June 27, 2025 Show with David M. Cook on “Standing in Awe: Meditations on Fearing God

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June 27, 2025 DAVID M. COOK,Pastor of Calvary Baptist Church ofGreenwood, IN, whose preachingcan be heard on the “Calvary Green-wood Preaching” podcast, who willaddress the theme of his new book, “STANDING IN AWE: MEDITATIONSon FEARING GOD” Subscribe: Listen:

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Live from historic downtown Carlisle, Pennsylvania, home of founding father James Wilson, 19th century hymn writer
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George Duffield, 19th century gospel minister George Norcross, and sports legend
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Jim Thorpe. It's Iron Sharpens Iron. This is a radio platform in which pastors,
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Christian scholars, and theologians address the burning issues facing the church and the world today.
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Proverbs, chapter 27, verse 17, tells us iron sharpens iron, so one man sharpens another.
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Matthew Henry said that in this passage, we are cautioned to take heed with whom we converse and directed to have in view in conversation to make one another wiser and better.
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It is our hope that this goal will be accomplished over the next two hours, and we hope to hear from you, the listener, with your own questions.
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And now, here's your host, Chris Arnzen. Good afternoon,
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Cumberland County, Pennsylvania, Lake City, Florida, and the rest of humanity living on the planet Earth who are listening via live streaming at ironsharpensironradio .com.
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This is Chris Arnzen, your host of Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, wishing you all a happy Friday on this 27th day of June 2025.
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I'm thrilled to have today a first -time guest whose name is
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David M. Cook. He's pastor of Calvary Baptist Church of Greenwood, Indiana, whose preaching can be heard on the
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Calvary Greenwood Preaching Podcast, and he's an author, and today we're going to be addressing the theme of his new book,
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Standing in Awe, Meditations on Fearing God, and it's my honor and privilege to welcome you for the very first time ever to Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, Pastor David M.
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Cook. Oh, thanks so much, Chris. I'm really honored to be here. And I'm honored that you accepted my invitation.
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And tell our listeners something about Calvary Baptist Church of Greenwood, Indiana. Well, I mean, other than just how deeply
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I love these people, they're just the best people to go to church with. Our story is that I came here in 2019, and before that, the church had had a very hard decade.
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The short version is that we went from 400 to 100 people in 10 years. And you know, you can imagine a lot of things that would go along with that, a lot of hardships.
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But you know, I came, I visited, met the people, and just fell in love with them and said, if I can't lead these people,
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I can't lead anybody. And from largely on that deep love, and then just a sense that the church didn't need like rock star, draw a bunch of people in leadership, which
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I can't do. They just needed a faithful shepherd that loved them. And I thought, well, with God's help,
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I can do that. And so it seemed like a good fit. So we came here in 2019, my wife and I and our four kids.
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We had a very good first year, then of course COVID after that. And since then, the
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Lord has been slowly growing the church and just doing a whole lot on the inside to strengthen the people.
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We've seen some baptisms, growing student ministry, a growing nursery. And we're just really thankful to see what the
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Lord is doing. It's brought a lot of rejoicing to the older folks in the church, and excited to see what
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He does next. Great. Well, can you tell us something about the theological background of the church? Yeah.
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Well, the background has, I don't know if it's so much a theological background as a leadership background.
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The story has been one of very, almost alternating, very dynamic, you know, draw lots of people in pastors, and then a few times the bottom's kind of fallen out after that pastor has left.
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And that's left a mark on the church, most certainly. The background as far as emphasis and theology, a huge one on missions.
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It's always been a church deeply involved in missions, especially with the immigrant populations here in the community.
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Indianapolis has lots of immigrants from all over the world. And so over the years, we've hosted many different church plants.
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Right now we're hosting a Spanish -speaking church plant. Over the years, been several Burmese churches that have gotten their start here, a
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Korean church, and a few others as well. So the emphasis through the years has been on reaching the nations.
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Right now, there's probably a fresh emphasis on building godly leaders, which you can find that theme in my writings too, because, you know, when
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I arrived, most of the members were 65 and older. For whatever reason, the Lord is bringing in—well, at first it was largely 20 -somethings, now 30 -somethings as well.
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And with a gap like that in the middle, we have just needed to raise up leaders quickly.
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So some of our older folks are very ready to hand their positions to the next person. The younger people are willing, but, you know, don't have the training and the experience left.
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And so we've spent a lot of time on leadership development as well. Our emphasis now, we emphasize theologically a singing culture.
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It's not much of a rock concert -type atmosphere here. We want our people singing.
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We emphasize biblical expository preaching. I preach almost always through books of the Bible, though right now
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I'm doing a series on the gospel. And then there's a—I would say probably just because of me being me, and we'll get to this—there's a big emphasis on the fear of God and just a deep, connected reverence to him.
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Amen. Well, I'm assuming, since the book we're going to be discussing was published by Reformation Heritage Books, the publishing ministry started by my longtime dear friend,
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Dr. Joel Beakey, I'm assuming that you folks believe in the doctrines of sovereign grace? Yeah, we have a wide net here.
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It's a Baptist church. That's the net. And so there are a variety of perspectives on that,
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I would say here. Our statement of faith is just the Baptist faith and message, which does include election, predestination, the free choice of man, that harmony between the two.
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And so all of our members affirm those doctrines. But we aren't particular on the five points or things like that, as a church especially.
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Well, I just want to, first of all, before we get into your personal testimony of salvation, which we always have first -time guests do here,
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I'd like to give our audience your website for your church—and I will be repeating this,
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God willing, later—cbcgreenwood .com, which stands for Calvary Baptist Church, Greenwood, Indiana.
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That's us. And I'll be repeating that later, as I said. And now we would love to hear a summary of your salvation testimony, the kind of religious atmosphere, if any, in which you were raised, and what kind of providential experiences and circumstances our
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Sovereign Lord raised up in your life that drew you to Himself and saved you. Yeah, those are really one of the same.
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The religious influences when I was young really were the experiences and conditions the
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Lord used to draw me to Him. So my story is, you know, less dramatic and interesting than a lot of people's, but I found it is sometimes very helpful to certain people.
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And that's because I don't really remember the moment that I came to Christ.
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And I find a number of people have the same experience and feel troubled by it sometimes. The reason—well,
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I'll go back to the beginning. I was raised in a United Methodist Church growing up. It was a rather conservative
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United Methodist Church, but it was Wesleyan doctrine and teaching and the revivalism and things like that, a large emphasis on God's love, but it did not hear as much about judgment or the fear of God or things like that there, although I would learn it later.
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A church that really emphasized the importance of Jesus Himself, the importance of the
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Scriptures, and that they loved me. And so I had just rock -solid foundations, and Jesus, Bible, I was loved growing up.
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I think I came to Christ when I was 12 years old at a summer camp, but the memory is very fuzzy.
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I can remember it was answering an altar call at a, you know, kind of a big energetic, emotional type altar call, kneeling there at the altar, praying, telling the
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Lord that this Jesus that I just heard that man talk about and the kind of relationship he talked about,
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I want that with Jesus. And came back and told everyone I had come to Christ there.
