Sermon: Fear & Knowledge

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Open your Bibles to Proverbs. Book of Proverbs, chapter 1. Book of Proverbs, chapter 1.

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Proverbs 1, verse 7. Hear now the word of the living and the true

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God. The fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge.

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Fools despise wisdom and instruction. Thus far is the reading of God's holy inspired word.

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Let's pray together as His people. Father, thank You for Your Word. Thank You for this truth. Lord, we love

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You and we thank You so much that You've given to us Your Word, this letter from You, Your instruction,

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Your truth. Thank You that You've preserved Your Word through time, that we have this free access that we do to Your Word.

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I pray, especially for today, God, as we unpack this foundational truth,

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I pray that You would open our eyes to it, our hearts and our minds, that You would renew our minds, that You would convict us, that You would challenge us, bless us, strengthen us.

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Lord, I pray that You would hide this word in our hearts that we may not sin against You, that this word from You would be treasured up within us, that we would be able to draw from it

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Your truth in the future as we live our lives, that we would be able to draw from it Your truth glorifying You and enjoying You in Your good world.

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We praise You. We pray that You'd get the preacher out of the way. Again, as we ask often,

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God, that people would forget me and remember You. In Jesus' name, amen.

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The fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge. Fools despise wisdom and instruction.

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So we're in the book of Proverbs now going verse by verse through this book of God's wisdom.

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We call this series Wisdom from Above because that's where it comes from. These are the words of God.

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This is God's revelation to you and to me. What's wrong? Are you broken?

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Is the world broken? Do you feel pain? Do you see brokenness and darkness around you?

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This is the answer. So it's interesting because this is just seven verses into the book of Proverbs.

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It's sort of an opening as we talked about last week. It's sort of the foundation. It's the beginning of wisdom.

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It's explaining what wisdom is. It is not just knowing things, but actually the ability to have skill in knowing those things and actually applying those things.

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And you get to verse seven and this verse, it's almost universally recognized. This verse right here is the climax of those first seven verses.

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It's landing here and it's landing here for a reason because this particular verse sets up the understanding for the entirety of the book.

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The rest of the book rests here and you're gonna find out in a minute, this is repeated in other ways throughout this one book of wisdom from God.

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But this is really the answer. Especially, and I hate to just keep talking about it because it's not just us.

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We're so unique and things are really falling apart and broken in our world and it's just unique to us. No, I don't wanna do that, but I think

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I have to highlight the fact that we look past the last couple of years in this nation. We're only the last generation, but sort of hitting this climax peak that we're in right now, sort of running off the cliff in so many ways.

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When you look around the world, you say, so much seems so broken. There seems like there's so much pain and so much darkness and such a lack of understanding and wisdom in the world.

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And it just becomes just mind blowing and at times bewildering to say, how can people be so foolish and so broken?

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How can they not see 10 steps ahead of them? Why can't they make wiser decisions? And I think the answer is summed up right here in this verse.

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The fear of the Lord. And the word here is the divine name of God. It actually says in the

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Hebrew, the fear of Yahweh. Not some God, not any God, not a general theism, a general

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God, but the fear of Yahweh is the beginning of knowledge.

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Not just the start, it's the very foundation of all knowledge. If you want to be a knowing person, if you want to truly know things, if you want to have understanding, if you want to be a wise person, a wise businessman, a wise wife, a wise husband, a wise child, a wise leader, if you want to be wise and have understanding and knowledge at all, this is an audacious, bold claim coming from the

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Bible. And we either believe this or we don't. Because it is possible with something that is this powerful, this potent, this loud, screaming, it's possible to allow it to become merely a pithy slogan.

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Something that works really well on coffee mugs and things. The fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge.

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Fools despise wisdom and instruction. It's really easy to allow that to be a pithy slogan. But if we stop for a moment, this is the answer to all of life.

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It is everything. It is everything from the moment you open your eyes in the morning to where you interact with your loved ones, your wife, your husband, your children.

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It is the foundation of questions of knowledge and building bridges and buildings.

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It is the foundation of being able to do science and to create logic textbooks. It is the basis of medicine.

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It is everything summed up right here. And we either believe it as Christians or we don't.

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We can't have one foot in the biblical worldview on this truth and one foot in neutrality.

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This verse allows for absolutely zero neutrality. It is the fear of the

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Lord that is the beginning of knowledge. If you want to be a knowing person, an understanding person, a wise person, then this word from God says that it is the fear of the

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Lord that is the beginning of that pursuit. And so here we are.

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This is the foundational truth. It's the climax of the entire book of wisdom. And as I've said, all biblical truth.

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This particular thought, the fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge, is really throughout the entirety of God's revelation.

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Old Testament and New Testament, just in this one book, the book of Proverbs, in the one book, it's repeated throughout in different ways.

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I'll give you an example. If you would turn with me to Proverbs 9. Proverbs 9, verse 10.

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Here it is again. The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom and the knowledge of the

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Holy One is insight. You want to understand? You want to know?

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You want answers? You want a foundation? It's the fear of God. That's where it starts.

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That's where it begins. That's the posture that has to exist to have true insight and true understanding.

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But it's not just here. It's said a number of times again in different ways. It's in Proverbs 1 .29,

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2 .5, 3 .7, 8 .13, 9 .10, 10 .27,

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14 .2, 14 .26, 14 .27, 15 .11, or 16, 15 .33,

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16 .6, 19 .23, 22 .4, 22 .4,

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23 .17, 24 .21, 28 .14, 29 .25, 31 .30.

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Good? It's everywhere. One book. It's over and over and over again.

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The fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge. The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom. The fear of the Lord, the fear of the Lord is not just in the book of Proverbs.

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This foundational truth to all of life for God's creatures in His good universe is everywhere.

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Go with me to Psalm. Chapter 1 .11. Psalm 1 .11, Psalm 1 .11,

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verse 10. So it's not just in the book of wisdom. It's something that God's people have been singing about throughout the ages.

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Psalm 1 .11, verse 10. The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom. There it is again.

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All those who practice it have a good understanding. His praise endures forever.

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And then go to Job, the book of Job. Daniel, stand up, read

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Job 28 .28. Nice and loud. Yeah.

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Nice and loud, brother. 28 .28. So it's in Job, Psalm.

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Throughout the book of Proverbs, the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom.

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The fear of the Lord. Now it's important here to start and unpack what the word fear means because I think it's really important.

