Relationship to Conduct, Part 2
Pastor Martin completes the study on the relationship between the fear of God and conduct by demonstrating the negative corollary: the absence of the fear of God is the unholy soil out of which an ungodly life grows. He expounds Romans 3:18 as the capstone of Paul's indictment of universal sinfulness, then examines Psalm 10, Psalm 36, and Malachi 3 to show how the wicked must push God out of their thoughts in order to sin freely. He applies this to religious hypocrisy (Matthew 6, Matthew 23) and closes with a cultural analysis of how the devil destroys a society by undermining its theological foundations rather than attacking individual virtues.
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A full transcript is available on the tab. 131 paragraphs, roughly 54 minutes.
Review: The Fear of God as Soil of Godly Living
The teaching of Holy Scripture on the fear of God is so vital a thing that one author in writing on this subject was bold enough to say, and I quote, The fear of God is the soul of godliness. The emphasis of scripture in both the Old and the New Testaments require no less significant a proposition. End of quote. The fear of God is the soul of godliness.
And just as the body does not function without the soul, for Scripture says, as the body without the spirit is dead, so there can be no true godliness without this living soul of the fear of God. In order to acquaint ourselves, at least in an introductory manner, with this great theme of Scripture, we have spent the past two months each Lord's Day morning considering portions of Scripture which set before us this aspect of biblical truth concerning God's fear. we've considered the predominance of this theme in both the Old and the New Testaments. We've tried to grasp something of the meaning of the fear of God.
The dominant thought, of course, not the fear of dread or of terror, but that fear of awe and of reverence, that regard of God's character, and the resultant attitude which causes a man or woman to count the smile of such a great being life's greatest favor and the frown of such a being life's greatest curtains. And we looked at the ingredients of the fear of God. It involves at least some measure of right views of the character of God, some pervasive sense of his presence, and some constraining awareness of our obligations to him. Then we look to scripture to see the origins of this fear.
We saw that this fear is not an attitude which will ever grow upon unblessed Adamic stock, but it's a disposition implanted in the heart as a distinct blessing of the new covenant as we saw in Jeremiah 32 and verse 40. Then last week we began to consider the relationship of the fear of God to our practical experience. What is the relationship of the fear of God to conduct? What are the practical effects of the fear of God?
Having grasped, I trust, something of the biblical teaching as to the fear of God in importance and its substance, then we ask the question, so what? What does the fear of God do in the life of an individual? And I gave you last week a positive statement, Namely, that the fear of God is the holy soil out of which a godly life grows. There can be no practical godliness apart from the fear of God.
And we looked at passages in both the Old and the New Testament where this teaching is so very clearly set before us that when people were walking in practical godliness, Scripture says it was because they feared the Lord. And perhaps the best way to summarize all that we considered last week is to just look briefly at a passage in 1 Peter, one which we did not consider, but I think it will be the best summary and review of the main threads of thought that we tried to lay out last Lord's Day morning. in 1 Peter chapter 1 we have the admonition beginning with verse 13 to gird up the loins of our mind
and to be sober and set our hope perfectly on the grace that is to be brought unto us at the revelation of Jesus Christ in other words we are to live in the constant awareness that the best is yet to come and at the revelation of Christ That is, at his second coming, measures of grace will be poured into us that will climax and complete all that the present measure of grace has begun. And if we have our hope set perfectly on the grace that is to be brought to us at the revelation of Christ, what will be its practical effect upon us? verse 14, as children of obedience, not fashioning yourselves according to the former lust in the
time of your ignorance, but if he which has called you is holy, so be ye holy in all manner of living, because it is written, ye shall be holy, for I am holy. He says, now, don't be like you were. You were children of obedience. Don't fashion yourselves after the old pattern, negative exhortation, but positive exhortation, be holy after the very pattern of God himself.
And then he goes on to say, verse 17, and if ye call on him as father, who without respect of persons judges according to each man's work, pass the time of your sojourning in fear, knowing that ye were not redeemed with corruptible things, but with the precious blood of Christ. Exhortation negative, don't be like you were. Positive, be holy. And he says the climate in which that godly life is to be developed and expressed is a climate of the fear of God.
Pass the time of your sojourning in fear, and then he says the basis of it all is what? God's free redemption in Jesus Christ, knowing that ye were not redeemed with corruptible things, but with the precious blood of Christ. Is it impossible for a man to be godly if he is not a redeemed man? And the answer is obvious.
