In this sermon, the speaker begins by sharing a story about seeing a large jackrabbit in the Sahara Desert. He then transitions to discussing the importance of walking in the fear of God and not putting Him second in our lives. The speaker emphasizes that fearing God brings growth, life, delight, and proof of our values. He also shares a personal testimony of how he surrendered his life to God 44 years ago and experienced a transformation.

Psalms 147, I'm going to read the first 11 verses of this, Psalms 147. Praise ye the Lord, for it is good to sing praises unto our God. For it is pleasant, and praise is comely. The Lord doth build up Jerusalem, that he gather together the outcasts of Israel. He healeth the broken in heart, and bindeth up their wounds. He telleth the number of the stars, he calleth them all by their names. Great is our Lord, and of great power, his understanding is infinite. The Lord lifted up the meek, he casteth the wicked down to the ground. Sing unto the Lord with thanksgiving, sing praise upon the harp unto our God. Who covereth the heaven with clouds, who prepareth rain for the earth, who maketh grass to grow upon the mountains. He giveth to the beasts his food, and to the young ravens which cry. He delighteth not in the strength of the horse, but taketh not pleasure in the legs of a man. The Lord taketh pleasure in them that fear him, in those that hope in his mercy. The Lord taketh pleasure in them that fear him, in those that hope in his mercy. Let's pray. O Lord, we thank you for your word, and we pray for your blessing. We ask you to bless us with thy presence. We pray for any that might be joining us on the webcast. We pray for those of our body that are scattered around here and there, some in other parts of the country. But most of all, we pray that you would be glorified, that you would be pleased with our fellowship, and that we would come to have an encounter with you this morning. And we pray also, if there are any that do not know Christ as their Savior, that they would have an encounter, a life-changing encounter. In Jesus' name, amen. You may be seated. I'm going to continue on on this subject of the fear of God, never intending to do it but one Sunday, and then I did it another Sunday, and then another Sunday. And the first time we got into this, I'd ask this question, why should we fear God? And just to briefly go back over this, maybe someday I might get you an outline printed out, or we might get one on the overhead up here. But why should we fear God? And I covered the objects and reasons of fear, and one of the first things we learned is it helped us understand God Himself. We understood that His presence is dreadful, and there were things about His presence, His greatness, His majesty, what it showed us of ourselves, and also of just God's goodness. And then we looked at His name, being dreadful, and His worship to be dreadful and fearful in the church, and I based this study off of studying John Bunyan and his teaching on the fear of God, which I just started off to study for myself. And it's begun to, began to, began or begun, which is right, like some of my English teachers roll over in their grave. But it's just beginning to really affect me as I spent the last three days just really looking at the Scriptures on it. But there are things that we learned about it. We had learned, and the next time I did it, about fathers and their responsibility to teach the fear of God and why it was important for fathers to teach the fear of God. There were five reasons, basically, that they would walk humbly and that they would honor God, that their health and well-being would be good, and so they would be holy, and so they'd be blessed. And then we did the next section I did on one of the greatest needs of man and some benefits. This is one of our greatest needs, and I'm convinced now, after going over this, we've missed it in the church. We don't have a fear of God. I was thinking about how I was raised up. There's a lot of things that I didn't get, but one thing I was taught was to have a deep reverence for God in the church. You don't run it when we went to church and have a deep reverence for the pastors that God gave us. And so I grew up loving church and loving the preachers and loved all of them. And as I went along and I began to see some of the workings of warfare as I got older going on in the church, I started probably about ten observing pastors and observing them and watching them and studying them, never dreaming that I would be one and basically never desiring to be one. But it was God's doing, and God told me that this was the way it was going to be or we were going to have problems. And so it's... And I can share some stories with you about that. Maybe I will. Maybe I might do one today. We'll see. But I just looked at the things on responsibilities of the Father and then the greatest needs of man, benefits of fruits, and that's where we left off last week. I covered the benefit of reverence and four things about that and six principles about that. And the carefulness and watchfulness was the second thing. The third thing was the godly fellowship and conversation, and there were three things I shared about that and three blessings. And then that's where I'm at for today to share the fourth benefit of having the fear of God. And I'm going to just confess, I had no idea. I had no idea until a couple months ago when I began to study on what this area was about. And God showed me as a... Some while back, I had a really deep encounter with God. And I've had several close encounters with God, as maybe you have too, but this encounter was fearful and terrible and awful. And God is this week, even beginning in the last week, the last few weeks, just beginning to show me the benefit of that terrible encounter with Him that I had. And I won't go into the details of that, but I will share some principles. And so I'm just going to share, and I've been praying quite a bit, I'm just going to share some of these things today