The Fear of God - Peter's Principles for Prevailing Over Problems

Hey, I'm Pastor Steve Holt.

I want to empower you today to walk in your true identity as a worshiper and warrior.

Today, embrace the power of God's Word and the Holy Spirit.

Welcome to the Born for War podcast.

So we are in 1 Peter.

For you that are guests with us, want you to know 1 Peter's in the New Testament.

And if you came without a Bible, we're kind of a Bible-carrying, Bible-believing, Bible preaching church.

So there is a slot in front of you, and there's probably a Bible.

Feel free to use that, take that, whatever.

But if you come again and you don't have a Bible, just keep taking that one and have it.

It's yours.

So we talked about last week focus.

And probably one of the biggest problems for most of us in this room is how to focus.

And Peter's very clear about how to focus.

We went through four things about focusing last week.

But what's interesting, and this is where I concluded last week's sermon, was this idea of the fear of God.

It's not a popular message today.

Maybe some of you in this room have never even heard a message on the fear of God.

So I wanted to cover that because it's mentioned five times in 1 Peter.

So turn to 1 Peter chapter 1 and look at verse 17.

1 Peter 1 · chapter mention

This is where we concluded last week.

And if you call on the Father, who without partiality judges according to each one's work.

So God's going to judge us according to the works in this life.

Okay, salvation is not based on your works, but there does seem to be indication all through Scripture that you're rewarded according to your works.

Conduct yourselves throughout the time of your stay here in fear.

Now underline fear.

Now look at chapter 2, verse 17.

So that was 117.

Now look at chapter 2, 17.

Honor all people.

Love the brotherhood, fear God.

Underline that.

Fear God.

Honor the king.

Servants, be submissive to your masters with all fear.

Underline fear.

It's the fourth time now that he's mentioned it.

Excuse me, third time.

Now, chapter 3, verse 2.

When they observe your chaste conduct accompanied by fear.

So underline fear there.

Then, same chapter, verse 15.

But sanctify the Lord God in your hearts, and always be ready to give a defense to everyone who asks you a reason for the hope that is in you with meekness and fear.

Underline fear again.

So this idea of fear was really, really strong in Peter.

And I don't know why it's so prevalent a theme in him, except that we know his story, right?

We know that Peter had a tendency to be arrogant.

Peter tended to be one who kind of took off with things that he thought were right.

Sometimes they were, sometimes they weren't.

And probably one of the memories, and we know this from tradition and legend and history, was he was always haunted.

He was always haunted by what happened on the night of Jesus' betrayal, and then him betraying Jesus to the servant girl.

The story is told when I was in Rome one time, I was uh with a guide, the guide was explaining some things, and we were coming out.

We were coming out of Rome, we were on the APM way there, and there was the arches of the APM Way, and this was a secular guide, but then he made the comment that tradition has it that Peter once, knowing that he was going to be crucified, ran from his accusers and got down the APM way, and then he heard the voice of the Lord saying to him, You who denied me, I've never denied you.

And so he turned around, he went back into Rome, and he was crucified upside down.

And so this fear of God was over Peter for the rest of his life.

And so I like what Benjamin Franklin said once.

He said, Fear God and your enemies will fear you.

Beautiful passage from someone who didn't even consider himself a Christian, but he understood, evidently, the fear of God.

Now, Isaiah 33, 6 is one of the most powerful passages on the fear of God in the Bible.

Isaiah 33.6, we read, Wisdom and knowledge will be the stability of your times and the strength of your salvation.

The fear of the Lord is his treasure and your treasure.

Isn't that a powerful passage?

He's saying here that if you want stability, then fear God.

If you want stability, you need wisdom and knowledge.

And you guys know that one of the rewards of the fear of God is you get the wisdom of God.

So it's the first step, according to Solomon, the wisest man in the world, who said that the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom and knowledge.

And so here we see stability.

How many of us need more stability in our life?

So we need stability.

That comes from wisdom and knowledge, which is treasured in the heart of God through his people who fear him.

So when we walk in the fear of God, the healthy fear of God, then there is a wisdom and knowledge.

It keeps us out of trouble.

It keeps us out of trouble.

To have a fear of God, to understand that there's certain places you shouldn't go and certain things you shouldn't look at, because God knows is a healthy view of God.

That's a healthy fear of God.

