WEBVTT 00:00:37.200 --> 00:00:40.480 Welcome to the Stone Choir Podcast, I am Cory J. 00:00:40.480 --> 00:00:42.880 Mahler. And I'm Wo. 00:00:42.880 --> 00:00:46.160 There shall come forth a shoot from the stump of Jesse, and 00:00:46.160 --> 00:00:49.600 a branch from his roots shall bear fruit, and the spirit of 00:00:49.600 --> 00:00:54.080 the Lord shall rest upon him, the spirit of wisdom and Understanding, 00:00:54.080 --> 00:00:57.920 the Spirit of Counsel and Might, the Spirit of Knowledge and the 00:00:57.920 --> 00:01:01.920 Fear of the Lord, and his delight shall be in the fear 00:01:02.080 --> 00:01:03.280 of the Lord. 00:01:03.920 --> 00:01:08.640 Today's episode is discussing the fear of the Lord, the fear of 00:01:08.640 --> 00:01:12.480 God. What does it mean to fear God properly? 00:01:12.480 --> 00:01:15.920 What you'll find as you as you look at all the examples 00:01:15.920 --> 00:01:21.040 in scripture, particularly throughout the Old Testament, fear of the Lord is 00:01:21.040 --> 00:01:25.840 used as synonymous with one who has faith. 00:01:25.840 --> 00:01:29.520 Someone who was a believer was described as fearing God. 00:01:29.520 --> 00:01:31.120 This is how Jonah described himself. 00:01:31.840 --> 00:01:37.520 It's how Joseph described himself to his brothers when they didn't recognize 00:01:37.520 --> 00:01:41.120 him. They both those men describe themselves as having fear of the 00:01:41.120 --> 00:01:43.200 Lord. It's synonymous with having faith. 00:01:43.200 --> 00:01:44.400 It means to be a believer. 00:01:45.360 --> 00:01:49.360 Something that's lost on us in the modern world is the connection 00:01:49.360 --> 00:01:56.320 between proper fear as it's understood scripturally and what it means to 00:01:56.960 --> 00:01:57.520 have faith. 00:01:57.520 --> 00:02:00.080 We think of it in sort of euphemistic terms like, oh he 00:02:00.240 --> 00:02:01.040 he fears God. 00:02:01.040 --> 00:02:01.760 Like no. 00:02:01.760 --> 00:02:04.320 These men actually feared God. 00:02:04.320 --> 00:02:08.240 They were afraid of God in the traditional sense, which is not 00:02:08.240 --> 00:02:13.520 the sense of a spooky movie or of you know being afraid 00:02:13.520 --> 00:02:17.520 of the dark or being afraid of running out of fuel on 00:02:17.520 --> 00:02:18.160 the highway. 00:02:18.160 --> 00:02:20.480 It's not that exact type of fear. 00:02:20.480 --> 00:02:26.640 It's a much more Properly oriented relationship to God. 00:02:26.640 --> 00:02:29.760 So hearkening back to the episode that we did a while back 00:02:29.760 --> 00:02:34.480 on perfect hatred, it's important to note that when we're talking about 00:02:34.480 --> 00:02:39.360 these things that today we called emotions, fear and hatred, that you 00:02:39.360 --> 00:02:42.640 know those are prime emotions or primal emotions. 00:02:42.640 --> 00:02:44.560 That's not all that they are. 00:02:44.560 --> 00:02:47.760 When we talked in the episode on perfect hatred, we talked about 00:02:47.760 --> 00:02:51.680 the fact that hatred is in fact a fruit of the Holy 00:02:51.680 --> 00:02:56.720 Spirit, proper hatred against those things which are opposed to God. 00:02:56.720 --> 00:02:58.720 And in that sense, it's not emotional. 00:02:58.720 --> 00:03:02.160 It's not an emotional response or outpouring. 00:03:02.720 --> 00:03:04.160 it's relational. 00:03:04.160 --> 00:03:08.800 If you love God, if you are oriented towards God's things, naturally 00:03:09.040 --> 00:03:13.360 that flows to a hatred of that which is contrary to God's 00:03:13.360 --> 00:03:16.080 will. The same is true of the of the fear of God. 00:03:16.080 --> 00:03:20.560 When we say fear God, it doesn't mean hide in terror. 00:03:20.560 --> 00:03:24.960 It doesn't mean flee as the wicked man when no man pursues. 00:03:25.360 --> 00:03:30.640 To be afraid of God is to understand your relationship to God 00:03:30.800 --> 00:03:31.840 as your creator. 00:03:31.840 --> 00:03:33.040 We're creatures. 00:03:33.040 --> 00:03:34.800 We are at the bottom. 00:03:34.800 --> 00:03:36.160 God is at the top. 00:03:36.160 --> 00:03:38.880 So today we're going to basically be doing another Bible study. 00:03:38.880 --> 00:03:41.840 We're going to go through a bunch of Bible verses talking about 00:03:41.840 --> 00:03:46.400 all the manners in which scripture describes fear and examples of it 00:03:46.400 --> 00:03:46.960 being used. 00:03:46.960 --> 00:03:48.880 Well, not all the examples, because there is we said there are 00:03:48.880 --> 00:03:51.680 hunters up and this this could be a a 30 hour Bible 00:03:51.680 --> 00:03:53.520 study if we went through every single one. 00:03:53.520 --> 00:03:57.120 They're redundant, but it gets the point across that if you are 00:03:57.120 --> 00:04:00.880 not able to say I fear God, there's something wrong with your 00:04:00.880 --> 00:04:04.160 faith. And I think today that's largely absent from the way we 00:04:04.160 --> 00:04:06.960 think We think of our own relationship to God. 00:04:06.960 --> 00:04:11.040 We think of God as being loving, as being our loving father. 00:04:11.040 --> 00:04:17.360 A father in a head also naturally inspires fear, properly understood. 00:04:17.360 --> 00:04:21.600 That's a part of that relationship because there's a hierarchy. 00:04:21.600 --> 00:04:25.440 Anytime there's a hierarchy, there's fear properly understood. 00:04:25.440 --> 00:04:28.320 Again, not in the sense of a scary movie, but in the 00:04:28.320 --> 00:04:32.880 sense of there's something greater above me that can do good or 00:04:32.880 --> 00:04:36.720 ill. And I understand my relationship to that as one of submission 00:04:36.880 --> 00:04:41.600 and one of not being able to resist whatever comes from above. 00:04:41.600 --> 00:04:45.600 And so today we're going to talk about how we properly understand 00:04:45.600 --> 00:04:49.040 what it is to fear, love and trust in God. 00:04:49.040 --> 00:04:53.360 That's how Luther correctly, I think, explained the first commandment. 00:04:53.520 --> 00:04:55.440 You shall have no other gods before me. 00:04:55.440 --> 00:04:59.120 Luther said that means we've fear, love, and trust in God above 00:04:59.120 --> 00:05:00.080 all things. 00:05:00.080 --> 00:05:01.760 Fear comes first. 00:05:01.760 --> 00:05:05.280 And that wasn't just Luther sort of picking words at random. 00:05:05.280 --> 00:05:09.600 What we find in scripture is that fear comes before love, just 00:05:09.600 --> 00:05:14.320 as law comes before gospel, it's it's synonymous, it's the same thing. 00:05:14.320 --> 00:05:18.800 You cannot understand God's love for you if you do not have 00:05:18.800 --> 00:05:22.080 a proper fear of the God who must love you so that 00:05:22.080 --> 00:05:23.440 he doesn't destroy you. 00:05:23.440 --> 00:05:25.600 So that's where we're going to begin. 00:05:25.680 --> 00:05:30.000 So to start off, we'll turn to Genesis thirty one. 00:05:30.000 --> 00:05:32.960 I think this is a good place to begin because here we 00:05:32.960 --> 00:05:37.520 actually have fear as a name of God. 00:05:37.520 --> 00:05:40.720 If the God of my father, the god of Abraham and the 00:05:40.720 --> 00:05:44.640 fear of Isaac, had not been on my side, surely now you 00:05:44.640 --> 00:05:47.440 would have sent me away empty handed. 00:05:47.440 --> 00:05:49.920 God here is called the fear. 00:05:49.920 --> 00:05:54.240 Yes, it's the fear of Isaac, but fear is properly capitalized in 00:05:54.240 --> 00:05:58.480 the ESV and some other translations because it is a name of 00:05:58.480 --> 00:06:02.240 God. This is an attribute of God. 00:06:02.240 --> 00:06:06.080 God is fearful in the sense that He is something to be 00:06:06.080 --> 00:06:07.600 feared. And 00:06:08.720 --> 00:06:14.160 as was mentioned, modern readers, modern listeners are going to have an 00:06:14.160 --> 00:06:20.320 incorrect incorrect background set of assumptions when it comes to what fear 00:06:20.320 --> 00:06:22.000 is. And 00:06:23.120 --> 00:06:26.960 when preparing for this episode I looked up fear in the eighteen 00:06:26.960 --> 00:06:30.160 twenty eight dictionary to get a better idea of what this term 00:06:30.320 --> 00:06:33.520 used to mean in English. 00:06:33.520 --> 00:06:36.800 And as we were discussing before we started recording, there's actually a 00:06:36.800 --> 00:06:40.800 hierarchy given in the definition, and I think it's an important hierarchy 00:06:41.600 --> 00:06:43.120 for modern ears. 00:06:43.120 --> 00:06:46.480 This is something we should hear, something we should understand. 00:06:46.480 --> 00:06:49.680 We have fear, dread, terror, and fright. 00:06:49.680 --> 00:06:52.560 Now fright is the one that as we were preparing for the 00:06:52.560 --> 00:06:58.080 show we discussed because fright to the modern ear doesn't really mean 00:06:58.720 --> 00:07:01.200 worse than fear, dread, and terror anymore. 00:07:01.200 --> 00:07:02.480 But that's the hierarchy here. 00:07:02.480 --> 00:07:06.080 And the reason that I want to point out this hierarchy is 00:07:06.720 --> 00:07:10.960 that the classical definition of fear, one of them in English that 00:07:10.960 --> 00:07:15.120 has sort of fallen by the wayside, is that fear is a 00:07:15.120 --> 00:07:19.280 mixture of dread and reverence. 00:07:19.280 --> 00:07:24.240 And so it's important to recognize that that dread, that's the aspect 00:07:24.240 --> 00:07:27.840 that we're we're really missing today when we think about what it 00:07:27.840 --> 00:07:30.160 means to fear. 00:07:30.160 --> 00:07:30.800 And so 00:07:32.000 --> 00:07:37.840 if we fear God, yes, there's the reverence, yes, there's the respect, 00:07:37.840 --> 00:07:43.440 these other things, but there is also dread, because God is something 00:07:43.440 --> 00:07:45.440 that is wholly other from us. 00:07:45.440 --> 00:07:50.880 I'm not saying in the sense of anti-realism or moral anti-realism, anything 00:07:50.880 --> 00:07:51.440 like that. 00:07:51.440 --> 00:07:54.160 That's a different subject. 00:07:54.160 --> 00:07:56.000 But in the sense of 00:07:56.880 --> 00:07:59.280 God is Sui Generis. 00:07:59.280 --> 00:08:02.000 God is different from us. 00:08:02.000 --> 00:08:05.440 His ways are not our ways, our ways are not his ways. 00:08:05.440 --> 00:08:09.600 He is above and beyond us to an incomprehensible degree. 00:08:09.600 --> 00:08:13.920 And so there is a certain response that we would and should 00:08:13.920 --> 00:08:17.520 have when in the presence of God. 00:08:17.520 --> 00:08:17.840 And 00:08:19.360 --> 00:08:23.120 in the theological and philosophical literature this has sometimes been called the 00:08:23.120 --> 00:08:28.160 numinous This comes from a Lutheran theologian called Rudolf Otto. 00:08:28.160 --> 00:08:31.360 His main book on the subject is actually a good book worth 00:08:31.360 --> 00:08:34.080 reading. It's the idea of the holy. 00:08:34.080 --> 00:08:36.800 It's worth noting again what holy means holy means to be set 00:08:36.800 --> 00:08:39.120 apart, it means to be other, it means the sacred. 00:08:39.440 --> 00:08:43.120 These are interchangeable terms in this case, but again, God is sui 00:08:43.280 --> 00:08:47.280 generis, God is Gans Andra, he is this is the holy other 00:08:47.760 --> 00:08:53.120 God. And that elicits from men who have a proper respect for 00:08:53.120 --> 00:08:56.880 God, a proper conception of God in so far as the mind 00:08:56.880 --> 00:09:01.840 of a mortal man can conceive of the infinite, it elicits fear. 00:09:01.840 --> 00:09:04.080 And so that is what we are talking about today. 00:09:04.080 --> 00:09:06.000 That's what we're going over in Scripture. 00:09:06.000 --> 00:09:11.120 And as mentioned, Scripture uses the word fear repeatedly. 00:09:11.120 --> 00:09:15.200 It appears over four hundred times in the ESV's text. 00:09:15.520 --> 00:09:20.080 The connection between fear and dread is also called out in Genesis 00:09:20.080 --> 00:09:22.160 nine where it's given context. 00:09:22.160 --> 00:09:25.040 God said to Noah, the fear of you and the dread of 00:09:25.040 --> 00:09:27.520 you shall be upon every beast of the earth and upon the 00:09:27.520 --> 00:09:31.200 bird of the heavens and upon everything that creeps on the ground 00:09:31.280 --> 00:09:33.040 and all the fish of the sea. 00:09:33.040 --> 00:09:36.080 Into your hand they are delivered. 00:09:36.080 --> 00:09:41.840 And that's fundamentally what fear and dread is to the beasts today 00:09:42.080 --> 00:09:43.440 naturally fear us. 00:09:43.440 --> 00:09:46.320 Now some are less fearful than others, some are too dumb to 00:09:46.320 --> 00:09:47.120 be afraid. 00:09:47.120 --> 00:09:51.200 But when you encounter a wild beast, it will be fearful of 00:09:51.200 --> 00:09:54.000 you. It may not be fearful of other things in nature, but 00:09:54.000 --> 00:09:57.520 it will be fearful of man in the sense that it will 00:09:57.520 --> 00:10:03.120 naturally understand that you are above it in creation. 00:10:03.120 --> 00:10:06.240 It doesn't know why, but it knows that you're something dangerous, something 00:10:06.240 --> 00:10:08.960 that might be a predator, something that could hurt it. 00:10:08.960 --> 00:10:12.160 It has the sense that it is delivered into your hand. 00:10:12.160 --> 00:10:15.600 Now, a dumb beast isn't comprehending these things in the way that 00:10:15.600 --> 00:10:17.840 a man does, but as God said, he put the fear and 00:10:17.840 --> 00:10:19.840 dread of man in the beast's heart. 00:10:19.840 --> 00:10:21.440 So it doesn't have to understand. 00:10:21.440 --> 00:10:24.320 God has given those things into our hands. 00:10:24.320 --> 00:10:28.720 And the beasts understand that as well as they can understand anything. 00:10:28.720 --> 00:10:34.640 And the fact that being delivered into someone's hand is is the 00:10:34.640 --> 00:10:39.920 root for that fear and dread is why we should fear God. 00:10:40.400 --> 00:10:42.080 we are not delivered into his hand. 00:10:42.080 --> 00:10:46.400 We we're we're held as as his children in his hand, but 00:10:46.400 --> 00:10:47.360 it's in his hand. 00:10:47.680 --> 00:10:49.440 he's our creator. 00:10:49.440 --> 00:10:52.000 Again, he's at the very top of creation. 00:10:52.000 --> 00:10:54.560 We're not at the bottom because there are many things beneath us, 00:10:54.560 --> 00:10:58.400 but relative to him, we're less than worms. 00:10:58.400 --> 00:11:01.360 That's something we'll get into in a bit later in some of 00:11:01.360 --> 00:11:02.800 the examples. 00:11:02.800 --> 00:11:04.080 One of the first passages 00:11:04.080 --> 00:11:06.560 I wanted to call out was from Psalm 19. 00:11:06.960 --> 00:11:09.360 Before we move on to that, I actually just want to add 00:11:09.360 --> 00:11:12.480 an anecdote here because very convenient timing. 00:11:12.480 --> 00:11:18.480 When it comes to the fear of God and particularly the analogue 00:11:18.480 --> 00:11:22.720 here, the fear of man that animals have, I went down to 00:11:22.720 --> 00:11:25.760 take care of my chickens a little while before we started recording 00:11:26.080 --> 00:11:28.000 and I went down there and one of them had managed to 00:11:28.000 --> 00:11:32.240 get out of the pen because every so often they do fly. 00:11:32.240 --> 00:11:34.160 Chickens can actually fly. 00:11:34.160 --> 00:11:37.920 They don't really remember they can fly, so they get spooked, they 00:11:37.920 --> 00:11:40.240 go upward, they get out of the pen, and then they look 00:11:40.240 --> 00:11:42.400 at the fact they're out of the pen and go, how did 00:11:42.400 --> 00:11:43.040 this happen? 00:11:43.040 --> 00:11:45.280 And they can't figure out how to get back back in because 00:11:45.280 --> 00:11:48.480 again, they don't realize they can fly. 00:11:48.480 --> 00:11:54.560 But the chickens obviously trust me to some degree, because I feed 00:11:54.560 --> 00:11:55.920 them, water them, and all those things. 00:11:55.920 --> 00:11:59.280 I take care of them, and I haven't harmed them. 00:11:59.280 --> 00:12:01.520 But they are still afraid of me. 00:12:01.520 --> 00:12:04.000 They will run away if I try to capture them and pick 00:12:04.000 --> 00:12:08.480 them up, because there is still that fear, they recognize that I 00:12:08.480 --> 00:12:12.160 am something that could very well cause them harm. 00:12:12.160 --> 00:12:16.640 That is analogous in some ways to man's relationship to God, the 00:12:16.480 --> 00:12:20.480 fear of God that man should have with respect to God because 00:12:20.480 --> 00:12:20.800 God 00:12:21.680 --> 00:12:28.720 the difference between me and the chickens is nothing compared to the 00:12:28.720 --> 00:12:33.360 difference between God and me between God and man. 00:12:33.360 --> 00:12:35.760 God is infinite, man is finite. 00:12:35.760 --> 00:12:41.120 God has absolute control over your life, over what will happen in 00:12:41.120 --> 00:12:43.680 your life, over the world, over everything. 00:12:43.680 --> 00:12:48.640 God has control over the universe on the grandest scale, down to 00:12:49.280 --> 00:12:55.360 individual divisions of cells, the way that quarks interact inside the particles 00:12:55.440 --> 00:12:56.240 inside atoms. 00:12:56.560 --> 00:13:01.040 God has control over absolutely everything. 00:13:01.040 --> 00:13:06.480 And it's the fear of God flows in part from that proper 00:13:06.480 --> 00:13:10.720 understanding of the majesty of God, the power of God, the nature 00:13:10.720 --> 00:13:12.720 of God relative to man. 00:13:12.720 --> 00:13:16.720 And so it's good to think of the way that animals interact 00:13:16.720 --> 00:13:20.080 with man to some degree because it gives us a picture of 00:13:20.080 --> 00:13:21.200 that sort of fear. 00:13:21.200 --> 00:13:24.560 It's not always just abject terror. 00:13:24.560 --> 00:13:26.160 It is a respect 00:13:27.120 --> 00:13:31.840 due to the power differential, due to the nature of that relationship. 00:13:31.840 --> 00:13:35.120 And it is because of God's love for us that he reveals 00:13:35.120 --> 00:13:36.960 all of this to us in scripture. 00:13:36.960 --> 00:13:40.240 He tells us why and how to fear him, why and how 00:13:40.240 --> 00:13:41.120 to love him. 00:13:41.120 --> 00:13:43.200 He tells us that he loves us. 00:13:43.200 --> 00:13:46.400 It again, he he tells us these things because he loves us 00:13:46.480 --> 00:13:50.720 and he wants us to fear and love him, in that order. 00:13:50.720 --> 00:13:54.320 In Psalm nineteen it reads, The law of the Lord is perfect 00:13:54.400 --> 00:13:58.160 reviving the soul, the testimony of the Lord is sure, making wise 00:13:58.160 --> 00:14:01.920 the simple, the precepts of the Lord are right, rejoicing the heart, 00:14:01.920 --> 00:14:05.680 the commandment of the Lord is pure, enlightening the eyes, the fear 00:14:05.680 --> 00:14:09.440 of the Lord is clean, enduring forever, the rules of the Lord 00:14:09.440 --> 00:14:12.160 are true and righteous altogether. 00:14:12.160 --> 00:14:13.680 And I did that whole passage. 00:14:13.680 --> 00:14:15.520 You know, you could you could cherry pick just the fear of 00:14:15.520 --> 00:14:18.160 the Lord is clean and during forever and say, well, you know, 00:14:18.160 --> 00:14:19.840 obviously fear is good. 00:14:19.840 --> 00:14:23.760 When you look in context, fear of the Lord is put in 00:14:23.760 --> 00:14:27.040 a list of synonyms for God's will, the law of the Lord, 00:14:26.960 --> 00:14:30.800 the testimony, the precepts, the commandments, the rules, the fear of the 00:14:30.800 --> 00:14:34.800 Lord. Those are our all part and parcel, according to God, of 00:14:34.800 --> 00:14:36.160 the same thing. 00:14:36.160 --> 00:14:39.360 So when we say fear God, when God says fear God, like 00:14:39.440 --> 00:14:41.360 this isn't Stone Choir theology. 00:14:41.360 --> 00:14:46.000 God is literally saying, if you fear me, you know my law. 00:14:46.000 --> 00:14:47.520 It's the same thing. 