Biblestudy: Sin Defined and Overcome
#BS-991
John W. Ritenbaugh
Given 08-May-10; 72 minutes
description: The Bible does not budge one inch with sin. Sin is considered a major impediment to approaching God. It impedes worship and stops God's ears to our prayers. Sin creates estrangement from God, causing us to fail in everything we attempt. Sin always produces separation; it never heals, but causes death. God is as serious about sin at the end of Revelation as at the beginning of Genesis. Overcoming sin is a formidable task, but it is not impossible. Each of us is admonished to be alert because the enemy is at the door. We are in no way in competition with each other, but we are in mortal combat with our carnal human nature. God wants us to become one with Them, the greatest purpose that can be given to any human being. God the Father and the Son do not sin. Sin is the transgression of the law (1 John 3:4) a deviation from what is good and right or missing the mark. A sin is a deviation from a moral standard (assumed to have been done in ignorance or sins of weaknesses). Even though God distinguishes between willful sin and sins committed in weakness, the consequences are just as deadly. Presumptuous sins have the tendency to be expansive, rebellious and self-willed, rashly done without the fear of God (as Jacob exemplified when he cheated his brother). We need to learn to develop a fear for God as a complementary aspect of loving Him. If we really fear God, we will be afraid to sin. If we fear God, we will not fear anything the world has to throw at us. Once this fear of God is etched in our minds, it will create a sense of obligation to keep His covenant.
transcript:
I do not know how you take sin. By take, I mean how it impacts on your mind and therefore your life in terms of its seriousness to your life now and in the future. Now I do know this for sure, the Bible, which we believe is the Word of God transmitted to man for our guidance, takes it with dead seriousness. It does not flinch in describing its nature as being entirely, totally, and absolutely detrimental to one's well-being. The Bible does not allow even one iota of good in it, except for maybe a momentary passing pleasure or sense of exhilaration or relief that it sometimes provides. The Bible's writers uniformly, from Genesis through Revelation, speak of it in terms of heinousness and tragedy. It is spoken of as something that one must turn away from whatever the cost. So strong is this approach that some commentators say the Bible really only has two subjects: sin and salvation.
Now why did they write in such strong terms? Part of the reason is because the writers perceive sin within its big picture of why God created mankind in the first place. They did not picture sin as merely a minor momentary act, but as a major impediment to achieving God's purpose for creating us.
We are going to begin with one brief scripture here in Revelation 2, a scripture that you are all familiar with.
Revelation 2:11 "He who has an ear, let him hear what the Spirit says to the churches. He who overcomes [and within the context He means overcomes sin] shall not be hurt by the second death."
Now God did not create us and then call us—and thus revealing Himself—for failure. He created us for success. In fact, the Greek term used to indicate success here is Strong's #3528. It is nikao transliterated. And incidentally it comes from the root Nike. The shoes, Nike, that is where they got it. It is a Greek word and nikao means to subdue, to conquer, to prevail, to get the victory. God has called us to victory, and that should begin to help you to understand that we are in a battle. It is something in which we are called to win.
The Bible does not view life as being a rose garden, nor the worship of God as something passing, in which a person spends a few hours working on once a week. It sees worship of God as a full-time responsibility. In Ephesians, it is called a vocation, a work, and it requires dedication and discipline. Sin impedes proper worship.
Now the reason for such strong terms does not become apparent really until the New Testament, and that is why I started there. The Bible's writers see it as a battle for our very lives. Therefore, sin, in whatever context it appears, whether in Old Testament or New, is viewed by the Bible as failure. It is suffering defeat in life's overall purpose.
We are going to leave the New Testament and go to the Old Testament, to the book of Isaiah, chapter 59, verses 1 through 3. I am going to give you a second reason of why the Bible looks at sin in such dark terms.
