Living Hope Fellowship Church

FEAR GOD

Training Material

by Pastor Kevin Badgley

FEAR GOD

Preface

 (fear of God)

          The fear of the Lord is just a beginning of knowledge and wisdom, and for the rest of it you must seek after God.

          The fear of the Lord is not of condemnation, but it will come into that if you do not walk uprightly before God.  God didn’t command us to dread him, but to fear Him. 

          When you fear God, you will obey him, and then you can come into His presence without dread! 

FEAR GOD

 (fear of God)

by Pastor Kevin Badgley

          Romans 3:18 says, “There is no fear of God before their eyes.”  Romans 3:10-18 says, “As it is written, There is none righteous, no, not one:  There is none that understandeth, there is none that seeketh after God.  They are all gone out of the way, they are together become unprofitable; there is none that doeth good, no, not one.  Their throat is an open sepulchre; with their tongues they have used deceit; the poison of asps is under their lips:  Whose mouth is full of cursing and bitterness:  Their feet are swift to shed blood:  Destruction and misery are in their ways:  And the way of peace have they not known:  There is no fear of God before their eyes.”

          After descriptions of these terrible people, the Word of God tells us that there was no fear of God before their eyes.  You might think this of the type of people who are in the maximum security prison, but there are many people in the church world who do not fear God!  Destruction and misery, and cursing and bitterness, and all that was described above, is because there is no fear of God before their eyes.

          There are preachers today who will tell you that you shouldn’t fear God.  They are not preaching the Word of God to you, but a lie.  As a child of God you are commanded to fear the Lord.  Now, there is a difference between fear and dread.  My children fear me, but they don’t dread me.  Dread is something that is continuously ominous.  That means that you are always fearful that something bad is going to happen to you.   Some people dread God, because they always feel like God is going to smite them to the wall.  

          People have misconstrued the fear of the Lord, and don’t even know what it is.  Some are preaching that it is not right to fear God in any case.  For example:  you are driving down the road in your car, and you meet a state policeman.  You know that they have radar, and they can be moving, and aim their radar at you to check if you are speeding or not.  You check your speedometer, and you are doing 55 mph in a 55 mph speed limit area, and you feel just fine.  However, if you have any respect for the law, you will respect his position, because he is in authority.  You fear him in that he could give you a $50.00 fine or higher.  Since you weren’t doing over the speed limit, you don’t have a dread, but if you were doing 75 mph in that 55 mph zone, and you met that same policeman on the road, you would have more than a fear of him; you would have a dread!  You would have that dread, because you knew that you were doing wrong, and he had the power and authority to punish you.  He could catch you, and do something about it.  You would suffer the consequences for going 20 mph over the speed limit. 

          Fear of that authority is righteous, and you should have it, but the dread of that authority comes when you know that you are doing wrong.  I am convinced that many people have a dread of God, because they know that they are in the wrong.  They know just enough about the Lord’s Word to know that they are not following it!  They know just enough about the authority to know that they are going to be punished.  This is why they have a fear and dread that is uncomfortable, painful, and that destroys them. 

          If you’ve got sin you need to dread.  You need the fear of the Lord to let you know that you can go to hell over it.  However, if you get redeemed that dread will leave, and you can have a rejoicing in the Lord, and you will still fear Him enough to not want to do it again.  There is no fear of God in the church today like it should be.  There is a dread of God, because there’s sin in the camp. 

          In Luke 12:5 Jesus himself says this:  “But I will forewarn you whom ye shall fear: Fear him, which after he hath killed hath power to cast into hell; yea, I say unto you, Fear him.”  God is the one who has power to kill and cast into hell.  Satan doesn’t have any power over anybody except what God gives him.  The devil is already working on a sinner, but the devil does not have power over someone who is living for God, unless God allows it. 

          Satan had to get permission from God before he could afflict Job.  He recognized the hedge that God had put around him.  That hedge today is the blood of Jesus applied to us.  Satan got consent from God to find out what Job was made of, and God allowed it.

          God alone has the power to kill and to cast into hell, and Jesus said you should fear him.  If you fear God, and you are serving God, the Bible says in Jude 23, “And others save with fear, pulling them out of the fire; hating even the garment spotted by the flesh.” 

