Latest / First Love Revolution / One of Those People series (Part 3): "The Fear of the Lord" | October 15, 2023

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One of Those People series (Part 3): "The Fear of the Lord" | October 15, 2023 · First Love Revolution

• 0:03
  Speaker 2: Welcome to the Revolution Church.
• 0:05
  Speaker 1: Message Series one of those people.
• 0:07
  Speaker 1: You can find the entire series in video and podcast format, as well as other messages, at FirstLoveRevolutioncom.
• 0:14
  Speaker 1: Here's special guest, pastor John Lology, with today's message.
• 0:20
  Speaker 2: You think God stretches you.
• 0:22
  Speaker 2: He stretches all of us.
• 0:23
  Speaker 2: To walk in faith is certainly a stretch.
• 0:26
  Speaker 2: I have had a few people say does this mean you're going to be leaving us?
• 0:31
  Speaker 2: I want to assure you.
• 0:32
  Speaker 2: God's just kind of given us a lot of understanding into the model he's calling us to.
• 0:38
  Speaker 2: The teaching will be videoed out from this campus to the other campuses.
• 0:44
  Speaker 2: I'm not leaving you.
• 0:46
  Speaker 2: I'm not going anywhere.
• 0:47
  Speaker 2: Certainly, I'll be investing a lot of time and energy in helping this first multi-playing work get off the ground.
• 0:53
  Speaker 2: I'm so happy to be able to share this with you guys, so happy to one.
• 0:58
  Speaker 2: Have you begin to add this, please, to your prayer list, because the only way that new ground is taken for the kingdom of God is first by the arrows of intercession, as you all know.
• 1:08
  Speaker 2: Please join us in praying as we begin to go in Canvas neighborhoods and start building up a core team and aim for that Easter 2023 launch.
• 1:19
  Speaker 2: Thank you, guys for listening to that.
• 1:20
  Speaker 2: I'm also very excited to introduce our guest teacher this morning.
• 1:26
  Speaker 2: I think it was, I don't know, maybe nine months ago.
• 1:28
  Speaker 2: We were praying and somehow God led us to get online and look something up and we got onto one church ministries and we were looking at their annual conference or one of their annual conferences and a lot like our revival week.
• 1:42
  Speaker 2: Even some of the same people that we have had out here or scheduled to come out here were teaching at their conference and as we just watched them engage in worship, our hearts were really drawn to what God was doing at one church ministries.
• 1:57
  Speaker 2: Then we listened to the message by one of the main pastors of one church ministries, john Lowell G, on the fear of God.
• 2:06
  Speaker 2: As we were listening to this message on the fear of God, we felt like the Lord said to us to invite him specifically to come and to give that message.
• 2:16
  Speaker 2: Now, just to give you a little understanding into like pastor, teacher world, no pastor, no teacher has ever had another church call them and ask them to come and give their fear of God talk.
• 2:28
  Speaker 2: That's just not one that's high on the menu for anybody these days, but it was at the top of the menu for us and so we reached out and we asked and by the grace of God, this man who I did not meet until last night said yes, by faith to come out and to give this message.
• 2:47
  Speaker 2: And I want to encourage you to open up your hearts to what God has to say.
• 2:51
  Speaker 2: A private prayer between me and the Lord is God, I want to lift up to you a bride that fears you.
• 2:59
  Speaker 2: That fears you, and I don't know how to do that.
• 3:03
  Speaker 2: God, I don't know what causes us to fear the Lord, where it comes from, how you do it, but I long for this and as he was teaching this message last night, my heart was just burning like, oh God, what a great grace it would be to be a people who had this incredible fear of God.
• 3:25
  Speaker 2: And I know some of you are like I don't know that I want that.
• 3:27
  Speaker 2: Well, you just need to open up your heart and listen.
• 3:29
  Speaker 2: Can we welcome Pastor John Lowjie as he comes up to teach us this morning?
• 3:33
  Speaker 1: Thank you, Well, hello, church on the front range.
• 3:57
  Speaker 1: I am so excited to be here this morning.
• 4:00
  Speaker 1: I just want to say from the outset I had no idea that the announcement was going to be made last night until I got here.
• 4:09
  Speaker 1: This is obviously a momentous occasion for you guys and I was taken completely off guard, which I suspect is what Pastor Shane likes to do.
• 4:19
  Speaker 1: I don't know, but I was sat there watching it, thinking why would you have a guest speaker come after this?
• 4:26
  Speaker 1: It's so enormous what's happening.
• 4:28
  Speaker 1: But you know, as I was listening to the video, I became aware of the significance of me being here at this time and I'll kind of explain a little bit more of that as we go along.
• 4:41
  Speaker 1: But even the explanation of your name was helpful, because it's a really weird name if you don't know what the front range is.
• 4:51
  Speaker 1: And when I mentioned to people that I'm going to speak at a church called the Church of the Front Range, I got lots of funny responses.
• 5:01
  Speaker 1: One of my funniest responses was one of our leaders in the UK who said Church of the Front Range, he said, is that next to the little house on the prairie which I loved.
• 5:13
  Speaker 1: All right, I've got no room to talk.
• 5:17
  Speaker 1: I actually live in Wisconsin, in a city called Kenosha, which I'm reliably told sounds like a sneeze Kenosha, god bless you.
• 5:29
  Speaker 1: Okay, so that's where I reside.
• 5:32
  Speaker 1: You probably have picked up already that this is a really unusual Wisconsin accent and I suspect as I look out there, people are looking and thinking I don't think that people from Wisconsin speak like that.
• 5:45
  Speaker 1: Well, I'm not from Wisconsin, obviously.
• 5:49
  Speaker 1: I come originally from the UK, but I've lived out here since 1993, where I have done everything I can to adjust to American life.
• 5:59
  Speaker 1: As you see, I'm wearing my plaid tee, my plaid shirt today, just to relate to you guys.
• 6:06
  Speaker 1: I make every effort.
• 6:07
  Speaker 1: I sent a picture to my wife and she said you look like a lumberjack.
• 6:12
  Speaker 1: I said nailed it.
• 6:14
  Speaker 1: That's what I was aiming for.
• 6:18
  Speaker 1: All right, so I just want to sort of springboard off what Pastor Shane said at the beginning when he was introducing me.
• 6:26
  Speaker 1: I just want to explain to you.
• 6:30
  Speaker 1: I don't typically do public speaking in conferences outside of the little family of churches that I'm involved with.
• 6:38
  Speaker 1: So just to explain, I've spent the last 30 years being involved in laying foundations in churches and planting new churches.
• 6:48
  Speaker 1: That's pretty much what I do.
• 6:49
  Speaker 1: I've planted a number of churches and I love these churches and part of my commitment to building well is that I'm very invested in those churches and that has caused me to say no to things generally when the invitation came in.
• 7:08
  Speaker 1: First of all, I don't know any of you guys, you're all complete strangers to me and literally in my mind I was preparing the standard Thank you so much for inviting me, but unfortunately I won't be able to do this and then explaining why.
• 7:25
  Speaker 1: But there was something about the fact that I was being invited in to speak on the fear of the Lord.