They that are in the flesh cannot please God. So without faith in and an experimental acquaintance with the cleansing of the blood of Christ, there can be no godliness. But just as there can be no godliness without its ground in the saving merit of Christ, so there can be no godliness without the atmosphere of the fear of God. These two things are tied together around this exhortation to a godly life.
And so it's accurate to say concerning this matter of the practical effects of the fear of God that the fear of God is the holy soil out of which a godly life grows to change the figure. It is the holy atmosphere in which a godly life breathes. And if you cut off the oxygen of the fear of God, then the man will no longer breathe. As one has so beautifully said, the Christian is alike everywhere because God is alike everywhere.
and he that fears God needs no other theater than his own conscience and no other spectators than God and the holy angels. And when you walk in the fear of God, you walk in that consciousness that I need no theater but my own conscience to which to appeal and I need no witnesses to my thoughts or my actions but God and the holy angels. Now, I want to couch the statement in a negative form this morning, so much for our review. What is the relationship of the fear of God to conduct?
Well, if the fear of God is the soil out of which a godly life grows, then by the sheer pressure of logic, and logic has an amazing pressure, it would be right to say that the absence of the fear of God is the unholy soil out of which an ungodly life grows.
But I would never think of building a message on logic. You know me too well for that. And so I want to demonstrate from Scripture that this negative statement is not just an inescapable statement of logic, but it is an accurate reflection of the teaching of Holy Scripture. The absence of the fear of God is the unholy soil which produces an ungodly life.
Proposition: Absence of Fear Is the Soil of Ungodliness
Now, to demonstrate this proposition, I want to first of all consider with you a key text in some depth that will set the framework of our study, then secondly look at several specific passages in a little less depth which support the conclusion of the main text, and then, as time permits, draw out some practical conclusions and observations. Very well, then, a key text to demonstrate this proposition that the absence of the fear of God is the unholy soil which produces an ungodly life. Turn, please, to the third chapter of the letter to the Romans, Romans chapter 3.
Key Text: Romans 3:10-18
The text, of course, is verse 18. There is no fear of God before their eyes. Now, what is the context of this statement? Well, any of you, and this would include many of you, who are familiar with the larger context of the argument of the book of the Romans, Paul's concern is to set out in systematic form the gospel, which is the power of God unto salvation, verses 16 and 17 of chapter 1.
To begin, he first of all then displays the universal need of the gospel, beginning with verse 18 of the first chapter, coming all the way through to verse 20 of chapter 3. Now, what he has been doing in great detail is rounding up one segment of humanity after another. He takes a certain group in chapter 1 and he corrals them and he holds over them the sentence of judgment and of death and of guilt. Then he corrals another section in the early part of chapter 2, and then another section in the latter part of chapter 2, and on into chapter 3. And then he comes to this summary statement of what he has been doing throughout that entire period in verse 9 of chapter 3.
What then? Are we, Jews, better than they, that is Gentiles? No, in no wise, for we before laid to the charge both of Jews and Greeks that they are all under sin. It's wonderful when a writer says, now this is what I told you. Starts out by saying, this is what I'm going to tell you.
Then he tells you, and then he looks back and says, this is what I told you. Now Paul says, I have told you, I've already proved Jew and Gentile, they're all under sin. Now someone comes along and says, but Paul, is this some crazy idea that you've concocted? He says, no.
everything I say as we read in Acts this morning is consistent with the law of Moses and with the prophets therefore he's going to buttress the whole argument of chapter 1, 18 through chapter 3, verse 8 with a number of quotations from the Psalms and the prophets so he says as it is written and you'll notice then in your American Standard from verses 10 through 18 You have them in the form of the Old Testament poetry, for they are quotes from the book of the Psalms and also from Isaiah. Now notice what he does. Follow his argument. And remember, he's writing to peasants and to slaves, not the scholars, not the PhDs, not the college graduates.
He expects us to follow his train of thought and his argument. So, recapitulating now, bucklesing his whole argument with Scripture, he says, a summary statement, verse 10, as it is written, non-righteous, no, not one. There's the canopy of Scripture that hangs over all humanity. Not a one of them is righteous.
