How to Become a Fearless Person, Without Fearting God

Transcription

1 Ipswich Lutheran Church A 32 Roderick Street, Ipswich, QLD, 4305 W P F Date: 28/06/2015 Series: Practical Atheist Part: 1 Title: I Say I Believe in God, But I Don t Fear Him Author: Ben Hentschke All scripture references are taken from the Holy Bible, New International Version, NIV 2011 unless otherwise indicated. The material for this message is obtained from a variety of sources. If any individual s copyright has been dishonoured, please contact us to have this acknowledged or removed. 1 P a g e

2 Practical Atheist Part 1 I Believe In God, But I Don t Fear Him Let s jump straight into it this morning, I am going to start in the second letter of Timothy chapter 3 verse1, and you can follow along in your Bible, or the YouVersion Bible Application on your mobile phone or follow along on your Talk-it-over notes in the bulletin. And as we go through this, what I want to do is ask ourselves, how many of these qualities do we actually see in the world that we live in today? So we will look at them one by one. Here s what the Word of God says, and it may be a little bit different in your bible: But mark this: there will be terrible times in the last day. People will be lovers of themselves. Is that true? I would say check. Lovers of money. check. boastful. check. proud check. abusive. check. disobedient to their parents. check. ungrateful yes. unholy. check. without love. often, yes. unforgiving. check. slanderous yes. without self-control. check again. brutal. check. not lovers of good. check. treacherous. check. rash. check. conceited. check, check. lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God. check. having a form of godliness but denying its power check. (2 Timothy 3:1-5) People who go to church have a form of Christianity, but don't really understand, they are lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God. In fact, a recent poll showed that some 85% of Australians believe in God or some universal spirit. 85% of Australians believe in God, but most don t fear him. I mean, kind of the way it looks in our world today is I believe in God but I don't really know Him. I believe in God, but I want to do whatever the heck I want to do. I want enough of God to keep me out of hell and enough of God to get me into heaven, but I don't want so much of God that it makes me change my lifestyle, because at its root is: I believe in God, but I do not really know Him or follow Him. It is practical atheism. What is a practical atheist? If you are taking notes on your bulletin handouts, it is someone who BELIEVES in God but LIVES as if He does not exist. Someone who believes in God, but lives as if He does not exist. All I ask is that if you are open to God today, I know that God can do something significant in your life. Today we are going to look at the reality that so many people believe in God but they don t really know Him. It s kind of what you could call buffet Christianity. The reason I love a buffet - especially an all you can eat buffet is because you get your plate, get in a line, and then you can walk by and choose whatever it is you want, and you don't have to get the things which you don t want. Typically, it starts with the salads. I would like some potato salad please, but not bean salad. They shouldn't even be in a salad, anything with beans in shouldn't be right. Anyway, and you get to choose your meat, and then you get to the deserts, which is normally my favourite part if I still have any room left. But you get to go through and you get to pick and choose what you want, which is exactly what a lot of people are doing with God today. I ll take a little bit of the grace of God please, but I don't want any judgement please, no thank you. I ll take this verse that says that God blesses me, a double portion of God s blessings please, but no discipline. Oh I like that verse that says God has plans to prosper me and to bless me and not to harm me and such, but I don't like that verse that tells me to be generous. This is the kind of God I want to believe in. Pick and Choose. Buffet Christianity. The problem is at the end of the day you have to pay. I believe in God but I don t really know him. I believe in God but I m still going to live however I want to live. There is a verse in the book of Psalms that to me captures the essence of this problem. The Bible says that I have a message from God in my heart concerning the sinfulness of the wicked, then the Bible says there is no fear of God before their eyes. (Psalm 36:1) 2 P a g e

