Ingredients, Part 2

Extended Review: Predominance, Definition, First Ingredient

0:00 If someone were to read through his Bible with pen and paper in hand, jotting down every explicit, overt reference to the fear of God, and then seek to keep a column where passages dealt with not so much the words, but the thought and illustrations of the reality of the fear of God, I am quite confident that he would have many pages filled with references and much in his second column of indications and illustrations of this great truth. For one of the most dominant themes in all of Holy Scripture is the theme of the fear

0:49 of God. It is that which the writer to the Proverbs says is the beginning or the chief part of all knowledge. So in the past few Lord's Day mornings we have been attempting to grasp something of the weight of this theme and come to a better understanding of what scripture means when it speaks of the fear of God. And the way we've approached it is, first of all, by seeking to establish the predominance of the fear of God in biblical thought.

1:22 And I did this by selecting 13 texts from the Old Testament and 9 from the New, which set out in a most clear manner this great theme of the fear of God as being a dominant theme of Holy Scripture. so dominant that at the close of that study we drew the conclusion that to be devoid of the fear of God, whatever it is, is to be devoid of true saving religion. The second conclusion we drew was that to be ignorant of the fear of God was to be guilty of ignorance at a most basic point, and ignorance is never the handmaiden of Christian growth and development. And then the third

2:08 conclusion we drew was that we grow in grace only to the extent that we also grow in the fear of God. Then we spent two weeks trying to come up with a somewhat workable definition, or perhaps I should better say, description of the fear of God. That the fear of God is a predominant note in scripture is obvious to anyone who takes the scripture seriously. Well, then, if it is a dominant note, and to be devoid of it is to be devoid of saving religion, then the question that ought to be focused in the mind of every serious listener is, what then is the fear of God? Do I have it?

2:51 How may I grow in it? And so we've grappled with this matter of seeking to define and to describe the fear of God. And we've indicated that the word for the fear of God is the common word for fear, both in the Greek and the Hebrew, which means basically two things. There's the fear of the little boy who sees the neighborhood bully. It's the fear of dread. It's the fear of anguish, which always makes you want to run from the object. When that little boy grounds the corner and sees the neighborhood bully.

3:26 He doesn't run into his arms. He moves in the opposite direction as fast as his little size four shoes will carry him. Then there is the second aspect of fear, which is the fear of awe and of reverence. That same little boy put him in the presence of a great dignitary, the president or someone else, and he's filled with awe and with reverence, but not the kind that makes him want to run, but rather that makes him want to draw near in the light of the great privilege of being in the presence of such a dignitary.

4:00 So then these two thoughts of fear used in common language are captured and taken up into the biblical doctrine of the fear of God. There is a fear of God which is comprised of dread and of terror. It's the fear which Adam had when he heard the voice of God after he sinned And he said, I heard thy voice and I was afraid. And this fear, though it's not in any way an indication of grace, this fear is not only legitimate, but demanded wherever we have grounds to be afraid of God.

4:42 And I repeat, as I have the past two Lord's Day morning, if you sit here this morning and your sins are not covered by the blood of Christ, If you are not accepted in the Beloved, then the great, infinite, majestic, powerful, holy God of the Bible is angry with you. He has a controversy with you. His wrath burns against you, and you ought to tremble in your seat. For Scripture says God is angry with the wicked every day.

5:13 It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God. And so you ought to be afraid of God if you have reason to be afraid of him. And even in the life of the Christian, this element of fear never completely leaves him. For when he contemplates a course of disobedience, he knows that that course will bring upon him the chastening rod of God.

