Fear of the Lord

Good evening everyone and thanks for joining the Sunday service. So hope all are doing good and nice to meet you all. Pastor is in India for a mission trip, so I'll be delivering the word of God today.

So today what we're going to see is the fear of God. It's a known topic, I just want to touch base on fear of God. And why should we fear God? What is fear? Is it something we need to be very much trembled or terrorized or whatever it is? It's not the case.

So why we need to fear the God is reverence, due respect, honor. This is what we need to give to God. That's why we need to fear God.

See, while I was a teenager, I used to fear my dad. I did my school, everything, college, boarding. And my father is an army officer.

He wants to have a good trim. I should not be having a long hair. This is what he was expecting.

So when the time comes when I need to go home, I do a proper haircut, trim it well and I go. Because it's not a fear. Fear in sense, I want to honor him.

He wants to see my son like this, right? So that's something that is what expected here. Here God does not want us to fear. Fear in sense, we need to respect him.

We need to honor him. It's obedience and also to have a right relationship with God. That's the intention.

That's why God is expecting us to fear him. And again, why the reason? Because he is holy and just. So, for example, if I'm an athlete and we all know that Usain Bolt is the greatest athlete on 100 meter.

Assume that it's an Olympic final and eight people standing to run against him. Seven people, he's the eighth person. And everyone will fear him because he has a proper discipline in terms of the sportsmanship.

He has a good performance. He's a good sprinter. And everyone would know that.

OK, he going to win. So when they know that he's a person with a lot of caliber, everyone will fear him. It is not that he is terrorizing others.

But something based on his likewise. God is just and God is holy and he is expecting us to be holiness. We also want to exhibit the holiness.

Hence, we fear God by seeing his holiness. And we also want to carry it out. So here is where the fear of God comes into place.

So maybe let's the details. What we are going to see is the Proverbs 8.13. Proverbs 8.13. There are many places, a lot of things in the Bible we have seen about the fear of God. But this is what we are going to talk about.

The fear of the Lord is to hate evil. And pride and arrogance and the evil way and the perverse mouth I hate. So here God is teaching us that the fear of Lord is to hate evil.

There are many words we would have seen that fear of Lord is the beginning of wisdom. And the knowledge of his only one is understanding. And this is in the Proverbs 9.10 and in Proverbs 16.6 it says that and by the fear of the Lord one departs from evil.

There are many places where we can see the references related to the fear of God. But here God emphasized that we need to hate evil. So it's not only reverence but apart from the reverence and having a good relation we need to hate evil.

That's what God is expecting. First let us see, understand the fear of the Lord. Let's go and read Job 28.28 Behold the fear of the Lord that is wisdom and to depart from evil is understanding.

Behold the fear of the Lord that is wisdom. Whenever we read about fear of the Lord I do see that the word wisdom is also keep on coming. Many references.

I was thinking why wisdom and fear of God is but it is very interconnected. It's something we see that God is just holy and we fear because he is holy. But I see that there is a word wisdom.

Why do we need wisdom to fear God? But there is a lot of good answers to that. Let us take the story of Joseph. Genesis 38.39.7-12 if you read.

So Joseph is tempted by Bathiba's wife. So Joseph was been sold by his brother and he was left alone. And he was a favorite child for his dad and his mom.

But now he is alone. Nowhere to take care of him. And he is free man now.

He can live as it is he wants. He has a lot of reasons to be depressed. He has his own reasons to hate others.

But still in that situation he feared God. And he wanted to be always righteous. Maybe we know that only after Moses the law was given.

But here he is following. He is nowhere. He has no one to control him.

No one to look after his wall. He is free man. But still he wants to please God.

How? He feared God. And even though the Bathiba's wife was interested on him. And she wanted to sin against him.

And even though she was keep on following him for very often many days. But he did not give a chance. So let's read from verse Genesis 39.

There is no one greater in this house than I. Here it is again a sentence of pride. When we see in Proverbs 8.13. Pride, arrogance and perverse mouth is what God hates. Here it is again a quote for we can say that it is a pride.