3 Think about that. They have no fear of God to hold them back, to restrain them. No fear of God to change anything about the way they live. In their blind conceit they cannot see how wicked they really are. Sin, it whispers to the wicked deep within their hearts. What does sin say? I don't know, it might whisper Hey, go ahead and do it, you deserve it. Live a little. You re not as bad as everyone else. Go ahead and do whatever you want. You know God is going to forgive you anyway so you might as well, don t let everyone else have the fun. Sin whispers to the heart of the wicked. You know, I am so glad I am not one of the wicked. You re not either. I mean, we know some wicked people. They are the jerks down the street that we don't like, you know the ones that do graffiti and smoke pot and sleep around and that sort of stuff. There are some wicked people, but it s not us, right? But what if this verse is talking to us? Because we don't like to see ourselves as wicked do we, but, the Bible says there is no one who does good, not even one, that our heart is deceitful above all things. What if sin is whispering to us? What is in our blind conceit that we cant see how wicked we really are? What if there is no fear of God to restrain us? What if, like many people, we believe in God but we don't really know Him or fear Him? Some of you are probably thinking, great, Pastor Ben is on and now we have hellfire and brimstone. Couldn't we have Milton back who talked about God s love. But I m not a mean guy who is going to tell you how to fear and know a God who is some kind of cosmic cop up in the air waiting for me to speed or break some commandment and then he is going to arrest me, put me into jail and throw me to hell where the worm never dies and there is weeping and gnashing of teeth. Because then you will spend the rest of your life afraid of God. Some of you might have flashbacks or have overheard some adult saying when you were younger Young man or young girl, I m gonna put the fear of God into ya. But actually, the fear of God is something far greater and more powerful than that. The fear of God, it s more of a reverent awe. A-W-E, awe. It s this holy sense of divine wow. God is so big and holy. It s the reality that the God who spoke and hung the stars in the heaven, that God, loves you. It s the God who was before we were, cares about the intimate details of your life. It s the Great I Am. The one who was and is and is to come. It's the God who is the consuming fire. The rock. The shelter. The one who is so holy that man cannot look upon Him and live. It s that God. It s the God who with the spoken word can change anything. The all powerful. The ever present. The all knowing That God. The God who was so great in His love that He sent His one and only Son, Jesus, to die for us. The good news of the one who was perfect, who died in our place. It s that God. It s the sense of wow, that God loves me. Sometimes I think our kids get it better than we get it. They seem to just accept. Like one child asks, Dad, how do the babies inside of mommies belly eat? That s a hard question kid, something like mum eats, and then God breaks it down, and then it goes into this umbilical cord, like the one we cut of your brother, and then it goes to the baby and feeds it. And the child says, So if mummy eats pizza then it goes to the baby and the baby gets to eat pizza. That s right, Wow, that is so cool. Then he asks, So daddy how do they get the baby out of mum s belly? Ask your mum. 3 P a g e

4 But here s the deal. The better you get to know God the more your wow increases. You see, the more you get to know Him, the more you see His character and His power and His nature, and His goodness and His glory and His transcendence and the closer you get to Him the more in awe of Him you are and then when you realise that He loves you, you have this holy reverent awe of Him and you want to do what is important to Him, not because you have to please Him, but because of what He s done for you. I m going to tell you a story about Ananias. If you have your Bible s there, flick to Acts chapter 9. And I thought I would focus on Ananias. And the story starts in Acts and it s the story of Saul s conversion. He was blinded by this massive light, a vision of the Lord Jesus, and then he goes to this town of Damascus and he is completely blind, and he was a killer of all Christians and things, but we pick up the story in verse 9: In Damascus there was a disciple named Ananias. The Lord called to him in a vision, Ananias! Yes, Lord, he answered. The Lord told him, Go to the house of Judas on Straight Street and ask for a man from Tarsus named Saul, for he is praying. (Acts 9:10-11) Now, Ananias is like Hang on. I might not be following the news of Twitter or Facebook, but everyone is saying this guy came here to kill me. It doesn t make sense. He says Lord, I have heard many reports about this man and all the harm he has done to your holy people in Jerusalem. And he has come here with authority from the chief priests to arrest all who call on your name. (Acts 9:13-14) And God starts a move that doesn t seem to make any sense. It s a move that might be a bit painful for Ananias. He asks him to do something that might not make any sense to him, but God knew it plays into the whole scheme of things. Verse 15, But the Lord said to Ananias, Go! This man is my chosen instrument to proclaim my name to the Gentiles and their kings and to the people of Israel. (Acts 9:15) Go Ananias. I know it doesn t make any sense, but this man is my chosen instrument. A lot of times, we want the glory of being Saul, the visible world changer, who became Paul who wrote a fair chunk of the New Testament and went and preached in lots of places and was like one of God s awesome world changers, when in reality, I believe we should strive to be Ananias, the one who says yes and is obedient and faithful with small things. We continue in the story: Then Ananias went to the house and entered it. Placing his hands on Saul, he said, Brother Saul, the Lord Jesus, who appeared to you on the road as you were coming here has sent me so that you may see again and be filled with the Holy Spirit. (Acts 9:17) I believe that the problem is that you say you believe in God, but you don t really know Him. You have a head knowledge, you know all of the Sunday School answers, but you don t really know Him. The problem is, if you don t fear God, and many of you may not, it s simply because you don t know Him very well. If you don t fear Him, it s because you don t know Him, because when you get to know Him you are so blown away by who he is you have to fear Him and yet in our society, so many people claim belief in God, even the demons believe in God, and they are smart enough to tremble, but we have a group of people - 85% who say they believe in God, but I m still going to do whatever the heck I want to do. Practical atheism, it s believing in God without fearing Him. It s because simple people just don't know Him. 4 P a g e