5:38 And no Christian in his right mind welcomes that rod. no child in his right mind if he has a father whose rod means anything trips around saying well daddy I love your rod it's a lovely thing I'd be glad to have it anytime you see fit to give it to me no sir there's one thing I avoided with studious carefulness was my father's thick hand on my bottom because that hand was thick and it was attached to a strong arm and I avoided the things that would provoke that hand attached to that arm to be applied to that part of my anatomy where my father used to take care of me. So then, for even the Christian, the fear of God is never totally devoid of this aspect of dread. However, it is the second aspect of fear that is the

6:28 dominant thought in Scripture when it speaks of the fear of God, the fear of reverence, The fear of awe, the fear of veneration, the fear which seraphim and cherubim knew when they veiled face and feet and cried one to another, Holy, holy, holy is the Lord God the Almighty. So much then for these two lines of thought upon which we have been moving, the predominance of the fear of God in biblical thought and then a definition of the fear of God involving dread and terror, involving the fear of reverence and of awe. Now, last week, what we tried to do was to begin, and that's all we did,

7:14 to carry out a third line of thought, the essential ingredients of the fear of God.

7:22 What is necessary if men and women are to biblically fear God? and the first thing we dealt with and this will end our review there must be correct concepts of the character of God particularly his immensity his majesty and his holiness men will not fear God unless they see that there is a God worthy to be feared either the fear of dread or the fear of awe and of reverence you don't need to dread the God who's one big, gushy, formless glob of love.

8:07 Who trembles before a formless, gushy, ethereal glob of love? Why tremble before that? All you need to do is push it and a few drops of it will come over you and you're all fixed up. There is very little trembling Very little dread in the consciousness Even of unconverted religious people Who sit in the best of our evangelical churches Week after week and year after year Why?

8:34 Because the God whom they hear preached Elicits no dread and no terror When I see that the God with whom I have to do Is a consuming fire And that his love is holy love and that his mercy is holy mercy, when I see that all of his attributes are suffused with holiness, with immensity and majesty, perhaps once again something of true trembling and holy terror will seize the hearts of unconverted people. But not until. This God that you can snuggle up to is not the God who will elicit the fear of dread, but more so, he's not the God who will elicit true awe and reverence from his people.

9:26 Ah, but someone says, that sounds so Old Testament-ish to me. Isn't there something in the revelation of God in Jesus Christ that just sort of like a rasp rubs off those sharp angles of the dread and terror of God? No, just the opposite is true. For I read in the latter part of Hebrews 12,

9:53 where the writer to Hebrews, having expounded all the greater privileges that are ours under the new covenant, having contrasted them with the old, says this, verse 28 of Hebrews 12, Wherefore, receiving a kingdom that cannot be shaken, that which we now have in Jesus Christ in the fulfillment of the new covenant is an unshakable kingdom having such privileges let us have grace whereby we may offer service well pleasing to God with what? with reverence and godly fear

10:40 The King James says the American standard with reverence and awe for our God is, not was, our God is a consuming fire. Therefore we must feed our minds upon the God of Scripture And in particular those Scriptures which set him before us In all the splendor, might, and majesty of his person This is no less true of God as revealed in Jesus Christ For the New Testament actually uses the term The fear of the Lord and the fear of Christ Colossians 3.22 and Ephesians 5.20

11:28 So if your Jesus is one who elicits no sense of awe No sense of holy dread Not the carnal dread that unregenerate men have But the holy dread of Revelation 1 He's not the Christ of the Bible He's some other Jesus And oh how necessary that we as the people of God feed our minds and spirits upon the scriptural concept of God that will elicit true fear. So then, the first essential ingredient of the fear of God is correct concepts of the character of God, particularly His immensity, His majesty, and His holiness.

Second Ingredient Introduced: Pervasive Sense of God's Presence

12:14 Now, I have two more, but being a realist, I think we'll only get to one, so let's start out and see where we go. The second essential ingredient of the fear of God is what I'm calling a pervasive sense of the presence of God. The foundation of the fear of God correct concepts of the character of God The next building block in the fear of God a pervasive sense of the presence of God And some of you kids say now preacher why do you use such a big word Well, because I want to give you a little vocabulary lesson this morning. The word pervasive is a very good word and you ought to know what it means.

12:57 And the next time you write a composition, you can use it and you show your teacher how smart you are. All right. Something that is pervasive is something that spreads throughout a given area. Let me illustrate from something you all know.