Isaiah 59:1-3 Behold, the Lord's hand is not shortened, that it cannot save; nor His ear heavy, that it cannot hear. But your iniquities [many sins] have separated you from your God; and your sins have hidden His face from you, so that He will not hear. For your hands are defiled with blood, and your fingers with iniquity; your lips have spoken lies, your tongue has muttered perversities.
The second reason why it is perceived as so dreadful is this. Now this second reason is not of secondary importance. It is in every way equal or greater than the sense of failure. Sin is viewed as creating estrangement from God and that relationship, brethren, is the source of the power to succeed, to overcome. And if estrangement from God occurs, boy, I will tell you, brethren, we are already licked, defeated.
Now God has created us for the purpose of having an everlasting relationship with Him in peaceful and productive harmony. God does not sin. Sin destroys relationships. And so despite human reasoning to the contrary, whether the relationship is with fellow humans or God, sin always works to produce separation. It never makes things better. It never heals. That is one of the major lessons of the entirety of the Bible and God teaches us this right from the very beginning. So let us go back to that original sin in Genesis the second chapter.
Genesis 2:15-17 Then the Lord God took the man and put him in the garden of Eden to tend and keep it. And the Lord God commanded the man, saying, "Of every tree of the garden you may freely eat, but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat; for in the day that you eat of it you shall surely die."
Now look at chapter 3, verses 22 through 24.
Genesis 3:22-24 Then the Lord God said, "Behold, the man has become like one of Us, to know good and evil. And now, lest he put out his hand and take also from the tree of life, and eat, and live forever"—therefore the Lord God sent him out of the garden of Eden to till the ground from which he was taken. So He drove out the man; and placed cherubim at the east of the garden of Eden, and a flaming sword which turned every way, to guard the way of the tree of life.
Death is the ultimate in separation. But in order for God to make His point as clear as He can, He also physically removed Adam and Eve from His immediate presence. This is what sin does. It creates separation, estrangement from God—and this is a hard thing for us to learn the seriousness of, this separation from God.
Just in case we do not get the point, we are going all the way back to the book of Revelation in chapter 22, almost the very last words in the Scripture.
Revelation 22:18-19 For I testify to everyone who hears the words of the prophecy of this book: If anyone adds to these things, God will add to him the plagues that are written in this book; and if anyone takes away from the words of the book of this prophecy, God shall take away his part from the Book of Life, from the holy city, and from the things which are written in this book.
God was not kidding at the beginning of His Book, and He confirms in the end that He is as serious as ever. We will not be there if sin is dominating our life. I wish I had asked you to hold your finger in Genesis 4 because we are going to go back there because the story continues on. In verse 7 comes another point that needs to be added to this so that we understand in this case that we are in a battle for our lives.
Genesis 4:7 "If you do well [in other words, do not sin], will you not be accepted? And if you do not do well, sin lies at the door. [What an illustration! You know, it is right there.] And its desire is for you, but you shall rule over it."
There is our responsibility. I do not know how He could make it plainer that this is the battle that we fight. The war is to resist the appeals to sin.
The second point is sin is always close, beckoning for us to follow it. But it is so serious God says it is our responsibility to overcome it. And in making those efforts we are accepted of Him. Now please do not say I am implying that we are going to earn salvation. There are other things to this. We are laying a foundation here so that we see clearly that sin is serious business to God.
Now this Bible study contains basic material, at least in its opening third, I would say. And one of the reasons that we are giving this (I mean, Richard and Martin as well), is that we discovered (actually David did), that on our website we really do not have very much basic material. Everything is of a fairly advanced nature. And so we feel that needs to be made up for by giving a series of more or less basic materials so that people will have access to that and be able to get something that will help them to lay foundations. So in this Bible study, which is the fourth in the series, we are continuing to make up for our website's gap.
Now overcoming sin is a formidable task, but it is not a hopeless one. And there are reasons it is not hopeless and should not get us too discouraged, and one of which is found in the book of Luke in chapter 12. At least I find it encouraging to some degree. It does not remove the seriousness of it, but it does help us to understand something here.