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It was not, though, the kind of environment that was especially careful about that, you know, just praise the
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Lord, hallelujah, somebody came to Christ, which of course we should do. And so between my memory being really fuzzy, what
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I know of myself then that, you know, I just, I didn't, I'm not sure I saw myself as a sinner who needed to be saved.
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I just knew I wanted to follow Jesus. So if I could pinpoint a moment, it would be right there when
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I was 12. However, I do know that slowly through the years, what was most lacking in me, that sense that I was a sinner that needed to be saved, the
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Lord did teach it to me over time. And that's really, in my early years, the biggest thing that I needed to repent of.
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You know, some of the kids in my church were bad kids. I was a good kid. That's good.
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But the mistake I made is that I thought I was better than them. I thought they needed to be saved. And it just took time for the
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Lord to teach me that I needed to be saved. So through the years, he taught me that and a deepening gratitude and thankfulness for what he did for me on the cross.
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So that's how I came to Christ. Later on, I went to college with that foundation, began studying the Bible myself.
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For a while, I had a hard time finding a church at first for a number of reasons. And that begins another story of how
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I became a Baptist and how I was called into ministry that we might get into later, but that's at least how the
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Lord drew me to him. It was through a childhood with parents that loved him and modeled Christianity well and a church that just loved me so much.
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Praise God. Well, how did you realize you had received a call from God to become a pastor?
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Yeah, that was a slow experience as well. So I went away to college knowing how to play guitar, thinking, you know,
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I think the Bible is the Word of God, but I'm not totally sure. I better look up every book and make sure we know who the authors are.
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So not convinced of inerrancy yet, convinced of Christ's Lordship and of the gospel.
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Spent some time reading the Bible on my own, and it was not really a proof that convinced me of Scripture's inerrancy.
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It was just reading it and hearing the voice of my shepherd in it. Later on,
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Wayne Garuda would say something very similar that happens to a lot of people, which brought me a lot of comfort. So I was playing guitar and often did that in campus ministries, went to school for graphic design and advertising and really enjoyed it.
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So did I. Oh, yeah. Great. Same thing. Farmingdale College in Long Island.
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Yeah. Oh, excellent. Yeah, I went to Flagler College in St. Augustine, Florida. So opposite end of the country down south, but similar study fields.
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So, yeah, so I was leading worship for groups like InterVarsity, Campus Crusade, and it dawned on me that as much as I loved doing design and advertising, probably the work
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I was doing leading people in worship would have a more lasting, eternal impact. And so I wanted to invest in that.
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So when I graduated, I applied to Southern Seminary in Louisville, Kentucky for their worship and arts program there.
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I was accepted and moved up there and studied worship ministry there. And the reason really was that I knew how to play guitar and I kind of knew how to sing, at least well enough that they would let me do it, although I was never a star.
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But I didn't really understand the biblical dynamics of worship. Like how does this work? What's the right way?
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It's got to be more than just strum and sing and get everybody to sing. How do we do this with a theological depth to it?
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And their program had the right mix of that. I thought I would learn that well there. So I went off to Southern, was learning how to lead worship biblically there.
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And the idea then was, you know, I'll probably just graduate and volunteer doing this and work in the field that I was trained in and was content with that.
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What happened, though, was that being around professors that loved the church and young men like me who loved the church, they loved the church a lot more than I did at that time.
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It instilled in me just a really high value of shepherding God's church and the idea of pastoring.
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And so the Lord used that, their example, both to mature me as a man—I was very immature at the time and very silly in a lot of ways—to mature me and to give me a love for both the church and the work of shepherding the church.
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And so when I graduated, through a lot of prayer, just had that, you know, what is called in either
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Timothy—I guess it's 1 Timothy—that desire to elder and shepherd a church and was called up to Cape Cod, Massachusetts, as a worship pastor.
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So I was working full time there as a worship pastor. So I was there for five years and then did the same thing in another church for four years.
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While I was there in Massachusetts, my job was—part of it was to preach four times a year. And after a few sermons, my lead pastor, preaching pastor, who had a
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Ph .D. in homiletics, was an excellent preacher. He sat me down and he said, you know, I think there's something here in preaching for you.
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I want to mentor you and teach you preaching. So we worked together for five years.
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He taught me a lot about preaching. And really the leadership of that church were the first ones to kind of push me down a path of not so much music, but preaching for the church.
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So then I moved back to Kentucky, was there for four years at a church as a worship pastor there as well, and realized that, you know,
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I kept being asked to lead in the church and the Lord seemed to be opening doors and moving me more and more into leadership in the church.
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And I had really outpaced my ability to lead, like my, I don't want to say rank, but my—the calling in the church, what
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I was being asked to do was far beyond my ability to lead other people. And I was just very burdened by that and realizing that, you know,
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I'm making a lot of mistakes, I'm not leading well, what should I do about that? And the
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Lord used that to bring me back to Southern. I went there for a doctorate in leadership. So worked on that for a while.
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And then when I was close to finished with that, the time just seemed right on the advice of friends and talking with my wife and praying through it.
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That was the time that seemed right to begin looking for a preaching pastor position.
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And so that's what brought me up here. And the Lord used that to introduce me to these folks up here. And the rest is history.
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Praise God. Well, we're addressing a theme today that most programs in Christian media would never want to address, whether that's print media or audio media or video media, whether it is even churches and parachurch ministries.
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The fear of God is probably described by many, if not most, evangelicals as a buzzkill.
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Why are you bringing that up? We should be rejoicing in the
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Lord as if this is antithetical to fearing the Lord. And obviously, many churches gear so -called preaching towards doing nothing but lifting up the spirits and encouraging the listeners and the audience.
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Now, obviously, I believe that is an important element. We are not to have nothing but doom and gloom in the sermons of the church, and we're not to be pessimistic.
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But at the same time, the fear of the Lord is a vital element of knowing who
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God is. In fact, a classic text in Job 28 .28,
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Behold, the fear of the Lord, that is wisdom, and to depart from evil is understanding.
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Obviously, if the God -breathed words of Scripture tell us, Behold, the fear of the
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Lord, that is wisdom, the fear of the Lord is something that we should be taking seriously.
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And perhaps you could even define that, because people may have all kinds of unbiblical and incorrect understandings of what exactly that means, which may be why a lot of preachers stay clear from even talking about it or preaching about it.
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But start with defining that and tell us why you had a burden placed on your heart to write about in this devotional.
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Yeah, well, if it's all right, maybe I'll answer those in reverse order. The burden was because of just what you said, that it's essentially a forgotten teaching in the church.
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And like you said, most people don't know what it is. On the other hand, it's, as you said, the beginning of wisdom.
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So if you want to grow in wisdom, you must have the fear of God. And even more than that, it's in the end of Ecclesiastes and in Peter's words in Acts chapter 10, it's the shortest summary that I have seen in the
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Bible of what God wants of humanity. Ecclesiastes says, Fear God and keep his commands, for this is the whole duty of man.
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So you have one job, it's to fear God and keep his commands. In Acts, Peter says,
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Anyone who fears God and does what is right is acceptable to him. Anyone from any nation. So it's that important.
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It's the foundation of everything godly in a believer's life. And most of us don't know what it is.
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In fact, we have even a misinformed definition of it. So I wanted to recast that foundation and give to readers a very thorough but very accessible, you know, multifaceted look at the diamond from every angle kind of view of the fear of God in order to make up some of what was lacking there in the church.