and tie together some of these things that God has been teaching me and hopefully that God will use it to impact your life. Last night, I went to have about four hours with God. And I had a little break in there in the middle of it when I come in to have some prayer time with my family and read the Scriptures. And I went back and stayed basically from a quarter of seven to eleven. And I was doing that on purpose because it was precisely 44 years ago, yesterday evening, on that date, the 10th of July, that I had told God something. And after I told God something, it totally changed me. It totally changed my life. I told God He could take me and do whatever He wanted to with me. He could send me wherever He wanted to. I was His. And I repeated that prayer again last night to God. But that's when I attribute my conversion, because something happened inside of me. And I believe I was born again 44 years ago on the 10th of July. I changed. I was transformed. I believe converted. Truly, God came into my life. And up to that point, I'd had a thing at 10 where I went forward. I'd come under conviction of sin. And I guess I prayed a prayer. I didn't even remember praying a prayer. But people tell you, you're saved now. And I was baptized. But nothing changed. Nothing. And you've heard me say this many times. And so last night, sometime at about that time, in the oldest church in the Louisiana Purchase on the back row, I had told God that. And God's been reminding me that a lot of my problems have come from me trying to go back on my word, that He could take me and send me wherever He wants and do whatever He wants. Now, doing whatever He wants with me has been a big problem. When He would want to do some things, and I would sort of object. You know, we object by getting angry. We object by getting bitter. We object by trying to get even with somebody. But it's sort of an earth-shaking thing when God comes along someday and said, I've been doing all that. I'm behind the scenes. So, I'm going to take you into a further study on the fruits of fearing God. And I'm going to take off with the enjoyment of the Word of God. I never did enjoy the Word of God before that time. I read it so I could check it off on my little Sunday school thing. Read your devotions. Check. You pray. All right. Yeah, God, I prayed. Yeah, I prayed. You know, check them off, all those things. I don't even remember how many there were. But you didn't want to fail Sunday school. So, you do those things. But nothing in my heart for God personally. And so, I want to start off and take you to Psalms. And I'm going to share quite a bit of Scripture with you. I've been in a lot of Scripture, and some of these Scriptures have amazed me. But back over in Psalms 110, is there something in the Word about a Christian enjoying the Word? That was my question. Does this come out of fear in God? Does the fear of God affect us where we have a different desire for the Word of God? Well, Psalms 111, just to ease into this, in verse 10. The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom. And that's all through Proverbs, obviously. It's in Psalms several places too. But the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom. A good understanding of all they that do His commandments. His praise endureth forever. Then go to verse 1 of chapter 112. Praise ye the Lord, blessed is the man that feareth the Lord, that delighteth greatly in His commandments. If we do not have a deep delight in the Word of God, we do not fear God. We haven't been affected. And there's more verses on this. As Jeremiah said in Jeremiah 15, 16. Thy words have found, and I did eat them, and thy words went to me, the joy and the rejoicing of my heart. Something like that. So I ask this question. Why would the Word of God give us enjoyment? And I've got five reasons. I'll go through these quickly because this is a bonafide bunny trail off of the subject. But because it gives us hope. You've got a problem and you're reading along and God gives you a rhema from the Word. And you take it as yours and it gives you hope for your situation. It gives you some hope there. Psalms 135. I wait for the Lord and my soul doth wait, and in His Word do I hope. And that is basically the meaning of the Hebrew. It's a sense of expectation, of hoping. You know Moses did this. Not Moses, Noah. This kid will get the right guy in here. But do you ever notice when he sent out the raven first of all? Because the tops of the mountains were showing. And then he finally sent out the dove. And the dove came back and he waited seven days. Then he sent the dove out again. There is a lesson of he's hoping. Can we get out of this box? Can we get out and be free? Have you been in there as long as they were? I don't know if they got seasick. But if you're inside of a ship and the waves are tossing. And that thing was so big probably maybe it floated like a Cadillac or something over it. But you get tired after a while being in there. But that was the idea. Be you of good courage and He shall strengthen your heart. All ye that hope in the Lord. Psalms 31.24. So there's a lot of things. The fear of God should propel us to wait for Him and not get ahead of Him. Anybody here beside me ever get ahead of God? And it cost you something? It cost you some problems and things? The fear of God propels us to enjoy the Word and wait on Him. And get our promises, get our nourishment and everything from the Lord. Now here's something else on that. It gives growth. Just the fear of God putting into us this enjoyment and then it gives us growth. 