The Fear of the Lord - Part 1 — K.P. Yohannan

Next, on the Road to Reality. We live in a time, especially in a culture here, that we are basically the masters of our life. We don't like to think in terms of our life being servanthood or being a slave or any of those things.

And we say, accept Jesus as your Lord, but basically that means you do what you want to do anyway. But you know, when you read in the life of Paul, in Romans chapter 1, he says something very interesting.

I am a born slave of the Lord Jesus Christ.

Welcome to the Road to Reality, the radio ministry of Gospel for Asia. Today, Brother KP Yochanan asks, what does it mean to fear the Lord? And how does fearing God impact your life? These are difficult questions, but essential in our walk with the Lord.

Abraham's Test and the Fear of God

So let's join Brother KP as he unfolds the cost and the blessings of truly fearing God. Let's get started in Genesis 22.

I just want to read a few verses to you from the book of Genesis, chapter 22, and briefly share with you a few thoughts that the Lord laid upon my heart. And this is in Genesis chapter 22. The story is about God asking Abraham to take his son, his only son, and offer him up as a sacrifice, a bond offering.

And so we'll begin with verse 1. Sometime later, God tested Abraham. He said to him, Abraham, here I am, he replied. Then God said, take your son, your only son, Isaac, whom you love, and go to the region of Moriah.

Sacrifice him there as a bond offering on one of the mountains I will tell you about. Early the next morning, Abraham got up and sadly longing, he took with him two of his servants and his son, Isaac.

When he had cut enough wood for the bond offering, he set out for the place God had told him about. On the third day, Abraham looked up and saw the place in the distance. He said to his servants, stay here with the donkey while I and the boy go over there.

We will worship and then we will come back to you. Abraham took the wood for the bond offering and placed it on his son, Isaac, and he himself carried the fire and the knife. And the two of them went on together.

Isaac spoke up and said to his father, Abraham, father, yes, my son, Abraham replied. The fire and the wood are here, Isaac said, but where is the lamb for the bond offering? Abraham answered, God himself will provide the lamb for the bond offering, my son.

And the two of them went on together. Verse nine. When they reached the place God had told them about, Abraham built an altar there and arranged the wood on it. He bound his son, Isaac, and laid him on the altar on the top of the wood.

Then he reached out his hand and took the knife to slay his son. But the angel of the Lord called out to him from heaven, Abraham, Abraham. Here I am, he replied. Do not lay a hand on the boy, he said.

Do not do anything to him. Now I know that you fear God because you have not withheld from me your son, your only son. Then down in verse 18. And through your offering, all nations offspring and through your offspring, all nations on the earth will be blessed because you have obeyed me.

Prayer and the Call to Obedience

Shall we pray? Father, thank you for your precious word. You gave this to us that we may live by it. Help us then that we will not be just hearers of your word, but we'll become doers of it. Thank you for this afternoon, the time you gave us to be with you, to learn from you.

In Jesus name, amen. The kind of assignment I have is, of course, you know, the theme of the conference is fear of the Lord and how it motivates us to serve him and do his will. And I took this passage to share briefly and bring some practical applications.

Abraham's Faith as a Model of the Fear of God

This is the first time in the Bible it mentioned the fear of God. If you're reading King James or some translation from in NIV, it says, now you know you fear God. It's in King James. It is now I know you are the fear of God.

Now God still says, I'm the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. And Abraham, we know what an incredible call God gave him out of a home just to us, filled with idolatry and just the normal life, didn't know nothing about the living God.

But God called him by his grace and said, I'm going to make you a blessing and I'm going to make a blessing to the whole nation for the whole world. And I'm going to bless you. And he became what we know, the wonderful statement, the friend of God, someone who is so ordinary, someone who just lived with all the troubles and mess.

When you talk about 70 divorce rate and all the mess and, and the churches are not exempted from these difficulties and men, fathers, husbands, you know, the, the struggles you go through, you went through.

No matter where you are, God is the same God who calls us out of whatever we are in to make our life incredible blessing with God's authority in our life. And as I read this passage, is there a key to this whole thing?

Becoming a Friend of God Through Intimacy

Well, I see very clearly Abraham becoming a very close acquaintance of the Lord. He became a friend of God. John chapter 15, Jesus said, Hey, I don't call you any more slaves or distant people. You are now my friend, someone that Lord can talk to face to face, share his intimate feelings, his concerns, not, not say me, I'm now born again and this and that no, but you grow to the place where the Lord says, Hey, Tom, I just want to talk to you.

So Lord, what do you want me to tell me? What do you want me to say to me? What do you want me to do? And that close acquaintance. And I think it's important for us to understand that to know the Lord intimately, the way Abraham knew him, we must understand something about the fear of the Lord.

Building Life on the Fear of the Lord

Now you already had explanations about it. Now, as I was looking through this passages and thinking about this conference, it dawned on me that in order to build our personal life on a correct foundation, our family, our service, our future, we must understand what it means to relate our life with this concept of walking in the fear of the Lord.

The Fear of God in the Old and New Testaments

Did he know of the entire Bible? Three quarter of the Bible is the Old Testament. Only one quarter is the New Testament. The principle theme of the Old Testament is the fear of God. The principle theme of the New Testament is the grace of God.

True Grace and Radical Obedience

The way to distinguish between false grace and true grace is by finding out whether the grace people preach, they are incorporating the fear of God in it. You realize the grace of God as preached in the New Testament to a people that knew the fear of God, the Jewish people.

But today we preach the grace of God to a people that don't understand nothing about the fear of God. So if you feel like it, do it. We misunderstand obedience as legalism. So we say, this guy is going to put us on a guilt trip or condemnation.

Hey man, get off. That's California talk. Leave me alone, man. But sometimes we miss the whole point about the call of God for radical obedience and sacrifice because he is God. About Jesus, it says in Luke 2 .40.