Fear or Awe?

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Real Life presents the Jack Hibbs podcast with intention and boldness to proclaim truth, equip the saints and impact our culture.

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Hey you guys, we're going to be talking about the fear of God. What is it, what is it not and why you should know.

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You can get the outlines of this podcast by going to jackhibbs.com Today. If this podcast lifts you up and encourages you to live a more fulfilled life in Christ, then make sure you leave us one of those five star ratings. To us that's like saying Amen or yes. Then that rating will encourage others to listen. Now open your hearts to what God's word has to say to you. Here is Jack Hibbs.

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We're here, everybody, welcome to the podcast and we are going to be talking today about something that is often misunderstood. I think I have to confess I've been a Christian for a long time and I am happily the product of a very, very, very healthy, sound teaching church. In those days, I grew up under a ministry that was very firm in the word and dissected every word and verse, and it was fantastic because the foundation laid makes all the difference in the world. Having said that, of course I must build upon what I have stood upon, because that's the way we all function. Did you know that, whatever your foundation is in life, you stand on it, and the thing is you want to make sure that your foundation is the right one, and, of course, as believers.

In fact, paul told the believers in Corinth Greece, he said and had to be amazing, because I've been to Corinth Greece and the biblical sites just getting from the tour bus over to the biblical site, you've got to pass through the agoura, the marketplace, the bazaar. And it is bazaar because they have incredibly grotesque ancient idols that the Corinthians worship and you can buy them. And I mean to tell you it's just beyond bad. And so the Corinthians were mixing in with their worship, ignorantly, the things of the world. And so if you read 1st and 2nd Corinthians, paul is not only often rebuking them, he's exhorting them. But the part that is so big of him which we need to take away from always is Paul opens up to the Corinthians by saying to them in both letters, 1st and 2nd Corinthians, he greets them as his beloved brothers and sisters. At Corinth he calls them saints. Corinth was the last church I would ever tell you to go to if we lived back then. But God's people were there and they're in the Bible and you read 1st and 2nd Corinthians and it's like really what a crazy place.

But part of their foundations, growing up from the very beginning, from birth, was the fact that we worship all these gods. And so for Corinthians to decide to worship one God was what the 1st century culture called us. They called the Christians atheists. Is that interesting? Because they were so polytheistic in all of these various gods and goddesses that they worshiped in demigods that when the Christian came along and said we worship one God, they called us atheists. And that term meant to them they deny all the gods. They say there's only one. And so we call them atheists. Today we use the term atheists differently, although I do believe an atheist believes in a God.

Having said that, the whole concept of the gods was based upon your offering to flirt with, get their attention, to appease them, to somehow do something and usually it was crazy stuff but always appealed to the flesh to get the attention of the gods so that you can get an answer to your need or to your request. So for those of you who've watched, for example, old movies, or even somewhat recently, but not is the Gladiator with Russell Crowe, you're reminded that the Romans would make offerings to gods before they would go to war, so that they would have the favor of the gods. And the people were extremely terrified of the gods. And when something happened to you that was bad, everybody believed that you fell out of displeasure among the gods, and whatever you got, you deserved it, and so you were outcast, you were looked down upon. Why is he sick? Oh, he upset the gods. Why did his mom die? Or why did his wife die? Or why did their child die? Oh, he must have displeased the gods. You better go down to the temple and Diana or Artemis or Athena or Atlas or Titan, and you better make an offering because you fell out of pleasure and so, and the people were terrified.

So then we come along in the Bible and we read the Bible, both Old and New Testament, and we hear the word fear and we seize up because we still have some of the ancient belief systems, maybe in our verbiage and certainly in our dictionary, that's in our head. The Bible says, for example fear God and depart from evil. And then people will say, who don't know what it means. They'll say, oh my goodness, I didn't know that we're supposed to be afraid of God. That's not what the fear of God means. Well, you just said the fear of the gods in Greece and Rome and all that stuff. No, no, no, no. That kind of fear is terrorizing. That kind of fear is debilitating. It causes you to be sick to your stomach. It causes you to, every moment of the day, your karma's getting tanked right Because, oh my gosh, what God did I offend today? Hey, it hasn't rained. It should have rained by now. We must have upset the God of rain. Get out there and do a dance, you know that kind of stuff. That's not what we're talking about when we talk about the fear of God, the fear of God.