The charge of unrighteousness is laid against them all. Now, someone says, well, Paul, isn't this matter of unrighteousness and sin It is sort of just a philosophical concept. He says, no, no, sin is not a philosophical concept. Sin is not just a dirty religious word.
He said sin is a very practical reality and I going to prove it to you from the Psalms and the prophets So he starts then in verse 11 with what we might call the effects of sin in the mind and in the heart There is none that understandeth, there is none that seeketh after God, they are all turned aside, they are together become unprofitable, there's none that doeth good, no, not so much as one. and he goes on to enlarge in verses 13 through 14 of the sins of the mouth and of the speech apparatus the throat is an open sepulcher when you open up a sepulcher take away the stone all the rottenness within belts is forth
the stench of rotten flesh and the rest he says when men open up their mouths it's like rolling away the stone of a sepulcher and when you hear their foul oath And when you see belching forth, or hear belching forth, the putrid lies and uncleanness, he said, it's just what's coming in, what's within coming out. The sins of the tongue, their tongues as they use deceit. The poison of ass is under their lips, whose mouth is full of cursing and bitterness. Then he moves the deeds of the hands and of the feet.
Their feet are swift to shed blood, murder. Destruction and misery are in their ways. The way of peace had they not known. He shows what we might call the sins of their general character and their general living.
Murder, lack of peace and friction and turmoil. And now, having done this, he says, What shall I do which is a statement that shows the cause of that entire life pattern? No understanding, no desire to seek after God, turning aside from him, walking in ways of uncleanness, speaking words of defilement and bitterness, hands and feet swift to shed blood. And he takes us in verse 18 to that which is the cause of this whole life pattern of ungodliness.
And he says, this is the reason for it all. There is no fear of God before their eyes. As he contemplates the state he has described in verses 10 through 17. and he wants to find one phrase which is the cause of such a disordered ungodly life.
He says, it's this noxious plant in the heart of man, no fear of God, before their eye. That is, as they view life, as they live life, as they carry out their desires and ambitions, they do so devoid of the fear of God. How many of you ever had spots before your eyes? Some of you kids, you had spots before your eyes?
Maybe you got knocked in the head or you bent over too long and you got up. What happens when you have spots before your eyes? Well, everything that you see has superimposed upon it those little spots. When you've got spots before your eyes, what has happened is there's been some disorder that's causing the eye to maybe pick up and register some of the components of the blood and other things passing over.
I don't know all the technical angles of it, but there aren't actually spots out there. But what happens, you look at the curtains, and there are spots. Maybe you've had pictures taken at a wedding, see, and all the flash bulbs popped, and the next person you looked at, he had a spot on the end of his nose. And then you looked out at the trees, and there was a spot on the end of the leaf.
Or if you've gotten conked in the head and you've begun to see stars, Everything you look at had stars superimposed upon us. You can't look at your hand. You can't look at a tree. You can't look at a drape.
You can't look at the preacher. Everything you look at, when you have spots before your eyes, those spots are superimposed upon the image. You cannot divorce the image from the spots. Now, it says of the wicked, there is no fear of God before their eyes.
That is, when they get up in the morning, they say, what shall I do today? They are able to look out upon life without superimposing upon it the being of God, the claims of God, the character of God, the salvation of God, the law of God, the judgment of God. And so they go out into that day with no fear of God, superimposed upon life. That's the accusation.
So he says, when you see the life they live, this is the reason, no fear of God before their eyes. You see, the godly man is the man who in everything has those thoughts before his eyes. He can't think of the day before him without reflexively thinking, this is the day that the Lord has made. I am his servant. He is my God.
So as I go out into this day, into the car, into the shop, into the school, into the place of business, into conversation, as I'm exposed to objects of sight and of sense, everything must have stamped upon it. The reality of God's being, the reality of my relationship to him, his claims upon me, his provisions for me, the fear of God is before his eyes and is that which colors every facet of his life pattern. Conversely, the ungodly man is the man who does not have this fear of God before his eyes.
No regard to God's authority. No consideration of God's law. No concern about his smile. No dread of his frown.
He may be a nice guy. He may not be too nice. He may be moral. He may be immoral.
He may be religious. He may be irreligious. But this he has in common with every other unregenerate sinful son of Adam. There is no fear of God before his eyes.
