The Fear of God
Dr. Larry Thorson
Scripture in this text is from Today’s New International Version
Copyright © 2001, 2005 by International Bible Society
Psalm 36 (A Psalm of David)
1
I have a message from God in my heart concerning the sinfulness of the wicked:
There is no fear of God before their eyes.
3 The words of their mouths are
wicked and deceitful; they have ceased to be wise and to do good.
4 Even on their beds they plot
evil; they commit themselves to a sinful course and do not reject what is
wrong.
5 Your love, LORD, reaches to
the heavens, your faithfulness to the skies.
6 Your righteousness is like
the highest mountains, your justice like the great deep.
You, LORD, preserve both people and
animals.
7 How priceless is your
unfailing love, O God! People take
refuge in the shadow of your wings.
8 They feast on the abundance
of your house; you give them drink from your river of delights.
9 For with you is the fountain
of life; in your light we see light.
10 Continue your love to those
who know you, your righteousness to the upright in heart.
11 May the foot of the proud
not come against me, nor the hand of the wicked drive me away.
12 See how the evildoers lie
fallen— thrown down, not able to rise!
You may not know this but to get into
our church office, one must navigate at least two locked gates, two locks on
the office door and disarm the alarm.
Several months ago someone got into our sanctuary and helped themselves
to two large speakers and two microphones.
As I told this story to a middle aged Hispanic woman one day not in our
church, she said that when she was growing up in the Roman Catholic Church one
wouldn’t think of stealing even a piece of paper from the church for fear that
the wrath of God would strike you dead.
Where’s that fear of God today?
In the Old Testament, the remains of
Moses’ tablets containing the Ten Commandments were carried on an ark. The people of God knew not to touch that ark
unless they were God’s authorized agents to carry it from battlefield to
battlefield. One time someone was moving
it, slipped and grabbed for it as he was falling and the wrath of God struck
him down. Think what kind of fear of God
that put in the people. If only we had
some of that fear of God today.
This summer I read a book called Inside
Steve’s Brain by Leander Kahney.
It’s the story of Steve Jobs, co-founder of Apple Computers. I was curious to read it because Steve and I
are about nine months apart in age (he’s older) and grew up about 20 minutes
from each other in the
Kahney writes “Jobs is one of the
‘“great intimidators, a category of fearsome business leaders characterized by
Roderick Kramer, a social psychologist at Stanford. According to Kramer, great intimidators
inspire people through fear and intimidation, but aren’t mere bullies. They’re more like stern father figures, who
inspire people through fear as well as through a desire to please.”
In another quote Kahney writes “Just
as Jobs is exceedingly demanding of the people who report to him, Apple’s
middle managers demand the same level of high performance from their staff. The
result is a reign of terror. Everyone is
in constant fear of losing their jobs.”
I wouldn’t like to work at Apple but no
one can argue with their success since Jobs returned there in 1996. Think of the iPod, iTunes, iPhone, and the
Mac Book. They’re changing the way we
live, at least many of the next generation.
Those who work there have the fear of something in them.
Now I’m going to contrast that with what
King David calls “the wicked” in his Psalm 36.
David writes in verse 1 “I have a message from
God in my heart concerning the sinfulness of the wicked: there is no fear of
God before their eyes.
David believed that sinfulness begins with a lack
of fear or respect for God. When we were in our exchange in
Without having fear or respect for the
consequences of our behavior our natural tendency will be to do whatever we
want to do and not necessarily for the good of the other person. iPods, iTunes and iPhones don’t get developed
with people doing their own thing. It
takes teamwork pulling in the same direction as the leader. Sin could be described simply as every person
doing their own thing and ignoring the direction of their leader; Almighty
God.
In verse two David writes: “In their
own eyes they flatter themselves too much to detect or hate their sin.” Let’s imagine the engineer at Apple
Computer saying “I’m one of the best in my field, Stanford educated, and
innovative….I know more of what I’m doing than the boss.” In his specialized area he may know more than
the boss. Let’s say he goes off and does
his own thing. What he’s missing is the
perspective of a leader who can see the big picture. He loses perspective. He can’t see the forest for the trees. He then works counter to the direction of his
team. Little good for the company is
accomplished.
When we look in the mirror we never see
the picture that is really there, only the picture we want to see. In our own eyes when we look at ourselves we
begin to think we’re pretty good. We
don’t drink. We don’t smoke. We don’t look at porn. We don’t even eat pork rinds. That’s all true and it’s good to remember
that because it gets really discouraging when you think about the sins you have
difficulty with. But we don’t want to
dull our ability to detect what sins we do commit.