00:14:47.520 --> 00:14:52.960 God lifts synonym after synonym in Psalm 19 for the purpose of 00:14:52.960 --> 00:14:56.960 making clear that the fear of God is not a emotional principally, 00:14:56.960 --> 00:14:58.240 it's knowledge. 00:14:58.240 --> 00:15:03.360 The proper, rightly ordered knowledge of God is itself fear. 00:15:03.360 --> 00:15:03.520 It 00:15:03.520 --> 00:15:09.440 is interesting that she would pick that example for explaining that the 00:15:09.440 --> 00:15:13.760 fear of God can be a synonym for his law, his word, 00:15:13.760 --> 00:15:18.080 for obeying God, because that is literally the example verse given in 00:15:18.480 --> 00:15:20.240 Webster's 1828 00:15:21.120 --> 00:15:23.920 because one of the and I I I want to point out 00:15:23.920 --> 00:15:27.840 that you did not actually look at Webster's 1828 before this episode. 00:15:27.840 --> 00:15:31.760 I happen to have it open, but the eighth definition under fear 00:15:32.240 --> 00:15:35.440 is the law and word of God, and it gives Psalm nineteen 00:15:35.600 --> 00:15:37.680 nine as the example. 00:15:37.680 --> 00:15:40.800 Which this is actually something worth noting here. 00:15:40.800 --> 00:15:45.200 Webster's eighteen twenty eight cites to scripture constantly. 00:15:45.520 --> 00:15:51.600 It is is probably far and away the top source that is 00:15:51.600 --> 00:15:55.440 cited for examples of the use of various words. 00:15:55.440 --> 00:16:00.080 I mean, just looking at this one, the verses themselves are hyperlinks, 00:16:00.080 --> 00:16:02.320 so it's very easy to see they're all blue. 00:16:02.320 --> 00:16:06.480 It is almost every single definition of fear, cites to scripture. 00:16:06.480 --> 00:16:08.720 And this is something that we've lost as a society. 00:16:08.720 --> 00:16:11.440 If you open up a modern dictionary, it is not going to 00:16:11.440 --> 00:16:13.600 cite to scripture as often. 00:16:13.600 --> 00:16:18.720 Academic ones, interestingly, will actually cite to scripture more because, as we 00:16:18.720 --> 00:16:22.240 have mentioned previously, if you do not know scripture, you are functionally 00:16:22.240 --> 00:16:24.960 illiterate in a Western context. 00:16:24.960 --> 00:16:29.280 It doesn't matter if you're Christian, if you're pagan, Buddhist, whatever you 00:16:29.280 --> 00:16:32.320 are, if you are in a Western context and you do not 00:16:32.320 --> 00:16:36.000 know scripture, you are functionally illiterate. 00:16:36.000 --> 00:16:40.800 And that definitely shines through when looking at the examples in older 00:16:40.800 --> 00:16:42.880 dictionaries. Just imagine how 00:16:42.880 --> 00:16:46.080 terrible things must have been in 1828 when we had a Christian 00:16:46.080 --> 00:16:49.680 nation and people had to know the Word of God to understand 00:16:49.680 --> 00:16:52.560 their own language and how they related to others. 00:16:52.560 --> 00:16:53.760 That sounds like a nightmare. 00:16:53.760 --> 00:16:57.360 Well, it's it's a good thing we're not Christianizing nations anymore. 00:16:57.520 --> 00:17:01.360 Another uh psalm that I wanted to highlight was Psalm 111. 00:17:01.680 --> 00:17:05.200 The works of his hands are faithful and just, all his precepts 00:17:05.200 --> 00:17:09.520 are trustworthy, they are established forever and ever, to be performed with 00:17:09.520 --> 00:17:11.120 faithfulness and uprightness. 00:17:11.120 --> 00:17:15.280 He sent redemption to his people, he has commanded his covenant forever. 00:17:15.280 --> 00:17:17.200 Holy and awesome is his name. 00:17:17.200 --> 00:17:19.760 The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom. 00:17:19.760 --> 00:17:22.400 All those who practice it have good understanding. 00:17:22.400 --> 00:17:25.120 His praise endures forever. 00:17:25.120 --> 00:17:27.440 This is a passage that ties into what we'll be talking about 00:17:27.440 --> 00:17:31.360 in Job in a little bit, how not only is fear of 00:17:31.360 --> 00:17:37.120 the Lord wisdom and understanding, but it is glory to God to 00:17:37.120 --> 00:17:38.160 fear him. 00:17:38.160 --> 00:17:41.120 And again, we talked I talked at the beginning about how this 00:17:41.120 --> 00:17:42.320 is a relational concept 00:17:43.200 --> 00:17:44.960 not an emotional one. 00:17:44.960 --> 00:17:48.480 When you hate that which the Lord hates, as we talked about 00:17:48.480 --> 00:17:52.080 in the perfect hatred episode, that's not you being angry. 00:17:52.080 --> 00:17:54.800 That is you having a spirit that is oriented in the same 00:17:54.800 --> 00:17:58.800 way that God's spirit has told us to be oriented against those 00:17:58.800 --> 00:18:01.680 things which are contrary to God. 00:18:01.680 --> 00:18:02.000 So 00:18:02.880 --> 00:18:06.480 when we talk about fearing the Lord, it is giving him glory 00:18:06.480 --> 00:18:08.080 to fear him. 00:18:08.080 --> 00:18:10.640 It is not being presumptuous. 00:18:10.640 --> 00:18:15.120 To not fear the Lord is to be a cocky jerk. 00:18:15.120 --> 00:18:18.800 I was I was thinking earlier about examples and I I I'm 00:18:18.800 --> 00:18:22.560 gonna give this example but I realize that it's it's not blasphemous, 00:18:22.560 --> 00:18:23.760 but it's kind of absurd. 00:18:23.760 --> 00:18:28.720 I was thinking of the example in Diehard when the cocky idiot 00:18:28.720 --> 00:18:32.480 in the tower wanted to go in and negotiate with Hans Gruber 00:18:32.960 --> 00:18:35.040 And he puts his feet up on the desk and he says, 00:18:35.200 --> 00:18:36.480 Hans Booby. 00:18:36.480 --> 00:18:38.080 Like they were equals. 00:18:38.080 --> 00:18:42.240 And Gruber is sitting there just astonished that this idiot could be 00:18:42.240 --> 00:18:44.720 so close to death and not realize it. 00:18:44.720 --> 00:18:47.120 That man did not have a proper fear of someone who had 00:18:47.600 --> 00:18:48.960 his life in his hands. 00:18:48.960 --> 00:18:53.200 Now I'm I Lord forgive me, I'm not comparing God Almighty to 00:18:53.200 --> 00:18:59.280 Hans Gruber, but that sort of inversion of proper understanding of relationship 00:18:59.680 --> 00:19:01.680 is when you get your head bitten up. 00:19:01.680 --> 00:19:05.840 It's you know there are examples in scripture where God himself says 00:19:06.000 --> 00:19:09.040 don't put yourself at the high place at the table, go at 00:19:09.040 --> 00:19:11.920 the low place at the table, let God invite you, let the 00:19:11.920 --> 00:19:15.200 master of the ceremony invite you up to the place of honor. 00:19:15.200 --> 00:19:17.760 That is the approach that we're to have with God. 00:19:17.760 --> 00:19:21.600 If you fear and have the dread of God in your heart, 00:19:21.600 --> 00:19:23.440 you're not going to be cocky. 00:19:23.440 --> 00:19:25.200 You're not going to put your feet up in the on the 00:19:25.200 --> 00:19:28.560 table and act like you're an equal and act like you can 00:19:28.560 --> 00:19:29.840 negotiate with God. 00:19:29.840 --> 00:19:31.920 You're going to come as a supplicant. 00:19:31.920 --> 00:19:34.160 That is what God wants from us. 00:19:34.160 --> 00:19:38.800 And by God telling us in scripture that that's what he wants, 00:19:38.800 --> 00:19:42.480 it then permits him to invite us to the table, to receive 00:19:42.480 --> 00:19:44.640 us as his adopted children. 00:19:44.640 --> 00:19:48.480 So none of what we're saying today is about nullifying God's love. 00:19:48.480 --> 00:19:51.920 It's about making sure that we don't lose the context of who 00:19:51.920 --> 00:19:52.880 God is. 00:19:52.880 --> 00:19:58.160 I think so much of modern theology is oriented completely around man. 00:19:58.480 --> 00:20:02.800 It's all focused on us, on you, on me, on our feelings, 00:20:02.800 --> 00:20:07.600 on our on our relationships in the small R sense, not in 00:20:07.600 --> 00:20:11.280 the sense of how we are oriented towards or away from God. 00:20:11.280 --> 00:20:16.480 And so when Psalm 111 ties the fear of the Lord with 00:20:16.480 --> 00:20:20.720 wisdom and praise and how holy and awesome God's name is. 00:20:20.720 --> 00:20:22.320 It's all part and parcel. 00:20:22.320 --> 00:20:26.080 Just as in Psalm 19, the rules and the precepts are part 00:20:26.080 --> 00:20:28.000 of the fear of the Lord. 00:20:28.000 --> 00:20:31.440 God's glory is to be feared by us. 00:20:31.440 --> 00:20:33.120 That is a good thing. 00:20:33.120 --> 00:20:35.200 We're not saying hide in terror. 00:20:35.200 --> 00:20:40.880 We're not saying, as God doesn't say, flee and just be mindlessly 00:20:40.880 --> 00:20:42.080 terrified of me. 00:20:42.080 --> 00:20:46.160 God says you should have a proper orientation towards me that is 00:20:46.160 --> 00:20:47.920 one on your knees. 00:20:47.920 --> 00:20:50.480 You know, it's something that used to be a part of worship 00:20:50.480 --> 00:20:53.440 in the West, where you know a lot of most churches used 00:20:53.440 --> 00:20:54.560 to have kneelers. 00:20:54.560 --> 00:20:57.600 There were periods in the church service where you would literally get 00:20:57.600 --> 00:20:58.640 down on your knees. 00:20:58.640 --> 00:21:01.200 And thankfully, like at least in the Lutheran church and in some 00:21:01.200 --> 00:21:05.040 Catholic churches and probably others, there's still kneelers or there there's a 00:21:05.040 --> 00:21:08.800 bench to kneel at a rail when you receive communion. 00:21:08.800 --> 00:21:11.840 That is the proper posture of fear. 00:21:11.840 --> 00:21:16.000 When you get down on your knees, that is a it is 00:21:16.000 --> 00:21:19.360 a posture, a physical posture of supplication. 00:21:19.360 --> 00:21:22.960 If we met in person and I said, get down on your 00:21:22.960 --> 00:21:25.360 knees, you would be deeply unnerved. 00:21:25.360 --> 00:21:27.840 That's something like you don't know what's going to happen next, but 00:21:27.840 --> 00:21:30.640 it doesn't seem like it's probably going to be good because the 00:21:30.640 --> 00:21:36.880 physical orientation of me standing and you kneeling by command is fundamentally 00:21:36.880 --> 00:21:40.720 one of dominance and then fear on the part of the kneeler. 00:21:40.720 --> 00:21:44.560 When we kneel before God at the communion altar, it is in 00:21:44.560 --> 00:21:46.400 fear as well as thanksgiving. 00:21:46.400 --> 00:21:49.840 We are kneeling before the Almighty and receiving his body and blood 00:21:49.840 --> 00:21:50.960 in our mouths. 00:21:50.960 --> 00:21:52.560 That is a fearful thing. 00:21:52.560 --> 00:21:53.760 It is a wondrous thing. 00:21:53.760 --> 00:21:56.000 It is a gift beyond imagining. 00:21:56.000 --> 00:21:58.720 But if you just go up there and say, I want that, 00:21:58.720 --> 00:21:59.360 that's mine. 00:21:59.360 --> 00:22:02.640 Yeah, it's it's like putting your your feet up on the rail 00:22:02.800 --> 00:22:05.040 as though you were entitled to these things. 00:22:05.040 --> 00:22:08.960 These are gifts from the master that are undeserving to any of 00:22:08.960 --> 00:22:14.240 us. And when they're received, receiving them through the love by which 00:22:14.240 --> 00:22:20.000 they're sacrificed and offered means fearing the nature of he who's giving 00:22:20.000 --> 00:22:23.040 these things because God could just as easily have not given these 00:22:23.040 --> 00:22:26.000 things. In fact, it would make far far more sense for us 00:22:26.160 --> 00:22:28.160 for God not to give us anything. 00:22:28.160 --> 00:22:31.920 We know naturally we don't deserve any of the good gifts. 00:22:31.920 --> 00:22:35.120 And that is that's not what we're talking about when we say 00:22:35.120 --> 00:22:35.600 fear God. 00:22:35.600 --> 00:22:37.600 We're not saying fear God as a pagan. 00:22:37.600 --> 00:22:41.760 We're saying fear God so that when you receive his gifts it 00:22:41.760 --> 00:22:47.280 is in the proper understanding of how much he loves you that 00:22:47.280 --> 00:22:50.960 you do have to fear him and yet you receive these things 00:22:50.960 --> 00:22:56.000 anyway. In despite of the infinite disparity between the creator and the 00:22:56.000 --> 00:22:59.920 creature, all of these things of love are still poured out for 00:22:59.920 --> 00:23:04.880 us. And so to not fear God is to receive those gifts 00:23:04.880 --> 00:23:07.200 unworthily if we receive them at all. 00:23:07.600 --> 00:23:07.760 You 00:23:07.760 --> 00:23:11.520 mentioned pagan fear, and I think this is a good spot to 00:23:12.160 --> 00:23:16.960 divide two different kinds of fear, two different senses of the term 00:23:16.960 --> 00:23:20.640 that we can mean when we use it, and that is what 00:23:20.640 --> 00:23:26.400 you call the pagan fear would be just blunt fear, fear of 00:23:26.400 --> 00:23:29.040 being squashed like a bug. 00:23:29.040 --> 00:23:32.560 That's the sort of fear that you would have of a tiger 00:23:32.720 --> 00:23:36.800 or a bear or trapped in a cave, what have you, something 00:23:36.800 --> 00:23:37.360 like that. 00:23:37.360 --> 00:23:39.280 That kind of fear. 00:23:39.280 --> 00:23:42.720 There is some of that when it comes to God. 00:23:42.720 --> 00:23:45.120 It's not exactly the same. 00:23:45.120 --> 00:23:49.440 Yes, God is so high above you that obviously it is worse 00:23:49.600 --> 00:23:52.640 in a way to stand in the presence of God, you know, 00:23:52.640 --> 00:23:56.880 as a man of unclean lips say, than to be trapped with 00:23:56.880 --> 00:24:00.560 a bear, but there is a difference between the kind of fear 00:24:00.560 --> 00:24:04.720 that we mean when we are speaking of the Christian versus the 00:24:04.720 --> 00:24:10.560 unbeliever. And I'll just read definition six from the eighteen twenty eight 00:24:10.560 --> 00:24:15.520 version of Webster's In Scripture, fear is used to express a filial 00:24:15.520 --> 00:24:17.440 or a slavish passion. 00:24:17.440 --> 00:24:20.640 In good men, the fear of God is a holy awe or 00:24:20.640 --> 00:24:24.720 reverence of God and his laws, which springs from a just view 00:24:24.720 --> 00:24:29.120 and real love of the divine character, leading the subjects of it 00:24:29.120 --> 00:24:32.880 to hate and shun everything that can offend such a holy being, 00:24:32.880 --> 00:24:35.920 and inclining them to aim at perfect obedience. 00:24:35.920 --> 00:24:38.240 This is filial fear. 00:24:38.240 --> 00:24:42.080 Slavish fear is the effect or consequence of guilt. 00:24:42.080 --> 00:24:46.000 It is the painful apprehension of merited punishment. 00:24:46.240 --> 00:24:47.920 And so that's the distinction here. 00:24:47.920 --> 00:24:52.800 There is a difference in the sort of fear that a believer 00:24:52.800 --> 00:24:58.240 will have with respect to God versus an unbeliever, because an unbeliever 00:24:58.240 --> 00:25:01.280 does not have a loving father. 00:25:01.280 --> 00:25:05.120 An unbeliever has an angry God who is going to punish him 00:25:05.120 --> 00:25:10.000 for eternity, whereas a believer has a loving God who is going 00:25:10.000 --> 00:25:15.280 to chastise him yes here in time, because beloved children are disciplined 00:25:15.280 --> 00:25:16.960 by their fathers. 00:25:16.960 --> 00:25:20.480 However, he is a loving God who is doing that for our 00:25:20.480 --> 00:25:23.600 good, so that is filial fear, that is the fear that a 00:25:23.600 --> 00:25:26.960 son has toward his father, which is a good thing, as opposed 00:25:26.960 --> 00:25:30.720 to the slavish fear of the pagan, of the unbeliever, of the 00:25:30.720 --> 00:25:31.280 atheist. 00:25:31.600 --> 00:25:34.080 That also ties back into what was said in in Psalm one 00:25:34.320 --> 00:25:39.600 eleven. This is the glorification of God comes from a proper fear. 00:25:39.600 --> 00:25:44.960 You can't glorify God if you're just In blind animal terror. 00:25:45.120 --> 00:25:48.560 The last verse I wanted to pull from wisdom literature is uh 00:25:48.560 --> 00:25:51.920 from Proverbs 1, yeah, the very beginning of Proverbs. 00:25:51.920 --> 00:25:55.840 It says to know wisdom and instruction, to understand words of insight, 00:25:55.840 --> 00:26:00.960 to receive instruction and wise dealing, in righteousness, justice and equity, to 00:26:00.960 --> 00:26:04.880 give prudence to the simple, knowledge and discretion to the youth. 00:26:04.880 --> 00:26:08.240 Let the wise hear and increase and learning, and let the one 00:26:08.240 --> 00:26:10.240 who understands obtain guidance. 00:26:10.240 --> 00:26:13.680 To understand a proverb and a saying, the words of the wise 00:26:13.680 --> 00:26:15.120 are their riddles. 00:26:15.120 --> 00:26:18.240 The fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge. 00:26:18.240 --> 00:26:21.120 Fools despise wisdom and instruction. 00:26:21.120 --> 00:26:24.800 I think that last line, fools despise wisdom and instruction, is something 00:26:24.800 --> 00:26:26.960 that many of us encounter in our own lives. 00:26:26.960 --> 00:26:30.400 You you're interacting with someone, you're trying to tell them something important 00:26:30.880 --> 00:26:35.280 that they don't want to hear that they don't understand, you know, 00:26:35.280 --> 00:26:39.120 maybe it was about COVID vaccines or any number of things. 00:26:39.120 --> 00:26:42.560 And one of the most common responses that you'll find with some 00:26:42.560 --> 00:26:44.560 people is I don't want to hear it. 00:26:44.560 --> 00:26:46.800 I don't want to hear anything about it. 00:26:46.800 --> 00:26:49.920 Fools despise wisdom and instruction. 00:26:49.920 --> 00:26:52.560 What is the exact opposite of that? 00:26:52.560 --> 00:26:57.040 The fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge. 00:26:57.040 --> 00:27:00.400 Fear of God is God is a blessing. 00:27:00.400 --> 00:27:05.200 So we're not talking about something that we do, you know, again, 00:27:05.200 --> 00:27:07.280 not out of animal terror. 00:27:07.280 --> 00:27:09.440 We're talking about a fruit of the spirit. 00:27:09.440 --> 00:27:12.000 The fear of the Lord is a fruit of the spirit. 00:27:12.000 --> 00:27:14.960 If you have the Holy Spirit, you're going to fear God. 00:27:14.960 --> 00:27:18.160 And so if you are listening or you know someone who has 00:27:18.160 --> 00:27:21.120 absolutely no fear of God, if they're just going to put their 00:27:21.120 --> 00:27:25.360 feet up on the table and chat away like they're equals and 00:27:25.360 --> 00:27:27.600 that's the only understanding that they have 00:27:28.480 --> 00:27:31.600 that person their faith is in trouble. 00:27:31.600 --> 00:27:37.280 Now obviously Jesus, God, the Son of God, came down from heaven, 00:27:37.280 --> 00:27:41.200 was incarnate by the Holy Spirit, and was made man, and he 00:27:41.200 --> 00:27:43.200 sat and ate with his friends. 00:27:43.360 --> 00:27:46.880 We're not saying that that is not God, that is absolutely God. 00:27:46.880 --> 00:27:50.160 God can sit among us, he can sit across the table and 00:27:50.160 --> 00:27:53.920 be a friend, and be a brother, and be someone who is 00:27:53.920 --> 00:27:55.760 close and intimate. 00:27:55.760 --> 00:27:59.120 This is not a denial of that, because there were also times 00:27:59.200 --> 00:28:04.800 even in Jesus' earthly ministry before the ascension when the apostles were 00:28:04.800 --> 00:28:09.280 afraid when the disciples were afraid of what was going on, because 00:28:09.280 --> 00:28:12.800 although their knowledge of him as the Son of God was imperfect 00:28:12.960 --> 00:28:18.240 before the veil was lifted from their eyes at Pentecost, they they 00:28:18.240 --> 00:28:21.600 still knew that he was God and they knew that there was 00:28:21.600 --> 00:28:24.480 things that he could do that no man could possibly do. 00:28:24.480 --> 00:28:27.040 It's one of the reasons that they believed in him. 00:28:27.040 --> 00:28:30.320 And when their response to that knowledge was fear. 00:28:30.320 --> 00:28:31.440 They feared Jesus. 