Many people don't have a healthy fear of God.

I have a healthy fear of bears.

So I remember one time years ago, I was hunting, I came up on a hill, and I crested this hill.

I was elk hunting, and here comes a mama bear with three cups.

And it was really cute.

And I thought, that's so cute.

But they kept coming toward me.

And it wasn't cute anymore, right?

And so they kept coming, and then two of them would get ahead of her, and so she's back trying to deal with the third one that kept lollygagging around, and she would, and she would pat it on the little bottom and it would take a roll.

It was really cute.

I wish I had a you know a video of it, but I wouldn't have watched the video even if I had it, because she kept coming toward me.

And so I took safety off and got behind a tree, and I was ready, and then she just kept coming and kept coming.

So she was probably 300 yards away when I first saw her, and now she's like 50 yards away.

Because I kept thinking she's gonna go that way or she's gonna, but she kept coming straight toward me.

So I just with safety off came and I just stood in the field in front of her, and she rose up because she was on all four.

She rose up and then she turned and took off.

Two again, the the main two went with her.

There was the third the third little guy, he just didn't want to go.

And so she came back, it was really precious.

So I actually backed off at that point because I wanted to come back.

So she came back, again, patted, it took a roll, and they took off on their way.

But that's a healthy fear of bears, okay?

And um I was uh one time hiking in Garden of the God, so we were going along, and uh, kids were with us, we're on that sidewalk part of the, you know, when you're in the main part, and I could hear a rattlesnake.

I could hear a rattlesnake back in the rocks, and I know that sound.

And so I had a healthy fear of rattlesnakes.

Now, so when I think about a healthy fear, I'm not talking about where you're just deathly afraid, but rather you know what your boundaries are.

And so a healthy fear of God is knowing that God actually has boundaries, and he wants us to reverence him in his holiness.

Well, there's two unhealthy extremes in our view of God.

Two unhealthy extremes in our view of God, and especially in the church today.

Number one is hypergrace, and the other is hyperlealism.

There's a hyper-grace and there's a hyperlegalism.

So hypergrace is those churches and that type of Christianity, which is all about totally 100% love of God, grace of God.

Believe me, men and women, you you we can't hear enough about the love of God and grace of God.

I'm totally for the love of God and the grace of God.

Don't hear me saying anything otherwise.

But it's a hyper-grace message, and it's leading to a lot of problems in the church today where even pastors and leaders are getting involved in sexual sin and stuff like that because they've just been, their whole theology is around God's forgiveness, and it's the laughing Jesus.

Okay, how many have seen the portrait of the laughing Jesus?

Okay, yeah, but it's it's a pretty cool portrait, actually.

But I don't like it.

But anyway, I I it's so Jesus laughed, because I think Jesus laughed, so it's cool.

That's that's another version of Jesus.

But it's the laughing Jesus, it's the love you no matter what you do, Jesus, which is that's absolutely true.

He does love us no matter what we do.

But, but that being the central and the only message is missing the holiness of God, right?

So then there's the hyperleism.

So one is, I'd say the hyper-grace message probably started more in the 1930s and 1940s with the liberal church swinging that way because of hyperlegalism.

So there were the pendulum swang.

So the hyperlegalism message is one where it's always on the holiness of God, and it's always on how you never measure up and you're never good enough, and you need to do more, and it may not be said all the time, but it's definitely implied in the culture of that church, and that's where so many today who've been involved in some uh sexual sin and things like that feel like they can't go back to church because they've, you know, they've messed up forever.

And that's not healthy either.

Okay, so we need the law to a certain degree, and we need the love to a certain degree.

We need both.

We need the fullness, actually, of both, and uh I think raising kids is a great example of that.

You have you have certain kids that they're gonna push the limit, right?

They're gonna push the limit, and sometimes you have to come more with the law.

Okay, these are what the rules are, you know.

And then there's other kids that are just hypersensitive to the law, and they need to know the love and grace of God.

So we need both.

So I want to give you seven benefits.

Seven benefits to walking in a healthy, and that's the operable word here, the healthy fear of God.

And these are all just straight Bible passages.

Number one, the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom and knowledge.

That's like number one.

We got to get that.

That the fear, a healthy fear of God gives you wisdom and knowledge.

I had a healthy fear of the bear.