1 Peter 2 we know as newborn babes desire. Did you ever, I'm sure maybe a lot of you have. You got a little bucket calf. And you got the little bottle. I was going to bring one but I forgot to get it. You know it's been rejected by its mama. And so you got to feed this little bucket calf. And he comes in first of all he doesn't know what's going on. But once he gets figured out when you stick that nipple in his mouth and he's going to get some milk. Wow does he like that. And he sees you coming and he, or if you got a bunch of them they all come around. But they delight in that. They delighted in their mother but their mother didn't delight in them. But it gives them nourishment. Do you go to the Word of God in the morning like that? Oh Lord I'm so glad to get to the Word. So glad to get to the Word. Do you delight in the Word of God more than you do a good steak meal if you ever get one of those? You know the favorite meal your mother would make. Oh good mom's making this. You know. And you just, how about it? It gives us growth. We delight in it because it strengthens us. It gives us growth. It gives us life. Matter of fact I was over in 1 Peter. Looking at this passage. As newborn babes desire the sincere milk of the Word that you may grow thereby. One of the evidences of the fear of God in our life. Is we fear to try to live life without the Word of God. Where as a professor they can live life without the Word of God. Because there's no fear. But he said over in, I was looking over in 1.23. Being born again not of corruptible seed but of incorruptible by the Word of God which liveth and abideth forever. The Word of God. All of a sudden when we are born again. We realize we were living in a terrible state. If we would have died without Christ we would have went straight to hell. And the Word of God brought conviction in our life. The emptiness of our life. And the Word of God that gives you life. You want to keep getting it because it gave you the new birth. It brought the message of salvation. Of your wretched state and your sin. And the redemption in Christ by the blood of Christ. Why would you not want to stay in that which gave you life at first? But there's so many that say, oh yes I'm a Christian and whatever. And I'll ask them, well how much time do you spend in the Word of God? Oh, I look at my Bible when I get up every morning. What do you mean look at your Bible? Oh, I glance over there on the shelf and there it is. When's the last time you read it? Are you a Christian? Are you a real Christian? I said a prayer. But, do you have any desire to read your Bible? Well, not really. Let me tell you what I think and then I'm leaving quick. But I think if you die right now you go straight to hell. If you don't desire the Word of God, the Bible says, as newborn babes desire the sincere milk of the Word that you may grow by, that's a vital sign of a Christian. And so it gives delight. And I will delight myself in thy commandments which I have loved. Psalms 119.47 I ask myself this, and I'm learning this, and I tremble that I learn so slow and I forget so much, but will you fear to not put Him first? Will you fear to not put Him first? It gives growth, it gives life, have these things, it gives delight to us, it gives proof of what you value. I thought about something. I've got all the change I had. It's amazing how you give out some money for somebody to go get something and then all of a sudden not much change comes back. And I started off the week I had some money. And then as I was looking around this morning I was left with, after all of this stuff this week, I was left with $3. A rich man at least had got $3. That's because I didn't give it away. But would anybody here like to have $3? You would? Come on up, Roy. I'll beg or help another one here. Now then, before I give you the $3, could I entice you to take the water instead? It's your choice which you think is more valuable than $3. Well, there's one other little detail I need to add to you before you get the $3. You have just gone on a tour and they skirted into the edge of the Sahara Desert. And they stopped to look at this, look around in the desert and everybody got out and they're looking and you see a four-foot jackrabbit. You've never seen a jackrabbit that big. They've got big ones out in Wyoming. But he hops off over a little hill and says, I want to get another look at that jackrabbit. So you hop over the hill too and you're looking at that rabbit. My, that is something. And so then he says, I better get back to the bus. And you get back over the hill and they left you out there on the edge of the Sahara Desert. And you go, oh, it's going to be a while before I get back to town. So you started walking back up towards the next town which just happens to be like 50 miles away. And so you're walking and you're getting really pretty thirsty after you've walked all day and it's 120 degrees out there in the desert. And somebody comes along and he offers you $3 or a glass of water. Now which is more valuable to you at this point? The water. Okay, so you get the water. It's John's water. There you can get some. But this is the point. All of a sudden some circumstances are going to change in your life. And the Word of God is to be such a delight, such a joy. And it gives proof of what you value. David said, Psalms 119.72, The law of thy mouth is better unto me than thousands of gold and silver. So somebody comes along, you've been walking out in the desert for three days and they say, hey, I'm going to give you 100 pounds of gold. Or I'll give you a 5 gallon jug of water. But I'm leaving. You'll die in the desert with your 100 pounds of gold. He'll come back and get it. But that's it. Think about this. I've thought about this. That's how we make such wrong choices. We just do this. And this is where we should be growing. One day, Jesus came along and He knocks on the door and these two sisters Oh wow, it's Jesus! And He comes in and He sits down and He begins to talk to them and one of them, instead of sitting there, hops up and goes and rattles around in the kitchen and gets herself worked up into a fury. But what a privilege to have Jesus come, sit down in your living room and talk to you. And that's what we have every morning. What do you desire first? Your email list? Your newspaper? Or whatever. What a choice. What a choice. Now I want to talk to you about another fruit. This one is a benefit of fearing God. You want to go over to Nehemiah chapter 