I wanna read it to you. By the way, it's pretty much summed up in Deuteronomy 6, which is awesome. Verse one. Now, this is the commandment and these are the statutes and judgments which the Lord, your God, has commanded to teach you that you may observe them in the land which you are crossing over to possess. Stop right there.

Does not God want His kids to cross out of the world, over the Jordan, which is a symbol of death, into a new life in the promised land in Israel? Yes, didn't God say I'm gonna take you to the promised land? Yes, listen, you already know that God wants what's good for His people. You know that. No problem there, it's all good. Verse 2, that you may fear the Lord what? That you may fear the Lord, your God, to keep all His statutes and His commandments, which I command you and you and your son and your grandson, all the days of your life, and that your days may be prolonged. God says I want you to live a long, blessed, happy, joyous, prosperous life, not only for you, but for your sons, your daughters, your grandsons, your granddaughters, your descendants after you, and may all of you live a long, blessed life.

Isn't that cool. Based on what? The fear of God, the fear of God, it's tragically, in the English is spelled the same way as the fear of an earthquake the fear of God. But it means this A W E, the awe of God, B and awe of God. It means listen, that God is who he says he is, he's awesome, he is not human, he is beyond us, he is all-powerful, he is the Creator, he is the sustainer, he is all that is good and he is the final judge of all that there has ever been or ever will be, and he is the one eternal. He is the great. I am so listen.

I know this sounds kooky at first, but check it out. Just before coming here outside I saw which is normal for where we live here they're everywhere is the remarkable monarch butterfly, the monarch. There's beautiful butterflies all over the world, but there's none as amazing as the monarch butterfly. Why? Because they migrate over 3,000 miles. For example, those monarchs that are in southern Canada. When winter comes, they fly to Mexico. The only smart monarchs are the ones in southern California. They actually don't go anywhere. They stay in southern California in the summer and the winter. I don't know if you know they're not. You probably don't, that's TMI. But here's the thing God made them and when I look at them and our family, we've studied them and we've set up a monarch habitat in our backyard so we're pretty familiar with them. We can tell actually the boy monarchs from the girl monarchs and pretty cool and all this kind of stuff.

The more we learn about that, the more we are in awe of God. We're not afraid of God. We actually are blown away by God. In fact, I want to talk to God about it. Are you with me? Are you tracking? That's the awe of God when you stand.

Listen, we just had a storm come by here in southern California. Kind of no big deal, but it kicked up some big waves down at the wedge in Newport Beach. So everybody went down there to watch, to look at waves that were supposed to be 15 to 25 feet high. They do get that big there at times, but when they hit the ground you get this 20-foot wave breaking in three feet of water. The ground rumbles, the sand shakes and you can hear it in its awe. Inspiring. Now what? As I think of that and the grandeur of God and I read it this morning in our daily Bible reading that God told Job I'm the one that fills up a cloud with water and floats it to the place where I want the water to fall. Think of that. How does God move water? He floats it. How do you move water? You got to use buckets or a water truck God floats water, is he?

awesome, that should cause you to be in awe of him. And when God says follow me, because what I have to tell you is really good for you, things like this. You shouldn't have any other gods but me. Why? Because they'd have wind up killing you. A divided heart leads to a divided faith, which leads to confusion and which leads to a life of disorder, which leads to, eventually, a life meaningless and without purpose and without convictions. And when you don't have any convictions, then you have no moral rudder and then you wind up allowing anything in your life to happen. Why? Because you were not in awe of God. Okay, when you're in awe of God, listen, nobody's got to tell me Jack, be a good boy today. No one tells you that, do they? Because you love the Lord, you want to be a good boy today. You want to be a good girl today. And what's the basis? His word. David said thy word have I hidden in my heart that I might not sin against you, oh God. And so when we're in awe of God, I love the fact that he I don't know how to explain this, but when he, you know when you're alone and you're alone, you're alone, you're alone. You're reading the word yourself and almost always, unsuspectingly, there's a verse that just boom. That's the answer. Oh my gosh, lord, that's the answer to the issue that either I'm going through or the meeting I've got to go to tomorrow. This is how I'm going to open up that meeting. That's the answer. You're amazing. I'm in awe of you Translation. I fear you. Oh God, you're so amazing. Okay, so I can find Him like that and I can find Him in what has been referred to as His second Bible. The first Bible is the Bible, the second Bible is His creation. You can find Him in creation, according to Romans 1. So when you look at the monarch, you should stand in awe of God.