13:12 If you happen to be driving down the highway, and up ahead you see a little dead body on the road, and as you get closer, before you can even see its color, you know what that animal was, don't you? If it was one of those little black animals with a white stripe down the back, before you even get close enough to see it, you can tell that it's a skunk. Why? Because the skunk has a little gland that squirts out something that pervades the atmosphere. You see, it becomes a very pervasive smell. It extends throughout the whole area. Now, when something is pervasive, it extends through everything. If you come into a small room where there's a potted lily, The fragrance of that lily is pervasive

14:00 It pervades the whole room You don't need to go over within the foot of it The moment you open the door That beautiful fragrance Strikes your nostrils And it registers that's a lily So the second great ingredient of the fear of God Is a pervasive sense of the presence of God That is a sense of the presence of God which spreads throughout the entirety of our lives so that there is no place in which we find ourselves, no circumstance in which we are found, but what we know, God, this great, majestic, transcendent, holy, this God is where?

14:47 He is here. He is here. and all that he is in his majesty, in his holiness, in his immensity, he is not somewhere out there, but right here. So then the fear of God will always be constructed of this pervasive sense of the presence of God.

15:14 I remember some time years ago hearing a statement by the late Dr. Tozer, and I don't know if I'm quoting him accurately, but if I'm not, the seed thought comes from him, and it's got a little bit of my own adjustment in it. But he said this, the most profound word in the human language is God.

15:35 The most profound word, God. You go to your dictionary to look up a word like pervasive, and that's what I did. And it said, that which is spread throughout. You can define the word pervasive.

15:48 Now try to define God. Think of all the thousands of theological books that have been written in all the hundreds of languages throughout the earth. Trying to define God. If you could put them all together into one language and read them all.

16:02 If God gave you some kind of a computer mind that could read through them all in a year's time. When you were all done you would have to say what? We know about the edges of his ways. The most profound word in the English language is God.

16:17 The most profound fact in all of human experience is this sentence, God is.

16:30 All that the scripture tells us about him, he is right now. And then the third thing, the most profound experience is the recognition that God is here.

16:47 The most profound word, God.

16:51 The most profound fact, God is. The most profound transforming experience, God is here. And that's what I'm driving at. And it's interesting, and I want to support this now from Scripture, that in most of the instances where the fear of God is described for us in Scripture, it's described in a context of the realized presence of God.

Psalm 139: From Omniscience to Personal Presence

17:21 Some of you I trust will remember last week when I was trying to describe this fear of reverence and awe. I went to Jacob and his vision and he says surely God was in this place and I knew it not. Moses at the burning bush had said he was afraid to look upon God. Isaiah in Isaiah chapter 6 woe is me I'm undone I've seen the Lord.

17:43 If you trace out these illustrations of the fear of God, the fear of reverence, the fear of awe, the fear of veneration, you will find that almost exclusively they are set in a context where men are experiencing the realized presence of God. God is there, and they know He's there, and they are in His presence, and they know it. Exodus chapter 3, he sees that bush burning, he turns aside to examine it, and God speaks out of it. And when he recognizes God is there, speaking out of the bush, it was then that he covered his face and wouldn't even look upon it.

18:26 At that point, you see, all that Moses knew of God, it wasn't a God who is all of this up there and out there somewhere, but he's all that he is right there, right here in my presence. God is all of this right here. So he hides his face. Same way with Jacob.

18:46 He wakes from his dream, and when he reflects upon it, he says, This is none other than the what? The house of God. How dreadful is this place? Why?

18:56 Because right here, God is. And I've been in his presence. How dreadful is this place? Made dreadful because the dreadful one was there.

19:07 Even that fear of terror has this thought in it. For you remember in Genesis 3.10, Adam answers to the Lord when he says, Where art thou? He said, I heard thy voice, and then I was afraid.

