Blessed Are Those Who
Fear The Lord!
Sermon for November 13, 2005
1. Good Morning. Let’s pray . . . O Lord, may the words of my mouth and the meditations of our hearts be pleasing to You O Lord our Rock and our Redeemer. Amen.
2. Opening Comments: Well the end of the Church year is fast approaching. Next Sunday is November 20 and is referred to as “Christ the King Sunday” and marks the end of the Church year and it’s entirely fitting that as we draw closer and closer to the end we should be reminded of the basics of our faith. Last Sunday our Lord encouraged us to seek Wisdom who desires to be known.
This morning did anyone discern a theme being repeated a number of time? . . . Yes, we’re being encouraged to Fear the Lord! It’s that time of the year when we also anticipate the coming of the Lord and can you see how appropriate it is that we’re being called upon this morning to have the right frame of mind and heart posture for His coming – and that’s described as “fear.” An interesting word and easily misunderstood our current disdain for any form of “fear.”
We’re going to explore this a bit further this morning so that we can really understand and embrace what God is calling out in us in this idea of “fear.”
So let’s begin with a framing question:
“Do you actually “fear God?” Our Scripture verses today are clearly calling us to ‘fear the Lord!’ So there’s something very right about fearing Him but what is this ‘fear of the Lord’ really all about?”
Now some of us have perhaps wrestled with this in the past or have heard a good or perhaps not so good sermon about this subject and have come to some conclusions. I’d like us all to suspend all of our past understandings so that God can perhaps knead something new and perhaps even transformative into our lives for truly a sermon is not ultimately about information but rather revelation and transformation. God seeks to transforms us though the sermons. He seeks to form us more and more into the image of His Son and our Lord – Jesus Christ – Amen and Amen!
3. So let’s dig in shall we. Let’s launch then from last weeks focus on wisdom. How are wisdom and the “Fear of the Lord” related to one another?
In Job chapter 28 verse 28 we read:
Job 28:28 And he said to man, ‘The fear of
the Lord—that is wisdom, and to shun evil is understanding.’”
And in Proverbs
chapter 1 verse 7 we read:
Prov. 1:7 The fear of the LORD is the
beginning of knowledge, but fools despise wisdom and discipline.
Our growth in knowing and wisdom begins in the posture of “fearing the
Creator of it all.” So again we’re
confronted with the question: What does it mean to fear God?
4.
Focus on Proverbs 31 were reminded of the virtues of a godly woman and these virtues are “capstoned” by the cardinal virtue of “fearing the
Lord.” Listen to Proverbs 31:30:
Prov. 31:30 Charm is deceptive, and beauty is fleeting; but a woman
who fears the LORD is to be praised. 31
Give her the reward she has earned, and let her works bring her praise at the
city gate.
“a woman who fears the LORD is to be praised!” Ah, gentlemen – do your wives “fear the LORD?” If so, are you praising them?
Ah! Our problem right now is
still this, we still a bit fuzzy over what it means to
“fear the Lord” aren’t we?
We still need to understand and agree on what it means to ‘fear the
Lord!’
5. Focus on Psalm 128:1-5: OK, let’s turn now to our Psalm for this
morning – Psalm 128 the first 5 verses.
Can anyone remember the refrain which we repeated: “Blessed are those
who fear the Lord!”
Let me read it to us once more but this time from the Message by Eugene
Peterson:
Psa. 128:1 All you who
fear GOD, how blessed you are! how happily you walk on his smooth straight road!
2 You worked hard and deserve all you’ve got
coming. Enjoy the blessing! Revel in the
goodness!
3 Your wife will bear children as a vine bears
grapes, your household lush as a vineyard,
The children around your
table as fresh and promising as young olive shoots.
4 Stand in awe of God’s Yes. Oh, how he blesses the one who fears GOD!
:5 Enjoy the good life in
every day of your life.
“Stand in awe of God’s Yes. Oh, how He blesses the one who fears GOD!” (read with emphasis!!!!)
God wants to bless us as
we fear Him!
Again, we come back to the question – what is this “fear” all about.
6. Focus on 1Thess 5:1-6. Now turn with me briefly to 1Thessalonians chapter 5 verses 1 through 6. In these verses Paul is seeking to get the people to adopt the right mindset for the second coming of our Lord. Listen as I read these verses once more but this time from the “Message” translation. See if you can “pick up” a sense of “fear” – and see if this gives us a hint at what godly fear is all about. Here we go . . .