• 7:33
  Speaker 1: It was so extraordinary that I found myself thinking I actually think I need to pray about this.
• 7:41
  Speaker 1: I think I really need to talk with the Lord about it and ask what he would say.
• 7:45
  Speaker 1: And in praying about it it became very clear to me very quickly that I was supposed to come.
• 7:52
  Speaker 1: And I just want to say I believe it's tremendously significant and a reflection of the leadership of this church that they would ask for teaching on this subject, because in all of the further of revival-based initiative, there can come a level of kind of froth and bubble which is non-substantive, and I believe that it's reflective of your leaders that they would say no, we want this to be authentic, we want this to be real before God, and therefore the fear of the Lord is critical in the mix of what we see happen, and so I just want to commend them to you.
• 8:35
  Speaker 1: Not that they need any commending from me, but I just want to say it is reflective of something really important.
• 8:40
  Speaker 1: Okay, so let's jump into what I want to talk about then, this fear of the Lord.
• 8:44
  Speaker 1: Let's just talk about fear for a second.
• 8:46
  Speaker 1: In general, how many of you think of fear positively?
• 8:49
  Speaker 1: Okay, nobody.
• 8:52
  Speaker 1: All right, because in most every context, fear is not a positive thing.
• 8:58
  Speaker 1: Let's look at some things that typically we're scared of.
• 9:02
  Speaker 1: Come on, shout something out.
• 9:03
  Speaker 1: What are typical fears?
• 9:05
  Speaker 1: What do you fear?
• 9:06
  Speaker 1: Spiders, yes, especially for you, my friend.
• 9:12
  Speaker 1: We have spiders.
• 9:15
  Speaker 1: That's a yeah that some people are really creeped out by creepy crawlies, aren't they?
• 9:19
  Speaker 1: Yeah, okay, what else?
• 9:20
  Speaker 1: Heights?
• 9:22
  Speaker 1: Come on, we're really nailing it, yeah.
• 9:25
  Speaker 1: Heights yeah, those are things that some people are absolutely petrified of.
• 9:30
  Speaker 1: Heights, come on, what else?
• 9:31
  Speaker 1: Change, yeah, change.
• 9:37
  Speaker 1: I think some of you watched last night, didn't you?
• 9:39
  Speaker 1: Because this is so much better than last night.
• 9:42
  Speaker 1: We had really weird ones last night, but this is working out great.
• 9:46
  Speaker 1: Change, yeah, the actual shift and the discomfort that comes from change you guys are about to undergo.
• 9:54
  Speaker 1: In fact, you've already gone through a load of change.
• 9:56
  Speaker 1: Maybe you're thinking we've just overcome the change that we've gone through and now this guy's taking us into more change.
• 10:03
  Speaker 1: Well, yes, absolutely All right, let's go.
• 10:07
  Speaker 1: What else?
• 10:07
  Speaker 1: Sorry, did you get that one?
• 10:12
  Speaker 1: Speed?
• 10:17
  Speaker 1: What the drug or the?
• 10:19
  Speaker 1: You should be scared of speed.
• 10:22
  Speaker 1: I don't, we don't have a.
• 10:25
  Speaker 1: We don't have a slide for speed.
• 10:27
  Speaker 1: Come on, come on, let's talk about some of the big ones.
• 10:29
  Speaker 1: What are the big ones?
• 10:31
  Speaker 1: Sickness Somebody said cancer.
• 10:36
  Speaker 1: Sickness, let's look at sickness.
• 10:38
  Speaker 1: Fear of sickness is enormous.
• 10:40
  Speaker 1: Honestly, there are many people that live in the dread of the fear of sickness.
• 10:45
  Speaker 1: It's not even necessarily that they are sick, but perhaps they had parents or relatives that died or had terrible diseases and they got to watch it firsthand, and maybe they live in the nervousness of potential fear of sickness.
• 11:00
  Speaker 1: Absolutely, what else?
• 11:02
  Speaker 1: Death?
• 11:03
  Speaker 1: Yeah, it's the big one, isn't it?
• 11:04
  Speaker 1: Death?
• 11:05
  Speaker 1: You know, death is one of these things that we it's the inevitability that we all head towards, and yet there's so little that we know, even biblically.
• 11:16
  Speaker 1: All we know is sort of tantalizing glimpses of heaven and shocking realities of hell.
• 11:22
  Speaker 1: But outside of that, it's not like we're dialoguing with people on the other side, are we?
• 11:27
  Speaker 1: Okay?
• 11:30
  Speaker 1: Good, all right.
• 11:31
  Speaker 1: So fear of death is an enormous one.
• 11:33
  Speaker 1: What else?
• 11:33
  Speaker 1: Rejection, sorry, rejection, yeah, I would connect that with fear of rejection.
• 11:43
  Speaker 1: Fear of, perhaps failure is very much connected to this.
• 11:46
  Speaker 1: This is something that I was racked with as a young boy.
• 11:49
  Speaker 1: I was completely petrified of failure because of the humiliation that would come from failure and because of that I determined at a young age that I wouldn't try.
• 12:00
  Speaker 1: I was absolutely bound up with a fear of failure.
• 12:03
  Speaker 1: It can be a terrible thing to live with.
• 12:05
  Speaker 1: Is the fear of failure.
• 12:06
  Speaker 1: What else Did somebody say?
• 12:11
  Speaker 1: Women, and so you should be.
• 12:16
  Speaker 1: 30 years of marriage has created that fear in me also.
• 12:22
  Speaker 1: We have no slide for this.
• 12:26
  Speaker 1: Praise the Lord.
• 12:27
  Speaker 1: All right, let's throw out a couple of other things.
• 12:29
  Speaker 1: What about the fear of war?
• 12:30
  Speaker 1: How many of you think this is a big issue at the moment?
• 12:34
  Speaker 1: It's huge, isn't it?
• 12:34
  Speaker 1: Some people are racked with the fear of war, this sort of impending dread of what might happen.
• 12:41
  Speaker 1: What else is there?
• 12:42
  Speaker 1: Have I missed any Fear of confined spaces?
• 12:45
  Speaker 1: The end?
• 12:45
  Speaker 1: You get freaked out.
• 12:46
  Speaker 1: You have those dreams where you get, yeah, yeah, that's it.
• 12:49
  Speaker 1: That's another fear.
• 12:50
  Speaker 1: Have we got them all?
• 12:51
  Speaker 1: Oh, look at this one Fear of public speaking, fear of humiliation.
• 12:56
  Speaker 1: Honestly, guys, this is something that all of us who preach a lot have to contend with.
• 13:02
  Speaker 1: Is that awful dread of getting up here and somehow the anointing of God lifting from you and you're left with you in that moment and the awful sense of that was the worst experience.
• 13:18
  Speaker 1: You look out, you see people literally falling asleep.
• 13:22
  Speaker 1: If I see you, I will pick on you mercilessly this morning, but yet you know that fear of humiliation.
• 13:29
  Speaker 1: You know they say that the fear of that type of humiliation, public embarrassment, you know it's the single biggest fear that people have.
• 13:37
  Speaker 1: Second is death.
