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Jun 04, 2023

Fear that Rewards

Passage: Deuteronomy 5:22-33

Preacher: John Repsold

Series: Deuteronomy

Keywords: god's presence, revelation, obedience, revival, blessings, fear of god, awakening, responsibility

Summary:

This is the first national revival presented for us in the Bible. As such, it presents truths about the nature of spiritual revival and why it affects different people differently. This passage reviews the difference between the response of the Israelites to the presence of God and that of their 70+ leaders and Moses and helps us see what we must do to experience the wonderful promises given to those who walk in a reverent fear of the Lord.

Detail:

Fear that Rewards

Deuteronomy 5:22-33

June 4, 2023

Morning Get-Acquainted Question:  Share about a time in your life when you felt that you have had some sort of encounter with God.

INTRO:

We’re back in the book of Deuteronomy today after a month away so we could focus on God’s heart for spiritually lost people, for taking His Gospel to the world through cross-cultural missions. 

We’ll be coming back to that for one more Sunday this month (June 25th) when we’ll have Brumleys, Elizabeth Jones and Wegners all here on the same weekend.  We’d also love to see our Mission’s Giving Goal met if not surpassed by that Sunday.  So if you haven’t completed a Missions Faith Commitment Card yet, I trust you are praying about what God would have you do.  I don’t want to see any of you miss out on that experience this year. 

            Back to Deuteronomy.  We left off at Deut. 5:21 with the last of the 10 Commandments.  What sets these 10 commands of God off from all the others you encounter in the O.T.?  They were the ones that were given directly and audibly to the entire nation of Israel.  All the others were either communicated directly to Moses or to other prophets.  But these 10, we are told, were received directly by all the Israelites at Mt. Sinai.  They all heard God’s voice and words.  They all had that very sensory encounter with God.  And they all agreed, “Yes, we will follow these commands.”  Obedience to the rest of the Law would follow as long as they were obedient to these 10 foundational commands. 

            So, let’s read today’s passage:  Deut. 5:22-33.

22 “These words the Lord spoke to all your assembly at the mountain out of the midst of the fire, the cloud, and the thick darkness, with a loud voice; and he added no more. And he wrote them on two tablets of stone and gave them to me. 23 And as soon as you heard the voice out of the midst of the darkness, while the mountain was burning with fire, you came near to me, all the heads of your tribes, and your elders. 24 And you said, ‘Behold, the Lord our God has shown us his glory and greatness, and we have heard his voice out of the midst of the fire. This day we have seen God speak with man, and man still live. 25 Now therefore why should we die? For this great fire will consume us. If we hear the voice of the Lord our God any more, we shall die. 26 For who is there of all flesh, that has heard the voice of the living God speaking out of the midst of fire as we have, and has still lived? 27 Go near and hear all that the Lord our God will say, and speak to us all that the Lord our God will speak to you, and we will hear and do it.’

28 “And the Lord heard your words, when you spoke to me. And the Lord said to me, ‘I have heard the words of this people, which they have spoken to you. They are right in all that they have spoken. 29 Oh that they had such a heart as this always, to fear me and to keep all my commandments, that it might go well with them and with their descendants forever! 30 Go and say to them, “Return to your tents.” 31 But you, stand here by me, and I will tell you the whole commandment and the statutes and the rules that you shall teach them, that they may do them in the land that I am giving them to possess.’ 32 You shall be careful therefore to do as the Lord your God has commanded you. You shall not turn aside to the right hand or to the left. 33 You shall walk in all the way that the Lord your God has commanded you, that you may live, and that it may go well with you, and that you may live long in the land that you shall possess.

            Many of us here have been praying for spiritual revival and awakening in our city and nation.  I think that this event is probably the first account of widespread spiritual revival recorded for us in the Bible.  God is coming near and showing up in his overpowering glory to an entire nation of people in a specific geographic location.  From my study on revival, those are the essential marks of a genuine move of God: a group of people in a specific geographic location experience the overpowering presence of God in such a way that it moves them to holy fear, repentance and new-found obedience to the call of God.

            That is not to say that they will all continue in that path of repentance and obedience. Many will.  Some will not.  Even God’s glorious and fearsome presence is not a guarantee that everyone will continue to walk in the knowledge of what they have experienced.  Holiness is never forced upon us; it is offered as a fruit of faith-filled obedience day after day, year after year.  God could come near to us today, right here, in some astounding, undeniable way.  Not all of us would be forever changed by that.  Only those who chose to continue to walk in the light of that revelation of God through deepening obedience to Him would continue to experience the fruit and effect of that revival encounter. 

