Introduction
I give thanks to the eternal God, to the Almighty, for one more time that in His grace and in His mercy He allows us to expose ourselves to His Word and to the power of His Holy Spirit.
We have been studying for the past two weeks about the fear of God, and we have established something fundamental that every man and every woman of faith must know, understand, and exercise: the fear of God is the foundation of everything. The book of Proverbs says it clearly: “The beginning of wisdom is the fear of God”.
In Deuteronomy 10:12, the Spirit of God through the mouth of Moses establishes the instruction upon which we are working this series of teachings: “What does the Lord your God require of you, Israel? To fear the Lord your God, to love the Lord your God, to walk in all His ways, and to serve Him with all your heart and with all your soul”.
Although it says Israel, this is a word that applies to every man and every woman who comes before the presence of the Lord.
The Divine Sequence
We have said, and it is important to re-emphasize, that to be able to love God we first need to fear God. No one who does not learn to fear God can love God. When the Word of the Lord tells us to “love God,” it is not referring to emotional or sentimental terms to which we are accustomed. It is referring to total surrender.
The Lord Jesus presented it this way: “No one who puts his hand to the plow and looks back is worthy of Me”. Therefore, when the Word tells us we must love God, it is surrender, it is disposition, not sentiment or emotion.
Likewise, no one who has not learned to fear God can walk in His ways. How will it be possible for us to walk in the ways that God has traced if we have not first learned to fear Him? And no one who has not learned to fear God can serve Him with all his heart and with all his soul.
Two Essential Introductory Points
To introduce ourselves to this topic, I want to establish two fundamental points that will help us understand and, above all, develop the fear of God.
First Point: The Fear of God Is Teachable
In Psalm 34:11 we read these words from the psalmist David by the Spirit of God: “Come, children, listen to me; I will teach you the fear of the Lord”. The fear of God is teachable.
In last week’s meeting we established that it is a personal, individual, and non-transferable responsibility. None of us can go to a minister and say, “Pray for me, because I want to develop fear of God.” The fear of God develops when men and women expose themselves to teaching.
Let me explain this about “exposing oneself to teaching,” because I know there are many people who have exposed themselves practically their entire lives to teaching, like the rich young man who presented himself to Jesus: “Yes, I was taught about that, I know that.”
However, when we speak of being teachable, we are referring above all to exposing ourselves to correction. This is the point that many of us do not like. When the Word teaches us that the fear of God is teachable, it is not only referring to knowledge that is imparted and that each of us takes and walks by. It is referring above all to the capacity of each one to receive reproof.
This is the part that many of us do not like. We can receive teaching, we can receive revelation, we can receive training, but we do not like to receive correction. When the Word tells us that the fear of God is teachable, we must understand that it is correction: the capacity to accept correction, the capacity not to reject it, the capacity not to resent it, the capacity not to become uncomfortable with the instruction or correction being given to us. To that extent is the fear of God teachable.
Second Point: The Consciousness of God
The fear of God depends on the consciousness that each of us has about God. I want to expand on this because it is not about a religious consciousness.
Many people say, “Yes, I believe there is a God, I know there is a higher being. There has to be, because how is it possible that all these things could not have arisen from nothing?” But that is a religious consciousness, even a philosophical or logical consciousness, because the person says, “There had to be someone who started all this. There had to be a beginning, so that beginning is the Creator, the higher being.” That is what many people call it and therefore they say, “Yes, I believe in God.”
When we speak of having consciousness of God, we are not speaking of a philosophical, religious, or logical consciousness. We are referring to the spiritual consciousness of understanding that God is present in our midst. God is not far away in the universe, He is not outside this universe merely watching what we are doing. God is immanent, that is, God is interacting with men and women.
I must tell you something more: having consciousness of God is understanding that God walks with us to all places wherever we may be. Having the consciousness that God feels what we feel and that God sees the thoughts we have. To that level I am referring when speaking of having consciousness of God.