As one has accurately said Since the eyes do not see him Their feet and hands and mouth Act as though God were not For as you read this list in Romans 3 When a man curses What does he say? There is no God to tell my tongue what to do Whatever my spirit and my nature and my mind want to do By way of the tongue my tongue will do Who's God to control this member that sits there between my cheeks? So their mouth is full of what? Cursing and bitterness.
And when they see someone who's in the way of their ambition, someone who opposes their carnal desires, says their feet are swift to shed blood. Why? Because there's no God as far as they're concerned who says thou shalt do no murder. Who is God to tell me not to take out vengeance on the object of my hatred?
There's no fear of God before the eyes. And you go through that entire description in chapter 3, and as we'll see when we turn to the passage from which it was taken, I've not read that in. That's precisely the way the Holy Spirit has given it to us and the way the apostle understood it. So we learn at the very outset, and even the youngest child here, I trust, will grasp it, that moral and ethical problems, that is, problems of life and of conduct, are rooted in religious principles.
And you cannot separate ethics, morality, and conduct from true biblical religion. You cannot do it, for God has joined them. And what God has joined together, man puts asunder only to his own peril. So it's clear then from this text in Romans 3 that the absence of the fear of God is that unholy soil out of which the ungodly life grows.
Supporting Text: Psalm 10 — The Psychology of the Wicked
Now, having looked at this key text, as sort of the sphere of reference, look with me, please, at three other supporting and explanatory texts in the Old Testament. First of all, the tenth psalm.
Psalm 10.
Now, the context of this psalm is said out very clearly in verse 1 in the first phrase of verse 2. Why standest thou far off, O God? Why hidest thou thyself in times of trouble? In the pride of the wicked the poor is hotly pursued.
Here are the righteous, being oppressed and pursued by the wicked, and it seems like God doesn't give a hoot. he says God why do you stand far off can't you see these are your people that are being afflicted these are your people that are being trodden down by the wicked why do you stand far off this is a great problem comes up again and again in the Psalms if you never have that problem as a Christian you're simply not living with your eyes open at times you say God doesn't seem right 73rd psalms another one so the context then is the active work of the wicked in oppressing the righteous and god's apparent silence and indifference to the whole thing what would you
think of me as a father i could look out the picture window there 25 meadowbrook lane and see the neighborhood billy beating up my son and i don't run out of the house and say you get your hands off him, fella, or you'll have my hands on him. What would you think of me as a father? If I could see my son kicked around and abused by a bully, and I had the power to do something and didn't. Wouldn't you have some questions about the depth of my love to my children? Sure you would.
And God's people have this problem. Maybe you're not honest enough to admit it, but you haven't. Sure you do. Why?
Now in that context, what the psalmist does is he gives us the psychology of what happens in the mind of the wicked when he observes this. He picks on the righteous. No thunderbolts break out of heaven. No lightning strikes it.
No divine visitations. And he is made bold to go on in his wickedness. And the psalmist explains how the ungodly man thinks as he carries out his ungodly living. Notice very carefully now.
In verses 5 to 10, he tells us what the wicked does. His ways are firm at all times. Thy judgments are far above out of his sight. As for his adversaries, he puffs at them.
He says in his heart, I shall not be moved. To all generations I shall not be in adversity. His mouth is full of cursing and deceit and oppression. Under his tongue is mischief and iniquity.
He sitteth in the lurking places of the villages. In the secret places doth he murder the innocent. His eyes are privily set against the helpless. He lurketh in secret as a lion in his covert.
He lieth in wait to catch the poor. He doth catch the poor when he draweth him in his net. He croucheth, he boweth down. and the helpless fall by his strong ones.
Notice now, here is a description of what the wicked man does. Verses 5 through 10. But that section of the psalm is bounded by verse 4 and verse 11. Both of which tell us why he does what he does.
Verses 5 to 10, this is what the wicked does. carries out all his schemes against the righteous, against the poor, against the helpless. Some of these phrases quoted, of course, in Romans 3, but notice carefully the reason for all of this verse 4. The wicked in the pride of his countenance saith, He will not require it.
All his thoughts are, there is no God. Verse 11, he saith in his heart, God hath forgotten. He hideth his faith. He will never see it.
