Fear of the Lord V: Our Good: Behold Your God Podcast

Welcome back to the Behold Your God podcast. I'm Jon Snyder and with me again is my co -pastor and longtime friend

Chuck Baggett. And we've been talking about the theme of the fear of the Lord. And this is based on a series of sermons that you did at the church about a month ago and that we found beneficial.

So we're really glad that Chuck was willing to pitch in and to give us the content for these podcasts.

Now this is actually the fifth of a six -part series. And we've been looking at things like the nature of the fear of the

Lord and the command to fear the Lord. And when we use the term fear, again, we are talking about what you call the filial fear, the loving fear of a child, the respect of a child for a father, that really, you know, we feel,

I think we feel at a loss to kind of give a one -sentence definition because it's more than just respect, but it's not the cowering fear.

So, you know, with big themes like this, we could spend a long time, but since we don't have a long time, maybe it's good to just kind of put some, you know, edges to a pathway.

You know, if you move over toward kind of a cowardly fear, you're wrong. And, you know, if you move over toward just like, yeah, you know, he's just like a dad, you know, well, that's something's wrong there.

So we want to stay between those. I think John Bunyan was the one that described it as standing before God in a sense, gazing upon him in Scripture with an all -filled reverence,

A -W -E, I'm filled with awe, astonished reverence, both from his bigness, but also his amazing goodness.

Now, this week and next week, we're going to be looking at the fact that the fear of God is a real blessing to us.

And we want to use that as the Lord does in the Scripture to motivate us to fear the Lord. And before we look at that, just one comment.

The Puritans often described God as dealing with us as reasonable creatures. So God doesn't wrap chains around the believer and drag us into obedience.

And God doesn't stand behind us and shout at us and say, this is the path of obedience. Do it just because I said to do it.

How often we find in Scripture God giving us a command and following it with arguments.

You know, whether these are arguments that describe the misery of going away from him, but oftentimes they're arguments describing the unexpected happiness of living for this king in his perfect rule.

So we're looking at some of these arguments under the theme of the fear the

Lord is a blessing or a gift. Right. So thinking about the fear of the

Lord being a good thing or a blessing to us, I was thinking about how often we're encouraged to not think about fear as a good thing, to face our fears, try to get over them.

We want to see our children outgrow some of their fears. Some of their fears are really irrational.

I guess some of our fears as adults are irrational also. But kids, you know, fear the dark, fear of, you know, whatever.

Just lots of silly things sometimes. But then you look in the

Bible and you also see commands not to fear. One of the most often repeated commands in Scripture is fear not.

And so how can you have that command on one side and on the other commands that clearly tell us to fear

God? And how can it be a good thing to fear God when we also see don't fear?

And yet, I think if we stop and like you're saying, be reasonable for reasonable people, we can see that some fears are rational, reasonable, and some are irrational.

And to fear God is a reasonable thing. It's not unreasonable. And there are things even in the realm of this world, you know, natural things, that it is reasonable to have a healthy fear of, not a fear that forgets

God, but it's just a common sense kind of thing. We look at the world around us and there are animals that it's okay to pet and there are other animals you don't pet.

You don't pet rattlesnakes. You know, you don't pet alligators. Because there's danger there and we understand that.

You don't do that. We have laws in place that have consequences and those consequences provide a fear that keeps us from doing some things that we might otherwise do.

And it's because those things are in place that we stop at red lights and we don't drive 120 miles per hour down the highway.

And so we learn that there are things that are okay to do, but there are also things that are not okay to do because there are consequences and there is fear.

And yet at the same time, we look at the

Bible and find verses like this. And this is not a contradiction to what

I've just said, but because that's true, this is also true. In Psalm 128, verse 1, the

Bible says, How blessed is everyone who fears the Lord, who walks in His ways.

You know, if we were under the delusion that that kind of a statement only occurs very occasionally in Scripture, then, you know, we might be forgiven for not really realizing what a happy thing it is for a man to be in the grip of God's greatness and for that genuine, clean fear of the

Lord to be the product of it. But really, it shows up everywhere. And there's a couple of other passages that you mentioned in your sermons.

One is from Psalm 67, verse 7. And notice the connection here between the blessed or the happiest, most enviably happy life and the way we fear the

Lord. Verse 7 says, God blesses us that all the ends of the earth may fear

Him. Psalm 112, verse 1, praise the Lord. How blessed is the man who fears the

Lord, who greatly delights in His commandments. And these are just a couple of examples. We don't have time to give all of them, but frequently we see an intimate connection that the only person that is truly happy in this life is a person also that lives in the atmosphere of this healthy fear of the

Lord. Yes, yes. And as we look at Psalm 128,

I think the context of it helps us to understand more of this, that God is a source of blessing and that there's a futility of placing your hope anywhere else.