Luke 12:35-37 "Let your waist be girded and your lamps burning; and you yourselves be like men who wait for their master, and when he returns from the wedding, that when he comes and knocks they may open to him immediately. [In other words, through recognition.] Blessed are those servants whom the master, when he comes, will find watching. Assuredly, I say to you that he will gird himself and have them sit down to eat, and will come and serve them."
He is speaking to you and me. Now drop down to verse 46.
Luke 12:46-48 "The master of that servant will come on a day that he is not looking for him, and at an hour that he is not aware, and he will cut him in two and appoint him his portion with the unbelievers. And that servant who knew his master's will, and did not prepare himself or do according to his will, shall be beaten with many stripes. [Hopefully that is none of us. We do know our Master's will.] But he who did not know [because there is some measure of ignorance in us], yet committed things worthy of stripes [in other words, we did sin, we fell on occasions], shall be beaten with few. For everyone to whom much is given, from him much will be required; and to whom much has been committed, of him they will ask the more."
One of the senses that we can pick up from this is that each one of us is admonished to be alert because our enemy is at the door, even to the extent that it might be stalking us. However, each of us is also encouraged to understand that we are all judged individually. There is a difference in judgment. Everybody is judged against the same Standard, but judged individually according to our natural abilities, the gifts that are given by God, our dedication, faithfulness, discipline, time, sacrifice, and energies exerted to overcome, against what God knows that we are capable of.
We are not in competition with each other. We are in competition only with ourselves. And God will judge us according to what He knows from His evaluations of us what we are capable of. So we are not going to be judged against Joe, Judy, John, or anybody else. God will judge us individually.
In John 17, a very important prayer of Jesus, just to touch on something again here so that we understand where we fit in and why. This is being made a vital part of our lives. We will read verse 11. He said,
John 17:11 "Now I am no longer in the world, but these are in the world, and I come to You. Holy Father, keep through Your name those whom You have given Me, that they may may be one as We are one."
The purpose of this creation that God is working out and in us, is that we become one with Them. That is really a high calling. And the reason sin is so serious, this is the greatest purpose that can be given to any human being—to become one with the Father and the Son. That, brethren, is awesome. So that will mean that we will be in complete agreement with the Father and the Son, and with each other. And so, it is to this oneness that God wants to bring us. And brethren, They do not sin.
Now this standard is displayed throughout the Bible in a multitude of word pictures revealing the nature of the Father and Son and Their characteristics in both word and deed. Now sometimes we have difficulty understanding what the Bible is saying about God and His characteristics, and so in order to make us understand sin and its nature a little bit more, let us say visible, God makes some definite specific statements every once in a while. You are going to recognize these right away.
Right now we are talking about recognizing sin. Because if we are going to overcome it, we have got to recognize it first, and if we do not recognize within the context of His words, we can recognize something like this.
Romans 3:20 Therefore by deeds of the law no flesh will be justified in His sight, for by the law is the knowledge of sin.
That is pretty easy to understand.
Romans 4:15 Because the law brings about wrath; for where there is no law there is no transgression.
We know that the Bible has laws and to break those laws is transgression. So in order to make it really clear so that we have a big overview of what sin is, we have I John 3:4, which says that "sin is the transgression of the law." That is pretty clear. So it gives nobody any excuse to at least not know generally what it is that we are battling, this pull to transgress the law of God.
Now I will make it even a little bit plainer. At its very simplest, sin is a deviation from whatever is good and right. It is interesting to know that a deviation is revealed even more specifically by other terms within almost any given context in which sin is being committed and described. And it is helpful to be aware of these terms so that we can extract more knowledge and understanding of sin.
All sin brings death. However, God shows that for purposes of judgment, remember, I said everybody is judged individually for purposes of judgment, the sin committed, let us say the manner or the way or the attitude in which a sin is committed, makes a difference in His judgment of us. Now the most common Hebrew word translated sin is Strong's #2398, hata. Transliterated it is khaw-taw. I am going to show you a couple of places this word appears and it does not say sin. It is not translated sin. Now we are going to go to the book of Job in chapter 5, verse 24. But this tells you what hata means.
