Sunday, August 7, 2022 PM

All right, well, we're going to return to our study on fear, a biblical practical study.

We want to know what the Bible has to say about fear. How does it describe fear?

The first time we began to discuss this topic, we talked about three different types of fear that we find in the

Bible. Fear can be the fear of the Lord, the fear of man, and the fear of death.

And as we talked about, the theme of fear can be found well over 700 times in the

Bible. Something that exceeds even pinnacle themes such as faith and hope and love.

Fear is talked about a great deal in the Bible because it is a big part, a huge part, a significant part of the human experience.

Man was made to fear the Lord, but when man sinned, he began to fear men and to fear death.

We talked about the way that fear impacts us in the variety of terms that are used, 13 different verbs in the

Hebrew and 6 -8 in the Greek.

We find that fear impacts the inner man and the outer man. As the Bible likes to talk about what does it mean to be a human being, what it means to be made in God's image, that there is the outer man and the inner man.

And fear impacts both. Fear impacts our heart, mind, soul, will.

Fear impacts the outer man both voluntarily and in involuntarily ways.

So, we began to talk about last time the human experience.

It's important that we recognize that the Bible is all about Christ.

It's the word of the Father through the Spirit about the Son. And Jesus Christ is the image of the invisible

God. If we want to know what it means to live as the image of God, if we want to know what it means to live as a human being, a man or a woman, we have to look at the supreme leader of all of humanity and that is

Jesus Christ. You either submit to the Son, honor the

Son, take refuge in Him and are thereby blessed or you live in rebellion against Him.

And those are the two choices. Because He is King of Kings and Lord of Lords. If we want to know what humanity is, we could look at Adam, but far better to look at the second

Adam. Far better to look at the epitome of humanity, the

Son of Man, Jesus Christ Himself. In that, the Bible talks to every facet of the human experience.

Not necessarily how to use your smartphone in the technical side of things, but how to steward wealth, how to steward tools, how to steward time, how to use what

God has entrusted to us for His glory. And so, the Bible speaks to every facet of human experience as it speaks of Christ.

So, we've been thinking about the human experience and we have our handout.

We have a few odd little designs on there. And we talked about that everybody made in God's image is in a unique intersection between the

Creator, one another, and the created order. We read that from Genesis chapter 1.

And we are under the authority and the blessing of God. We are to love one another rightly.

And we are to steward the creation responsibly to His glory.

And this is one way to talk about everything that happens in the human experience. No matter what happens tomorrow, you're going to be engaging with God, other human beings, and the created order.

That's going to happen tomorrow. And that's part of what it means to be a human being.

And you are in a particular relationship of submission to God, to love others rightly, and then you are to exercise dominion properly over the created order.

We also talked briefly about the different anointed offices that we find throughout

Scripture. A prophet, and priest, and king, and wise man.

We think of Joseph, and Daniel, and others who played that role, the right hand of the throne.

And we saw instances where that is manifested in the book of Genesis, even in Genesis chapters 1 and 2.

Because these are part of the human experience. Dealing with truth and holiness.

Dealing with authority and wisdom. This is all part of the way we live.

And in order to be submitted to the Lord, we must fear Him, think of Him first, think of Him most, so that the truth in our lives is

His truth being mediated through us, through His word. The truth that we're going to deal with is

God's truth. God gets to say what is holy and what is unholy. And when we deal with authority, how we interact with authority structures, which we're going to talk about tonight, it needs to be

His authority. He's the one who's in charge of everything. And it's His wisdom by which we are to live.

So now, we're going to talk about some new terms about fear.

We're going to be in the book of Job. We're going to look at four new vocabulary words, definitions in the context, and we're going to just see expressions of fear.

Four new verbs in the Hebrew for fear show up for the very first time in the book of Job, which makes some sense given the unique experiences and themes that are being dealt with in this book.

After we look at that, we're going to get to our handouts and talk about this big circle.

