2/9/25 Pro. 1:7, Pro. 9:10 Psalm 112:1-2 “Fear of the Lord”

06 Feb 2/9/25 Pro. 1:7, Pro. 9:10 Psalm 112:1-2 “Fear of the Lord”

2/9/25     Pro. 1:7, Pro. 9:10    Psalm 112:1-2      “Fear of the Lord”

Today, I am going to begin a short sermon series that will take us into the first week in Lent.  And yes, Lent is not far away.  Therefore, Easter isn’t far away which means we can hear two of the best pieces of news ever.  1. Jesus Christ has risen from the dead.  2.  Spring is almost here!  The next few weeks we are going to talk about something that Jesus laid on my heart once just before we started talking about a building project several years ago.  I thought I would revisit this with a little different viewpoint.  The people there need wisdom to move ahead with this project and all other projects of the church and personal projects as well.  All churches need wisdom for the same kinds of reasons.  As a matter of fact, we all need wisdom and if you think you have enough wisdom, then I may have some ocean front property to sell you in Kansas.  Anyway, Jesus led me to Ephesians 5:17 which reads, “Therefore do not be foolish, but understand what the Lord’s will is.”  In other words, let’s try to be wise in whatever we do.  Our catch phrase will be, “Is what I am doing right now, the wise thing to do?”   I think that project was much harder than I anticipated because of where our society was going.  The more we rely on what our government is telling us to do, the more we rely on what big corporations are telling us to do, the less we have access to wisdom.  This needs to be changed so that is why we are doing this series again.

I would like to begin with some wise sayings that come from Rick Stacy as he observed some youngsters.  A 10 year old boy tells us, “Never trust a dog to watch your food.”  A 14 year old boy named Michael tells us, “When your dad is mad and asks you, ‘Do I look stupid?’ don’t answer him.”  Another very wise young man said, “Never tell your mom her diet’s not working.  A 9 year old tells us, “Never hold a dust buster and a cat at the same time.”  Here’s a good one from young Naomi, “If you want a kitten, start out asking for a horse.”  Here is something very wise from 9 year old Lauren, “Felt markers are not good to use as lipstick.”  Joel tells us, “Don’t pick on your sister when she is holding a baseball bat.”  And last but not least Eileen, age 8, tells us, “Never baptize a cat.”  I hope that you can see that wisdom comes from life experiences and not book learning although it could be from a combination.

Our Scriptures today, talk about the fear of the Lord and I would like to connect this to wisdom while getting us all on the same page.  When the authors of the Bible talk about the fear of the Lord, they are talking about wisdom.  That is what they mean.  Sharon and I were once in a Bible study where a person could not understand why we had to be afraid of God.  We came to the conclusion that we did not have to be so much afraid of God, but rather we should have a whole lot of healthy respect for God.  This is wisdom.

Now even having a healthy respect for God is totally against the norm of our society.  Here is what I mean.  I mentioned last week how we like to worship ourselves and that is a fact.  We would much rather pat ourselves on the back and believe how we evolved from some monkey according to some shaky and flawed science, than believe that God made this world and everything in it which, by the way, takes a lot less faith than faith in the religion of evolution.  We would much rather abort a baby than know that God knows that baby’s name while still in the womb.  Once again we would have to believe in God which is hard to do when we believe that humans are absolutely infallible.  Do you see what I mean?  You can go ahead and think of many other examples.

The bottom line is that the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom.  I will go as far as saying that this fear means wisdom mixed with some fear.  I believe that we should have a certain amount of controlled fear for the one who is so powerful that He can make the universe and everything in it.  This isn’t the kind of fear where we are scared to death of something like a tornado bearing down on us.  This is the kind of fear that like we have for our bosses boss.  We are not necessarily afraid, but we do have a lot of respect for them.  It is kind of the way I view our bishops in the past.  He controlled my job so I have a certain amount of fear and respect for him.  Do you see what I mean?

I also think that this type of fear/respect comes when we first come to believe.  A person, who doesn’t believe in Jesus, may have a little respect for God, but it won’t be very much if they don’t believe in the God who made the universe.  Why would anyone respect something they don’t believe in?  It would be like us believing in all the things of Tolkien’s stories of the Hobbit and the Lord of the Rings.

Therefore, fear of the Lord begins with our relationship with Jesus.  This is where our wisdom begins.  I know that there are a lot of folks who don’t know Jesus who think they are wise.  But they can only be wise in superficial ways.  Jesus is the way to perfect wisdom.  Here is yet another reason why everyone should know Jesus.  If you don’t know Jesus, then confess your sins to Him and ask Him into your life.  It will be changed instantly for the better.  If your world isn’t doing well, or if you are heading in a bad direction, then do this one little thing.  When you begin to tap into the wisdom of God, good things will begin to happen.  It may take some time for things to get better and you will have to do some work because Jesus is not a wish granter, but it will begin to get better as Jesus gives you the wisdom to cope in this ugly, ugly world.

Let’s take a little deeper look at what I just said.  We all have a little work to do.  You may come here thinking that you don’t have time to pray and listen to Jesus.  Your schedule is filled up from morning to night.  When you go to bed you are so tired that you just go to sleep.  Sometimes when you get up, you are almost as tired as when you went to bed.  However, we have work to do for the kingdom, and I want us to question if what we are doing in this world is the best for Jesus.  Is it our mission to be so busy all the time?  Is it our mission to only think about Jesus on Sunday morning?

My answer to this is no!  We were not made to be this busy.  We were made to worship Jesus all the time and not just on Sunday.  You see when you start to do this, fearing God, being wise, then you will begin a journey of being able to avoid evil.  This is one of the benefits of fearing God. Before you start to think that I’m pulling this out of thin air, listen to Proverbs 8:13, “To fear the Lord is to hate evil.”  There are many other places in the Bible where it tells us to hate evil.