Why? Because you find in the accounts of Jesus that He wept. God wept, yes. Why? Because He feels what man feels, He understands what man is going through. He does not rejoice in the evil that develops against a righteous person. He is watching and feels what is happening.
That consciousness of God, of a present God, of an active God, of an interactive God, is what helps us to understand and develop the fear of God.
Three Foundations for Developing the Fear of God
This is a topic that, surely, many people are hearing about for the first time, because it is not taught, because it is not preached. Yes, it is mentioned, yes, there is knowledge of it, but the definition we have is a vague definition that has not really helped us to develop the fear of God.
We are going to establish three essential foundations.
First Foundation: Understanding That God Gives and Takes Life
In Acts of the Apostles 9:3-6, we read this well-known account:
“As he journeyed he came near Damascus, and suddenly a light shone around him from heaven. Then he fell to the ground, and heard a voice saying to him, ‘Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting Me?’ And he said, ‘Who are You, Lord?’ Then the Lord said, ‘I am Jesus, whom you are persecuting. It is hard for you to kick against the goads.’ So he, trembling and astonished, said, ‘Lord, what do You want me to do?’ Then the Lord said to him, ‘Arise and go into the city, and you will be told what you must do’”.
I emphasize: “he, trembling and astonished”.
Life comes from God. God is the only one who can give life. God gives it, but God also takes it.
The First Teaching in Eden
This was precisely the first teaching that Adam and Eve received in the Garden of Eden. God had told Adam and eventually Eve: “The day you eat of it, you shall die”. In Hebrew, in the original language, if we were to translate it literally, it says “dying you shall die,” establishing in that expression that he would die without fail. There was no option: as soon as he ate the bite he would die.
But what happened? They did not die. Adam and Eve then understood that this act of dying, although they had not experienced that experience, they understood perfectly what God was referring to. They believed that the activation of that word would occur when they saw God. That is why we can now understand why they hid, because they said, “We were afraid.” Afraid of what? Why? “Because I know what You said and now, since we did not die when we ate, does it mean we will die when we see You?” But they did not die either.
The first teaching that God established for Adam and Eve was: life comes from God, God gives it and God takes it.
A Necessary Revealed Knowledge
This is revealed knowledge that many men and women do not have today. The idea has developed that it is science that has government, dominion, and exercise over life, and this attacks the revelation of God. Why? Because we have displaced God from our lives. We have set God aside from our lives and have integrated medical knowledge, chemical knowledge, medicinal knowledge. We think, “Really, what keeps me alive are the medications, the treatments, the intervention of the doctor, the specialist or the subspecialist.” This attacks what the Word of the Lord teaches.
Having consciousness of God, that God is present, but above all understanding that life comes from God, God gives it, God takes it, God determines over man, God determines over woman. Therefore, we cannot walk in arrogance, believing that God to some extent becomes like a helper in moments of crisis we are living through.
The Experience of Paul and Job
Why did I use the text from Acts 9? Because in verse 6 it says: “He, trembling and astonished, said, ‘Who are You, Lord?’” He had never had this experience. This is the same experience as Job: “I had heard of You by the hearing of the ear”. Yes, he knew, yes, he had knowledge, yes, he had activity in function of You, but he had never had this revealing knowledge.
Paul, like Job, confronts a situation: life does not belong to man. Although we are the protagonists of this activity, life does not belong to me. I can be healthy and God can take my life. Life or death does not come because a person is sick or entered physical crisis. It is God who determines about life and about death.
This is fundamental for us to understand, because the fear of God cannot be developed if we are seeing God as a spectator or as a helper in the different crises that men and women face in life. I must understand that if I am standing, it is because it has pleased God. If I am alive, it is because it has pleased God, but I must understand that God also wounds and God chastises.
Biblical Testimony
The prophet Jeremiah wrote in Lamentations: “Through the Lord’s mercies we are not consumed, because His compassions are new every morning”. And in another part of the prophets we find: “God wounds, but on the third day He will give us life”.
