“Oh That Their Hearts Would Fear Me” March 4, 2010

Deuteronomy 5:23-33

SI: We’re studying the book of Deuteronomy.

The name Deuteronomy means a second giving of the law.

The first time God gave Israel the law was when he gave the stone tablets

to Moses on Mt. Sinai. The generation that receive the law had died.

Their children were standing on the brink of the Promised Land,

about to cross the Jordan River

and take possession of the land promised to Abraham.

The Lord told Moses to read them the law, give it to them a second time,

so that they would know how he wanted them to live in the Promised Land.

We come to the reading of the law this morning.

INTRO: There was a little old lady who came home from church Sunday night

and she surprised a burglar. He grabbed his bag and ran for the back door.

She shouted, Stop! Acts 2:38! And he froze.

Acts 2:38 is “Repent and be baptized for the forgiveness of your sins.”

She called the police. They came right away and found the burglar standing

in the doorway and got the story from the little old lady.

As they were handcuffing him one of the policemen shook his head and said:

I’ve never heard anything like this. I’ve got to ask you, why didn’t you run?

Was it the fear of God?

The man said, The fear of God? No.

I was scared of that little old lady.

She hollered at me to stop, that she had an ax and two .38s!

My guess is that if you asked people if the fear of God motivates them,

the vast majority would respond the same way.

The fear of God? No. The fear of consequences, yes.

But not the fear of God. What’s to fear? Who’s afraid of God?

Even in Christian circles you wonder how much the fear of God motivates.

We rarely talk about the fear of God any more.

The very phrase itself has virtually dropped out of our conversations.

In past generations, Christians often spoke of the fear of God.

They urged their children to fear the Lord.

They described strong Christians as God-fearing people.

They prayed for their cities and towns to be places where God is feared.

We don’t even talk that way any more.

When is the last time you told your children that you want them to fear the Lord?

When is the last time you said that so and so is a God-fearing man or woman?

I don’t know about you, but I can answer for myself. Almost never.

There’s something wrong with that. Something very wrong.

Because the Bible is saturated with this kind of language.

Both the Old Testament and the New, again and again,

call God’s people and all creation, to fear him.

And by not talking about that fear more often, we are losing more than the

language of the Bible, we’re losing something essential to the life of faith.

In this passage Moses is describing to the Israelites what happened when God

first gave them the Ten Commandments on Mt. Sinai 40 years earlier.

He recalls for this second generation the scene that their parents had witnessed.

How the glory of God presence surrounded the mountain.

And how the majesty of God was displayed in fire, thunder, and darkness.

And how the people of Israel were afraid when they heard the voice of God.

They pled with Moses to approach the Lord and speak on their behalf.

They felt that they could not stand more exposure to God’s glory,

they felt that if they heard him speaking any longer, it would literally kill them.

Even though they had discovered that they could hear the voice of God and live,

and even though Moses himself had already gone up into that fire

and darkness and come out again, they were too afraid to go any closer.

How did the Lord respond to their fearful request?

He commended them for it. He told Moses:

“I have heard what this people said to you. Everything they said is good.”

And then the Lord said something that I want us to focus on this morning:

“Oh, that their hearts would be inclined to fear me and keep all my commands always,

so that it might go well with them and their children forever.”

Oh, that their hearts would be inclined to fear me

and keep all my commands always

What is the fear of the Lord?

What does it mean to have a heart inclined to fear him?

There’s not simple answer to that question. It’s a complicated teaching.

In one sermon I can’t possibly cover this grand subject.

But it seems that as we survey Scripture and take a big view,

that three primary aspects of the fear of the Lord stand out.

So let’s look at those.

And as we do, we’ll see how the fear of the Lord motivates us

to keep all his commandments always.

Three points: I’ll give them to you as we go along.

MP#1 First, the fear of the Lord is a sense of awe at the greatness of God.

It is a sense of awe and wonder at his power and majesty and wisdom.

The songs we sang at the beginning of the service are full of this.

