Predominance in Biblical Thought

Driving home: The fear of God is the very soul of godliness.

Take away the soul from a body and in a few days you have a stinking carcass. Take away the fear of God from any religion and all that is left is the stinking carcass of Phariseeism and barren religiosity.

Take away the soul from the body, and all you have left in a few days is a stinking carcass. Take away the fear of God from any expression of godliness, and all you have left is the stinking carcass of Phariseeism and barren religiosity. and so in order to think our way through at least in an introductory way to this theme we shall this morning seek to grasp something of the predominance of this concept of the fear of God in biblical thought then we shall move on next Lord's Day morning to consider the meaning of the fear of God the essential elements of the fear of God

1:23 - 2:11 Read in full sermon

Driving home: If my apprehension of God and my comprehension of God does not lead me to fear him as Isaac did, I have not rightly understood who God is.

In Genesis 31, God actually names Himself 'the fear of Isaac.' Pastor Martin draws the conclusion: if apprehending God does not produce fear in us as it did in Isaac, we have not rightly understood who He is.

Notice a similar reference in verse 53 of the same chapter the God of Abraham and the God of Nahor, the God of their father, judged betwixt us, and Jacob swear by the fear of his father Isaac. God's name is a revelation of his character. God gave an increasing understanding of who he was by the accumulation of the names by which he identified himself and through which he revealed himself to his people. And here, one of the names attached to God as a revelation of his character is the fear of Isaac.

6:00 - 6:47 Read in full sermon

The point: Recognize that Israel's exposure to God at Sinai was designed to teach fear; if our reading of the Old Testament fails to produce this, we are missing its central purpose.

Why the thunder, lightning and cloud on Sinai? Martin exposits Exodus 20:20: 'Fear not, for God is come to prove you, that his fear may be before you.' The whole theater of Sinai existed to replace natural dread with godly fear.

And Moses said unto the people, Fear not, that is, don't be afraid with that carnal dread and fear, for God is come to prove you, and that his fear may be before you, that ye sin not. If you were to stand off at a distance and to see the lightning flashing off the top of Mount Sinai, if you were to see the descent of the cloud and hear the rumblings and the thunder and stand there full of natural dread, you were to turn to someone and say, what is all of this? Why is God bringing about all of this phenomena in the physical realm? The answer would be, He's doing this to rid you of carnal fear

10:07 - 10:55 Read in full sermon

The point: Let your approach to God in worship be both confident in His lovingkindness and trembling in His fear — neither alone is biblical worship.

A missionary recounts an African who, after his first trip to the coast, said what impressed him most was the sea — 'it is like the mighty love of God, ever stretching out before me, yet ever coming toward me.' Martin uses it to illustrate how love and holy fear meet in worship.

But even as we approach God in the fullest consciousness of his mercy and his love It is never a consciousness of mercy and love divorced From the climate of godly fear Notice how David ties these two together But as for me, in the abundance of thy loving kindness will I come into thy house. He says, I will come fully conscious that God's love is like the ocean. A few weeks ago as we stood there by the Cardigan Shire Bay in Aberystwyth, Wales, we thought of that illustration that was conveyed to us by a missionary, who when having talked with one of the natives who had gone out to the coast of...

17:28 - 18:17 Read in full sermon

Just as a child's ABCs are not only the beginning but the permanent chief part of all later learning — even the most advanced physicist still works with the same numbers — so the fear of the Lord is the beginning and the chief part of all true knowledge.

do once you learn the alphabet, then you move from little words to big words, and you would say learning my ABCs was the beginning of learning how to spell. But it is the chief part, just as the use of the alphabet is something which is not left, but becomes the chief part of all your learning, so that when a man is studying the most complicated book on far-out physics, he's dealing with the same numbers he learned in kindergarten and first grade and with the same letters he learned. Now, there may be arrangements of them that we look at them and scratch our heads and say, it looks like a cat ...

25:10 - 25:56 Read in full sermon

The point: Bring the fear of God into your workplace — the lathe, the foreman, the typewriter — until it is as present as your physical surroundings.

Martin makes the fear of God vivid in ordinary work: as near as the lathe, the foreman, the workbench, the secretary next to you blowing her dirty smoke in your face — the fear of God belongs in every interpersonal relationship at work.

And in that context, the admonition comes, Colossians 3.22, servants obey in all things them that are your masters according to the flesh, not with eye service as men pleasers, but in singleness of heart, fearing the Lord. In other words, the fear of God is to be as present in that place of business as that lathe into which you put that piece of steel, as that foreman who passes by to check your work, as that person who stands next to you at the workbench, as that girl that sits next to you and bangs her typewriter and blows her smoke into your face, as near as her dirty smoke that you've got ...

43:49 - 44:39 Read in full sermon

The point: Bring the fear of God into your workplace — the lathe, the foreman, the typewriter — until it is as present as your physical surroundings.

Pastor Martin mocks the popular notion that the jolliest Christians are the most spiritual, setting it against Philippians 2:12: 'Work out your own salvation with fear and trembling.'

Now I ask you, where in the world do we get this idea that the people who are most jumping about with jolly, jolly joy all the time, time, time, are the most spiritual? Fear and trembling. Fear and trembling. And anyone who's working out his salvation in any other context, he's working it out in a context unauthorized by the Word of God.

45:48 - 46:20 Read in full sermon