Some writers think that Psalm 127 and 128 go together because they both deal with that kind of a theme.

But Psalm 128 particularly speaks of us being blessed as we fear the

Lord. The word blessed occurs four times in Psalm 128. The first two times, in verse 1 and in verse 2, it is a noun.

In the New American Standard that I'm looking at, in the second occurrence in verse 2, it's translated as happy, but it's the exact same

Hebrew word. And so, happy is a man, blessed is the man who fears the

Lord. The second two times, in verse 4 and in verse 5, it is a verb and it is a different word, and it is a word that has the idea of pronouncing a blessing.

Be blessed. Now, I know when you first moved here from Ohio, you probably had to learn that in the

South we say some things differently and there are things we say that we really don't mean. It may have surprised you,

I don't know, to learn that a person could say bless your heart and they really weren't pronouncing a blessing at all.

They weren't wishing you well. But when God pronounces a blessing, He is wishing well.

He never says that and doesn't mean it. It's never said as a slight.

Even when we mean it, we can say the words, you know, bless you.

And it's nothing really any weightier than words unless we're actually praying and asking

God to bless the person. And even then, we're praying, we're dependent upon Him to answer that prayer.

Our words don't make it so. But every time God says this person will be blessed or blessed is the man who, it's real.

There's weight there because there's authority behind those words. Verse 4 calls attention to this fact that the person who is blessed, that God is doing this, it is a fact.

Behold, for thus shall the man be blessed who fears the Lord. For thus shall the man in this way.

And the word behold is calling attention to this. Look at this and pay attention because God is doing something.

It's not just religious talk, not just a nice Bible story, but the man will be blessed in the ways that the psalm describes.

Yeah, when you think about the word behold, it is a command. But it is a sweet command to look at the kindness of the

Lord occurring here. It doesn't mean it's an optional command. If we don't get this clear in our minds, then we leave a door open for the enemy to come in and lie to us about this whole issue of a life of a

God -fearer. And so that will lead to a life that dishonors them. So we want to take the command here very seriously.

Look, stop and look, take a long look. One of the reasons it's required is because things aren't always what they appear.

You know, a casual look at a Christian's life may not seem to match up with what you've just said from Psalm 128.

So here I see a Christian and they carry a burden in some manner. And it's not a sin.

They're obeying the Lord. And in the process of living for the Lord, they have embraced a heavy burden.

And when you look at them from a distance, you think that doesn't look like a happy life. But if you were to be able to go under the surface, to look beyond just appearances to substance, you would be able to see that that person, doing that out of love for the

King, living with the realities of the bigness of God, you know, fearing the

Lord, that that person really is genuinely happy. And they have an enviable life in the midst of some of the darker spots.

And one evidence of this is found in the passages you've been mentioning that these descriptions of blessing or happiness are all in the plural.

So blessings, blessednesses. We could say happiest or happinesses.

Here is a life that regardless of what things look like on the surface, there is genuinely a happiness upon happiness, blessings following on the heels of blessings, heaped on top of each other because this is a person that walks in the fear of the

Lord. It's wonderful to think that God does not give to us stingily.

You know, He gives liberally. We have the Father of lights who gives good gifts to His children and He doesn't measure them out with a small measure.

Psalm 31, I think it's verse 19, says, How great is

Your goodness which You have stored up for those who fear You. Storehouses of blessings for those who fear

Him. And it's hard, I would imagine, for a person who doesn't know the

Lord, maybe even for a new Christian who hasn't walked down some of the paths that an older Christian has walked, to look at a life and think that that person is blessed.

And not really to understand that God gives grace for the burdens that He also gives.

But He does. And so the person is pronounced blessed by God because He has blessed them.

But this blessing in the Psalm can be understood in two ways. In verse 4,

God will bless the person who fears Him. And you could understand verse 1 in the same way, but you can also understand verse 1 to mean that the fear of the

Lord is a blessing. Verse 1 again says how blessed is everyone who fears the

Lord or how happy is everyone who fears the Lord. And so it could be understood this person is blessed or happy because they do fear the

Lord. The fear of the Lord itself being the blessing. And that's how

I understand verse 1. Yes, we can look at some different ways that the

Bible describes this as a blessing. We'll look at four of them in these last episodes.

And the first is that the fear of the Lord is a grace that God gives. Now when we say that, we don't want to just skirt over that.

It is a gracious gift. It is a gift. But it is a gift that comes from an unexpected source in the sense that we don't deserve that.

We would not have expected that the King that we fought against, who has freely forgiven us, would follow that forgiveness with gift after gift, as if we had been good children, as if we had been faithful subjects.

But one of the gifts He gives is this fear of the Lord. He gives us a heart that stands in awe of Him.