In Deuteronomy 32:39, the words that the Spirit of God put in the mouth of Moses say: “Now see that I, even I, am He, and there is no God besides Me; I kill and I make alive; I wound and I heal; nor is there any who can deliver from My hand”.
The gospel that has unfortunately been preached in our contemporary times does not present this spiritual truth. The contemporary gospel presents us with a God who is only there to help, to bless, to deliver. But we have forgotten that God also chastises and that God also wounds.
Hannah, the mother of Samuel, wrote in 1 Samuel 2:6: “The Lord kills and makes alive; He brings down to the grave and brings up. The Lord makes poor and makes rich; He brings low and lifts up”.
To be able to develop the fear of God, I must understand, and I speak of understanding, develop the understanding that God is present, that life belongs to God, that God gives it, but that God also takes it. Without this knowledge, without this revelation, we cannot develop the fear of God.
How are we going to develop respect, fear of a God who we have always believed is there only to bless us, only to prosper us? How will the fear of God be developed under this idea? No one develops respect for God, and the experience of many years has shown us.
Why are there falls? Why are there situations that are repeating all the time? Because there is no fear of God. We must return to the Word and establish the foundation of the Word so that we can grow spiritually according to what God has determined.
Second Foundation: Respect for Life and the Person
I go to the book of Exodus, chapter 1, verses 15-17:
“Then the king of Egypt spoke to the Hebrew midwives, of whom the name of one was Shiphrah and the name of the other Puah; and he said, ‘When you do the duties of a midwife for the Hebrew women, and see them on the birthstools, if it is a son, then you shall kill him; but if it is a daughter, then she shall live.’ But the midwives feared God, and did not do as the king of Egypt commanded them, but saved the male children alive”.
I emphasize: the midwives feared God.
They did not heed what Pharaoh told them. Not heeding what Pharaoh had established meant death for them. But the text says: “The midwives feared God”.
It is important to understand that the midwives were not Hebrew. They were Egyptian, because how could the king of Egypt give instructions to those who were not Egyptian? Precisely for that reason he is giving them the instruction. They were Egyptian, but the text says: “The midwives feared God”.
The fear of God develops in the exercise of respect for life and the person.
They were newborns, they had not grown, they were not children, but they preserved their lives. Why? Because they exercised respect for life and the person.
The Loss of Respect
Have you noticed how today that respect has completely disappeared, and precisely because of this, even men and women who belong to congregations have not been able to develop the fear of God, because there is no respect.
Why is respect for life and the person important? Because in Genesis 1:26, God said: “Let Us make man in Our image, according to Our likeness”. Even if it is a person who is not walking according to the will of God, by creation they maintain an image and likeness of God. Respect for the image and likeness of God is what allows us to develop the fear of God.
Biblical Instructions on Respect
Leviticus 19:14 says: “You shall not curse the deaf, nor put a stumbling block before the blind, but shall fear your God: I am the Lord”.
Do not curse the deaf. Why? Do not mock the deaf for the very fact that they cannot hear. Here there is an attitude of mockery because since they are not hearing, words of cursing are often uttered. This same thing applies to people who belong to other regions who speak other languages. They are spoken to with gestures of apparent appreciation, but the words being declared to them are obscene words.
Do not mock, do not curse the deaf. It also says: “Before the blind do not put a stumbling block”. Do not mock those who have deficiencies, do not mock those who cannot perceive the things that are happening. This is a lack of respect for life and the person.
In Leviticus 19:32: “You shall rise before the gray headed and honor the presence of an old man, and fear your God: I am the Lord”. What is it talking about? Precisely what we are establishing: respect for life, respect for the person.