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So that was the burden. Hopefully describing it like that makes your listeners eager to hear the definition now and want to know how important it is.
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I defined in the book, for a believer, now it's different for an unbeliever, but for a believer, it's a joy filled, awestruck, trembling before God.
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To maybe describe what it feels like, if you've ever stood at the edge of the ocean and just been in awe of how big the ocean is, there's a feeling that goes along with that.
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Or recently, I was out in the middle of the night on a clear night and just looked up at all the stars and just tried to drink it all in.
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You know, if you stood in front of the Grand Canyon or seen the sequoias and the red woods out in California, there's a feeling there of awe and wonder where the thing you're looking at is so much bigger than you and you feel so small, but you're very happy.
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And that is what the fear of God feels like. It is to get some sense of how incredible He is and to feel very small next to His greatness, but to be very glad and happy.
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That's the heart of our godliness, that everything good that the
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Lord does in us starts with Him giving us that kind of heart in the
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Christian life. So one of the reasons that confuses people is because obviously
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I'm talking in very positive terms, joy, awe, and the word is fear. And so people will say, wait a minute, fear is a negative word.
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Why are you using positive words? The thing that we have to understand about history is that our modern
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English is really one of the first languages to only use the word fear negatively.
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Most languages, including Old English, use the word fear negatively and positively. Just like the word awful that is in many of our hymns, the immediate definition that pops into people's head is not full of awe.
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It's horrible. That's terrible. And that's why even many hymnals have changed the word awful in various hymns to awesome.
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Yeah, yeah. And so it's so hard to find a good word for it because the deep -sounding words sound negative now, and the positive -sounding words all sound trite.
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Awesome just sounds like, I think, a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles when I hear the word awesome. It doesn't evoke awe before the
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Lord in me. And so it's so hard to find a good word. Really, it's just worship.
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But the word worship has been so overused as well that it doesn't really ring the way that it should when we talk about it.
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So in biblical Greek and biblical Hebrew as well, the word fear has both a positive and negative use, and it's for anything that just overwhelms your heart.
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Now, that can be negative. You can be overwhelmed with something that you're scared of, and that would be fear.
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But also, if you just have a deep respect and admiration for a person, you might say you fear that person.
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And that reverent, respect -filled awe and worship that we give
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God as his children who are safe in his arms, we're not scared.
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There's an instance where both uses are used together in the Bible, right after the
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Lord gives the law in the book of Exodus. You know, it's a terrifying sight.
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There's trumpets blowing, the mountains are shaking, if you go on the mountain, you will die.
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I mean, it's just, you know, awe -filled sight for sure. And the people are terrified, and they say, basically,
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Moses, don't ever let him do that again. Like, you go talk to him, but we cannot bear to be before him.
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And he says, do not be afraid or do not fear. The Lord has done this to teach you to fear him.
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So he uses that word twice right there, negatively and positively. Don't be afraid of this God. But he is doing this to teach you to revere him, to have a great sense of awe before him, to worship him and to obey him.
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And that's what he calls it. He doesn't call us to be afraid of him for his people. He calls us to worship and love and adore him.
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And that is the most thrilling, I think it's the happiest that a human can be, is to feel that before God.
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Amen. And we have to go to our first commercial break. If you have a question for Pastor David M. Cook about his devotional standing in awe, 31
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Meditations on Fearing God, our email address is chrisarnson at gmail .com.
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As always, give us your first name, at least city and state of residence in your country of residence.
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If you live outside the USA, only remain anonymous if your question involves a personal and private matter.
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Don't go away. We're going to be right back after these messages. James White here of Alpha Omega Ministries announcing that this
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September I'm heading out to Pennsylvania to speak at two events that my longtime friend
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Chris Arnson has lined up for me. On Thursday, September 18th at 11 a .m.,
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I'm speaking to men in ministry leadership at Chris's Iron Sharpens Iron Radio Free Pastors Luncheon at Church of the
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Living Christ in Loisville. Then on Sunday, September 21st at 1 .30
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p .m., I'm speaking at Trinity Reformed Baptist Church of Carlisle on the theme, Can We Trust the
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Bible is the Authentic and Inerrant Word of God? I hope you can join Chris and me for both events.
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For more details on the Free Pastors Luncheon, visit ironsharpensironradio .com.
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That's ironsharpensironradio .com. For more details on Trinity Reformed Baptist Church of Carlisle, visit trbccarlisle .org.
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That's trbccarlisle .org. God willing, I'll see you in September in Pennsylvania for these exciting events.
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IRON when you're placing your order. That's CVBBS .com. And we're now back with David M.
35:25
Cook. And I want to repeat our email address if you have a question. ChrisArnson at gmail .com.
35:32
Give us your first name at least, city and state, and country of residence. One thing I think that we should return to at least momentarily, just so there's no confusion here, when you were talking about don't be scared of God, do fear
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God. Isn't there a sense, though, when people, when
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Christians are in the current state of rebellion because all
36:01
Christians sin, and some Christians wallow in that sin for at least a season before they return to their senses and they fall to their knees and cry out in repentance.
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Don't you think that there is, unless I'm misreading what
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James writes when he says, you say you believe in one
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God, you do well, but even the demons believe and tremble. It's as if he is saying that these people who are professing
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Christians who do not produce any good fruit in their life. It's as if, when
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I read that, I think James is saying the demons are trembling, you should be trembling.
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Am I off base there? No, I don't think you're off base. I think the key is that people in that situation should be scared, but the reason they should be scared is that they may not be
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Christians, and so they may not be saved. That's very different than being afraid that the
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Lord might not be merciful to you if you were to go back to him. So yes, to the extent that you don't have assurance of your faith, you will naturally be scared if you sense how great
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God is and how powerful he is. A Christian who has assurance, on the other hand, has nothing to be afraid of.
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I'm trying to remember where it is, there is no fear in love, perfect love casts out fear. So if you have confidence in God's love for you or assurance, then you have nothing to be afraid of.
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But if your lifestyle is reflecting that perhaps you've deceived yourself, perhaps your conversion was not genuine, then yeah, that's scary, and yeah, you should be scared.
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One of your meditations is, Fearing God Inwardly Means Worshipping God Out Loud.
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If you could tell us, first of all, what do you mean by fearing God inwardly and how that would lead to worshipping
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God out loud? Yeah, well, the Scripture speaks of a believer's fear of the
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Lord in kind of two senses, internal and external. So sometimes he says to fear me by keeping my commands, and other times he says that fearing him leads to keeping his commands.
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So what happens on the inside comes out. Jesus says, let the tree be good and the fruit be good, or let the tree be bad and the fruit be bad.
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James says near where you quoted a moment ago that good water and polluted water don't come from the same spring.
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It's one or the other, and it's based on the state of the heart. So what's in the heart comes out. And when
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I say fearing God inwardly, I mean the heartfelt awe and reverence before God.
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When we feel that on the inside through the gospel of Jesus, we sense our safety before him and we love him.
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That is going to lead to praise that comes out of us, right? If the tree is good, the fruit is good.
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Out of the overflow of the heart, the mouth speaks. You see this all the time with other things.
