obey. He will take vengeance; he will recompense disobedience. Not in excluding us from heaven, but during this life, chastising us for our sins, which as the Puritans used to say, are done against clear light and great love with full knowledge! Christian, we know full well when we sin; let us be afraid to sin.
“If his children forsake my law, and walk not in my judgments; If they break my statutes, and keep not my commandments; Then will I visit their transgression with the rod, and their iniquity with stripes. Nevertheless my loving-kindness will I not utterly take from him, nor suffer my faithfulness to fail. My covenant will I not break, nor alter the thing that is gone out of my lips.” Psa 89:30-34
For me, this is a great motivation to no sin; I wish I heeded it more!!
The summation is, fear God by obeying him which means don’t sin. It is wise to not sin; to sin is the most foolish thing we can do; be wise, fear God, and do not sin.
So Question: Do you fear God, or do you want to sin? We all sin, and at times we all want to sin, absolute sinlessness is not the issue, we will not know that in this life; we are talking about the desire to be free from sin, and to fight against sin.
Develop a mindset of fearing God and the consequences of disobeying him; that will help you to fight against sin and sinning.
To cry out as Paul did: “But I see another law in my members, warring against the law of my mind, and bringing me into captivity to the law of sin which is in my members. O wretched man that I am! who shall deliver me from the body of this death?” Rom 7:23-24
I can know how much I fear God, by how often, and how easily I sin.
It is impossible to love God and keep on disobeying him. I am not talking about a Christian falling into sin, getting up, repenting, going on, like a sheep who do falls into the mud, but hates it, and so gets out, cleans itself off and keeps going trying to avoid the mud; I am talking about someone, who like a pig wallows in the mud (2Pt 2:22). Christians do not wallow in sin, we fall into it, but we do not wallow; we get up as quickly as possible, and wash our selves off again with confession and repentance and resume our walk on the narrow road that leads to life, and we do that because we have received a kingdom, because we have promises, and because we fear offending God who has so loved us.
Examine yourself, do you fear God? Do you fear sinning? If not, that should make you very afraid, because you are probably not a Christian.
21 April 2024