In James 2:2-4 we read:
“For if there should come into your assembly a man with gold rings, in fine apparel, and there should also come in a poor man in filthy clothes, and you pay attention to the one wearing the fine clothes and say to him, ‘You sit here in a good place,’ and say to the poor man, ‘You stand there,’ or, ‘Sit here at my footstool,’ have you not shown partiality among yourselves, and become judges with evil thoughts?”
Why evil thoughts? Because there is no fear of God, because there is no respect for life or respect for the person.
In Romans 14:4 it says: “Who are you to judge another’s servant? To his own master he stands or falls. Indeed, he will be made to stand, for God is able to make him stand”.
The Five Commandments
These texts, both from the Old and New Testament, are teaching us and establishing this fundamental principle for being able to develop the fear of God: respect for life, respect for the person.
If a man, if a woman, if a young man or young woman has not managed to exercise respect for life and the person, they cannot develop the fear of God. For that reason we find that within the Ten Commandments, five commandments are directed particularly to respect for life and the person.
In Deuteronomy 5:16-21 we read the remaining five commandments:
“Honor your father and your mother, as the Lord your God has commanded you, that your days may be long, and that it may be well with you in the land which the Lord your God is giving you. You shall not murder. You shall not commit adultery. You shall not steal. You shall not bear false witness against your neighbor. You shall not covet your neighbor’s wife; and you shall not desire your neighbor’s house, his field, his male servant, his female servant, his ox, his donkey, or anything that is your neighbor’s”.
Ten commandments. The last five are speaking to us and emphasizing precisely this second foundation for being able to develop the fear of God: the exercise of respect for life and the person.
It is of no use to us to understand it if we are not willing to execute it. The development of the fear of God is based on the exercise of respect for life and the person. It is not understanding, it is not knowledge, it is not simply admission. It is the exercise that each of us develops concerning life and the person.
Third Foundation: The Decision to Abominate What God Abominates
In 2 Corinthians 6:14-18 we read:
“Do not be unequally yoked together with unbelievers. For what fellowship has righteousness with lawlessness? And what communion has light with darkness? And what accord has Christ with Belial? Or what part has a believer with an unbeliever? And what agreement has the temple of God with idols? For you are the temple of the living God. As God has said: ‘I will dwell in them and walk among them. I will be their God, and they shall be My people.’ Therefore ‘Come out from among them and be separate, says the Lord. Do not touch what is unclean, and I will receive you. I will be a Father to you, and you shall be My sons and daughters, says the Lord Almighty’”.
The fear of God develops from the decision to see as abominable all those actions that are abominable to God.
I am not speaking of knowledge, I am not speaking of understanding. The Word of the Lord is very clear: it is about a decision. The fear of God develops from the decision to see as abominable those things that God abominates.
We Cannot Reconcile with the World
I cannot call good what God called evil. I cannot call permissible what God proscribed. I cannot call holy what God determined is profane.
The greatest problem that we men and women of the current time have is that we try to reconcile all things with the world. We try to approach the world, but not to denounce it, but rather to share with it under the idea: “This way I attract them to the Lord,” based on the expression of the apostle Paul: “I became as a Jew to the Jews and as a Gentile to the Gentiles”. Words that have been misinterpreted, because at no time did God call us to approach the world.
In Genesis 3, Eve declared to the serpent perfectly what God had established. There are those who say, “That was an invention of Eve when Eve said ‘nor shall you touch it.’” But Eve remembered perfectly what God had told her. It is not lawful for us to approach the world.
At no time did God tell us that we should approach the world to give testimony to the world. Light is seen from afar. We do not need to approach the darkness.
We have tried to reconcile. How many times have we heard? “You don’t have to be so religious,” “there’s more love and less religion.” Philosophical phrases, worldly phrases that are not based on the Word of the Lord.
“Come out from among them and be separate, says the Lord. Do not touch what is unclean, and I will receive you”. The Word is clear: God has not called us to share, to reconcile with the world.
The Problem of Indecision
The greatest problem we all have is that we do not want to make the decision to leave the world. We do not want to make the decision.