• 13:40
  Speaker 1: People would rather die than go through what I'm going through right now.
• 13:46
  Speaker 1: It's remarkable how that happens.
• 13:49
  Speaker 1: So fear of losing loved ones.
• 13:52
  Speaker 1: You know, as any of you who have children know, that even if you were pretty carefree, there's something about your love for your children that causes you to have sleepless nights from time to time.
• 14:06
  Speaker 1: Just the love for your kids is enormous.
• 14:11
  Speaker 1: And listen, I don't want to spend any more time on this because all of these fears are real.
• 14:17
  Speaker 1: I don't want to minimize them, I don't want to pretend they are issues, but thank God, he has given us scriptures that help us address these issues of fear.
• 14:29
  Speaker 1: For example, we read in 1 John 4, 18, it says there is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear, for love has to do with punishment and whoever fears has not been perfected in love.
• 14:44
  Speaker 1: And 2 Timothy 1, 7 says for God gave us not a spirit not of fear, but of power and love and self-control.
• 14:55
  Speaker 1: Listen, god wants to dominate these negative fears in our life, but I want to say something to you right now, and I want you to hear it More than sowing into your lives these, what I will speak of as minor fears, the greatest thing the enemy will work on is robbing you of the wonder of a fear that has the ability to dominate all of the fears.
• 15:30
  Speaker 1: Of course, I'm talking about the fear of the Lord.
• 15:34
  Speaker 1: The fear of the Lord is wonderful, the fear of the Lord is legitimate and the fear of the Lord is crucial.
• 15:45
  Speaker 1: The fear of the Lord has the power to dispel all other fears.
• 15:55
  Speaker 1: I spoke to you earlier about the fear of humiliation and public speaking.
• 15:59
  Speaker 1: Remember when I was first preparing this message, I kind of caught just a concept of what would it be like to be standing in front of hundreds of people and suddenly the Lord Jesus walks into the room.
• 16:15
  Speaker 1: Imagine the Lord coming through.
• 16:18
  Speaker 1: Just those curtains part and the Lord Jesus comes in and he walks across and he sits there in the middle.
• 16:28
  Speaker 1: How many of you know?
• 16:31
  Speaker 1: In that moment the fear of man would disappear in that room.
• 16:35
  Speaker 1: I couldn't care less about what any of you think at that moment, because all I can see is the King and all that would matter to me would be his expressions, his reactions.
• 16:51
  Speaker 1: You know, when we come together to worship, I believe that we need to be caught up with the King in such a way that he's everything to us.
• 17:03
  Speaker 1: His pleasure is what grips our hearts.
• 17:08
  Speaker 1: I just think to myself wow, if I was speaking, all that I would be looking for is his reaction to what I'm saying.
• 17:16
  Speaker 1: In fact, I would be like why am I talking?
• 17:20
  Speaker 1: The King is here.
• 17:22
  Speaker 1: Stop it Microphone.
• 17:30
  Speaker 1: So the fear of the Lord is what we're talking about.
• 17:32
  Speaker 1: So what do we know?
• 17:34
  Speaker 1: What do we know about the fear of the Lord?
• 17:37
  Speaker 1: Tell me something we know about the fear of the Lord, pure.
• 17:41
  Speaker 1: What else do we know about the fear of the Lord?
• 17:43
  Speaker 1: Beginning of wisdom, thank you, the beginning of wisdom.
• 17:47
  Speaker 1: It's kind of what all Christians know about the fear of the Lord.
• 17:51
  Speaker 1: If they might not know anything else about the fear of the Lord other than it's the beginning of wisdom, and there's a reason for that.
• 17:57
  Speaker 1: The actual phrase which comes from Proverbs 9, 10, the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom.
• 18:03
  Speaker 1: The knowledge of the Holy is understanding.
• 18:05
  Speaker 1: The Holy One, sorry, is understanding.
• 18:07
  Speaker 1: That statement and slight variance of it repeat many times in Scripture.
• 18:13
  Speaker 1: But I want to talk to you a little bit about the word fear, the root of the word fear, fear, comes in the Hebrew from the word Yira.
• 18:21
  Speaker 1: Yira is the Hebrew word for fear.
• 18:24
  Speaker 1: The Greek word for fear is Phobos, which is where we get our term phobia.
• 18:30
  Speaker 1: I'd like us to just give some consideration to the usage of the original word of fear.
• 18:36
  Speaker 1: Okay, so fear shows up in the beginning, right in the garden, where Adam said I heard you walking in the garden and I knew that I was naked and I was afraid and I went and hid myself.
• 18:51
  Speaker 1: I was Yira, I was afraid and hid myself.
• 18:55
  Speaker 1: Now, listen, adam had good reason to fear because he had eaten of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.
• 19:01
  Speaker 1: And God said that if you eat of this tree, you will surely die.
• 19:07
  Speaker 1: I don't think that this was some mere concept that was troubling Adam.
• 19:13
  Speaker 1: I think Adam was legitimately gripped with a fear that I'll die.
• 19:20
  Speaker 1: And we see something happening right after that, in Genesis as well, between Esau and Jacob.
• 19:27
  Speaker 1: You remember, jacob tricks Esau out of his birthright.
• 19:31
  Speaker 1: And in tricking him out of his birthright, jacob ends up running, running from Esau for good reason, because Esau was a man's man and Esau was a hunter.
• 19:43
  Speaker 1: And basically Jacob ran because Esau was gonna kill him.
• 19:47
  Speaker 1: And Jacob in his heart said one day Esau is gonna catch up to me and I will surely die.
• 19:56
  Speaker 1: Now I want to start there with your understanding of this word, yira, because I think that it has shifted in our modern culture and understanding to something that is merely kind of respecting God or reverence for God or even awe of God, and people will actually say well, the fear of God is not a knee-knocking type of fear.
• 20:28
  Speaker 1: I want to challenge that because I believe that even those who were most intimate with God actually feared God.
• 20:39
  Speaker 1: You know it said.
• 20:40
  Speaker 1: You know it said of Moses that Moses was a friend of God, he talked to him face to face, he had this level of intimacy, and yet it was Moses who said in Hebrews 12, 21, he says this.
• 20:57
  Speaker 1: He said indeed, so terrifying was the sight that Moses said I tremble with fear.
• 21:06
  Speaker 1: I tremble with fear.
• 21:11
  Speaker 1: You know the apostle John, who was so intimate with.
• 21:16
  Speaker 1: He described himself, didn't he, as the one Jesus loved.
• 21:19
  Speaker 1: I always think that's funny what the other brothers must have felt.
• 21:21
  Speaker 1: But John said, hey, I'm the one Jesus loved.
• 21:24
  Speaker 1: He had this intimacy with Jesus where he would lay his head on Jesus' chest.
• 21:30
  Speaker 1: There was this love and tenderness, there was this level of friendship with John and Jesus.
• 21:35
  Speaker 1: That was truly exceptional.
• 21:37
  Speaker 1: And then we read in Revelation 1 where suddenly John is confronted with the risen Christ.
• 21:46
  Speaker 1: And you know what happened.