So, in Job chapter 21, we receive a new word for fear.

I'll begin in verse 1. Then Job answered and said, Listen carefully to my speech, and let this be your consolation.

Bear with me that I may speak, and after I have spoken, keep mocking. As for me, is my complaint against man?

And if it were, why should I not be impatient? Look at me, and be astonished, but shut over your mouth.

Even when I remember, I am terrified, and trembling takes hold of my flesh.

Actually, we're going to look at the word trembling. Terrified is one of the words we've already seen. Trembling covers a

Hebrew word that is new in this section. Their houses are safe from fear, neither is the rod of God upon them.

And he goes on. The reason why he's trembling is he's reflecting upon the fact that he has no control over the outcome.

He has no control over the outcome. These so -called friends of his are saying to him,

You're suffering, Job, because you've messed up somehow, and you deserve it.

And Job is saying, when I think of the reality of the fact that this is not how it works out, that God is sovereign in these things, and we can't just simply prescribe a formula of cause and effect here, but he is sovereign in all things.

He says, I tremble. I tremble. The word means to palpitate, to be made alarmed, to be greatly agitated.

Has the idea of, if you watch somebody increasing their speed, very anxiously walking away, or trying to get away, has the idea here.

There's dismay, and being troubled, and vexed. This is the term that Job is using here when he says, trembling takes hold of my flesh.

When he realizes, when he thinks about the fact that he has no control over his own situation, ultimately things are in the hands of a sovereign

God. He can't even make sure that the wicked die early and fail.

Job can't make that happen, even though he knows it should. He's afraid.

And in this case, we have a very complex expression of fear. As he said earlier,

I'm not complaining against men. As we find out later,

God rebukes Job, because he was complaining against God. So here's a situation where it looks like he might be fearing the

Lord, but in reality, he's complaining against God, because he has no control over how men prosper, how evil men prosper.

So there's the fear of man. And even concerned about his own life, as we see when we read the context.

So, in this case, he is thinking about the Lord, but he's complaining. What has turned him to complain against God?

We find him fearing man, fearing death. These have taken hold of his heart.

And so he somehow senses that in his own suffering, Job is sensing that God has done something unjust, unfair.

Second passage is in chapter 23 of Job. Chapter 23, and this is a bit of a change.

In verse 12, it says, I have not departed from the commandment of his lips. I have treasured the words of his mouth more than my necessary food.

But he is unique, and who can make him change in whatever his soul desires that he does? For he performs what is appointed for me, and many such things are with him.

Therefore I am terrified at his presence. When I consider this, I am afraid of him.

For God made my heart weak, and the Almighty terrifies me, because I will hide deep darkness from my face.

So this word, that he was terrified at his presence, has the idea of being startled by sudden alarm, to be afraid, to be made to shake.

So again, Job's fear is complex, because he recognizes that everything is in the hand of God, and he is terrified about what might happen.

There are some subtleties here with Job that are instructive to us. I do believe that Christians come to these situations more often than we readily admit.

But even as we recognize that God is sovereign over all things, sometimes, rather than love casting out terror, love casting out this kind of terrified fear, as the

Apostle John talks about, we remain in terror because we're still fearing the effects of death, and the effects of what men may do.

Again, still believing that God is sovereign and in charge, but fearing what may come through the avenues of man and through the avenues of death.

This is a little more complex. Simply recognizing the sovereignty of God, you see, is not the cure -all.

It helps, but it's not the cure -all. Because we do find, more than Job, complaining against God, recognizing his sovereignty in the issues that happen in their life, and saying, why?

Right? Being very accusatory. There's a fear of the

Lord there, recognizing his sovereignty, his government, his power. But there's also a fixation on the disasters of death and men that is spawning a complaint against God.

So really, where's the gravity? Really, where's the weight that is pulling the soul? There's certainly a contest here, but it's good to recognize the complexity of it.