But here Joseph is not mentioning it that way. He is telling that even though I am the second in command. Your husband has given everything to me.

Where I am ordering. He also his husband. Bathiba also knows that God has blessed his household because of Joseph.

Even though it is there. He is saying that there is no one greater in this house than I. Nor he has kept back anything from me. But you, because you are his wife.

How then can I do this great wickedness and sin against God. So he considered any sin in a room is against God. This is what the fear of God is.

So he feared God. This is what the fear and he is hating evil. In this way as he is hating the evil he is showing that he fears God.

And he is not showing the pride. He did not take everything in his control. He could have lived as it is.

He could be having a lavish life. Enjoying all the properties. And taking misusing the Pothiba his master's wife.

But he didn't do that. But here he is fearing God. That's what the expectation from God.

And moreover the wisdom comes here. We all know that. The lady she keeps on requesting him.

But one fine day what happens. He happened to leave his clothes and he has to run away. Sometimes this is what the wisdom is.

He did not negotiate with her. He did not open the law or Bible and he did not preach. Because he applied his wisdom.

He knows that that is not the right place. That's where the wisdom of God is required for us to hate evil. It's interconnected.

So he is running out by leaving his clothes. And also we can see that Apostle Paul when he was persecuted and beaten. At some places he accepted.

He is ready to be beaten by others. Why? Because of that few are getting changed. Few are accepting the Christ.

They are able to understand the gospel. But there are some places when they were about to beat him. He is claiming that no you cannot lay hand on me because I am a Roman citizen.

Hand me over to the emperor. So that's what he is claiming. So we need to act with wisdom.

When we say what is wisdom it is not a knowledge. Knowledge and wisdom we have to differentiate. If we go to a law school we get the complete knowledge about the law.

And if we go to a technology college we will learn and we will know the technology about it. But wisdom is something which we cannot acquire anywhere. It is something given from the heaven.

Given from above. So we have to acquire this wisdom from the God. And we have to apply this wherever.

And by this we have to hate the evil. This is what the expectation which God has on us. So this is one sort of thing where we have to hate evil.

So as hating evil, what does this mean? So we saw that understanding the fear of God from the example of the life of Joseph. And hating evil, what does it mean? If you read Psalm 97.10 Psalm 97.10 You who love the Lord hate evil. And if you read Amos 5.15 Amos 5.15 Hate evil, love good, establish justice in the gate.

So these are all some expectations from God. And we should hate evil and love good. So this is the expectation.

Hence we need to hate evil. God wants us to do. And what does this evil include? As in the Proverbs 8.13 We have seen that pride, arrogance and perverse mouth.

There are many many evils. Many many things are there. But as per this proverb, there are three items which we are going to see now.

Pride and arrogance. Why we want to hate evil is also one more thing. Because it is the entry point.

When we allow one evil, it is like a cancer. So if a doctor diagnoses a cancer, he will cure it. Or else what happens, he will fight for it.

Or else it will keep expanding and it will kill us. That's why God wants us to hate this evil. He does not want to take it back.

Instead we have to hate and we need to get rid of it. So one of the things is pride and arrogance. Let's read Proverbs 16.18 Proverbs 16.18 Pride goes before destruction and a haughty spirit before a fall.

So anything before the destruction, that comes the pride. And the haughty spirit is nothing but arrogance. Arrogance before a fall.

So wherever there is a fall, there is arrogance. Wherever there is a destruction, there is a pride. Let's see some examples.

If we read Daniel 4.28-37 King Nebuchadnezzar. So he is a mighty emperor, we all know. He conquered all the places, Syria, Israel and throughout all the region.

And he built his dynasty. And he was being blessed by God. That's where God prophesied it.

Like someone from east would come, from Babylon would come and they would conquer Jerusalem. It is all known. So God has planned for it.

But still, this Nebuchadnezzar, what he did, especially when we read the verse 30. He boasted among himself. He told that.