In verse 4, you see, the wicked man voids his mind of conscious thoughts of God. The wicked in the pride of his countenance sayeth, He will not require it. All his thoughts are, there is no God. That doesn't mean he may be an outspoken atheist.
but in the thoughts that govern his life God does not enter all his thoughts are there is no God I make my plans I carry out my ambitions but I don do so with reference to God Verse 11 shows the same wicked man seeking to rid himself of any constraining awareness of the character of God. Notice, he says in his heart, God hath forgotten. He tries to make God a little short on memory. He hideth his face.
He will never see it. He tries to limit God's omniscience. You see what he's doing? In verse 4, he's simply trying to push God out of his mind, but he can't totally do that.
So, because there's some remaining thoughts of God in his mind, he says, But God is not the God I know him to be. He's short on memory, and he's a little bit nearsighted.
Now, why does he do this? why does the wicked man need to push God out of his thoughts and when he can't fully succeed in that twist the God who remains in his thoughts why? because he cannot live an ungodly life unless he can take himself out of the orbit of the fear of God so that if he's to grow his plants of ungodly living He must condition the soil to be soil over which there is written, no fear of God. See it?
So it's not just the force of logic that leads me to make the proposition that the absence of the fear of God is the unholy soil out of which an ungodly life grows. It is precisely the analysis that Thomas made when in this troubled state of mind, he analyzes the psychology of the wicked man. And he says, this is how he thinks. I'll push God out of my thoughts so I can sin with abandonment.
And when my conscience begins to disturb me, I'll twist God into a shape and an image that will make me feel a little bit more comfortable with him in my sin.
Supporting Text: Psalm 36 — No Fear Before His Eyes
I'll resist the temptation to draw out some applications at this point. Stick with me. We'll come to them later. Psalm 36 is another illustration of this same basic principle.
In this particular psalm, the larger context of the thought pattern is, The psalmist is contemplating and contrasting the wickedness of men and the character of God, particularly his mercy. So you have a contrast. The mercy of God, beginning in verse 5, Thy lovingkindness, O Lord, is in the heavens. Thy faithfulness reacheth unto the skies.
How precious, verse 7, is thy lovingkindness. Verse 10, O continue thy lovingkindness. So the theme of the latter part of the psalm from verse 5, with but one or two exceptions, is a celebration of the character of God as a God of mercy. But the first four verses are a contemplation of the man of wickedness.
He describes what the wicked man does in verses 2 to 4. He flattereth himself in his own eyes that his iniquity will not be found out and be hated. The words of his mouth are iniquity and deceit. He hath ceased to be wise and to do good.
And listen to this picture. He devises iniquity upon his bed. As he's going off to sleep at night, he's not meditating in the law of God. He's conceiving new ways that he can carry out his sinful designs the next day.
He devises iniquity upon his bed. He setteth himself in a way that is not good. He abhorreth not evil. Now, as he looks at such a man, indifferent to God's law, constantly conceiving and giving birth to his wicked designs, verse 1 tells us what his conclusion was.
The transgression of the wicked saith within my heart, as I observe the wicked man and how he lives, there is within my heart this conviction, there is no fear of God before his eyes. As he sees a man live in the way described particularly in verses 3 and 4, he says there is but one explanation of that life pattern. No fear of God before his eyes. And so you have essentially what we found in Psalm 10, that this is the explanation for the conduct of the wicked man.
full of self-flattery, mouth full of evil, abandon all true wisdom, abandoning all true righteousness, conceiving iniquity in his spare time. Why? No fear of God before his eyes. Then one other passage in the Old Testament, Malachi chapter 3.
Supporting Text: Malachi 3 — Judgment on Those Who Fear Not
Malachi chapter 3. The chapter begins with the announcement of this one called the messenger of the covenant. A reference, of course, to our Lord Jesus Christ himself. And when he comes, the prophet says he will have a twofold ministry.
A ministry of purification. Verse 2. Who can abide the day of his coming? Who shall stand when he appeareth?
for he's like a refiner's fire and like a fuller's soap and he will sit as a refiner and a purifier of silver and he will purify the sons of Levi. This messenger of the covenant will come and his first ministry will be one of purification. But then his second ministry, verse 5, is to be one of judgment. And I will come near to you in judgment.
Not only to purify, but to judge. Now notice who's going to be judged. And I will be a swift witness against the sorcerers, those that dabble in the occult, spiritism. And against the adulterers, those who give themselves to the violation of the seventh commandment in thought or in deed.
and against the false swearers, that is, those who say, oh, yes, honest to God, I really mean it, Mom, I didn't do it. Honest to God, I didn't. And you know all the while you're lying.