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Last week when we started this study, we read through Proverbs 1 .7

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and we just simply read the text. The fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge. And it was interesting because I actually saw a comment that I expected,

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I anticipated, and I think we have to address it when we talk today as 21st century evangelicals in the

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West, if that word has any meaning at all anymore, you say things like you need to fear God.

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And there's sort of a gut response today because of our culture in the West where we've actually given a caricature of the biblical

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God. We have a portrayal of God that is not biblical. And so people will say, and a comment came last week just through the mere reading of the text, are we really supposed to fear

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God? Are we really supposed to fear God? People ask that question today. And only in a generation like ours would we have the audacity to ask that question.

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Are we really supposed to fear God? You can only ask a question like that if you've actually been sort of lulled into this very strange portrait of Jesus Christ in the modern context where we believe that God, he's really just sort of the jolly nanny in the sky, right?

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He's the jolly nanny in the sky. That's what God is to us. He's the nonjudgmental fun uncle.

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Like that's God today, right? He just wants to be your friend. So you have, you know, sort of the, you have to understand like Jesus is my homeboy, guys.

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Jesus is my homeboy. He's my buddy. He's my friend. God is my broseph, right?

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He's a nonjudgmental super being up there. And you know, all he really cares about is me, is just loving me.

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And there's really one attribute of God in the modern evangelical context.

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And what is that one attribute? You already know. What is it? Love. It's love.

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God is love and he's just love. He's always just loving.

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That's all there is to God's character is he's just loving. Now, of course, it makes sense to ask the question, are we really supposed to fear that God?

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And the answer is if his only attribute is love, whatever that means, then of course we have no reason to fear that false depiction of God.

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However, the Bible says quite a lot about fearing

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God. I actually thought about reading like a hundred verses in a row but I thought you guys were gonna be very upset with me for that because you're gonna say,

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Jeff, like we do have to someday finish the book of Proverbs. And so I'll just give you an example. This goes throughout the

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Bible. I challenge you, just look it up. Look up fear of God verses in the Bible. Fear of the Lord verses in the

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Bible. You will get pages and pages and pages like this. Proverbs 1 .7, the fear of the

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Lord is the beginning of knowledge. Fools despise wisdom and instruction. Matthew 10 .28.

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Jesus says, and do not fear those who kill the body, but cannot kill the soul.

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Rather, words of Jesus here, these are red letters so really important. Rather, fear him who can destroy both soul and body in hell.

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Here is God incarnate, Jesus Christ, the second person of the Trinity. God in the flesh walking among His creation and He's saying to people, don't fear those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul.

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Rather, He says, fear Him who can destroy both soul and body in hell.

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Is that supposed to be a real fear of God? Jesus is attaching that call to fear

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God to the fact that He will throw your body and your soul into hell.

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So you should fear God because of that judgment, that ability to judge that God has.

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See, the modern conception of God is so far from the biblical God, that's why it's so strange for us to take in that claim from Scripture that it is the fear of Yahweh that is the beginning of knowledge.

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Jesus taught people, fear God, why? Because He can throw your body and your soul into hell.

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Don't fear man. What can these people do to you? You're basically immortal. You can live forever because you know

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God. What do they have over you? There's no fear of death for Christians. This is why Christians throughout the centuries, throughout the ages, throughout 2 ,000 years have gone willingly to their deaths, sometimes going to their deaths singing.

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How do you do that? How do you sing a song to God before your head is cut off in front of your friends and families and loved ones?

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Christians have done this over and over and over again. Why? Because Jesus said, don't fear the ones who have the power to kill your body but not your soul.

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You fear God who can throw both into hell. That's what Jesus says.

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And again, those are red letters, so they're apparently very reliable. Psalm 33 .8,

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let all the earth fear the Lord. Let all the inhabitants of the world stand in awe of Him.

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Ecclesiastes 12 .13, the end of the matter. All has been heard. Fear God and keep

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His commandments for this is the whole duty of man. So that's the substance of the

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Christian life. You want to know what the Christian life is all about in summary, in substance?

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Fear God and keep His commandments. Are we called to fear God in Holy Scripture?

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Well, there's more. Proverbs 14 .27, the fear of the Lord is the fountain of life that one may turn away from the snares of death.

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Deuteronomy 10 .12, and now Israel. What does the Lord your God require of you?

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But to fear the Lord your God, to walk in His ways, to love

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Him, to serve the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul.

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Luke 1 .50, and His mercy is for those who fear Him from generation to generation.

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Proverbs 19 .23, the fear of the Lord leads to life and whoever has it rests satisfied.

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He will not be visited by a harm. Psalm 25 .14, the friendship of the

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Lord is for those who fear Him. You want to be a friend of God? Fear Him.

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That's what it says. And He makes known to them His covenant. Psalm 34 .7, oh, fear the

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Lord, you His saints. For those who fear Him have no lack.

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Teach me your way, O Lord, that I may walk in your truth. Unite my heart to fear your name.

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That's the call of God to His creatures. Fear God, love

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God, walk in His commandments. Fear God, have no lack. Fear God, have knowledge, wisdom, understanding, insight.

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That's what the Bible teaches. But we need to talk real fast about what that word means because obviously you throw the word out, you need to fear

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God, and many of us have had experiences where you've been abused, right?

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You have experiences maybe where you're walking down a dark street in a strange area and you see the guy talking to himself and screaming at the sky, and you sort of get that reaction, right?

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That adrenaline dump, like something is wrong, I'm in danger, and you try to escape, and you try to flee, and that's natural, and that's good response, and so we sort of associate that word fear with only one thing we've experienced.

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That experience you have where it's two o 'clock in the morning and your window starts rattling and someone's pulling it up.

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You sort of feel that jolt of fear. You think about the fear of seeing down your hallway at night in the dark, you see somebody coming into the house.

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That feeling of fear is not what we're talking about when we talk about what the Bible talks about when it talks about fear.

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What does it mean? A semantic range of the word here in the Hebrew fear covers respect, it covers awe, and it even covers utter, sheer terror.

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So the semantic range of the word is sort of all of that. But what do we get from Scripture clearly when we think about fearing

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God? Well, there's some of that in all of what we have in terms of a response to God as judge, as creator, as the sovereign, but it's best to condense this to a reverential awe and submission before God, a reverential awe and submission before God.

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It's not the fear of somebody who is imbalanced. Like I said, the guy sort of, there's a heck of a lot of these today, aren't there?

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Like, I don't know if you live like in South Phoenix, but it seems like there's more and more of the people sort of talking to themselves and talking to the sky.