Vs. 22—“These words the Lord spoke to all your assembly at the mountain out of the midst of the fire, the cloud, and the thick darkness, with a loud voice; and he added no more.”

God limited his revelation of himself to all Israel with these 10 simple, foundational commandments.  This verse even tells us, “and He added no more.”  Everyone received some basic training, some minimal revelation of the nature and law of God. 

            And so has every human being who has ever walked this planet. The founding fathers of our nation called it “natural law.”  It is the basic, foundational truth of God that is revealed to every person through creation and conscience.  According to Romans 1, everyone has some basic “knowledge of God” from creation and conscience.  And everyone violates or denies or sins against that “knowledge of God” when we rationalize and excuse and refuse to seek the mercy and grace of God needed for forgiveness of our sins. 

“Natural law asserts that mankind is destined by God to an end, and receives from Him a direction towards this end.  The rule, then, which God has prescribed for our conduct, is found in our nature itself. Those actions which conform with its tendencies, lead to our destined end, and are thereby constituted right and morally good; those at variance with our nature (and destructive of it) are wrong and immoral.

“There is, then, a double reason for calling this law of conduct natural: first, because it is set up concretely in our very nature itself, and second, because it is manifested to us by the purely natural medium of reason. In both respects it is distinguished from the Divine positive law, which contains precepts not arising from the nature of things as God has constituted them by the creative act, but from the arbitrary will of God. This law we learn, not through the unaided operation of reason, but through the light of supernatural revelation.”  [Found at https://www.catholic.com/encyclopedia/natural-law]

            The challenge today is that with the death of truth and the imposition of radical moral relativity, we no longer seem able to appeal to reason, to common sense or to logic. 

ILL:  Listening to Matt Walsh’s documentary, What Is A Woman.  When you simply show people today who think that anyone can be whatever they want to be, whether it’s a wolf or a woman (even though they are a human and a man), that their radical positions are completely irrational, illogical and destructive of humanity and individual human beings, they stop talking to you or simply start throwing pejorative names at you.  Language means nothing anymore when a simple, clear word like “woman” can mean whatever anyone wants it to mean. 

The state of morality in America today has, very sadly, slipped to the lowest rung mentioned in the moral decay of Romans 1.  We’ve gone way beyond simply homosexuality.  We’ve actually embraced irrationality and insanity as the now-preferred & dominant norm.   Listen to the end of Romans 1:

28 Furthermore, just as they did not think it worthwhile to retain the knowledge of God, so God gave them over to a depraved mind, so that they do what ought not to be done. 29 They have become filled with every kind of wickedness, evil, greed and depravity….31 they have no understanding, no fidelity, no love, no mercy. 32 Although they know God’s righteous decree that those who do such things deserve death, they not only continue to do these very things but also approve of those who practice them.

But back to this passage.  There is a foundational principle about the revelation of God to people:  The greater the REVELATION of God, the greater our RESPONSIBILITY to God.  We are going to see that lived out in this book the farther we get into it. God, in His grace, does not give us more revelation of himself than we can handle.  Since revelation brings responsibility, failure to respond to the given revelation also brings judgment.  Moses and the 70+ leaders of this young nation received more revelation than the over a million Israelites.  Thus, when those leaders failed to live into that revelation, they suffered more stern judgment, as we will see.  But even the adults present at Mt. Sinai, who later became faithless and rebelled against God whom they had heard speak at Mt. Sinai, would be judged more severely than their children who hadn’t heard God’s voice as they did.  The greater the REVELATION of God, the greater our RESPONSIBILITY to God.

NOTICE:  the manifest presence of God is not always light and cheery; but it is always reverence and godly fear-provoking. In this encounter with God, Moses describes the visible presence of God as “out of the midst of the fire, the cloud, and the thick darkness, with a loud voice.”  Some have tried to make this out to be some volcanic eruption that the people interpreted as God.  That doesn’t fit either the passage or the geography of that region.  Besides the fact that there are no volcanic mountains for hundreds of miles, Moses would not have been able to survive 40 days that close to an erupting volcano with its noxious gasses, ash and pyroclastic flows.  This was the presence of God, nothing less.

 In the Bible, God’s presence is frequently evidenced by fire and a loud voice.  Sometimes he “wraps himself in darkness” (2 Samuel 22:10; Ps. 18:11, 97:2) to spare mere humans the life-taking exposure to His consuming holiness and glory.