5. It puts into our life that fear of God puts into our life something that many times nothing else will. And that is self-denial. Self-denial. If there's anybody we really like it's ourself. You know, when the pie comes around you're going to really look at the biggest piece, unless you're a mother. You're going to look at the smallest piece. But, you know, when you get the picture of somebody who do you look for first? Me. No, you don't look for me, you look for you. Oh, I forgot to comb my hair. And all this stuff. But look at Nehemiah chapter 5. Here's an amazing thing and I didn't even mark this, so you have to bear with me while I get there. But Nehemiah we know was in a situation, Ezra and Nehemiah that he was in and I never noticed this how unselfish he was. But in Nehemiah chapter 9 and this is where they're they've got these problems, you know, they're developing and he's trying to get Jerusalem rebuilt and get things all established and things are not too good in the setting with people. In verse 9 he says, Also I said, It is not good that ye do ought ye not to walk in the fear of our God because of the reproach of the heathen or our enemies. His brethren were not living right, they were not doing right. They were putting each other into bondage, loaning money and taking their lands and taking away their possessions. And in verse 6 he said, I was very angry when I heard their cry in these words. So he had a conference with himself in verse 7. He said, I consulted with myself and I rebuked the nobles and the rulers. And then he comes around 9 and he gives them a little sermon. He said, It's not good that ye do ought ye not to walk in the fear of our God because of the reproach of the heathen or our enemies. And he goes on down through there, but what you don't know is while they were suffering and sacrificing he had not been taking something that all the other governors had. They could get, all of the leaders, they could get some money from the authorities. In verse 14 he said, Moreover from the time that I was appointed to be their governor in the land of Judah, from the twentieth year even until two and the thirtieth year of Artaxes the king, that is twelve years, I and my brethren have not eaten the bread of the governor. He went through all these years where he could have had some bread. But the former governors that had been before me were chargeable unto the people and had taken of them bread and wine. They would take from the people the bread and the wine, their goods for themselves to feed themselves. Besides forty shekels of silver yea, even their servants bear rule over the people. But so did not I because of the fear of God. Isn't that interesting? He denied himself something that he could have had because of the fear of God. The fear of God was the cause of his self-denial. And if you go through the scriptures you'll see this principle goes through the scripture. Those that feared God would deny themselves in many different areas. 1 Corinthians 8.13, I will eat no flesh while the world standeth, lest I make my brethren to offend. I believe Paul did that because of the fear of God. And I was with you in weakness and in fear and in much trembling. 1 Corinthians 2.3. I was talking to Jeff about that. I said, I believe that's because he feared God. He realized what he was doing. And it's just a yielding of the rights and it's the principle that Jesus taught, and whosoever does not bear his cross, that means his self-denial, and come after me, cannot be my disciple. It's not just that we have become a Christian, but that the Christian life that we have brings into us because of the fear of God now that we have, a denial of self. And that's the cross. And he also, he said in Luke 14.27, 28.33 in that area, that forsaken, not all that he hath. I wrote down a little something. We can fail. We can fly. Boy, I shared with somebody this week as I was counseling. It's been a long time. This brother's got a real problem. But I shared the story how I had failed with an uncle up in New York years ago. And the grief that it's caused. We can fail. We can mess up. We can be a demon. I can do that. And the fear of God should keep us on our toes. Here's another one, which would be my sixth one. Enjoy the Word of God, self-denial. And this sort of goes along with the one we just did. And this is a singleness of heart. The fear of God puts into our life a singleness of heart. It just drives us to be one, united, one in our spirit. Colossians 3.23 is a passage that I gleaned this from. Colossians 3.23 and it said, it's mentioned two times. It's mentioned in Ephesians also. But he said, and whatsoever, 22 I guess it was, yes. Colossians 3.22. And he's talking about the servants who come through their wives, husbands, children, fathers when they hit the servants. Obey in all things your masters according to the flesh, not with eye service, as men pleaser, but in singleness of heart, fearing God. And I did a little study on that from the Greek. And it means no foes. In other words, your life is one sheet. Simplicity. You're not folded over into being duplicity. God is one. It's the opposite. It's also involving simplicity and sincerity. This is what singleness of heart is. It's simplicity and it's sincerity. The passage over in Ephesians chapter 6 and verse 5, servants be obedient to them that are your masters according to the flesh with fear and trembling and singleness of your heart as unto Christ. And the reason I think that God wants us to do this, let me just say it's like this. Just doing something for God doesn't get it done to where God is happy with it. Because many times we do things for God with a hidden motive. When we do our giving, many times that can be deceptive. We won't give, and I've seen this so many times, unless we get something out of it. I remember one time a man offered $10,000 to our church or to give our church $1,000 a year. I can't remember. I don't know. I'm not sure if it was forever, but it was for a long time. Now why do you think he was