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Not very long ago, I was driving down the road and there was a naked woman just walking straight down my thing on Baseline Road.

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Major, like, the light is on, the sun is out, it's middle of day, and she's just, you know, mostly naked, walking down Baseline like it was the sidewalk.

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You know, and everyone's just sort of just driving like, I guess I'll drive around this woman, obviously calling the authorities and everything and is she okay and all that kind of stuff.

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And if you go to I -10 in Baseline right now, there are a lot of people that are there that might sort of provoke within you that fear of an imbalanced person.

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When we think about fear of God, it's not fear of the imbalanced person. It's not even the kind of fear that you may have felt being raised with imbalanced parents.

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This is really important, this is very, very important. I don't wanna psychoanalyze this a whole lot, but there is something connected to this in terms of the fact, and especially children, you need to hear this right now.

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Moms and dads, parents have been put into this sphere, this family, this world that God creates.

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When he creates the world and the universe and all these glorious, amazing things, he then creates male and female, and he creates the foundation for everything else he does in the world.

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Everything else God does in the world comes from what? That little mini sphere, that world, that beautiful world he creates when he puts together male and female, and then he tells them what?

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Go forth and be fruitful, and what? Multiply, and so God creates this beautiful, glorious little world, and he creates numbers of them, little tiny spheres and glorious little units that create everything else in the world, these little mini gardens where he grows things up and sends them out into the world, and we live in a fallen world.

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However, God has given to that family order, a dad and a mom, and God, I love how

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Bonson puts this word, I think it's a powerful way that we understand. He said, God gives those children a mother and a father, and he deputizes them, he deputizes them to act in God's place, to speak for God to the children, and so in a way, you look at your father, your earthly father, and you're supposed to see a reflection of your heavenly father, amen?

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And this is why it's such a terrifying thing to be a father over a child, because you recognize, as broken as you are as a man, that my child needs to see my heavenly father in me.

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And this is also why when our fathers here in this fallen world fail

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God and fail us, we actually drag some of that baggage into our relationship with God.

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We may have a father who is so angry and so imbalanced. You didn't wanna be at home when he came home.

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Maybe you had the drunkard dad who would come home and just plow through bottles of alcohol, and you knew the safest thing to do was to not be there, to be out of his way, to be out of his rage.

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Maybe you had the father that would just fly off the handle. He'd be wrathful, he wasn't trustworthy, he was imbalanced.

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You never knew if you could trust his love, and you were afraid of him. You were fearful of that dad.

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And the baggage that we carry into our relationship with our heavenly father is that kind of baggage, and it's not appropriate, because that's not the fear that we're talking about.

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It's not fear of the imbalanced man. It's not fear of the imbalanced woman.

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It's not fear of the person that could lose their temper. It's actually a fear that's a settled, reverential, awe before God, the one who can be trusted, the one who's in full control.

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It's a fear of God that is a settled fear that's actually mingled with trust, awe before God.

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Why should we fear God? Very important in our day, because we have a culture and a world out there that has no fear of God before their eyes.

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They don't seek God's revelation for the answers. They won't submit to the authority of Christ and to God's Word for wisdom, for insight, for instruction.

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It's a world of folly. It's a world of foolishness. And so we need to actually maybe provide a moment of biblical convincing.

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Why ought we to fear God? Because Scripture clearly commands it.

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We need to fear God because He's the creator and we're the creatures. If you walk into a

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Christian church, you're like, fear God because He's the creator, you're the creature. Everyone goes, yeah, obviously. Here's the problem. They don't believe that.

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They don't believe that. When you go out there into the world and you talk about the authority of Christ, God's Word, when you think about human beings as image bearers of God, as unique, when you think about men and women really equal before God, really equal in the image of God, when you think about the way that you see the world through the lens of God's Word as a

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Christian, you have to acknowledge this fundamental point is the world in the last generation has been taught that there is no

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God. That you are just the random results of evolutionary processes that did not have you in mind.

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You are on a long chain of chaos, accidents that had no meaning, no purpose.

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If you move the line all the way back, what do you have? We are just stardust.

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We're protoplasm bumping into protoplasm. You have a world out there that says there is no meaning, there is no purpose, there is no ultimate beauty, there is nothing that is really good, there is nothing that is true, and why?

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Because fundamentally they are creatures saying I will not have him over me.

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He is not the creator, I am not his creature. We must fear

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God because God is the ultimate. He is the creator, he made you, he formed you.

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It says in scripture that he knits us together in our mother's womb. Every single person you will ever meet in your life, every path that crosses is a path that crosses with a unique creature of God, every one of us.

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You must fear him because he is the creator and you are the creature. He's all powerful, he's all knowing, he's the

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God who stretches the heavens out. You must fear God because he is holy. Now this is really important.

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You gotta fear God because he's holy. And here's the problem, we're not. Now as a Christian, your status has changed.

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You're in Christ. In Christ you've been declared righteous. You're not in the old way. You're not dead in your sins and trespasses.

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You are alive, you are new. When God is doing things in your life by his spirit, he is bringing forth real fruit that is pleasing to God.

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So yes, our status has changed, but we need to remember this very important biblical truth.

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God is holy, holy, holy. And we are not.

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That's why we need Christ. And isn't it so interesting? We live in a context where we've been given so much biblical gospel truth over the centuries to land in this point where there's been such a betrayal of that truth and an abandonment that we ask, we actually ask the question, we have the nerve to ask the question, why should

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I fear God? Do you ever notice that nobody in the Bible asks that question?

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Have you noticed that? Nobody in the Bible is asking that question. I think if you would ask that question to one of the apostles who walked with Jesus, saw him die, saw him rise again, saw him raise kids from the dead and others from the dead and heal sick people, if you would ask any of them, should

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I really fear God, they would have probably given you a holy slap. How about Isaiah?

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When he, as a creature, gets this vision of God's holiness and we have that beautiful moment in scripture where there is the holy, holy, holy scene, his response is to immediately recognize

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I'm a man of unclean lips. And when he says this, I'm coming apart at the seams, like I'm unraveling,

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I shouldn't be here. Like he's just, like just end me, put me out of existence.

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I am just splitting apart, I am so broken. Why? Because he's confronting with the holiness of God and so we have to fear

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God as his creatures because he's the creator and he is holy.

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I mean, think about when we talk about even that problem in the West today, modern evangelicalism that wants to just highlight the love of God, love of God, love of God, as though that was his only attribute.

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We neglect the fact that when we talk about the love of God in that cross, that cross expresses the love of God for a reason because it is wrapped up in brutality and wrath.