God of Wonders

Lord of all Creation, of water, earth and sky.

The heavens are your tabernacle, Glory to the Lord on high.

God of wonders beyond our galaxy, The universe declares your majesty.

Immortal, Invisible

Immortal, invisible God only wise, In light inaccessible hid from our eyes.

Thy justice, like mountains, high soaring above,

Thy clouds, which are fountains of goodness and love.

Do you notice a common theme in those hymns?

What is it that moves the worshipper to fear God?

What gives him a sense of awe and wonder before the Lord?

It’s the contemplation of Creation.

When a believer sees the beauty and complexity of creation,

when he sees the power of it and the mystery of it,

then he is moved to bow before the power and majesty of the Creator in holy fear.

There is a hint of that in this passage.

The Mt. Sinai experience was a supernatural event.

The voice of God speaking out of the fire was a unique event in history.

But the physical description is one of nature in its most frightening display.

A mountain on fire, billows of smoke and darkness, booming thunder,

the earth shaking—It sounds exactly like the eruption of a violent volcano.

And the Israelites knew that these natural manifestations were really

pointers to the supernatural power of the Creator and they feared him.

The Psalms are full of this. They are often looking at creation.

The frightening parts of creation and the mysterious parts,

and then drawing a line from that to the fear of God.

Psalm 33 is a beautiful example.

By the word of the Lord the heavens were made, their starry host by the breath of His mouth.

He gathers the waters of the sea into jars, he puts the deep into storehouses.

You imagine the Psalmist looking up into the sky, and vastness of stars.

And the water of the sea in jars. What’s he looking at? Must be clouds.

Somehow water comes from sea, purified and stored, so it can water the earth.

He’s amazed at the complexity of creation.

But he doesn’t stop there. He says:

Let all the earth fear the Lord, let all the people of the world revere Him.

His fear is a sense of awe at the power and wisdom of God.

Let me give you one more example. This is from a sermon Charles Spurgeon

preached in 1857. Keep in mind that speaking style was different in his day.

In the 1800s people liked flowery, poetic sermons rather than the plain style

that is popular today. So when you read Spurgeon’s sermons, they can seem

overly dramatic. You have to get in the mood and let yourself be carried along.

Did you ever, in the silence of the night, look up and view the stars, feeding like sheep, on the dark blue pastures of the sky? Have you ever thought of those great worlds, far, far away, divided from us by almost illimitable leagues of space? Did you ever, while musing on the starry heavens, lose yourself in thoughts of God; and have you ever felt, at such at a time, that you could say with Jacob, “How dreadful is this place! This is none other than the house of God, and the very gate of heaven.”

Have you ever seen the craggy hills lift their summits to the skies? Have you ever marked the tempests sailing over them, and seen the thundercloud burst upon the mountain, and heard the heavens shake beneath the tramp of the Most High, and seen the skies all glaring with fire, when God has sent his thunderbolts abroad; and have you not trembled that God was there, and have you not so known the presence of God that you were filled with trembling?

Fear took hold on you and made all your bones to shake, not because you dreaded God, but because you then saw some of his greatness . . . God is so great a being, that the rightly constituted mind must always fear when it approaches into his presence.

When you think magnificent thoughts about God, when you are in awe of him,

then you soul is purified and strengthened and you want to live a noble life.

Sin seems so petty and stupid.

It’s like playing in a mud puddle when you could be standing on the edge of the

ocean, listening to the pounding of the waves and feeling the sea breeze.

You have to train yourself to fear the Lord in this way.

You have to perhaps turn off TV. You have to deliberately look at Creation.

And allow yourself to be moved by it and then you have to deliberately

draw a line from that to the Creator and praise him.

You have to say to yourself, and maybe to those who are with you.

Look at that! Isn’t God amazing! Isn’t he beautiful. Just like the Psalmists did.

You should do all you can to open your heart to be filled with awe.

That brings us to the second aspect of fear.

MP#2 Second, the fear of the Lord is a sense of dread at His holy hatred of sin.