00:28:31.440 --> 00:28:32.240 They loved him. 00:28:32.240 --> 00:28:34.640 They loved him as a brother who had lived with them for 00:28:34.640 --> 00:28:37.600 years. And they feared him because he was God. 00:28:37.600 --> 00:28:39.840 He was fully God and fully man. 00:28:39.840 --> 00:28:42.720 And so the love of God and the fear of God are 00:28:43.040 --> 00:28:44.000 part and parcel. 00:28:44.000 --> 00:28:45.760 They go together. 00:28:45.760 --> 00:28:46.080 But 00:28:46.960 --> 00:28:49.520 they didn't just hang out just with Jesus because he was a 00:28:49.520 --> 00:28:51.440 fun guy and they liked being around him. 00:28:51.440 --> 00:28:54.560 They were with him first and foremost because he was God. 00:28:54.560 --> 00:28:58.160 He was the fearful God who was capable of infinite things. 00:28:58.160 --> 00:29:03.520 And the fact that he masked that infinite glory, glory that would 00:29:03.520 --> 00:29:07.360 kill them if they had seen it fully, that was his love 00:29:07.360 --> 00:29:08.000 for them. 00:29:08.000 --> 00:29:11.600 But the fear always came first in the relationship, even when they 00:29:11.600 --> 00:29:13.440 weren't necessarily thinking about it. 00:29:13.440 --> 00:29:16.640 It still was there because they knew that he was God. 00:29:16.640 --> 00:29:20.320 They feared the Lord and they loved their brother, Jesus, who lived 00:29:20.320 --> 00:29:22.080 among them. 00:29:22.080 --> 00:29:24.640 That's what all these passages are talking about. 00:29:24.640 --> 00:29:26.800 The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom. 00:29:26.800 --> 00:29:28.400 It's the law of the Lord. 00:29:28.400 --> 00:29:30.720 It's all of these good things. 00:29:30.720 --> 00:29:32.800 That's the point of this entire episode. 00:29:32.800 --> 00:29:35.200 The fear of the Lord is a good thing. 00:29:35.200 --> 00:29:37.600 We're not saying be terrified like an animal. 00:29:37.600 --> 00:29:41.440 We're saying that if you have no fear of God, you're missing 00:29:41.440 --> 00:29:44.640 out on one of God's blessings, and it's such an important one 00:29:44.640 --> 00:29:46.800 that it's potentially jeopardizing your faith. 00:29:46.800 --> 00:29:49.280 That's the reason that we were devoting an entire episode to this. 00:29:49.280 --> 00:29:51.520 It's not saying, oh man, you you should be afraid of God. 00:29:51.520 --> 00:29:52.640 It's terrible. 00:29:52.640 --> 00:29:54.160 God is glorious. 00:29:54.160 --> 00:29:55.120 God is perfect. 00:29:55.120 --> 00:29:56.160 He is infinite. 00:29:56.160 --> 00:29:58.640 And his love for you is infinite as well. 00:29:58.640 --> 00:30:00.720 And that is something that's fearsome. 00:30:00.720 --> 00:30:03.520 And it's okay for a Christian to say that out loud. 00:30:04.080 --> 00:30:09.760 We could spend hours just going through fear in the wisdom literature, 00:30:09.760 --> 00:30:16.720 particularly in Psalms, but I want to read one more snippet from 00:30:16.720 --> 00:30:21.280 one of the Psalms because it highlights this difference between the slavish 00:30:21.280 --> 00:30:24.240 pagan fear and the fear of a believer. 00:30:24.240 --> 00:30:26.480 And that's from Psalm one hundred thirty. 00:30:26.480 --> 00:30:30.080 If you, O Lord, should mark iniquities, O Lord who could stand, 00:30:30.320 --> 00:30:34.000 but with you there is forgiveness, that you may be feared. 00:30:34.000 --> 00:30:37.600 Now obviously this is not the kind of fear that an unbeliever 00:30:37.600 --> 00:30:41.120 would have, because it says with you there is forgiveness, and it 00:30:41.120 --> 00:30:44.080 is only believers who benefit from the justification. 00:30:44.080 --> 00:30:49.120 Yes, all of creation is redeemed in the objective justification, but the 00:30:49.120 --> 00:30:53.760 subjective justification is applied to believers to believers by faith, and so 00:30:53.760 --> 00:30:58.000 this sort of fear is the fear that a son has for 00:30:58.000 --> 00:30:58.880 his father. 00:30:58.880 --> 00:31:00.560 This is filial fear. 00:31:00.560 --> 00:31:03.600 This is exactly the kind of fear that we are speaking of 00:31:03.600 --> 00:31:05.680 with regard to Christians. 00:31:05.920 --> 00:31:09.680 This is what we should have in relationship to God. 00:31:09.680 --> 00:31:14.720 We can properly fear God because there is forgiveness of sins. 00:31:14.720 --> 00:31:18.560 If there were no forgiveness of sins, we could very well still 00:31:18.560 --> 00:31:19.760 fear God. 00:31:19.760 --> 00:31:22.400 But it would not be filial fear. 00:31:22.400 --> 00:31:26.880 It would be the fear of God as transcendent, the fear of 00:31:26.880 --> 00:31:32.080 God as so totally other that we are forever disconnected from him. 00:31:32.080 --> 00:31:36.000 It's the kind of fear that an animal has of a hunter 00:31:36.080 --> 00:31:38.880 it is sheer animalistic terror. 00:31:38.880 --> 00:31:42.480 That is what you would have if there were no forgiveness. 00:31:42.480 --> 00:31:46.320 But with you there is forgiveness that you may be feared. 00:31:46.320 --> 00:31:49.760 Which is why God revealed all this to us in scripture. 00:31:49.760 --> 00:31:54.640 God has given us this knowledge for our edification, for our comfort, 00:31:54.960 --> 00:31:56.400 for our fear. 00:31:57.440 --> 00:31:59.600 that's an okay thing to say. 00:31:59.600 --> 00:32:01.680 God wants you to fear him. 00:32:01.680 --> 00:32:04.160 And if you understand him, you will. 00:32:04.400 --> 00:32:07.840 We're gonna get now into Job, which is one of both Corey 00:32:07.840 --> 00:32:10.720 and my favorite books of of scripture. 00:32:10.720 --> 00:32:15.360 I I think that the way that Job and God interact is 00:32:15.360 --> 00:32:19.520 a perfect illustration of what we're talking about here. 00:32:19.520 --> 00:32:22.320 And it also lends into what we're going to talk about at 00:32:22.320 --> 00:32:26.320 the end about trusting in God, because fear and trust are part 00:32:26.320 --> 00:32:27.360 and parcel. 00:32:27.360 --> 00:32:31.120 You know, Cory's chickens fear him and they trust him. 00:32:31.120 --> 00:32:33.520 They know that when he comes out he's going to feed them 00:32:33.680 --> 00:32:37.840 and that trust they they can f be confident that they're going 00:32:37.840 --> 00:32:40.960 to receive treats and they get they're going to receive food and 00:32:40.960 --> 00:32:43.760 they're not going to be hurt when he's doing good things for 00:32:43.760 --> 00:32:47.840 them. The fear of him as being over them is also manifest 00:32:47.840 --> 00:32:50.400 in their trust for the gifts that he gives. 00:32:50.400 --> 00:32:53.200 That's the same as thing is true for all of us. 00:32:53.200 --> 00:32:56.400 And I think there's no better example in all of scripture than 00:32:56.560 --> 00:32:58.400 the entire story of Job. 00:32:58.400 --> 00:33:00.160 I'd recommend you read the whole thing. 00:33:00.160 --> 00:33:03.280 I just especially recommend even if you want to cut out the 00:33:03.280 --> 00:33:07.440 the some of the dialogue between Job and his three friends, the 00:33:07.440 --> 00:33:12.400 first couple chapters and the last four chapters beginning with thirty-eight are 00:33:12.720 --> 00:33:16.400 really the perfect encapsulation of what we're talking about here. 00:33:16.400 --> 00:33:17.920 I'm not going to read the whole thing, but I want to 00:33:18.080 --> 00:33:21.440 I want to give some clips from it to give a sense 00:33:21.440 --> 00:33:23.840 of what it is that God 00:33:24.720 --> 00:33:28.560 says when he's describing fear being a good thing. 00:33:28.560 --> 00:33:28.720 And 00:33:28.720 --> 00:33:32.720 the Lord said to Satan, have you considered my servant Job, for 00:33:32.720 --> 00:33:35.680 there is none like him in the earth, a perfect and an 00:33:35.680 --> 00:33:40.160 upright man, one who fears God and turns away from evil? 00:33:40.160 --> 00:33:44.640 And Satan answered the Lord and said, Does Job fear God for 00:33:44.640 --> 00:33:48.240 naught? Have you not made a hedge about him, and about his 00:33:48.240 --> 00:33:51.280 house, and about all that he has on every side? 00:33:51.280 --> 00:33:54.960 You have blessed the work of his hands, and his livestock has 00:33:54.960 --> 00:33:56.640 increased in the land. 00:33:56.640 --> 00:34:00.560 But put forth pray your hand, and touch all that he has, 00:34:00.560 --> 00:34:02.880 and he will renounce you to your face. 00:34:03.200 --> 00:34:03.440 So 00:34:03.440 --> 00:34:08.720 it's notable there that God specifically holds up his servant Job as 00:34:08.720 --> 00:34:12.000 someone who fears God and turns away from evil. 00:34:12.000 --> 00:34:16.320 And Satan's argument against him in the divine council is, well, of 00:34:16.320 --> 00:34:17.440 course he fears you. 00:34:17.440 --> 00:34:19.280 Look at all the good things you give him. 00:34:19.600 --> 00:34:23.600 So this is right here in the very beginning of Job. 00:34:23.600 --> 00:34:30.000 The fear of God is faith, and it is the natural response 00:34:30.000 --> 00:34:31.600 to God's blessings. 00:34:31.600 --> 00:34:33.360 That's what Satan says, and he's right. 00:34:33.360 --> 00:34:36.000 Like Satan's not lying about this. 00:34:36.000 --> 00:34:39.280 When he says does Job fear God for naught? 00:34:39.280 --> 00:34:40.720 He's absolutely right. 00:34:40.720 --> 00:34:41.920 Job was blessed. 00:34:41.920 --> 00:34:44.560 And I think in a in a recent episode, Corey, you mentioned 00:34:44.560 --> 00:34:47.920 that the list of all the animals and the servants and all 00:34:47.920 --> 00:34:51.680 the wealth that Job had marked him as probably one of the 00:34:51.680 --> 00:34:53.120 richest men on earth. 00:34:53.120 --> 00:34:55.600 He was profoundly wealthy. 00:34:55.600 --> 00:35:01.120 And God's response is go ahead, you can go and you can 00:35:01.120 --> 00:35:05.360 do evil to this man, to my servant, but don't harm him. 00:35:05.360 --> 00:35:09.840 And so Satan went down and he killed all of his animals, 00:35:09.840 --> 00:35:12.720 he killed all of his children, he killed all of his servants. 00:35:12.880 --> 00:35:15.840 The only thing that Job had left at that point was his 00:35:15.840 --> 00:35:18.800 wife, who was never touched, and his health. 00:35:18.800 --> 00:35:21.040 And so I want to read next, you know, I'll just I'll 00:35:20.960 --> 00:35:22.480 read from ESV interesting. 00:35:22.480 --> 00:35:25.120 ESV and ALV are actually very close in this. 00:35:25.440 --> 00:35:28.960 I preserved a lot of the same wording, which is nice to 00:35:28.960 --> 00:35:33.440 see. I'm glad that that literalism carries through. 00:35:33.440 --> 00:35:38.400 After Satan delivered this evil to Job, a servant A servant three 00:35:38.400 --> 00:35:41.680 servants and each rapidly in turn came and told him and his 00:35:41.680 --> 00:35:44.160 wife all the evil that had just befell him. 00:35:44.160 --> 00:35:47.200 Here's Job's response to finding out all his kids are dead, all 00:35:47.200 --> 00:35:50.880 his servants are dead, all his animals are dead. 00:35:50.880 --> 00:35:54.400 Then Job arose and tore his robe and shaved his head and 00:35:54.400 --> 00:35:58.480 fell on the ground and worshipped, and he said, Naked I came 00:35:58.480 --> 00:36:01.120 from my mother's womb, and naked shall I return. 00:36:01.120 --> 00:36:03.600 The Lord gave, and the Lord has taken away. 00:36:03.600 --> 00:36:05.840 Blessed be the name of the Lord. 00:36:05.840 --> 00:36:09.120 In all this Job did not sin or charge God with any 00:36:09.120 --> 00:36:12.880 wrong. I think I mentioned this in a previous episode. 00:36:12.880 --> 00:36:15.280 Imagine you're Satan in this scenario. 00:36:15.280 --> 00:36:18.880 You you basically make a bet with God that you're gonna torture 00:36:18.880 --> 00:36:21.440 this man so that he will curse God. 00:36:21.440 --> 00:36:24.400 You go down, you kill his entire family, you kill all every 00:36:24.640 --> 00:36:26.480 you take basically take all his possessions. 00:36:26.480 --> 00:36:28.720 He has nothing but his health and his wife. 00:36:28.720 --> 00:36:31.360 And after all of this evil, what does Job do? 00:36:31.360 --> 00:36:32.800 How does he respond? 00:36:32.800 --> 00:36:36.240 He falls to his knees and he worships and he gives glory 00:36:36.240 --> 00:36:37.680 to God. 00:36:37.680 --> 00:36:38.960 Imagine you're Satan. 00:36:38.960 --> 00:36:42.080 Imagine what a kick in the teeth that is to do the 00:36:42.320 --> 00:36:45.200 just about the worst possible things you can do to any man. 00:36:45.200 --> 00:36:47.200 He just found out all his kids are dead. 00:36:47.200 --> 00:36:50.560 All of them, all ten children, seven sons and three daughters, have 00:36:50.560 --> 00:36:51.760 just been killed. 00:36:51.760 --> 00:36:55.600 His enemies from other nations have slaughtered all of his servants and 00:36:55.600 --> 00:36:58.720 all of his livestock, he basically has nothing left. 00:36:58.720 --> 00:37:01.120 He went for being one of the richest men on the planet, 00:37:01.120 --> 00:37:04.560 and blessed by God, and protected by God with a hedge, as 00:37:04.560 --> 00:37:07.840 Satan pointed out, to someone with nothing but his health and his 00:37:07.840 --> 00:37:11.760 wife. He falls to his knees, he worships God, and he said 00:37:11.920 --> 00:37:14.400 the Lord gave and the Lord is taken away. 00:37:14.400 --> 00:37:16.320 Blessed be the name of the Lord. 00:37:16.320 --> 00:37:18.640 He doesn't attribute the evil to the Lord. 00:37:18.640 --> 00:37:21.440 He doesn't give Satan any credit at all. 00:37:21.440 --> 00:37:23.120 He said, bless God. 00:37:23.600 --> 00:37:26.480 Bless God for having given me these things. 00:37:26.480 --> 00:37:29.600 And bless God, even though these things have been taken away from 00:37:29.600 --> 00:37:31.920 me. That is fear of God. 00:37:31.920 --> 00:37:33.280 Just as God said he had. 00:37:33.280 --> 00:37:35.040 God said that he had fear of the Lord. 00:37:35.040 --> 00:37:37.600 And this is a fearful response. 00:37:37.600 --> 00:37:41.680 When calamity falls whatever it is in your life, you should be 00:37:41.680 --> 00:37:46.400 equipped by your faith and by your meditation on scripture that whatever 00:37:46.400 --> 00:37:49.920 happens to you, you should be able to respond to it the 00:37:49.920 --> 00:37:51.840 way Job does here. 00:37:51.840 --> 00:37:55.120 Because such a man is unbeatable. 00:37:55.120 --> 00:37:58.880 Such a man lives his life, every moment of it, in fear 00:37:58.880 --> 00:38:00.800 and trust of the Lord. 00:38:00.800 --> 00:38:04.240 Satan has taken everything in in the next passage he takes his 00:38:04.240 --> 00:38:04.880 health as well. 00:38:04.880 --> 00:38:07.040 He's covered in sores from head to toe. 00:38:07.040 --> 00:38:11.520 But even at that, Job still knew that he was in God's 00:38:11.520 --> 00:38:16.080 hands. Such a man cannot be defeated, because such faith, which is 00:38:16.080 --> 00:38:18.800 a gift from God, is forever. 00:38:18.800 --> 00:38:22.080 If that is your faith, if you have the faith of Job, 00:38:22.080 --> 00:38:25.760 there's nothing that can possibly happen in your life that will rob 00:38:25.760 --> 00:38:26.640 you of that faith. 00:38:26.880 --> 00:38:28.480 Again, God's giving it to us. 00:38:28.480 --> 00:38:32.000 God is telling us these things for our edification. 00:38:32.000 --> 00:38:36.720 God is encouraging us to fear him, such that when calamity befalls, 00:38:36.720 --> 00:38:38.640 we give thanks for it. 00:38:38.640 --> 00:38:42.000 How can you possibly have your spirit broken when that is your 00:38:42.000 --> 00:38:44.400 response to the worst thing imaginable? 00:38:44.560 --> 00:38:47.200 You have to think that Luther probably had 00:38:48.160 --> 00:38:51.680 this section among other parts of Job in mind when he was 00:38:51.680 --> 00:38:55.760 writing the four stanza of Einfesteberg 00:38:57.600 --> 00:39:00.800 for for those who aren't familiar with it, I'll read it in 00:39:00.800 --> 00:39:03.440 German and then translate it because I don't like a lot of 00:39:03.440 --> 00:39:05.680 the English translations. 00:39:05.680 --> 00:39:10.560 Namen Sie uns den Leib, gut er kind und weib, las farin 00:39:10.560 --> 00:39:16.480 dahin, sie haben keinen Gewinn, das Reich muss uns doch bleiben. 00:39:17.280 --> 00:39:21.200 And the English translations lose a little bit. 00:39:21.520 --> 00:39:26.800 the rough translation from the the German would be Let them take 00:39:26.800 --> 00:39:33.040 our life, goods, honor, children, and wife, let these go. 00:39:33.040 --> 00:39:35.040 He cannot win. 00:39:35.040 --> 00:39:39.520 The Reich, the kingdom must remain with us. 00:39:39.520 --> 00:39:43.360 And so it really is a picture of what is happening to 00:39:43.360 --> 00:39:47.280 Job here, and it was also of course what was being threatened 00:39:47.280 --> 00:39:52.160 by the papists against the Lutherans at that time and thereafter for 00:39:52.160 --> 00:39:56.640 quite a while, and they nearly succeeded in the Thirty Years War, 00:39:56.640 --> 00:39:58.480 of course. 00:39:58.480 --> 00:39:58.800 But 00:39:59.760 --> 00:40:03.040 this is what happened to Job. 00:40:03.040 --> 00:40:08.960 Satan took his goods, his honor, his children, didn't take his wife, 00:40:09.280 --> 00:40:14.560 notably, although did drive a wedge between them because of her reaction 00:40:14.560 --> 00:40:18.960 to what happened versus Job's reaction, because of course she says, curse 00:40:18.960 --> 00:40:23.280 God and die, which is not the reaction Job has, Job has 00:40:23.280 --> 00:40:24.880 the proper reaction. 00:40:24.880 --> 00:40:28.320 But this is what happened to Job, and 00:40:29.280 --> 00:40:34.960 the reaction of Job and the words of the hymn are equivalent. 00:40:34.960 --> 00:40:40.240 Let these things go, if they do, if it be God's will. 00:40:40.240 --> 00:40:44.560 Everything works together for the good of those who trust in and 00:40:44.560 --> 00:40:45.200 love God. 00:40:45.200 --> 00:40:48.800 We know that from Romans. 00:40:48.800 --> 00:40:50.000 Satan cannot win. 00:40:50.160 --> 00:40:54.400 The evil cannot win, because Christ is already one. 00:40:54.400 --> 00:40:58.000 And so we know, and in later verses in Job, I know 00:40:58.000 --> 00:41:00.880 that my Redeemer lives, and that at last he will stand upon 00:41:00.880 --> 00:41:03.440 the earth, and that I will see him with my own eyes, 00:41:03.440 --> 00:41:06.960 I and not another. 00:41:06.960 --> 00:41:09.840 Satan cannot win, the evil cannot win. 00:41:09.840 --> 00:41:13.840 All of this works together for good in God's plan. 00:41:13.840 --> 00:41:18.240 And so even if the worst happens, which the worst very well 00:41:18.320 --> 00:41:22.160 happens to Job, this is about as bad as it can possibly 00:41:22.160 --> 00:41:26.320 get. You lose your possessions, you lose your servants, you lose your 00:41:26.320 --> 00:41:28.240 children, you lose your position, you lose 00:41:29.120 --> 00:41:34.400 everything, and finally you're afflicted with some sort of terrible disease. 00:41:34.400 --> 00:41:36.160 That's rock bottom. 00:41:36.160 --> 00:41:37.600 And he still praises God. 00:41:37.600 --> 00:41:38.640 That is the correct reaction. 00:41:38.640 --> 00:41:42.640 That is proper fear Proper fear of God, that is fear directed 00:41:42.640 --> 00:41:48.560 toward a proper ultimate end, God, instead of fear of these temporal 00:41:48.560 --> 00:41:55.760 consequences of losing these things in life that yes, they are important. 00:41:55.760 --> 00:41:57.120 We're not saying they're not. 00:41:57.120 --> 00:41:58.320 That's not what scripture is saying. 00:41:58.320 --> 00:42:02.080 It's not saying that your children, your wife, your health, your goods, 00:42:02.080 --> 00:42:03.440 these are all blessings from God. 00:42:03.440 --> 00:42:06.240 These things are good, but they are not an ultimate good. 00:42:06.240 --> 00:42:08.400 They are not ultimate goods. 