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That cross is there for a reason, it expresses love in the way that it does because it is brutal and it is the wrath of God and justice of God.

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Just consider for a moment, look back at this cross. It's a cross, it's become a sign of the love of God, the justice of God, the glory of God.

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It speaks to Christ and what he's accomplished and this cross that we have on this wall right here has all this beautiful light coming through it.

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Little stained glass look to it, looks nice, right? I've got a cross on my neck, right?

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Some people wear these and for them it's just a piece of jewelry, it just looks nice. There's no meaning to it.

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If you ask them, what's that mean to you? It just, it's my bling, right? It's just, it's just nice.

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But when you look at something like this and we try to make it look so beautiful today, you remember the fact that our entire story has a wooden cross that was covered in blood, covered in blood, absolutely grotesque and horrifying.

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Can you imagine if we actually had access to that cross? Would any of us actually say, let's put that up on the wall behind the pastor?

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You'd probably say, I don't know, I don't know if I can handle that. That'd be a lot to take in every

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Lord's day, that cross. And so we beautify it, right? Because it is beautiful, it speaks to the love of God, but it also should speak to something else.

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It should speak to the holiness of God, the justice of God, the wrath of God against sin.

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So should you fear God? If you love that cross, yes, you should fear

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God. I should fear God. We should fear God because He's holy. You should fear God because He is all knowing.

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What does Jesus teach? What do the scriptures teach about the knowledge of God? He knows absolutely everything. And not like you and I, where you have to access information.

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You know, you have to think through things. You have to sort of like stretch out a line of thought to make an argument or to think past to something.

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Or if someone says, hey, do you remember that time such and such was here and we did this thing?

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You have to go, let me think about that. I'm not sure. You have to access information. When we say God is all knowing,

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He knows every detail of all of eternity, past, present, and future at all times.

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He has to access nothing. He doesn't have to think about anything. He is all knowing, which means

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He knows everything about you. Past, present, future.

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He knows everything about you and I that we're afraid to even touch and admit.

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There are things that we block from ourselves. We try to hide them from ourselves. We don't even wanna admit about ourselves and God knows all of those things.

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Jesus says there will be a day of judgment where every idle word is gonna be known.

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And God isn't gonna have to think back and reflect on your story. God knows all things.

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We should fear God because He is all knowing. We should fear God because He's the sovereign.

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Think about this for a moment. In the Sermon on the Mount, the most famous sermon in the history of mankind will always be, it's better than sinners in the hands of an angry

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God and every other sermon has changed more lives and had more of an impact in history.

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Jesus talks to His people about their anxiety. He talks to them about their fears and He says, do not be anxious.

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I love that. That's a command, not a suggestion. Like, hey, it's not tips. Like, hey, try this.

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Try not to be so anxious. Take some deep breaths. Jesus says, do not be anxious.

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And what does He connect the not being worried to? To the fact that your

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Heavenly Father has the hairs of your head counted. For some of you, that is very easy.

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But you get the point. He's connecting it all. Don't be worried, why? Because He's your

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Father and He's the Sovereign. He knows every detail about the hairs on your head. As a matter of fact, there's not a bird that falls from a branch to the ground that He doesn't know about.

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He decrees that sort of a thing. And then Jesus starts to actually challenge His people on the don't be worried stuff.

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Don't be worried, why? Can you add a single hour to your life through your worry,

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Jesus asks. Can you do that? And so you say, no, I can't add any time to my life.

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And then the pressure comes, and why is that? How come you can't add an hour to your life through your fear, through your worry?

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And the answer, it's assumed in the question with Jesus, is that He's in charge of that.

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Well, that's God's prerogative. He's done all that. Like every day of my life was recorded into His book before there was even one of them.

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That's what the Bible teaches. And so why do I have to abandon worry in my life? Because He's the sovereign.

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He knows every detail. He's in charge of all things. And my days are already numbered. Do you understand that?

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That your days are numbered. He determines the moment that He's bringing you home with Him.

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And so why should you fear God? Because He's the one that has full sovereign control.

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He declares the end from the beginning. He is the determiner of all things. He's the sovereign.

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We should fear God because He's all -powerful. He's the all -powerful God. Not kind of powerful. He's the all -powerful

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God. Just think about a moment here in redemptive history. As the Bible opens up the story, it opens up with, in the beginning,

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God created the heavens and the earth. And we're only just now in human history, just now being able to tap what the glory of that first opening verse is in scripture.

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I mean, think about it. We're shooting out things out into space. Dr. White is such a nerd. He'll sit there and talk.

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If you let him, if you let him and you're at a party, you'll lose the entire time to fellowship with other people there, right?

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Because if you look up to the sky and say, hey, what's that? First mistake. It's over. Because you're stuck.

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I'm just joking. It's awesome. Because then he'll just start explaining everything there. And hey, did you know we have this super nerd telescope going out into space?

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It's better than all the other telescopes because they only sent this and that. And you're like 10 hours deep, and you've learned everything there is about all the stuff we're putting out into space.

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But some cool stuff we're learning. And we have things that are flying so fast out of our solar system, and they're still sending back data.

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We sent those things out 40 years ago, and we're only barely beginning to understand the glory of God in this universe and how unbelievable it is and how much of an absolute insignificant little speck we are in just our galaxy.

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And there are billions and billions of these things. He creates all that.

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And you know what's amazing about it? He didn't have to sit down and create an architecture map of the universe.

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You know what I'm saying? He didn't have to spend a billion years sort of planning out stages of the architecture and foundations.

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No, he's so powerful and all -knowing, all he does to make it is he says, he speaks it into existence.

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Be this, do this, become this, and just spreads it all out.

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And then the revelation opens up a little more, and you immediately see the fall enter

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God's sovereignty, promising the Messiah. And then you start to see the story of God's real sovereignty and power, where he just shows off over all the false gods and idols of men.

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He's splitting Red Seas. He's parting waters, sending frogs in, saving people, feeding his people in miraculous ways.

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God is doing powerful things. And he's even doing things that we should absolutely fear him for. He is destroying the entire world that he made with a flood.

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Should you fear God? Should we fear the one who has the ability to simply drop water over the face of the

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Earth and to wipe out sinful humanity? Should you fear that God? Yes, you should fear him.

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We should fear him because he's the judge, and you and I are guilty. We should fear him because his justice is perfect, and he always does right.

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I want to remind you of what incarnate love says to us about the fear of God. When Jesus walks among us, he says, do not fear those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul.