Many people come to me almost every day with this same argument: “I end up doing the things I don’t want to. I have the desire, I have the good intention, I have the motivation to do it, but I end up doing the things I don’t want to.”
As long as you do not decide, as long as you do not decide that it is abominable because God abominates it, you will never be able to do what God is demanding of you.
The greatest problem of men and women today is that they have not made decisions. They are walking in ambiguity. I must remember at this point the message to the messenger of the Church of Ephesus: “I have this against you, that you have left your first love”.
We must understand: it is necessary to make decisions. God is calling us to decisions. Do not postpone it any longer. It is necessary to make the decision: “As for me and my house, we will serve the Lord”, was declared by Joshua many years ago.
What Are We Sharing?
You cannot develop the fear of God if you are still sharing with the world. What might we be sharing? We might be sharing music, melody, philosophy, images, sayings, expressions.
If God called something evil and perverse, I, in order to develop the fear of God, must also call evil and perverse what God called as such. I am not greater than God. But if I call the things that God called evil and perverse, I call them good and permissible, I am rising up and acting in the spirit of the antichrist, sitting in the place of God.
That is why Jesus said: “In the last days many antichrists will come”. He was not referring only to those who were going to preach or be popular. He was referring to many men and women, many young men and women who in the secrecy of their environment or in the unpopularity of their lives would be acting, calling permissible what God proscribed.
The Decisive Call
The call of God is decisive for our days: “Come out from among them and be separate, says the Lord. Do not touch what is unclean, and I will receive you. I will be a Father to you, and you shall be My sons and daughters, says the Lord Almighty”.
How many ministries have not been able to take off? How many ministries have not been able to develop? How many men, how many women with a calling, with ministry, with confirmation that God has called them, have not been able to emerge precisely because they have not been capable of developing the fear of God?
I must tell you: you will not be able to do it. It does not matter if you went to a seminary, because theological knowledge will not constitute you as a servant of God if you do not develop the fear of God. Even when you have doctoral degree diplomas, you will receive the word from Matthew 7:21-23: “Depart from Me, you who practice lawlessness, I never knew you”.
It does not matter if you go to a theological seminary, the doctoral degrees you may want to develop do not matter. The fear of God does not depend on that.
Conclusion: The Limits of God
The fear of God depends on the consciousness we have that God gives life and takes life, on understanding that we are not going to be hiding from God all the time. God has limits on the face of the Earth.
Let us not find ourselves one day that the limit has reached its end in our lives, and in the best of our experience or in the greatest of our lives, God could cut it short because we were not pleasing to Him.
The teaching of Belshazzar, the son of Nebuchadnezzar, when the hand appears to him and writes “Mene, mene, tekel, upharsin”, teaches us: God sets limits. Let us not find ourselves reaching the limit of our lives and our ministry, without opportunity to vindicate ourselves. Why? Because we did not act with the knowledge of the fear of God.
The Word says: “God will not hold him guiltless who takes His name in vain”.
The Three Foundations Reviewed
The fear of God is founded and develops in:
- The understanding that God gives life and God takes life.
- The exercise of respect for life and the person. Let us not show partiality because we are distancing ourselves from the fear of God. Let us not make a person’s life vain. And worse still, let us not go to slander them, which would be equivalent to taking a person’s life because they did not share our points of view.
- The decision to call abominable the things that God abominates.
When we build on this foundation, then, and only then, can we develop the fear of God.
Personal Responsibility
Now there are no excuses for any of us. “What does the Lord your God require of you? To fear the Lord your God, to love Him, to walk in all His ways, and to serve Him with all your heart and with all your strength” (Deuteronomy 10:12).
The work now belongs to each one of us. It is a personal and individual responsibility. We cannot transfer it nor can we go to a minister to pray for me. It is the decision that corresponds to us to make.
What are we going to do?
Lord, I give You thanks for Your Word. The peace of the Lord be with you. Amen.
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