            So, what happened that limited the revelation of God to the entire nation but also led to a greater revelation of God to some of the leaders of the nation (like Moses, Aaron, his 2 sons and the 70 elders)? 

23 And as soon as you heard the voice out of the midst of the darkness, while the mountain was burning with fire, you came near to me, all the heads of your tribes, and your elders. 24 And you said, ‘Behold, the Lord our God has shown us his glory and greatness, and we have heard his voice out of the midst of the fire. This day we have seen God speak with man, and man still live. 25 Now therefore why should we die? For this great fire will consume us. If we hear the voice of the Lord our God any more, we shall die. 26 For who is there of all flesh, that has heard the voice of the living God speaking out of the midst of fire as we have, and has still lived? 27 Go near and hear all that the Lord our God will say, and speak to us all that the Lord our God will speak to you, and we will hear and do it.’

28 “And the Lord heard your words, when you spoke to me. And the Lord said to me, ‘I have heard the words of this people, which they have spoken to you. They are right in all that they have spoken. 29 Oh that they had such a heart as this always, to fear me and to keep all my commandments, that it might go well with them and with their descendants forever! 

The clearer we hear the voice of God, the greater the danger to us if we disobey.  We’re often tempted to think, “If God would just make it clear what His will is in this situation in my life.”  But the real danger is not that God won’t speak clearly.  The real danger is that He will…and we won’t obey Him fully. 

ILL:  Parents, we know that it is one thing for our child to be playing in the backyard as we shout some command through the upstairs window and to not really register with what we are telling them to do.  “Stop spraying the dog with the hose!” we holler.  But the dog keeps getting wet and our kid keeps spraying the backyard.  It is quite another to have our child look us in the eye, repeat what we’ve told them not to do and then go and do it.  There are usually different ramifications, right?

God knows the level of our spiritual hearing influences the level of our obedience.  So, He often limits his further revelation to us to the level of our faith-walk with Him.  Rather than tell all the Israelites the entire Law he revealed over 40 days to Moses, God gives the nation the amount of direct revelation for which they will be held directly responsible…and for which they will eventually face judgment.

APP:  Might this be why God’s reviving presence is sometimes withheld from us?  God knows how serious or unserious we are about obedience.  He doesn’t want to have to judge us any more severely than He knows we’re capable of obeying.  Because when His presence comes in reviving fire, we will be more responsible for that revelation of His presence than we were in our old ways. 

ILL:  Two, 1 OT and 1 NT

  • Aaron’s sons, Nadab and Abihu: Exodus 24 tells us that after this event in Deut. 5, 70 elders of Israel plus Moses, Aaron and 2 of his sons, Nadab and Abihu, were invited by God up on the mountain to worship God at a distance and have a covenant feast with Him.  Only Moses was invited closer to God’s holy presence to worship and receive the Law. 

Ex. 24:9 Then Moses went up with Aaron, Nadab and Abihu, and seventy of the elders of Israel, 10 and they saw the God of Israel; and under His feet there appeared to be a pavement of sapphire, as clear as the sky itself. 11 Yet He did not stretch out His hand against the nobles of the sons of Israel; and they saw God, and they ate and drank.

BTW, this vision of the presence of God corresponds with other visions of God in Ezekiel 1:26-28 and Revelation 4:1-6. 

Ezekiel 1:26-28-- 26 Now above the expanse that was over their heads there was something resembling a throne, like [x]lapis lazuli in appearance; and on that which resembled a throne, high up, was a figure with the appearance of a man. 27 Then I noticed from the appearance of His loins and upward something like 

glowing metal that looked like fire all around within it, and from the appearance of His loins and downward I saw something like fire; and there was a radiance around Him. 28 As the appearance of the rainbow in the clouds on a rainy day, so was the appearance of the surrounding radiance. Such was the appearance of the likeness of the glory of the Lord. And when I saw it, I fell on my face and heard a voice speaking.

Revelation 4:1-6-- 2 Immediately I was in the Spirit; and behold, a throne was standing in heaven, and One sitting on the throne. 3 And He who was sitting was like a jasper stone and a sardius in appearance; and there was a rainbow around the throne, like an emerald in appearance. 

5 Out from the throne come flashes of lightning and sounds and peals of thunder. And there were seven lamps of fire burning before the throne, which are the seven Spirits of God; 6 and before the throne there was something like a sea of glass, like crystal; and in the center and around the throne, four living creatures full of eyes in front and behind. 