Job 5:24 You shall know that your tent is in peace; you shall visit your habitation and find nothing amiss. [There is the word hata.]
So what does the word hata mean? It means to miss. It means nothing is out of order, nothing is out of the way that it should be. Everything is aligned according to a standard.
Let us go back to the book of Judges. And when we read this verse, you will find this interesting, I think.
Judges 20:16 Among all the people there were seven hundred select men [these are of Benjamin] who were left-handed; everyone could sling a stone at a hair's breadth and not [sin] miss.
We generally say that this word means to miss the mark, to not live up to the standard. However, we are going to go back now to the book of Proverbs and we will see it in a moral and spiritual context.
Proverbs 8:36 "But he who sins against me wrongs his own soul; and all those who hate me love death."
There the word hata (the fourth word in there) is translated as sin.
Proverbs 19:2 It is not good for a soul to be without knowledge, and he [hatas] who hastens with his feet.
So anytime that word appears in a context involving moral and ethical issues, the verbal root demands that it become translated as sin.
Let us go back to Genesis 20, verse 9. We will see it in a little bit different context. I am going to give you a lot of scriptures here.
Genesis 20:9 And Abimelech called Abraham and said to him, "What have you done to us? How have I offended you [sinned against you], that you brought on me and my kingdom a great sin? You have done deeds to me that ought not to be done."
Here we have a man sinned against; and Abraham in his unethical behavior committed a sin against him.
Let us go to the book of Lamentations.
Lamentations 5:7 Our fathers sinned and are no more, but we bear their iniquities.
Here the sins being spoken of were considered by God, in His inspiration of this, directly against Him.
I said earlier that a sin is a deviation from what is right. And now I will change it, alter that definition just a little bit. We also see that sin is a deviation from a moral standard. That makes it very simple, and of course those moral standards are given in God's Word, by God's example, and sometimes indirect commands.
Now we are going to tweak this definition of sin just a little bit by turning to the book of Leviticus, chapter 4.
Leviticus 4:2 "Speak to the children of Israel, saying" 'If a person sins unintentionally against any of the commandments of the Lord in anything which ought not to be done, and does any of them. . .
Now this is a slightly different form of the same Hebrew term, but it indicates ignorance. This is a cognate of hata, but it indicates ignorance. It indicates wandering. It indicates straying is involved in the cause of missing the mark. And what you need to understand as you are studying, that often the context will reveal it. Now these sins are inadvertent, unintended missing of the mark, done without willfulness, and therefore it redefines the deviation.
If you are understanding what I am saying is that God is helping us to understand that He does not judge every sin exactly the same way. He takes into consideration factors that are involved in the commitment of that sin, and He does that out of mercy to you and me. Because as I said just a little earlier, every sin brings on death, but God in His judgment takes into consideration the circumstances of the sin.
So what we are looking at right now are sins of weakness. The kind, in a sense, if we put it into a family situation, that you would expect the 2 or 3 year old to do, but you would never expect a 12 or a 13 year old to do. And so with the 2 or 3 year old, is not your judgment less harsh, more merciful? Well, that is the way God is too. He takes these things into consideration and therefore protects us in His judgment of us.
Let us go to Psalm 58.
Psalm 58:3-4 The wicked are estranged from the womb; they go astray [There is a clue. Remember I said people wander, they go astray, they drift.] as soon as they are born, speaking lies. Their poison is like the poison of a serpent; they are like the deaf cobra that stops its ear.
I am going to take you to one more scripture here in regard to this in the book of Ezekiel. This is another fairly well known scripture that this word is used in.
Ezekiel 44:10 "And the Levites [this is something that is going to occur in the future] who went far from Me, when Israel went astray, who strayed [There it is, there is your clue.] away from Me after their idols, they shall bear their iniquity."
