Fear of God - Fear of Man

Amen.

Amen.

Amen.

Amen.

Good morning.

If I've not met you before, I'm Forrest Lee Pastor here at Multiply.

Grateful that you're here.

If you're new with us, welcome.

Glad that you're here, a part of our church this morning, and I hope that you'll come back.

We are a church that's fairly young, two and a half years old, spent two years doing portable church in the movie theater here.

Praise God.

We're no longer in the movie theater.

Praise the Lord.

We're in this space and place.

And you heard earlier that we are getting the opportunity to come alongside and to bless with Thanksgiving meals 17 families that are in Collins Lane Elementary School that's literally right in our backyard, about a half a mile from here.

I I'll give you a little uh insight.

This little this one's for free.

They asked us if we would come alongside and help them because we've built a relationship with them and they trusted us to be entrusted with serving some of the families of their uh community and of their school, and they knew that we were gonna do our part and be able to serve them.

And I praise God that Lord has built a relationship with that school and many others that we can bring our best to the Lord and serve others, and we can be somebody who can be trusted.

Amen.

To be able to serve outside the walls, to love, to give, to care.

I also want to let you know that that coming this next Sunday, we're gonna be moving into our gratitude and generosity series called The Outpour.

And so I'm so excited about this uh because this is a season to talk about gratitude.

Um, not all y'all who started listening to Christmas music on Friday on November the 1st and already have your Christmas trees up.

Can we at least have some gratitude for Thanksgiving, okay?

Can we at least be grateful before we get to all the presents and all that, please?

My goodness.

Obviously, I'm on Team Thanksgiving.

I love it.

Uh I'll pray for all the Team Christmas people out there.

I'm grateful that you are here today as we are in the second week of two, a two-part series called The Fear of God or to Fear God.

And last Sunday, we started with the first uh message in this series called Fear God.

And today, the title of my message is Fear of Man.

Everybody say Fear of Man.

And as we jumped into this series last Sunday, what we were taking a look at is the fact that the word fear and fear has in a lot of times been misrepresented and maybe even misused in the life of the local church to bring guilt, condemnation, and shame.

And what we talked about last Sunday is that there is no condemnation in those who are in Christ Jesus.

Amen.

And the fact that we know from the scriptures that it's God's kindness that leads us to repentance and change, not a guilt trip.

And so as we walk with God and we truly begin to understand what it looks like for us to revere, to serve, to love our God who is holy and never changing, we now step into the next part of this series as we talk about fear of man.

In the 1950s, there was an experiment that was done by some academics called the Ash Conformity Experiment.

And essentially what happened was that they had a room filled with actors, except for one person who was the test subject.

And they brought all these people into a room and they showed them three lines and asked which line was the longest, and person by person by person, all of the actors gave the wrong answer.

And when it came to the person that didn't know what was going on, the majority of the time they gave the wrong answer to, even though they knew that it was not the right answer.

Almost 75% of the time, they just wanted to fit in.

It's part of human nature that we care about what other people think.

It's part of just our human nature that we care about how we look.

But when we care too much about what other people think, it becomes a trap.

It becomes a trap.

Now I know right now there's a guy probably in the back of the room right now as I'm saying this, and they're saying something like this.

You're saying this in your head.

I don't care what anybody thinks about me.

I don't care what anybody thinks.

Nobody, I I don't care at all.

Well, um, there probably is at least somebody who you care about what they think, maybe a wife or a father or a mother or a boss.

If not, you're probably a very lonely person.

See, because many of us, many of us, we we have a desire to be admired.

It's a it's a natural inclination, it's a natural inclination that we will want to look like a good person, look like a loving person, because we love to look loving, don't we?

Especially as believers.

We love to look loving, but it's possible for us to rather than love to look loving, that instead of us just being captured by the thoughts of others, that we want to appear loving and at the same time not honor God's truth, we become people pleasers.

Prioritizing people's approval over God's.

And what I know is true is that when we get into that mindset, I know that there is an enemy, Satan, who wants desperately to hold you back.

Wants to hold you back from everything that God has for you and has planned for you, and wants you to so desperately care about everybody's opinion except for Jesus'.

You have an enemy who wants to hold you back, but today we're going to break free.

Amen.

This is what the scripture says of the fear of man.

Proverbs 29, 25.

Fear of man will prove to be a snare.

But whoever trusts in the Lord, whoever trusts in the Lord is kept safe.

What's a snare?

It's a trap.

There's a group of people all throughout the New Testament and in the life and ministry of Jesus in the gospels that constantly are trying to trap and ensnare Jesus.

They're these religious leaders who don't agree with his ministry and what he's doing.