And we can see this negatively, this gift, in a negative sense and in a positive sense. So negatively, the fear of God is not a plant that grows in the soil of our natural heart.

Apart from God's work in a man or a woman or a child, there is no genuine biblical fear of the

Lord there. Sin has, in a sense, uprooted that. Think of what

Paul says in Romans 3. He gives a long list of evidences that everyone needs a

Savior. In chapters 1, 2, and 3, he's described different categories of people, pagans, religious people, moral people.

And basically, his summary is that every type of man needs a

Savior. And he lists the behavior. But at the end of that list of bad behavior, he kind of gives you the root or the cause of it all at the end.

And he says, there's no fear of the Lord before their eyes. So they live life as if God is a small matter, indifferent to God, placing themselves in the place of God.

And all of that flows. Now, that being true, when God begins to save us, the salvation process will generally begin with us having all those nice ideas we have about ourselves being stripped away and God showing us the truth about ourselves and using the law to expose exactly how far sin has spread into every area of our life and how dirty we really are compared to how clean

He really is. And the judgment we really deserve. And all of that is the beginning of a great mercy.

It's like a spiritual MRI. He's letting us see the truth about what's on the inside of us. And God will appear to be a very dreadful and fearful person to us.

And we're not yet brought through to the good news. And we've not yet been brought to that fear that flows out of a happy love to God that's forgiven us.

So our advice to you is that when that begins, don't mistake that as some bitter thing that you ought to run from.

It's painful. But it is the kindness of God that is leading you through that chasm of conviction to bring you through to the kind of fear that flows out of forgiveness and not just the kind of fear that comes when you realize that you're in trouble with a big

God. Yes. You mentioned that sin has stripped us of whatever natural sense of fear that we ought to have.

So when we find that there is a filial kind of fear growing in us so that in conviction maybe we're awakened to the terror of God and we want to run.

But then if our hearts are changed and we're brought to God in salvation, then there's awakened in us this love for God.

And I don't want to run from Him anymore even though I still hold Him in awe, in reverence. When that comes, it is positively a gift of God or a grace that God gives because it is a gift from Him.

It is a part of the new covenant. In Jeremiah chapter 32 verses 38 through 41,

God says, they shall be my people and I will be their God. And I will give them one heart and one way that they may fear me always for their own good and for the good of their children after them.

I will make an everlasting covenant with them that I will not turn away from them to do them good. And I will put the fear of me in their hearts so that they will not turn away from me.

I will rejoice over them to do them good and will faithfully plant them in the land with all my heart and with all my soul.

So those who have been born from above and have been made partakers of this new covenant find that there is a new principle at work in them.

He has removed from us a heart of stone, of flesh, pardon me, and given us a heart of flesh.

And this new heart, this new spirit has been put within us so that we now enjoy a fear of God that we did not enjoy before.

And I do say enjoy because, again, we're talking about this filial kind of fear, this love. So, previous to that work, we were held in bondage.

If we knew any fear at all, it was the servile fear. But now we've been given the spirit of adoption by His Spirit and introduced to Him as our

Father and to this awe that a child should have.

Now, while this has been planted in us as believers, it is still something to be cultivated and nurtured.

But if we belong to God, it is there. And God putting it there, again, it is a gift.

He's given it to us, but it is also a gift in the sense it is a good thing He's given to us.

It's not a bad thing He's given to us. Again, Jeremiah, he says in this passage

I quoted earlier, that he's giving us the fear of God, that they may fear me always for their own good and for the good of their children after them.

So, a good gift from a good Father. So, the fear of the

Lord, the kind that is a source of happiness, is the kind that only comes in that new covenant relationship.

It's a free provision. But also, we can see that the fear of the Lord is not just a gift that God gives that's good.

It's a desirable gift. And one way we know it's desirable is we have God's opinion of it.

Sometimes people give us something because it's not worth very much. And they say, well, I got a new one and it's really nice.

So, I'll let you have my old one. You can have this one. Sometimes I bought friends books before.

And so, I remember buying one for Lanny Autry. And I bought him a nice copy of John Newton's letters to his wife.

And then I thought, I'd like to have a copy and I could read them to my wife. So, I bought. And then when they both came in, I compared them.

And I thought, well, it's a gift. You can pick which one you get. And I gave Lanny the ugly one and kept the nice one to my eternal shame.

So, is that the kind of gift? Is God just giving us kind of the leftover and say, well, yeah.

Well, I mean, if you want it, you can have it. One way we know the value of a gift is how does the person who gave it to us, how does he consider its worth, you know?

What does God think of this? And we find in Scripture that God delights in the fear of Him.

God prizes the very gift He's given us. And so, that ought to make us think, well, if God thinks that highly of it, then

I need to make sure I think the same way God does. So, let me read a couple of verses from the book of Job.