The King 39. The King spoke saying, Is not this great Babylon that I built for a royal dwelling by my mighty power and for the honor of my majesty? So he kept on talking about his own stuff. And in verse 31, While the word was still in the king's mouth, that's a great thing.

While the word was still in the king's mouth, a voice fell from heaven. King Nebuchadnezzar, to you it is spoken. The kingdom has departed from you.

So the very moment, still he was speaking, the God from the heaven, he opened up and he told, your kingdom has been departed. And then he had to dwell with beast. And he was, he had to leave his palace and he had to dwell with beast.

And that's how he did it, right? So we need to acknowledge whenever God blesses us. So because we are believers, and our identity is son and daughter, we are the son of Romans, we call him our father. That being the case, we are his son and daughter.

And God bless us. This is what God is pleased to bless us. Whenever God blessing us, and blessing exceedingly, and blessing exceedingly abundantly, we should not think that it is because of our own mightiness.

Because we are knowledgeable. Because I did a master degree. That's why.

But everyone are there, right? So this is what we need to think around. And whenever we succeed, whenever we achieve our achievement, we need to be thankful to the God. It is the grace of God through which we have achieved it.

Even when we read Proverbs 22.4 Proverbs 22.4 By humility and the fear of the Lord are riches, honor, and life. So here is where we see that fear of the Lord, and by humbling ourselves, God is giving us riches, honor, and life. This riches is not only for those who are fearing God.

We see that many people in this secular world, they are rich, but they don't worship our God. But they are rich. And they are also honored in the society.

May be a politician. He may be a person who is worshiping our God. May not be.

But still they are honored. But those are all temporary stuff, right? Until his position is there, until he is in that position, he is taking care of that chair, until then he will be honored. But for us, the honor, the riches, and the eternal life is guaranteed.

When we fear the God, and when we hate the evil, this is what has been kept for us. So we are aiming and we are running towards this. This is very permanent for us.

The riches is not only on the side of finances. Healthily we will be rich. Right? So, that's what we are seeking for.

And the same way, when we saw about Nibhishanth Nesar, we can also see another example about Cyrus the Great. Cyrus the Great. So Cyrus is nothing but a king.

He is a king of Persia. And he is the one, their dynasty is the one which defeated the Babylon dynasty. Right? So that being the case, and this person is not a worshiper of our Lord, but he has conquered Jews.

When Babylon conquered Jews, and they were slaves under him. And this Cyrus, he conquered Babylon. And still it's evident that the Jews are under his province and they are the slaves.

And from the book of Esther, we read that the Persia media and Persia, they have conquered from India till Ethiopia. It was their boundary. They have defeated all the regions and they have enslaved everyone.

So just let's imagine whenever he went for a war, any group, any people, community in those days, whenever they go for a war, they used to worship their deity. They used to sacrifice animals. We don't know whatever they sacrificed, even could be a human sacrifice that we don't know.

So he is a pagan worshiper. He would have done everything to his deity and he conquered all the regions from India till Ethiopia. But still it's happy to read the word from 2 Chronicles 36 verse 22.

Now in the first year of Cyrus, king of Persia, that the word of the Lord by the mouth of Jeremiah might be fulfilled, the Lord stirred up the spirit of Cyrus, king of Persia, so that he made a proclamation throughout all his kingdom and also put it in writing, saying, Thus says Cyrus, king of Persia, All the kingdoms of the earth the Lord God of heaven has given me. So here he is acknowledging, All the kingdoms of the earth the Lord God of heaven has given me and he has commanded me to build him a house at the Jerusalem, which is in the Judah, who is among you all, of all his people, may the Lord his God be with him and let him go up. So here he is, we don't know, there is no reference how God touched this Cyrus the Great and how he was able to acknowledge that the God of one of his slaves, Jews, is the God of heaven.

When he says that God of heaven, it means he understood that he is the God who created the heaven and earth. And he is the one who defeated the Babylon dynasty and he is in the throne. But still how he is acknowledging it.