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When my friends go and visit state parks or national parks and they see incredible sights, they come back and they can't help but tell me all about it.
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If you get a new piece of technology that does some wonderful thing or you realize that Chat GPT can do some incredible thing you didn't realize it could do before, you just can't help but tell somebody.
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When your heart's full of awe, it just comes out of your mouth. And the same thing happens when we feel that way before the
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Lord. When our hearts are full of awe before him, when we fear him and revere him in our hearts, we can't help but praise him.
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That's the very next thing that's going to come out of us. Amen. And that seems to militate against a phrase that actually makes me nauseous when
40:08
I hear Christians repeat it joyfully. A phrase that has been accredited to St.
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Francis of Assisi, but there seems to be dispute among historians whether he actually said it.
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But the citation or the quote is, preach the gospel at all times and if necessary, use words.
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I get angry when I hear Christians say that because other than the foreordination of God the
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Father to sacrifice his son, other than that, if Jesus did not use words, he never would have been crucified.
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And his disciples that were martyred never would have been killed if they were not using words and they were only doing good deeds and so on.
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The Romans would not have been bothered by that. The Jews would not have been bothered by that.
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So that's really a fallacy, isn't it? That quote that is fondly used by many.
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Yeah, I mean, it's good news. You know, it's news. You have to say it.
41:24
So, I mean, I suppose that's literally true if we remember that it's always necessary to use words.
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Then you just preach the gospel with words always. But yeah, not only do you have to preach the gospel with words in order to get it out there, if your heart is full of love for him, you're going to.
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That's just going to be what you talk about because it's what your heart loves. And you specifically use the phrase worshiping
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God out loud. And one thing, even though I am a confessional
41:58
Reformed Baptist, I love Reformed theology and Calvinism, and I love the fellowship
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I have and the education I have received from Reformed men and churches.
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But having said that, I think there has been legitimate criticism over very often, not in all cases,
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I'm not broad -brushing, but very often there is not that boldness and that exuberant joy in worship where we are worshiping
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God with a robust fullness of voice because we are so grateful.
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We should be more grateful than anyone if we believe we owe God 100 % of the praise, honor, and glory for not only our salvation, but for every single good thing that we have received.
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So, am I making sense there? Yeah, yeah. And really, I mean, you see that. I think you see it widely than that, probably across all conservative churches.
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There is just something, there's a sense that, oh, we don't want to go too far with this.
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We don't want to get carried away in worship when, goodness, the beauty of the gospel of Jesus and what
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He has done to save us and what it means for us. Oh, goodness,
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I mean, we should just pour forth psalms all the time because of what He has done for us.
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Amen. Amen. And another meditation is, we already touched on it some, but fearing
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God means joyfully obeying God. Very often, and I can say that includes me, when
43:47
I'm obeying God, I'm doing it grudgingly. Like I'm saying to God, to myself, all right,
43:55
I'll do this, I'll do that. And what's worse is, sometimes the immediate thought in my head is,
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I better get something out of this. But tell us about that, where you were coming from.
44:11
Yeah, well, you know, the one thing that sticks with me is the story of Abraham and Isaac, where Abraham is ready to sacrifice
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Isaac at the Lord's command. What the Lord says to him at the end is,
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Now I know that you fear me, for you haven't withheld your only son from me. So Abraham's willingness to obey in the most difficult way that I could imagine is an outward expression.
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It shows outwardly that on the inside, he fears God. The Lord says that we see this now, right?
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Now I see that you fear me. So it's said in many other places as well.
44:50
I'm hoping to spot in the book, Psalm 112 uses parallelism to say the same thing in two different ways.
44:57
Blessed is the one who fears the Lord, who delights greatly in His commandments. So to fear the Lord, to delight in His commandments are essentially synonymous.
45:07
They're one and the same. And that makes sense. If you are convinced all the way down to the depths of your heart that the
45:14
Lord is good and the Lord loves you and that His ways are good, and that He has brought you from destruction destined rebellion into the people of God to be saved forever, it's going to be a delight to obey
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Him. You're going to know that His ways are good and you're going to love following Him. So it's not just a willingness to obey
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Him, but a joy that comes in that, that He has revealed His good ways. He's not left us without guidance or to know how to get along in the world, but He's shown us just what to do.
45:55
Amen. And one thing that was brought back to my memory when
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I was looking at the meditation, fearing God inwardly,
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I'm sorry, fearing God means turning from idols to trust
46:18
God. Very often, those who are
46:24
Christians, especially if we are evangelical, if we were former
46:32
Roman Catholic or an Eastern Orthodox, we may say, well, we've turned from our idols and we were saved and we repented and we are now worshiping
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God in spirit and truth and a good, solid Bible -believing Christian church, so we turn from our idols.
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And there are people born and raised in evangelical churches that are thinking in their heads, well,
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I can breathe a sigh of relief with that one because I never worshiped idols or never was focused on or held too tightly to any kind of an idol at all.
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But that's where people are really misunderstanding the depth of what an idol is.
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It's not just a false image of God, either on a painting or an icon or carved in wood or stone.
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It's something that we are holding on to, even though we know it displeases God. Am I right?
47:35
Yeah. Scripture says that covetousness, it says to lay aside covetousness, which is idolatry.
47:42
To want something, to have a controlling desire like that, that has overwhelmed your heart, is to have an idol.
47:51
And in the modern world, if only it took an image to commit idolatry, but it doesn't.
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I think this concept of fear, biblical fear or awe or reverence, can help people identify their idols.
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What has captured your heart that makes you say, oh, wow? Or what do you expect, the things you should expect from God?
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What do you expect provision from, where you should look to the Lord for provision? What do you expect fulfillment and happiness from, that you should look to the
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Lord for fulfillment and happiness? That can help us to identify some things that we may not have expected, but I think
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Scripture would identify as idols. Amen. I find it interesting that in the
48:43
Christian life, I'm sure we can all think in our minds of a proportionately smaller number of people than the greater number of people that we actually have met and know, where we say, man, that brother is such a humble brother.
49:09
And they stand out in our heads, and we are so in awe of their graciousness and humility.
49:16
I'm immediately right now thinking of some extraordinary men of God that reek and drip with humility.
49:27
And even though they are extremely gifted men and men that possess great talents and abilities, and I think it says something that's connected with your meditation.
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Fearing God means turning away from pride and evil. I think pride is something that exists within humans far more than we care to admit, even in the body of Christ, which is why when we think of very humble men and women of God, it's the minority number of people that we are immediately having come to our minds, rather than every single
50:14
Christian that we know. And that pride is such an evil sin that leads to all kinds of other manifestations of sin that can bring great downfall in the lives of Christians.
50:30
If you could explain your meditation on this. Yeah, well, if your heart is overcome by God's greatness and goodness, there's not really going to be much room left for you to be enamored with yourself.
50:51
You're going to be so fixated on Him. Was it C .S.
50:56
Lewis that said humility is not thinking less of yourself, but thinking of yourself less? It may have been him.
51:01
I can't remember. It sounds like him. Yeah. And really, humility isn't taking a falsely small view of yourself or self -abasement or anything like that.
51:14
It's really just having such a big view of God that you're put in your proper place, that your eyes and your heart are fixated on Him.
