Sermon Tone Analysis

Fear of God in Exile

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This morning I want to be candid about the topic we are diving into and the struggle I, and many of you I am sure, have with this topic.

The fear of God is something that many in the church have wrestled with for centuries.

It was important to Israel throughout the OT.

It was important to the early church.

But what about today?

What does “fearing God” mean for us living in the 21st century?

ILLUS: Much to the demise of Michelle, I like to take risks.

I love, more than anything, disobeying rules when it comes to nature.

If there is a sign that says don’t climb, don’t trespass, don’t go off trail… I am doing the opposite.

Its how God wired me.

Well there is one experience where this almost got me killed.

A few years back Michelle surprised me and sent me down to Hocking Hills by myself for a three day get away.

I went for prayer, spiritual reading, and solitude.

I also did a lot of hiking.

It was amazing!

But one day I came across a sign… SHOW PICTURE.

Obviously the adventurer kicked in and I went off trail and climbed the largest waterfall Hocking Hills has.

It was early in the morning and no one was there.

And there I was at the highest peak of the waterfall and I finally turned around to see how beautiful it was and I realized how serious this situation was.

As I looked down I was filled with more fear than I’ve ever had.

Like something horrible was about to happen to me.

I couldn’t get down.

The only way off where I was to climb further up and around.

Not my brightest moment.

But Ill never forget that pit in my stomach of fear seeing how high I was.

That if I wasn’t careful surely one wrong move would be my death.

There is another experience I will never forget.

3 years ago our high mill team went to Colorado for a training and team building retreat.

While there we went up Pikes Peak which is one of the highest mountains in North America at 14,000 ft.

SEE PICTURE

This was thousands of more feet far above the waterfall.

But up here I wasn’t filled as much with fear as I was with awe, majesty, and beauty.

I could’ve stayed there all day.

I knew it was dangerous.

But it was so breath taking I didn’t want to leave.

I still knew though that even up there if I went off path or went near the edge, it would have ended badly.

I knew I couldn't do anything too foolish near the edge, but the same awesome beauty that caused me fear drew me toward it.

But the feeling in the pit of my stomach was different than tip toeing on the edge of a tall waterfall.

The first experience was full of fear like “oh boy I’m going to die!”

The second experience was me being paralyzed with a certain reverence because of how beautiful, how breathtaking and majestic the view was.

Still could have been scary but I didn’t feel fear.

These two experiences are the best way I can think to understand what it means to fear God.

On the one hand we are captivated by his beauty, his reverence, his power.

We believe and trust in faith that he is everything the Word declares and so we stand in awe of him.

On the other hand, we also have that emotion of fear and dread within us because he is God.

He is Holy.

He is Just.

He hates sin, evil, and injustice.

And in the end... he is the judge.

This topic and this tension between beauty and reverence with fear and dread is really hard for our current church culture.

Many areas of Western Christianity have taken the route of pacifying God.

Taming Him and making him more like a Jolly Santa so that he is more accepted.

This is a move of desperation to appeal to non-believers.

But one of the most dangerous things we can do is compromise the truth of Scripture in an effort to win people to Christ.

We must remember as followers of Jesus is that it is not the current trends in society or the church that dictate how we believe or what we should believe concerning God.

It is not our preferences or desires.

The criteria that forms our understanding and beliefs concerning how we respond to God are the Scriptures.

The early fathers understood this.

Especially concerning the fear of God: READ QUOTES…EARLY FATHERS

Beginning at the earliest days of the church, fearing God was natural, normal, and understood.

What about you?

Do you fear God? Do you understand the balance of fearing God and falling in love with who He is as well?

Those quotes, and many others, are greatly influenced by what we read this morning from 1st Peter.

Let’s be open to Gods Spirit and what he wants to teach us this morning and as we jump in we are going to ask Peter some specific questions so we hopefully get some clear answers.

- Does fearing God bring us closer to God?

In the Apostle Paul commands us to work out our own salvation with fear and trembling.

He then explains that the Lord provides power and strength for us because as he says, “It is God who works in us both to will and to do for his good pleasure.”

Well wait a second, we should fear God but we should stay close enough to experience his power and strength to work in us?

Usually when we fear something or someone we want nothing to do with that person.

It is this paradox, something that doesn’t connect, that Peter speaks to as well.

Let’s get the big picture first.

Peter reminds us that we are living here as strangers.

We are simply passing through.

As Christians our major citizenship is not the USA or any other nation of the world.

That’s what Peter means when he says we are in exile.

Our supreme desire is not to please our president or local officials, as important following the rules are.

No; our supreme desire is to please, obey, and live our lives in alignment with the desires of the Father.

As Paul explains this he is careful to remind these weary Christians who God is and who we are.

Lest we forget, we must keep fresh who exactly it is we are calling upon as Father.

We are calling upon One who is not only Abba, not only Father, but he is also the Judge.

You see if we forget this we can drift into this place of Christian nominalism where we think we can get away with anything we want because we have God on such an impersonal level.

But we keep in firm tension the reality of who he is, as both Abba Father and the almighty judge, we will take this relationship with more seriousness.

Later on in this powerful letter Peter mentions Jesus and how he “committed himself to Him who judges righteously ().

And then a little later in Ch. 4 speaking about those who would disregard the desire of God for their life and live the way they desire, he says of them that “they will give an account to Him who is ready to judge the living and the dead.”

Peter gets it.

This is exactly why he says that we must conduct our time here in reverent fear.

This kind of fear is not only the feeling of terror I felt at the top of the waterfall.

It also isn’t just the feeling from being on top of Pikes Peak.

Its both.

It is a healthy fear that reminds you of the seriousness of the object while not too much to make you want to be distant.

In fact it’s the opposite we are drawn in.

Moses understood this kind of fear and was intentional about helping the Israelites walk in it.

In : “Moses said to the people, ‘Do not fear, for God has come to test you, that the fear of him may be before you, that you may not sin.’”

In other words, fear him so that we might be close to him and not sin.

ILLUS: Ill never forget the time I first met Cody, a large Huskie German Shepherd mix dog.

I was a young boy hanging out at a friend’s house.

He told me about his dog Cody and how massive he was.

He was right.