So those are two passages that are interesting and show us that everything's not really cookie -cutter in life, right?

Pretty much so. Alright, let's take a look at the human experience and how fear plays a role.

In the big circle there, in the very heart of it, we have kind of a three -way split.

And you can write it upside down, sideways.

You can be the person who rotates your paper, or you can keep it all oriented properly and neat.

We'll find out what kind of folks you are when you have to deal with circles. Okay? But the three different words you want there in the middle, separated by the little dividers, are the following.

Church, family, and state. Yeah, that's why he gets rebuked.

Yeah. Later on, he puts his hand over his mouth. Now, when we think about the human experience, because we're made in the image of God, the worship switch is hardwired on.

We're made in the image of God, male and female, he created them. He created us to exercise authority and to be under authority.

These three expressions of government are unavoidable.

At some level, these are unavoidable. But thinking about the biblical concepts of church and family and state, we want to see what the standard is, according to the word of God, that we may better understand how the fear of God is such a blessing in all these areas, and where the fear of man and the fear of death leads culture astray in all of these areas.

So, let's think about what a church and a family and a state does.

I mean, what is the biblical model for these things? So, just on the other side of the external circle, here, here, and here, we can begin to write three different terms.

For the church, what does the church do? Let's get three words up here, and again, this is not going to probably be as exhaustive as everybody wants, but we can sum it up in these ways, in terms of grounding and gathering and going.

Grounding, because Paul says that the church is the pillar and ground of the truth.

The church is the pillar and the ground of the truth. So, if there's ever any question anywhere in all of society about what is true or false, the word of God being declared from the church is going to settle the matter.

Gathering, do not forsake the assembling of yourselves together as is the manner of son. When they gather together, what does the church do?

They break bread together, they sing together, the word of God is proclaimed, they pray together, there's worship, giving glory to God, and then the church is also called to go, the

Great Commission, to make disciples of all the nations. So, when we think about the church, the church is a huge part of the human experience according to the scriptures, and this is what we're supposed to be, this is what the church is supposed to do.

All in all, it is a ministry of proclamation.

Proclaiming the truth, proclaiming the glory of God in worship, proclaiming the gospel, it's essentially a ministry of proclamation.

And indeed, as we come together as the image of God, this is an essential part of the human experience.

But also, in terms of the family, what is the family supposed to be about? What is the family about?

The family is about education, the estate, meaning, this is an older term, the estate of marriage and economy.

When we look in the word of God about where children are educated, they're educated in the family, right?

They're educated in the family. That's the primary education sphere. The family is responsible for the education of the children, to raise children in the fear and the admonition of the

Lord. Don't think that that's, well, that's because it was the ancient

Near East and Bible times, and they were really old -fashioned, and they didn't have all the amenities we have today. Oh, they had plenty of education opportunities outside the home.

So the family is primarily responsible for education. Parents are ultimately responsible for the education of the children, that they be raised in the fear and the admonition of the

Lord. Also, we have the estate of marriage, which, when we look back at the centrality of all human relationships, begins with husband and wife,

Adam and Eve in the garden, and that the estate of marriage is to be honored and supported and promoted and protected.

Very, very essential. And it's the family that provides economy.

The Greek word for household is oikonomos. We get our word economy from it, okay? If you think back, some of you can remember 150 years ago, when the economy was run out of fam—

Why are you looking at me? Run out of the family, wherein even the last names of families designated their economy, what they did, how they functioned.

Now, when we look at the definition of marriage, education, and the economy, where are these things today?

Are they put under the heading of family? Where are they put—what heading do these receive today?

The estate. That is anti -biblical. That is not biblical in the least.

That is not how God created the world, not how he gave us his word. What is the job of the estate?

Well, you also have three terms. Just to be clear, the estate's main job is to punish evildoers.

This is what Romans 13 tells us, that the estate is to punish evildoers.

The estate is a minister, a deacon of God to punish evildoers, okay?