19:23 See, as long as Adam could think of God as being off there somewhere, he wasn't gripped with that sense of terror and dread. But he says, when I heard thy voice and I knew that all that you were and are, you were right here in close proximity to me. He said, I was afraid. I was afraid.

19:44 I was afraid. Now, what does this tell us? It tells us, you see, that the second essential ingredient of the fear of God is this pervasive sense of his presence. not only right concepts of his character but taking all that he is and bringing it here into this very place where I sit where I stand in this moment now I've tried to establish the general principle from these passages but now let's zero in on probably the most sustained and concentrated passage which teaches this truth if you were asked to select one what immediately comes to your mind? What passage in Scripture most clearly describes a man who has

20:36 right concepts of the character of God, his immensity, his majesty, his holiness, but it's couched in the context he's all of that right here, and he's filled with a pervasive sense of the presence of God. I hope you're thinking Psalm 139. If you weren't, I hope you will any time in the future. Will you turn, please, now to the 139th Psalm?

21:07 Now, remember what we're trying to establish is the second essential ingredient of the fear of God. Without this, there will be no fear of God.

21:21 Notice how the psalmist begins, thinking of the omniscience of God, that is, the fact that he knows all things. O Lord, thou hast searched me and known me. Thou knowest my down-sitting and my uprising. Thou understandest my thought afar off.

21:45 Thou searchest out my path and my lying down, and art acquainted with all my ways. There is not a word in my tongue, but, O Lord, thou knowest it altogether. Now, up to this point, the psalmist is giving what we might say a description of bare omniscience. He's describing what he knows about the character of God as an all-seeing, all-knowing God.

22:14 But now, how is he thinking of that? Is he thinking of it in terms, and I want to use an illustration that I hope will bring this into focus, Is he using it in terms of what we might say about one of these U-2 planes with the special cameras that can take pictures from 60 or 80,000 that would show the color of your car or the shape of your car on the ground all these miles below? Or some of these photographing satellites? And it's amazing the detail that they can show from 6, 7, 8, 10 miles, 20, 100 miles up.

22:47 there's not a detail that they cannot see from a distance now is that the concept David has God is this great immense all knowing all seeing God and he's up there out there somewhere and everything I do like the great eye of the orbiting spy satellite he sees it he knows it is that the concept no for notice the transition in the next verse verse 5 Thou hast beset me behind and before And laid thy hand upon me Now granted, God has no hand He's using the figure of speech What they tell us is an anthropomorphism

23:34 That's another big word You may not be able to spell it But if you really want to pull off a good grade You use that in your next essay Anthropos From the Greek word which means man where God has attributed to him certain characteristics of men. He doesn't actually have hands and eyes and feet, but in order to convey to us his ways and what he's like, God does this. Now, David says, The God who has searched me, the God who knows me, who understands my thought, who knows every word, he knows and understands not like the orbiting spy satellite from miles away, but because his hand is upon me. Now, notice how this thought is developed.

24:14 Such knowledge is too wonderful for me. It is high. I cannot attain unto it. Whither shall I go from thy spirit, or whither shall I flee from thy, the next word, presence.

24:27 Thy presence. Not just thy knowledge, but thy presence. If I ascend up into heaven, he doesn't say, you will see me. He says, thou art there.

24:38 If I make my bed in hell or in the grave, and this is one of the instances where hell apparently means the grave. It doesn't always mean that, contrary to the Jehovah's Witness teaching. But he says, if I can go as high as a man can go in this direction, thou art there. If I go as far down as a man can go in this direction, thou art there.

25:02 Then he says, if I go out as far as a man can go in that direction, he's gone up, he's gone down. Now he says, if I can take the wings of the morning, apparently a poetic picture of jumping on the first rays of the sun as they break up over the horizon. He said if I could do that and as they shoot out over the sea he said if I could be on one of those rays of the sun that burst out over the sea even there shall what Thy hand lead me Thy right hand shall hold me Do you see? Do you see what he's doing?

25:38 Do you catch this? He's not talking about bare omniscience. God knows everything. Or some bare kind of heartless, formless, personality-less, omnipresence.