00:42:08.400 --> 00:42:13.040 They come from God as blessing, and so proper fear is directed 00:42:13.040 --> 00:42:16.720 toward God as that ultimate good. 00:42:16.720 --> 00:42:18.240 And that is really 00:42:19.200 --> 00:42:24.880 if you look properly at the first commandment, that is what you 00:42:24.880 --> 00:42:25.520 are supposed to do. 00:42:25.520 --> 00:42:26.640 That is what Job is doing. 00:42:26.640 --> 00:42:28.640 Job is obeying the first commandment. 00:42:28.640 --> 00:42:32.480 He is not putting his trust in these temporal goods. 00:42:32.480 --> 00:42:35.920 He is putting his trust in the eternal good that is God. 00:42:35.920 --> 00:42:38.640 And that is right fear directed rightly. 00:42:39.040 --> 00:42:43.760 And when after Job is beset by the sores from head to 00:42:43.760 --> 00:42:48.320 toe, and he's scratching himself with broken potteries sitting in ashes, and 00:42:48.320 --> 00:42:51.440 his wife is nagging at him, saying, Curse God and I he 00:42:51.440 --> 00:42:53.840 said to her, You speak as one of the foolish women would 00:42:53.840 --> 00:42:57.440 speak. Shall we receive good from God and shall we not receive 00:42:57.440 --> 00:43:01.840 evil? Which is reiteration of what he said previously Previously. 00:43:01.840 --> 00:43:05.200 You take the good with the bad because it's all blessings from 00:43:05.200 --> 00:43:07.920 God. The bad things are a blessing from God too. 00:43:07.920 --> 00:43:09.840 It's not obvious, does make sense. 00:43:09.840 --> 00:43:13.440 But if you receive it as a blessing as God intends it, 00:43:13.440 --> 00:43:16.960 God didn't intend for for Job to be cursed here. 00:43:16.960 --> 00:43:21.440 God permitted evil to befall him, but it was not a curse. 00:43:21.440 --> 00:43:25.760 And that's something that intellectually I don't think we can process. 00:43:25.760 --> 00:43:30.640 It's not it's not how we would treat each other typically, although 00:43:30.720 --> 00:43:34.640 I think it's important to acknowledge that throughout all of this, fear 00:43:34.880 --> 00:43:38.320 is fundamentally a part of headship. 00:43:38.320 --> 00:43:41.360 In some of the passages in the New Testament talking about the 00:43:41.360 --> 00:43:44.960 relationship of husband and wife, in one of this specifically says that 00:43:44.960 --> 00:43:47.920 the wife is to fear her husband in this sense. 00:43:47.920 --> 00:43:51.120 Not that she should be terrified that she's going to be beaten, 00:43:51.120 --> 00:43:54.240 that something horrible will be happening to her, but she should have 00:43:54.240 --> 00:43:57.600 a properly ordered ordered fear of her husband. 00:43:57.600 --> 00:44:01.760 In the same sense, fear and headship go together. 00:44:01.760 --> 00:44:07.520 So when Job receives this evil, these bad things, he says this 00:44:07.520 --> 00:44:10.160 came from God, I receive it in gladness. 00:44:10.160 --> 00:44:14.000 Even though he was suffering, and after after he was reduced to 00:44:14.000 --> 00:44:17.280 scratching his terrible sores with pottery. 00:44:17.280 --> 00:44:20.000 He did curse the day that he was born and then his 00:44:20.000 --> 00:44:24.080 three friends laid into him and you know made his life miserable 00:44:24.080 --> 00:44:26.160 for a while on top of everything else. 00:44:26.640 --> 00:44:29.760 having friends who were giving him bad advice and saying things about 00:44:30.240 --> 00:44:32.880 God that were not true. 00:44:32.880 --> 00:44:35.360 I want to jump ahead to Job thirty eight, which is where 00:44:35.360 --> 00:44:37.840 I highly recommend that you begin reading and just read the rest 00:44:37.840 --> 00:44:38.160 of it. 00:44:38.160 --> 00:44:41.040 Start in Job thirty eight and read every word of it. 00:44:41.040 --> 00:44:44.240 I want to highlight a few portions here, but the specific thing 00:44:44.240 --> 00:44:48.960 I want to call out is that after Job had been bitching 00:44:48.960 --> 00:44:53.040 at God for a while about having been born, and when God 00:44:53.040 --> 00:44:57.840 comes to him, now keep in mind, Satan and God had had 00:44:57.840 --> 00:44:58.960 this discussion. 00:44:58.960 --> 00:45:02.960 God had permitted Satan to do this evil to Job. 00:45:02.960 --> 00:45:08.720 Job never cursed God, but he did get fed up with how 00:45:08.720 --> 00:45:10.400 miserable he was. 00:45:10.400 --> 00:45:14.640 When God comes to him, when he comes out of the whirlwind, 00:45:14.640 --> 00:45:16.240 what does he say to Job? 00:45:16.240 --> 00:45:17.600 This is what he says. 00:45:17.600 --> 00:45:19.920 And then we'll get into what he I'll just highlight up from 00:45:20.080 --> 00:45:21.280 what he doesn't say. 00:45:21.280 --> 00:45:24.720 Job, when when God comes to Job and says, I'm God and 00:45:24.720 --> 00:45:28.160 here's what I'm here to say, he doesn't blame Satan. 00:45:28.160 --> 00:45:30.880 He doesn't say Satan did this, I didn't you know why are 00:45:30.880 --> 00:45:31.600 you complaining to me? 00:45:31.600 --> 00:45:34.240 This evil stuff's coming from somewhere else. 00:45:34.240 --> 00:45:36.320 He hasn't even acknowledged the evil. 00:45:36.320 --> 00:45:40.000 Basically what God is about to do to Job is to put 00:45:40.000 --> 00:45:41.920 him completely in his place. 00:45:41.920 --> 00:45:47.680 He completely ignores his complaining and his moaning and his whining and 00:45:47.680 --> 00:45:52.800 he says who do you think you are God in this passage 00:45:53.040 --> 00:45:57.680 puts the fear of God in Job and Job relents Job I'm 00:45:57.600 --> 00:46:00.000 not going to read that passage, but when you read it you'll 00:46:00.000 --> 00:46:04.000 see Job repents, he's like, You're absolutely right, I was way out 00:46:04.000 --> 00:46:07.200 of line complaining, do you, Lord? 00:46:07.200 --> 00:46:10.400 Then the Lord answered Job out of the whirlwind and said, Who 00:46:10.400 --> 00:46:13.600 is this that darkens counsel by words without knowledge? 00:46:13.600 --> 00:46:16.800 Dress for action like a man, I will question you and you 00:46:16.800 --> 00:46:18.160 make it known to me. 00:46:18.160 --> 00:46:21.040 Where were you when I laid the foundation of the earth? 00:46:21.040 --> 00:46:22.800 Tell me if you have understanding. 00:46:22.800 --> 00:46:24.320 Who determined its measurements? 00:46:24.320 --> 00:46:27.840 Surely you know, or who stretched the line upon it? 00:46:27.840 --> 00:46:31.760 On what were its bases sunk, or who laid its cornerstone when 00:46:31.760 --> 00:46:35.280 the morning stars sang together, and all the sons of God shouted 00:46:35.280 --> 00:46:36.320 for joy? 00:46:36.320 --> 00:46:39.200 Or who shut in the sea with doors when it burst out 00:46:39.200 --> 00:46:42.560 from the womb, When I made clouds its garment, and thick darkness 00:46:42.560 --> 00:46:46.240 its swaddling band, and prescribed limits for it, and set bars and 00:46:46.240 --> 00:46:50.240 doors, and said, Thus far you shall come, and no farther here 00:46:50.400 --> 00:46:53.600 shall your proud waves be stayed. 00:46:53.600 --> 00:46:56.080 Have you entered into the springs of the sea or walked in 00:46:56.080 --> 00:46:57.440 the recesses of the deep? 00:46:57.440 --> 00:47:00.240 Have the gates of death been revealed to you, or have you 00:47:00.240 --> 00:47:02.160 seen the gates of deep darkness? 00:47:02.160 --> 00:47:04.400 Have you comprehended the expanse of the earth? 00:47:04.400 --> 00:47:06.480 Declare if you know all this. 00:47:06.480 --> 00:47:09.520 Can you bind the chains of the Pleiades or loose the cords 00:47:09.520 --> 00:47:10.560 of Orion? 00:47:10.560 --> 00:47:13.680 Can you lead forth the Masaroth in their season, or can you 00:47:13.680 --> 00:47:15.440 guide the bear with its children? 00:47:15.440 --> 00:47:17.440 Do you know the ordinances of the heavens? 00:47:17.440 --> 00:47:20.240 Can you establish their rule on earth? 00:47:20.240 --> 00:47:24.080 Now I skipped a few passages, but what God is saying to 00:47:24.080 --> 00:47:28.240 Job in all of this is who do you think you are? 00:47:28.240 --> 00:47:31.600 Where were you when I created the foundations of the earth? 00:47:31.600 --> 00:47:34.960 When I set the stars in their places and ordained their movement 00:47:34.960 --> 00:47:36.000 through the heavens? 00:47:36.000 --> 00:47:37.200 Where were you? 00:47:37.200 --> 00:47:39.040 You are nothing compared to me. 00:47:39.040 --> 00:47:41.200 How dare you criticize me? 00:47:41.200 --> 00:47:42.560 Who do you think you are? 00:47:42.560 --> 00:47:46.640 This was God's response to Job complaining. 00:47:47.600 --> 00:47:49.680 I think that that's important. 00:47:49.680 --> 00:47:57.120 That is God establishing his fearful relationship with all his creatures. 00:47:57.120 --> 00:48:00.480 God God up front said that Job was without sin. 00:48:00.480 --> 00:48:01.680 He was blameless. 00:48:01.680 --> 00:48:04.560 He feared the Lord and obeyed his precepts. 00:48:04.560 --> 00:48:08.800 And yet when Job mouthed off, he didn't get any credit for 00:48:08.800 --> 00:48:10.960 that. God said, Who do you think you are? 00:48:10.960 --> 00:48:17.120 And he goes on for four chapters describing his own glory in 00:48:17.120 --> 00:48:21.760 terms of creation, which is an aside is something that numerous pastors 00:48:21.840 --> 00:48:26.000 for the past week have been viciously going after Corey for something 00:48:26.160 --> 00:48:28.480 he wrote a couple of years ago, where Corey made the same 00:48:28.480 --> 00:48:33.120 argument that the heavens testify to God's glory as God. 00:48:33.120 --> 00:48:35.120 Well Well, where did Corey get that from? 00:48:35.120 --> 00:48:39.120 He didn't get it from Odin, as these idiot pastors claim. 00:48:39.120 --> 00:48:41.120 Corey got it from Job. 00:48:41.120 --> 00:48:43.920 This is how God talks about himself. 00:48:43.920 --> 00:48:48.320 When dealing with someone who's acting faithless, who's acting uppity, who's putting 00:48:48.320 --> 00:48:52.400 their feet up on the table and saying, God booby, God puts 00:48:52.400 --> 00:48:55.280 his foot down and said, You've got to be kidding me. 00:48:55.280 --> 00:48:57.600 Do you have any idea who you're talking to? 00:48:57.600 --> 00:49:02.000 The fear of the Lord is oriented around we are not the 00:49:02.000 --> 00:49:05.520 same. The creature and the creator are at opposite ends of the 00:49:05.520 --> 00:49:06.160 spectrum. 00:49:06.640 --> 00:49:10.720 So we'll turn now from the wisdom literature and the writings back 00:49:10.720 --> 00:49:14.240 a little bit in scripture, although not in time because Job is 00:49:14.240 --> 00:49:18.560 the oldest book in Scripture to Exodus three. 00:49:18.560 --> 00:49:21.840 Now Moses was keeping the flock of his father in law Jethro, 00:49:21.840 --> 00:49:24.240 the priest of Midian, and he led his flock to the west 00:49:24.240 --> 00:49:27.760 side of the wilderness and came to Horib, the mountain of God, 00:49:27.760 --> 00:49:30.080 and the angel of the Lord appeared to him in a flame 00:49:30.080 --> 00:49:32.160 of fire out of the midst of a bush. 00:49:32.160 --> 00:49:35.280 He looked, and behold the bush was burning, yet it was not 00:49:35.280 --> 00:49:39.200 consumed. And Moses said, I will turn aside to see this great 00:49:39.200 --> 00:49:41.120 sight, why the bush is not burned. 00:49:41.440 --> 00:49:44.800 When the Lord saw that he turned aside to see, God called 00:49:44.800 --> 00:49:48.880 to him out of the bush, Moses, Moses, and he said, Here 00:49:48.880 --> 00:49:49.600 I am. 00:49:49.600 --> 00:49:53.440 Then he said, Do not come near, take your sandals off your 00:49:53.440 --> 00:49:57.200 feet, for the place on which you are standing is holy ground. 00:49:57.200 --> 00:50:00.320 And he said, I am the god of your father, the god 00:50:00.320 --> 00:50:03.600 of Abraham, the god of Isaac, and the god of Jacob, and 00:50:03.600 --> 00:50:08.240 Moses hid his face, for he was afraid to look at God. 00:50:08.560 --> 00:50:13.200 And here we see that proper fear response from Moses. 00:50:13.200 --> 00:50:16.960 He is afraid to look directly at God. 00:50:16.960 --> 00:50:19.360 And of course we have other places and we'll get into those 00:50:19.360 --> 00:50:23.440 verses about why that is a proper fear to have of looking 00:50:23.440 --> 00:50:25.360 directly at God. 00:50:25.360 --> 00:50:30.480 But this is a recognition of, as mentioned earlier, the numinus, of 00:50:30.480 --> 00:50:36.880 this presence of the divine, of God's physical manifestation in the world 00:50:36.880 --> 00:50:42.240 in a special way, that should induce fear in anyone. 00:50:42.240 --> 00:50:46.000 In the righteous, in a believer, it is going to induce a 00:50:46.000 --> 00:50:50.800 certain kind of fear, again that felial fear, a proper respect and 00:50:50.800 --> 00:50:55.840 dread of God as our Father and as God, as opposed to 00:50:56.000 --> 00:50:58.320 if God had appeared to a pagan in a burning bush, he 00:50:58.320 --> 00:51:01.200 would have run away screaming as Moses does in a little bit 00:51:01.200 --> 00:51:03.040 with regard to the snake. 00:51:03.040 --> 00:51:06.400 But that is the response of an unbeliever to God is just 00:51:06.400 --> 00:51:08.000 abject terror. 00:51:08.000 --> 00:51:09.440 Moses doesn't have the abject terror 00:51:10.640 --> 00:51:13.120 because Moses believes in God. 00:51:13.120 --> 00:51:17.360 Perhaps he doesn't believe in God as fully as he will later 00:51:17.360 --> 00:51:21.120 on after seeing what God does to the Egyptians and what God 00:51:21.120 --> 00:51:26.560 does in the wandering in the desert and the Ten Commandments, etc. 00:51:26.560 --> 00:51:26.880 But 00:51:28.480 --> 00:51:33.840 this is a proper fear response from Moses with regard to the 00:51:33.840 --> 00:51:35.760 presence of God. 00:51:35.760 --> 00:51:41.440 This is all Awe of God this is reverence for God. 00:51:41.440 --> 00:51:44.640 This is the kind of fear that God wants us to have 00:51:44.640 --> 00:51:48.320 in His presence, and yes we do come into His presence still 00:51:48.320 --> 00:51:52.880 today. No, it's probably not going to be a burning bush, but 00:51:52.880 --> 00:51:56.720 every time you attend the divine service, you are coming into the 00:51:56.720 --> 00:51:57.440 presence of God. 00:51:57.440 --> 00:51:59.920 That is why you go to the divine service. 00:51:59.920 --> 00:52:02.880 You go to the divine service to be in the presence of 00:52:02.880 --> 00:52:05.040 God and to receive his gifts. 00:52:05.040 --> 00:52:10.560 Yes, then in response to that, you offer your worship and praise. 00:52:10.560 --> 00:52:14.880 But it is first and foremost God coming to his people. 00:52:14.880 --> 00:52:18.720 And so that should instill awe and fear in you when you 00:52:18.720 --> 00:52:22.800 go to the divine service, because you are in the presence of 00:52:22.800 --> 00:52:23.680 God. 00:52:24.000 --> 00:52:28.640 Moses gets a little more ambitious later on in Exodus thirty three 00:52:28.800 --> 00:52:32.080 when he goes up on Mount Sinai and God is about to 00:52:32.080 --> 00:52:34.240 give him the ten commandments. 00:52:34.240 --> 00:52:36.640 Moses said, Please show me your glory. 00:52:36.640 --> 00:52:39.520 And God said, I will make all my goodness pass before you 00:52:39.520 --> 00:52:43.360 and will proclaim before you my name the Lord, and I will 00:52:43.360 --> 00:52:46.560 be gracious to whom I will be gracious, and will show mercy 00:52:46.560 --> 00:52:48.320 on whom I will show mercy. 00:52:48.320 --> 00:52:52.240 But, he said, you cannot see my face, for man shall not 00:52:52.240 --> 00:52:53.680 see me and live. 00:52:53.760 --> 00:52:56.400 And the Lord said, Behold, there is a place by me where 00:52:56.400 --> 00:52:59.840 you shall stand on the rock, and while my glory passes by, 00:52:59.840 --> 00:53:01.920 I will put you in a cleft of the rock and I 00:53:01.920 --> 00:53:04.960 will cover you with my hand until I have passed by. 00:53:04.960 --> 00:53:07.920 Then I will take away my hand and you shall see my 00:53:07.920 --> 00:53:11.200 back, but my face shall not be seen. 00:53:11.200 --> 00:53:15.600 Now Moses was perhaps a little less fearful here, not sinfully so, 00:53:15.600 --> 00:53:16.560 but he was he was curious. 00:53:16.560 --> 00:53:19.040 He said, I I'm standing before you I want to see your 00:53:19.040 --> 00:53:22.000 face, and God says I'll come as close as I can, but 00:53:22.000 --> 00:53:24.240 if I show you my face, you'll die. 00:53:24.240 --> 00:53:27.360 It will kill you to see me. 00:53:27.360 --> 00:53:30.640 If we properly understand who God is, we understand that if God 00:53:30.640 --> 00:53:32.880 were to appear in your living room living room, you would be 00:53:32.880 --> 00:53:34.720 struck dead on the spot. 00:53:34.720 --> 00:53:36.080 That's God. 00:53:36.080 --> 00:53:42.560 Moses, I think, probably not arguably, has a higher standing in heaven 00:53:42.560 --> 00:53:44.480 than any of us will. 00:53:44.480 --> 00:53:48.640 And yet Moses would have been struck dead if God had shown 00:53:48.640 --> 00:53:51.840 him his face because of the glory of God. 00:53:51.840 --> 00:53:54.400 Again, it goes back to the passages from Psalms. 00:53:54.400 --> 00:53:57.760 It is the glory of God which is fearful, and the fear 00:53:57.760 --> 00:54:00.480 of the Lord is a recognition of his glory. 00:54:00.480 --> 00:54:02.400 So all this fits together. 00:54:02.400 --> 00:54:09.200 It's not terrifying emotional response to spooky, scary Hans Gruber god. 00:54:09.200 --> 00:54:14.560 It is a proper understanding that the Almighty is just that. 00:54:14.560 --> 00:54:17.920 He's omnipotent, omniscient, omnipresent. 00:54:17.920 --> 00:54:20.400 All these words that we had to come up with to try 00:54:20.400 --> 00:54:22.880 to describe something that's inconceivable. 00:54:22.880 --> 00:54:25.920 We can't understand what any of those words actually mean. 00:54:25.920 --> 00:54:30.960 We know that they're just a collection of infinities of different properties. 00:54:30.960 --> 00:54:32.320 We can't understand. 00:54:32.320 --> 00:54:35.760 And that is why it shouldn't be hard for anyone to be 00:54:35.760 --> 00:54:37.520 properly fearful of God. 00:54:38.480 --> 00:54:42.000 So when God says Himself in no uncertain terms, if you see 00:54:42.000 --> 00:54:43.440 my face, you'll die. 00:54:43.440 --> 00:54:46.560 You'll be killed if you see me. 00:54:46.560 --> 00:54:48.240 That's something to be fearful of. 00:54:48.240 --> 00:54:50.160 And that's something to be thankful for. 00:54:50.160 --> 00:54:53.440 We have a God who is so glorious that even seeing him 00:54:53.680 --> 00:54:54.640 would kill us. 00:54:54.640 --> 00:54:58.000 While that's something that is a a source of fear in the 00:54:58.000 --> 00:55:00.640 proper sense, it's something to rejoice in. 00:55:00.640 --> 00:55:03.200 We don't have a measly piddly God. 00:55:03.200 --> 00:55:06.640 We don't have a god that's just a superhero or part of 00:55:06.640 --> 00:55:07.920 a pantheon. 00:55:07.920 --> 00:55:13.600 We have an infinite god who's inconceivably glorious, so glorious that perceiving 00:55:13.600 --> 00:55:16.640 that glory would cause our physical death. 00:55:16.640 --> 00:55:18.160 That's incredible. 00:55:18.160 --> 00:55:19.280 That's amazing. 00:55:19.280 --> 00:55:21.520 That's the kind of God you want to have. 00:55:21.520 --> 00:55:25.280 Because that sort of God can overcome all of your evil, all 00:55:25.280 --> 00:55:27.920 of your own personal sin, which is why he came on the 00:55:27.920 --> 00:55:29.360 cross to do precisely that. 00:55:29.360 --> 00:55:34.240 It took a God that fearful to be able to sacrifice all 00:55:34.240 --> 00:55:36.000 for our sins. 00:55:36.000 --> 00:55:38.480 So this is about the gospel too. 00:55:38.480 --> 00:55:41.120 This is about the good news of what God has done for 00:55:41.120 --> 00:55:45.680 us. A lesser God couldn't have done enough for our sins and 00:55:45.680 --> 00:55:47.040 the sins of the world. 