That's their main job. And as we look back at Genesis 9, we see the birth of the need of the estate, that if a man sheds blood by man, his blood must be shed.

So there's the need for the estate. Also, 1 Peter chapter 2 tells us that it's the job of those who do right, a praise.

That's a very interesting term, praise. It doesn't even say promote.

It's not even promote. It's simply praise. It's entirely responsive to what has already occurred.

The estate's job is not to even promote righteousness, not even to subsidize righteousness. The estate punishes evildoers and praises those who do what is right.

Also, they take payment, right? For this reason, we pay our taxes.

And so in the biblical model, the estate is to punish evildoers, to praise the works of righteousness, and for the purpose of them punishing evildoers, we are to pay our taxes.

So that's the biblical model for the estate. So the ministry of the church is one of proclamation.

That of the family is that of prosperity, and I mean that from the creation mandate, be fruitful, multiply, fill the earth, and subdue it.

Biblical, true biblical prosperity. And the role of the state is to take care of the polis, or the city, or the politics, which is simply supposed to be a matter of defending the innocent and the righteous and punishing evildoers.

Now this is the way it fleshes out in the scriptures.

This is the way that Jesus talked about the church and the family and the state, and this is the way that we find it throughout the rest of scripture.

Now, we put this out here, we can put it on your list, and I want you to think of, first of all, that everything that we're talking about here in the circle is defined by the word of God.

We're thinking about these terms in light of God's truth. It's part of fearing the Lord. Think of him first, think of him most.

What does he think about the family? What does he think about the church? What does he think about the state? So that we can understand what the true standard is.

But also, moving from the ideas into practical, actual living, you can think about the outer circle as the fear of the

Lord. Outside of the fear of the Lord, there's only what? There's the fear of death and there's the fear of man.

And this is where things begin to be warped, twisted, and made problematic when the fear of death and the fear of man begin to take hold of these different biblical categories.

So, for example, and again we're trying to establish the practicality of this study, why does it matter that we fear the

Lord rather than fearing death and fearing man? Remember that fearing death is slavery and fearing man is a snare.

So, these categories begin to be a snare or slavery when they are handled by the fear of man and the fear of death.

Let's see how. Let's see how. So, in regards, let's say, to the state of education, marriage, and economy.

Why do you think it is that the state has co -opted everything that belongs to the family?

It seems like some sort of organized takeover, right? Some evil genius sitting behind his desk plotting and sending out his minions.

It's way simpler than that. It's way simpler than that. What interest does the state have in taking over the family?

Well, it's the fear of death and it's the fear of man, right?

So, in the sense of the fear of death is, of course, embedded the fear of deprivation, not having enough.

And in this sense, the state wants to control the economy because they think that's the only way to keep there from being deprivation.

There's a fear of death. We have to control the economy. And, besides the fact, the state sees that without control of the economy, the state cannot keep itself safe against foreign powers who may come and threaten it.

So, the state believes it's interest to take control of all of the economy.

There's a fear of death. There's also a fear of man, education.

Why did Pharaoh want to kill all of the

Hebrew male babies? Why?

Too many of them for us. Well, why would that matter that you have a lot of people in your country?

Well, it's a big deal, Pharaoh. The problem was they did not think the same way, did not have the same cultural values as Pharaoh and those who were lords of the state.

And so, their way of handling it was to kill the male children, so there's only female

Jews left. They all are married off to the populace. Eventually, there's no strength left in the nation and they are all completely curtailed and turned into proper

Egyptians rather than be a separate distinct group of the Hebrews.

Very often, when it comes to re -education campaigns, even in the last 120 years, a whole lot of death has occurred.

Why is it when we hear about re -education camps, we also think of wholesale slaughter? That's nothing new.

When it comes to the state taking over education, Daniel, Hananiah, Azariah and Mishael, taken away from their homeland in Judea, are taken to Babylon where they are given new names,

Belteshazzar, Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego. They are renamed in the honor of the gods of Babylon and then are re -educated in the ways of Babylon.