doing that? Do you think he had something to get out of it? I didn't think so because he didn't even go to our church. But we happened to, this is a second church I went into and we got in there and they had a debt of $64,000 and they hadn't paid on it for a year. And the interest alone is $8,000 and God miraculously provided the $8,000 out of prayer. With singleness of heart, we were praying one Wednesday night for $8,000 because the bank was coming to get the place. And so we were praying the next morning. I received a phone call because I'd sent in to the denomination that we were in for a request for some help. They had a group of men that helped churches and the most they would give was $8,000. So I'd sent in and made a request if they could help us explain their situation. And they brought that up the next morning at the meeting and they were saying, doesn't look good. Let's go to the next thing. And one man said, wait a minute, let me just go call and talk to the pastor or somebody there. And he called me up. I got a phone call and I shared with him what happened in that church. And he went back and he said, brethren, we need to give them $8,000. And then this other guy calls me up, this man that says, I'm going to give you $10,000. You know, God took care of that debt by the time we were done. And so we took the $10,000. He put that on there. It went a long way. You see, God just but we were, I was determined that we needed to get out of debt. That was a bondage to the church. And after the first year, second year, somewhere in there, I came to him and I said you need to not pay me a salary anymore. You can't handle this and get us out of debt. And so being single of heart means that you get something done. You get something done for Christ. How do you recognize it? How do you recognize the singleness of heart? And I wrote down these three things. It's going to be recognizable by the helpfulness without hidden motives. Without hidden motives. I mean, I'll tell you this story about when I, this was my first shocker when I went into the Air Force. And my buddy Bill Stewart was getting the Bible study started in the barracks and had a Bible study going and the chaplain calls us in and tells us we've got to stop the Bible study. I was thinking about this guy. I'm hoping he got saved. But he said we've got to stop the Bible study. And we said, what? They have a beer blast and tear the place apart, blow the dorm up. And we don't care, but if we have a little quiet Bible study, you as a chaplain, are you going to shut us down? He said, well, you can keep your Bible study if I can get credit for starting it. This guy was of my own denomination that I was raised in. Well, sure, we don't care. What a thing. He was a major bucking for lieutenant colonel. No fear of God. And he gave us a lot of trouble. He gave trouble when I was teaching in a Sunday school class and the kids would ask about him going to the club and drinking and everything. No fear of God was evident. No singleness of heart. That was just there. And something else. The singleness of heart is going to be evident, I believe, by faithfulness. Faithfulness to God, faithfulness to others, and by benevolence. The bountifulness. That was 2 Corinthians 9.13. You look at their giving, how they're giving out of their poverty and everything. That was because they had a singleness of heart to God. They had the fear of God in their life. But there's one other thing. It's just an evidence of a genuine Christian. Singleness of heart. The fear of God. And it makes you a fanatic. It just makes you weird to the world. How else can you explain a man like Abraham marching off on a 3 days journey with a knife and some wood and some fire to go kill his son? Abraham had the fear of God on his life and that's the only reason he did it. Because he loved God and he feared God and that was way back before you had the Scriptures, before you had Esau where you could study and get all these things and information. I mean, all he had was just God speaking to his heart. And he had the record of whatever was there with Genesis and there. But what would drive this man to do that? Well, here's what God said about him. For now I know that thou fearest God, seeing that thou hast not withheld thine only Son from me. God will test us. God will test us. Here's something else on how to recognize and I'm telling you, this is beginning to affect me this week as I was looking at this stuff. Lord, You, the Word of God is the center of the thoughts and intents of the heart and these things. Romans 3.15 said, No fear of God before their eyes. And how is that? They would kill Christians. These ungodly would kill Christians. But you go through there without a fear of God in our hearts, these things go on in our churches and in our homes anyway with slander, gossip, backbiting, false accusers, 2 Timothy 3.18. Why would these things go on? Because we have no fear of God to disobey Him and His Word. Even Paul, when he had a confrontation in Acts 23 with some of the Jews, and he turned to one of them and they mouthed off back at him and then they gave a command to smite him. And he said, God's going to smite you, you whitewashed wall. And then he said, don't you fear to revile God's high priest. Something like that. And then he said, I wish not. I didn't know, brethren. I didn't know. He still had respect for that position because of his honor of God and fearing God. Then he got him off track onto something, tried to get himself out of that jam that he was in. But how do we treat God personally? Go over to Zechariah chapter 7. Zechariah chapter 7. And there's other places in the Bible. But in Zechariah chapter 7, Zechariah's just before Malachi. You know, Isaiah, God had come along to him and he said, you find pleasure in exact all your labors in the day of your fast. God was a little sensitive to that. And Zechariah's sort of the same thing about it. They've got these things going along, like in verse 3, And to speak unto the priests which were in the