00:55:47.040 --> 00:55:50.160 It took a God this fearful to be able to do what 00:55:50.160 --> 00:55:54.400 was necessary for us to in the resurrection be able to see 00:55:54.400 --> 00:55:55.600 him face to face. 00:55:55.600 --> 00:55:59.200 As As Job said, he knew that his Redeemer lived and he 00:55:59.200 --> 00:56:00.800 would see him with his own eyes. 00:56:00.800 --> 00:56:03.120 Job was talking about the resurrection. 00:56:03.120 --> 00:56:07.440 The resurrection of the body was not some prophecy that came midway 00:56:07.440 --> 00:56:09.040 through the Old Testament. 00:56:09.040 --> 00:56:12.000 It was known by every believer from Adam on. 00:56:12.000 --> 00:56:15.120 They knew that they would die according to the curse, and they 00:56:15.120 --> 00:56:18.400 knew that they would be restored anew in the flesh, and that 00:56:18.400 --> 00:56:21.520 they would see God with their own eyes, and not be struck 00:56:21.520 --> 00:56:26.000 dead, as was the case throughout Scripture in this life prior to 00:56:26.000 --> 00:56:27.040 judgment day. 00:56:27.040 --> 00:56:29.520 Before judgment day, if you see God, you're dead. 00:56:29.520 --> 00:56:32.640 After judgment day, those who see God will see him with their 00:56:32.640 --> 00:56:36.080 own eyes, with our own eyes, and we will live and we 00:56:36.080 --> 00:56:41.040 will live in eternity with God in perfection, where his glory will 00:56:41.040 --> 00:56:44.640 still be fearful because again this fear is not a product of 00:56:44.640 --> 00:56:46.880 the fall, it's not a product of sin. 00:56:46.880 --> 00:56:53.680 When God in Job described his glory in creation, describing how fearful 00:56:53.680 --> 00:56:58.240 he was in the six days of creation, that demonstrates the fear 00:56:58.240 --> 00:57:00.960 is not something that is a product of sin. 00:57:00.960 --> 00:57:04.160 It is a product of the disparity between the creature and the 00:57:04.160 --> 00:57:06.080 creator, which is preserved in heaven. 00:57:06.080 --> 00:57:07.840 It's preserved in the new earth. 00:57:07.840 --> 00:57:12.080 That is the dichotomy, that is the headship that exists according to 00:57:12.080 --> 00:57:13.760 God's proper order. 00:57:13.840 --> 00:57:20.480 Before we leave Exodus, there's one other instance of fear that highlights 00:57:20.480 --> 00:57:24.160 a point we've been making, and that's from Exodus twenty. 00:57:24.160 --> 00:57:26.880 Now when all the people saw the thunder and the flashes of 00:57:26.880 --> 00:57:30.480 lightning, and the sound of the trumpet and the mountain smoking, the 00:57:30.480 --> 00:57:33.920 people were afraid and trembled, and they stood far off and said 00:57:33.920 --> 00:57:37.680 to Moses, You speak to us, and we will listen, but do 00:57:37.680 --> 00:57:40.560 not let God speak to us, lest we die. 00:57:40.560 --> 00:57:44.240 Moses said to the people, Do not fear, for God has come 00:57:44.240 --> 00:57:47.360 to test you, that the fear of him may be before you, 00:57:47.360 --> 00:57:49.120 that you may not sin. 00:57:49.120 --> 00:57:52.480 The people stood far off, while Moses drew near to the thick 00:57:52.480 --> 00:57:55.360 darkness where God was. 00:57:55.360 --> 00:57:58.640 And we see both kinds of fear and one of the reasons 00:57:58.640 --> 00:58:02.240 for the fear here in these verses. 00:58:02.240 --> 00:58:06.000 Initially the people are afraid, and that is a proper response. 00:58:06.000 --> 00:58:09.840 They see God's majesty descend on this mountain. 00:58:09.840 --> 00:58:13.360 That is a fearful thing, that is terrifying, and they are in 00:58:13.360 --> 00:58:15.200 fact terrified. 00:58:15.200 --> 00:58:18.800 And so they ask Moses to have God speak to him, and 00:58:18.800 --> 00:58:22.720 then Moses speak to them, because Moses is not terrifying, in the 00:58:22.720 --> 00:58:24.880 way that God is, at least. 00:58:24.880 --> 00:58:28.880 And so Moses tells them: do not fear, do not have this 00:58:28.880 --> 00:58:31.280 reaction of abject terror to God. 00:58:31.280 --> 00:58:35.360 God is not displaying His Majesty to destroy you until you make 00:58:35.360 --> 00:58:39.120 the golden calf, but that's a separate matter. 00:58:39.120 --> 00:58:43.360 God is showing His Majesty so that they will fear God, have 00:58:43.360 --> 00:58:48.000 proper reverence, dread of him, that they may not sin. 00:58:48.000 --> 00:58:51.600 And that is one of the reasons to fear God. 00:58:51.600 --> 00:58:54.640 That is one of the chief reasons to fear God. 00:58:54.640 --> 00:58:58.160 You have fear for God, so that you will not sin, it 00:58:58.160 --> 00:59:03.200 is one of the reasons you will attempt to avoid sinning. 00:59:03.200 --> 00:59:06.720 Because if you sin, you incur God's wrath, and that is a 00:59:06.720 --> 00:59:10.720 fearful thing, and so if you have proper fear of God, you 00:59:10.720 --> 00:59:13.600 will attempt to avoid sinning. 00:59:13.600 --> 00:59:17.840 Yes, of course, you are still going to fall, you are fallen, 00:59:17.840 --> 00:59:21.440 you are still corrupt, you have original sin, you will not be 00:59:21.440 --> 00:59:23.040 perfect in this life. 00:59:23.040 --> 00:59:26.640 But if you have that proper fear of God set before your 00:59:26.640 --> 00:59:30.320 eyes, the indwelling of the Spirit will give that to you, if 00:59:30.320 --> 00:59:34.400 you have faith, if you are a Christian, that fear of God 00:59:34.400 --> 00:59:36.640 will keep you from some sins. 00:59:36.640 --> 00:59:41.040 That is part of your sanctification, is developing that proper fear of 00:59:41.040 --> 00:59:46.080 God, that proper reverence and dread for God, in order to over 00:59:46.080 --> 00:59:52.160 time through sanctification, diminish the rate at which you give in to 00:59:52.160 --> 00:59:56.560 temptations. And in case of some sins, to simply drive them out 00:59:56.560 --> 01:00:00.160 of your life, you won't drive out all, but you will be 01:00:00.160 --> 01:00:03.760 able over time with the help of the Spirit to drive out 01:00:03.760 --> 01:00:08.160 some sins, and that is one of the chief purposes of this 01:00:08.160 --> 01:00:12.240 fear of God that all believers should have. 01:00:12.240 --> 01:00:15.520 There's one more passage from Exodus that's worth mentioning. 01:00:15.520 --> 01:00:20.160 It comes immediately after Moses came down off Mount Sinai. 01:00:20.160 --> 01:00:23.040 He came down with the two tablets of testimony in his hand. 01:00:23.040 --> 01:00:25.680 As he came down from the mountain, Moses did not know that 01:00:25.680 --> 01:00:28.880 the skin of his face shone because he had been talking with 01:00:28.880 --> 01:00:32.080 God, and Aaron and all the people of Israel saw Moses, and 01:00:32.080 --> 01:00:35.520 behold, the skin of his face shone, and they were afraid to 01:00:35.520 --> 01:00:36.560 come near him. 01:00:36.560 --> 01:00:38.880 But Moses called them, and Aaron and all the leaders of the 01:00:38.880 --> 01:00:41.280 congregation returned to him, and Moses talked with him. 01:00:41.760 --> 01:00:45.120 Afterward all the people of Israel came near and he commanded them 01:00:45.120 --> 01:00:48.000 all that the Lord had spoken with him on Mount Sinai. 01:00:48.000 --> 01:00:50.960 And when Moses finished speaking with him he put a veil over 01:00:50.960 --> 01:00:52.000 his face. 01:00:52.000 --> 01:00:55.680 Now, Moses didn't even look at God's front, he looked at his 01:00:55.680 --> 01:00:57.600 back after he had passed. 01:00:57.600 --> 01:01:02.320 So much glory was present in that moment that it was terrifying 01:01:02.320 --> 01:01:04.640 for the people of Israel to look at a man who had 01:01:04.640 --> 01:01:05.600 looked at God. 01:01:05.840 --> 01:01:11.200 That's the that's the transitive property of the fear of the Lord. 01:01:11.200 --> 01:01:15.040 That degree of radiance and magnificence i we don't have the words 01:01:15.040 --> 01:01:15.360 for it. 01:01:15.360 --> 01:01:18.000 We don't know what that would even look like. 01:01:18.000 --> 01:01:21.360 And yet Moses had to veil his face so that they could 01:01:21.360 --> 01:01:24.240 be around him and not be terrified. 01:01:24.240 --> 01:01:28.960 This is something that is also exemplified in another passage from Isaiah 01:01:29.360 --> 01:01:33.520 6. At the beginning of Isaiah's vision of heaven. 01:01:33.520 --> 01:01:36.480 So this wasn't he didn't he wasn't physically in pr in the 01:01:36.480 --> 01:01:37.600 presence of the Lord. 01:01:37.600 --> 01:01:39.520 It was a vision. 01:01:39.520 --> 01:01:43.120 Isaiah writes, In the year that King Uzziah died, I saw the 01:01:43.120 --> 01:01:46.320 Lord sitting upon a throne high and lifted up, and the train 01:01:46.320 --> 01:01:47.920 of his robe filled the temple. 01:01:47.920 --> 01:01:49.680 Above him stood the seraphim. 01:01:49.680 --> 01:01:52.960 Each had six wings, with two he covered his faiths, and with 01:01:52.960 --> 01:01:55.440 two he covered his feet, and with two he flew. 01:01:55.440 --> 01:01:58.800 And one called to another and said, holy, holy is the Lord 01:01:59.200 --> 01:02:02.240 of hosts, the whole earth is full of his glory. 01:02:02.240 --> 01:02:05.280 And the foundations of the threshold shook at the voice of him 01:02:05.360 --> 01:02:09.040 who called, and the house was filled with smoke, and I said, 01:02:09.040 --> 01:02:11.680 Woe is me for I am lost, for I am a man 01:02:11.680 --> 01:02:14.560 of unclean lips, and I dwell in the midst of a people 01:02:14.560 --> 01:02:17.840 of unclean lips, for my eyes have seen the king, the Lord 01:02:17.840 --> 01:02:18.800 of hosts. 01:02:18.800 --> 01:02:21.520 Then one of the seraphim flew to me, having in his hand 01:02:21.520 --> 01:02:24.880 a burning coal that he had taken with tongs from the altar, 01:02:24.880 --> 01:02:28.240 and he touched my mouth and said, Behold, this has touched your 01:02:28.240 --> 01:02:32.160 lips, your guilt is taken away, and your sin atoned for. 01:02:32.400 --> 01:02:35.680 So here Isaiah has a vision of God, he sees God in 01:02:35.680 --> 01:02:38.720 heaven, and he says, Woe to me, I am undone. 01:02:38.720 --> 01:02:41.600 He was utterly terrified to see God. 01:02:41.600 --> 01:02:43.360 He knew that it was the end of him. 01:02:43.360 --> 01:02:47.120 Unlike Moses on the mountain, because he was not physically present. 01:02:47.120 --> 01:02:48.720 He was not killed. 01:02:48.720 --> 01:02:52.000 But even at that, the the angel of one of the seraphim 01:02:52.080 --> 01:02:54.880 came to him and touched his tongue and said your sin is 01:02:54.880 --> 01:02:56.240 atoned for. 01:02:56.240 --> 01:03:00.400 That reconciliation was necessary for him, even the vision to be able 01:03:00.400 --> 01:03:02.160 to be in the presence of God. 01:03:02.160 --> 01:03:06.400 He was rightly terrified of what he saw because he saw God 01:03:06.400 --> 01:03:10.720 in his glory, something that no man is equipped to see. 01:03:10.720 --> 01:03:14.560 We see the similar reaction in the New Testament when John is 01:03:14.560 --> 01:03:19.600 given a vision of heaven in Revelation, he writes, Then I turned 01:03:19.600 --> 01:03:22.080 to see the voice that was speaking to me, and on turning 01:03:22.080 --> 01:03:25.600 I saw seven golden lampstands, and in the midst of the lampstands 01:03:25.600 --> 01:03:29.280 one like a son of man clothed with a long robe and 01:03:29.280 --> 01:03:32.400 with a golden sash around his chest, the hairs of his head 01:03:32.400 --> 01:03:34.720 were white like white wool like snow. 01:03:34.720 --> 01:03:37.360 His eyes were like a flame of fire, his feet were like 01:03:37.360 --> 01:03:41.200 burnished bronze, refined on a furnace, and his voice was like the 01:03:41.200 --> 01:03:42.960 roar of many waters. 01:03:42.960 --> 01:03:46.320 In his right hand he held seven stars, from his mouth came 01:03:46.320 --> 01:03:49.520 a sharp two edged sword, and his face was like the sun 01:03:49.520 --> 01:03:51.120 shining in full strength. 01:03:51.120 --> 01:03:53.840 When I saw him I fell at his feet as though dead, 01:03:53.840 --> 01:03:57.200 but he laid his right hand on me, saying, Fear not, I 01:03:57.200 --> 01:03:59.600 am the first and the last, and the living one. 01:03:59.600 --> 01:04:02.640 I died, and behold I am alive forevermore, and I have the 01:04:02.640 --> 01:04:04.240 keys of death in Hades. 01:04:04.240 --> 01:04:07.520 Write therefore the things that you have seen, those that are and 01:04:07.520 --> 01:04:10.080 those that are to take place after this. 01:04:10.080 --> 01:04:15.200 So this was John seeing in heaven Jesus Christ, seeing the second 01:04:15.200 --> 01:04:17.120 person of the Trinity. 01:04:17.120 --> 01:04:20.720 I think just as an aside, read that passage in John 1 01:04:20.800 --> 01:04:24.320 and tell me this is not the picture of masculinity. 01:04:24.320 --> 01:04:26.400 God is not a wimp. 01:04:26.400 --> 01:04:31.360 Jesus, the second person of the Trinity, the Son of God, is 01:04:31.360 --> 01:04:32.320 not a wimp. 01:04:32.320 --> 01:04:33.280 He is not a 01:04:34.240 --> 01:04:35.600 mild man. 01:04:35.600 --> 01:04:39.520 He's so terrifying that when John saw him, he dropped as though 01:04:39.520 --> 01:04:43.120 dead. You know, Isaiah in his vision was at least able to 01:04:43.120 --> 01:04:44.640 spit out woe as me. 01:04:44.640 --> 01:04:46.080 John didn't even get that far. 01:04:46.080 --> 01:04:49.040 He dropped like a sack of potatoes and Christ had to come 01:04:49.040 --> 01:04:52.640 to him and touch him and said, You're here for a purpose. 01:04:53.040 --> 01:04:58.000 We have almost totally lost this sort of reaction to anything in 01:04:58.000 --> 01:04:59.760 the modern world. 01:04:59.760 --> 01:05:02.560 And unsurprisingly, this is 01:05:03.520 --> 01:05:07.280 one of the consequences of the Enlightenment. 01:05:07.280 --> 01:05:11.840 And we don't harp on the Enlightenment because we just hate the 01:05:11.840 --> 01:05:16.160 Enlightenment. That's not the point. 01:05:16.160 --> 01:05:20.880 We point out the enlightenment in so many of these episodes because 01:05:20.880 --> 01:05:25.040 it really is the nexus, it's the proximate cause, it is the 01:05:25.040 --> 01:05:28.720 fount from which so much of this flows. 01:05:28.720 --> 01:05:34.800 Because the enlightenment attempted to subject everything to human reason. 01:05:34.800 --> 01:05:39.280 And if you subject everything to human reason, there are some things 01:05:39.440 --> 01:05:44.240 that you will simply have to jettison or ignore. 01:05:44.240 --> 01:05:47.680 And one of those, of course, is mystery, because if something is 01:05:47.680 --> 01:05:51.680 a mystery, it is by definition not subject to human reason. 01:05:51.680 --> 01:05:54.880 If you subject it to human reason, it is no longer a 01:05:54.880 --> 01:05:57.360 mystery. And so 01:05:58.880 --> 01:06:03.040 there are aspects of the Christian faith that are mystery. 01:06:03.040 --> 01:06:05.680 There are things that we cannot understand, there are things that we 01:06:05.680 --> 01:06:11.200 cannot reconcile with our limited abilities. 01:06:11.200 --> 01:06:14.160 Perhaps God will explain them to us one day, perhaps we don't 01:06:14.080 --> 01:06:15.440 need to understand. 01:06:15.440 --> 01:06:20.400 Whatever happens, that is in God's good judgment, that is in his 01:06:20.720 --> 01:06:23.760 order, his design. 01:06:23.760 --> 01:06:27.840 But in addition to getting rid of mystery, you have to get 01:06:27.840 --> 01:06:31.680 rid of things like the numinous, you have to get rid of 01:06:31.680 --> 01:06:37.680 things that are outside the realm of human reason, that are above 01:06:37.680 --> 01:06:39.600 and beyond it. 01:06:39.600 --> 01:06:42.240 And there are many things like this. 01:06:42.240 --> 01:06:44.320 If you go out into creation 01:06:45.280 --> 01:06:50.800 and view the beauty of God's creation, you cannot entirely reduce to 01:06:50.800 --> 01:06:56.320 reason why you believe, why you know those things are beautiful, because 01:06:56.320 --> 01:06:59.120 it is not purely a matter of reason. 01:06:59.120 --> 01:07:02.160 Beauty is beyond reason. 01:07:02.160 --> 01:07:07.600 There are metaphysical truths that are beyond human reason. 01:07:07.600 --> 01:07:09.520 They have existence that is prior to 01:07:10.720 --> 01:07:14.720 and above our reason. 01:07:14.720 --> 01:07:18.720 And so when it comes to the glory of God, when it 01:07:18.720 --> 01:07:21.600 comes to being in the presence of the divine, when it comes 01:07:21.600 --> 01:07:28.960 to this proper reaction of falling down dead before God, we do 01:07:28.960 --> 01:07:33.520 not have that anymore as part of our culture, because it has 01:07:33.520 --> 01:07:37.120 been ruthlessly driven out over time Over time by the cult of 01:07:37.120 --> 01:07:41.440 reason. And so this is something that the modern reader has to 01:07:41.440 --> 01:07:43.360 come to with different eyes. 01:07:43.360 --> 01:07:48.880 If you bring your preconceptions, your presuppositions that were instilled in you 01:07:48.880 --> 01:07:54.800 by a post-Enlightenment culture by rationalism, you are going to miss a 01:07:54.800 --> 01:07:57.840 great deal of what scripture is telling you, and you are going 01:07:57.840 --> 01:08:01.600 to miss a great deal of any old book. 01:08:01.600 --> 01:08:05.600 Because Because there are things in those books that you will simply 01:08:05.600 --> 01:08:10.480 not understand because they are so alien to you because of the 01:08:10.480 --> 01:08:14.880 background information that forms your view of the world. 01:08:14.880 --> 01:08:18.880 And your view of the world, if you have this post enlightenment 01:08:18.880 --> 01:08:22.400 view of the world, is very much an impoverished view of the 01:08:22.400 --> 01:08:27.920 world, because you do not recognize that there are things outside of 01:08:27.920 --> 01:08:31.520 reason, things outside of so-called science. 01:08:31.520 --> 01:08:36.240 One just brief example is what we would call qualia, and that 01:08:36.240 --> 01:08:36.560 is 01:08:38.160 --> 01:08:42.640 the perception of something that is intrinsic to a person, so for 01:08:42.640 --> 01:08:44.400 instance, the best example 01:08:45.600 --> 01:08:48.400 yellow is a color. 01:08:48.400 --> 01:08:52.880 Yellow is a certain wavelength of electromagnetic radiation. 01:08:53.680 --> 01:08:54.960 That's how it works. 01:08:54.960 --> 01:08:59.200 It hits the eye, certain wavelength you see yellow, because it activates 01:08:59.200 --> 01:09:01.440 certain cells in the eye. 01:09:01.920 --> 01:09:06.720 But it's more than that, because your conception of yellow in your 01:09:07.520 --> 01:09:12.720 mind is something distinct from that physical reality. 01:09:12.720 --> 01:09:14.000 It is above and beyond it. 01:09:14.000 --> 01:09:15.600 It is a metaphysical truth. 01:09:15.600 --> 01:09:19.280 Incidentally, it is proof that materialism cannot be true, but that is 01:09:19.680 --> 01:09:22.640 a discussion for another time. 01:09:22.640 --> 01:09:27.280 That's something that the modern mind hates, because it cannot be reduced 01:09:27.280 --> 01:09:32.720 to the material, because the post-enlightenment thought, the schema in which we 01:09:32.720 --> 01:09:36.240 are operating in the modern world wants to be able to reduce 01:09:36.240 --> 01:09:37.840 everything to matter. 01:09:37.840 --> 01:09:40.480 Because if it's matter, it can be reduced to reason. 01:09:40.480 --> 01:09:44.480 If it's matter, I can poke at it until I understand it. 01:09:44.480 --> 01:09:46.880 And that is not how this works. 01:09:46.880 --> 01:09:48.880 That is not how God works. 01:09:48.880 --> 01:09:52.320 There is no amount of poking at God that you can do 01:09:52.560 --> 01:09:55.840 that will make you understand God fully. 