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This Sunday I preached on the fear of the Lord - in resentment. This message was the first of two in which ill be talking about the fear of the Lord, both in reverence and in resentment. Today, I spoke briefly about the fear of the Lord in resentment, saying that the fear of the Lord in resentment is understanding the position that siners are in when they continually commit crimes against a Holy God. Proverbs 9:10 was the text from which i came and I used a second text from Romans 11:22. It is so important that we have a balance in knowing Who God is. So many people desire to know of only His goodness, mercy, love and kindness; and while all this is well and good, if this is all we choose to believe about God we will become unbalanced in our conception of Him and begin to attribute things to Him which are not characteristic of His nature. Now, we will never fully comprehend all of Who God is because we serve a God who is Incomprehensible and He wont be fitting into any box that men try to put Him in. But God has revealed some characteristics about Himself to us in His Word and we must search the scriptures to see Who God has revealed Himself to be.
Furthermore, we must have a balance in knowing Who God is. It is not just enough to know of His goodness without knowing of His severity. We must know that because God is Infinitely Loving and Holy , he must hate sin and all that is associated with it...and from this we see His hatred for sinners ( Psalms 7:11 ), His fury for those who walk contrary to Him ( Leviticus 26:28 ) and we see how both of these attributes "co-exist" and never shift apart from each other in Romans 5:8-10.
In short, the fear of the Lord to those who resent Him means that the wicked need to know where they stand in the eyes of a Holy God - and that they are not just dealing with some mortal authority who "suggests" that they get it together. The wicked are under God's wrath and God is actively their enemy in their enjoyment of sin and self-pleasure. God's wrath abides on those who persevere in a lifestyle of sin and He will not rest until justice has been served. Paul says in 2 Corinthians 5:11 , "therefore knowing the terror of the Lord, we persuade men." No man is ready for the terror of the Lord, no man can endure or stand in the day of His wrath, and therefore the sinner needs to fear the Lord because he has been found on His radar and unless God miraculously regenerates the heart of that wicked sinner and causes Him to fall upon the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ in His saving work on the cross, there remains nothing but wrath for the one who rejects God.
All men are born under the bondage of sin, and all men are born enemies of God and conceived in iniquity, and therefore all men need to realize that they are in need of a Savior, a substitue for their crimes in the eyes of a Holy God who will not let the guilty go unpunished. Men need to fear Him who can destroy body and soul in hell. (Matthew 10:28) For those who would continually reject God and to those who would fall back having tasted of His good word ( Hebrews 6:6 ), there is the wrath and terror of God which is Hell...eternal separation and torment in the presence of the King. This is the fear of the Lord to those who resent Him.
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