• 21:47
  Speaker 1: John says I fell to the ground as though dead.
• 21:52
  Speaker 1: Hold on a second, you're the one who loves you.
• 21:56
  Speaker 1: The resting the head.
• 21:57
  Speaker 1: What's going on?
• 21:58
  Speaker 1: I fell as though dead.
• 22:03
  Speaker 1: Make no mistake, brothers and sisters, our God, as intimate as he is with us and as much as we revel in the love of God in our life, he's a scary God, and there's an aspect that I believe is so critical for us to grow up in the love of God and into the fear of God.
• 22:23
  Speaker 1: See, I think that people sometimes think, oh, the fear of God is the beginning of wisdom.
• 22:30
  Speaker 1: It's like, okay, yeah, maybe at the beginning, but now we love Him.
• 22:33
  Speaker 1: No, I want to suggest to you this morning that it is actually more the reverse, that we have an encounter with the love of God.
• 22:42
  Speaker 1: We sense, we hear the wonderful gospel of His forgiveness, his love for us.
• 22:46
  Speaker 1: He's made away for us, he's died on the cross for us.
• 22:49
  Speaker 1: In and we come to Him.
• 22:50
  Speaker 1: We respond to that love of God that comes to us absolutely.
• 22:55
  Speaker 1: But the more we get to know Him, brothers and sisters, can I just say, if you haven't read through your Bible in a year, for a period of times, read through your Bible, because in working through your Bible, I guarantee you you will come across a scary God, a God who might restore to you the true meaning of the word awesome.
• 23:25
  Speaker 1: You know, we live in a culture, particularly in the States.
• 23:29
  Speaker 1: We live in a culture where we use so many exaggerations and superlatives and descriptive words.
• 23:39
  Speaker 1: We tend to use them so widely that we've lost a vocabulary that really belongs to God.
• 23:46
  Speaker 1: You know we serve an awesome God.
• 23:53
  Speaker 1: We sing.
• 23:53
  Speaker 1: You are an awesome God.
• 23:55
  Speaker 1: Trouble is that word has lost its power because we also can eat a sandwich that we describe as awesome.
• 24:07
  Speaker 1: Actually, we have a cafe across the road from our church building in Kenosha and one of their sandwiches is the awesome roast beef sandwich.
• 24:17
  Speaker 1: Now, listen, guys, I've had a few good sandwiches in my time, but there's never been a sandwich that I opened up and gone.
• 24:25
  Speaker 1: It's awesome.
• 24:32
  Speaker 1: Truth is, it's a decent roast sandwich.
• 24:37
  Speaker 1: I mean, it doesn't carry much weight on the menu.
• 24:40
  Speaker 1: It's a decent roast sandwich, but that's all it is.
• 24:43
  Speaker 1: It's not awesome.
• 24:44
  Speaker 1: I believe that we need to see some measure of restoration of words and vocabulary we use that describes the wonder of our God.
• 24:56
  Speaker 1: So let's take a look at some of the Scriptures that give us insight into why true fearing the Lord is so vital for us.
• 25:05
  Speaker 1: In Psalm 19,9 it says the fear of the Lord oh, here we go, you ready?
• 25:11
  Speaker 1: The fear of the Lord is clean, enduring forever.
• 25:18
  Speaker 1: What does it mean?
• 25:20
  Speaker 1: The fear of the Lord is clean.
• 25:22
  Speaker 1: Brothers and sisters, there is a cleansing that takes place with the people who begin to fear the Lord because we can become so complacent in our relationship with God, we can become so accustomed to the continuation of sin in our lives, unrepented issue in our lives.
• 25:45
  Speaker 1: We're not dealing with issues in our lives and I want to suggest to you it's often because we don't fear the Lord, we've become casual and familiar with God instead of having a sense of the awe of who he is.
• 26:00
  Speaker 1: The fear of the Lord is clean.
• 26:03
  Speaker 1: It will clean us up.
• 26:05
  Speaker 1: How many of you think the church needs to be cleaned up?
• 26:08
  Speaker 1: How many of you think our lives need to be cleaned up?
• 26:13
  Speaker 1: Thank you, yes, I want to suggest to you that the fear of the Lord is a key that has been missing in the cleansing of God in our lives.
• 26:23
  Speaker 1: The other thing it says is the fear of the Lord endures for how long?
• 26:26
  Speaker 1: Forever?
• 26:28
  Speaker 1: Oh, I thought it was just the beginning.
• 26:31
  Speaker 1: No, it is the beginning.
• 26:33
  Speaker 1: It's also the end.
• 26:35
  Speaker 1: What this is saying, brothers and sisters, is we will always be caught up with the wonder of the fear of the Lord.
• 26:41
  Speaker 1: 10,000 years from now, we're still going to be encountering things of the wonder of our God that will cause us to say I fear the Lord.
• 26:52
  Speaker 1: What?
• 26:54
  Speaker 1: Yeah, it's not like.
• 26:55
  Speaker 1: 10,000 years from now we're going to be saying, yeah, we got to the bottom of it, yeah, he's absolutely awesome and we've really grasped it all.
• 27:02
  Speaker 1: Now Never.
• 27:04
  Speaker 1: The fear of the Lord endures forever.
• 27:07
  Speaker 1: I think that one of the reasons why I have some appreciation.
• 27:18
  Speaker 1: I don't want to stand here professing that I am the ultimate example of the fear of the Lord.
• 27:22
  Speaker 1: I fear God too much for that.
• 27:24
  Speaker 1: But I do believe that part of the grasp that I've had on the fear of the Lord actually came somewhat through my natural dad.
• 27:35
  Speaker 1: My dad died a few years back, but my dad was a scary man.
• 27:39
  Speaker 1: He really was.
• 27:41
  Speaker 1: He was an exceptional individual.
• 27:43
  Speaker 1: He was a very highly respected medical doctor.
• 27:48
  Speaker 1: He was from his father's Indian, his mother's African.
• 27:52
  Speaker 1: He won, like an island scholarship to study medicine at Edinburgh University and he ended up having six children.
• 27:59
  Speaker 1: I'm the second to youngest and I grew up with a dad whom you never answered back.
• 28:06
  Speaker 1: My dad.
• 28:07
  Speaker 1: You know what?
• 28:10
  Speaker 1: I can never remember my dad ever telling any of us as kids to do something more than once.
• 28:16
  Speaker 1: You just did not disobey my dad, and some of that was because he was an extremely strict disciplinarian.
• 28:26
  Speaker 1: One of the things my dad was so scary that all other people in authority weren't scary compared to him, and so I was terrible at school.
• 28:42
  Speaker 1: I was just an awful.
• 28:44
  Speaker 1: I know it's hard for you to believe now, but I was an awful student.
• 28:48
  Speaker 1: I literally when I was at school.
• 28:51
  Speaker 1: I used to go to school not to be educated but to make my teacher's lives miserable.
• 28:59
  Speaker 1: I'm not even joking, that is totally true.
• 29:03
  Speaker 1: I went there.
• 29:04
  Speaker 1: I remember this one teacher.
• 29:06
  Speaker 1: She was a biology teacher and I remember her first day and she was this particularly petite, frail lady.