1Th. 5:1 I don’t think, friends, that I need to deal with the
question of when all this is going to happen.
2 You know as well as I that the day of the Master’s coming can’t
be posted on our calendars. He won’t call ahead and make an appointment any
more than a burglar would. 3
About the time everybody’s walking around complacently, congratulating each
other—“We’ve sure got it made! Now we can take it easy!”—suddenly everything
will fall apart. It’s going to come as suddenly and inescapably as birth pangs
to a pregnant woman. Can you sense that
this thought could produce “fear” in some people? In some perhaps an “unhealthy” paranoid fear
but in others a healthy “anticipatory” – a getting ready type of fear. Let’s conclude this reading – verse 4:
1Th. 5:4
But friends, you’re not in the dark, so how could you
be taken off guard by any of this? 5
You’re sons of Light, daughters of Day. We live under
wide open skies and know where we stand.
6 So let’s not sleepwalk through life like those others. Let’s
keep our eyes open and be smart.
Ah! “keep
our eyes open and be smart” – could this be a part of this elusive virtue we’re
hunting after? I wonder . . . . .
7. OK! Now let’s turn to our Gospel reading. I’m not going to read it all again but let me
reminds us all what it was about.
This reading is often referred to as “The Parable of the Talents” – now remember a parable is “a metaphor or simile drawn from common life that arrests the hearer with its vividness or strangeness but leaves the hearer in sufficient doubt about it’s precise application to tease him or her into active thought.”
In other words, our Lord used parables to tease his hearers into active thought. He wants to make us contemplatives!
It’s also important to remember that a parable should not be dissected for multiple messages. A parable generally seeks to make one point and one point only. An analogy, on the other hand, can often contain multiple messages but not so a parable. Parables want to tease us into fully grasping a single but profound idea!
So what’s the single most profound idea in the Parable of the Talents?
Let me tease you into finding it shall I? What do most of us feel after reading that parable?
The rich get richer and the poor get poorer? Is that it? . . . a
sense of injustice seems to arise doesn’t it????? It’s not fair that the poor steward – the one
who had the least number of talents - should get no reward at all. Indeed, not only not any reward but
punishment! What is this?
But why did this happen? What we
his real problem? Yes, see it wasn’t
that he had few talents. To quote a bible commentator, George A Buttrick,
“He did not realize how much he is
needed. He does not realize that while a
man may not have Shakespeae’s gift, Shakespeare
cannot become current coin without the printer and the bookbinder. The one-talent man is one note on the piano;
but his failure can play havoc, as one sour or silent note can play havoc on a
keyboard. The one-talent man can speak,
vote, work, and pray. In reality he is
many-talented, and the ongoing of the kingdom depends on him. Had he been true, in the story Jesus told, he
also would have entered into the joy of his Lord!”
So this man’s problem wasn’t his limited talent. So what was it?
Ah! The real reason for his
failure was his fear of the Lord or more precisely his fear of the landlord!
In verse 25 he confessed, “I was afraid.” He dared no venture. He lacked faith in life and God. He was as Buttrick noted “churlish and poor-spirited.
Charlotte Bronte wrote,
“Better to try all things and find all
empty, than to try nothing and leave your life a blank.”
The one-talent man in his failure
is like the parishioner who is content with routine in the Christian
church. If this person lived in Hitler’s
As Buttrock stated,
“By his default, not by his outright crime,
he is an encouragement to bold wickedness.
To him can be traced much of the deadly lethargy of our world. He
fails to see how much he is needed!”
8. Ah – Fear??? We began by an understanding that “fear of
the Lord” was to be praised and yet here we’re being told that “fear” is a most
despicable vice, indeed one that elicits God’s punishment!
So we’re back to our original question aren’t we:
“What is this ‘fear of the Lord’ really all about?”
I want to give us a word picture to capture what this
means. Turn with me if you can to Isaiah
chapter 6
Is. 6:1
In the year that King Uzziah died, I saw the Lord
seated on a throne, high and exalted, and the train of his robe filled the
temple. Now listen to Isaiah experience of the “fear of the Lord” and see what
action it prompted out of him . . .
Did you hear that? “Send me!”
True fear of God calls us out of our lethargy and calls us into the
So, do you want to fear the Lord in such a
way that you will cry out “Here I am!
Send me!”
Amen and Amen!
Let us Pray . . .