51:21
And that makes people very happy. I bet those humble people you're talking about, I bet they're also very happy people.
51:33
I've said this a few times before. If you think back to the most satisfying moments in your life, like for me, when my firstborn daughter was born and I first held her in my hands, or when
51:45
I stood in front of the Grand Canyon for the first time. If you think to those great peak moments where your soul felt so happy, it probably was not in a moment where you were consumed with your own greatness or enamored with how great you are.
52:01
It probably, for most people, it's when you just forget about yourself and you're overcome by something else and how wonderful that is.
52:11
And that's because we were not made to be enamored with ourselves. We were made to just have a slack -jawed awe and worship before the
52:22
Lord. And that's where we find happiness in His presence. There is fullness of joy. And so a lot of us who are looking for that fulfilling happiness really just need to take our eyes off of ourselves and just gaze at the
52:34
Lord in His goodness and find happiness there. Amen. And we have to go to our midway break right now.
52:40
And once again, if you have a question for David M. Cook on the fear of God, we do have some listeners waiting to have their questions asked and answered on the air.
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Welcome back. Before I return to my fascinating conversation with David M.
01:08:24
Cook about his devotional 31 Meditations on Fearing God well that's the subtitle.
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The title is Standing in Awe. Before I return to that conversation
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click support then click click to donate. Now last but not least if you are not a member of a
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Christ honoring biblically faithful, theologically sound, doctrinally solid church like Calvary Baptist Church of Greenwood, Indiana no matter where you live in the world
01:11:02
I may be able to help you find a biblically sound church because I've helped many people spanning the entire globe in our audience find faithful churches sometimes even within just a couple of minutes from where they live and that may be you too.
01:11:16
So if you are without a biblically faithful church home anywhere on the planet earth send me an email to chrisarnson at gmail .com
01:11:24
chrisarnson at gmail .com and put I need a church in the subject line and that's also the email address where you can send in a question to David M.
01:11:33
Cook on Standing in Awe 31 Meditations on Fearing God which happens to be published by our friends at Reformation Heritage Books founded by world renowned reform theologian
01:11:47
Joel Beake but one thing I wanted to have us clarify also is that people have a misunderstanding when it comes to pride as well they think or they may think that what we are saying the turn away from pride that people should not notice and take encouragement from and even take joy in the knowledge of gifts that they had and abilities that they had and in fact it sometimes can be nauseating you were talking earlier about false humility sometimes people who go on and on oh shucks
01:12:43
I'm no good at that and that kind of a thing after a while when you know they are really talented at something and it's not in all cases that they are being falsely humble but sometimes it can get really irritating because you know that they know that they are good at what they are doing.
01:13:05
Am I making sense? Yeah it does. I mean the scripture gives us two guards when we are considering gifts and abilities that God has given us.
01:13:13
One is every good and perfect gift comes from God and that's what keeps it from being prideful when you see it as given by God to you.
01:13:21
He's the source of it. You didn't generate this within yourself but it was the Lord who gave it undeservedly and if he took it from you this moment and gave it to somebody else he's allowed to do that.
01:13:32
If you really see it as a free gift that helps. The other is it does say be careful not to think of yourself more highly than you ought.
01:13:39
We are all kind of tempted to maybe think we are a little more gifted than we are so we do have to be careful not to either think too highly or too lowly and whatever we do have we just have to see it as a gift from God do our best to give it back to him and love others with it.
01:13:54
And sometimes the false humility in my opinion can be heretical and what
01:14:02
I mean by that is I have heard on many occasions especially from some of our charismatic and Pentecostal brothers and sisters, perhaps not exclusively from them but for instance if somebody writes a beautiful song of praise to Christ and you are with this person you hear he or she sing it or you read the lyrics on a piece of paper and you say to this individual this is breathtaking and so extraordinarily worshipful and deep in its content and biblical and you are very gifted
01:14:50
God's given you a gift. Oh, don't give me the credit this all comes from God these words, every word that's written down here came from the
01:15:02
Holy Spirit so don't give me the credit give the Holy Spirit the credit. No, I believe in Sola Scriptura for a reason and the reason we believe in Sola Scriptura is not everything written by men and women even if they are
01:15:19
Christians is not God breathed so knock it off with the nonsense that the
01:15:26
Holy Spirit gave you am I going overboard? I don't think so in kindness to them being praised is for most people just uncomfortable any of us might say something a little silly that we regret when we've just been praised and I think some folks just aren't as careful with their words about the
01:15:52
Spirit's working as we are. Sometimes people will say things like that and they mean, the
01:15:57
Lord helped me or the Lord gifted me but it sounds like they're saying, I'm an apostle and the
01:16:04
Lord gave me these words when I'm talking with someone like that I try to understand just what they mean by that because if they think themselves to be a
01:16:15
Spirit -inspired prophet then there are some things I'm going to want to talk about with them
01:16:20
I'm likely going to want to confront that but if they're just being loose with their words then that's a different matter altogether some people that I've actually met and heard go into detail about the
01:16:35
Holy Spirit gave me each and every one of these words that kind of thing you even have people like Jimmy Swaggart I can remember him years ago saying that,
01:16:50
I don't know how young he was whether it was 8 or 7 or 6 or 5 or something that he just sat down in front of a piano the first time in his life and started playing with expertise because the
01:17:02
Holy Spirit gave him the gift to do that and obviously I don't buy that for a split second so I just think that we've got to be careful about in our attempts to be publicly humble not actually being prideful because you're giving the message
01:17:20
God thinks so highly of me that he's given me this wonderful message to you or something this is a big issue that grieves me it's a meditation of yours fearing
01:17:45
God means not fearing men or man there are so many people out there who want you to tiptoe around issues that are biblically true and vital for an audience to hear and out of a desire not to offend people pablum is what is presented that will never stir a soul to fall to the ground in repentance and even pastors that are terrified of losing their jobs or even just losing numbers in the congregation they're terrified to even approach some biblical texts because they may be unpopular to a modern audience and I think this is a very important meditation that you have here yeah
01:18:56
I think maybe I'll speak to both aspects of that I think it helps people to ask why is it that other people are so scary you know you hear people talk about that all the time why do
01:19:08
I care so much about what other people think it puzzles so many of us the reason other people are scary is because they're made in the image of God and so they resemble
01:19:17
God in some ways not perfectly of course and not completely and mankind has been given some of God's authority to rule over earth and so there's a dominion, a power aspect to that and so it would make sense that when you stand in front of another person and you feel that you might be judged by them that you might be tempted to fear them in a way that you shouldn't because they're made in God's image, they resemble
01:19:42
Him the key to growing out of that the key to repenting of that and living life rightly there is to have such a big view of God to have a great fear of God that as the
01:19:57
Puritans used to say just swallows up all of your other fears Jesus says don't be afraid of man who can kill only the body but fear
01:20:06
God who can destroy both the body and the soul He is greater and He is the one that we must fear so the fear of man can become a kind of idolatry in that way when it comes to you apply it particularly to preachers and pastors and certainly when you're standing in front of a group of people
01:20:26
I believe that is one of the scariest experiences for humankind
01:20:32
I think it's still probably the number one fear statistically even over the fear of death and of course it is, you've got a hundred image -bearing humans watching you talk and judging what you're saying that can be a terrifying thing and it takes a spirit -filled boldness to be willing to go up there and preach and be willing if necessary to have the whole room turn on you because of what you're saying, that happened to the apostles you've got to be willing for it to happen to you
01:21:00
I decided early on here at Calvary that I would just kind of get that out of the way early and just preach whatever the text said no matter who it would offend early on, so if I was going to lose somebody because I was willing to tell them what the text actually said
01:21:17
I wanted that to happen in the first three months and so we preached the book of James, a very hard book to hear and to swallow, that's also a very sweet book as well and I think what that did here is it just built a credibility