The state takes over the education because it fears what will happen if the education is outside of their control.

What will happen to the state? The state is always tempted towards changing the primary role of punishment of evildoers into self -preservation.

So those are some examples. What about the state's job to punish evildoers?

Why does the state do such a bad job of punishing evildoers?

Even when they punish people, they do it wrong. And then all the time, they wrongly fail to punish people.

Why are they just so bad at it? Obviously they don't fear the

Lord. You ever see a bird caught in a snare?

What does it do? It flops around all over the place, kind of like our justice system.

The justice system is caught in the snare of the fear of man. They're only punishing those that they think, and punishing crimes that they think that the populace want them to punish.

And if there's something that they think that the populace no longer wants them to punish, they stop punishing it, and then they change the laws.

This is why we've gone from sodomy being a crime less than 100 years ago to now being a protected class who needs extra vaccines.

What happened? Did morality change? No, it didn't.

What changed was the will of the people, and the fear of man is a snare, and the justice system is caught in the snare of the fear of man.

So that's why they flip -flop and change all over the place, just like a politician. What about the church?

What about an example of what happens when the fear of death or the fear of man gets involved?

What happens to the going if the fear of death or the fear of man takes hold?

They may not want to go, right?

Preview of the book of Acts. The early church was guilty of the fear of man and the fear of death.

They didn't want to get out and about. God used adverse circumstances to spread them, but they didn't necessarily want to get out and about beyond their comfort.

But if we fear the Lord, there we'll be going. If we fear death, well, then we won't go.

It'll be too hard, too difficult. If we fear man, certainly not going to go, because if you fear man, then man must have his space, man must have his way, man must have his opinion, man must be left to his own devices, because we think first of man and most of man.

But if we think of the Lord first and think of the Lord most, then it's what the Lord has to say and the

Lord's truth, which is far more important than what any man may affirm. Which is why the declaration of the kingdom of heaven, the preaching of the gospel of the kingdom, is more like heraldry than it is a sales pitch, right?

Proclaiming the gospel in the Bible is not like I was taught in Bible college, closing a sale.

As I was verbatim, I was told in evangelism class in college that my job as an evangelist was to lower the walls of resistance in somebody else's life low enough for the

Holy Spirit to jump over. But that's not how the church goes in the

Bible. They go forth and they herald, I got in trouble for using that word actually, for heralding the gospel, proclaiming the truth of the matter.

What about grounding? Church is to be the pillar and the ground of the truth about all manner of issues.

And invariably, it is the most controversial issues where the church has to be the loudest, much like the referee in the game.

What if we fear man? What happens to our grounding ministry?

We're going to be snared by the fear of man, thinking of man first, thinking of man most. And what are we going to do about getting a woman in the pulpit and a homosexual in the youth group?

I'm not kidding. That's part of diversity training in churches today. You got to have women in the pulpit and you have to have homosexuals running the youth ministry.

If you're a really cool, hip Presbyterian church. It's a grounding ministry to say things as God sees it.

That's the church's job. Families need to know what the Lord desires of them.

Well, the church is going to tell them because of the proclamation ministry of the church. The state needs to know its limits and its job.

It needs to know what righteousness is so they can praise it. It's the church's job to do that grounding ministry.

Now, if the church decides, well, we don't want to annoy the state. We don't want to poke the bear.

He may eat us. So the church is not going to address the state anymore.

State, you just do your thing. We'll be quiet and we'll do our thing. You know what happens? The state comes and eats the church anyway.

Because when there's the fear of death, when there's the fear of death, all of a sudden the state begins to punish churches for gathering.

Right? The state begins to say to the church, no, we're in control of your gathering and what you do because we're afraid of death.

We're afraid of the virus. Therefore, you can no longer gather. We're the state. We're in charge.