I knew what a bear could do to me, and so I stayed back.

You know, I watched my steps because I had a healthy fear, but I wasn't sitting there freaking out or all afraid.

It was just more like I was looking at this and going, don't want to go there, right?

Healthy fear of rattlesnakes.

I'm not gonna go walking into that particular canyon there at Garden of the Gods because I can hear that rattle of a rattlesnake being there.

So a healthy fear of God gives you wisdom and knowledge about where to go and not to go.

I mean, I have a healthy enough fear of God to know that if I went to one X-rated movie, if I went to one sexually explicit movie, I could get caught in a web of sexual addiction.

So that's part of a healthy fear of pornography, okay?

But in that, I also recognize that the blessing and the favor of God would lift off of my life because I've got hidden sin.

Does that make sense?

So that's a healthy fear of God.

Number two, the fear of the Lord is clean, the scriptures say.

It is what leads you into purity.

So a healthy fear of God leads us into purity.

It's clean, it feels good.

The healthy fear of God is a beautiful thing because you know what you shouldn't do, you know where you shouldn't go, and there's a cleanliness to it.

There's a purity that goes with it.

Number three, the secret of the Lord is revealed to those who fear God.

The secret of the Lord is revealed to those who fear him.

So 90% of the decisions that we make are obvious.

I mean, it's really, really obvious.

You don't need to have a Bible verse, you don't have a dream or vision of it.

It's just like that's, you know, you know, both by common law as well as in your conscience, you shouldn't go there.

But then there's a truly 10% of our lives, right?

Where it's good, better, best.

It's not really good and bad, it's good, better, best for your life.

You need to know the secret of the Lord for you.

You need to know his secrets for you.

He's got in his heart hiddenness.

God hides himself.

God hides himself, why?

So that we will seek him more.

So he's causing us, he's not letting us know everything about the job or about that house you should buy or not buy, or whether you should move or not move.

I mean, it's good, bad, or best.

Nobody can answer that question for you.

But God's got a secret where he can disclose that to you if you fear him.

So it's clear that God gives up his secrets to those who fear him.

Number four, the eye of the Lord is upon those who fear him.

So the scriptures say that the eyes of the Lord run to and fro across the face of the earth, looking for those who strongly, that he might strongly support those who seek him with all their heart.

So Jesus has this blessing, this favor, his eyes looking for those who walk in the fear of God.

Number five, the mercy of the Lord is upon those who fear him.

So there's who anybody here need more mercy, okay?

So we do.

We need more mercy, and those who fear him get more mercy.

They get more of God's mercy upon their life, which I think leads into number six, and that is that the fear of the Lord brings life.

So when you've got more mercy, you've got more life.

You, I mean, you your constitution is more lively.

You have more energy because you're not.

Anybody notice that you do better when your conscience is clean?

You do better when you're focused and you know what your purpose is, and it's really hard when you feel bifurcated, you feel like you're just kind of all over the place.

Man, I feel that way all the time here at the church.

Like sometimes I don't know as senior pastor what I'm supposed to be focused on.

There's too many things to focus on.

And so I'm asking God, I mean, I need focus here, right?

Well, in our lives, I think the fear of the Lord gives us focus.

I think it gives us life.

And the more you're focused on the right things, the kingdom of God, then the more life you have.

I mean, that's even a biological fact.

That when you're stressed out, you're releasing toxins into your bloodstream that make you get sick.

That actually toxins being released in your bloodstream can cause cancer, can cause all kinds of stuff in your life.

And so the more you're fearing God, well, healthy fear of God, and we're gonna explain that in just a moment.

Healthy fear of God, the more life flows through even your physical veins.

And then lastly, the Lord favors those who fear him.

So God's favor.

Life's hard enough.

Life's hard enough to be working against God versus the favor of God.

And so a healthy fear of God, according to Scripture, gives us the favor of God.

So write down in your notes, Deuteronomy 17, 19.

You don't have to turn there, but I just want you to write down Deuteronomy 17, 19.

And here's what it says learn the fear of the Lord.

Deuteronomy 17, 19 says, learn the fear of the Lord.

So the fear of the Lord can be learned.

Now I cut out a whole bunch of this message.

I had like three more pages on this message.

I couldn't go through it all.

I wish I could, but but one of the things that I cut out was the fact that, and it's in Romans 3, is that no one fears God naturally.