01:21:35
I've heard some of the folks say well, he wouldn't have said it if it weren't in the Bible it just built that credibility that I think they trust me to tell them what the book really says and so if you can get there then there's more of a license to say things that may make them uncomfortable because they've come to trust you as a shepherd who will really tell them what the book says
01:21:58
Yes, I can remember years ago in the 80s when I was a new Christian I wrote a letter to a
01:22:08
Presbyterian pastor who had a program on TV that I enjoyed and I was thanking him for not being an ear tickler and he broke back with,
01:22:23
I don't know if the phrase was original to him or if it just came from himself but I've never forgotten it he said pastors and preachers like that who are just trying to appease to something that you enjoy and to build you up with wonderful comments without giving you any kind of bad news like the curse of sin that we need to be cleansed from he said they're more interested in yours than they are in you and what he meant by that is they're more interested in what you have that can bless them, whether it's your money or your support in other ways and that can be obviously a very disheartening thing when you know that somebody is likely candy coating the message of the gospel and anything else from the scriptures that needs to be told because they don't want financial gifts to dwindle and that kind of thing yeah
01:23:52
I find a lot of comfort in Paul's words I think to the Corinthians he says
01:23:59
I counted a small thing to be judged by you or by any human court indeed I don't even judge myself he just remembers who the judge is what matters is not that people walk away and say oh that was a really good sermon what matters is what the
01:24:14
Lord thinks of what we are doing and we will answer to him and we'll spend eternity much more concerned with what he thought about our preaching and so that's where we should set our eyes now and of course we should be always more concerned about what
01:24:29
God thinks about something than how men view it and we are to be more concerned about the never dying souls of people we love than we are about their feelings being temporarily hurt by something yeah and even more important than what
01:24:53
I think I have to do that so much when I am studying the scriptures to prepare for a sermon
01:24:59
I just have to remind myself all the time because it's so tempting to care most about what you think about a text and instead to say what does the
01:25:08
Lord think about this what is the Lord saying I don't proclaim my words I proclaim his words just as Paul is not willing to be judged by other people or even by himself and what the
01:25:18
Lord thinks about it is always what matters most it's the only thing that matters now you have a meditation that definitely is a subject of great controversy and division in the body of Christ as was made manifest during the coronavirus crisis that we've all experienced mainly because we had experienced in some way far -reaching overreaching mandates from the government that were put in place that were unnecessary and sometimes the opposite of what they were claiming they were intended for to be of benefit to us and keep us safe and healthy at sometimes
01:26:12
I have been convinced some of these things were leading people to be physically harmed in their health in other ways but the meditation fearing
01:26:24
God means obeying and disobeying authorities please tell me tell my listeners where you're coming from on that yeah it's interesting the scripture presents both sides of that really clearly
01:26:38
Romans 13 you know often quoted in discussions like this you know there's no government that exists except that is from God the government is there it doesn't bear the sword in vain but it's there to punish the evildoer and so obey earthly authorities and in other passages of the
01:26:53
New Testament to pray for them and to be obedient to them even when they are doing things they should not do even when they were first Peter is all about even when the government as the
01:27:03
Roman government was then is oppressing us we still do our best to obey them when we can when it doesn't displease
01:27:10
God but then you get this story in Exodus where early on the
01:27:16
Pharaoh is desiring to slaughter all of the male children in order to keep essentially
01:27:22
Moses from rising up and he tells the midwives if it's a boy kill it if it's not let it live and it says because the midwives feared
01:27:34
God they did not do as the king commanded as the Pharaoh commanded so the reason they disobeyed him because they feared
01:27:42
God and later it says because they feared God and did not obey him he gave them family so he was pleased by that and he rewarded them with families which was a prized thing so much in those early days so we then have this example of when we are commanded by our earthly authorities to disobey
01:28:02
God then the most God -fearing thing you can do is say no sir no
01:28:08
I'm sorry and to disobey them but to obey God we can think of the apostles as well saying we must obey
01:28:14
God rather than men and so the line is drawn when we are commanded to disobey him now this may be this is a controversial thing for me to say but I don't believe the line is drawn when the government has overreached its
01:28:29
God -given power the Roman government did that all the time and the line was not drawn there the line is drawn when we're commanded to oppress others when we are commanded to do wrong before God that's when we draw the line we say no it would not please
01:28:44
God if I did this and so I cannot do this and the times that a typical
01:28:50
Christian in his life are really put to the test with this issue of when to obey and when to disobey an authority most of the time that's something involving your employment especially but not exclusively secular employment because sometimes even
01:29:12
Christian employers are thinking like unbelievers and acting like unbelievers and are pressuring employees to do things that are displeasing to God but that's especially true with unbelievers who are in the state of authority in a position of authority in an employment situation yeah you know it seems like we have a reprieve from that now a lot of them are backing away from that but I wonder if that's short -lived
01:29:41
I wonder if another wave will come back in the future there tend to be when
01:29:48
I counsel church members through that it tends to come down to one of two things either they're being commanded to join their company and sin which is different than working for somebody who sins you know there's a difference between working for an employer that has a pride section on their website versus an employer that tells you you have to wear the rainbow pin on your shirt when they command you to disobey him and the other one that comes up the most is conscience issues when employees are commanded to disobey their conscience which would be a sin against God those two tend to come up the most and so that's what
01:30:25
I counsel people to watch for watch when you're asked to participate in the sin and watch for your conscience don't violate your conscience because that would displease the
01:30:33
Lord A meditation that you have here is fearing
01:30:40
God means never using power to hurt others you did touch on that already in the previous meditation but other than the most obvious blatantly obvious example of that where you have dictators treating the citizens or subjects of whatever nation country where they rule they're treating them with sometimes even barbaric levels of cruelty and things that have even led to genocide those things are obvious but in what other more subtle ways or ways that Christians take for granted and may not even realize initially at least that they are being guilty of using power to hurt others tell us some of those examples some rather common ones today might be underpaying employees to the point that they're not able to afford the things that they need or they aren't paid a fair wage overworking employees unfairly harsh treatment from a father towards children to a husband to his wife from a mother to their children sometimes we've actually seen a lot of it in the news oppression from pastors fleecing their flocks which is just so grievous the
01:32:14
Lord writes about that in the prophets and the Lord hates it that would include things like using church discipline to pressure members to do what you want instead of biblically confronting sin the way the church discipline should be done a great sense of entitlement in a pastor that's often where we see that in the
01:32:42
West in a modern world now like you said in other parts of the world you see dictators and sometimes I don't spend a lot of time in the political realm but I'm sure that in some areas of American politics there could be some of that going on as well as vast as American politics is but those are the ones that we tend to see that come to my mind now you have a meditation
01:33:05
God fears make the best leaders that is refreshing to hear because we are living in a day and age when even conservative
01:33:23
Christians very often when it comes to a political authority when it comes to political leaders and presidents and so on when a complaint is made about the integrity or the morality of the person you'll hear a whole host of conservative
01:33:49
Christians saying I'm voting for him to be my leader in government not my pastor and now there is some element of truth in that but at the same time why would it be such a strange thing for a
01:34:10
Christian to want a person in a vital role of preserving the safety, well -being and prosperity of a nation why would it be out of acceptability for that Christian to want similar qualifications that the
01:34:38
Bible even requires for pastors not exactly or identically but at the same time how can you trust a president that you discover as a habitual adulterer if he is lying to his wife why do you think that he is being honest with you?