01:09:55.840 --> 01:10:01.200 And so your reaction to God properly is one of fear. 01:10:01.200 --> 01:10:06.240 There is a mystical element to it, not advocating for mysticism, but 01:10:06.400 --> 01:10:10.160 there is a mystery to it, because God cannot be fully understood. 01:10:10.720 --> 01:10:13.680 He is wholly other. 01:10:13.680 --> 01:10:15.760 He is above and beyond us. 01:10:15.760 --> 01:10:21.120 And so we have this proper response to God, this proper relationship 01:10:21.120 --> 01:10:22.800 to God when we recognize 01:10:24.320 --> 01:10:29.840 this chasm between us, this vast difference between the finite man and 01:10:29.840 --> 01:10:32.480 the infinite God. 01:10:32.480 --> 01:10:37.360 And there there are some authors who have captured some aspect of 01:10:37.360 --> 01:10:42.240 this the unknown, the uncanny, the the numinous. 01:10:42.240 --> 01:10:45.280 And in some cases, it's actually been horror writers who have captured 01:10:45.280 --> 01:10:45.680 some of this. 01:10:45.680 --> 01:10:49.760 Well Lovecraft captures some of that because that is a lot of 01:10:49.760 --> 01:10:51.680 what his horror is about. 01:10:51.680 --> 01:10:53.440 It's the the unknown. 01:10:53.440 --> 01:10:57.120 It's in the opposite direction, of course, because he was an atheist. 01:10:57.120 --> 01:11:00.800 And so for the atheist, well that's the proper response, because the 01:11:00.800 --> 01:11:05.200 unknown, for some For someone who does not believe in God, well, 01:11:05.200 --> 01:11:08.160 it's it can be only sheer terror. 01:11:08.160 --> 01:11:13.280 Because something that is incomprehensible so far and above you that it 01:11:13.280 --> 01:11:18.800 is utterly alien is terrifying if there is no God. 01:11:18.800 --> 01:11:21.200 God for the believer is not terrifying. 01:11:21.200 --> 01:11:24.400 Yes, he is dreadful, but that is a different thing. 01:11:24.400 --> 01:11:28.080 That is paired with reverence, that is again that filial fear of 01:11:28.080 --> 01:11:32.640 God. And it it's just something that we have lost in the 01:11:32.640 --> 01:11:33.360 modern world. 01:11:33.360 --> 01:11:37.280 And so we read these things, and with modern eyes we miss 01:11:37.280 --> 01:11:37.920 so much. 01:11:37.920 --> 01:11:40.720 I'm not saying you have to go back to being an ancient 01:11:40.720 --> 01:11:43.520 to understand scripture, no, that's not it. 01:11:44.000 --> 01:11:47.440 But you do have to be careful when you are reading these 01:11:47.440 --> 01:11:48.080 things 01:11:49.280 --> 01:11:53.680 to assess your own presuppositions, your own priors, and make sure that 01:11:53.680 --> 01:11:56.880 you are not bringing something to the text that isn't there. 01:11:56.880 --> 01:11:58.080 So see what it is saying. 01:11:59.200 --> 01:12:01.600 Form your worldview from Scripture. 01:12:01.600 --> 01:12:05.360 Don't bring your worldview to Scripture and then try to squish Scripture 01:12:05.360 --> 01:12:07.120 into a little box. 01:12:07.120 --> 01:12:10.640 The fear of God is a good thing, and the fear of 01:12:10.640 --> 01:12:10.880 God 01:12:11.840 --> 01:12:17.600 is based in large part on the fact that God is other. 01:12:17.600 --> 01:12:19.840 God is above and beyond us. 01:12:19.840 --> 01:12:21.280 He is God, He is infinite. 01:12:22.240 --> 01:12:24.720 You are finite. 01:12:24.720 --> 01:12:28.080 You can contemplate that, you can meditate on it, and you should, 01:12:28.080 --> 01:12:30.080 that is an important thing to do. 01:12:30.080 --> 01:12:35.440 Meditation in the sense of Christian meditation, which is to meditate on 01:12:35.440 --> 01:12:37.040 something, not to clear your mind. 01:12:37.040 --> 01:12:40.240 If you clear your mind, you're just making room for demons to 01:12:40.240 --> 01:12:44.160 move in, so never do eastern meditation. 01:12:44.160 --> 01:12:47.840 But Christians should think about these matters. 01:12:47.840 --> 01:12:51.920 Because the fear of God runs all throughout scripture. 01:12:51.920 --> 01:12:56.000 And if you look at it as just oh, it's the word 01:12:56.000 --> 01:12:57.200 fear, and then you move on. 01:12:57.200 --> 01:12:57.920 No, think about it. 01:12:57.920 --> 01:12:59.360 Think about what that actually means. 01:12:59.360 --> 01:13:01.440 What does it mean to fear God? 01:13:01.440 --> 01:13:05.520 Look at the reaction of those in Scripture who come into the 01:13:05.520 --> 01:13:07.200 presence of God. 01:13:07.200 --> 01:13:10.640 They fall on their face, they drop down to their knees. 01:13:10.640 --> 01:13:15.680 They but cry out in terror that they are of unclean lips 01:13:15.680 --> 01:13:17.760 and they are in the presence of God. 01:13:17.760 --> 01:13:22.480 We have seen God and not died, and that is an alarming 01:13:22.480 --> 01:13:28.160 thought. This is the right reaction to a proper fear of God. 01:13:28.400 --> 01:13:31.920 Both you and I are very fond of posting the meme that 01:13:31.920 --> 01:13:36.320 I made with the judgment day with Jesus and the angels coming 01:13:36.320 --> 01:13:38.160 back and judging that the pagan pantheon 01:13:39.120 --> 01:13:42.800 and I superimpose the words every knee shall bow and every tongue 01:13:42.800 --> 01:13:45.280 shall confess. 01:13:45.280 --> 01:13:48.160 That will be a day of fear for everyone. 01:13:48.160 --> 01:13:50.080 Two different kinds of fear. 01:13:50.080 --> 01:13:55.760 For believers, we will fall to our knees in fear and thanksgiving. 01:13:55.760 --> 01:13:57.360 Pagans won't have thanksgiving. 01:13:57.360 --> 01:13:59.920 They will have only fear, but they will fall to their knees 01:13:59.920 --> 01:14:02.480 and they will confess Christ just as we will. 01:14:02.480 --> 01:14:04.480 Only it will be too late for that to be a saving 01:14:04.960 --> 01:14:07.520 confession. It will be a damning confession. 01:14:07.520 --> 01:14:11.520 Nevertheless, they will be compelled to confess with their lips that Jesus 01:14:11.520 --> 01:14:15.360 Christ is Lord, and those will be their final words before they 01:14:15.360 --> 01:14:17.200 are cast into eternal destruction. 01:14:18.240 --> 01:14:19.840 That's fearful. 01:14:19.840 --> 01:14:21.440 That's and it's Corey. 01:14:21.440 --> 01:14:24.320 I think you meant an outstanding summation of all this. 01:14:24.320 --> 01:14:25.920 How did we get here? 01:14:25.920 --> 01:14:29.600 The enlightenment let us put reason above everything. 01:14:29.600 --> 01:14:31.680 And if you can understand something, then you don't need to be 01:14:32.000 --> 01:14:35.600 afraid of it, because you can put it in its proper category, 01:14:35.600 --> 01:14:38.880 or you can taxonomize it and you can say, okay, it gets 01:14:38.880 --> 01:14:41.280 this flags, I'm gonna call it this sort of thing. 01:14:41.280 --> 01:14:42.160 I understand it now. 01:14:42.400 --> 01:14:44.080 I don't need to be afraid. 01:14:44.080 --> 01:14:46.960 God doesn't fit in any of those boxes. 01:14:46.960 --> 01:14:48.640 God doesn't fit anywhere. 01:14:48.640 --> 01:14:50.240 God is too big to fit. 01:14:50.240 --> 01:14:54.080 Literally. Again, we don't have words for how big God is. 01:14:54.080 --> 01:14:55.440 It's just it's God. 01:14:55.440 --> 01:14:58.800 There's God and there's everything else, and the everything else is what 01:14:58.800 --> 01:14:59.840 God created. 01:14:59.840 --> 01:15:04.640 And so when our reason attempts to rob God of his fearful 01:15:04.640 --> 01:15:08.560 majesty, it turns God into something less than God. 01:15:08.560 --> 01:15:12.400 And if you're worshiping a God who is less than God, it's 01:15:12.400 --> 01:15:15.200 not the God that you're going to be kneeling before on judgment 01:15:15.200 --> 01:15:19.120 day. That God is a fearful, infinite, unknowable God. 01:15:19.120 --> 01:15:20.720 That God is the God who will judge me. 01:15:21.040 --> 01:15:24.160 That God is the God who died for your sins on the 01:15:24.160 --> 01:15:31.280 cross. Fear is our acknowledgement that we are creatures in this 01:15:31.280 --> 01:15:37.040 hierarchy and that the Creator is he who made us, who redeemed 01:15:37.040 --> 01:15:40.320 us, and who calls us to be enlightened and sanctified by his 01:15:40.640 --> 01:15:43.920 word. Just to sum up this part about fear, I want to 01:15:43.920 --> 01:15:47.520 read another passage from Deuteronomy ten that I think summarizes all this 01:15:47.520 --> 01:15:52.560 perfectly. And now Israel, what does the Lord your God require of 01:15:52.560 --> 01:15:55.440 you but to fear the Lord your God, to walk in all 01:15:55.440 --> 01:15:58.480 his ways, to love him, to serve the Lord your God with 01:15:58.480 --> 01:16:00.880 all your heart, and with all your soul, and to keep the 01:16:01.280 --> 01:16:04.960 commandments and statutes of the Lord, which I am commanding you to-day 01:16:05.040 --> 01:16:06.320 for your good. 01:16:06.320 --> 01:16:10.560 Behold, to the Lord your God belong the heaven of heavens, the 01:16:10.560 --> 01:16:13.840 earth and all that is in it. 01:16:14.240 --> 01:16:18.480 God is referencing back or forward in this case, I guess back 01:16:18.560 --> 01:16:19.920 in both directions, you know. 01:16:19.920 --> 01:16:21.040 God's outside of time. 01:16:21.120 --> 01:16:24.000 We'll talk about that some other time, that time is part of 01:16:24.000 --> 01:16:29.600 creation. So when God operates in time, that's according to his goodwill, 01:16:29.600 --> 01:16:31.280 but it's not because he's stuck there. 01:16:31.280 --> 01:16:34.560 It's not that God has to do things in certain order, which 01:16:34.560 --> 01:16:38.720 is why on the night on which Jesus was betrayed, he broke 01:16:38.720 --> 01:16:41.120 the bread and said, This is my body. 01:16:41.120 --> 01:16:43.200 That wasn't a forward looking statement. 01:16:43.200 --> 01:16:44.640 It actually was his body. 01:16:44.640 --> 01:16:48.640 It was Christ's crucified body that would be crucified the next day. 01:16:48.640 --> 01:16:50.080 God is outside of time. 01:16:50.080 --> 01:16:54.640 When he operates within it, sometimes it doesn't make sense. 01:16:54.640 --> 01:16:57.840 But when God says that everything belongs to him in this passage 01:16:57.840 --> 01:17:03.360 in Deuteronomy 10, that's hearkening back to his proclamation to Job, to 01:17:03.360 --> 01:17:05.440 say, I made everything. 01:17:05.440 --> 01:17:07.360 Who are you to question me? 01:17:07.680 --> 01:17:10.240 In this passage, love the Lord your God with all your heart 01:17:10.240 --> 01:17:13.040 and with all your soul is something that Jesus quotes. 01:17:13.040 --> 01:17:19.360 Jesus references this as the law, as proper fear of the Lord, 01:17:19.360 --> 01:17:22.640 of faith in God, is this is the manifestation. 01:17:23.040 --> 01:17:25.440 To love God is to fear God. 01:17:25.600 --> 01:17:28.560 As notable at the beginning of that, God requires of you to 01:17:28.560 --> 01:17:31.120 fear the Lord, to walk in his ways, to love him, and 01:17:31.120 --> 01:17:31.680 to serve him. 01:17:32.240 --> 01:17:34.080 Love comes third in that list. 01:17:34.080 --> 01:17:37.600 Fear, walk in his ways, and love. 01:17:37.600 --> 01:17:43.360 When the modern so-called Christian tries to put love before everything else, 01:17:43.360 --> 01:17:48.160 it upends the God that is revealed in Scripture. 01:17:48.160 --> 01:17:50.400 God begins with fear. 01:17:50.400 --> 01:17:54.400 And God testifies in Job and in Genesis as well. 01:17:54.400 --> 01:17:57.040 The creation of the universe is fearful. 01:17:57.040 --> 01:18:00.320 I mean, we can't even comprehend what it's like for God to 01:18:00.320 --> 01:18:04.240 be creating everything that we know, from the smallest scale to the 01:18:04.240 --> 01:18:06.960 largest, neither of which we can conceive of. 01:18:06.960 --> 01:18:08.240 And those are finite. 01:18:08.240 --> 01:18:12.080 Those are measurable, those are concrete, and yet they're still beyond our 01:18:12.080 --> 01:18:17.200 minds. What God did in creation is far beyond anything that could 01:18:17.200 --> 01:18:20.000 fit in our minds because that's how God works. 01:18:20.000 --> 01:18:24.960 And so it is a natural, properly ordered response to fear that 01:18:24.960 --> 01:18:28.320 God. If you don't fear God, you don't know the true God. 01:18:28.320 --> 01:18:30.080 It's as simple as that. 01:18:30.080 --> 01:18:35.200 When we try to subject everything to human reason, we don't just 01:18:35.200 --> 01:18:40.800 miss the proper relationship of man to God. 01:18:40.800 --> 01:18:46.240 We also lose a proper understanding, a proper perspective on many of 01:18:46.240 --> 01:18:49.840 the good things that flow from God, on many of the gifts 01:18:49.840 --> 01:18:52.240 God gives to us. 01:18:52.240 --> 01:18:55.440 For instance, I'll just give one example. 01:18:55.440 --> 01:19:00.640 If you attempt to reduce love to reason, if you attempt to 01:19:00.640 --> 01:19:04.320 reduce it to material, if you attempt to explain it in a 01:19:04.320 --> 01:19:08.160 materialistic framework, you are going to destroy it. 01:19:08.160 --> 01:19:13.840 You are going to utterly misunderstand it, and you are going to 01:19:13.840 --> 01:19:15.200 miss the entire point. 01:19:16.000 --> 01:19:21.040 Because love is not simply a matter of neurochemistry. 01:19:21.040 --> 01:19:24.160 It is not dopamine and serotonin. 01:19:24.160 --> 01:19:27.600 I could explain all those pathways and how that works and and 01:19:27.840 --> 01:19:32.160 which chemicals are released when you do certain actions, whether it's a 01:19:32.160 --> 01:19:34.560 hug or other things. 01:19:34.560 --> 01:19:36.880 That's not what love is. 01:19:36.880 --> 01:19:39.440 Love is something above and beyond that. 01:19:39.440 --> 01:19:43.200 And we are actually starting to get into some proof of that 01:19:43.200 --> 01:19:49.680 on the physical side because when you start looking very specifically at 01:19:49.680 --> 01:19:54.160 when a thought originates and when an action starts, we start running 01:19:54.160 --> 01:19:57.680 into problems of causation because it starts to look like you're doing 01:19:57.680 --> 01:19:59.920 things before you think them. 01:19:59.920 --> 01:20:04.160 Which is of course proof that materialism is false, but to return 01:20:04.160 --> 01:20:07.200 back to the issue of love, if you try to reduce your 01:20:07.200 --> 01:20:08.560 relationship with your wife 01:20:09.520 --> 01:20:12.240 to neurochemistry. 01:20:12.240 --> 01:20:15.280 You're going to get divorced, is really the the long and the 01:20:15.280 --> 01:20:16.000 short of it. 01:20:16.000 --> 01:20:18.560 That relationship is not going to last if you start to reduce 01:20:18.560 --> 01:20:19.040 it to that. 01:20:19.040 --> 01:20:23.360 Yes, you can take those things into account because you're not a 01:20:23.360 --> 01:20:28.560 spirit, a ghost piloting a meat suit, as some atheists and others, 01:20:28.560 --> 01:20:31.920 particularly Gnostics, will attempt to argue. 01:20:31.920 --> 01:20:33.440 You are your body. 01:20:33.440 --> 01:20:39.200 You are body and soul, also mind, but that's a separate matter. 01:20:39.200 --> 01:20:42.400 You cannot reduce these things to the purely material. 01:20:42.400 --> 01:20:44.400 You cannot reduce them to reason. 01:20:44.400 --> 01:20:51.440 You cannot subject them to the limited human understanding understanding post enlightenment. 01:20:51.440 --> 01:20:54.000 That's not how this works, and if you do it you will 01:20:54.000 --> 01:20:55.360 destroy it. 01:20:55.360 --> 01:21:01.120 And so in the small case, as it were, with relationships between 01:21:01.600 --> 01:21:05.440 human beings, if you try to reduce them in this way, you 01:21:05.440 --> 01:21:07.840 will destroy them, you will not understand them. 01:21:07.840 --> 01:21:12.000 You will miss the real import of what they are. 01:21:12.000 --> 01:21:16.080 And on the grander scale, you will do the same thing with 01:21:16.080 --> 01:21:20.400 your relationship to God if you attempt to reduce it simply to 01:21:20.400 --> 01:21:23.040 reason, if you attempt to put God in a box, because you 01:21:23.040 --> 01:21:25.280 will no longer have God. 01:21:25.520 --> 01:21:30.240 You will have your conception of God, and your conception of God 01:21:30.240 --> 01:21:35.520 is imperfect, your conception of God is inaccurate, your conception of God 01:21:35.520 --> 01:21:37.120 is an idol. 01:21:37.120 --> 01:21:42.320 And so if you attempt to use these post-Enlightenment presuppositions and priors, 01:21:42.320 --> 01:21:46.640 if you attempt to use human reason to say, this is God, 01:21:46.640 --> 01:21:49.520 He sits in these little boundaries that I have made, because I 01:21:49.520 --> 01:21:52.800 can understand these boundaries, and so I am comfortable with them, if 01:21:52.800 --> 01:21:55.600 you attempt to do that, you no longer have God, you have 01:21:55.600 --> 01:21:56.960 an idol. 01:21:56.960 --> 01:22:01.040 You have violated the first commandment, you have probably ceased to be 01:22:01.040 --> 01:22:02.080 a Christian. 01:22:02.080 --> 01:22:05.520 At least you will, if you continue down that path. 01:22:05.680 --> 01:22:09.840 And so this is why it is vitally important for Christians to 01:22:09.840 --> 01:22:15.040 come to the text of Scripture and see what it says, not 01:22:15.040 --> 01:22:19.120 to import the things the world has told us that it has 01:22:19.120 --> 01:22:22.880 to mean or cannot mean. 01:22:22.880 --> 01:22:26.000 The scripture should form your thought. 01:22:26.000 --> 01:22:31.120 Your thought, your reason, your limitations should not form scripture. 01:22:31.680 --> 01:22:34.960 So to wrap up we're gonna be bridging a little bit from 01:22:34.960 --> 01:22:41.200 fearing God to talking about in particular what we shouldn't fear. 01:22:41.200 --> 01:22:44.080 And in a minute, Corey is going to read from uh the 01:22:44.080 --> 01:22:49.280 ALV in Matthew 6, where Jesus tells us not to worry about 01:22:49.280 --> 01:22:52.000 tomorrow, not to worry about where food is going to come from, 01:22:52.000 --> 01:22:53.520 and so forth. 01:22:53.520 --> 01:22:57.360 I think that that is an important part of properly understanding fear 01:22:57.600 --> 01:23:03.920 because if you fear God properly, you don't fear anything else. 01:23:03.920 --> 01:23:07.280 And that's one of the that that's probably the chief benefit apart 01:23:07.280 --> 01:23:11.040 from doing what God says is that when you are fearful of 01:23:11.040 --> 01:23:13.680 God, nothing else can matter. 01:23:13.680 --> 01:23:15.360 Job understood that. 01:23:15.360 --> 01:23:19.760 Job understood clearly that all the good things he had came from 01:23:19.760 --> 01:23:23.760 God. And when those good things went away, God was still God. 01:23:23.760 --> 01:23:26.480 So he had nothing to fear. 01:23:26.480 --> 01:23:29.840 That is a key part of this. 01:23:29.840 --> 01:23:34.080 And I think that it's something that we are particularly going to 01:23:34.080 --> 01:23:38.240 have to grapple with in our own personal lives in this decade 01:23:38.560 --> 01:23:43.520 as the world gets worse and more dangerous, as the actions of 01:23:43.520 --> 01:23:46.880 the state and the actions in our churches and our communities and 01:23:46.880 --> 01:23:51.440 our own families get worse for us, we are going to be 01:23:51.440 --> 01:23:55.600 confronted with fear that Jesus condemns. 01:23:55.600 --> 01:24:00.640 And I think that in particular pastors who are called to proclaim 01:24:01.040 --> 01:24:05.680 the whole counsel of God have become so fearful of proclaiming the 01:24:05.680 --> 01:24:09.280 parts that are might might get them into trouble that at some 01:24:09.280 --> 01:24:15.520 point they are devolving into idolatry because they don't believe Jesus' words 01:24:15.520 --> 01:24:18.640 here. When Jesus says you don't need to worry about where your 01:24:18.640 --> 01:24:21.520 next meal is gonna front come from, I'll take care of you. 01:24:21.520 --> 01:24:24.480 How many of our pastors are like, oh, I can't say that? 01:24:24.480 --> 01:24:26.240 I might lose my job. 01:24:26.240 --> 01:24:30.880 Well There's a pragmatic concern, and there's a right way and a 01:24:30.880 --> 01:24:33.840 wrong way for a pastor to preach these things. 