False swearers, those who assert truth, even bring in the name of God, but do so dishonestly. He says he'll come and he'll judge those. And against those that oppress the hireling in his wages, those that take advantage of their position as employers and do not give just due to the employee, he said, I'll take care of them. the widow and the fatherless, that is, those who oppress the widow, the helpless, those who cannot be defended by a father, and those that turn aside the sojourner from his right.
In other words, he says, my judgment will come against all those in the whole spectrum of the life of evil, From those who are guilty of open growth immorality to those who are indifferent to the needs of the sojourner. And he says they have one thing in common. And notice how he describes them. And fear not me, saith the Lord of hosts.
What does the adulterer have in common with the person who is indifferent to a legitimate need which he sees and does not respond to it when he can? They have this in common, that they do not walk in the fear of God. And so the prophet Malachi tells us that God's judgment will come forth with fury and with vengeance upon all such. But now there's another class of people that we've omitted this morning.
Religious Hypocrisy: The Pharisees
These three passages deal primarily with those who are openly irreligious in their wickedness. But there's a second grade class of person who is very religious. but is guilty of religious hypocrisy, who maintains the outward profession of true religion, many of the activities of true religion, but who is devoid of the power of true religion. And of course, the classic example of such a class of people was the scribes and the Pharisees.
Because the clock has gotten away from me, I won't take time to turn you to the passages, but I'll quote them and you can look them up at your leisure. You remember what our Lord said in Matthew 6 about the scribes and the Pharisees? He said, don't be like them, for when they pray, they pray to be seen of men. When they give, they give to be seen of men.
When they fast, they fast to be seen of men. What is he saying? He says, in all the maintenance of the form of orthodox religion, and in all the activities of religious practice they're devoid of the fear of God for what's the essence of the fear of God? That regard of his person which makes his smile my greatest delight his frown my greatest dread which makes me a man or woman who having my own conscience for a theater and God and the holy angels for witnesses says, I need no other.
And so our Lord describes their religious experience in great detail in the 23rd chapter of Matthew, and in particular in verses 25 to 28, he uses the picture of dirty dishes on the inside that are clean on the outside, and sepulchres that are bright and shiny on the outside, but full of uncleanness within. And he says that's what this always produces. when you have adherence to revealed religion in the head and adherence to the practices of revealed religion in the life, but where a person is devoid of the power of revealed religion in the heart.
That's always the result. And why do they live that way, Jesus said? Because they don't know the fear of God. What they do, they do to be accepted and seen of men.
But what God sees never enters their heart. Oh, one of the things that I ask again and again from this pulpit is, where's your heart this morning? I can see your body here. And I can see your eyeballs on me.
But what does God see? Does he see that your presence here this morning is an expression of the fear of God in the heart? That you're here because your God has commanded you to forsake not the assembling of yourselves together and out of love to Him and desire to please Him, constrained by the awareness of your obligation to Him, you're here? Or is it simply part of your life pattern?
You know, you say, well, if I don't come once in a while, you and the other elders will be down my neck. So to keep you off it, I'll come. Why are you here? I can't answer for only one person.
Am I here simply because I get a check from this church and it's part of my duty and coming here Sunday morning is punching my clock? Or am I here because God's put his fear in my heart? and even if God would have ripped my tongue out, I'd be here to worship Him, to gather with His people, to confess my sins with them and to rejoice with them. Why are you here this morning?
Why do you do what you do? Why don't you do some of the things other people do? Is it simply to keep up the form and semblance of true religion before the eyes of men? Jesus said, He, Pharisees, appear beautiful unto men, but with him.
You see, the person who maintains orthodox religion in the head and the form of it in the life, but who a stranger to the fear of God in the heart knows nothing of the inwardness of true biblical Christianity Poverty of spirit he knows nothing Hungering and thirsting after righteousness, he knows nothing. Mourning over his sins in secret, he knows nothing. The common substance of his whole religious experience, it's what's packed into his head in what is done externally in the life and of the goings forth of a heart after God. He knows precious little.