When you look at a documentary I just saw the other day about I think it was titled America's Builder or America's Contractor, do you know what it's about? I was shocked. Who is America's Contractor? Who is America's Builder? Do you know who it is? It's not a who, it's a what? It's a beaver. Did you know that the Department of Interior in the United States they're capturing, transporting male and female beavers to areas where there's droughts but there's a creek bed and they set up a habitat and they turned them loose and they showed the complete transformation of a wasteland by a Mr and Mrs beaver, having more little beavers build in a little pond and trees begin to grow and somehow frogs begin to get introduced and birds begin to show up. And I think the test point was in Nevada. Somewhere in Nevada, america's Builder the gopher oh, my gosh, not the gopher, the beaver, excuse me made this oasis Incredible.

What does that cause the believer to do? God, you are amazing, right? I fear you, god, or I'm in awe of you. So, christian, remember that. Do not. Nor does God want you to be afraid of him, because if you're afraid of him, then you don't want to be near him. If you're afraid of him, you're terrorized by him. And even when God shakes the earth, as the psalmist writes or as Job spoke of, you stand and you feel very small. That's always a good thing when you feel very small about yourself in the presence of God, that is to fear him. By the way, when you see him in that grandeur, that keeps you from sinning.

Now, don't get me wrong. Every one of us are sinners. Okay, none of us are going to be perfect. But the more you fear God, the less you're going to sin. Okay, I don't have posted in my bedroom or on my mirror when I shave in the morning Jack don't do drugs today, I don't have to worry about that. Jack don't uh, don't call a prostitute, I don't have to worry about that. Jack don't get in fights, I don't have to worry about are you?

with me, maybe for you at something else, but you love God and that, that something else that used to be a factor in your life. It's not an issue anymore why you fear the Lord. It's very awesome, by the way. Here's a little side note in the closing moments that we have, are any of you single out there and you're wanting to be married, here's a little bit of fatherly advice for you Don't marry anybody who doesn't fear the Lord, and please don't talk back to me right now and say but I'm going to make him fear the Lord, I'm going to pray and I'm going to get him to love God. No, you're not. No, you're not. No, you're not. Because if you can get him to love God by your actions, then somebody else can get him to not love God by their actions. Okay, let me tell you.

If you listen to what I just said a moment ago, I'll spare you a lot of grief. Only only become one with someone who is an awe of God. Why? Because after you get married and he or she is called away to a business convention in Chicago for a week, you won't have to worry about them being unfaithful, because if somebody approaches them and says hey, they'll say you know what? Not a chance. I love God, I'm a Christian. Oh, come on, come on, man, come on. No, I love God, I fear God. See you later. Are you married? Are you married? Doesn't matter if you're married or not. I fear God. Now I'm walking away, see ya, that's when you employ your feet to run from all youthful lusts. How does that happen? The fear of God is the beginning of wisdom. That's what wisdom looks like.

So, listen, you guys hit the subscribe button to stay up to date. We'd love for you to do that and, as always, if you're ever blessed by these podcasts, can you share with other people and let them know, because it's important to us. We got to get feedback. We need feedback. We don't look, we're not asking for your money, we're not selling stuff.

Nobody's saying hey, jack, we use sell our water, we use sell our microphones. No one's ever approached us and we're not in this for the money. We don't get any money. Okay, the best way that you could encourage us is to share this and other content with those that you know. That is such an encouragement to us because it kind of feels like sometimes I'm speaking into a black hole if we don't get a response. So you could really help us out by sharing it and telling other people to subscribe as well. And also, as always, remember it's time for you to live out what it is that you believe in. It's time for real life, and that's what the world is waiting for authenticity from you. Until next time you guys go to jackhibbs.com, you can find out so much more.

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