Now it is very clear, very evident that these people described in Psalm 58:3-4 were sinning. But God adjusts His judgment and He counts it as a sin of weakness, a sin of straying. And He did that same thing with the Levites as well. That they were guilty of straying and in their straying, they committed a lot of sins, well, we will just say, unintentionally.
But did you notice in Psalm 58:4 the harsh terms that God showed in His explanation? That their sins—though they were just sins of ignorance, though they were sins of weakness, though they strayed—they had devastating effects. It was like the poison of a cobra, pretty deadly. So a sin of weakness, though it may be judged mercifully by God by comparison to willful sin, can nonetheless have devastating results. And so we say, "Well, I didn't mean to do it." "Yeah, but look, the person's dead now." You understand?
So even a sin of weakness can have devastating results. It may be careless. It may be brought on by laziness. It may be brought on by indifference. But it is a result of not really thinking things through and so guilt is still there.
Now there is another level of sin that is devastating to the judgment of the sinner, and boy, that is just to say the least. These are presumptuous sins and they are normally committed by those who know better, but they went ahead and willfully did it anyway. Now the term describing these sins are very frequently translated as transgress, transgressions, transgressors, or transgressed (past tense) many times, and this Hebrew word is pasha. It is #6588. This word, get this sense, has in it the sense of expansion. The sense of breaking away, the sense of continuousness. And thus it is often translated as revolt or rebel. It is pretty harsh.
Interestingly, just one of these cognates, transgressions (plural), appears 48 times in the Hebrew Scriptures, and interestingly 10 of that 48, 20% of them, are in one book: Amos. And this is interesting, to me anyway, because I believe that the book of Amos is describing modern Israel. Now let us go to the book of Amos and we are going to go right to chapter 1, verse 3.
Amos 1:3 Thus says the Lord: "For three transgressions of Damascus, and for four, I will not turn away its punishment, because they have threshed Gilead with implements of iron."
Here is something that might be a little surprising to you. This charge by God is made against a Gentile nation. Remember, I said these sins are usually committed by somebody who knows better. Well, the Gentiles did not receive God's law. They are people apart from law, but I wanted you to see here that God is not against charging even those who are ignorant of God's law with committing transgressions because of the attitude. Even though we might say they were ignorant of much, the sin was so bold, so vicious, so in your face, and so continuous in its revolting attitude, it could not be passed over on the basis of ignorance and inadvertence. In other words, these people were just going with the flow, and they were really into it.
Now I will show you something interesting. This time we are going to go to I Kings chapter 12, verse 19.
I Kings 12:19 And so Israel has been in rebellion against the house of David to this day.
There is that word rebellion. And notice God marks, it was continuous. Never letting up. Never really supporting, never really helping. Kind of reminds you of the way that the Israelites have treated the Jews in our time. How France abandoned them, how Britain abandoned them, and now we are in the process of abandoning them. We all have our own interests. But the house of Judah contains the line of David. And it may not be large over there but God is watching over them, in a way, and He thinks we should have respect for them. Because God put that line in that part of the family of Jacob and so we are just abandoning them left and right, the Israelite people.
Back to Amos.
Amos 3:14 "That in the day I punish Israel for their transgressions, . . .
I will not go any further. I just wanted you to note that Judah was guilty of transgressions and Israel was guilty of transgressions against God; this very harsh, presumptuous kind of sin. However, if you read the entire book of Amos, you will find that when God gives a description of the sins of Judah and the sins of Israel, what you will find is that in comparison to the sins of the Gentile nations, the Gentile nations committed vicious, violent, bold, bloody, murderous, unmerciful, I guess you might say, kinds of sin, really in your face. Whereas Israel's sins were different.