25:49 God is everywhere. He says, no, wherever I go, God is there as the personal God whose hand is upon me. Whose hand holds me. Whose hand covers me.

26:01 And then he even traces this all the way back in a beautiful poetic imagery in verse 13. Thou didst form my inward parts. Thou didst cover me in my mother's womb. He said, in the darkness of that period before I was ever born, he says, thy hand did cover me and envelop me.

26:22 I was not only enveloped in my mother's womb, but I was enveloped in the tender protecting hand of my God. And then he goes on to develop these thoughts until he says, My head's going to split. Verse 17, How precious are thy thoughts unto me! How great is the sum of them!

26:41 If I should count them, they are more in number than the sand. When I awake, I am still with thee. Do you catch that strain of emphasis? Thy presence, thy hand with thee.

26:53 What's he saying? He's saying, O God, the thought that has just pervaded me. and that I carry with me in every circumstance and situation, is that all that you are is that great, all-knowing, all-seeing, all-powerful, all-gracious God. You are to me right here.

27:17 Right here. Therefore, the fear of God to David comprise this great second element, a pervasive sense of the presence of God. And it's this that will create that awe, that sense of wonder, that sense of reverence, so that the thought of disobeying such a God, the thought of grieving Him by walking contrary to His will, is unthinkable to the man who walks in his fear. That's why scripture says the fear of the Lord is to depart from evil.

Practical Effects: The Grand Canyon Analogy

28:01 For if I'm living in the sense of the immediate presence of this great God, I will not dare to fly into the face of his holy commandments and his laws. How often have we been tempted to do something, you children, maybe you were going to take some forbidden object, and just the presence of your sister or brother walking into the room and suddenly you stopped what you were doing and started fiddling around like you never were going to do it? If the presence of another creature who has no power to judge you for your action, the least or the worst they can do is squeal on you, but they have no power to judge you. If their realized presence radically changes your moral and ethical conduct, what happens to the man who knows I am always in the immediate presence

28:47 not only of one who can observe and squeal on me, but the one before whom I am accountable for all that I do. Will that have any ethical and moral implications? I say it has ethical and moral implications. And we'll look at a couple of them in a little bit.

29:06 May I use one more illustration? I've labored at trying to make this concept clear. Suppose we went down to the local library and we were going to find out all the facts we could find out about the Grand Canyon. Any of you been to the Grand Canyon?

29:22 Anyone been to the Grand Canyon? We have one. Only one. All right.

29:26 The rest of us have a lot of exploring of our own country to do. But I've talked with some people who've been to the Grand Canyon. It's made me want to go there. But we could get all the facts.

29:36 All right. So we're getting all the facts. So many wide miles across at certain points. So deep.

29:40 And we've got all these facts about the immensity, the majesty, the beauty, the transcendent splendor of the Grand Canyon. And so we memorize all those facts. We could pass a test and be experts on the physical properties of the Grand Canyon. But now let me ask you a question.

30:00 You get up in the morning, brush your teeth, go and get your toast and coffee and go off to work. All that you know about the immensity of majesty, the glory of the Grand Canyon doesn't affect you one bit in how you live. But if it were possible, If it were possible, when you got up the next morning, got all these facts about the Grand Canyon, and suddenly you were saddled up on the back of a ray of light that broke over the eastern coast of our country, and within the snap of the fingers you found yourself standing right in the midst of the Grand Canyon, what would happen? I doubt you'd take out your tube of toothpaste and start washing your choppers.

30:42 No, no. No, no. What would happen? They say, oh, yeah, I, what do you say?

30:52 Yeah, I got all the facts, but this is the Grand Canyon. This is the Grand Canyon. This is the Grand Canyon. See, what's happened?

31:03 All the facts and figures, not a one of them has changed. You can look out and see the mile or two mile expanse. You can see the depth. You can see all the factors.