You do not, no one in this room naturally fears God.

You just don't.

You don't naturally want to obey God, you don't naturally want to do the right thing because we're born sinners, and because of that, we we're selfish.

We're just selfish people.

And so, and so we have to learn the fear of God.

We have to learn it.

So I want to give you three principles that I see on learning the fear of God.

There's probably 18, okay, but I'm gonna give you three, the three biggies, in my opinion.

I feel like if we get these three right, it could transform your life.

If you don't walk, if you come out of a hyper-legalistic or a hyper-grace background, I'm hoping to bring you into the center to see that there is a healthy way in which we can fear God.

The first one is this the fear of the Lord does not mean we're afraid of God.

The fear of the Lord does not mean we're afraid of God.

I remember I was talking to a young lady years ago about her religious background and religious experience.

And she used to say, when I went to church as a kid, I had a fear of God.

And I thought, well, okay, that's not a bad thing the way she said it.

But what she meant was she was afraid of God.

And she said it was spooky, ma'am.

The church is spooky, and there was smoke, and there was incense, and the guy up front had this massive cross and everything.

And she talked about all that as being afraid of God.

She had a she had an unhealthy fear of God.

She was afraid of God.

So turn in your Bibles to Exodus.

So, second book of the Old Testament.

Go to the front of your Bible, Exodus chapter 20.

Exodus 20 · chapter mention

And we see the contrast here.

Exodus 20 is where Moses is getting the Ten Commandments on Mount Sinai.

Very interesting passage.

Exodus 20, verse 18.

Exodus 20:18

Exodus 20, verse 18.

Exodus 20:18

Now, all the people witness the thunderings, the lightning flashes, the sound of the trumpet, and the mountain smoking.

Now that that could induce some fear in anybody.

This is a, I mean, imagine that scene on Pike's Peak.

Like you wake up one day and boom, all this stuff's, and you know that your leader, Moses, is up there with God.

Um so this places a fear of God in an unhealthy way in the people.

And when the people saw it, they trembled and stood far off.

Then they said to Moses, You speak with us and we will hear you, but let not God speak with us lest we die.

So, in other words, this being afraid of God is often a symptom of a lack of intimacy with God.

Being afraid of God, for those people that have come out of that background, especially hyperlegalism, you probably have never experienced intimacy with God.

Now I hope coming to the road, you're experiencing intimacy with God, because I'm going to give you a thesis in just a moment about why that's important and how we get that.

But but this being, I think there's two things that cause us to be afraid of God and not have a healthy fear of God.

The first is sin in our life, and then the second is an unhealthy understanding of the fear of God.

So obviously they're afraid of God.

Now you would think, you would think, I would think, Moses should say, no, God loves you and God really cares about you, and he took you out of Egypt, and his grace is with you.

But he doesn't say it that way.

Here's what he says in the next verse, verse 20.

Moses said to the people, do not fear.

In other words, don't be afraid of God.

For God has come to test you that his fear may be before you so that you may not sin.

So he says, Don't be afraid of God, but fear God.

Don't be afraid of God, but have a healthy fear of God.

That's wild.

He said, look, it isn't anything about grace, it doesn't say anything about love.

He says, look, here's the deal.

Your understanding of God is off.

You don't know him.

You don't intimately know him.

But you need a healthy fear of him so that you won't sin.

So I found this to be true.

And I haven't done it in Latin America, so a little bit in Mexico.

We've been in Latin America, but I wasn't sharing my faith a lot.

We were there on a um more of a vacation and a language school for Spanish that we were down there for as a family.

But but when I was in the Philippines, for example, in the Philippines, it's a Roman Catholic country.

So that's a historically Spanish or Spain colony.

So they have, you know.

Roman Catholic churches everywhere.

And they're, and I have to admit, it's it's interesting.

Like you come by a Roman Catholic church and smoke's pouring out, and there's statues and stuff all over the place.

And it's it's it's a little interesting, okay?

And so and so they come in Philippines with a fear of God.

They do, but they're afraid of God.

So what's cool about that is you can just come with the love of God and bam! Oh, that's how you get saved, and they're in, man, and you share with 20 people in the Philippines, 21 will receive Christ.

I mean, they they've never heard the love of God at the level that we were sharing it.