01:24:33.840 --> 01:24:37.440 Nothing that we're saying here is saying just a YOLO into your 01:24:37.440 --> 01:24:41.520 life and be as stupid as possible and trust that God is 01:24:41.520 --> 01:24:42.720 going to take care of you. 01:24:42.720 --> 01:24:43.680 That's foolishness. 01:24:43.680 --> 01:24:45.600 That's not what we're advocating. 01:24:45.600 --> 01:24:52.640 However, if proclaiming the whole counsel of God means that bad things 01:24:52.640 --> 01:24:53.840 happen to you? 01:24:53.840 --> 01:24:56.160 Is that a reason not to do them? 01:24:56.160 --> 01:24:59.680 Is the reason that you might lose your job a reason not 01:24:59.680 --> 01:25:01.120 to obey God? 01:25:01.120 --> 01:25:04.400 Is your job an end, or is it a means to an 01:25:04.400 --> 01:25:07.840 end? Is a is it a gift that God has given you? 01:25:07.840 --> 01:25:11.440 Just as Job had been given all the gifts of camels and 01:25:11.440 --> 01:25:16.880 livestock and servants and children, when those were taken away, Job was 01:25:16.880 --> 01:25:19.360 still Job and God was still God. 01:25:19.360 --> 01:25:22.640 Job still ate, despite being reduced to nothing. 01:25:22.640 --> 01:25:24.160 He didn't starve to death. 01:25:24.160 --> 01:25:27.760 God continued to take care of him, as Jesus promises here in 01:25:27.760 --> 01:25:28.960 Matthew 6. 01:25:28.960 --> 01:25:32.800 And so when we are confronted with situations in our own lives 01:25:33.680 --> 01:25:39.040 where there may be material consequences for being faithful, there's a time 01:25:39.040 --> 01:25:42.960 and a place to be judicious about how you approach these things. 01:25:42.960 --> 01:25:47.600 But ultimately, if you can't tell the truth because you're afraid that 01:25:47.600 --> 01:25:51.360 you might not be able to feed your kids, that is faithlessness 01:25:51.360 --> 01:25:52.160 to God. 01:25:52.160 --> 01:25:54.560 You have a vocation to keep them fed. 01:25:54.560 --> 01:25:57.280 God has promised He will keep them fed. 01:25:57.280 --> 01:26:00.480 If you If you think disobeying God is going to win you 01:26:00.480 --> 01:26:03.520 points, it will with the world, but it won't with God. 01:26:03.520 --> 01:26:05.600 And so we're gonna end with this and I'm gonna end with 01:26:05.600 --> 01:26:09.200 a a personal story about something that I dealt with in a 01:26:09.200 --> 01:26:12.720 much smaller manner than Job that I think illustrates how this stuff 01:26:12.720 --> 01:26:14.000 all ties together 01:26:14.480 --> 01:26:18.320 Therefore I say to you, be not anxious for your life, what 01:26:18.320 --> 01:26:21.920 you shall eat or what you shall drink, nor yet for your 01:26:21.920 --> 01:26:25.280 body, what you shall put on it, is not the life more 01:26:25.280 --> 01:26:28.560 than the food, and the body more than the raiment. 01:26:28.560 --> 01:26:31.760 Behold the birds of the heavens, that they do not sow nor 01:26:31.760 --> 01:26:36.720 reap, nor gather into barns, and your heavenly Father feeds them, are 01:26:36.720 --> 01:26:39.360 you not of much more value than they? 01:26:39.360 --> 01:26:42.480 And which of you by being anxious can add one cubit to 01:26:42.480 --> 01:26:43.920 the measure of his life? 01:26:43.920 --> 01:26:46.480 And why are you anxious concerning raiment? 01:26:46.480 --> 01:26:49.840 Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow, they do not 01:26:49.840 --> 01:26:54.000 toil nor spin, yet I say to you that even Solomon in 01:26:54.000 --> 01:26:57.280 all his glory was not arrayed like one of these. 01:26:57.280 --> 01:27:00.480 But if God so close the grass of the field, which to 01:27:00.560 --> 01:27:04.080 day is, and to morrow is cast into the oven, shall he 01:27:04.080 --> 01:27:07.440 not much more clothe you, you of little faith? 01:27:07.440 --> 01:27:11.760 Be not therefore anxious, saying, What shall we eat, or what shall 01:27:11.760 --> 01:27:14.800 we drink, or with what shall we be clothed? 01:27:15.120 --> 01:27:19.280 For after all these things the Gentiles seek, for your heavenly Father 01:27:19.280 --> 01:27:22.960 knows that you have need of all these things, but seek first 01:27:22.960 --> 01:27:26.640 his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things shall be added 01:27:26.640 --> 01:27:27.120 to you. 01:27:27.600 --> 01:27:31.200 Be not anxious therefore, for the morrow, for the morrow will be 01:27:31.200 --> 01:27:32.800 anxious for itself. 01:27:32.800 --> 01:27:36.000 Sufficient to the day is its own evil. 01:27:37.120 --> 01:27:41.600 So in Matthew 6, Jesus talks about anxiousness, not so much fear, 01:27:41.600 --> 01:27:45.680 but I think that fear is typically how it manifests among us 01:27:45.680 --> 01:27:48.640 when we're afraid that, you know, I have to take care of 01:27:48.640 --> 01:27:51.520 myself, I have to feed myself, I have to clothe and shelter 01:27:51.600 --> 01:27:52.800 and all these things. 01:27:52.800 --> 01:27:57.680 And I And that's functionally true, but it's not ultimately true. 01:27:57.680 --> 01:28:01.840 If you fear and trust in God, you know that those things 01:28:01.840 --> 01:28:02.960 come from him. 01:28:02.960 --> 01:28:04.720 That is what Job knew. 01:28:04.720 --> 01:28:07.360 When those things were taken away from him, what did he say? 01:28:07.600 --> 01:28:11.120 He said The Lord giveth and the Lord taketh away, blessed be 01:28:11.120 --> 01:28:12.720 the name of the Lord. 01:28:12.720 --> 01:28:16.000 God pours out his bounty on all of us every day, and 01:28:16.000 --> 01:28:18.960 we should be thankful for it and we should be acknowledging it 01:28:19.040 --> 01:28:19.200 because 01:28:20.240 --> 01:28:23.040 the manner in which those things are delivered 01:28:24.320 --> 01:28:26.560 is another testament to God's glory. 01:28:26.560 --> 01:28:29.520 The fact that especially and we're so blessed to live in the 01:28:29.520 --> 01:28:31.360 West where we have 01:28:32.240 --> 01:28:38.080 relative peace, we have relative security, we have relative prosperity, frankly, that 01:28:38.080 --> 01:28:40.960 exceeds almost all times and places in history. 01:28:40.960 --> 01:28:44.800 Even at this late hour where things seem to be getting ugly. 01:28:44.800 --> 01:28:46.880 We're still well off today. 01:28:47.440 --> 01:28:47.760 And 01:28:49.680 --> 01:28:53.360 I think one of the things that as as we face harder 01:28:53.360 --> 01:28:56.560 and harder days, the reason we're talking about this today is that 01:28:56.560 --> 01:29:00.400 this is gonna get more and more important in your own life, 01:29:00.400 --> 01:29:01.040 in your 01:29:01.920 --> 01:29:04.640 faith, in your relationship with God. 01:29:04.640 --> 01:29:09.680 If you are confronted with your children dying, you losing your home, 01:29:09.680 --> 01:29:11.760 are you going to curse God and die? 01:29:11.760 --> 01:29:13.680 That's what the world says to do. 01:29:13.680 --> 01:29:18.400 You know, when when something terrible befalls a Christian, the atheist mocks 01:29:18.400 --> 01:29:20.640 and says, Where's your God now? 01:29:21.040 --> 01:29:24.160 why didn't your God save your wife or your child or whatever 01:29:24.160 --> 01:29:29.840 you've lost, horrible losses that are are heart wrenching. 01:29:29.840 --> 01:29:34.240 When you trust in God, you know that those gifts were from 01:29:34.240 --> 01:29:37.120 Him, and as long as they last we enjoy it. 01:29:37.120 --> 01:29:40.080 And when they're gone, we give thanks that we had them. 01:29:40.080 --> 01:29:42.480 And we give thanks for whatever's coming next. 01:29:42.480 --> 01:29:44.960 We don't know what's coming next, but we know that it will 01:29:44.960 --> 01:29:46.960 also come from God. 01:29:46.960 --> 01:29:49.200 And so when I want to end with a personal story. 01:29:49.200 --> 01:29:52.240 Uh we we say I and we and us more than I 01:29:52.240 --> 01:29:53.600 would like on this show. 01:29:53.600 --> 01:29:55.600 We don't want this to be a show about us. 01:29:55.600 --> 01:29:58.880 The story I'm about to tell is a personal story because I'm 01:29:58.880 --> 01:29:59.760 an expert on it. 01:29:59.760 --> 01:30:00.320 I lived it. 01:30:00.320 --> 01:30:00.880 I was there. 01:30:00.880 --> 01:30:04.000 I I know what it was like I'm not telling it for 01:30:04.000 --> 01:30:06.320 the sake of self-aggrandizement. 01:30:06.320 --> 01:30:09.680 I'm not telling it for the sake of saying, Oh, I'm great. 01:30:09.680 --> 01:30:11.920 You should be like me. 01:30:11.920 --> 01:30:16.160 The purpose of sharing this particular story is to illustrate that when 01:30:16.160 --> 01:30:22.160 one has the particular sort of faith that we're trying to emphasize, 01:30:22.160 --> 01:30:27.360 when bad moments in your life arrive, you will have confident faith 01:30:27.520 --> 01:30:31.280 that God will take care of you no matter what. 01:30:31.280 --> 01:30:33.360 So my story is this. 01:30:33.360 --> 01:30:38.800 On January 27th, 2020, it was about two months into COVID becoming 01:30:38.800 --> 01:30:40.160 a thing that was well known. 01:30:40.160 --> 01:30:42.000 I'd been tracking it for about two months. 01:30:42.240 --> 01:30:46.240 I was already making uh you know plague doctor memes at the 01:30:46.240 --> 01:30:47.280 end of January. 01:30:47.280 --> 01:30:49.280 I knew it was going to be a big deal, even before 01:30:49.280 --> 01:30:51.360 most people had heard anything about it. 01:30:51.360 --> 01:30:54.000 I think it was either a Friday or Saturday. 01:30:54.000 --> 01:30:57.680 I was sitting in my living room, probably watching something on TV 01:30:57.760 --> 01:30:59.840 and and playing on my computer. 01:30:59.840 --> 01:31:02.960 My dog got feisty, wanted to go outside, wanted to play for 01:31:02.960 --> 01:31:03.680 a bit. 01:31:03.680 --> 01:31:07.200 And so I took him out and we went out the sliding 01:31:07.200 --> 01:31:10.320 door in the backyard and I live on kind of a steep 01:31:10.320 --> 01:31:12.000 hill and it was January. 01:31:12.000 --> 01:31:12.720 It was snowy. 01:31:12.720 --> 01:31:15.360 It wasn't too cold, so I didn't have to bundle up, but 01:31:15.360 --> 01:31:16.960 the ground was slippery. 01:31:16.960 --> 01:31:20.800 And because of how steep the hill was, when what I did 01:31:20.880 --> 01:31:23.840 I I grabbed I think either a stick or a frisbee to 01:31:23.840 --> 01:31:26.560 play with him just to run him around for a few minutes. 01:31:26.560 --> 01:31:28.800 I threw the it was a frisbee, I remember. 01:31:28.800 --> 01:31:29.520 It was a frisbee. 01:31:29.520 --> 01:31:32.000 I threw it once and he ran down the hill after it 01:31:32.080 --> 01:31:34.800 'cause he's got four legs and he's unbeatable. 01:31:34.800 --> 01:31:35.840 He's a super athlete. 01:31:35.840 --> 01:31:38.080 So he just charged down the hill one after it. 01:31:38.080 --> 01:31:40.720 I had to be more careful so I wouldn't fall on my 01:31:40.720 --> 01:31:42.480 butt and hurt myself. 01:31:42.480 --> 01:31:45.600 So because of how slippery it was and how steep it was, 01:31:45.600 --> 01:31:48.560 I decided to stomp all the way down the hill, basically planting 01:31:48.560 --> 01:31:51.840 my heels with every step to make sure I had good purchase 01:31:51.840 --> 01:31:54.000 and wouldn't lose my footing. 01:31:54.000 --> 01:31:55.920 But it's steep enough that I had to do it in a 01:31:55.920 --> 01:31:59.760 hurry, so I kind of half ran, half stomped down the hill, 01:31:59.760 --> 01:32:02.240 got to the bottom where it was flat, stopped. 01:32:02.240 --> 01:32:06.560 He brought the Frisbee back, I threw it once or twice more, 01:32:06.560 --> 01:32:10.400 and the last time I threw it, it went off to the 01:32:10.400 --> 01:32:13.360 right, he ran off to the right to run after it. 01:32:13.520 --> 01:32:16.960 As I was standing there sort of watching him, not really thinking 01:32:16.960 --> 01:32:17.360 about it. 01:32:18.080 --> 01:32:21.440 It dawned on me that something was wrong. 01:32:21.440 --> 01:32:22.800 I couldn't tell what it was. 01:32:22.800 --> 01:32:26.640 I I like it wasn't there was no sensation, there was no 01:32:27.200 --> 01:32:30.560 thought. It was just I could tell I was missing something and 01:32:30.560 --> 01:32:32.480 it was beginning to concern me. 01:32:32.480 --> 01:32:34.560 It's like, did I leave the gas on? 01:32:34.560 --> 01:32:36.720 It was just there was there was something wrong. 01:32:36.720 --> 01:32:38.080 I didn't know what it was. 01:32:38.080 --> 01:32:41.120 And so I had this sort of sense of ill, ill at 01:32:41.120 --> 01:32:43.840 ease, dis-ease. 01:32:43.840 --> 01:32:46.080 As I was trying to figure out what it was that I 01:32:46.080 --> 01:32:49.680 was missing, what it was that I didn't know, I felt my 01:32:49.680 --> 01:32:53.920 dog tapping on my left arm on my left uh thigh. 01:32:53.920 --> 01:32:56.960 And that confused me because he was still off to my right. 01:32:56.960 --> 01:32:59.920 I was watching him get the frisbee run around. 01:32:59.920 --> 01:33:02.240 But he was tapping on my my leg. 01:33:02.240 --> 01:33:04.800 I looked down and it was my arm. 01:33:05.200 --> 01:33:09.680 It was my hand tapping against my leg, basically swinging in the 01:33:09.680 --> 01:33:12.240 wind like a wind chime. 01:33:12.240 --> 01:33:14.880 I thought, huh, that ain't right. 01:33:14.880 --> 01:33:15.840 So I reached out. 01:33:16.080 --> 01:33:16.720 I tried to move it. 01:33:17.040 --> 01:33:18.080 My arm couldn't move at all. 01:33:18.080 --> 01:33:19.280 It was completely dead. 01:33:19.280 --> 01:33:23.440 I grabbed my left wrist with my right hand, picked it up, 01:33:23.440 --> 01:33:24.480 totally dead. 01:33:24.480 --> 01:33:26.640 At that point it was not my arm at all. 01:33:26.640 --> 01:33:29.760 It was it was just an appendage attached to my shoulder. 01:33:30.720 --> 01:33:33.360 It was, you know, meat, but it had nothing to do with 01:33:33.360 --> 01:33:34.080 me anymore. 01:33:34.080 --> 01:33:37.680 You know, my wrist was was flopped down totally dead. 01:33:37.680 --> 01:33:38.880 Zero motion. 01:33:38.880 --> 01:33:42.080 I thought, wow, this is some sort of medical condition. 01:33:42.080 --> 01:33:45.440 I'm gonna have to address this pretty urgently. 01:33:45.440 --> 01:33:48.480 So standing at the bottom of the hill, my third first thought 01:33:48.480 --> 01:33:51.680 was I need to get back inside because this is a medical 01:33:51.680 --> 01:33:54.880 problem. I don't know how much warts it's gonna get, but I 01:33:54.880 --> 01:33:57.760 need to get inside so that I at least have the opportunity 01:33:57.760 --> 01:34:01.200 to call for help before I'm incapacitated. 01:34:01.200 --> 01:34:02.480 It was just my arm. 01:34:02.480 --> 01:34:05.600 Everything else was working, but I didn't know what it was, and 01:34:05.600 --> 01:34:07.040 that's a bad sign. 01:34:07.040 --> 01:34:08.080 So I called the dog. 01:34:08.080 --> 01:34:10.560 Thankfully he listened to me and came up with me. 01:34:10.560 --> 01:34:13.520 As I marched back up the hill, I hung on to my 01:34:13.680 --> 01:34:18.080 my dead arm because I realized it was sufficiently dead that if 01:34:18.080 --> 01:34:20.960 I moved up the hill with the speed I intended, I was 01:34:21.200 --> 01:34:25.440 rubbing running the risk of actually dislocating my my shoulder because I 01:34:25.440 --> 01:34:27.120 knew it was just gonna flop around like crazy. 01:34:27.120 --> 01:34:29.760 So I hung on to it, basically I carried myself and I 01:34:29.760 --> 01:34:31.920 carried my dead arm up the hill. 01:34:31.920 --> 01:34:35.440 Got back inside, went back into the living room as I was 01:34:35.520 --> 01:34:39.520 standing there, my arm started working again, partially. 01:34:39.520 --> 01:34:41.920 It was still felt a little funny, but I was able to 01:34:41.920 --> 01:34:42.400 move it again. 01:34:42.400 --> 01:34:44.560 I go, oh great, you know, whatever that was, maybe it was 01:34:44.560 --> 01:34:45.920 a nerve problem. 01:34:45.920 --> 01:34:48.160 Kind of came and went. 01:34:48.240 --> 01:34:51.280 Obviously I was still concerned I gotta figure out what's going on, 01:34:51.280 --> 01:34:54.640 but momentarily I had the use of the arm again. 01:34:54.640 --> 01:34:58.320 So I I remember I grabbed my iPad and I walked back 01:34:58.320 --> 01:35:01.760 to my bedroom, which is a long way away. 01:35:02.080 --> 01:35:04.880 Part of what I was thinking was that I might be having 01:35:04.880 --> 01:35:05.360 a stroke. 01:35:05.360 --> 01:35:07.840 If I'm having a stroke, do I take aspirin or not? 01:35:07.840 --> 01:35:10.560 I wasn't sure at the time what to do. 01:35:10.560 --> 01:35:12.720 But I thought, you know, like I'll just I'll go back to 01:35:12.720 --> 01:35:17.360 the bathroom and get aspirin if whether I was gonna take it, 01:35:17.360 --> 01:35:19.520 I was gonna have it in hand and look in the mirror 01:35:19.520 --> 01:35:22.240 to see if my face was drooping or anything. 01:35:22.240 --> 01:35:24.400 So I carried the iPad back to my bedroom. 01:35:24.400 --> 01:35:26.880 It's probably about 120 feet away. 01:35:28.960 --> 01:35:31.120 Look in the mirror, face looks fine. 01:35:31.120 --> 01:35:32.880 I speak out loud to see if I can talk. 01:35:32.880 --> 01:35:34.080 I was able to speak okay. 01:35:34.080 --> 01:35:36.080 So I'm like, well, I'm not sure what's going on. 01:35:36.080 --> 01:35:38.080 Maybe it's a stroke, maybe it isn't. 01:35:38.080 --> 01:35:40.560 And I wanted to pick up the iPad, I think, to look 01:35:40.560 --> 01:35:44.080 at like stroke symptoms online because you know, even in a medical 01:35:44.080 --> 01:35:46.000 emergency I want to be analytical. 01:35:46.000 --> 01:35:48.480 I realized that my arm was dead again and I didn't have 01:35:48.480 --> 01:35:49.280 my iPad. 01:35:49.280 --> 01:35:52.480 So I walked back down the hallway and find found a halfway 01:35:52.480 --> 01:35:55.040 down the hallway, the iPad was laying on the ground. 01:35:55.040 --> 01:35:58.000 So at some point I had dropped it from my hand, which 01:35:58.000 --> 01:35:59.040 had died again. 01:35:59.040 --> 01:36:00.240 I didn't even know it. 01:36:00.240 --> 01:36:02.400 So well, that's strike two. 01:36:02.400 --> 01:36:04.160 Something's definitely wrong here. 01:36:04.160 --> 01:36:06.000 Picked it up, went back towards the living room 01:36:07.280 --> 01:36:09.680 and the arm came back kind of again. 01:36:09.680 --> 01:36:12.000 So I went back to the living room, set the iPad down 01:36:12.000 --> 01:36:15.360 again, went into another bathroom to look at my face because I'd 01:36:15.360 --> 01:36:18.400 been moving around for a bit, and look in a at a 01:36:18.400 --> 01:36:21.920 better mirror more closely, the left side of my face was starting 01:36:21.920 --> 01:36:24.560 to droop a little bit, and so I tried speaking out loud 01:36:24.560 --> 01:36:27.200 again. I was still able to speak, but I was pretty sure 01:36:27.200 --> 01:36:28.960 I was having a stroke. 01:36:28.960 --> 01:36:31.440 And so I walked into the living room, and this is the 01:36:31.440 --> 01:36:34.720 point of the story, what happened next. 01:36:34.720 --> 01:36:37.120 I had realized at that point I'm having a stroke. 01:36:37.120 --> 01:36:41.200 I'm gonna be going to the hospital today. 01:36:41.200 --> 01:36:43.920 Before I called nine one one, I said a prayer. 01:36:44.320 --> 01:36:47.680 It was like a ten, fifteen second prayer. 01:36:47.680 --> 01:36:51.760 I remember very clearly I I bowed my head and I began 01:36:51.760 --> 01:36:55.680 the prayers I begin every prayer, no matter what, with thanksgiving. 