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Rather, fear him who can destroy both body and soul in hell.

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It's interesting because fairly recently, we've been trying as a church body so hard to have a prophetic ministry, a prophetic ministry, forth -telling ministry.

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This is God's word. This is what he requires of us to the world around us, to the church, to legislators saying, do your duty before God.

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And it was interesting because one of the things that was the most common resistance to the establishment of justice in the state of Louisiana for the pre -born children that we were fighting for, one of the most common things we heard was the fear of man.

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Fear of man, right? The response was, what will we do if we establish justice for these children?

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If we provide equal protection, we say they're human, we believe they're human, they ought to be protected.

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If we actually do that, what will we do if the powers that be actually resist what we're trying to do?

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How will we fight that? Or what will we do to those who don't agree with us? How will this actually play out?

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It was fear of man, fear of man, fear of man. And what I kept saying to them all as lovingly as I could as a minister of the gospel is

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I would say to them, I said, you need to fear God rather than men. You must fear God because you are full of fear right now, but it is not the fear of God that is leading you.

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It's not the fear of God that is driving you. You must fear God rather than men.

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Scripture teaches us that's the very foundation of wisdom. So next, in Proverbs, that was fear.

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What time is it? OK, we're good. Two more hours. Proverbs 1 .7

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says the fear of Yahweh is the beginning of knowledge. The beginning of knowledge.

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The word, and this is a quotation now from the Baker commentary. Tremper Longman III said this.

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I think it was a good summary here. The word beginning has a sense not only of first, but also of foundation or even source.

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So fearing God is the foundation or source of knowledge.

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You want knowledge? And by the way, here in the Hebrew, the word knowledge is synonymously used with wisdom, knowledge.

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They're coming together here because in order to have skillful living, you have to know what is the right thing to do. You have to have true knowledge to be able to have skill in applying it.

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And the foundation here is the fear of the Lord is the source. It's the foundation.

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If you want knowledge, if you want wisdom, if you want insight, if you need to know, then it's the fear of the

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Lord that's the source of that. It's that first posture. It's the beginning. So if we don't start our pursuit of knowing and understanding with reverence and awe and submission to God, we will have no true understanding, no true knowledge.

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So think about what this is saying. Think about the text now. The Bible says some glorious things, some powerful things.

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And at times, I feel like I'm wrapped up in this too. We're just creatures with small brains.

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We don't know everything. We make mistakes. We get mixed up. Some amazing things will be shouted to us from scripture, and they just fly right past us.

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We'll read this text once. We'll read through it once a month, every day, one proverb a day. You'll get through the whole book of Proverbs every single month.

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And you'll read this and read this and read this and not think about what this is shouting to the world.

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And what is that? That apart from God, true knowledge is impossible.

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Embrace it. Because here's the thing. You're going to look out there in the world. We're going to look out in the world, and we're going to say, man,

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I see a lot of people who don't know God. They're all made in this image. They don't know God. They will not acknowledge God.

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They won't submit to Christ. They seem to know a lot of stuff. Like for example,

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I know unbelievers that are really, really great at arithmetic or mathematics.

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They're great. They're amazing. Sharp, sharp, sharp minds. You have people that are amazing heart surgeons, unbelievers, don't know

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Jesus. And they know a heck of a lot about the heart. You know people who can fix your car for you.

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Imagine, you go to a car fixer upper, what's it called, a garage or something. I'm not a real man.

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I don't understand these things. But you go there, and nobody goes there and says, can

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I have the Christian mechanic, because none of y 'all know anything. No, we don't do that. Why?

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Because we recognize, as image bearers of God, people do know things. They can't help it, because they're made in God's image.

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And they're living in God's world. There's common grace from God. There's common understanding. And there's even ways that unbelievers have hitched on to the blessings of the

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Christian worldview that we gave to the world. They borrowed that capital. Some of that stuff, we just gave up to the world.

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And they're excelling in it in many ways, but with no foundation. Is it possible to be an unbeliever and know things?

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Yeah, but with no justification, no true knowledge, no real understanding.

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Yeah, you can fiddle with the tools, but you'll have no real understanding of the system itself and what is really true.

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Think about how this is actually said in other places in scripture. I just want to give you a grounding that it's not one place that makes the claim.

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It is an understanding through and through. Go to Colossians chapter 2. We've been here before.

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I'm sure you've heard us talking about this before. But just attaching this to the biblical worldview and the grounding of all truth and understanding, wisdom and knowledge.

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Colossians chapter 2. Colossians chapter 2.

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Paul is speaking here. And there's a lot wrapped up in here, and knowledge, and the Gnostics. There's a whole background here to this text.

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But just think about the basics of what the Apostle Paul is saying here. The foundation for the

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Apostle Paul. He says, verse 1, I want you to know how great a struggle

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I have for you and for those at Laodicea, and for all who have not seen Me face to face, that their hearts may be encouraged, being knit together in love, to reach all the riches of full assurance of understanding and the knowledge of God's mystery, which is

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Christ, in whom are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge.

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There is, again, another one of those claims that's just shouted from the text that just goes zing, right past your heads at times.

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We never think about what does that actually mean. All of the treasures of wisdom and knowledge are hidden in Christ.

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He's the foundation of it all. Oh, did you know it's somewhere else too? It's a verse you already know.

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I hope everybody has this memorized, because it's a big one. It's a potent one. Jesus says in John 14 6,

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I am the way and the what? The truth and the life.

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No man comes to the Father but by Me. Jesus is the very embodiment of truth. If you want to know something, it's wrapped up in Jesus Christ, in God.

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And so when we talk about true knowledge, it is impossible apart from God.

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Can't justify it. You can't truly know. You see, the unbeliever who knows things will know things because they do live in God's world.

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They know things, but they have no foundation. They have no foundation for it.

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And so we think about this question of knowledge and being able to justify something as knowledge and truly have understanding and insight.

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Think for a moment about what Proverbs 1 7 is saying. Go back to it.

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The fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge. Reverence, awe, fear, submission before God is the source of all knowledge.

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It's the very foundation of all knowledge, of all wisdom, of all understanding.

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Do you realize how amazing that is as a Christian? You see, a lot of times I think we neglect the glory and the beauty of the biblical worldview, just how powerful it is.

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I'm going to get to what we've all experienced in the last week. It's contacted and touched every one of us.

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Those moments of pain that we feel, the shocking moments in communities of death and depravity and evil, we all get a sense of it when we view something like that.

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But let's start somewhere else. How about beauty? The fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge.