          If you love and serve God with a godly fear, you can rejoice in doing His commandments.  Jesus said, “If ye love me, keep my commandments.”  Then you won’t have to have the fear/dread of being punished for sin.  Many don’t know what that terrible gut feeling and torment is in their mind.  It is the fear of the consequences of sin, because guilt is a terrible thing.  Dread comes through guilt from wrong doing. 

          If you are afraid of the authority, you are going to obey the authority.  Today the church world at large and many preachers are comforting their people with a false comfort.  They tell them that they don’t have to be afraid of the Lord.  They tell them that it’s not right, that God doesn’t want you to be afraid of him.  Luke’s gospel tells us that we had better fear Him or we will go to hell over it. 

          Proverbs 1:7 says, “The fear of the LORD is the beginning of knowledge: but fools despise wisdom and instruction.”  You are starting to get smart already when you start fearing God!  If you fear God you are going to want to know what it takes to please Him.   You will start digging in the Word of God to find out.  The Bible is the source for that, not some man’s opinion. 

          The Bible says that the fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge, but there’s another clause in that scripture:  “. . . fools despise wisdom and instruction.”  If you do not seek after wisdom and instruction from God’s Word you are a fool.  Psalm 14:1 says, “The fool hath said in his heart, There is no God. . . .” 

          If don’t fear the Lord, you are a fool.  Go to Psalms 111:10, and I will show you where I get this.  “The fear of the LORD is the beginning of wisdom. . . .”  Proverbs tells us that fools despise wisdom.  Therefore, since the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom, someone who despises that wisdom also despises the fear of the Lord, which is the beginning of it, and the Bible says that you are a fool. 

          What does it say about those who do fear God?  Psalms 111:10, in entirety says, “The fear of the LORD is the beginning of wisdom: a good understanding have all they that do his commandments: his praise endureth for ever.”  One of His commandments is found in Luke 12:5 where Jesus tells us whom to fear.

          God has power over death, hell, and the grave, and the power to cast into hell, and to kill, and to make alive.  In Deuteronomy 32:39 God said, “See now that I, even I, am he, and there is no god with me: I kill, and I make alive; I wound, and I heal: neither is there any that can deliver out of my hand.”  I Samuel 2:6 says, “The LORD killeth, and maketh alive: he bringeth down to the grave, and bringeth up.” 

          Anybody that tells you that you shouldn’t fear God is a fool, because they are despising the knowledge and the wisdom that comes by the fear of the Lord.  They will make a fool out of you, if you believe them.  If you don’t fear the authority of God, then you aren’t going to be particularly interested in obeying Him.  If no one feared the police officer on the street, because of the authority that he has to bring them to judgment for wrong doing, everybody would be speeding and acting unlawfully in other ways. People would be committing crimes, and there would be no order or justice. 

          In our country we see courts letting people off for murder, slapping them on the hand, and letting them go.  People are doing hideous crimes, yet they are back on the street in a matter of days, or at the most a short period of years.  There is no fear of God, nor fear of the law, nor fear of the authority that has given you the law.  Therefore people don’t obey it.  Who would care anything about obeying a commandment if there wasn’t retribution or a penalty for it?   The Bible tells us that there is a penalty for sin.  Romans 6:23 says, “For the wages of sin is death; but the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord.”

          The fear of the Lord is just a beginning of knowledge and wisdom, and for the rest of it you must seek after God.  God didn’t command us to dread him; He commanded us to fear Him.  When you fear God, you will obey him, and then you can come into His presence without dread! 

Father, I ask you to touch everyone who reads this message.  Help them to understand that the fear of the Lord is not of condemnation, but that it will come into that if they do not walk uprightly before you.  God, I pray that souls would dig into the scriptures that I’ve expounded upon and see the truth.  We praise you for the victory in Jesus’ mighty name.  Amen.

CONTACT INFORMATION:

PASTOR KEVIN BADGLEY

LIVING HOPE FELLOWSHIP, P. O. BOX 111, GRAND CHAIN, IL  62941

CHURCH / FAX (618) 634-2541

E-mail  livinghope@hughes.net

www.livinghopefellowshipchurch.org

These condensed Bible studies have been published to help new Christians in their new walk with the Lord.  Kevin Badgley, the author, is the pastor of Living Hope Fellowship Church.

This is a Living Hope Fellowship publication.