01:35:05
Am I going too far here? No, you're not going too far you said there's a little bit of truth in it
01:35:11
I think the truth is when we apply that to theological issues you can have a wacky theology of the trinity and still be a decent president that's where we can say things like that with license but I guess to put it bluntly someone who does not consider themselves accountable to God cannot be trusted with power please don't give that person power because they consider themselves unaccountable who are they going to answer to?
01:35:39
They're going to do whatever they want to do with that power and especially when we see them expressing that with bragging about adultery and things like that so listeners who are interested in that will want to know that's the subject of my first book with my doctoral supervisor so I have another book with Reformation Heritage Shane and I do together it's called
01:36:00
Leading from the Foundation Up How Fear in God Forms Stronger Leaders and this book that we're talking about today is really the fruit of the research that started with that book when
01:36:10
I was in the leadership program at Southern so what King David teaches and what the scriptures teach from beginning to end is that when a leader fears
01:36:22
God in their heart and leads in the fear of God in other words if they lead with a deep sense of accountability to God I will be measured by God for how
01:36:32
I lead these people when that's in their heart the people they're leading tend to flourish
01:36:40
David's last words before he dies are when one rules justly over man ruling in the fear of God he dawns on them like the light of the morning when the sun rises a morning without clouds like the tender grass springing out of the earth a clear shining after the rain easy to picture this just after spring when the grass is wet with dew and the sun rises on a cloudless morning and shines on the grass we all start firing up our lawnmowers because the grass is going to flourish it's going to grow that's what happens to people when they are led by somebody who fears
01:37:23
God that person shines on them like the sun and nourishes them and the group just flourishes together so God -fearing leadership people tend to flourish under God -fearing leadership the best is brought out of them under God -fearing leadership that's something
01:37:40
I could go on and on about if you want to take a diversion down that road so many different places in scripture leaders are exhorted to fear
01:37:49
God the things we look for in leaders integrity, wisdom, courage, zeal the scripture grounds all of them in the fear of God if you want to grow into a better leader you need to grow in the fear of God you'll be a more zealous person, you'll be more trustworthy you'll be wiser, you'll have all the things you want as a leader all the qualities you want as a leader by growing in the fear of God that's what
01:38:13
I train our leaders here I teach our people here the most important quality in a president is that he or she if it's a woman, considers themselves accountable to God for the way that they lead start there and then get into the political issues
01:38:26
I have this vivid memory of a very well -known evangelical pastor, televangelist and I can remember him blurting out with anger loudly
01:38:43
I'm voting for a president, not a Sunday school teacher and he said it with such dripping disdain the term
01:38:53
Sunday school teacher that is giving the impression that a definition of a
01:39:00
Sunday school teacher is a weak, impotent, wimpy timid effective -less person that's not the way
01:39:13
I view a Sunday school teacher that's not the way I view any person of any position of authority at all in a church there may be multitudes of churches where that is an accurate description of their leaders, they are pathetic and weak and impotent and wimpy and timid but that shouldn't be in other words a
01:39:40
Sunday school teacher should not be a pejorative term no,
01:39:46
I mean, Scripture says not many of you should be teachers for they will be held to a higher standard I mean, if anything, we should be lifting them up and something that hits home to many people not everybody is married or seeking to be married but God -fearers make the best husbands and wives
01:40:08
I would expect this to be especially a good warning to those who are dabbling with the idea they are
01:40:22
Christians themselves but are seriously considering marrying someone who is not even a believer yeah, you know, so the journey that led towards this book it started with that other book that connected the fear of God and leadership and as Shane and I were working on that it just became evident that the
01:40:45
Scripture casts the fear of God as foundational we were thinking foundational to leadership but it turns out it's foundational to everything including marriage and one expression of that is the way that the
01:41:00
Psalms and the Proverbs speak to both the husband and the wife casting the fear of God as the core of being a good husband and the core of being a good wife the
01:41:10
Psalms say in Psalm 128 blessed is the man that fears the Lord your wife will be like a fruitful vine in your house your children like olive plants around your table behold shall the man be blessed who fears the
01:41:23
Lord so that man who is leading his family to flourish there again is that flourishing plant imagery for somebody who is being led your wife flourishing like a fruitful vine the core of that kind of husbandry and leadership is a blessed man who fears the
01:41:40
Lord so if you want to become a good husband one day learn to fear the Lord today that's the core of it.
01:41:48
Interestingly he says the same thing about the wife as well Proverbs 31 which many of us love to quote we love the imagery of it, we love to see this imaginary woman working with willing hands and doing so many valiant things and it peaks at the very end or maybe two verses before the very end the climax of the whole thing is charm is deceptive beauty is fleeting but a woman who fears the
01:42:14
Lord is to be praised because the foundation of being a good wife that blesses her husband, in whom the heart of her husband trusts and he has no lack of gain, the foundation of that is the fear of God what
01:42:25
I teach our single people here is if you're wanting to get married, grow in the fear of God yourself and look for someone who just loves the
01:42:35
Lord someone like that will bless you more on your 50th anniversary than they will on your wedding night whereas charm is deceptive, it's fun for a while but if she makes you laugh today, she'll make you cry tomorrow and beauty is fleeting, it's wonderful but that inner beauty of the fear of the
01:42:54
Lord, that grows it doesn't fade, it grows and it becomes more and more beautiful and you have more and more to cherish as the years go on and we have to go to our final break and when we return we will go to audience questions and fit as many of you as possible into the final segment if you want to get in line, give it a shot chrisarnson at gmail .com
01:43:17
don't go away, we're going to be right back after these messages it is much more than an exposition of a larger catechism it is a thoroughly researched work it utilizes biblical exegesis as well as historical and systematic theology
01:44:05
Dr. Moorcraft is pastor of Heritage Presbyterian Church of Cumming, Georgia and I urge everyone looking for a biblically faithful church in that area to visit that fine congregation for details on the 8 volume commentary go to westminstercommentary .com
01:44:22
westminstercommentary .com for details on Heritage Presbyterian Church of Cumming, Georgia visit heritagepresbyterianchurch .com
01:44:33
heritagepresbyterianchurch .com please tell Dr. Moorcraft and the saints at Heritage Presbyterian Church of Cumming, Georgia that Dr.