We're afraid of death and you will be too. You see how that works? The state begins to take control of all sorts of things when the fear of death and the fear of man, and then we, if we don't fear the

Lord, then we're not going to tell the state what their job actually is. Which if you think about the dynamics in the scripture, how often do we find

God -fearers, the circumcised of heart, informing kings and governors and judges what's up?

This saith the Lord. This is what righteousness is. This is what unrighteousness is.

This is the way God made the world. This is how you're supposed to function. That's the job of the church. All right, so this is some examples.

We're trying to examine the human experience and then see what happens to various facets of the human experience when we fear the

Lord. There's blessing. There is a great blessing to fear the Lord in all these areas, but if we allow the snare of the fear of man and the slavery of the fear of death to take over, then all these things are perverted and twisted and made corrupt.

So this is a way of understanding what goes on in the world today. It is as Paul wrote in Romans 3.

What's the main problem? What's the sum of all the problems? There is no fear of God before their eyes.

All right, any questions or thoughts before we close our study tonight? Well, I'd say that there is, in the

Scriptures, when it came to executing the condemned, that the manner in which they undertook that was very serious.

It had to be proven by at least two witnesses, and if they were false witnesses, and it was proven that it was false witnesses, they would suffer the penalty that they were trying to inflict on somebody else.

So that's a very serious way of setting it up. Additionally, there's all sorts of scenarios where somebody could probably get away with murder and with rape and with kidnapping, all capital offenses.

Plenty of ways for people to get away with that. It's important in the

Scriptures that it was far better for a guilty man to go free of human justice than for an innocent man to die.

So with all that in consideration, when it was time to kill someone, they did it fairly quickly, and they did not make it unnecessarily cruel.

They just went ahead and finished the job. Why we have today is a justice system in which everyone thinks that incarceration is somehow the golden ticket.

The reason why is that incarceration is big business, and we're in it where incarceration is the answer.

If you stole, you paid back. Couldn't afford it, you became somebody's slave and worked it off.

Didn't do right, continued to do wrong, more punishment follows, possibly followed by death, if you weren't going to follow it.

If you murdered someone, if you raped somebody, if you kidnapped someone to make them your slave, your man -stealing, like so many

African tribes did against other African tribes and Muslims and men from the West, stole people from Africa and enslaved them, that, biblically, is punishable by death.

If all manner of things are punishable by death, they were possibly held for a little bit until the trial commenced, two witnesses, proven, and then the execution would happen.

It is not biblically just to put men in cages like animals.

But then again, the people who invented the incarceration system believe that men are animals. Also, what have they taken to calling prisons?

Rehabilitation centers or penitentiaries. If you're sent here, you will become penitent, meaning that we're going to structurally, with a system, save you.

The state is going to save you through our penitentiary system. We will make you penitent, we will rehabilitate you.

The job of the state is now to save.

That's not the job of the state. So again, this whole idea of making those on death row as comfortable as possible before they are killed comes from an entirely erroneous system.

It is unfortunate that this is the system we've been given. There are many, many problems with running prisons and penitentiaries, jails and so on.

Have you noticed that there's a problem with the jail? You know what the problem is? It's not the bad construction companies and the no -bid contracts and the ingrained corruption and everything else.

The problem is we're not supposed to have a jail at all. We're not supposed to have the prison at all.

We're supposed to follow God's pattern of justice in the scriptures and handle it His way. Right?

That's so far out of our cultural context, it's hard to imagine. Isn't that true?

When we find the people of God in jail, it's never really a positive scene, isn't it? Right?

Joseph in jail, right? Not there because he deserved it.

Jesus gets arrested, thrown into the court system.

No. Paul, thrown into the jail. Not really supposed to be there.

The prophets are always getting thrown into some pit in the ground for saying the wrong thing. Jeremiah, Micaiah.

Not a very positive scene in the scripture when jails and prisons come up. Have you ever noticed that? That's not

God's system. So, got to fear the