And I'm sure that some Catholic churches do do that, but I'm just saying, as a general rule, you go into Roman Catholic countries, they have a fear of God, but it's it's it's oftentimes afraid of God, but it's a setup for the love of God, which can be a beautiful thing.

And so, number one is that the fear of the Lord does not mean we're afraid of God.

Number two, the fear of God means we love God.

The fear of God means actually that we love God.

Paul writes, the love of God leads us to repentance.

That's the fear of God.

So it's in loving God that we realize we're a sinner and thus we repent because we want more of the love of God.

So that's the love of God and the fear of God.

John writes, we love him because he first loved us.

So Jesus went to the cross.

That's what Good Friday is about this week.

He went to the cross because he feared his father.

He loved his father, but he feared his father because he wanted to do his father's will.

That's what he said in the garden.

Not my will be done, but your will be done.

And the agony that was involved in that, he sweat.

He sweated drops of blood.

That's the agony that he went through before he went to the cross, and we're going to celebrate that.

And I should probably say to you, as I say, every week before, how many have not been to one of our Good Friday services raised your hand?

You haven't been before.

Okay, so this is for you.

If you come, it's not like this.

It's very, very dark.

The lights are down dark, dark music, and we want you to experience the death of Jesus.

It's not a celebratory time.

It's the death of Jesus.

I mean, it's it's Good Friday, and I guess you could say it's great Easter, but it's Good Friday, and we want you to come out with a little bit of the fear of God from that so that you really are pumped up and excited on Sunday because he rose from death.

He rose from death.

He went to hell.

He went to hell, and he proclaimed the victory of Jesus.

Christus victorious came a good Friday to Easter.

In this is love, not that we loved God, but that he loved us, and he sent his son to be the propitiation for our sins.

Beloved, if God so loved us, we should love one another.

John continues, God is love, and he who abides in love abides in God, and God in him.

But then the scriptures are also clear that to understand the love of God is also to understand the fear of God.

Paul tells us, work out your salvation with fear and trembling.

So they go together.

And it was said of Cornelius in Acts chapter 10.

Acts 10 · chapter mention

Luke writes, a devout man and one who feared God in all of his household.

So the noteworthy thing about Cornelius in Acts 10 was he feared God.

Ephesians 5.21, submitting to one another in the fear of God.

So even in the church, even in the fabric of the culture of a church or family, the fear of God is good.

We submit to each other.

We submit to each other out of the fear of God.

1 Peter 2.17, we just read it.

Honor all people, love the brotherhood, fear God.

So honor, love, and fear, all in those three sentences, they all go together.

So my thesis today is this.

Number three, third principle.

This is my thesis today.

Everything's leading up to this.

The fear of God and the love of God are the boundaries to intimacy with God.

The fear of God and the love of God are the boundaries to intimacy with God.

You've got to have both to have a healthy intimacy with the Lord.

So I had intimacy with my dad.

My dad is a gracious man.

He's 92 today.

Not today, but I mean he's 92 right now.

And he um he's he's always a gracious, loving father, always was.

But but man, there were boundaries that we were given at our house.

And my mom's really smart.

She's a steel magnolia from the South.

She's really smart.

She's a farm girl, ranch lady, gal, who kind of sometimes I felt like I was like a horse, you know, in the stall.

But uh, but she knew how to get me going, you know.

And so if I did something pretty majorly wrong, if it was minor, she took care of it.

But it was kind of major, like trying to burn down the house, which I did once.

Um, you, you know, you heard, and you guys, many of you know this phrase, you know, wait till your dad comes home, right?

So I remember that, and she and she seemed to get great pleasure in saying that, and then usually letting me know he won't be home until 8 tonight.

There's a board meeting.

Okay, and so I had to wait for like five hours, you know, because usually everything happened after school.

So she she loved the fact that I was in school, you know, away from her.

She could do her own thing.

But when we came home, boom, man, she was there, she was on it.

And uh, so things would happen from time to time.

And there was a, I think that's a healthy fear of dad.

Because I loved my dad, and my dad wasn't too, I don't know, his punishments were interesting.

He um he did use a switch from time to time, and so I remember that on my legs, and it hurt so much that I decided we would never do that with our kids, so we never did.