They don't understand what he's doing, that he's come to be the Messiah, and they can't figure out why he's not following all of their rules that they've come up with, made.

And they're constantly coming against Jesus and trying to trap him, ensnare him.

They're trying to debate him and get him to say things that are against the word, and they come up to him and try to debate him, and many times he just responds to their question with a question to expose their evil hearts.

And this group of religious leaders are so committed to trying to trap and ensnare Jesus, they ultimately come up with a plot in order to murder Jesus.

But we know that no one took his life from him, but he gave it up freely for us.

And in John chapter 5, Jesus has just healed a man who has been infirmed for years, who's been needing to be healed.

John 5 · chapter mention

And Jesus heals him, tells him to get up.

And then all these religious leaders begin to try to bring up all these different points and try to adjudicate and try to hold court against Jesus, and Jesus looks right at them in their people-pleasing hearts.

And he says this to them in John chapter 5, verse 39.

John 5:39

He said, You search the scriptures because you think they give you eternal life, but the scriptures point to me.

Amen.

Yet you refuse to come to me to receive this life.

Verse 41.

Your approval means nothing to me.

Because I know that you don't have God's love within you.

For I have come to you in my Father's name, and you have rejected me.

Yet if others come in in their own name, you gladly welcome them.

No wonder you can't believe.

For you gladly honor each other, but you don't care about the honor that comes from the one who alone is God.

Now, I don't know about you, but I like to be liked.

I do.

I like to be liked, I like to be accepted.

I like to try to have a reputation of being a loving person.

And someone who accepts people and loves people.

But what I know is true is this.

It's not, it's not loving.

And Jesus in this moment is calling out the hypocrisy of these people, these religious leaders.

And I wonder for you at times, have you ever felt in a way that you hesitated to speak up because your desire for approval was so heavy on you that it was pulling you away from God's truth and action?

And I want to encourage you today of when it comes to fear, that you fear your fear of man.

See, Jesus, Jesus didn't care about the approval of those who weren't godly.

And that's why he said, it's no wonder that you can't believe.

Right?

Some people may say that.

If you keep the peace, never offend.

But what we end up doing is trading eternal honor for temporary praise.

Eternal honor for temporary praise.

Now last Sunday in a 9 o'clock service, we had a great service.

It was a beautiful time of worship.

And between the services, there was something that just wasn't sitting right in my mind and my soul as I was praying and preparing for the 11 o'clock service.

And God reminded me of this quote from a very notable preacher and pastor that I've known for some time.

And the Lord reminded me that this word that while you are preaching as a preacher, that you should not be performing, but instead serving.

And so God and I did a lot of business.

And those of you who came at 11 o'clock last week, it was 10 times better at 11 than it was at 9.

And just to go ahead and put your mind at ease, God and I have already done business today about me coming to serve you and not perform for you.

Because a chief responsibility of a pastor is to feed you.

To feed you not with opinion, but to feed you with the holy word of God that will sustain you.

That will keep you.

That holds your future.

That will keep you safe.

And so today I'm wanted to come with a very nice plate to serve to you today.

See, even when we're sharing the good news of Jesus, we're not performing, we're serving.

And Peter, he he challenges us to be ready for this at any time.

In 1 Peter chapter 3, verse 13, Peter says, Who is going to harm you if you are eager to do good?

1 Peter 3:13

But even if you suffer for what is right, you are blessed.

Everybody say blessed.

Do not fear their threats, do not be frightened, but in your hearts revere Christ as Lord.

Always be prepared to give an answer to everyone who asks you to give a reason for the hope that you have.

But do this with gentleness and respect.

Verse 16 Keep a clear conscience so that those who speak maliciously against your good behavior in Christ may be ashamed of their slander.

We need to stand firm.

But oftentimes we fear that doing the right thing is going to cost us our peace and our comfort.

We let our thoughts, our fears control us about what other people think about us.

Sometimes we let our pillow control us from getting up to come and worship and revere Christ.

To bring to him the honor that we should bring to him.

And what ultimately happens is that when we're caring about the opinions of others, it robs us of the courage that God so desperately wants to give to us.

And many of us, and maybe you have found yourself in a place where you have held back because of fear of backlash.

And what I want to encourage you with today is that let your fear of the Lord and putting him in the high place of honor that he should be in your life, let that create courage for you.

You're blessed.

Even when the world says differently, because the world wants to say to you, don't make waves, blend in.

But God has called his body, his people to live a bold faith for him.

And as we fear God, and as we love him, and as we serve him, we're going to find a courage within ourselves that will go beyond our fears.

Because it comes from him.