house of the Lord of hosts, and to the prophets, saying, Should I weep in the fifth month, separating myself as I have done these so many years? Should I carry on the same thing of weeping? God's got an answer for them. Then came the word of the Lord of hosts unto me, saying, Speaking to all the people of the land and to the priests, saying, When you fasted and mourned in the fifth and the seventh months, I've got a question for you. God says, I've got a question. Even those seventy years, did ye at all fast unto me, even unto me? Did you come to church today for you or for God? Did you come here to please God? Did you get up this morning to live this day to please God or live to please yourself? God's got feelings. And we're careful sometimes to make sure that we don't get our feelings hurt. Exodus 32.6 And they rose up early on the morrow and offered burnt offerings and brought peace offerings. And the people sat down to eat and to drink and rose up to play. God saw that. They're worshipping God. Burnt offerings, peace offerings. Then they rose. You know that Hebrew word? I looked that up and that's used for laugh six times, mock four times, and sport two times. Wow. 1 Corinthians 10.7 Paul said they sat down and they rose up to play the same thing. I want to share a little thing I wrote down to myself yesterday on this. It's something I'm learning about from the fear of God and I've been observing this for years. But when I do wrong, there's always a consequence. Have you ever noticed this? That when you do wrong there's a consequence? I think a lot of times because of the lack of the fear of God we don't put the two together. The sin and the consequence. We just think it's a coincidence. And no, God has said no, that's a consequence. It may be in an hour. It may be the next day. It may be a week. It may be a month. It may be a year. But God links these things together. The cursing and the blessing. The principle. And I began observing this many years ago and observing it for myself to when oh Lord I know I shouldn't have done that. And I know you've got a long rod. But the fear of God will make us more careful in this area. I think when we come to communion it's a time to really do serious inventory. We don't take it serious. But they did. That's why Paul said many sleep. Joseph and his brothers is an illustration of this. They had no fear of God. They had no fear of God in their life. They didn't have a singleness of heart. And so they had no fear of God to throw their brother into a pit. They were going to kill him. But was there a consequence? There sure was. Why would it work for them and not for us? It does. It does. Did something happen to you this week? Did you go ask God why did this happen? God's got a reason. God's got a reason. Let me go to the seventh one that I had. The fear of God moves us to have compassion. You say compassion? How would the fear of God move us to have compassion? That's a good question. I'm glad you asked it. Let's look at it a little bit. Go to 1 Kings 18. This one is really interesting. I sometimes think that because of our lack of fear of God we have a lack of compassion. We can turn our back on each other. 1 Kings 18. Here's the setting. And we're familiar with this one. The fear of God moves us to have compassion. Just like Jesus. He said, I have compassion on the multitudes. Look at verse 1. And Ahab said unto Obadiah, Go into the land and to all the fountains of water and to all the brooks for adventure. We may find grass to stay the horses. Say ye the horses and mules alive that we lose not all the beasts. And so they went into all of this. But here's what I want you to see. It had to do with the fear of God The scripture had this testimony in verse 3 that he feared the Lord. He feared the Lord. And so he hid the prophets. You know, they're trying to... Ahab and Jezebel, they're really quite a pair. He feared the Lord greatly. Why was this so? Why did he fear the Lord? To have compassion on them enough to hide them. Well, I've got some lessons on this. Starting off in verse 12. You know, Elijah showed up and told Obadiah. He's out there looking for some water and he shows up. Hey, go tell the king I'm here and I want to have a talk with him. And Obadiah said, you're going to get me killed. I'm going to show up there and you just got to take you off somewhere else. I don't want to do this. And he said, no, I'm going to really show up. But one of the things Obadiah told him in verse 12, he said, it shall come to pass as soon as I am gone from thee that the Spirit of the Lord shall carry thee with her, I know not. And so when I come to tell Ahab he cannot find thee, he shall slay me. But I, thy servant, fear the Lord from my youth. From his very youth. I think this is one of the things we've lost. Our young people, we need to know, we need to fear God. And there's some reasons that we're going through this and that's why we're doing this. But here's some lessons that I learned just from Obadiah looking at this. His fear of God gave him the ability to hide those hundred prophets. It gave him the courage to hide those hundred prophets. It gave him the mercy that he needed and he denied himself. It gave him all of that. By the way, Obadiah means servant or worshipper of God. And something else, his training from his youth gave him, I believe, these four things. It gave him self-discipline. And you say, how do you know that? Well, I believe that self-discipline was in his life because he wasn't thinking about himself. But it was evidenced by these four things. He had a sense of duty to do what was right. What was right was to have compassion. Don't worry about your own skin. Do what's right. Also, he had strength of character. The fear of God, it all trickles down in all these things. It gave him the strength of character to do what is right. This is why many times we have a weak character inside of ourselves. And it goes back to the no fear of God. The fear of God produces strong character and alertness of God. You ought to get