• 29:15
  Speaker 1: I remember looking across the classroom and saying I'm going to make your life miserable and I proceeded to do that.
• 29:25
  Speaker 1: Well, one of the things that this teacher did on one occasion it was when we came off a summer break and it was back in the days where you had textbooks and exercise books.
• 29:35
  Speaker 1: Probably don't have that anymore, really, but anyway, she said, right, what I'd like you to do is write a story of what you did over the summer.
• 29:44
  Speaker 1: So I thought I was 14 at the time.
• 29:47
  Speaker 1: I thought I'm going to write a really graphic sexual story which is going to so shock her, a biology teacher, that she's going to be so embarrassed she's going to blush when she reads it.
• 30:07
  Speaker 1: I'm going to just show her my knowledge of this issue.
• 30:12
  Speaker 1: Just not the smartest tool in the box, you know.
• 30:17
  Speaker 1: So anyway, I wrote this, what I thought was a grossly graphic story, handed it in.
• 30:26
  Speaker 1: Anyway, next class, she doesn't say anything, I'm thinking.
• 30:30
  Speaker 1: Then, at the end of the class, she just said John, come and see me.
• 30:35
  Speaker 1: I'm thinking, here we go, I get up there.
• 30:39
  Speaker 1: Yeah, she said, didn't say a word, actually, she just lifted up my exercise book.
• 30:46
  Speaker 1: And then she lifted up an envelope, brown envelope, with my dad's name and address on the front of her and a stamp on the front of the envelope, and she put the exercise book into the envelope, sealed it and she said this any more trouble out of you, this goes straight to your dad.
• 31:11
  Speaker 1: See, you love that story, don't you?
• 31:16
  Speaker 1: I became an absolute model student.
• 31:23
  Speaker 1: After that.
• 31:24
  Speaker 1: All of my friends were baffled.
• 31:26
  Speaker 1: They were like I'm like get on and do your work, come on, let's get finished.
• 31:31
  Speaker 1: I became like class prefect.
• 31:33
  Speaker 1: They just couldn't understand it.
• 31:35
  Speaker 1: But I dare not say anything because I couldn't do anything to cross this woman.
• 31:39
  Speaker 1: You know why?
• 31:40
  Speaker 1: Because she had accessed the authority of my father.
• 31:43
  Speaker 1: She tapped into the fear that I had of my father, and it brought discipline to my life.
• 31:56
  Speaker 1: I believe again that we need to grow up in the love of the Lord, to actually begin to embrace the fear of the Lord.
• 32:07
  Speaker 1: Why is it so important?
• 32:11
  Speaker 1: Let me just give you some wonderful scriptures.
• 32:13
  Speaker 1: Are you ready?
• 32:13
  Speaker 1: We're going to go through them fast.
• 32:14
  Speaker 1: Isaiah 33.6 says this he will be the sure foundation of your times, a rich store of salvation and wisdom and knowledge.
• 32:27
  Speaker 1: The fear of the Lord is the key to this treasure.
• 32:34
  Speaker 1: How many of you can remember reading this scripture?
• 32:36
  Speaker 1: Honestly, when I was studying, getting ready for preaching originally this message, I remember coming across this scripture and going I can't remember ever seeing this before.
• 32:48
  Speaker 1: Some of you are honest in your heart and you're saying I don't remember seeing it before either.
• 32:53
  Speaker 1: This is enormous.
• 32:55
  Speaker 1: What it's saying is the sure foundation for your times.
• 32:59
  Speaker 1: How many of you feel we need a sure foundation in our times?
• 33:02
  Speaker 1: Oh, my goodness, has there been times like this?
• 33:05
  Speaker 1: I can't remember seriously the level of upheaval of the last few years and what we've gone through.
• 33:13
  Speaker 1: We need solid foundation.
• 33:15
  Speaker 1: What it's saying is the foundations are connected to the fear of the Lord, rich store of salvation and wisdom and knowledge.
• 33:21
  Speaker 1: The fear of the Lord is the key.
• 33:23
  Speaker 1: I'm going to say to you this morning, guys, that there is a missing key that many of us don't even appreciate at the moment, but there's a missing key of the fear of the Lord, and God wants to bring that key to us.
• 33:39
  Speaker 1: Isaiah 33.6 says the fear of the Lord is Zion's treasure.
• 33:45
  Speaker 1: What a concept of the fear of the Lord.
• 33:49
  Speaker 1: It's actually Zion's treasure.
• 33:51
  Speaker 1: Oh, it's not like this awful thing, it's not like this hovering negative thing.
• 33:57
  Speaker 1: No, it's Zion's treasure.
• 33:59
  Speaker 1: The treasure of Zion is that they fear the Lord.
• 34:02
  Speaker 1: Other nations didn't, but they did.
• 34:05
  Speaker 1: It's treasure.
• 34:11
  Speaker 1: Proverbs 10, 27 says the fear of the Lord prolongs life, but the years of the wicked are cut short.
• 34:17
  Speaker 1: Brothers and sisters, I want to just say to you whatever schemes and ideas and potions and whatever you think are going to preserve your life I'm not attacking anything particular at the moment.
• 34:28
  Speaker 1: If you're feeling attacked, Listen.
• 34:29
  Speaker 1: All I'm saying is the fear of the Lord is pre-eminent over all of those things, better than any other concoction, potion, idea, diet, method.
• 34:39
  Speaker 1: The fear of the Lord is what you need in your life.
• 34:42
  Speaker 1: Whoever fears the Lord has a secure fortress, says in Proverbs 14, 26,.
• 34:51
  Speaker 1: The fear of the Lord leads to life.
• 34:54
  Speaker 1: Then one rests, contend, untouched by trouble.
• 35:00
  Speaker 1: Proverbs 22, 4 says the reward for humility in the fear of the Lord is riches and honor and life.
• 35:07
  Speaker 1: Are you getting something of the value of the fear of the Lord here?
• 35:11
  Speaker 1: Psalm 2, 11 says this serve the Lord, I love this.
• 35:16
  Speaker 1: Serve the Lord with fear and rejoice with trembling.
• 35:23
  Speaker 1: Okay, there's something here, brothers and sisters, even within the context of worship, that if we're missing, I want to suggest to you we're not worshiping God as he deserves.
• 35:40
  Speaker 1: If your worship of God carries no dynamic of trembling, there's something that you're lacking, there's something we're lacking, and I want to suggest to you that sometimes can I just say I love the worship here.
• 35:57
  Speaker 1: I really appreciate this team genuinely.
• 36:01
  Speaker 1: It is very reminiscent and reflective of worshiping in my home churches as well, but I brought this message to my home churches as well and I've said listen, guys, there's got to be something that causes us to tremble in the presence of God as well.
• 36:18
  Speaker 1: As much as it's right for us to leap and jump and shout, there's also got to be something of the weight of the presence of God that at times will cause us to lie prostrate and dare not to look up Because his presence is so heavy.
• 36:35
  Speaker 1: I've had the privilege in recent years of becoming quite good friends of people that led revivals and they have told me story and story about the weight of the glory of God coming and how that brings ripples of the fear of God among the people of God.