The interesting, I was in a um, I was in a tech stream with some guys from the University of Georgia, guys that I went to school with, asking about corporal punishment and some things related to something, and uh, and they said and they were all like talking about how spanking's so important and all that, and they said, What do you what do you think, Steve?

So I waited to hear everybody else's opinion.

That's often what I do.

And then I said, Well, you know, we spanked their kids from time to time, but we found that the most effective discipline was giving them jobs to do.

So, I mean, look about it.

If you're gonna spank someone, I mean, the thing's done in like 15 seconds, right?

Or you can say, clean up the garage.

We're talking hours, man.

You ought to see our garage, okay?

Hours, right?

You know, that they had to do that.

It's like, uh, they didn't do stuff again.

They didn't do, or clean the bathroom and really swab that bowl, man.

You know?

That was way more effective than just a little, you know.

So, anyway, be creative, you parents out there, okay?

But it was a healthy fear of God.

In the Lion, the Witch in the Wardrobe, C.S.

Lewis speaks of the children's first encounter with Aslan, the lion, which represents Christ in his great fictional book.

People who have not been in Narnia sometimes think that a thing cannot be good and terrible at the same time.

If the children had ever thought so, they were cured of it now.

For when they tried to look at Aslan's face, they just caught a glimpse of the golden mane and the great royal, solemn, overwhelming eyes, and then they found they couldn't look at him, and they went all trembly.

Moses, in the same vein, explains to the people in Deuteronomy 10, and now, Israel, what does the Lord your God require of you?

But to fear the Lord your God, to walk in his ways, and to love him.

Fear him and love him, and to serve the Lord your God with all of your heart and with all your soul.

So the fear of God and the love of God are the boundaries to intimacy with God.

You really do need both.

The love of God will most of the time not keep you out of sin.

It'll keep you in intimacy with God, going after him.

But the fear of God oftentimes keeps us out of sin, and then we have that pure relationship of intimacy with him.

So the love of God and the fear of God are two sides of the same coin.

And God disciplines us.

What does the scripture say?

God disciplines us because he loves us.

So discipline, fear of God, leads us to intimacy with God because of the love of God that's actually disciplining us.

So they're both a part of that.

Now, last week I brought up St.

Patrick because it was St.

Patrick's Day.

It was Patrick's St.

Patrick's Day, the um the patron saint of Ireland.

And I gave you the story about his story.

And if you didn't, if you were not here for that, you can go back and listen to the message from last week.

I opened the sermon with the story of St.

Patrick, and then we closed the sermon and the service with the breastplate of St.

Patrick.

Now here's what's interesting.

So I'm reading the confessions of St.

Patrick this week, and I come across this from St.

Patrick's diary and his confession that he made to the British nobility at that time.

Tending flocks was my daily work, and I would pray constantly.

So he's speaking of when he was a slave to Irish noblemen.

The love of God and fear of God surrounded me more and more, and faith grew, and the spirit was roused.

That's when he was getting saved.

So he didn't know the Lord before, but he was there tending the flocks at 16 to 22, six years.

He was up there in the northwestern part of Ireland, the coldest part of Ireland, day after day in the frigid cold.

That's when he encountered God.

And the Confessio goes on to explain, he spent hours in prayer every day, and that's when he got saved.

And then the Lord spoke to him and said, Look, there's a ship waiting for you.

He walks 200 miles, finds the ship, goes home, then has a dream that an Irishman is coming to him and saying, Come back and walk with us again.

And so he gave the next 30 years of his life to evangelizing and bringing great revival to Ireland.

But it was the love of God and it was the fear of God that surrounded him.

Jesus is our loving friend, but he's also our holy king.

Jesus is our grace brother, but he's also our disciplining father.

Jesus is our merciful healer, but he also gives us the Holy Spirit, not the jolly spirit, he gives us the Holy Spirit.

The fear of God is the fear of not being in communion with God.

The fear of God is a fear of missing out on the love of God.

So men and women, the fear of God and the love of God are the boundaries to intimacy with God.

I pray that you would walk that balance.

Don't fall on either side.

Walk right down the center.

I call it the uncomfortable middle.

To be in the uncomfortable middle.

Thank you for listening to the Corn for War podcast.

We hope today's message has empowered you to make a difference in your world.

To connect with Pastor Steve's sermons, books, and blog, visit steveholtonline.org.

God bless.