01:36:55.680 --> 01:36:59.360 I will not pray without first thanking God for something. 01:36:59.360 --> 01:37:00.480 Sometimes it's dumb. 01:37:00.480 --> 01:37:05.120 Like it's not I'm not talking about big ticket items, you know, 01:37:05.360 --> 01:37:07.200 whatever, like eating or anything. 01:37:07.200 --> 01:37:09.280 I don't pray unless I thank God first. 01:37:09.280 --> 01:37:12.000 So as I was standing there with a dead arm, knowing that 01:37:12.000 --> 01:37:16.080 I was almost certainly having a stroke, I said, Dear Lord, thank 01:37:16.080 --> 01:37:18.800 you for the use of this arm for these many years. 01:37:18.800 --> 01:37:21.680 If it is your will that I regain the use of this 01:37:21.680 --> 01:37:25.520 arm, please guide me through whatever I need to do next to 01:37:25.520 --> 01:37:26.240 get help. 01:37:26.240 --> 01:37:29.120 Uh please help the doctors to figure this out. 01:37:29.120 --> 01:37:32.000 And if this is gonna get worse and if I'm not going 01:37:32.000 --> 01:37:32.320 to 01:37:33.280 --> 01:37:36.640 be healed or if I'm not gonna recover, if I'm not gonna 01:37:36.640 --> 01:37:40.960 survive, please strengthen and preserve my faith unto the end. 01:37:40.960 --> 01:37:44.480 Amen. And then I called 911. 01:37:44.480 --> 01:37:47.920 And the reason I did that was that I knew that the 01:37:47.920 --> 01:37:49.600 doctor wasn't gonna save me. 01:37:49.600 --> 01:37:51.120 Nine one one wasn't gonna save me. 01:37:51.120 --> 01:37:52.880 I wasn't gonna be a paramedic. 01:37:52.880 --> 01:37:55.280 I was in God's hands. 01:37:55.280 --> 01:37:57.920 That's something that I know all the time. 01:37:57.920 --> 01:38:02.320 You know, it's not something that you're always conscious of, but it's 01:38:02.320 --> 01:38:04.160 something you should reflect on. 01:38:04.160 --> 01:38:08.480 And I'm thankful that prior to January twentieth, January twenty seventh, twenty 01:38:08.640 --> 01:38:13.600 twenty, I had thought about being in God's hands because when I 01:38:13.600 --> 01:38:17.840 was having a stroke, my first thought wasn't, Oh, I gotta fix 01:38:17.840 --> 01:38:18.720 this problem. 01:38:18.720 --> 01:38:21.600 My first thought was, I'm up a creek and there's nothing I 01:38:21.600 --> 01:38:22.560 can do about this. 01:38:22.560 --> 01:38:24.400 I gotta go try to get help. 01:38:24.400 --> 01:38:27.680 But n the only way I'm gonna make it is by God's 01:38:27.680 --> 01:38:31.440 grace. So before turning to the state, before turning to nine one 01:38:31.600 --> 01:38:34.080 one, I turned to God. 01:38:34.080 --> 01:38:34.400 And 01:38:35.920 --> 01:38:38.160 after I hung up and it was funny, when I when I 01:38:38.160 --> 01:38:41.360 called nine one one I said, uh, I think I'm having a 01:38:41.360 --> 01:38:44.880 stroke. Yeah, at that point that's where my speech was and that 01:38:44.880 --> 01:38:48.560 was kind of confirmation, so the operator didn't really argue with me. 01:38:48.560 --> 01:38:50.240 It's like okay, where what's your address? 01:38:50.240 --> 01:38:52.720 And it came up and took about eight minutes for the ambulance 01:38:52.720 --> 01:38:53.200 to get there. 01:38:53.200 --> 01:38:55.680 I went outside, I locked up the house So my dog wouldn't 01:38:55.600 --> 01:38:56.640 get away. 01:38:56.640 --> 01:38:58.960 I think I texted a friend to say, Hey, can you come 01:38:58.960 --> 01:38:59.440 get my dog? 01:38:59.440 --> 01:39:02.320 I'm gonna be at the hospital for a while. 01:39:02.320 --> 01:39:02.640 And 01:39:03.520 --> 01:39:07.840 by the time the ambulance got there about eight minutes later, arm 01:39:08.000 --> 01:39:11.120 was completely dead, I could barely speak at all, my face was 01:39:11.120 --> 01:39:12.320 severely drooping. 01:39:12.320 --> 01:39:13.760 It was a severe stroke. 01:39:13.760 --> 01:39:18.880 It was I would have been permanently debilitated if I had not 01:39:18.880 --> 01:39:19.680 been healed. 01:39:19.680 --> 01:39:23.200 And so they took me to the local hospital, uh, they did 01:39:23.200 --> 01:39:27.680 a quick MRI, I think, and within about fifteen minutes they said, 01:39:27.680 --> 01:39:29.360 Yeah, you're having a stroke. 01:39:29.360 --> 01:39:32.800 And I'll tell you, you know, secondarily another value of me sharing 01:39:32.800 --> 01:39:35.280 this story, there's a drug called TPA. 01:39:35.280 --> 01:39:36.720 You don't need to know what the name of the drug is, 01:39:36.720 --> 01:39:40.000 but there's a claw busting drug that if it's administered within like 01:39:40.000 --> 01:39:42.320 the first ninety minutes or so, I think ninety minutes to two 01:39:42.320 --> 01:39:45.760 hours, is the absolute outside of when they can administer it. 01:39:45.760 --> 01:39:48.800 It's a super clot busting drug that will just bl break up 01:39:48.800 --> 01:39:52.880 the clot and minimize the amount of brain damage you suffer because 01:39:52.880 --> 01:39:56.960 the reason my arm was dead was that I had brain damage. 01:39:56.960 --> 01:40:00.080 You know, if the clot gets broken up quickly enough, that can 01:40:00.080 --> 01:40:03.520 be temporary, goes on long enough or the clots move around, if 01:40:03.600 --> 01:40:05.520 there are more of them, it could be permanent, it could very 01:40:05.520 --> 01:40:06.880 easily kill you. 01:40:06.880 --> 01:40:07.200 But 01:40:08.080 --> 01:40:10.640 they said do you want to take aspirin or do you want 01:40:10.640 --> 01:40:12.880 the the b the drug and he said, Give me the drug, 01:40:12.880 --> 01:40:13.520 give me the drug. 01:40:13.520 --> 01:40:15.600 Well, I couldn't say anything because I couldn't. 01:40:15.600 --> 01:40:16.640 I was just sort of 01:40:17.520 --> 01:40:19.680 I I could I could kind of struggle to the point of 01:40:19.680 --> 01:40:24.080 getting out a single word, but it was not really articulable speech. 01:40:24.080 --> 01:40:26.720 They gave me the drug and within about 90 minutes it knocked 01:40:26.720 --> 01:40:29.120 some of it out and uh they kept me for about twenty 01:40:29.200 --> 01:40:32.480 four hours because one of the risks of the drug is brain 01:40:32.480 --> 01:40:37.680 bleed hemorrhage, so I had to be under neurological analysis once an 01:40:37.680 --> 01:40:41.040 hour for twenty four hours, which was itself worse than the stroke. 01:40:41.040 --> 01:40:44.640 Getting woken up every hour and being poked and prodded is is 01:40:44.640 --> 01:40:45.680 pretty much torture. 01:40:45.680 --> 01:40:46.880 It's sleep deprivation. 01:40:46.880 --> 01:40:48.480 I don't recommend it. 01:40:48.480 --> 01:40:50.640 By the time I got out of there I was I was 01:40:50.640 --> 01:40:51.600 good to go. 01:40:51.600 --> 01:40:54.000 My arm was working again, I could speak again. 01:40:54.000 --> 01:40:57.440 Uh my speech was probably ninety nine percent. 01:40:57.440 --> 01:41:00.080 My arm was interesting, I could still move my arm. 01:41:00.080 --> 01:41:02.880 I got full function of the arm back within I don't know 01:41:02.800 --> 01:41:05.920 three hours, but virtually no sensation. 01:41:05.920 --> 01:41:08.320 It took a year and a half for the sensation to come 01:41:08.320 --> 01:41:11.040 back. And basically my arm was just tingling like it was waking 01:41:11.040 --> 01:41:12.320 up for a year and a half. 01:41:12.320 --> 01:41:15.200 It's still kind of tingling to this day. 01:41:15.200 --> 01:41:20.240 And unfortunately, you know, for a new podcaster, I have brain damage. 01:41:20.240 --> 01:41:24.000 You probably hear me s occasionally stumble over words, you know, use 01:41:24.080 --> 01:41:26.880 the wrong wrong wrong word once once in a while, like I'm 01:41:26.800 --> 01:41:28.640 doing right now in the sentence. 01:41:28.640 --> 01:41:30.000 I didn't used to be like that. 01:41:30.000 --> 01:41:33.680 I used to speak with perfect clarity like Corey's does. 01:41:33.680 --> 01:41:37.520 I was so precise in my speech at all times that on 01:41:37.520 --> 01:41:40.480 the rare occasions, I'm by rare I mean like once a year, 01:41:40.480 --> 01:41:44.080 once every other year, when I might misspeak in front of friends, 01:41:44.080 --> 01:41:47.760 they would literally interrupt me to stop and laugh and point at 01:41:47.760 --> 01:41:50.000 me and mock me for making a mistake. 01:41:50.000 --> 01:41:50.960 Which wasn't cruel. 01:41:50.960 --> 01:41:53.360 Like it would be cruel to do it to most people, but 01:41:53.520 --> 01:41:58.240 my s the precision of my speech was so r reliable that 01:41:58.240 --> 01:42:01.040 I kinda came across as an android just in terms of never 01:42:01.040 --> 01:42:02.000 making a mistake. 01:42:02.000 --> 01:42:04.400 So my friends would get excited that I would actually show I 01:42:04.400 --> 01:42:05.440 was a human being. 01:42:05.440 --> 01:42:08.160 God has since spared me any sort of vanity for that, that's 01:42:08.160 --> 01:42:08.880 long gone. 01:42:09.200 --> 01:42:12.400 So if I hadn't told you, I think you probably most people 01:42:12.400 --> 01:42:13.520 wouldn't notice. 01:42:13.520 --> 01:42:16.800 Uh if you had heard if we had been recording before I 01:42:16.800 --> 01:42:18.960 had had the stroke, you would definitely be able to tell the 01:42:18.960 --> 01:42:20.400 difference. I certainly can. 01:42:20.400 --> 01:42:24.080 I find it very aggravating uh to do anything imperfectly. 01:42:24.080 --> 01:42:26.560 And especially when, you know, m kind of the purpose of me 01:42:26.560 --> 01:42:29.520 being here is to speak clearly, to fail to do that to 01:42:29.520 --> 01:42:30.800 the my best ability. 01:42:30.800 --> 01:42:32.560 Well, this is my ability now. 01:42:32.560 --> 01:42:33.840 So it is what it is. 01:42:33.840 --> 01:42:35.520 I am absolutely not complaining. 01:42:35.520 --> 01:42:36.880 God gave me my arm back. 01:42:36.880 --> 01:42:39.920 He gave me my ability to speak without sounding like I was 01:42:39.920 --> 01:42:40.720 a vegetable. 01:42:40.720 --> 01:42:42.400 Yeah, my brain worked fine the whole time. 01:42:42.400 --> 01:42:43.840 I just couldn't spit any words out. 01:42:43.840 --> 01:42:46.960 I could barely mumble a single word with great effort. 01:42:46.960 --> 01:42:50.480 And it didn't last long enough that I really got upset about 01:42:50.480 --> 01:42:53.760 it. It was it was still a novel experience, so I would 01:42:53.760 --> 01:42:58.320 never call myself any sort of stroke survivor or anything like that. 01:42:58.640 --> 01:43:02.800 what happened to me, although the stroke was severe but The recovery 01:43:02.800 --> 01:43:04.000 was was very swift. 01:43:04.000 --> 01:43:07.280 And I I'm I'm eternally thankful to God for sparing me. 01:43:07.280 --> 01:43:09.520 You know, if God had not given me my arm back and 01:43:09.520 --> 01:43:11.600 my voice back, I couldn't complain. 01:43:11.600 --> 01:43:14.320 I certainly deserve far worse than that. 01:43:14.320 --> 01:43:17.600 And so I'm thankful to have been put back together as well 01:43:17.600 --> 01:43:20.080 as I have been. 01:43:20.080 --> 01:43:22.640 Everything that we have is a gift from God. 01:43:22.640 --> 01:43:25.760 My ability to use my arm to speak, your ability to do 01:43:25.760 --> 01:43:28.560 everything that you can do, all the stuff that we take for 01:43:28.560 --> 01:43:31.840 granted, all of those things are gifts from God. 01:43:31.840 --> 01:43:35.440 And so part of the reason for telling the story is that 01:43:35.440 --> 01:43:40.720 if you lose something temporarily, permanently, remember to give thanks for everything 01:43:40.720 --> 01:43:44.000 else. In addition to giving thanks for the 01:43:44.880 --> 01:43:48.880 for the cross to bear of something that will help maybe straighten 01:43:48.880 --> 01:43:50.480 your life out in a way that you needed. 01:43:50.480 --> 01:43:52.720 Uh certainly did in my life. 01:43:52.960 --> 01:43:55.280 Give thanks for the stuff that still works. 01:43:55.280 --> 01:43:57.600 If you're blind, you can still taste food. 01:43:57.600 --> 01:43:59.840 You know, if you can't move your arm, you can do something 01:43:59.840 --> 01:44:02.880 else. There's always something to be thankful to God for. 01:44:02.880 --> 01:44:06.560 And that's part of the reason that we focus this episode on 01:44:06.560 --> 01:44:07.680 fearing God. 01:44:07.680 --> 01:44:11.760 If you fear God, all these other bad things that happen, they're 01:44:11.760 --> 01:44:13.520 nothing by comparison. 01:44:13.520 --> 01:44:17.760 Are you gonna if you fear God, are you gonna fear starving? 01:44:17.760 --> 01:44:18.560 Of course not. 01:44:18.560 --> 01:44:21.440 You can't fear starving if you fear God, because the God that 01:44:21.440 --> 01:44:23.760 you fear has promised to take care of you. 01:44:23.760 --> 01:44:28.560 And that taking care of you includes perhaps starving. 01:44:28.960 --> 01:44:32.800 As stupid as that sounds, but we know the people sometimes starve, 01:44:32.800 --> 01:44:35.200 Christians sometimes starve. 01:44:35.200 --> 01:44:40.800 If the worst befalls us in our own personal lives, we must 01:44:40.800 --> 01:44:44.960 still fear, love, and trust in God above all things, above the 01:44:44.960 --> 01:44:48.320 food that's not in our bellies, or whatever abilities that we've all 01:44:48.560 --> 01:44:52.160 ha lost, whatever things that we had and we don't have, whatever 01:44:52.160 --> 01:44:56.000 people are taken from us, if we give thanks to God, none 01:44:56.000 --> 01:45:01.520 of that can be seen as anything more than a painful reminder 01:45:01.760 --> 01:45:04.080 that we live in a fallen world. 01:45:04.080 --> 01:45:07.600 The reason I'm talking about this experience today again is not to 01:45:07.600 --> 01:45:09.600 say anything good about myself. 01:45:09.600 --> 01:45:14.480 Everything about that experience, my response to it, was come from God. 01:45:14.480 --> 01:45:16.160 It was completely outside of myself. 01:45:16.160 --> 01:45:18.560 I'm not saying, oh, I have good faith, be like me. 01:45:18.560 --> 01:45:22.400 I'm saying believe in God in the manner that Job did, in 01:45:22.400 --> 01:45:25.760 the manner that I'm trying to describe in that moment. 01:45:25.760 --> 01:45:28.480 You know, if I tell an atheist, yeah, I was having a 01:45:28.480 --> 01:45:32.640 stroke and I wasted fifteen seconds talking to Sky Daddy before I 01:45:32.640 --> 01:45:35.920 called 911, they would say that's completely retarded. 01:45:35.920 --> 01:45:40.240 When seconds count, why on earth would you pray to your imaginary 01:45:40.240 --> 01:45:44.880 God? As a God fearer, as a Christian, I knew that the 01:45:44.880 --> 01:45:45.920 opposite was true. 01:45:45.920 --> 01:45:48.800 Why would I bother calling 911 if I wasn't going to turn 01:45:48.800 --> 01:45:49.440 to God? 01:45:49.440 --> 01:45:52.560 So in that moment, it was the only possible choice that I 01:45:52.560 --> 01:45:54.560 had. It wasn't a burden. 01:45:54.560 --> 01:45:55.360 It wasn't scary. 01:45:55.360 --> 01:45:57.120 I was never scared through any of it. 01:45:57.120 --> 01:45:59.760 I knew that God was going to take care of me. 01:45:59.760 --> 01:46:03.600 Even if it got worse, even if I died, I was still 01:46:03.600 --> 01:46:05.520 going to be in God's hands. 01:46:05.520 --> 01:46:09.840 That is what you should believe so that when the time comes, 01:46:09.840 --> 01:46:11.520 that is what you can feel. 01:46:11.520 --> 01:46:17.200 Because if these doctrines, if these understandings are not part of the 01:46:17.200 --> 01:46:21.760 way we view the world when everything's hunky dory, when you're sitting 01:46:21.760 --> 01:46:25.600 in your living room listening to a podcast, then later on when 01:46:25.600 --> 01:46:30.800 you're by yourself and something terrible happens, you won't have laid the 01:46:30.800 --> 01:46:35.760 found foundation and the groundwork to be able to approach that issue 01:46:35.760 --> 01:46:39.120 in a God-pleasing manner, in a manner that shows that you fear 01:46:39.120 --> 01:46:41.360 God. Dealing with these things in this manner 01:46:42.240 --> 01:46:45.360 is a godly order in our lives. 01:46:45.360 --> 01:46:49.040 It is how faith is to be manifest, to fear God, to 01:46:49.040 --> 01:46:51.840 love God, to know that God will take care of us no 01:46:51.840 --> 01:46:52.720 matter what. 01:46:52.720 --> 01:46:55.440 It's something that used to be part of the Christian life. 01:46:55.440 --> 01:46:58.720 We used to focus on our death a lot more. 01:46:58.720 --> 01:47:02.720 Memento Mori used to be an important part of the Christian life. 01:47:02.720 --> 01:47:05.440 Graveyards used to be right next to churches. 01:47:05.440 --> 01:47:07.600 When you go to church of the same church that your family 01:47:08.080 --> 01:47:12.400 has gone to for generations, you're walking past their dead bodies. 01:47:12.400 --> 01:47:15.440 The unbeliever finds that incredibly morbid. 01:47:15.440 --> 01:47:20.720 The believer knows that the vast majority of Christian f burial grounds, 01:47:20.720 --> 01:47:23.040 the feet are facing east. 01:47:23.040 --> 01:47:24.400 Why east? 01:47:24.400 --> 01:47:27.840 He's gonna appear in the sky everywhere once with the promises that 01:47:27.840 --> 01:47:30.560 he's going to come from the same place that we saw him 01:47:30.560 --> 01:47:31.280 go up. 01:47:31.280 --> 01:47:34.720 And so Christians in the West face to the east in death 01:47:34.960 --> 01:47:38.000 because we know that our bodies have been planted in hope of 01:47:38.000 --> 01:47:39.040 the resurrection. 01:47:39.040 --> 01:47:41.440 And hope doesn't mean I don't know if it's going to happen. 01:47:41.440 --> 01:47:44.560 Hope is for the Christian is certain. 01:47:44.560 --> 01:47:46.160 I hope in the resurrection. 01:47:46.880 --> 01:47:48.960 I don't know if I'm gonna wake up tomorrow. 01:47:48.960 --> 01:47:50.000 I don't hope for that. 01:47:50.000 --> 01:47:51.280 I mean, I'd like to. 01:47:51.280 --> 01:47:54.640 I I I hope in in the small h sense, but my 01:47:54.640 --> 01:47:56.880 hope is not in waking up tomorrow. 01:47:56.880 --> 01:48:00.800 My hope is in the God whom I fear, who's given me 01:48:00.960 --> 01:48:04.720 all these things, who's given you all these things. 01:48:04.720 --> 01:48:07.840 If you think about these things now when the pressure isn't on, 01:48:07.840 --> 01:48:11.280 when you're on your deathbed, it's going to be easier for you. 01:48:11.280 --> 01:48:13.440 And that's why Corey and I speak about these issues. 01:48:13.440 --> 01:48:16.080 That's why we talk about these doctrines that are neglected. 01:48:16.080 --> 01:48:19.520 Because all these places where Satan is trying to weasel into our 01:48:19.520 --> 01:48:22.800 lives and saying, oh no, you need to be afraid about losing 01:48:22.800 --> 01:48:26.560 your job, about not being fed, about health concerned, about having a 01:48:26.560 --> 01:48:30.000 stroke, about being on a ventilator, that's what should terrify you. 01:48:30.000 --> 01:48:34.080 No. If you fear God, none of the rest of that stuff 01:48:34.080 --> 01:48:36.720 can take hold of you because there's no room. 01:48:36.720 --> 01:48:38.880 You're in God's hands. 01:48:38.880 --> 01:48:40.160 Job knew that. 01:48:40.160 --> 01:48:44.000 He knew it before Satan came and killed his entire family, except 01:48:44.000 --> 01:48:46.560 for his wife, killed all of his servants, killed all of his 01:48:46.560 --> 01:48:51.280 animals. Job believed it, and God credited to him as righteousness. 01:48:51.280 --> 01:48:55.440 So when Satan came and killed everything, what was Job's response? 01:48:55.440 --> 01:48:58.720 It's the response that we should all have when we're confronted with 01:48:58.720 --> 01:49:00.880 every day, with the good or the bad. 01:49:00.880 --> 01:49:04.480 The Lord giveth and the Lord taketh away, blessed be the name 01:49:04.480 --> 01:49:06.320 of the Lord. 01:49:06.320 --> 01:49:08.480 Amen.