31:11 But what's happened? You've been put into the presence of the canyon. itself and all that should have elicited awe suddenly grips you with a sense of awe and with wonder. Now that's what I'm trying to say.

31:26 We can have all the facts about God, even good, biblical, and reformed facts about God. Holy, sovereign, transcendent, immense, free, boundless, and all the rest. But listen, unless we learn to cultivate that all-pervasive sense of His presence, it won't make much difference in how you live. That's why some people who've got a smaller God in their theological propositions, but have more of the sense of the presence of God, live a lot better than people who've got a great big God in their theology, but who have a distant God in their experience. Does this make sense? He's not the orbiting spy satellite.

32:13 He's the ever-present personal God. And in that sense, and I say it reverently, the very environment in which we live, and I have scriptural grounds for this, is this great God. That's why Paul, speaking to pagans, and setting before them the God of Scripture, the God who is Creator, the God who is sovereign, who governs the nations, made of one blood all nations, rules them, he said, in Him we live and move and have our very being. This is not pantheism.

32:44 No. But it's a biblical concept that I fear we know, I know, too little about experimentally. And it is this which is the essential ingredient of the fear of God. And now it's this.

Abraham: Walk Before Me and Be Blameless

33:04 And I think what we'll do is look at several illustrations of how this has its practical effect now upon the life of the man who learns it. Turn, please, to Genesis chapter 17.

33:19 Genesis chapter 17.

33:31 Abraham has walked with God for a number of years. God has revealed himself to him. Here we have the record of another one of those self-disclosures that God makes to his servant whom he calls his friend. Genesis 17, 1.

33:48 And when Abram was ninety years old and nine, the Lord appeared to Abram and said unto him. Now here's the first element in the fear of God. I am God Almighty. Abraham, whenever you think of me, I want you to think of boundless might.

34:11 I want you to think of me as the God in whom all might and power resides. I am God Almighty. Now, walk before me. That is, walk in the constant awareness of my eye upon you, my presence with you, and your relationship to me being the all-important thing in every circumstance, wherever you walk, may your walk be before me, and, here's the practical outworking, be thou perfect.

34:48 Here is the moral, the ethical implications of a man who says, I believe what is revealed about the character of God, and by His grace I shall cultivate an all-pervasive sense of the presence of God. The result will be a life of obedience to that God. Now, let's turn to a passage where this command of God was put to perhaps its most crucial test. and see how when Abraham passes the test, God interprets that test and also Abraham's successful, if we may use the term, successful passing through that test.

35:32 Genesis chapter 22.

35:43 Genesis chapter 22. you remember the command of God was to take Isaac the son of promise and to kill him I like to use the term because again we miss something of the of the heart wrenching nature of God's command when God said verse 2 take now thy son thine only son whom thou lovest and get thee to the land of Moriah and offer him there for a burnt offering that sounds beautiful to us but what he's saying is go out and kill him Abraham as you've plunged the knife into many an animal and you've seen the spurt of blood and you've seen the quiver as life has struggled to maintain itself and then you've seen that final quiver and then it's dead

36:29 now go on up and plunge the knife into the breast of your own son and see the blood spurt form and see the twitching of the body as it fights for life and then see it breathe its last that's what you're going to do Abraham that's what God told him to do alright walk thou before me and be thou perfect who has told me to go up and kill my son this great majestic transcendent almighty all holy all powerful God and I've learned Abraham says to walk before him he's God I'm the creature mine is to obey the consequences of my obedience

37:15 his responsibility. And so Abraham, regardless of what struggles he may have had in the wee hours of the morning and no doubt he had them, scripture passes them over and all it does is record for us his implicit obedience. So we read in verse 3, And Abraham rose early in the morning and saddled his ass and took two of his young men with him and Isaac his son and claved the wood for the burnt offering and rose up and went to the place of which God had told him. Then you remember the story.

37:45 I need not go over the details just as he's about to do that very thing which God told him to do. The knife is raised. God stays his hand. God speaks to him.