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Can you really know something as beautiful apart from God? When I say

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God, I'm not talking about a general God. I'm talking about the God of the Bible, the only God, the true and living God. Is it possible to really have an understanding of something as beautiful?

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And if you think about two divergent perspectives, you've got the perspective of the biblical

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God and the biblical worldview, God's wisdom, God's knowledge, God's truth, us as creatures, and you have the worldview propagated today in a humanistic and secular society that says what?

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There is no ultimate. There is no God. What is this life but just stuff moving throughout space?

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It is purposeless. It is meaningless. And so the question has to be asked, can you really say something is beautiful apart from fear of God?

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And the answer is what? No. Nothing is really lovely.

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Nothing is really beautiful. Why? Because that would assume that there's an actual artist, that there's actually purpose.

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Otherwise, it's just a mess. Like nobody ever spills the carton of milk on the ground.

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It falls by accident and just pours out and goes, oh, van Gogh. Oh, that's so beautiful.

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And you get a sense of this, don't you? In fairly recent human history, just think about the last couple of hundred years.

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The Reformation bursts out. The light of the gospel goes all over the world. Christians are building hospitals and building beautiful churches.

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And they're doing art and music. We have all of the beauty that has come from the Christian worldview in so many ways.

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And then our society today says, no, God. We don't want Christ. We don't want your word.

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We don't want your knowledge. We don't want your wisdom. So we will make our own art. Have you ever looked at sort of like the remnants of a

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Christian civilization versus what we have today? And one of the things that we've remarked on a number of times as we've traveled around the country preaching and teaching and going to different state capitals, some of those old state capitals where you can tell, man, those were built by Christians.

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Right? I mean, they actually cared about the architecture and the structure and the beauty and the colors.

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And they put Bible verses on the building. And they wanted it to be a masterpiece. They wanted it to be something that lasted and endured and was beautiful.

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And you can see the difference between, say, those and the more modern ones that aren't concerns with glory and beauty and testifying to God's artistry.

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Right? It's just sort of utility. Right? It's building. It has to work.

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Right? It has to have walls, ceiling, floor. Right? But the old remnants of the

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Christian civilizations, you see these old churches and these old buildings. And you're like, man, they actually cared about glory and beauty.

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Because when they were making something, they recognized, as Christians, I'm the creature, he's the creator.

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I'm called to reflect his beauty and his attributes and even his creativity into the world.

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So when I make something, it has to be good. It has to be beautiful. It has to endure.

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Do you see what the Christian worldview does? Fear of God provides the very foundation of knowledge and understanding and wisdom.

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And that connects to so many things, whether it's tough things like logic and mathematics, but also things like beauty.

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I remember, and I'll be careful with how I say this, but I have got to give you an example to sort of give you the contrast.

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In Christian history, you see the Christians were concerned with, well, God's the creator. And man, when he makes stuff, he makes beautiful things.

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He makes beautiful things. He makes good things. I'm his creature. I've got to do that, too.

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If I'm a Christian and I'm an artist, he's gifted me like that, I've got to be good like him.

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And I remember fairly recently, we did a show on Apology Air Radio where there was this art thing happening in New York, totally godless, totally humanist.

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And the news media was there, and there were people actually standing around going, oh, yes, that's very beautiful.

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That is so lovely. It's beautiful. And what it was was a woman who wasn't wearing really anything.

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She was standing on a platform, and she had a canvas underneath her. And they filled up a balloon or some device with paint, and she was dropping these balloons from her.

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You get the point. And when it was breaking on this display, people were, oh, lovely.

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That is art. That is beauty. You see what we've done?

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Fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge. You want to have understanding? You want to have insights? You want to understand what's actually beautiful, that something is really good, that it's artistic and awe -inspiring?

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It's going to start with fear of God. There's no real understanding of what is art, what is good, what is lovely, what is beautiful, apart from, first, a reverential submission to God, and awe before God as creator.

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You think about even the last couple of hundred years. It was even in Arizona. When I first moved here in 1996,

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I think I mentioned this recently. When I first moved here in 1996, I remember some of you guys were here, too, during that time.

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You remember how many hospitals locally were called by Christian names? Do you remember that?

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If you were here that long, maybe you've been to other states, you know exactly what I'm talking about. It was like First Baptist Hospital, something

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Lutheran Hospital. You've got the Presbyterian Hospital.

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In history, last couple hundred years, somehow, oddly, hospitals were named after churches.

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Why? Just an accident? Just happened to be the case. No, the fear of the

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Lord is the beginning of knowledge. When Christians have an understanding of God, when they have an understanding of His place in the world, my place in the world, the fall itself, and the love of God, and what

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God calls us to, Christians go, we have to care for the hurting. We have to care for the broken. We need to develop medicine to care for others.

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I always bring this up because I think it's awesome. It's incredible. How many of you guys have ever had to get surgery and they put you under?

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You ever had to have that happen? Raise your hands real fast. OK, good. All right. For the rest of you, it's coming.

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Don't brag. Not me, never. Just wait. I've been put under a couple times.

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And we don't recognize the blessings of the Christian worldview and what fear of God brought in terms of understanding, even in the area of medicine.

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The reason today people are going under and falling asleep when they get surgeries is because of a

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Christian doctor who was reading his Bible. And he was reading the creation account.

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And in the creation account, he was reading how when God wanted to create Eve, he caused

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Adam to go into a what? Deep sleep. To remove that rib, to take a part of Adam to make this help meat for Adam.

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So when he creates male and female, the image of God, he creates them. Before that, this Christian doctor is reading the word of God.

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He sees other human beings as image bearers of God. He knows the results of the fall. He knows there is pain and suffering.

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He probably knows that there are times in his day where somebody has a major breakdown in their body.

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And they have to literally saw their leg off while they're awake. Can you imagine?

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It wasn't very long ago in human history, not very long ago, where people were wide awake during surgeries.

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Even the independent Baptists then were like, give me that bourbon, baby. Right? Then they were drinking.

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And whatever it takes to soften the blow, right? But we don't even think about how the fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge and how starting first with reverential submission all before God leads to so much beauty and good in the world.

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Because if you see God as God, me as the creature, and you see humans as God says they are, you begin to develop things in the world that actually are wise, that have insights, that are good, that are actually justified knowledge.

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And so you can thank the Christian worldview and specifically God's history in Genesis for the fact that now when you go to get surgery, they put you to sleep.

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That Christian doctor said, hey, if God did it, why aren't we doing it? That's what he did.