Do you know what our sins are like? We are sneaky. We are persistently sneaky. It is still sin but our sins tend to be a stubborn hardheadedness and taking advantage of one another in life. And that because it is continuous and God perceives that we as a nation are making little or no effort to overcome it, then He calls it a presumptuous sin. Even though it is not violent, we do not tend to be violent people on the whole, and so even a sin that is not violent and in your face and bold can still be presumptuous.
Now we are going to go back to the New Testament and I am going to show you here how Paul describes this.
Romans 10:1-3 Brethren, my heart's desire and prayer to God for Israel is that they may be saved. For I bear them witness that they have a zeal for God, but not according to knowledge. For they being ignorant of God's righteousness, and seeking to establish their own righteousness, have not submitted to the righteousness of God.
And so we have a serious sin, but our sin is one of ignorance of God and His way that is taken to an extreme to where God has to judge it as a nation as being self-willed.
I could go on to define this even further. I might remind you of an illustration that God gives to us of one of our forefathers that pretty well defines the way we are. We are very much like Jacob. If you can just think of how Jacob treated his brother, his twin! Taking advantage of him in times of weakness. We can begin to see what the sins of Israel are like and why when you read in the book of Amos God's complaints against Israel about how we treat those who are weak and those who are poor and do not have the advantages that we have. Instead of lifting them up we sell them for a pair of shoes, God says. We are really hardhearted when it comes to getting things for ourselves.
And you know what our sin is? The one that is so presumptuous? It is pride. We are a proud, hard-headed people. Not violent, but waiting for every opportunity to pull the rug from under somebody else and make a killing financially, economically.
Now I give you that so that you will understand that even something that is not violent can still be presumptuous in the eyes of God because of the attitude.
You should be able to see that sin comes in many levels of intensity. Now once we begin to be able to identify sin in us, how are we to find the motivation to overcome them? It would be nice to be able to say, "Shazam!" and everything would be all right. However, God has not designed things that way. Character in the image of God must be created through cooperation with the Creator. And it is not developed overnight. And there are qualities, mostly attitudes generated within us, that are most helpful toward accomplishing this task.
Please understand that these qualities exist because God is with us in helping to produce them in us so that we might use them. It is He who enables.
Now I have arranged these in order of importance. But there is one that I believe is an absolute necessity because the others are the fruit of its existence, and I think that you will find this maybe rather surprising. (I have not organized this Bible study well. Because we are really getting to the meat of this Bible study, and I have already been talking about 50, 55 minutes. And I really cannot go very far with this subject.)
But we are going to go to the book of Psalms, chapter 2.
Psalm 2:10-12 Now, therefore, be wise, O kings; be instructed, you judges of the earth. [Now this is not something leveled directly at us at all.] Serve the Lord with fear, and rejoice with trembling. Kiss the Son, lest He be angry, and you perish in the way.
I want you to focus on this command to these people and understand that though we are not directly involved in this verse, it is the characteristic, it is the quality that we must have. We must fear God.
Go to Psalm 34, a psalm of David, and it contains something of supreme importance. David says to you and me:
Psalm 34:11 Come, you children, listen to me; and I will teach you the fear of the Lord.
Please understand this fear of God that I am talking about here, that is an absolute necessity to overcome, is not something we have naturally. And even if we were confronted by God, that is absolutely no guarantee that we would pick it up and make it part of our life. Witness the Israelites, brethren. They saw God in action for 40 years, and they never had the fear of God in them for more than a couple of days at a time. This is why David said it is something that must be learned. And I will add this, after we are converted.
Now let us go to Psalm 32, verse 8, where David says,
Psalm 32:8 I will instruct you and teach you the way you should go; I will guide you with my eye.
There must be in us the fear of God. I could have read 100 other scriptures that say essentially the same thing.
Now fear in an extreme sense creates the fight-or-flight sense of urgency. I think we will agree that fear is a powerful motivator. There are so many statements by God, there is no doubt He greatly desires that we fear Him. But this fear is different from the fears that we normally have in life and this is why it must be learned. Our normal understanding of fear spans from a mild apprehension or anxiety all the way to sheer-out bowel moving terror. Now why does God want us to fear Him? Would He not rather have us snuggle up to Him with no thought of fear?