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Joseph Piper of Greenville Presbyterian Theological Seminary sent you when
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Iron Sharpens Iron Radio first launched in 2005 the publishers of the New American Standard Bible were among my very first sponsors it gives me joy knowing that many scholars and pastors in the
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Iron Sharpens Iron Radio And we have a question from Utica, New York from Brad And Brad says
01:48:34
What do you say to a young lady who married a Christian who started off his journey with Christ as a very noble,
01:48:45
God -fearing man and apparently a wonderful husband but then as years went on he became somewhat of a monster and began cheating on her and using violence
01:48:58
Then after the divorce she married an unbeliever who had the outward attributes of what would be considered a godly
01:49:13
Christian man but is not a Christian In fact, he may set people aback when you see him because he is so kind and humble and gracious and dotes on his wife and puts many
01:49:30
Christian husbands to shame because he is such a wonderful person How do you confront a young lady like that who is considering marrying somebody like that?
01:49:43
Oh man What do you say to someone who has suffered that much? Did it say that she has married this other man or she is just considering?
01:49:53
I think he is probably just making it a broader question to everybody, every woman out there
01:50:00
But I think from the way he phrased it she already did marry the unbeliever She already did marry him, yes
01:50:07
So, once you are married even if you are married to an unbeliever the
01:50:16
Lord has made you one and joined you and so the shorter version of my counsel to her would be to be as faithful to him as she can and to love him to follow the instruction of 1
01:50:28
Peter 3 that he perhaps might be won over by the conduct of his wife
01:50:35
I do think that there would be some benefit to her, some growth in Christ if she were to look back on the decision to marry an unbelieving man for reasons
01:50:51
I can very much sympathize with He has been mistreated so terribly and probably just hungered so much for a kind -hearted leader yet the scripture is very clear not to marry unbelievers and so the wisest, most
01:51:07
God -fearing thing to do would be to look to the Lord and say Lord, I should not have done that, I confess that However, that doesn't mean turning away from that now because the
01:51:18
Lord's joined you and you're one so be faithful to him If I actually was a pastor of this woman and had a longer relationship and was able to shepherd her there would probably be much more that I would say but that would be the short version of what
01:51:33
I might say to someone like that We have an anonymous listener who says
01:51:39
I battle with a fear of God that is not a healthy kind as you have been describing
01:51:46
I sometimes have nightmarish thoughts that I will be going to hell because I don't believe that I am living a life that pleases him
01:51:58
How does a person like myself who fears God too much in the wrong way get out of that mindset?
01:52:08
Well, my heart goes out to that listener The thing to do is just turn your eyes to the good news of Jesus to his suffering for sins his death for sins on the cross and just ask if it's enough to pay for your sins
01:52:31
You say your life doesn't please God Do the sufferings of Jesus count up to enough to pay for your sins?
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The Bible would say yes. Does your heart say yes as well? Do you trust Jesus to secure forgiveness for your sins?
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If you do, then you have nothing to be afraid of and it will be meditating on the goodness and love of God the mercy of God towards you that will help you to overcome that fear
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Now, one thing that will help is having a certainty that you are saved
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So this listener said I don't feel like I'm living a life that pleases
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God I think the question I would ask is does your life reflect faith in Jesus Christ?
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If you want some guidance on what that life would look like I would read through the book of 1 John which is written so that we might have assurance
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You can find assurance by following its guidance and it describes a person who has genuine faith in God as someone who confesses their sins to God as someone who loves
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God, someone who loves the brothers and someone who delights to obey God Not someone who does any of these things perfectly but their life is marked by those four things more than it was, much more than it was before you came to Christ in an increasing measure
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So, is the Lord working in you a greater love for Him? Are you quicker to confess your sins to the
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Lord than you used to be? If not, is it because you don't believe He is merciful or because you want to guard the sin and try to discern why, but I hope you're quick to How do you feel about the church?
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Are you involved in a church? Do you love the church? Do you love the brothers? Anyone who thinks he's walking in the light but hates his brothers is walking in darkness.
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Use those guides from the book of 1 John to help you discern whether your faith in Him is real and if it is, then just rejoice in the gospel and don't be afraid.
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But if what you're seeing is perhaps your life doesn't reflect faith in Christ then sit under good gospel preaching do that either way, but sit under good gospel preaching and turn and look to the good news.
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Look to what Jesus has done to save you. We have
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Stuart in Mechanicsburg, Pennsylvania who says, don't you think it can be an unhealthy sign if people in a particular church may never appear to have a fear of God and are always happy and are always dancing with joy and never are somber or appearing to grieve over sin, etc.
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Isn't it a danger to think that feelings is what we should base our joining a particular church because feelings can be very deceptive and people very often will join a church just because it lifts up their spirits.
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Oh yeah, boy, there's a lot there. One thing just came to my mind for the previous question, let me just advise that brother or sister to read
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Gentle and Lowly by Dwayne Ortlund. If you struggle with an unhealthy fear of God let
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Ortlund show you his goodness and mercy towards sinners. Yes, I think it can be.
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It is a bad sign if there's, I would call what he described as a false happiness, a happiness that's gleeful, joyful, and does not ever have a sober sense of sin, does not mourn over sin.
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It doesn't sound like that attitude would have much of a before the Lord.
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I would guess that that is just a false happiness altogether. Now, what
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I find is that when I preach on the judgment of God or the seriousness of sin or God's anger and wrath towards sinners, it's a sobering moment, of course, and there are tears in our eyes.
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But what that leads to is a people who are refreshed in their faith and who are overwhelmed with joy at the
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God who saved them. There does need to be a healthy measure of things like mourning, and that is part of the fear of God and mourning for sin and taking sin seriously.
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But true happiness in Christ often comes in looking at the full counsel of God and taking seriously things like judgment and wrath and seriousness over sin.
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That's not going to lead to being a fuddy -duddy. That is going to lead to a true joy and a deep happiness.
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Amen. Well, we're out of time, and I have some good news for those of you who sent in questions and also for the few of you who are still waiting in line to have your questions asked and answered, but we ran out of time.
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You're all getting a free copy of Standing in Awe, 31
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Meditations on Fearing God by our guest today, David M. Cook, complements of our generous friends at Reformation Heritage Books.
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You can find out more about this book in particular and all their titles that they publish at heritagebooks .org.
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heritagebooks .org. Also, don't forget about the website for Calvary Baptist Church of Greenwood, Indiana, cbcgreenwood .com,
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cbcgreenwood .com. I want to thank you so much, Pastor Cook, for being such a wonderful guest, and I absolutely look forward to having you back on the program at some point, and I also look forward to our
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God and His providence opening up a door for us to, at some point, meet face -to -face in person at a conference or some other venue that He has in store for us, apart from our knowledge right now, but thanks a lot for being on the program.
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Yeah, thank you for the work you put into this show, and there's so much I could commend, but maybe if I just commend one thing,
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I don't think I've ever heard a Christian media host guard the poor so carefully when making an appeal for giving, like the way that you said, if you don't have the means right now, wait until you do before you give.
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The Lord loves the poor, and to be that careful with that, it was inspiring to me and reminded me of His love for them.
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How many questions did you have left? We have three. Three, okay.
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If you email them to me, I will email them answers, so if you were a listener and you sent in a question, we'll do our best to write an answer to you.
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Great, and I want you all to always remember for the rest of your lives that Jesus Christ is a far greater