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We think about the blessings of hospitals, a blessing of knowledge from the Christian worldview and understanding of humanity and our love and concern for other human beings.

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We think about science itself and how the Christian worldview without dispute, it is the

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Christian worldview that gave modern science its great advance and pop.

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Why? Because Christians believe that God has a sovereignty, a control over his creation, that we can do experiments in this world and there is observation and intelligence and reason and facts and truth because God is

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God as he says he is in his word. He is not the author of confusion.

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He carries everything along to its intended destination. This universe is not just time and chance acting on matter.

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And so we can actually work in God's world, understanding this world, thinking about this world and trusting that the future will be like the past, which is the very foundation of all science.

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Without the principle of induction, without the uniformity in nature, without a sovereign

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God guiding and controlling the world, there is no justification for the use of science, the application of scientific principles because brothers and sisters, listen, without the fear of God, ready?

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Without the fear of God, you don't have any knowledge, any justifiable belief to trust that the future will be like the past.

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How do you know, ready? How do you know that one hour from now gravity is gonna hold you down like it did in the past?

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No one ever thinks about that, do you? We just walk around the world acting like, hey, this is how things are gonna work all the time.

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Why do you do that? Because you fear God. And why do atheists do that? Because subtly they fear

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God, they know God, they know they're under God's sovereign control, but they suppress the truth of God and unrighteousness.

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Without God, the God of the Bible, science isn't even possible. We have to fear

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God to do science, logic and math. You ever touched a law of logic?

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You ever touched a law of math? And you know, we said this years ago, we were always harping on this in terms of the fear of God is the beginning of knowledge.

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We would say things apart from the Christian worldview, you cannot justify the universal and unchanging laws of math.

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If you take an atheistic perspective, there is no reason to say that two plus two is four.

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And then sometime in the last year you started seeing people actually saying it, is two plus two really four?

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I mean, come on, is that just white supremacy? I mean, really saying stupid things like that.

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And I'm like, thank God these people aren't building bridges because the people building bridges don't act like that.

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They assume that these laws of arithmetic are things that are, you can't touch them, you can't feel them, you can't taste them, you can't say how much does the two plus two weigh?

01:00:10

What color is that law of math? You can't do that.

01:00:15

And yet, unbelievers build amazing bridges. I mean, can you imagine,

01:00:20

I think I've said this before, can you imagine getting into an airplane, right? And your pilot comes on and says, ladies and gentlemen, why don't you all know that I am an atheistic humanist,

01:00:29

I am a secularist, I am a naturalist and materialist, and I do not believe that the laws of mathematics are actually universal or unchanging.

01:00:37

Have a good flight. You'd be like, I'm sorry, I'm gonna take my stuff off, right, and you're like, can you open that door? Can I get on that little fluffy slide?

01:00:44

Can I do that? I've always wanted to do that. I hope I never do, right? But no, everyone understands that even the atheist, even the atheist pilot has to depend upon God, his world, the way that it actually is to live his life, but he cannot justify what he's doing because without fear of God, there is no actual knowledge, no wisdom.

01:01:09

He has to borrow from God every single day of his life. Apart from God, there is no logic.

01:01:16

Apart from God, there's no math. Apart from God, there is no, there are no ethical standards.

01:01:22

There's no ought. Now, I gotta say it because I think it's so amazing. Just hopefully in the last two years as a church body, as you've seen us trying to engage the world in a public square and we've come into contact with atheists and all the rest, we had an atheist on provoked not too long ago.

01:01:42

I'm sure you can look it up. There's not too many provoked episodes so you won't get too lost in it where I was on to talk to an atheist and I was trying to press this atheist because he doesn't want to acknowledge

01:01:52

God, will not fear God, will not start with God in his thinking. I was trying to press him that apart from God, you have no ultimate standard of moral ought.

01:02:01

Nothing ought to be the case and so I talked about the fact that in your system, you can't really say that we're morally obligated to love our neighbor rather than eat them.

01:02:11

Now he didn't like that at first of course because he's in the image of God and he lives in the ruins of a post -Christian society but I challenged him and challenged him and finally he admitted as an atheist without God, with no fear of God, that yeah, you're right.

01:02:27

And there's no real moral ought in terms of loving neighbor rather than eating them and so he finally admitted, he said, well

01:02:35

I guess in a society where they say it's okay to eat other people, just as long as you clean your plate.

01:02:45

There it was. And what I told him was, I know you're trying to be consistent but you won't live that way.

01:02:55

I hope, right, you won't live that way because you're in the image of God, you know the God that I'm talking about but the reason you're saying such foolish things is because you do not fear

01:03:05

God. That's why. Your system is so foolish and so flawed and so broken that you just said live on the air that it's not actually necessary for us to love the neighbors rather than eat them, just please clean your plates.

01:03:21

That's where no fear of God leads you. And it's not just the average

01:03:29

Joe on the street, the average atheist who says that. We've had the most intelligent men say that to us as Christians in public debates.

01:03:42

One last thing. The fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge.

01:03:49

When we think about the last week and the heartbreaking and evil thing that we saw take place in Texas, you have to ask the question, really ask it as a

01:04:00

Christian, what gives us the right to complain about something like that?

01:04:07

I'm talking about human beings. What gives us the right to look at something like what happened in Texas and complain about it?

01:04:17

Now, as Christians, you and I look at something like that through the lens of God's word and with fear of God, and you recognize the moral depravity and evil in something like that.

01:04:31

You recognize the abomination that takes place. You recognize the injustice.

01:04:36

You recognize the evil. You recognize the pain and the suffering. And as a

01:04:41

Christian, you have a basis with fear of God to feel the full weight of it, because you start with fear of God.

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I know what happened in Texas was evil, wicked, and will be judged by God.

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I know that that's real pain and real grief. I know, because I'm starting with fear of God.

01:05:03

But ask yourself the question, it's an important one. Without fear of God, on what basis was

01:05:10

Texas evil? If the worldview of the man going in was that he is just a cosmic accident, that there are no moral absolutes above his head, only sky is above me.

01:05:28

And if all of us are just the random results of evolutionary processes, then what, pray tell, is wrong with protoplasm scattering protoplasm?

01:05:41

Do you see? Without fear of God, you can't make sense of a moment like that in Texas.

01:05:48

There is no insight. There is no understanding. There is no wisdom. And further, the response of people in authority over how do we solve a problem like this will always be foolishness when it does not start with the fear of God.

01:06:06

What is wisdom? It's the application of knowledge. It is skillful, godly application of true knowledge.