Well, there are many, many people who have that conception, but brethren, they are misguided. Now where we have to begin to understand this is this: God is not a man. That is the foundation of this. He tells us in Isaiah 55 that He does not think like a man. His thoughts are different. Yes, He wants us to love Him. But with that love, fear must always also be present.
Psalm 2:11 Serve the Lord with fear, and rejoice with trembling.
Now would you not think that fearing and rejoicing are an odd couple? Most of us would not think that if you are fearful that it would be possible to rejoice. With God it is though. Here is a very well known scripture. Everybody knows what Philippians 2:12 says. Paul says, "Work out your salvation with fear and trembling."
We are in the Old Testament here, so let us go to the book of Deuteronomy. And here we have another well-known scripture, which we will read.
Deuteronomy 6:4-5 "Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one! You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your might."
There it is. He really wants us to love Him. Yes, He does want us to love Him. But just drop back a couple of scriptures in chapter 6, verses 1 and 2.
Deuteronomy 6:1-2 "Now this is the commandment, and these are the statutes and judgments which the Lord your God has commanded to teach you, that you may observe them in the land which you are crossing over to possess, that you may fear the Lord your God."
Deuteronomy 6:13 "You shall fear the Lord your God and serve Him."
That verse that commands us to love Him with all of our heart and soul is boxed in by the command to fear Him right in exactly the same context. Fear of Him and love for Him, brethren, cannot be separated from our relationship with Him. The two go hand-in-hand. And how is that accomplished? God is not kidding when He says He wants us to fear Him. That is why it has to be learned.
Let us go to Isaiah the 8th chapter. Now surely we would think that a man as converted as Isaiah would not be told to fear God.
Isaiah 8:11-13 For the Lord spoke thus to me with a strong hand, and instructed me that I should not walk in the way of this people, saying: "Do not say, 'A conspiracy,' concerning all that this people call it conspiracy, nor be afraid of their threats, nor be troubled. The Lord of hosts, Him shall you hallow; let Him be your fear, let Him be your dread."
Boy, that is strong! "Isaiah, I want you to dread Me." Now God would not say these things if this fear that He is talking about does not have a positive effect on our relationship with Him. Are you beginning to understand? If we really fear Him, we will be afraid to sin. Do you know why? Because we know His power.
But there is more to this than that. You might have the verse in mind in I John 4:17, where John says, "Perfect love casts out all fear." Boy, I twisted on this for 20 or 30 years before it finally came to mind what kind of fear is John talking about. I mean the love and fear. The fear he is talking about is the fear of disease, the fear of oppression, the fear of persecution, and the fear of death. The kind of fears that we would normally have in the world. If we truly do have the love of God, then those things begin to dissipate. Why? Because the only thing we fear is God.
And so if you look at I John 4:17, he said if we really have this love we are going to be bold in facing the fears that we would normally have in the world. Now if this were not true, what John said would be a contradiction to all these other places in the Bible where God says He wants us to fear Him. There are no contradictions between the Old and New Testament. God wants the love of God in us. God also wants the fear of God in us. But He does not want us to fear what is in the world.
I said a little bit earlier that God is not a man. I want you to turn now with me to Mark the 4th chapter, and I will show you a place where the apostles were beginning to learn about who it was that this relationship was developing with.
Mark 4:37-38 And a great windstorm arose, and the waves beat into the boat, so that it was already filling. But He was in the stern, asleep.
See, there is a fear, the perfect love was overcome. He was sound asleep. They were holding on for dear life.
Mark 4:38-41 And they awoke Him and said to Him, "Teacher, do you not care that we are perishing?" Then He arose and rebuked the wind, and said to the sea, "Peace, be still!" And the wind ceased and there was a great calm. But He said to them, "Why are you fearful? How is it that you have no faith?" [But notice their reaction to Jesus.] And they feared exceedingly, and said to one another, "Who can this be, that even the wind and the sea obey Him?"
