Aug
14
Fear of the Lord: where does it go?
Filed Under Bible, Christian Living, Holiness, Proverbs | Leave a Comment
Where does the fear of the Lord take us? What is its orientation? Proverbs maps it out for us: Be not wise in your own eyes; fear the LORD, and turn away from evil [3:7]. The fear of the LORD is hatred of evil. Pride and arrogance and the way of evil and perverted speech I hate [8:13]. By steadfast love and faithfulness iniquity is atoned for,
and by the fear of the LORD one turns away from evil [16:6]. Let not your heart envy sinners, but continue in the fear of the LORD all the day. Surely there is a future, and your hope will not be cut off [23:17-18].
The fool has no fear of God before his eyes [Psalm 36:1]. He lives for what this moment can deliver and for what his eyes can see.
Fearing God has a lot to do with what we love and hate, i.e., our affections. In fearing the Lord we love what he loves, we hate what he hates. We are happiest when we are pleasing him. Fear of the Lord is the internal motivator of the wise person. God, his presence, his will, and his glory drive him to do what he does. He does not live for his own momentary pleasure or for what he can possess. He does what he does because God has spoken—not because someone is watching, or out of fear of the consequences, but out of a deep, worshipful love and reverence for God. The thought of knowingly and purposefully disobeying God is unthinkable.
Why are you doing what you are doing? What you really are is what you are when no one else is watching. What will keep you faithful, loving and obedient in times of temptation when no ‘authority’ is watching and when the pressure is on to step outside of God’s boundaries?
Aug
9
Fear of the Lord: what is it?
Filed Under Bible, Christian Living, Holiness, Proverbs | Leave a Comment
The fear of the LORD is the beginning of knowledge;
fools despise wisdom and instruction. [Proverbs 1:7; 9:10]
The fear of the LORD is the principal part, the primary ingredient of godliness, the foundation of spiritual life. It is a comprehensive term for the way we live the Christian life—not just what we say, not just the activities we are involved in, but the way we act, feel, and live.
It is something more than FEAR + LORD. It not the fear that paralyzed the wicked and lazy servant in Jesus’ parable in Matthew 25:24-25); rather, it is the attitude of a loving child toward his father.
The fear of the LORD is instruction in wisdom, and humility comes before honor [Proverbs 15:33]. The proverb draws a parallel between the fear of the LORD and humility. You know humility, right? Paying close attention to who God is and what he does, not thinking more highly of ourselves than we ought–rather, forgetting ourselves in our love for God and others. This arises from the depth of mercy shown to us in the Gospel (see Jeremiah 32:39-40 and Psalm 130:4). I think it is Eugene Peterson who describes humility as becoming absorbed in what God has been doing and the way he continues doing it by his Son Jesus and by the Holy Spirit. Humility involves reckoning with a holy God at every moment in reverent responsiveness.
Here are some powerful lines from Frederick W. Faber about the fear of the Lord:
My fear of Thee, O Lord, exults
Like life within my veins,
A fear which rightly claims to be
One of love’s sacred pains.Thy goodness to Thy saints of old
An awful thing appeared;
For were Thy majesty less good
Much less would it be feared.There is no joy the soul can meet
Upon life’s various road
Like the sweet fear that sits and shrinks
Under the eye of God.A special joy is in all love
For objects we revere;
Thus joy in God will always be
Proportioned to our fear.Oh Thou art greatly to be feared,
Thou art so prompt to bless!
The dread to miss such love as Thine
Makes fear but love’s excess.The fulness of Thy mercy seems
To fill both land and sea;
If we can break through bounds so vast,
How exiled shall we be!For grace is fearful, which each hour
Our path in life has crossed;
If it were rarer, it might be
Less easy to be lost.But fear is love, and love is fear,
And in and out they move;
But fear is an intenser joy
Than mere unfrightened love.When most I fear Thee, Lord! then most
Familiar I appear;
And I am in my soul most free,
When I am most in fear.I should not love Thee as I do,
If love might make more free;
Its very sweetness would be lost
In greater liberty.I feel Thee most a father, when
I fancy Thee most near:
And Thou comest not so nigh in love
As Thou comest, Lord! in fear.They love Thee little, if at all,
Who do not fear Thee much;
If love is Thine attraction, Lord!
Fear is Thy very touch.Love could not love Thee half so much
If it found Thee not so near;
It is Thy nearness, which makes love
The perfectness of fear.We fear because Thou art so good,
And because we can sin;
And when we make most show of love,
We are trembling most within.And, Father! when to us in heaven
Thou shalt Thy Face unveil,
Then more than ever will our souls
Before Thy goodness quail.Our blessedness will be to bear
The sight of Thee so near,
And thus eternal love will be
But the ecstasy of fear.
Apr
23
There is no plan B…
Filed Under Around the Church, Bible, Evangelism, Holiness, Justification, Men, The Church | Leave a Comment
Dr. Elliott Greene has been doing a marvelous job at FPC Kosciusko’s annual Bible Conference (look for mp3s of the sermons later this week at fpckosciusko.org), taking us through the book of Ephesians under the title ‘What the Church Would Be If She Knew What She Was.’ In introducing Dr. Greene on Friday evening I read for the second time an excerpt from Dr. Ligon Duncan’s introductory address at the recent Twin Lakes Fellowship. He had posted it on his blog. It sums up so much of the vision of what The Sweet Dropper is about and what FPC Kosciusko is about:
“What do we long to see come out of the Twin Lakes Fellowship?