Our God is a consuming fire. He hates sin. His wrath burns against it.

All true fear of God contains a sense of the dread when contemplating

his wrath against sin.

Now, this is a very difficult aspect of the fear of God to understand rightly.

It requires balance. And it’s difficult to balance because there are

two things pulling against it from different directions.

The first thing pulling it off balance is that God’s holy hatred of sin is unpopular.

Even in evangelical Christian circles it is neglected and downplayed.

Some people say we shouldn’t talk about wrath and hell

if we are going to attract people to the church and lead them to Christ.

But that’s not right. No one spoke of these things more clearly than Christ himself.

Even to his followers. Even to his disciples.

I tell you, my friends, do not be afraid of those who kill the body and after that can do no

more. But I will show you whom you should fear: Fear him who, after the killing of the body,

has power to throw you into hell. Yes, I tell you, fear him.

Yes, Jesus spoke of God’s holy hatred of sin even to his own disciples.

Every time there has been true revival, this fear of God has been revived.

Believers and unbelievers are touched by the Holy Spirit

with a vivid sense of God’s wrath against sin.

One of the best examples of that in American history is the Great Awakening.

When Jonathan Edwards preached Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God

in his Connecticut church, people were crying out to the Lord for salvation.

That sermon wouldn’t go over very well in our day. But when the Holy Spirit

moves in true revival, hearts are opened to this fear of God.

But there’s something that can knock it off balance on the other side.

The Lord doesn’t want us to have the kind of dread of him that makes us

pull away from him in fear. That’s not right for Christians.

You shouldn’t dread him because you aren’t sure if he will save you or damn you.

There’s a little bit of that going on in this passage in Deuteronomy.

Part of the Israelites’ fear was that they thought God just might destroy them.

Their faith was weak. They didn’t understand grace.

That’s why they told Moses to talk to God. You talk to him. We’ll stay here.

But in the Bible the Lord calls his children to love him, trust him, seek him,

draw near to him, take comfort in him and so on.

Yes, he wants us to do all of those things—and to dread is holy hatred of sin.

Maybe dread isn’t the best word, but that’s the word the writer of Hebrews uses.

“It is a dreadful thing to fall into the hands of the living God.”

And he’s speaking to Christians.

So where do you find the balance? By emphasizing both extremes.

You have to emphasize God’s grace and mercy to the extreme.

You have to say: “There is therefore now no condemnation . . .”

You have to say, God won’t judge me, he can’t judge me, because Christ

has already paid the penalty for all my sins.

So I can approach with confidence the throne of grace.

And at the same time you have to emphasize God’s holy hatred of sin.

You have to emphasize the reality of hell and wrath for sin—just like Jesus did.

What this fear of God amounts is really a fear of sin itself.

Sin is a crime against God. A violation of his holy laws.

I think we’ve lost this fear of God in our day.

I read a story a while back that made me realize just how much we’ve lost this.

It was an incident in John Newton’s life. He was the author of Amazing Grace.

He was an Anglican minister. The constable called him to the jail to talk to

a young man who had tried to commit suicide.

Newton started by reading sixth commandment: Thou shalt not kill.

You tried to murder yourself, and God hates murder. He didn’t let up.

Why self-murder is such a heinous sin. How many people have gone to hell for it.

By this time this young man was trembling. Newton said, come to Jesus Christ.

I was a terrible sinner. I was a slave trader. I broke sixth commandment.

Jesus saved me. This young man prayed to receive Christ.

Do you fear God’s holy hatred of sin? Do you fear him so much that you don’t dare

to excuse or downplay sin because you believe in wrath and hell? I don’t.

But God wants our hearts to be inclined to fear him in this way. So I think we

need to pray for revival. Pray for the Holy Spirit to give us this holy fear.

Because, as that John Newton story shows us so well, it ultimately leads to Christ.

And that brings us perfectly to the third aspect of the fear of God.

MP#3 The fear of the Lord is a sense of dismay at offending the One who loves

you. This is the best fear of all.