So when such a person, a pagan worshipper, he came to know about the God, the creator, then how much more it is for us. Whenever we succeed in our job or our daily activities, we need to acknowledge God. It is not that we have to boast on our own thing and pride is something which is ahead of destruction.

And so we need to be always aware of it and we need to meditate this and we need to always be giving thanks to God on whatever the success we go ahead. And also we can see that, one more example, to justify the pride, we see the prayer of Pharisees and the tax collector. In Luke chapter 18, verse 11 to 14, we see that how the prayers are read.

Let's read the word, Luke 18. The Pharisee stood and prayed thus with himself, God, I thank you that I am not like other men, extortioners, unjust, and adulterers, or even as this tax collector. I fast twice a week.

I give tithes of all that I possess. And the tax collector, standing afar off, would not so much as raise his eyes to heaven, but beat his breast, saying, God, be merciful to me, a sinner. So here we see that the Pharisee, whatever he is saying, he is saying that I am not like the other, I am not unjust like him, I am not an adulterer, I pay the tithe, I come to church, I do follow whatever is in the law.

So it means that he is doing it, but pride is something which is very well connected to a person and his heart and it is only visible to God. Even I can have that pride and I can fool around with the people who is opposite to me, but God is the one who always looks at the heart and he can easily identify whether we are showing pride or what nature we are having it. So here, though this person doing everything as specified in the law and he is following, giving the tithe, coming to church, doing all the activities, it is something like a ritual he is doing, whereas when we see a tax collector, he is humbling himself and he is beating to his breast and saying that God I am a sinner and be merciful to me.

So this is what God is looking from us. So this is one of the evil which we have to remove it, is what we need to see. So this is also one of the fear of the God to hate evil, which is pride.

And we all know that the pride, whatever pride we people have, it is not from God, it is from Lucifer, he is the one who is the source of pride. He was an archangel, but still because of his pride, he happened to fell down and he became a certain enemy, adversary. So anything of this mindset of pride, anything comes to it, like Joseph, we need to remove the shirt and we should not make that thought get deep into our heart and it should not conceive like a child, it should not conceive, grow and give birth to a baby which is a dead thing.

So we need to take away that thought whenever it comes into our mind, whenever it strikes, we need to pray and we need to throw it away like Joseph did and we need to be very clear on it. And next one, so we saw that pride and arrogance, it is combined, both pride and arrogance, whatever we saw from Nabuchadnezzar and from the Pharisees, this is both combination of pride and arrogance, this we have to take it off. And the next one is perverse mouth.

So again I read Proverbs 8.13 The fear of the Lord is to hate evil. What is the evil? Pride and arrogance and the evil way and a perverse mouth I hate. So perverse mouth, it's nothing but a corrupt speech.

So this is also one of the key thing which we have to hate. Normally it is very tough to do because we saw in the book of James it is very clearly written that we can tame anything, we can tame animals but it is hard to tame a tongue, right? So it is very hard. So we gossip, sometimes we don't rebook, even we have our friends when they are talking, first initial conversation would be good but when the time goes up they will start talking about somebody else and we are also listening to it, we are not rebuking it or we have to put a barrier, we should stop it, we should move out or we should advise our friend not to deal with because he will be telling us something which we don't know about others and he will spoil our mind too.

So this is what it is called as corrupt speech, perverse mouth and we need to get rid of it. We don't consider this as a big stuff but God hates this and God is pointing this against the evil things and it is very well connected to the fear of God. So we explicitly say that we fear God, yes? But still we keep continuing this, right? So I am not saying we, we in sense in general, right? So we have to follow this and we have to rebook this and here again, here also we need to put our wisdom.

Do we need to continue this conversation or do we need to stop it? Even in the Psalm 1 and 1, we see that Blessed is the man who walks not in the counsel of the ungodly, nor stands in the path of sinner, nor sits in the seat of a scornful. So it is very evident that we are not supposed to, we need to get rid of that situation, we should not encourage, we should not talk about it. So one of my friend, friend's father is a pastor, when we went to his house, he was telling that, so speaking ill about others is worse than adultery.