37:55 But now notice what God says to him and this is pivotal to our study this morning Verses 11 and 12 And the angel of the Lord called unto him out of heaven and said Abraham Abraham and he said here am I And he said, lay not thy hand upon the lad, neither do thou anything unto him. Now notice, for now I know that thou, what, fearest God. You see I haven't read this in This is God's interpretation on the whole event He says Abraham This test and now your obedience in the midst of it

38:40 Is an eloquent cry An eloquent testimony of many things But above all Abraham This is the eloquent testimony of the depth And the reality of your fear of me For I knowest that thou fearest God, seeing thou hast not withheld thy son, thine only son, from me. Abraham, you have shown me that you fear me. A fear which has as its indispensable element such a concept of my character and the worth of my being, I am worthy to be obeyed. And such a pervasive sense of my presence that you know that to walk before me is to walk in the path that I've laid out for you.

Joseph: Sin Against God Who Is Here

39:32 And in that path, I will be your reward, even if Isaac must die. He obeyed. And we see something of the effect of the fear of God in the life of a man. Then there's that classic example in Genesis chapter 39.

39:52 And this is so relevant, living as we do in this day of Sodom-like debauchery and filth and preoccupation not only with legitimate flesh but with strange flesh. the pattern of any society is to move from its sexual pattern simply being one part of the whole of society to where it begins to be the focal point and then it moves into sophisticated sex and then it moves into perversion and then you move into judgment and I believe we're somewhere between the last two Joseph lived in a day where the pharaohs of Egypt were known for their preoccupation with flesh,

40:42 legitimate and strange flesh as well. And here's this handsome young man down in the court seeing all of this moral filth on every side, being a normal human being unlike some of the radical scholars who tried to show that he was a homosexual and had no normal heterosexual desires and all the rest, all this kind of foolishness. in the midst of all that and I'm only describing that not to go into gory details but to show some of the relevance of this matter of the fear of God to the whole pull that you feel as young men and women living in our day and some of us who are not so young.

41:20 Here Joseph receives overtures from Potiphar's wife and he refuses. That doesn't tell us too much about him for a man may say no the first time for a lot of reasons. any temptation that simply comes by once and flirts with us is relatively easy to deal with. It's when there is persistent temptation in the area of natural weakness that the real test comes.

41:50 And so day after day, Scripture tells us, she comes and she puts out her overtures. And Joseph says no, until one day in absolute frustration, seeing everyone out of the house, she actually lays hold of Joseph physically. And in the hour of his greatest testing, Joseph turns and says, now notice carefully his word, verse 9. Sorry, this was said before the hour of testing, and this is what preserved him in that hour, verse 9.

42:19 Speaking of the master, Joseph says, He is not greater in this house than I, neither hath he kept back anything from me but thee, speaking of Potiphar, because thou art his wife. How then can I do this great wickedness and sin against God? What kind of a God? A God who was out there somewhere?

42:44 No, no, no. The moment a man begins to think of God in that distant relationship, then he can very conveniently cauterize his conscience and insulate his present circumstance from the eye and the control of God. And when he's done that, then he's given himself up to the sin in principle already. How can I do this wickedness and sin against God?

43:07 What God? The God who has set me behind and before and laid his hand upon me. The God who saw me and was with me in that pit when my brothers thought to kill me. The God who has brought me out of that pit and put me here in Egypt.

43:23 The God who has brought me to a place of exaltation before your very husband. How can I do this and fly into the face of this God?

43:39 You know as well as I do that the first step to any sin, where there is definite inducement to sin, is we must negate any sense of the immediate presence of God. Right? Right?

43:55 Because many things you and I do, if we had started to do them and just a fellow human being were to walk in on us. That's all the check we need. We stop immediately.

44:07 Right? If you're having a spat with a wife, just let another fellow human, not even a Christian, come to the door and the presence of another human being is enough to check your words and suddenly you can become so sweet.