Last week we saw how obeying God’s commands is a means of intimacy with him.

The preface to the Ten Commandments says:

“I am the LORD your God, who brought you out of Egypt, out of the land of slavery.”

The Lord brought Israel out of Egypt to make a covenant with them.

A covenant is a personal and formal relationship.

Marriage is the best example we have of a covenant.

It’s intensely personal, but it’s not just personal, it’s also formal.

The two parties are bound together with promises of intimacy and faithfulness.

Husband and wife publically vow to keep the commandments of love.

That’s what was happening at Mt. Sinai.

Back in Exodus 19, just before the Lord gave the Ten Commandments

on Mt. Sinai he said to Israel, You will be my treasured possession.

The Lord tells Israel: I saved you, I brought you out of slavery, so that we could

have a relationship. And part of that relationship are the laws of love.

All loving, intimate relationships require obedience.

When you love a person, you discover that person’s preferences and needs.

You discover what he loves, what he hates.

And you begin to pursue those things as a means of showing your love and

increasing intimacy. You try to give that person the things he likes and needs.

You try to avoid and shield him from the things he hates.

And the deeper your love, the more you feel the preferences and desires

of your loved one as an obligation. They become laws that you follow.

You feel the authority of love, you feel the bonds of love.

Think of all God has done for you. How he brought you out of your Egypt.

How he delivered you from slavery to sin, and gave you a new heart,

and adopted you into the family.

He’s done all those great things for you at tremendous cost to himself—

it cost him the suffering and death of Jesus Christ.

When that sinks in, you start to value God’s commandments.

You realize—this is how I love God, by obeying his commands.

And as you see all God has done for you in Christ, and as you see how important

his commandments are to him, a new kind of fear starts to grow in your heart.

You fear hurting or offending your Father in heaven.

You fear sinning against Christ’s love after all he has done for you.

I think this is the kind of fear Paul is talking about when he says:

“Work out your salvation with fear and trembling . . .”

It’s a wonderful thing when a believer has a heart that says—

the thing I fear most, is that I will sin against the love of my Father.

I’ve told you before a story a man told about something that happened to him

when he was a teenager. He was at ball practice one day and had a conflict

with his coach. He went home angry and when he got home the phone rang

and it was his coach. The conversation didn’t go well.

He argued with his coach and hung up on him.

The second he hung up, he realized—He’s going to call my dad!

Coach is going to call my dad! And he was seized with fear.

But not for the reason you think.

Not because he was afraid his dad would punish him.

You see, his dad was recovering from near fatal heart attack, still weak.

Teenage boy suddenly afraid of what would happen if coach called,

and somehow the strain of that phone call hurt his father.

Flood of dismay came over him when he suddenly thought—

What if this foolish thing I have done hurts my dad!?

So he took phone off hook, ran upstairs, confessed everything to his father.

That’s fear motivated by love.

It’s beautiful. It’s the fear God wants.

How do you get it? I think you know what I’m going to say.

By looking at Jesus Christ. By looking at the grace of God.

By thanking the Lord every day for the wonderful things he has done.

By looking at your incredible blessings. And when you are tempted to sin,

saying, How can I sin against the love of my Father and the cross of Christ?

And when you do sin, running upstairs, grabbing your Father’s hand,

and saying, I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean to hurt you.

Do all you can to cultivate a heart that fears the Lord in this way.

CONC: Bernard of Clairvaux said that the fear of the Lord

is the door-keeper of the soul.

Sin is not likely to find much welcome

in a soul that is in awe of the splendor and majesty of God,

and in a soul that trembles at the holy hatred of God for sin,

and most of all, in a soul that is dismayed by the thought of hurting the One

who has loved him at great cost.

Is the fear of the Lord the door-keeper of your soul?

Oh, that their hearts would be inclined to fear me and keep all my commands always.

That’s the Lord’s will for you.

And he has given you his Holy Spirit to accomplish it.

So let us come to the Table, seeking the Lord,

that we will be a people who fear him.