• 36:53
  Speaker 1: Do we want that as well?
• 36:54
  Speaker 1: Don't we want that as well?
• 36:57
  Speaker 1: Because I fear at times that we can get to a point where we just love the elation of worship and we love songs and effective chord progressions and beautiful melodies and all of those things are good, but if we don't fear the Lord as well, there's something missing in the adoration that he deserves.
• 37:24
  Speaker 1: And worship is not about our pleasure.
• 37:31
  Speaker 1: Despite the thousands of conversations that happen on the car on the way home about what did you think about the worship this morning?
• 37:38
  Speaker 1: I like this and I didn't like that.
• 37:40
  Speaker 1: And ooh, we did that song again.
• 37:41
  Speaker 1: And ooh, hey, guess what?
• 37:44
  Speaker 1: It never was for you, it never was for your pleasure, it's for his pleasure.
• 37:51
  Speaker 1: And what does he and what pleases him?
• 37:56
  Speaker 1: Here's a shocker Psalm 14711, the Lord takes pleasure in those who fear him.
• 38:03
  Speaker 1: Really, yes, really.
• 38:07
  Speaker 1: And this is not some just experience of Old Testament God, it's the Old Testament God is like.
• 38:15
  Speaker 1: No, it's the God of the Bible.
• 38:17
  Speaker 1: Who is the Old Testament God, by the way, it's the God of the whole Bible requires that we also fear him.
• 38:23
  Speaker 1: It's part of our transformation to be like Jesus.
• 38:34
  Speaker 1: This is going to rock some of your world, but it's important that you hear it.
• 38:38
  Speaker 1: How many of you think that Jesus feared the Lord?
• 38:42
  Speaker 1: Some of you do.
• 38:47
  Speaker 1: I think a bunch of you are sat there and there's a question going in through your head right now A statement.
• 38:52
  Speaker 1: What is that statement?
• 38:54
  Speaker 1: Jesus is the Lord.
• 38:56
  Speaker 1: I mean, jesus feared the Lord.
• 38:59
  Speaker 1: Jesus is the Lord.
• 39:01
  Speaker 1: Listen, in Isaiah 11, 1 to 3, we read an amazing prophetic insight of Isaiah.
• 39:09
  Speaker 1: He says this a shoot will come from the stump of Jesse.
• 39:14
  Speaker 1: Who's he talking about?
• 39:18
  Speaker 1: Talking about Jesus?
• 39:21
  Speaker 1: Okay, just to be clear, this is way after David.
• 39:24
  Speaker 1: David was BC 1000 years.
• 39:26
  Speaker 1: This is at least 300, 400 years further on.
• 39:28
  Speaker 1: Now he's saying there's something that's going to a shoot that's going to come from the stump of Jesse and from his roots a branch will bear fruit.
• 39:39
  Speaker 1: And then it says the Spirit of the Lord will rest on him, which is exactly what Jesus said when he launched his ministry.
• 39:46
  Speaker 1: He said the Spirit of the Lord is upon me.
• 39:48
  Speaker 1: So the Spirit of the Lord will rest on him, the Spirit of wisdom and of understanding, the Spirit of counsel and of might, the Spirit of knowledge and the fear of the Lord, and he will delight in the fear of the Lord.
• 40:08
  Speaker 1: This is one of those amazing Trinitarian verses.
• 40:14
  Speaker 1: Like the Lord said to my Lord, come, sit at my right hand.
• 40:17
  Speaker 1: Listen, I want to be clear here.
• 40:19
  Speaker 1: Revelation speaks four times of the seven Spirits of God.
• 40:24
  Speaker 1: Now, again to be clear there's one Holy Spirit.
• 40:27
  Speaker 1: But this verse is helpful because it unpacks aspects of the characteristics of the Holy Spirit, and one of those characteristics is fear of the Lord that Jesus himself embodied.
• 40:44
  Speaker 1: Brothers and sisters, if we're being conformed to his image, which we are, then the fear of the Lord is going to play its place within it.
• 40:52
  Speaker 1: Now I know some of you will say well, it's a very Old Testament concept this that you're bringing John.
• 41:03
  Speaker 1: How many of you have read of the story of Ananias and Sophia in Acts 5?
• 41:08
  Speaker 1: I think it's one of the most shocking, outrageous stories in our Bibles.
• 41:15
  Speaker 1: Do you know the story that I'm talking about?
• 41:19
  Speaker 1: I'm assuming you do so.
• 41:20
  Speaker 1: This is the story where Ananias sells some land and he holds back a portion of it and gives it to the offering.
• 41:31
  Speaker 1: You know what amazes me about this?
• 41:35
  Speaker 1: How many of you, if you sold some land and gave it to the offering, would actually think I've done a pretty good thing here.
• 41:44
  Speaker 1: I think if I was a church leader at the time, if somebody came and they said I sold some land, here's $50,000 for the offering, I think I'd be going hallelujah, thank you, jesus.
• 41:59
  Speaker 1: And somebody said oh, you know, they actually got a hundred for it, but they just gave you 50.
• 42:04
  Speaker 1: I'd have gone really Hallelujah, thank you.
• 42:08
  Speaker 1: I don't think I would be confronting them about the half, but that's not what Peter did.
• 42:15
  Speaker 1: Peter challenged Ananias about lying to the Holy Spirit and you know what happened Drop dead.
• 42:22
  Speaker 1: You know, the shock to me in this whole story is that Peter's reaction wasn't one of what have I done?
• 42:31
  Speaker 1: Oh no, his wife's coming.
• 42:33
  Speaker 1: His wife's coming in a bit.
• 42:35
  Speaker 1: What are we gonna?
• 42:36
  Speaker 1: How are we gonna present this?
• 42:38
  Speaker 1: Well, I don't know what I did.
• 42:39
  Speaker 1: I said it must have shocked me.
• 42:40
  Speaker 1: Wife comes, peter asks him the same question.
• 42:45
  Speaker 1: She drops dead as well.
• 42:50
  Speaker 1: I think this is the least seeker friendly moments in all of church history, don't you?
• 42:57
  Speaker 1: I mean, this is the moment where you're like we're done.
• 43:00
  Speaker 1: Church is over forever because God's killing liars.
• 43:07
  Speaker 1: It's just remarkable on every level.
• 43:16
  Speaker 1: And you know what's remarkable?
• 43:18
  Speaker 1: It's said that people feared joining them.
• 43:20
  Speaker 1: Well, yeah, no kidding.
• 43:22
  Speaker 1: But you know it goes right on after that to say God continued to add to their number men and women who were being saved.
• 43:33
  Speaker 1: I want to say something to you here.
• 43:35
  Speaker 1: I say this to our churches all the time.
• 43:38
  Speaker 1: I am committed to scary church.
• 43:40
  Speaker 1: I believe the one thing that the church should never be is boring.
• 43:45
  Speaker 1: I believe that the church should represent what it would be like to engage Jesus.
• 43:52
  Speaker 1: I tell you what engaging Jesus might make you mad.
• 43:55
  Speaker 1: Engaging Jesus might actually soften your heart and transform you forever.