They did not realize it yet that they were walking and talking and eating and sleeping with God. But they were beginning to learn this Man was so far above them He was out of sight. And they were, in a sense, thunderstruck. "Who is this?"
Are you beginning to get an idea of this fear that God wants us to have of Him?
You can write down in your notes Psalm 130:4. There is a direct connection in this verse that shows us that being forgiven is directly tied to us fearing Him. In other words, in order for this fear of God to be created in us, we must be forgiven first. You see, He is leading up to we have to be converted first, and then this fear can begin to be created within us, this fear that God wants in us.
You will find in Luke 1:50 (we are getting into the New Testament), that Christians are described as those who fear God. In the New Testament, a distinction is really made. Those who fear God are converted. Those who do not fear God, even though they might be terrified of Him, but they do not fear Him in the way He wants us to fear Him, they are unconverted. You can look in Acts 9:31, where it shows Christians fear God. In Acts 10:22, Cornelius, a man who was becoming converted, is described as a man who feared God.
But turn with me to the book of Hebrews. I want you to see this.
Hebrews 5:7 Who, in the days of His flesh, when He had offered up prayers and supplications, with vehement cries and tears to Him who was able to save Him from death, and was heard because of His godly fear.
You want God to hear your prayers? You better start praying that God will create this fear of Him in us. These people have an attitude toward Him that is so special God desires it greatly in all of His children. And as we saw, even in someone like Isaiah, that fear could stretch all the way to outright terror.
Now I will describe briefly how this fear is created. Jesus says in John 17:3 that God desires a long-term intimate relationship with us, and in this relationship is life. In this relationship we learn about God. And in this relationship we come to understand His mind, His attitudes, His approach to things, the way He looks at things, His perspectives, and on and on. We learn about His mercy, His kindness, His generosity, and His characteristics begin to become more and more sharply etched in our mind, and we begin to see the glory of what He is. We begin to get a view of His holiness and we begin to realize He is so far above mankind there is absolutely no comparison except that we are in the same shape as Him. But everything about Him is powerful and pure and so good, and needs to be emulated in our lives. And we really come to respect Him in a way with reverential awe and want to be like Him. Because that is where life is. It is to be like Him.
And we find here in Exodus; I want you to look at the way Moses looked at God.
Exodus 15:9-14 "The enemy said, 'I will pursue, I will overtake, I will divide the spoil; my desire shall be satisfied on them. I will draw my sword, my hand shall destroy them.' You blew with Your wind, the sea covered them; they sank like lead in the mighty waters. Who is like You, O Lord, among the gods? Who is like You, glorious in holiness, fearful in praises, doing wonders? You stretched out Your right hand; the earth swallowed them. You in Your mercy have led forth the people whom You have redeemed; You guided them in Your strength to your holy habitation. The people will hear and be afraid; sorrow will take hold of the inhabitants of Philistia."
This is why David said, "Children, listen to me; I will teach you the fear of the Lord."
And so from this comes two other characteristics that are very profitable to overcoming sin. Once this fear is really sharply etched in our mind, and that God intends that it has solid loving purpose behind it, it will begin to produce in us a sense of obligation, of duty, of responsibility to keep His covenant in a way that will be glorifying Him in everything we do. And that will begin to be combined with an intense sense of humble appreciation, of gratitude, that one so great magnanimously gave Jesus Christ for us, called us, forgave us, and gave us His Spirit, so that one so undeserving can share life with Him.
This fear of God is something that we need to have etched, driven deeply, inscribed in our character so that we can understand better who it is that we are dealing with and in such a way have the right kind of appreciation and sense of obligation inscribed in our minds as well, so that we will fight to the very nth degree to keep ourselves from sinning, and at the same time, to positively glorify Him with our witness.
JWR/aws/drm