What is the difference between a healthy fear of God and an unhealthy fear of God?
Part two.
Hello, and welcome to today's Little Lesson.
We're going to continue from our last Little Lesson when we start talking about the fear
of the Lord, biblical theme and concept, an important concept.
The Bible says that the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom and the beginning
of knowledge.
As we talked about in our last Little Lesson, if you don't fear God, you don't have any
knowledge of any worth really, and you don't have any wisdom of any worth.
Now you may have worldly knowledge.
You may have worldly wisdom and it might do you well, serve you well until you die.
But after that, your degree in quantum physics or your investment portfolio that shows that
you made all the right choices and wait, it won't be worth anything when you die.
And so that's why God, from an eternal internal perspective, says that the fear of the Lord
is the beginning of wisdom.
The wise person thinks about death and thinks about standing before God and making sure
that they are ready to stand before God.
And I'm not telling anyone who's read the Bible anything new here.
Now I want to continue from last time talking about healthy and unhealthy fear of God, because
we certainly run into Christians who no doubt display the evidence of an unhealthy fear
of God, and another way of saying it, it's an unbalanced fear of God, because it's based
upon an unbalanced view of scripture.
I love the Bible, but I love the whole Bible.
And in my daily devotions, I read from what is called the One Year Bible, because I read
through the Bible in my daily devotions in a year's time.
Every day you read from the Old Testament, usually about two chapters, maybe a little
more.
You usually read about one chapter from the New Testament, and then one of the Psalms
and one or two Proverbs.
And so you're getting this perspective.
And something that's very interesting, the contrast you see, when you read the Old Testament
and then you read the New Testament and you go, "Wow.
I'm glad I read the New Testament today because if I just read the Old Testament, I'd have
a certain viewpoint that could be leading me to not be balanced in my perspective and
my understanding of who God is.
And so folks who focus exclusively on one part of the Bible are making a mistake.
And why do I say that?
Simply because God gave us the whole Bible, and that's how he's revealed himself, through
the whole Bible.
And there's a lot of mystery.
Don't get me wrong.
There are many things that I do not understand about God and many stories in the Bible that
reveal something that he thinks or something that he does.
And I don't understand it, but who am I?
My point, however, is is that people who have an unhealthy fear of God often focus on the
aspects of God's character, of his judgment, his justice, his holiness, his wrath, and
so forth.
And they're unbalanced in their understanding of God, where what they're lacking is understanding
God as he's revealed himself as merciful, long suffering and so on and so forth.
For example, there's that very scary story in the New Testament of Ananias and Sapphira
who were making a donation to help the poor, sold a piece of property like everybody else,
but they lied about it and kept some of the proceeds back for themselves, which actually
they could have done, but they were lying about it, leading people to think that they
were giving it all.
And both of them fell dead in a kind of a public church gathering there.
Well, that's a scary story.
And obviously God made an example of those two people.
And the Bible talks about how all who heard these things, it filled them with fear.
Oh my goodness.
But God doesn't do that to everybody.
In fact, your chances of that happening to you are pretty rare from my observation.
How many people do you know who have fallen dead as someone prophesied over them about
a lie they told?
I've been a Christian for 40 years.
I don't know of anyone that's ever happened to.
Now don't get me wrong.
There's no doubt the Bible teaches us that Christians can be and are disciplined by the
Lord, but God disciplines every son or every child whom he loves.
And so his discipline is not to hurt us.
It's to help us grow in holiness and to open our eyes to where we need to make an adjustment.
It's a loving discipline.
So yeah.
I feared my earthly father because I knew he might discipline me, but I didn't fear
him like I fear a snake or a scorpion or a grizzly bear.
And I know some people had fathers who maybe they did fear them like a grizzly bear because
your father was like a grizzly bear, and may God bless you for that suffering.
But my dad was a good dad, but my dad spanked his children when they disobeyed.
And so we had a healthy fear of our father, but knowing all the time that he loved us.
So that'd be the same thing if we have a healthy fear of God, that we know fundamentally that
he loves us.
And he's not just waiting up there with a hammer, hoping that we'll step out of line
so he can crush us like cockroaches.
No, no, we're his kids.
And if you're suffering with an unhealthy fear of God, then I would recommend that you
get balanced by focusing on the scriptures that will help you get balanced.
Quit reading all those scriptures about Ananias and Sapphira for a while and the ground opening
up during Korah's rebellion and those people falling in there.
Read some scriptures like where Jesus said God knows even when a sparrow falls to the
ground and don't be concerned because you're much more value than many sparrows to God.
And he's numbered all the hairs on our head and think, about Jesus dying on the cross
for you, and think about Jesus washing the disciples' feet.
If you'd have been there, he'd have washed your feet, too.
I know it sounds incredible, but he would have.
God is good and he's merciful and long suffering.
So to gain a healthy fear of God, the way to do it is to get to know God as he really
is.
He reveals himself as a father, doesn't he?
Doesn't he?
You see, and he's not the leader of a dysfunctional family.
God's perfect.
He's more loving, more long suffering, more merciful than any human being ever dreamed
of being.
And if you believe in Jesus, if you repented of your sins, well, that's your God, that's
your father.
So yes, you should fear him, but with a fear that pleases him.
He would not be pleased if you feared him like you fear a scorpion, because scorpions
are just... they got one small brain, little brain.
And if they feel like you're trying to put your foot in their shoe, they're kind of like
a one track mind.
God is much bigger than all that.
He is slow to anger, the Bible says, and he gently corrects us.
Yes.
Oh yes, yes, yes, yes, yes.
Negative things can happen to God's kids and do happen because God's trying to get their
attention, but God's not up in heaven gritting his teeth and rubbing his hands and, "Oh,
I'm so glad I get to make them-" No, no.
Jesus wept over Jerusalem and the scriptures in the Old Testament talk about the Lord weeping.
All right, well, we're out of time for today's Little Lesson.
I think I'll go one more time on this because I got one more thing I want to talk about.
It's really an obvious, unhealthy fear of God.
It's when Christians think that they've blasphemed the Holy Spirit.
So don't miss our next Little Lesson on that subject.
Hey, if you've never been to heavensfamily.org ... that's the ministry that I direct and
founded some years ago, a couple decades almost now... we're serving the least of these all
over the world.
That's something every Christian should actually be involved in according to Jesus.
So check out heaven S family, heavensfamily.org to see how you can get involved.
Till next time, Lord bless you.