Whereas our Lord says, by contrast, when you pray, there should be one concern. He says, your Father which seeth in secret. When you give your alms, one concern, your Father which seeth in secret. When you fast, one concern, Your Father would see it in secret.
Is that your concern that brought you here today? My Father sees me. What does He see? He sees a cold heart if I brought it up to Him that He might warm it by His grace.
By giving to me a fresh sight of His Son. Does He see a heart that is running off in a thousand directions? if so then he's found me praying unite my heart to fear thy name has the father's eye been your primary concern this morning as you sat here has it what the father sees has it if not then you see somehow the fear of God is absent from your whole experience of worship so then the soil out of which overt wickedness grows or the subtle wickedness of religious hypocrisy is that soil of the absence of the fear of God.
The Devil's Strategy: Destroying the Foundation
Now, very quickly, and I can only give you the headings, I wanted to make a general concluding application.
There are two ways to destroy a house, or lots of ways, but two main ways. If I saw a structure that I wanted to get rid of, I could arm myself with a pinch bar, a good claw hammer, and I could climb up on top of that thing, and in an hour's time, you'd pretty well know what I was out to do. I could rip off a lot of shingles in an hour's time, and if I had a 16-pound sledge, knock down some bricks from the chimney, so anybody going by would say, that fellow's out to destroy that house. There's another way I could do it.
I could take my sledge and I could start working on the foundation. Now, after an hour's time, you might not be able to see what I was out to do. You might walk by and the house looks very intact. I might be working around back.
And all I've been able to do in an hour's time is knock a hole that big, displace a few concrete blocks or put a hole in the poured foundation.
And at the end of the day, the house might still stand intact if I'm taking the second approach to destroying it. Whereas the fellow that's up there at the end of the day, he could have a pretty, pretty mess. And he could probably have some of the sheathing on the roof torn off. He might have some of the windows knocked out.
But if I stick with it, probably at the end of a full day or two days, I'd do a lot better job than he'd do. Because if I could, at the strategic points of stress, where the foundation bore the weight of that whole structure, undercut that foundation, I could bring the whole thing down upon itself. Whereas at the end of a couple of days, just working piece by piece, there still might be 80% of the structure of a homeland. Now you see, the devil hates the structure of biblical ethics and morality wherever he sees that structure raised.
And there's two ways he can go about to destroy it. He can come by attacking every single of a Christian virtue and say there's no such thing as purity and I'm out to destroy the concept of purity. No such thing as honesty and start tearing away at the shingles of honesty. The devil's smarter than that.
You know what he says? He says, sure, keep your shingles for a while. Let everybody go by. You know what I'm going to do?
I'm going to go around back where you can't see me and I'm going to start dislodging foundation stones.
So what happened in our own Western culture? What has happened in our own America? For several generations, the devil was behind the back, working at the foundations. Oh yes, the concept of general honesty rooted in the very biblical concepts upon which our nation was founded, our whole system of jurisprudence, our whole concept of a shared responsibility between the three branches of government.
All of that is rooted in the Puritan concept of the depravity of man and the fact that power is not safe in the hands of any one depraved central authority. All of that has its roots in biblical thinking. So the devil was working away at the foundation's thoughts. One of his great hammer blows was that of religious liberalism, which distorted the God of the Bible and turned him from the glorious, fearful God of Israel into this formless mass of unprincipled sentiment.
So everybody thinks God's just some formless mass of unprincipled sentiment called love. His holiness, His justice, His righteous anger, concepts that were gone. then there was the humanism came through in our American educational system man's not a creature depraved and bad the influence of evolutionary thought he's not obligated to God he never came from God in the first place and all of these influences until what has happened it seems almost overnight a house that looked beautiful you walk by the next day and it's a shambles we see the problem now everybody says look the house is coming upon us why? because the fear of God
has well nigh vanished from the very fabric of our national life and experience.
And you know the only way there's going to be any return and any widespread measure to any kind of true ethics and morality is to start from the beginning by implanting the fear of God in the hearts of men.
That's where we've got to start. That means we've got to go back to telling men who God is. And then when they begin to see who He is, they'll begin to see their obligations to Him, the terribleness of sinning and offending such a holy God until they're driven to despair. And then when they're told, this God, transcendent, holy, majestic, and powerful so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, they will see forgiveness in the perspective of Psalm 130, verse 4.