the book, Gaining Favor with God and Man by William Thayer and read that on self-denial. I was going to bring that and read some of it to you. It's really good. Alertness of mind. That was another thing. The fear of God gave him alertness of mind to recognize that he could do something, but it might cost him his life. And a desire to please God. These four things. A sense of duty, a strength of character, alertness of mind and a desire to please God. Better to offend Jezebel and Ahab than God. Self-sacrifice, his training from his youth, self-discipline and self-sacrifice. Andrew Murray said this, There's no feeling of well-being unless you're in harmony with the law of God. This law of God, to live by the fear of God. There's no feeling of well-being unless you're in harmony with the law of God. The conscience will say there's something not right here. Here's a third lesson on this. The fear of God trickling down into his life gave him a determination to do the will of God. A determination to do it. Andrew Murray said, My duty is never measured by what I feel is within my power to do, but what God's grace makes possible for me to do. It's not what I feel like it's within my power to do, but what God's grace makes possible. The fear of God trickling down into his life made it possible for him to do that by the grace of God. For now I know that thou fearest God. That was God's grace in Abraham's life. The willingness to die if need be, another lesson. Then the last one there is whenever we have the fear of God, there's going to be an outward expression of our testimony somehow. He said, Really? Really. The fear of God just doesn't stay within. It comes without. It comes without. This is why you won't share Christ. Because you don't have the fear of God upon your life. This is why I won't do it sometime. I forget about the fear of God. I have the fear of man. And if you're consistently like that, I believe you need to check and see if you're obeying the commands of Christ. Go into all the world. Preach the gospel. The early church, everywhere they went, they're talking about Jesus. You don't quit talking about Christ. I'm going to turn you into the authorities. Turn me in. I can't help but speak. What's wrong with us? They had no fear of man because the fear of God had released them. It's a release. It's a freedom. Cornelius, a devout man, and one that feared God with all his house, a Roman soldier. Get you? Living in a pagan society. He said one, a devout man, and one that feared God with all his house, which gave much alms to the people and prayed to God always. The fear of God in his life. He feared God. And he had this outward testimony. Let me go to another one. Maybe I better close down on this one. The one after this one. This one is on prayer. I'm going to close down on this one. The next one. I got hung up on it yesterday. Wow. It's on humility. As I got into the fear of God in the realm of humility, it's like I walked into another room. And it's a little rough. But let's close up with this one. Prayer. Would fear of God affect your prayer life? Would it? Would the fear of God affect our prayer life? He'd rumble around through the Scriptures. And like in Acts 10-2, we go back to Cornelius since we were just talking about him. I don't know if I got him marked here or not. But it says that one that feared God and prayed to God always. And prayed to God always. I ran into something I didn't pursue, but I'll let you do it and you can share with me. He prayed to God always because he feared God. And God has told us that we're to pray without ceasing and all these different things. But I want to share something with you about prayer. And if you think that every now and then you run into a preacher that's a little tough on you or rough, I'm going to share something with you that Bunyan said that will rattle your cage and get you thrown in prison. That's why you got put in prison probably, saying things like this. But before I get to what Bunyan said, I want to read to you about Jesus. In Hebrews verse 5 and verse 6. Have you ever thought about that? I haven't. But I'm going to give you a little bit that I thought about it. Why does the devil try to make us afraid? Maybe you don't jump out of a closet and say, Boo! But there will be something come along and then all of a sudden you begin to get these thoughts. Where do these thoughts come from? You begin to worry. And I do this too, I just begin to worry about it. And this is where the enemy can get in there and he'll just work where we're going to camp. If we're going to camp on fear, he's going to come along and ring our bell. Yeah, you've got to think about this a little bit. But I've got to think about this. And I want to make a statement before I get into what Bunyan says. My statement I wrote down, fear is a form of reverence. That's what the Scripture says. We're to fear God and keep His commandments. Let's hear the conclusion of the whole matter. We're to fear God and keep His commandments. That's the basis, our whole basis of this study is Ecclesiastes 12, 13. Fear God and keep His commandments. Fear is a form of reverence and worship. And so if the demons can get us to fear, they're getting our attention. They're getting our focus. They're getting our reverence. They're getting our worship, our attention. They're getting our priorities being focused over there where they're at. And we shouldn't do that. If we keep our gaze on God, we might glance, oh, wow, that looks pretty bad. God, I see that You're sufficient. You're sovereign. Nothing happens. These things don't come unless You are allowing it. I praise and worship You, but if You stay over there, oh, wow, that really looks bad. Would You look at that? My, that's the ugliest storm I've ever seen in my life. Oh, that might hit my house. I might do this and that. Listen to what Bunyan said about prayer in relation to godly fear. This godly fear is so essential to right prayer. And right prayer is such an inseparable effect and fruit of this fear that