“. . . a strong coalition of Bible-saturated, truth-driven, God-entranced, prayer-soaked, aggressively evangelistic, Christ-treasuring and exalting, Spirit-filled, sovereign grace-loving, missions-advancing, hell-robbing, strong-thinking, real-need-exposing, soul-winning, mind-engaging, vagueness-rejecting, wartime-life-style-pursuing, risk-taking, justice-advancing, Scripture-expounding, cross-cherishing, homosexuality-opposing, abortion-denouncing, racism-resisting, heaven-desiring, imputation-of-an-alien-righteousness-proclaiming, justification-by-faith-alone-apart-from-doing-preaching, error-exposing, complementarian, joyful, humble, loving, courageous, happy pastors working together for the Gospel. (Thanks to John Piper for many of these words and thoughts).
“And we want to see them leading strong evangelical churches who, while they hold as faithfully and biblically as they know how to certain doctrinal distinctives not shared by all other biblical evangelical churches, band together for the Gospel on a basis that is robustly doctrinal, historic, orthodox, reformational, world-opposing-while-at-the-same-time-world-serving, Bible-preaching, scriptural-theology-inculcating, real-conversion-prizing, deep biblical evangelism-practicing, New Testament church-membership-and-leadership-implementing, church-discipline-applying, healthy and growing Disciple-making – all for the display of God’s glory in the churches.
“May the Lord raise up such a ministerial fraternity – not on the basis of doctrinal minimalism but rather on the basis of shared conviction of the truth and Gospel forbearance in the areas where we differ; not to the detriment of our convictions regarding our distinctives in faith and practice in the local churches and families of churches we serve, but to their enhancement. And may the Lord raise up churches that are truly a witness to grace in this passing age, a display of the glory and power of God’s saving grace, outposts of heaven, suburbs of eternity. For the church is God’s strategy, and there is no plan B.”
Mar
2
Holiness before 8am?
Filed Under Around the Church, Holiness | Leave a Comment
I wanted to again plug our early morning Men’s Book Study beginning next Tuesday at 6:45 am in the Jackson Room. We’re going to be studying JC Ryle’s book called, Holiness. Besides the Bible, this book has had the single greatest impact on my spiritual growth. My copy is well worn and well marked. I look forward to taking a journey through it again with our early morning warriors. I’ve been through this book a number of times with groups as well as on my own and have without fail learned new things and been challenged in new ways with each successive reading. In case any of you haven’t signed up yet, I ordered a few extra books that are now available.
See you Tuesday!
Jan
12
Joy
Filed Under Christian Living, Holiness, Puritans, Thomas Boston, Uncategorized | Leave a Comment
One of the more prevalent critiques of Christianity is that it is simply drab and boring. In preparing for my Sunday School lesson on Westminster Shorter Catechism question 36, I ran across this Thomas Boston quote, on the subject of Christian joy.
Most groundless is the prejudice against religion, that it is a melancholy thing (Proverbs 3:17, ‘Her ways are ways of pleasantness, and all her paths are peace.’) None have such reason to rejoice as the believer has. If the poor wretched and condemned creature has more ground to rejoice than he that is pardoned and enriched with his prince’s favor, then the wicked has as much ground to rejoice as the believer who is justified by grace. Oh! if the ungodly saw their state, they would never rejoice; and if the godly saw theirs, they would never despond.
Jan
5
Hazards of dealing with trials
Filed Under Christian Living, Holiness, Prayer | 1 Comment
A believing friend who is being treated for rapidly advancing cancer wrote in his e-journal today about some scriptural examples of people who succeeded and failed in dealing with fiery trial:
“Let us not be
…Hezekiah and pray for long life
…Asa and only turn to physicians
…Job’s wife and have contempt
…Jonah and long to die.
Let us be like Paul, who chose contentment And most like Jesus, who suffered obediently”
The first four people illustrate some hazards of dealing with trial.
- Hezekiah’s hazard – Focus on loss instead of on gracious provision. Hezekiah focused on future years lost rather than past years provided in grace. “Am I to be robbed of the rest of my years?” (Isaiah 38:10).
- Asa’s hazard – Reliance on medical advice to the exclusion of God’s power. Asa, a good king of Judah, became so focused on medical advice for his disease that he forgot his total dependence on God. “Yet even with the severity of his disease, he did not seek the Lord’s help but turned only to his physicians. So he died in the forty-first year of his reign.” (2 Chronicles 16:12-13). John Piper writes in “Don’t Waste Your Cancer,” “Cancer does not win if you die. It wins if you fail to cherish Christ. God’s design is to wean you off the breast of the world and feast you on the sufficiency of Christ.”
- Job’s wife’s hazard – Bitterness toward God for fiery trial. She said “Are you still trying to maintain your integrity? Curse God and die.” (Job 2:9) Christ redeemed us from the curse of the Law by becoming a curse for us (Galatians 3:13). Our Savior became a curse for us. There is no curse, no condemnation for those who are in Christ.
- Jonah’s hazard - Giving up the fight. Jonah concluded that the fight was not worth it “Death is certainly better than living like this!” (Jonah 4:7) Satan will use trials to lead us into isolation and solitude instead of deepening and strengthening our relationships with others.
Listen again to my friend: “Asa’s example probably hits closest to home for me these days. Thank God for surgical therapy, radiation therapy, and chemotherapy - we are using them all. But God help me to remain focused on my need for Him, knowing Prayer Therapy is the best therapy of all!”