So he was quoting that if a person is involving in a wrong relation with another person, it is only with the two of them. But when we speak ill about a person, boy or girl or whoever it is, to ten people, it is spoiling ten people, right? So he says that there are only two or three, two people are being spoiled, here n number of people are being spoiled, and when we give a, when we talk about someone, maybe we would have been telling one, two, three, three points, but it will be a five and ten. People, whoever pass by them, they will keep adding more stuff.

But we, wholly we don't know the person whom we spoke about might have done that and might not have done that and we are not that to judge it, right? So this perverse mouth is very worst, very bad and we need to kill it and this, without our knowing, this happens, right? So we need to be very cautious about it and we need to have a wisdom, wisdom of God. With this only we can get rid of this. So lying and deceitful speech, what is this corrupt speech? Lying and deceitful speech, boasting and arrogance, gossip and slander, blasphemy and speaking against God.

So these are all the key things which are relevant to the perverse mouth. So again Ephesians 4.29 Ephesians 4.29 Let no corrupt word proceed out of your mouth. Let no corrupt word proceed out of your mouth.

But what is good for necessary edification that may impart grace to the hearers. So as a believer, as our identity as a son of God, so whenever somebody is talking to us, they should be edified. So we should be exhibiting, we should be reflecting the grace of God who overcomes with the problem.

By speaking to us, they should get a solution to that. They should be comforted. So comforter, healer.

So we should get the gift of God, gift of spirits if possible. Pray for them. Heal it or at least pray for them and edify them.

Make them stay strong. Instead we should not be indulging in this perverse or corrupt speech. So this is what expected from this chapter, book of Ephesians 4.29. No corrupt word proceeds out of our mouth.

But we need to have what is good for necessary edification. So that's what we need to deal with. And another thing is how to guard the perverse mouth.

This is also again, we understand that it is coming out of us and we need to control it. It is very tough to tame it. We can tame all the beast, animals, whatever it is.

It's hard to tame our mouth. But how to do it, right? So that's again, it repeats the fear of God. Fear of God.

Speaking truth and wisdom. Control your tongues. Psalms 141 verse 3, it says that set a guard, set a guard O Lord, over my mouth.

Keep watch over the door of my lips. So this is how the Psalmist say that. He also spoke about it.

And Colossians 4.6 Colossians 4.6, it says that encourage and edify others. Let your speech always be with grace seasoned with salt. So this is what we have to exhibit.

This is what God is expecting us to do. And overall, this is what the fear of God is. What is fear of God? How we can develop the fear of God? The fear of God can be developed by studying the word of God day and night.

So when we study, then only we will come to know what God is telling us. We have to chew the word of God. We need to meditate the word of God as in Psalms 1 chapter 1 it has been told, we need to chew and we need to meditate the word of God day and night.

It does not mean that we keep on reading the Bible. No, wherever we do, whatever job we do, we need to bring in the word of God. And based on that, we need to make our lifestyle.

We need to keep talking the wise things. We need to always quote from Bible. And we need to get rid of certain situations which is not amicable for us for our spiritual living.

And always we need to live based on how our spirit is telling us to do. And our life should be a word and spirit ruled living. It's not like we have to be very secular.

It's good. But still, socializing is good. But still, wherever we go, we have to create an impact.

And we need to edify people. And that's how we need to showcase ourselves. And turn away from sin.

Turn away from sin. In order to turn away from sin, we need to know what is sin and what is to hate. What we need to come out of it.

So again, it is binded to studying God's word. So overall, this is what I wanted to emphasize. So this is the fear of God.

And this is what we need to hate. And let's pray and let's stick to it. And let's follow it.

And let our words be a edifying word for others. Amen. Thank you.

Anybody wants to do prayers? Anybody have any prayer request? Let's