There is forgiveness with thee that thou mayest be feared. And instead of the gospel being some cheap panacea which seals them in their conduct reflecting no fear of God, it will be the instrument by which through the blessings of the new covenant applied with power to the heart, they will be brought to fear and to reverence this God and to walk strictly in his precepts and in his commandments. I must skip over the attempt to draw that out more fully. The second brief application is to you who are strangers to the grace of God.
Evangelistic Appeal and Closing Exhortation
You want an explanation of why you live the way you live? Here it is. Some of you young people, some of you children, you know why you live the way you do? Get up in the morning, eat, go off to school, lie a little bit, cheat a little bit, fight with brother and sister, be a little dishonest to mom and dad.
Say, oh, I'm just like the rest of the kids. I'm not real bad. You know what explains your life?
No fear of God before your eyes. That's the explanation of your life. It's the explanation of some of the lives of you adults. That's why you can live the way you do.
That's why you can go home today, kick on your TV this afternoon. No thought that this is God's day with any particular requirements. won't enter your mind at all. Why?
No fear of God before your eyes. How you spend the Lord's day is your business, not God's. Woe be unto him if he tries to meddle with it. That's your attitude.
Why? No fear of God before your eyes. You get that paycheck. You don't say, now Lord, what is your rightful due?
No fear of God before your eyes. You can do what you want. You earned it. That's your philosophy.
My friend, listen, this is the explanation of why you live that way. No fear of God before your eyes. And I plead with you to recognize that until you come to Jesus, the mediator of the new covenant, and have him implant this fear within your heart, this will be your life's pattern. And my last word is to you, who are the people of God, if this principle is true, that the only soil out of which ungodliness can grow is that of the absence of the fear of God.
May God help you and help me to resist with holy violence anything that would lessen the fear of God in our hearts.
For we can only move into the realm of sin deliberately when we've moved out of the realm of the fear of God. and the first step to moving us into the realm of sin is to get us moved out of the atmosphere of the fear of God either to put God out of our thoughts or if we can't do that to fashion a God with whom we can be more comfortable in our sin that's why God when he accused David through Nathan and said, Thou hast despised me, and that Thou hast taken Bathsheba. He said, David, you could never take her
in violation of my law till you pushed me out of your mind.
You despised me, you took her. Oh, dear child of God, beware of any influence, no matter how innocent it may appear. If it lessens your regard of God's smile, And your dread of his frown. May God help us to be in his fear.
All the day long. And God willing next week. I want to consider with you that text in Proverbs. Be not envious of the wicked.
But be thou in the fear of God. All the day long. And I want to speak very practically. Giving five or six principles from scripture.
As to how we may seek to keep ourselves. In the fear of God. All the day long. But, you say, I thought, God put this in our hearts.
Yes, the fruit of the Spirit is love, isn't it? And yet God says, I beseech you as the elect of God, holy and beloved, put on bowels of mercies. God does it, we must put it on. That's the whole pattern of grace.
And though God puts his fear in our hearts, he commands us to be in his fear all the day long. May the Lord be pleased to help us to heed the word of exhortation and to dread this unholy soil. of the absence of the fear of God, which produces an ungodly life. Let us pray.
Closing Prayer
Our Father, be merciful to us, we pray. We who have so many times either sought to put you out of our minds that we might have a free reign to indulge our lusts, or who have sought to conform you to some desire of carnal wish that would make us more comfortable in the thought of you while we contemplated or indulged in sin.
O Father, what can we do but ask that we should be cleansed afresh in the blood of your dear Son and be kept in your fear all the day long? O may it please you to return to our national life, to the structures of our own society, something of that fear. And we know the only way it will be done is as you implant your fear in the hearts of individuals. So use us to be your instruments through which, by the proclamation and demonstration of the everlasting gospel, men may have your fear inscribed in their hearts.
and seek to walk before you in that fear.
This transcript was generated by automated speech recognition and may contain errors. It is provided for study and reference only; the audio recording is the authoritative source.
Passages Expounded
The capstone of Paul's indictment of universal sinfulness — 'there is no fear of God before their eyes' as the root cause of all the sins catalogued in verses 10-17
The psychology of how the wicked must push God out of their thoughts or twist His character in order to persist in sin
The psalmist's diagnosis: no fear of God before the wicked man's eyes explains his entire pattern of self-flattery, deceit, and nocturnal scheming