• 44:00
  Speaker 1: Engaging Jesus would have been the thrill of your life.
• 44:04
  Speaker 1: One thing that Jesus was never was boring, and neither will his bride be.
• 44:10
  Speaker 1: She will be frightening as she gets herself ready for the King.
• 44:15
  Speaker 1: I love what Pastor Shane was bringing before.
• 44:20
  Speaker 1: I love this concept of all and all because I feel that's what I've given my life to, this last 30 years Building churches that swim against the tide of the culture, hold fast to the Word of God, full of the Holy Spirit, full of the Word and like he's that's not McDonald's If your vision, if your heart is caught up with fast and affluent, I would challenge that, because there's never a time in Scripture where God says how fast did you build, how big did you build?
• 44:57
  Speaker 1: But he does challenge us with how well we build.
• 45:01
  Speaker 1: I believe it's the fear of the Lord that causes us to build well.
• 45:06
  Speaker 1: It's the fear of the Lord that holds our marriages together.
• 45:10
  Speaker 1: Some people say the only reason I'm still together is because I fear the Lord.
• 45:15
  Speaker 1: I believe in this covenant.
• 45:17
  Speaker 1: That's not bad.
• 45:18
  Speaker 1: That's not bad.
• 45:20
  Speaker 1: Now.
• 45:21
  Speaker 1: There's things you've got to work on, but the foundation of your relationship is covenant.
• 45:27
  Speaker 1: We read another Scripture to you, psalm 25, 12, 14,.
• 45:30
  Speaker 1: It says this who then are those who fear the Lord?
• 45:35
  Speaker 1: He will instruct them in the ways that they should choose.
• 45:38
  Speaker 1: They will spend their days in prosperity and their descendants will inherit the land.
• 45:43
  Speaker 1: It says this the Lord confides in those who hear Him.
• 45:47
  Speaker 1: He makes His covenant known to them.
• 45:51
  Speaker 1: Guys, can I just say this there is something of God confiding in those who fear Him that he doesn't confide in those who do not, and that confiding in us is the establishing of covenant.
• 46:06
  Speaker 1: I want to say this I believe that it's people who fear the Lord that are faithful to God, faithful to His Word, faithful to the body.
• 46:15
  Speaker 1: It's a fruit of the fear of the Lord.
• 46:19
  Speaker 1: Finally, I just want to look very briefly at the significance of the fear of the Lord for unbelievers.
• 46:27
  Speaker 1: You know when the Gospel was first preached at Pentecost.
• 46:31
  Speaker 1: Can you remember who the people were that the Gospel was preached to?
• 46:35
  Speaker 1: Any of you remember?
• 46:37
  Speaker 1: It was Pentecost it was Jews.
• 46:40
  Speaker 1: Somebody said Jews, yeah, it was Jews, but so interesting, isn't it, that it wasn't just Jews.
• 46:45
  Speaker 1: It says in Acts 2.5, now there were staying in Jerusalem God-fearing Jews from every nation under heaven.
• 46:59
  Speaker 1: Can I just say this, brothers and sisters God is doing a work to prepare the hearts of those who don't know Him, and that preparation will be connected to the fear of the Lord, because it's the fear of the Lord that causes people to cry out.
• 47:15
  Speaker 1: What must I do to be saved?
• 47:17
  Speaker 1: What must I do to be saved?
• 47:22
  Speaker 1: You know, when I was a boy and I got led to the Lord, one of my brothers came to inspect the authenticity of my faith and he said this to me.
• 47:33
  Speaker 1: He said, john, I hear something's happened.
• 47:35
  Speaker 1: I said that's right.
• 47:36
  Speaker 1: He said what's happened?
• 47:36
  Speaker 1: I got saved.
• 47:38
  Speaker 1: He said saved from what.
• 47:41
  Speaker 1: I said saved from hell.
• 47:44
  Speaker 1: And he said good answer.
• 47:49
  Speaker 1: I believe that so often, the message that's going out is a message of come to Jesus for a better life.
• 47:56
  Speaker 1: Come to Jesus so that your problems get solved.
• 48:00
  Speaker 1: Come to Jesus because this aching empty gap in your heart.
• 48:05
  Speaker 1: All of that is true, but can I just say this, brothers and sisters we come to Jesus because our trajectory was hell when we got saved.
• 48:16
  Speaker 1: We didn't get saved from a lifestyle that wasn't fruitful, we got saved from a destination of hell, and I believe that we've got to recapture the passion of preaching the gospel of salvation, but it'll offend people.
• 48:34
  Speaker 1: It's going to upset people.
• 48:37
  Speaker 1: The Holy Spirit will convict people of sin to the point where they know they need a savior from the hell they're going to.
• 48:51
  Speaker 1: Jonathan Edwards preached a message which triggered the great awakening.
• 48:56
  Speaker 1: The message was this sinners in the hands of an angry God.
• 49:02
  Speaker 1: I don't think that would get many hits these days.
• 49:06
  Speaker 1: Sinners Do we even call them that anymore?
• 49:10
  Speaker 1: I don't know.
• 49:11
  Speaker 1: It's very offensive Sinners in the hands of an angry God.
• 49:18
  Speaker 1: It's a message that changed the world.
• 49:23
  Speaker 1: It's a message that brought a ripple of salvation across hundreds of thousands, millions of lives.
• 49:35
  Speaker 1: I believe that unbelievers desperately need to hear this gospel that will bring salvation to them, and I believe that God wants to sweep people into the church that are not coming in because of the niceness of an experience or even a comfortable meeting geared towards them, but they're coming because they have no choice, because God has so radically transformed their hearts, joining these people, even though it meant persecution.
• 50:16
  Speaker 1: They're in heart and soul.
• 50:19
  Speaker 1: I believe it's only preaching the full gospel that brings that to people.
• 50:25
  Speaker 1: I believe this is what's in your guys' hearts.
• 50:28
  Speaker 1: I know that for some of you you're saying well, I hear what you're saying, john, I just don't know what to do about it.
• 50:37
  Speaker 1: This is where I feel the absolute inadequacy of preaching, because I know full well I know full well that you can't manufacture desperation.
• 50:48
  Speaker 1: You can't just say it's a good message, I'm going to get desperate.
• 50:55
  Speaker 1: No, listen, unless God does this work, we can't produce it.
• 51:01
  Speaker 1: But that which we desperately need God to do, we can pray and ask Him to do.
• 51:13
  Speaker 1: One of the things that I see in this church wonderfully is clarity and revelation regarding prayer.
• 51:21
  Speaker 1: I preach this message to you with great hope that in this church it will take root and you will become a God fearing people, and the reason I have that confidence is because you've understood the vital key, which is prayer.
• 51:44
  Speaker 1: Prayer will take your openness to hunger and will then take your hunger to desperation.
• 51:54
  Speaker 1: I want to leave you with this challenge Would you pray for the fear of the Lord to grip your heart?
• 52:02
  Speaker 1: Would you do that?
• 52:05
  Speaker 1: If you do that, I believe your hearts will be ready for the revival that God wants to bring to you.
