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In church history, the fear of
God plays a very prominent role wherever true experiential relationship
with God is magnified because the fear of God is very close
to the whole idea of intimacy with God and a real vital relationship
with God. Some of the ancient fathers wrote
a great deal about the fear of God. Augustine did. He spoke
of it often. If you read his confessions,
that whole idea of God being everywhere and being in the presence
of God is very predominant. Then as you move through the
Middle Ages, because grace was no longer the sole operative
principle in salvation, that you're saved by grace and works,
the fear of God became sort of a mixture. And actually the fear
of God became more of a slavish fear than a childlike fear, which
is tragic. We do need to retain some of
the slavish fear of God as well. God is great and majestic. We
need to fear sin just for its own sake and what it could do
to us and so on. But a primary motivation even in fearing
sin in the gospel is because we love God. It's a childlike
fear. But when you teach that salvation
is a mixture of grace and works in terms of justification, you've
got to be sanctified in order to be justified, as Rome did,
and that was a middle-aged predominant, not every single theologian,
but predominant approach, then the slavish fear outweighs the
childlike fear. Now, when the Reformation came
along in the 16th century, Luther went through that struggle. And
if you watch his life and you observe his agony, And then his
freedom in the gospel, when he really broke through, as he says,
into the open gates of paradise through reading Romans 1-16,
what really happened there, in terms of the doctrine of the
fear of God at least, is that there was a transition where
the childlike fear of God now became predominant because he
saw that Jesus Christ was all his righteousness. And that's
what the Puritans had as well, very, very strongly. And they
wrote often on the fear of God. In fact, I just completed a book
that we're publishing called The Godly Fear of Jaron Bunyan. The whole book is on the fear
of God and Bunyan's perception. Now, Bunyan wrote a whole book
called The Fear of God, but it permeates all his writings. And
that kind of Puritan emphasis of the fear of God out of childlike
gratitude is huge. Jeremiah Burroughs wrote extensively
on it, Anthony Burgess, William Perkins. So fear of God was very
common. And then when you see the waning
of Puritanism between the end of Puritanism around 1700 and
the Great Awakening, 1730s, 1740s, that period of time, what was
lost was the fear of God. And then after the Great Awakening,
the winds of enlightenment blew through Europe and then blew
over to America. It's the fear of man that became
predominant over the fear of God. And what does man think?
And by the time three or four presidents would went by at Harvard,
which began so much with the fear of God. You know, John Harvard
said, the fear of God is really the beginning of wisdom, really
focused on that Solomon concept. And what happened was, I think
it was the fourth president of Harvard was leaving in May for
the summer, and he said to a sculptor on campus, when I come back,
I want you on this brand new building, I want you to put in
large letters, taller than a man, and near the top of the building,
man the measure of all things. So the sculptor went to work,
but he's a man who feared God. He couldn't do it. His conscience
bothered him. And so when the president came back, he came
around the corner to look at this final work of this man.
He goes, what? Because instead of man the measure
of all things, it said, what is man that thou art mindful
of him? You know, you just turn it completely
around. And that's what the fear of God does. And I think whatever
you see, true spiritual life, the fear of God swallows up the
fear of man. God becomes big. Man becomes
small and we worship him at his feet. And our greatest question
every day is, Lord, what would you have me to do? I want to
do what's pleasing to you today. I want to commune with you today.
And everything else that's on the horizontal level is motivated
by that vertical relationship, which is marinated in the fear
of God. And so when you come to our present
day, How can five supreme court justices rule something that's so blatantly
contradictory to the whole word of God? It's because there's
no fear of God before their eyes. They take it into their own hands
to redefine, supposedly, what they think marriage to be for
300 million people. That's the audacity of human
nature, stripped, cut away from the fear of God. It's the same
thing with abortion. But it's the same thing with
every single sin you and I commit. You know, Stephen Charnock said
something, the Puritan Stephen Charnock said something amazing.
He said, every time when we knowingly sin, be it a sin of omission
or be it a sin of commission, At that precise moment, we're
being a practical atheist. Because we're acting as if God
does not exist. So at that very moment, the fear
of God is not operative, it's not conscious. If the fear of
God is conscious with us, we just wouldn't dare sin. It would
be like Joseph. How can I do this great witness
inside of this God? And so when you're a Christian
and you've encamped your soul at the cross of Calvary, you've
seen the fear of God in the cross like an unconverted person never
can. You've got no business sinning.
The Fear of God in Church History
Series Living in the Fear of God
| Sermon ID | 81616113586 |
| Duration | 07:18 |
| Date | |
| Category | Miscellaneous |
| Language | English |
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