5 I could spend weeks talking about knowing Him, but what I m going to do is I m going to show you very clearly what happens when you get to know Him better and your fear increases. Two things if you are taking notes, the first thing is this, when you truly fear God, you will serve Him wholeheartedly without any CONDITIONS. You ll serve Him without conditions because the reality is today most people have conditions. Almost everybody does. I don t know what yours would be, but I ll share some common ones. I m going to serve God but hey I still may take His name in vain every now and then, because you know sometimes you just have to say something. or I m going to serve God but there ain t no way you are getting me to tithe. I mean 10 percent? Screw that. I mean I ve got too many things I want to buy first. or I m going to serve God, but I m not going to Africa. I mean I ll serve where I want to serve, and that is not in a third-world-country. or I m going to serve God, but I m not going to get in a small group or take part in the Transformed churchwide campaign even if God is calling me, because I m just too busy doing whatever the heck I want to do. One brand new believer one time went to church, about 21, and he saw a lady who obviously didn't have much and he felt like God moved him to give her all the money in her wallet. He looked inside, found just $5 and thought that will probably be useless, but he went up to her, Excuse me miss, I know this sounds crazy and I hope you don't think I m a weirdo and I m not stalking you, but I thought that I was supposed to give you this. As he hands the note to here she just starts worshipping God, and explains to him, you have no idea, I woke up and felt like I was supposed to go to church, but I don't have enough money, and I only had enough fuel in the car to get to church, but God was saying to me, just go to worship and trust me. Both that lady and the young man had a wow moment. The God of the universe cared enough about her to speak through that man, and then someone came up to him and asked him to lunch, he said, he can t because he didn't have any money, only for his friend to announce that it was his turn to buy anyway. Fast forward several years and the man had the same sense of giving, but instead of $5 in his wallet he had $100. So he argued with himself and didn't do it. You could say he had a $5 fear of God, but not a $100 fear. He had his limits. He said I ll serve you God, but only up to here. One of the most amazing stories to me in the bible is where God spoke to a father, Abraham, and said I want you to offer your son, Isaac, as a sacrifice to me. I want you to hear right now, believe it when I tell you, that ain t happening. There is no way anybody I know would give their son or daughter as a sacrifice, no matter how naughty that child might be. But this father takes his son up to the top of a mountain, puts him on an altar and raises up a knife to sacrifice his son and here s what God says, God in his goodness says Do not lay a hand on the boy. God said, Do not do anything to him. Now I know that you fear God, because you have not withheld from me your son, your only son. (Genesis 22:12) Now I know you fear God because the greatest evidence of the fear of God is obedience to God. Jesus said in John: if you love me, keep my commands. (John 14:15) The greatest evidence of the fear of God is obedience to God. You ll serve Him without any conditions. The second thought is this, if you are still taking notes. When you truly fear God, you will be forever RUINED. You will never be the same again, ever, when you truly know Him. Some of you, you know what 5 P a g e

6 I m talking about. Everything you thought was important is no longer important and there is a whole new mission that drives you. One of the great examples of this is in the Old Testament, in Isaiah chapter 6. It s worth reading the whole chapter in your own time, but today I ll just paraphrase it for you. It says that In the year that King Uzziah died I saw the Lord high and lifted up. It was a bad year, the year that our world fell apart, but with my eyes I saw the Lord high and lifted up. Then he goes on to say, the train of the robe of the Lord filled the temple. So, the train of His robe filled this whole temple and then smoke was all over the place and there were these angelic beings called seraphs with six wings, two covering their eyes, two covering their feet and they were flying out and they were singing the most beautiful heavenly majestic song that I ve ever heard in my life, declaring holy, holy, holy is the Lord God almighty, and as they sang and as I saw the train of God and as the smoke filled this place, everything shook. It was as if I was in the middle of this earthquake and there I saw God. I saw Him, and when I saw Him, at that moment, everything changed. I would never be the same again. I saw Him high and lifted up and then he cried out this, and Isaiah said Woe to me. And then he said I am ruined. For I am a man of unclean lips, and I live among a people of unclean lips, and my eyes have seen the King, the Lord Almighty (Isaiah 6:5) He is saying, I am ruined, and I ll never be the same. You see, I ve seen Him and I believe in Him and all of a sudden since I ve seen Him my life is different, different because I ve seen Him. I can t go back to normal. I can t, because it s not normal. Three verses later when God asks who will go for us, who can I send, What Isaiah didn't say was well, first can we talk about the retirement plan, are there good benefits, will provide me with health insurance, are you going to ask me to go to someplace dangerous? No, what Isaiah said was send me, send me, pick me, here I am send me (Isaiah 6:8). Why? Because I ve been ruined in the best sort of way and I m so afraid that so many of you you haven't been ruined yet, because you don't really know Him. You believe in God but you still do whatever you want, you don't fear Him. I have been ruined in the best sort of way because you cannot experience more of God without become more obedient and being ruined, and yet when I look around today, I see people becoming more disobedient and saying I ll take what I want of God and he can keep the rest. It s I believe in God but I do not fear Him. I don t know about you, but that scares me. My prayer is that we are a church, a community that don t just say we believe in God, but we fear Him because we know intimately who He is and what He has done for us through His Son Jesus. 6 P a g e