thou must have both or none. Let me say that part again. Godly fear is so essential to right prayer. The fear of God is so necessary for right prayer. If you don't have one, you don't have the other. Could that be why we don't pray as much as we should? And he goes on. You think, that was a little rough. Well, he's just getting introduced here. And so he says, this godly fear is so essential to right prayer. Are you praying right? And right prayer is such an inseparable effect and fruit of this fear that thou must have both or none. He that prayeth not, feareth not God. Are you a Christian? Do you pray every chance you get? He that prayeth not, feareth not God. Yet he that prayeth not, fervently and frequently, feareth Him not. And so he that feareth Him not cannot pray. For if prayer be the effect of this fear of God, then without this fear, prayer, fervent prayer, ceases. How can those pray or make conscience of the duty that fear not God? O prayerless man, thou fearest not God. What is the chief thing that's lacking in our prayers or in our churches? You can go and we've got programs and we've got you name it, almost hardly will you find a church that prayeth. And we're not any better than anybody else. But that was the chief mark of the early church. Is that everything they did came out of prayer. And when they had an event like an Ananias and Sapphira come along and they dealt with it, they got back on track and the fear of God was back. And God added to the church, we have lost it. We will do everything but pray. My house shall be called the house of pleasure, house of movies, house of this and that, concerts, parties. My house shall be called the house of prayer. You know what was missing in Saul of Tarsus' life? I believe a genuine prayer time with God. Because the first thing that happened to him when he met Jesus, he said, behold he prayeth. Behold he prayeth. Let's pray. Well God, I confess again publicly that I don't think I've had enough of the fear of God in my life. And I recognize your hand. And we all recognize your hand. And if we knew how terrible and if we could taste hell for a second, it would propel us to have the compassion in these things that we mentioned for our brethren, for our brothers and sisters, our aunts and uncles, our moms and dads that don't know you. But Lord Jesus, the amazing thing is that you had understanding of God because of the fear of God and shall make him a quick understanding in the fear of God. Lord, as I'm going through this study, I feel like Isaiah when he said, woe is me, I'm undone. And we stand before your word and we get ready to sing a song and we get ready to go do this and that to go on into the week. Lord, as we go this week, I've asked you to talk to us. I've asked that the Spirit of God would reveal to us, Christ, that we would recognize what you're saying to us. We don't compare ourselves with other people. We compare ourselves with your word. And if we look at that and compare our life with your word, we'll cry out with Isaiah, woe is me. He's going through all those woes, Father, in the word about other people, but when he got a good glimpse of you, he said, woe is me. And I say, woe is me. Lord, may we pray. Lord, I hear of a church that's in our country that you're using this church. And they've got a project going on and everything they do, they pray. Somebody comes here, they pray with them. Everything they do while that project's going on, they're praying. And they may not have everything right and we may not have everything right, but you are blessing. And it could it be that we are lacking in the blessing of God in our life, Father? Could it be that we're lacking in your blessing so much it's because we have so little fear of you? Father, do we go off into our day without praying over our day? I think we do. Do we commit ourselves to do something without praying about it? God, I would bring this that we are presumptuous. Father, do we buy things without praying about it and giving you a chance to give it to us? You say you have not because you ask not. Father, do we have idols in our life? Father, search our hearts. Break our hearts if need be. I thank you for the study. Sometimes it's just been terrifying in me and I think I need that. But also, Father, I see that those that had the fear of God were free. They had the most of the joy of God in their life. They had the most of the peace of God in their life, Father, and we want that. They had the most of the power of God in their lives because they had no other fears but you. And so thank you for the encouragement. You're encouraging us. You met with us to tune us up. To check us and to see if there's something there. You want to be all and in all. So remove from our lives Holy Spirit. Bring further conviction, deeper conviction. We thank you for your gentleness. But sometimes it's a little rough when you get down there to get the old tooth out and you have to do a root canal. But it's better that we have the root canal than that the infection contaminate us and get us sick and maybe even kill us. Do thy work. Thank you for the Word. Thank you for the subject. Thank you for the blessing of Christ. How you do not give up on us, Lord. You don't want any competing affections. You want our life to be single. And we want to be single too. Thank you for blessing. And Lord, I pray for your blessing on each one here. We desire thy blessing. We need your blessing. And you want to bless us. May we be a people, if we're known for nothing else, that a people that have the blessing of God on our lives. Forgive us for our lack of prayer. These things. Thank you for that Word that says the Father himself loveth you. Thank you that there's no condemnation in Christ. Thank you that you're giving us this Word to encourage us, to lift us up. And I pray for the lifting up of a soul that might be here that's without Christ. Oh, that they would fear to face another day without Jesus as their Savior. If there'd be one like that. Thank you in Jesus' name, Father. Amen.