• 52:14
  Speaker 1: Would you stand with me and let me pray with you, father, I just want to thank you so much for these good people and I want to thank you for the work that you're doing here, father.
• 52:33
  Speaker 1: I would just ask right now that this Word will take deep root in the soil of their hearts and that even in their times ahead of worship adoration, there would come waves of the fear of the Lord upon them.
• 52:48
  Speaker 1: Father God, I pray that they will grasp something of the wonder and the awe of who you are, that they, like the early Quakers, would be known as those who tremble at your word.
• 53:03
  Speaker 1: They tremble, god.
• 53:06
  Speaker 1: I pray that this would be a people that would know such a grace from you.
• 53:11
  Speaker 1: And so, father God, I do pray that for every open heart that you will turn it into a hungry heart, and for every hungry heart you will turn it into a desperate heart, that your fear would grip these people.
• 53:27
  Speaker 1: In Jesus' name, amen.
• 53:41
  Speaker 2: I could not agree more that.
• 53:43
  Speaker 2: This mysterious thing.
• 53:46
  Speaker 2: Why does one fear the Lord and one seems to not have fear for the Lord?
• 53:51
  Speaker 2: Where does that come from?
• 53:53
  Speaker 2: Surely only from God, and I would encourage this church Would you pray and ask God, I wanna be one who fears you and loves you and fears you and if it's okay with you guys, I just wanna give an opportunity.
• 54:09
  Speaker 2: If you're here and you're like, I'm not sure I've ever met this God, I'm not sure if I've ever come into a point where I know Him, where I have a relationship with Him.
• 54:24
  Speaker 2: You know, in Bible one year, this last week, we read the story of the ark being sent from the Philistines back to Israel.
• 54:33
  Speaker 2: And the men of the city came around the ark.
• 54:38
  Speaker 2: There was a point at which they, in their curiosity, said let's just rip the lid off this thing and take a peek.
• 54:48
  Speaker 2: And God struck them.
• 54:52
  Speaker 2: Tens of thousands of people died from this casualness.
• 54:58
  Speaker 2: We're talking about passion in the series.
• 55:00
  Speaker 2: Casualness with God is a passion killer.
• 55:04
  Speaker 2: The fear of God is a passion kindler.
• 55:07
  Speaker 2: It's why it's placed in this series the way it is.
• 55:10
  Speaker 2: But those that had not been there said who can stand before this holy God?
• 55:17
  Speaker 2: And they asked for a neighboring town to take the ark.
• 55:22
  Speaker 2: And if you've heard this message and you're kind of new and you're exploring all this, or maybe you realize I don't think I know God.
• 55:31
  Speaker 2: Actually, the truth is no one can stand before this holy God.
• 55:37
  Speaker 2: He is holy.
• 55:38
  Speaker 2: I want you to imagine the actual surface of the sun.
• 55:42
  Speaker 2: And if you were a little piece of living darkness and you're like I want to live on the sun, how well is that going to work out?
• 55:50
  Speaker 2: No, the brightness, the extremity of the sun, it's going to completely obliterate all darkness.
• 55:57
  Speaker 2: Darkness cannot survive.
• 55:59
  Speaker 2: That is the way the Bible, the God of the Bible, reveals in his word, the scripture, what it's like for us, with sin in us not made pure, to try to live and abide in God.
• 56:10
  Speaker 2: Who can stand before this holy God?
• 56:13
  Speaker 2: None, not even one.
• 56:14
  Speaker 2: There is none who is good?
• 56:16
  Speaker 2: No, not one.
• 56:17
  Speaker 2: That's what he says in his word.
• 56:20
  Speaker 2: And yet he has made a way for me and for you to come and stand before this holy God, to know the God who is worthy of all fear and all worship and all love.
• 56:31
  Speaker 2: And it's not something that you could do for yourself, it's not something that I could do.
• 56:36
  Speaker 2: It's not based on our good deeds.
• 56:37
  Speaker 2: It is based on what he, the God who is worthy of fear also, the God who loved us so much that he made a way, jesus Christ himself being God.
• 56:48
  Speaker 2: He came, he stretched out his arms for you in the cross, he died for your sin and rose from the grave, promising life in place of death for those that would put their faith in him.
• 56:59
  Speaker 2: And when we put our faith in Jesus Christ, for who he is and what he has done the Lord, the God, the King, who has come and has rescued us, who has paid the price for our sin, we are forgiven of our sins, fully, no darkness left in us, all of it covered by the cost of his blood.
• 57:20
  Speaker 2: And so, if you're here and you know I cannot stand before this holy God, I admit that I'm a sinner, I'm not too proud to be willing or to refuse to admit that, and I want to stand before this holy God.
• 57:34
  Speaker 2: I don't want death, I want life, I don't want the consequence of sin, I want to stand before him in this life and forever after, with heads bowed and eyes closed.
• 57:45
  Speaker 2: I'm just gonna ask us to give privacy for a moment and I wanna give you an opportunity.
• 57:50
  Speaker 2: If that's you and you wanna leave this room, forgiven of your sin, brought into a relationship with God starting now, that can last forever.
• 57:58
  Speaker 2: I wanna encourage you just to raise your hand as your way of saying I want to receive the forgiveness that Christ paid for me, so good.
• 58:08
  Speaker 2: Is there anyone else?
• 58:08
  Speaker 2: Amen, I see you.
• 58:11
  Speaker 2: Anyone else?
• 58:12
  Speaker 2: Is that you Praise God?
• 58:17
  Speaker 2: I see you.
• 58:18
  Speaker 2: I see you in the back.
• 58:22
  Speaker 2: Is there anyone else?
• 58:22
  Speaker 2: None can stand before this holy God, but he is made away.
• 58:27
  Speaker 2: It's by faith that we receive what he's done for us.
• 58:30
  Speaker 2: You guys can put your hands down.
• 58:33
  Speaker 2: I'm just gonna lead you in a prayer to come and say God, I am not too proud to admit that I have sinned and I need to be forgiven.
• 58:40
  Speaker 2: I know I cannot stand before you based on my own righteousness, but, jesus, I believe that you being God, that you came and you paid the price for my sin the cross, and I believe that you rose from the grave, giving life and place of death to all who would put their trust, their faith, in you.
• 59:03
  Speaker 2: And I'm looking to you, I'm trusting you to be the Lord of my life and the forgiver of my sins.
• 59:09
  Speaker 2: Would you lead my life, would you forgive me of my sins?
• 59:15
  Speaker 2: Today I wanna stand before you, come, live in my heart, make it your home.
• 59:23
  Speaker 2: I wanna know you, starting today and lasting forever in Jesus' name, amen.
• 59:29
  Speaker 2: Church family, can we just give a hand to those who said yes to the Lord.
• 59:32
  Speaker 2: Praise God, thank you, guys for coming out for another weekend of this new series.
• 59:41
  Speaker 2: If you need prayer, our prayer teams are available back there.
• 59:43
  Speaker 2: Otherwise, you guys enjoy the rest of your afternoon and I hope to see you guys back here soon.
• 59:47
  Speaker 2: Blessings everybody.
• 59:48
  Speaker 2: Thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you.