Job 1, verse 8, and then chapter 2, verse 3. We read this, The Lord said to Satan, Have you considered

My servant Job? For there is no one like him on the earth, a blameless and upright man, fearing

God and turning away from evil. Chapter 2, verse 3, we read, The Lord said to Satan, Have you considered

My servant Job? For there is no one like him on the earth, a blameless and upright man, fearing

God and turning away from evil. And still he holds fast his integrity, although you incited

Me against him to ruin him without cause. And so, we know the account of Job and the difficulties

God allows Job to go through for Job's good and also to teach us some things we need to know.

But He describes Job as a man that He delights in and at the heart of His delight in Job is this description that Job is a

God -fearing man. Now, we're not saying that if we fear the Lord enough or if our fear of the Lord is clean enough or the right kind, you know, is it pure enough, that then somehow we earn

His love, you know, we earn His affection, His attention. But what we mean is that God finds this a pleasing thing.

You remember the prayer that Paul prays for the Colossian Christians in the book of Colossians 1, verses 9 and 10, and he talks, and one of the things he says there is that he prays that they would live a life pleasing unto the

Lord, literally in the Greek, going out to meet all of His pleasure, all of His desires.

And at the heart of that, it's not earning love, but flowing out of a new relationship, out of the heart that you mentioned.

God places a new heart within me, the new birth and in the new covenant, there is this innate fear of the

Lord given and we want to cultivate that. But what flows out of that is a life that is pleasing and all the things that we read about the fear of the

Lord, so often it'll say the fear of the Lord is to depart from evil. The fear of the Lord is against this.

It leads away from all these sins. It leads to a life that God finds pleasure in.

The greatest example is in the person of His Son, Jesus Christ. He does not fear the

Lord in a sinful way. He fears God in a perfectly delightful way.

And it is at the heart of this human life that God finds perfect pleasure in.

So listen to what Isaiah says in chapter 11 when he describes the coming of Christ.

He says, Perhaps we haven't thought of Christ as fearing the

Lord. Nor will

He make a decision by what His ears hear. So in the life of Jesus of Nazareth, we know that the

Father delights in Him. But we also see that He delights to stand in awe of His Father.

Right. And so there's this response to the Father and there's a response to the

Father in a sense to the Son. He does delight in the Son. He looks at Him with pleasure.

Isaiah 42 .1 says, And during Christ's time upon the earth, more than once we hear a voice from heaven saying,

You're my beloved Son in whom I'm well pleased. So again and again, you have the testimony of God.

In Scripture, the testimony of God from heaven saying, I'm pleased in Him. And so the fear of the

Lord is a blessing that He gives. It's something that He prizes. And if it's something that He prizes, it seems right that the child of God who loves the

Father wants to cultivate that, would want to know more of that because it pleases the

Father. Possessing this fear is a blessing. It's one that He gives and it's a blessing that possessed

He prizes. Sadly, there are many, many people today who do not know the fear of the

Lord and do not prize it. But the Christian does have something of it as part of the new covenant.

And having it, we should want more of it. We should prize it because He prizes it. In Behold Your God, The Weight of Majesty, Dr.

John Snyder answers the question by focusing on God's attributes. The heart of this study is its daily devotional workbook that participants complete at home in preparation of a small group study.

Each small group session is led by a video that has three segments. First, a biographical sketch of an individual from Christian history who was gripped by the reality of God you were studying that week.

Second is a sermon from Dr. John Snyder, pastor of Christ Church, New Albany. Lastly, are interviews from contemporary

Christian pastors and authors who help apply the lessons from the week. To learn more or to see what others say about Behold Your God, The Weight of Majesty, visit mediagrazie .org

or click the link in the description below. So many passages in Scripture.

You know, one of the biggest themes in Scripture, you know, is this fear of the

Lord. And it ought to entice us to pick up our Bible and say, you know, starting now, if I haven't before,

I want to begin to just work my way through the Scripture and notice how many times this wonderful quality of the believer is mentioned.

And how is it described? You know, what does it guard me against? What does it lead me to? And why is it something that was so delighted in by the

Lord Jesus Christ? And, you know, how privileged am I that God would give it to me?

Well, we want to close today with a prayer by Augustus Toplady, a hymn writer and a preacher from the late 18th century.

And Toplady writes this, infinitely great and infinitely gracious God, your glory exceeds our utmost thoughts and your mercies are over all your works.

We, your sinful creatures, have particular reason to admire and adore not only patience, which bears with us, despite all that we have done against you, but likewise your never -ceasing bounty by which our comforts are continued and our wants are supplied.

We desire to approach you as our kind and merciful Father in Christ Jesus, humbly beseeching you to wash away our sins in His most precious blood and to give us a sufficient measure of your grace and Holy Spirit to enable us to strive and to prevail against them.