It's like a deeply rooted tree.

When the winds come and try to blow it down, it stays firm.

A few weeks ago we went through this series here to stay where we talked about digging deep roots with God.

And it's my hope and it's my desire and hope that every single one of us, as we are growing in Christ, and as our church is growing in Christ, that our roots would go down so deep that the changing of the winds don't blow us over, but we are in the firm foundation, the solid rock that Christ has promised to us, and that he is for us every single day.

So have courage.

Have courage.

In him.

Now, what you can't realize in this passage from Peter and what he's sharing with us is that Peter is actually quoting a truth from a thousand years earlier.

There's a hyperlink in the scripture from this passage in the 14th verse that connects back to a quote from the book of Isaiah written a thousand years earlier.

And the truth of God's word that was coming through Isaiah says this in Isaiah 8:11.

Isaiah 8:11

The Lord has given me a strong warning not to think like everyone else does.

He said, Don't call everything a conspiracy like they do, and don't live in dread of what frightens them.

Make the Lord of heaven's armies holy in your life.

He is the one you should fear.

He is the one who should make you tremble.

Verse 14, He will keep you safe.

We talked last week about how we should fear God out of love, not love Him out of fear.

That having God in the correct place in our life and the priority should produce in us an acknowledgement of God's holiness.

And his holiness and his anger and wrath that burns towards sin has been completely satisfied by the sacrifice of Jesus on the cross 2,000 years ago.

The mess-ups and the things that you and I do and the boneheaded decisions that we make that we should deserve death for because we are imperfect.

It's because of God's great mercy that he sent his son Jesus 2,000 years ago to die in your place on Calvary's tree and pay a debt that you could not pay yourself, but only he could pay because he was the holy one, the mighty one.

Without one blemish.

And it was his blood that as we trust in him as Savior, covers us that we might walk from this life into eternity future.

Not because of anything that we've done, but because of what he has done for us.

And so we must stand firm in our faith.

But the fear of man, it frustrates that faith.

It holds it back.

It stops it.

It keeps us from holding on to a holy God.

Don't rock the boat.

I you know I can't rock the boat at my work.

Of course, you want me to be weird at work?

You want me to be the one who gives God the glory and the praise?

You want me to be the one to say, hey, actually that's not right.

When we honor God's holiness, our faith will flourish.

I read a biography of a pastor in Germany during the rise of the Nazi Party and regime.

This took me quite a while to read his biography.

It's a long biography, but I feel like I learned so much as I read through the biography of the life of Dietrich Bonhoeffer.

He was a young theologian who studied in America for some time, headed back to Germany around the time that Hitler was rising to power in the early 30s.

And as I read through his biography, I learned so much about what was going on in the country at that time.

How in the early 1930s Hitler and the party were already beginning to empty out the hospitals of the elderly and mental hospitals and take them to death camps and begin to kill the weakest in society.

Seven, eight years before the war even began, World War II even began in 1940.

I learned about how Pastor Bonhoeffer was one of the few pastors who didn't go along with the Nazi Party and regime because in Germany the church was a state church.

And so in the late 1930s, all of the pastors in Germany of the German state church had to.

Circumstances of wisdom from his word.

The wisdom of God that it never begins with the fear of the Lord.

But I want to share with you some of the benefits of the fear of God.

Is that okay with you?

So I'm going to read through some passages for you.

If you prize wisdom, he will make you great.

Proverbs 4.8.

And we know that the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom.

Psalm 111.10.

And these promises that I give to you.

How great is the goodness.

How great is the goodness you have stored up for those who fear you.

You lavish it to those who come to you for protection, blessing them before the watching world.

You hide them in your shelter of your presence, safe from those who conspire against them.

You shelter them in your presence, far from accusing tongues, Psalms 31.

The angel of the Lord is a guard.

He surrounds and defends all who fear him.

Psalm 347.

Fear the Lord.

You his godly people.

For those who fear him will have all they need.

Even strong lions sometimes go hungry, but those who trust in the Lord will lack no good thing.

Psalm 34.

True humility and the fear of the Lord leads to riches, honor, and long life.

Proverbs 22.4.

How joyful are those who fear the Lord, all who follow his ways.

You will always, you will enjoy the fruit of your labor.

How joyful and prosperous you will be, Psalm 124.

Listen to this.

Listen to this, men.

Your wife will be like a fruitful grapevine flourishing within your home.

And your children will be like rigorous young olive trees as they sit around your table.

That's the Lord's blessing for those who fear him.

It's not just for you, it's for your children and your children's children to be blessed.

That you have a holy fear and reverence of God.

And you know what I absolutely have loved about this morning?