Both of them talk about a glassy sea under or surrounding the throne of God that looked like sapphire (blue).  The biblical authors are obviously trying to describe the indescribable.  But they use similar terms.  The 70+ leaders of Israel viewed the presence of God from below and thus could only see “his feet” rather than a fuller presentation of God’s glory.  Moses, however, was later allowed to see God’s “back” as he was hidden in the cleft of the rock as God passed by during the 40 days he fasted and spent in God’s presence.  That further revelation of God made him even more responsible for his misrepresentation of God to the people when he struck the rock at Meribah.

But back to Nadab and Abihu.  Later, when the Tabernacle had been established and Aaron and his sons had been installed in the priesthood, his sons offered “strange” or “profane, unauthorized or foreign” fire in worship to God (Lev. 10).  God judged them for that by fire from heaven coming down and consuming them there in the Tabernacle.  Greater revelation always results in greater responsibility…and judgement when we are disobedient to that revelation.    

N.T.--

  • Ananias and his wife, Sapphira, in Acts 5. We don’t know, but it is highly likely that this couple was present in the Upper Room on Pentecost Sunday when the Holy Spirit came with flames of fire and baptized them in the Holy Spirit. 

Notice that the Israelites recognized that their level of obedience towards God was somehow inferior to Moses’ level. 

This day we have seen God speak with man, and man still live. 25 Now therefore why should we die? For this great fire will consume us. If we hear the voice of the Lord our God any more, we shall die. 26 For who is there of all flesh, that has heard the voice of the living God speaking out of the midst of fire as we have, and has still lived? 

They realized that their experience of hearing God speak was rare, unusual and life-threatening.  Surely, when they asked, “who is there of all flesh, that has heard the voice of the living God speaking out of the midst of fire…and has still lived?” they knew that Moses himself had had a previous fire-and-voice encounter with God at the burning bush before he came to be God’s chosen deliverer for them.  Moses didn’t start with a mountain-top, glory-display of God.  He started with a burning bush.  And when he responded obediently to that, God let him experience even more than the other leaders of Israel did and far more than the general population of Israel at the time. 

            Moses ends his review of how God met with them at Mt. Sinai with these words:  28“And the Lord heard your words, when you spoke to me. And the Lord said to me, ‘I have heard the words of this people, which they have spoken to you. They are right in all that they have spoken. 29 Oh that they had such a heart as this always, to fear me and to keep all my commandments, that it might go well with them and with their descendants forever! 

Encounters with God are designed to move us to reverent fear of God… which will lead us into obedience to God… that will bless us and our offspring by God.

A word about “encounters with God” that lead to a healthy growth in the fear of God.

God’s people develop encounters with God when we experience God delivering us from our slavery to sin. 

  • Israelites experienced God’s redeeming, delivering power over Egypt and their slavery >> God calling them into a greater obedience than just putting the blood of the Passover lamb on the doorposts of their homes.
  • Us today: Taking refuge by personal faith in Jesus, under the cross of Christ and His blood shed for us will deliver us from our captivity and slavery to sin. That also needs to go on to greater obedience as we grow in Christ. Unless we are willing and desirous of God to initially and continually deliver us from sin, we won’t experience many encounters with God.  But, when we hunger for Him and ask Him to reveal our sins so we can truly repent and turn from them, God-encounters will increase.  Genuine repentance increases God-encounters.
  • You may find somewhat conflicting emotions in that process. We’ll be drawn to God and yet reverently fearful of His holiness.  We’ll want freedom from sin but tend to recoil at the humility such freedom requires.  We’ll be more in love with our God of love and more aware that “our God is a consuming fire” (Deut. 4:24; Heb. 12:29). 

From God-encounters that lead to reverent fear of God, the Holy Spirit wants to lead us into deeper obedience to God.  If you do a study of the more than 390 passages in the Bible about the “fear of the Lord,” you will find that in every case where that fear is missing, obedience to God is also missing.  But in every case where someone has genuine reverence for God, there is real and growing obedience to God’s word. 

  • Psalm 86:10—“Teach me your way, O Lord, that I may walk in your truth; unite my heart to fear your name.”

When we fear God, we will walk in His truth.  When we don’t, we will disobey His truth.  As Larry Lane reminded us a few months ago with the illustration about Jim Baker, we can appreciate the love of God even when we’re walking in sin.  But we cannot have the fear of God and walk in sin.  The fear of the Lord is essential for a hatred of sin. 

            Let me end by reminding us of just a few of the things God promises to those who allow God-encounters to move us to reverent fear and passionate obedience of God. 