44:20 You be cheating there at school and you think nobody's seeing and all of a sudden the teacher looks over your shoulder and the presence of another human being Oh dear ones, what would it do to us If we had this all pervasive sense of the presence of God That's what it did for Joseph It kept him And that's the only thing that will keep you From the human standpoint Now I know there is the inworking of God's spirit and all the rest But this is how he works For he says in the new covenant I will put my fear into their hearts He doesn't keep us automatically but by putting within and preserving in us this fear of God which has as an essential ingredient this all-pervasive sense of the presence of God.

Application: The Fear of God in Daily Life

45:07 That's why Scripture says, Work out your salvation with fear and with trembling for God works in you to willing to do of His good pleasure. But His working in does not bypass the cultivation of the fear of God nor the natural activity of this fear. this is why when we turn to the New Testament we have that command dealing with this same matter of ethical and moral purity in 2nd Corinthians 6 and I want us to look at that passage in closing this morning 2nd Corinthians chapter 6 the apostle is asking some questions to show these Corinthians the stupidity,

45:56 the moral folly of being sinfully involved with unregenerate people in unnecessary alliances that would try to mix light and darkness, God and the devil, and he asks all these questions. What concord hath Christ with Belial? Verse 15. What portion a believer with an unbeliever?

46:16 What agreement hath a temple of God with idols? Now notice. for we are a temple of the living God even as God said I will dwell in them and walk in them and be their God and they shall be my people there's the promise I will dwell in them walk in them I'll be their God all that I am I will be not in a distant far off way but in intimate personal relationship with my people wherefore come out from among them be separate, saith the Lord, and touch no unclean thing, and I will receive you and be to you a father, and you shall be to me sons and daughters, saith the Lord Almighty. Having therefore these promises, beloved, let us cleanse ourselves from all defilement of flesh and spirit, perfecting

47:07 holiness in what? In the fear of God. Carrying our holiness to perfection in the climate of the fear of God, which has as one of its indispensable elements this all-pervasive sense of the presence of God. Why should I work on this area of defilement of the Spirit? Because God is here. He sees and knows and is grieved with that which is unlike him and a contradiction of his holy character.

47:41 He's not out there somewhere, but I will dwell in them and be their God. And he says in the light of that promise, let us carry our holiness, carry our sanctification on to perfection in the climate of the fear of God.

48:00 Now I hope this opens up a text like Proverbs 23, 17. Be thou in the fear of God all the day long. Carry with you into every circumstance not only right views of the character of God, but this pervasive sense of the presence of God. You see what a difference it will make in a time like this when we've gathered to worship?

48:33 The preacher's going to be here? Fine. My fellow believer's going to be here? Fine.

48:37 But above all of that, God is here. How dare I dishonor Him with half-hearted mumbling of the words of a song of praise? Unthinkable. So I stir myself up to praise Him with full heart and full voice.

48:56 How dare I dishonor Him by allowing distracting thoughts when the Word of God is being opened and allowing my mind to run off about work tomorrow and the problems of yesterday and about my new suit next week and about my boyfriend. How dare I? I'm in the presence of God. I'm in the presence of God.

49:17 God is speaking through His Word by His Spirit. Oh you can carry this out And the implications are infinite Because the God in whose presence we live Is the infinite God Does this help? I hope it does To understand a little more What the fear of God is That's the chief part of knowledge That fear Founded upon right views of God's character And secondly Constructed of this all pervasive sense Of his presence The Lord willing next week Will take up the third element What I'm calling a constraining awareness Of my obligations to him

Closing Exhortation and Prayer

50:06 That in every situation and circumstance The only thing that really matters Is what God requires of me And the obedience that I ought to render unto him Do you know something of this fear that I've been speaking of today. If you're a Christian, I'm sure your heart has cried out as my hands, Oh Lord, I thank you for the little I know, but oh, how precious little it is. And isn't this the explanation of so much of our shoddy living and so much of the areas of weakness we have conveniently learned to push the Grand Canyon out to Colorado instead of standing in the midst of it. may God help us that we shall walk

50:52 in his fear