Self flattery causes us to dull our
ability to detect our own sins. Then we
start going in a direction away from God and don’t even realize it. David writes in verse 3 “The words of
their mouths are wicked and deceitful; they have ceased to be wise and to do
good. Self flattery causes us to
cease to be wise because we lose the ability to know the better choice from the
lesser choice. We can’t see the forest
for the trees.
Then he writes in verse 4
“Even on their beds they plot evil; they commit themselves to a sinful
course and do not reject what is wrong.”
“On their beds” symbolizes premeditated evil. When they should be sleeping they lay awake
scheming their next sinful endeavor.
When we get to this point, we’re pro active plotting and planning to do
our evil not just committing sins of omission.
But it all starts with abandoning the fear of God.
So start with this question: where’s the
fear of God in us? We fear the City
Council requiring us to make our buildings comply with the American
Disabilities Act. We fear lawsuits from
people who fall on our campus. We fear
our church bank account being overdrawn.
We fear our ceiling falling down from leaks. We fear offending or burning out our most
active people. Our denomination fears
offending a minority group in our church.
But where do we fear God?
God says to give generously of our
resources. Ten percent was the Old
Testament standard. Yet we give less
than half of one percent. Jesus said to
go out and make disciples yet can you name one person you have made into a
disciple in the last year? As a pastor I
fear someone leaving our church because I came down too hard on them. But who am I fearing, God or the person?
When you visit
But the fear of God is still there with
the older folks. Twice a year elders
visit members’ homes (mostly elderly) and give them a card with their name on
it. That card enables one to take
communion at church. Twice a year, in
addition to Christmas and Easter the churches are packed with people coming to
take communion. The rest of the year
most of them wouldn’t darken the doors of the church because they believe
they’ve taken care of the wrath of God by taking communion. That’s not so true with the young people in
the town. They don’t even come for
communion. The fear of God is departing
from the land.
So where is the wrath of God today? Some people believe the tsunami or the
earthquake in
I don’t believe any of those things are
the wrath of God. While in the Old
Testament there were natural disasters and diseases credited to God as retribution
for the sins of God’s people but always God’s prophets announced them
beforehand and gave specific warnings to the people to repent. That’s not happening today.
If you do a word study of the fear of
God in the Bible, it’s God who places this fear on people for their own
good. It’s meant to lead us to
repentance, to turn us to God from relying on ourselves.
It’s always the job of God’s followers
to deliver that message. As a church of
repentant believers it’s our job to let people know that they are sinners in
the hands of an angry God who hates sin.
We need to let people know that if they will turn from their sin and
accept Jesus Christ as their savior they can receive grace, unmerited
forgiveness for their sins.
I take that job very seriously. That’s why we’re going out to register 250
children in the Upward Basketball and Cheerleading League this month. Jesus told us to go out and compel people to
come in. If the church won’t instill the
fear of God in the community, who will?
Years ago when I told my dad that I
wanted to spend the rest of my life telling people about Jesus Christ, he said
you can lead a horse to water but how are you going to get them to drink? The answer he was looking for is simple;
God’s Holy Spirit will make them aware of their thirst. Our job is to go out and compel them in.
So what are you going to do to get these
250 children to hear about Jesus Christ?
You can hit the streets and sign them up or you can pray the fear of God
into them? Which is easier for you to
do? It’s going to take our whole
Presbyterian army working together to get this job done. It’s not every man or woman for themselves
anymore. It’s everyone pulling together
in the same direction.
Elder Susan Gray is heading up the prayer
side of Upward. A prayer room is being
set up upstairs in the
We need to pray for parents in our
valley who have been ignoring God because he was inconvenient to them. We need to pray for parents to say it’s time
to add God to their child’s life. We
need parents who will say I want something more than just sports for my child,
I want God for them. That’s only going
to happen if God’s Spirit comes down in a miraculous way in our valley. That’s only going to happen in prayer.
So where can we sign you up today? One hour on a Saturday. That’s it.
Come here and work the registration.
Come here and work the snack bar.
Come here and welcome people.
Come here and pray.
God is alive. God is well and God is mad at sin. It all starts with our putting flattery in
the wrong place. When we flatter
ourselves we can’t see our own sin. When
the church is too busy flattering itself it can’t expect or help its society to
do any different. But it’s interesting
how the Psalm finishes with David
flattering God inside of himself.
That’s the difference between the “wicked” and the godly. That’s when the fear or respect of God has
returned. Let’s put the proper fear of
God into our society by flattering God with praise and demonstrating that in
the places we go. May the grace of Jesus
Christ lead you to praise him in the new and fresh ways in the days ahead.