That already in our 9 o'clock service, we had a young lady, a high school student at Western Hills High School, who got baptized at our 9 o'clock service.

And here in just a minute, we're gonna see my friend Mark.

He's a player in Kentucky State be baptized.

And I cannot tell you how many times as a pastor, I've been in ministry 17 years.

I cannot tell you how many times as a pastor I've heard somebody say about getting baptized.

Oh, I can't do that.

I don't want everybody looking at me.

I don't want all those odds on me to get baptized.

If I've heard it once, I've heard it a hundred times.

Oh, I couldn't get baptized.

But today, this morning, two people would stand up and said, I don't care if all the eyes are looking at me.

And then opinions to want all those opinions to let those fall away and instead stand firm in the grace and peace and fear of Almighty God.

To step into baptism waters and say, Jesus is my Savior.

And so maybe you are one of those that you have held back.

And today on your Kinect car that's under your seat, you need to check that box of baptism because you need to step out and make public your faith in the example of Jesus and his baptism.

You need to do it too.

But the enemy's been holding you back.

Or maybe it's that you need to care more about God's opinion than about the lack of integrity that's going on in your office.

Or you need to care more about God's opinion and fear him more than the comfort of an affair.

To have God in the holy place, that he so deserves to be in all of our lives, and recognize in the reality of the fact that we cannot get it all right.

That's why Jesus died on the cross for us.

We cannot be righteous, no another one.

But it's Christ through his death on the cross that he would give his righteousness to us while we were still sinners.

Christ died for us.

So there may be something in the womb today that you need to take the step to finally receive Jesus as your Savior, but also as your Lord.

That you can bow to Him.

Maybe to be saved, to be forgiven for the first time, for you to truly trust in His sacrifice on the cross in your life.

Maybe that's somebody's maybe that's somebody's step today.

Or maybe you're in the room, and God has called us and asks us and commands us to worship him every single Sabbath day.

And so for you it means that you gotta uncross your arms during worship and you have to actually open your mouth so that you recognize that there is a holiness of God to worship him, because that's what we're doing here, people.

We're here to worship God in spirit and in truth, in healings and in the ministry of the word.

They're kept safe.

Because what Jesus told us is that Pastor Barney from at his funeral, they read the same scripture that we studied last Sunday that Jesus said.

He loves you more than sparrows.

They don't fear those who can kill the body.

Fear the body who can destroy the souls.

In Jesus' desperation wants to save your soul.

From this life into the next.

So would you bow your hands with me right now?

Father, all across this room, there are people at homes that are represented right now.

So Father, I just want to pray right now, God, that the blessing, Father, that's promised to us having you in the right position already in your life, God.

The blessing that flows from you, God, that it would begin to overflow in all the homes, apartments, dorm rooms, presented in this place.

Not just for us, but for our children's church.

Christ all the days of our lives.

And so, Father, I pray right now, all across this space, that Lord, we would as a church and as a people, we would have you in the holy place that you deserve and honor.

Father, I pray right now all across the room for anyone who has not received you as savior, who's not trusted you and your sacrifice on the cross, and your death in their place.

They've not received you as Savior and Lord, that today would be their day of salvation, that today they would make the choice to cross over the line, to believe in you, to put you in the right place in their heart and their life, and God see you overflow to them from this life and into the next.

And so, God, I pray all across this room.

If there's anybody in this place who has not received you as Savior, they would do it today, right now, that they would pray in their heart and mind.

Jesus save me.

Not as some magical spell, but it's a genuine heart cry and prayer from your heart and say, Jesus save me.

I believe that you are the Son of God, that you died for my sins on the cross, that you rose from the grave.

Forgive me, cleanse me, wash me, so that I can be in heaven.

I give you my life as you gave yourself.

Thank you for being my Savior and my Lord.

In Jesus' name.

This morning this opportunity to receive Christ as your Savior.

I want to ask you with a sound for heaven, and I want to pray for you just to I want to count the three that you received Christ as your savior today.

I want you just to throw your hand up in the air.

So I can see there were two of those people that spoke in our first service, and I pray that maybe that's you just right now.

I see the count of three.

Up right here, I see you.

Anyone else?

Keep your hand up so I can see you.

Keep your hand up surface here.

Father, thank you for those right now who raise my hand to receive you as Savior.

God, I pray, God, that Lord, they would truly and genuinely believe the prayer that they just prayed.

Father, you are sealing them, you are saving them now into eternity.

So, Father, we thank you, God, for the life in Christ in this place.

We love you, God, and we serve you every single day.

Thank you, Jesus, for what you've done for us.

Amen.

Church, we celebrate together.