01:06:15

And so if you want to fix a problem, if you want to shed light into darkness, if you don't fear God, you will only have folly behind it.

01:06:24

Now quickly, it says here, fools despise wisdom and instruction. I just want to hang on this point of foolishness quickly because I think it's important because, and I said this this week on the show as we talked a bit about fool in Scripture.

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It says fools despise wisdom and correction. In Scripture, when the word fool is used, and it's used actually quite a lot, in Scripture, the word fool is not used like you and I would use it on the street out there, right?

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Where you say to someone, you fool, right? Or sucker, right? Some sort of pejorative, like you're saying it's like just a cut and wounds, you're trying to make them feel bad, and you know,

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Mr. T, the whole thing, right? That's not what the Bible's doing when it says the word fool or foolishness.

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No, when the Bible talks about a fool and it uses it often, you know the verses, there's hundreds of them probably.

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Psalm 14, one, the fool says in his heart, there is no God. Romans chapter one, professing to be wise, they became what?

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Fools and exchanged the glory of the incorruptible God for images, they switched

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God for idols, they become fools. In Scripture, the word fool is not just the tag, the insult, it's actually a moral indictment.

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Being a fool in Scripture is a sin. Foolishness in God's revelation is sinful.

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Being a fool in the Bible is an indictment upon the person, it is an accusation of sinfulness.

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Fools don't wanna know. The word here, by the way, here the fool despises wisdom and instruction.

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The word here in Scripture, one of the ways to express what it's getting at is the thick -skinned ignoramus.

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Well, that sounds bad, doesn't it? But an ignoramus is a person who doesn't delight in knowing.

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They don't know, they're uninformed, they don't wanna be informed, right? They're an ignoramus.

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They're ignorant of the facts. They don't know, they don't want to know. And the idea here in Scripture of the fool is the person that has such thick skin, they don't know, they don't want to know, and they are so thick -skinned that nothing is getting in because they delight and they revel in not knowing.

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The thick -skinned ignoramus, the fool. Fools don't wanna know, they delight in ignorance.

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And one verse to express this in Proverbs is Proverbs 18 in verse two.

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It says, a fool takes no pleasure in understanding, but only in expressing his opinion.

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The fool takes no pleasure in understanding, but only in expressing his opinion.

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We know people like that, right? We know people like that. They don't wanna know, they don't care.

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They just wanna speak. They think they understand, they think they know, but they don't know.

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Like Daniel with his tacos, it's like that. I found a way,

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I'll always find a way. I'm just kidding. Fools despise wisdom and correction.

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Okay, let's end on this because you have the one hand that says, the fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge.

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Fools despise wisdom and instruction. So do Christians, generally to Christians.

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Fear God, that's the source. That's the beginning of all knowledge.

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You wanna know something? It's in God and God alone. Fear God. But the inverse of that is that fools despise wisdom and instruction.

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So as Christians, we should be bold. We should be confident.

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We should be trusting in God's revelation and his word. We should. We should be humble and bold about that, his truth.

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We should fight for his truth, be bold for his truth. All of that. But we should also be people who don't despise wisdom, who don't despise correction.

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We should be the kind of people that have that always opening within us to say, well, can

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I learn something here? Is there some insight this person has that I should reflect on? How can

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I be better at even articulating what I'm saying? Can I learn something from somebody else?

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Fools despise wisdom and instruction. You gotta be careful with theological truth, especially with young men.

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You gotta be careful with theological truth, especially with young men. I mean, it's a problem for all humans, of course, especially with young men.

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Young men can be so zealous for the truth and so excited about what is the case with God's word that they will kind of sort of like be like a bull in a

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China shop, right? Like, you know, sort of here's the truth. I'm gonna run with it and destroy everything. We talk about things like cage stage

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Calvinists and all the rest because we understand that you can have some glorious, really true things in people's hands and they can hurt a heck of a lot of people with them.

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Amen, yes? So we have to be the kind of people that actually are open to wisdom, open to instruction.

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Don't be the fool, the one who despises understanding, who has such thick skin and he's confident, she's confident to be ignorant.

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Children, children, don't be fools. Don't be the kind of person who despises wisdom and instruction.

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You see, the challenge of being a child in a Christian home, well, the benefit of it, the glory of it is you have a mother and a father who are in love with Jesus, who know

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Jesus and give you God's word. The challenge is, is you got a mother and father who know

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Jesus because they're sinners and he died for them. And they're gonna blow it. Your moms and dads are gonna blow it and they're gonna blow it often.

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And there's a challenge being a child in a Christian home with these parents who love God and give you his word. There's a challenge in that you'll see inconsistencies in your parents at times and you'll take that and you'll say, ah,

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I'm gonna mark that down. You don't have it all together so when you try to instruct me, I'm not gonna listen.

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But there's no one in here like that, right kids? No fools like that. We need to be the kind of people who love

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God, fear God. And when God gives us through parents and teachers and brothers and sisters, when he gives us insight and wisdom according to his word, we're receptive to that.

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We're not fools. We receive it. We're willing to be corrected. We're willing to hear words from God.

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Don't be a fool. When we think about the world, the world will not start with God and so they will erect a civilization of folly.

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And so when we go out there into the world and we proclaim the gospel, we need to make sure that we allow people to get to a place with the gospel where they first fear

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God to have understanding, amen? That's why I love my friend Ray Comfort. I saw

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Ray a couple of weeks ago. He was a real blessing to our church in many ways. But one of the things I've always loved about Ray in our modern context is that he goes out on the street.

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He goes out hunting the beach. He goes out and talks to random people, different people. And what does he do first?

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What does he expose him to? Who knows, what? The law of God. The law of God, right?

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The law of God. Have you ever loyed? Have you ever stolen anything? Have you ever looked with lust, right, out of the side of the mouth?

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But what does he do first? He gets them to a place to see their own brokenness, that they're the creature. God is God. They're sinful.

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He's holy. He starts them on a course to understand the cross itself with first their own need for Jesus Christ, that you've broken

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God's law. God is the just judge and he's gonna respond to your sin. You need to turn from sin to trust in Jesus Christ where there is peace and salvation and mercy.

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But I love the fact that Ray will always make sure when he talks to somebody, he leaves them in a place where they can only understand that the fear of God is the beginning.

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It's the starting place. You must start there. I pray we tell the world that.

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Let's pray. Father, I pray that you'd bless the word that went out today from your scriptures.

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I pray you bless us, change us, renew us for your glory and kingdom in Jesus.