The GOOD things that come from a reverent fear of God: 

  • 9:10—“The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom, and the knowledge of the Holy One is insight.”
  • Luke 1:50—“[The Lord’s] mercy is for those who fear Him from generation to generation.”
  • 2 Cor. 7:1—“Since we have these promises, beloved, let us cleanse ourselves from every defilement of body and spirit, bringing holiness to completion in the fear of God.”
  • Isaiah 11:1-3—Speaking prophetically of Jesus, Isaiah wrote,

“Then a shoot will spring from the stem of Jesse,

And a branch from his roots will bear fruit.
2 The Spirit of the Lord will rest on Him,
The spirit of wisdom and understanding,
The spirit of counsel and strength,
The spirit of knowledge and the fear of the Lord.
3 And He will delight in the fear of the Lord….”

Obviously, if Jesus, the fulfillment of this verse, DELIGHTS in fear of the God the Father, this is an experience we too get to embrace--“delight.”  The fear of the Lord is not like other fear that excludes positive emotions like peace, joy, love, delight and more.  The fear of God increases those positive emotions. 

Note that especially in the following passages:

  • Psalm 34:9—"Fear the Lord, you his holy people, for those who fear him lack nothing.”
  • Psalm 103:11—“For as high as the heavens are above the earth, so great is His steadfast love toward those who fear Him.”
  • Psalm 103:13—“As a father shows compassion to his children, so the Lord shows compassion to those who fear Him.”
  • Psalm 111:10—"The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom; all those who practice it have a good understanding.
  • Psalm 147:11—"The Lord delights in those who fear him,
        who put their hope in his unfailing love.”  (Notice:  fear and love are not mutually exclusive.)

There is no tension in the Bible between the fear of God and things like joy, pleasure, delight and happiness.  In fact, they go hand-in-hand.  In fact, as I’ve noted before when talking about the fear of the Lord, there is an interesting inverse relationship in human experience between forsaking the fear of the Lord and experiencing fear of everything else in life.  The more people move away from fearing God, the more we end up with fear of just about everything else in life.  Our current culture, which by and large has jettisoned belief in God and certainly any fear of Him, is probably the most fear-ridden generation in our history. 

We fear a host of things today that were not even major concerns, let alone significant fears, 50 years ago:  climate change, terrorism, pandemics, inflation, civil unrest, foods and illnesses from foods, cyber-bullies and cyber-terrorism, drugs, violent crime, family breakdown, pollution, mass shootings, etc.  Having lost God as the proper object of healthy fear, our culture is becoming ever more neurotic, ever mor anxious with ever more free-floating fears.

  • Proverbs 14:27—Fear of the Lord is a fountain of life, turning a person from the snares of death.”
  • Prov. 28:14—“Blessed [happy] is the one who fears the Lord always….”
  • Jeremiah 32:38-40—" 37 I will surely gather them from all the lands where I banish them in my furious anger and great wrath; I will bring them back to this place and let them live in safety.38 They will be my people, and I will be their God. 39 I will give them singleness of heart and action, so that they will always fear me and that all will then go well for them and for their children after them. 40 I will make an everlasting covenant with them: I will never stop doing good to them, and I will inspire them to fear me, so that they will never turn away from me. 41 I will rejoice in doing them good and will assuredly plant them in this land with all my heart and soul.

CLOSE: 

One of the greatest revivals in American history was birthed by Jonathan Edwards as he delivered the now famous message, Sinners In the Hands of An Angry God.  We today would consider it too much of a hell-fire-damnation type sermon.  But Edwards was preaching to people in the church who he knew were coming week after week just because it was the socially acceptable thing to do. BUT he was convinced they did not know God and certainly had no righteous fear of Him.  To them, Edwards said, it was only the grace of God that kept them alive in that moment rather than dropped them like a lead bolder into the fires of hell.  He talked about the absolute justice of God that could rightly make the next breath of every rebellious sinner their last. 

Edwards knew that when a genuine, right fear of God gripped people, they would not take hell lightly nor would they continue to treat their own sin as excusable.  As the fear of God fell on people, they found themselves in agony over their sin, literally crying out loud to God to have mercy on them, some even digging their fingernails into the pews in agony. 

While the manifestations of God-experiencing revival vary, the one thing that is common is a genuine, transforming and lasting fear of God. 

  • Have you ever felt the weight of your sin and cried out in faith for the mercy, grace and love of God to take over? [Call people to repentance and faith in Jesus.]
  • Are you asking God for growing encounters with Him, aware that such encounters will demand a growing reverence for Him and obedience to Him?

PRAY