The reason that the fear of God will take you away from evil is because God and evil cannot really co-exist in the same place.  Have you ever noticed this?  There will be no evil in heaven.  When evil came to the Garden of Eden, God dealt with it.  As a result of this, we have been living in a broken world ever since.

I have heard it said that once you have accepted Jesus Christ as your Savior, then the devil cannot live in you anymore.  I think that this argument has some merit.  I don’t think that the devil can take up permanent residence in us but that doesn’t mean that he can’t rent a room by the month.  I don’t think we get a guarantee that Satan won’t be with us just because the Holy Spirit lives in us.  I think it can happen and it does happen because we allow it to happen.

You see I think that this little misconception has led us to a lot of trouble.  We seem to think that Satan can’t live in us and therefore we are good people.  We think we are home free.  This is simply not true.  The best person in the world that you can think of today stands before God like a piece of black coal, blackened by sin.  Unless you are wise enough to be coming before Jesus on a daily basis, you will remain wallowing in sin thinking you have no way to escape.

Having a fear of God, having wisdom will help us in our fight against sin and evil.  If you are wise enough to be reading in the Bible every day, then you have a chance against evil, a good chance.  Notice I said a chance against evil because Satan is far more powerful than you are but he has lost the war.  He cannot win in the long run because of what Jesus did on the cross.  Jesus died on the cross for all people everywhere.

So, we will be saved for all eternity but we have to be careful how we live in this life.  Satan is lurking like a hungry lion.  He wants to devour us.  He will make your life miserable unless you use your wisdom, your knowledge from God to withstand him.  One way to keep Satan out of your life is to cast him out every day.  Don’t take a day off.  This is, once again, why your prayer time is so important.  God has given us all the tools for wisdom.  It is up to you to pick them up and use them.

Another result of fearing the Lord is that we will live longer.  Maybe I should repeat that because you probably don’t believe me.  Another result of fearing the Lord is that you will live longer.  Just so you don’t think I’m pulling this one out of thin air also, turn to Proverbs 10:27.  It tells us, “The fear of the Lord adds length to life, but the years of the wicked are cut short.”  If you believe in our media and our science, then you would think that a special diet or some Eastern guru will help you to live longer but this couldn’t be farther from the truth.  A healthy life in Jesus Christ is the key to longevity.  It is the common denominator.

Jeff Strite uses the illustration of a wall socket.  Through that wall socket we can have fans in the summer, furnaces in the winter, lamps that give us light and many life saving devices in hospitals that run on electricity.  Those sockets can give us life.  However, what would happen if I stuck something like a butter knife in the socket.  If I was lucky, I would get a heavy jolt or my hair might stand on end, however much of it is left.  But if I wasn’t so lucky, it might even stop my heart and I would die.

In other words, good and even great things can happen if I use electricity wisely.  The power of electricity can add years onto my life.  Or if I’m not wise it can take my life away.  Now I’ve never put a knife in a socket and you may wonder why not.  It is the same reason that I wouldn’t go ice fishing in November when the first skin of ice forms on a lake.  I’m afraid of what might happen if I do something so dumb, so unwise.  I don’t have to actually do these things to be afraid of them.  Ok?

Now, I have a fear of the Lord.  I know that there are certain things that He hates.  He hates sin, so I don’t want to go there.  If God hates something, then it is good enough for me not to want to do it.  God hates sin because it hurts me.  When I sin, I’m not looking out for my own best interests.  Think about that!  It hurts me and/or it may hurt someone around me.  I don’t necessarily have to understand all this, I just have to believe.  Do you understand?

Here’s another way of looking at this.  Suppose that I was going to explain why a child shouldn’t play with a wall socket.  Am I going to sit down with the 3 year old and explain the theory of electricity?  Of course not!  He won’t understand!  However, I might scold him or give him a little swat on his behind and take the knife away.  I’m not saying I would ever do this.  It is just an example.  If he keeps doing this, then I might keep up the punishment until he begins to fear me every time he gets close to a socket with a knife and he quits doing it.  God is the same way.  He has hundreds of ways to tell us not to do something.  If we keep listening, we will learn just how to stay away from sin.

One last example, we had a dog named Sparky and some of you remember him.  We got him as a pup and I had to train him to go outside.  I did this through scoldings and little spanks.  It took a while but he learned to go outside because he had a fear of me and what would happen if he didn’t go outside.  We also have to understand that Sparky was really the girl’s dog.  They did everything with him and they had a lot of fun.  But they didn’t train him or feed him, they just played with him.  Now I would like you to guess who Sparky went to when he was hurt or sick.  He came to me because I was big enough to take care of his best interests.  Through his fear of me, he came to trust me with all kinds of other things.

This is exactly the same way with us and God.  If we have a healthy fear of God, we will live longer because we won’t have the tendency to put the knife in the socket of life so to speak.  We will find great pleasure in seeking and doing the things that are pleasing to God.  God will, in turn, help us to have the best life possible.  Because of this fear, this respect, we put our complete trust in God.  We put our lives in the hands of Jesus.  These are the scarred hands of Jesus that took our sin away so that we could be this close to Him.

So the next time you get in a sticky situation, remember your fear of the Lord and ask the question, “Is what I’m about to do, the wise thing to do?”  I’m not going to guarantee positive results but you will begin to get good results if you do this every time you embark on a mission.  Jesus is always there for you to help you be wise.  He does this because He loves you so much.  Go to Him and tap into this vast, unlimited source of wisdom.  And thank you, Jesus, for first loving us.  Let’s pray.