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Colin Smith: Why in the world would you teach a young boy that it is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God? Why would you choose a text like that to teach a child? Would you do that?

There are folks today who regard teaching words like these to children as a form of abuse. What do you think?

Host: Welcome to Open the Bible Weekend with Pastor Colin Smith. And Colin, just based on the way you phrased that question, I'm going to guess your answer is no, that's not a form of abuse. That's something that we need to do. My question is why?

Colin Smith: Absolutely we need to do that because the Bible says that it is a fearful thing to fall into the hand of the living God. So it is for someone who is not reconciled to him in and through the Lord Jesus Christ. The thing is, we need to be able to distinguish between a right and a wrong kind of fear.

Perfect love casts out fear, and so we want our children to cultivate the right kind of confidence before God that comes from faith in the Lord Jesus Christ. But then the Bible also says that the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom. So there is a fear we want to get rid of, and there is a fear that we want to cultivate. We're going to look at both in the book of Deuteronomy.

Host: We're going to look at this from Deuteronomy chapter five. So grab a Bible, join us there as we begin a message called Cultivate the Right Kind of Fear. Here is Pastor Colin.

Colin Smith: We are continuing our series that is entitled Take Two: The Power of a Fresh Start. And we're learning God's words to people who are on the verge of something new. We're seeing that God gives to his people what it takes to break free from the ingrained and habitual patterns of the past and to find the courage to face the challenges of the future. We're finding that this book is speaking very powerfully and directly to us today.

Last week we saw that in order to pursue the new life that God calls us to, we need to own what is ours by nature—the Bible calls that repentance—and we need to own what is ours by grace—and the Bible calls that faith. Today we're going to take the next step forward in what it means to enter into something new, to live a new life in Jesus Christ.

I want to speak to you about this central subject of the place of fear in a godly life. You heard me right: the place of fear in a godly life. Cultivating the right kind of fear. Now, will you look with me at Deuteronomy chapter five and verse 29, which is our key text in this passage of Scripture today? God says, "Oh, that their hearts would be inclined to fear me and keep all my commands always, so that it may go well with them and their children forever."

You hear the passion of God in these words? "Oh," he says, "that they would have a heart that is inclined to fear me." That is what God says. Now, you know that children have an amazing capacity of memory. I am glad that as a child I was encouraged and helped and taught to memorize a good number of verses of Scripture from the Bible, as well as a fair chunk of the hymn book that is rooted from childhood in my memory as well.

What you remember as a child stays with you all your life. It goes in deep. For all of the younger folks who are learning verses of the Bible from AWANA, I encourage you in this. This is a marvelous thing. You will never regret having the Word of God memorized in your heart. Many of you will have done this over the years and will be doing it now.

I learned many of the verses that you also will have learned—one that you saw on the video earlier in the service that many Christians know: "God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son" (John 3:16). Romans chapter five and verse eight: "God demonstrates his love towards us in this, that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us."

Let me tell you a couple of other verses of Scripture that I learned when I was very young, from Hebrews in chapter 10. I quote it in the Authorized Version as I learned it: "It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God." Or from Hebrews in chapter 12: "Our God is a consuming fire."

That lies very deep within my own mind. It lies very deep within my own heart. It goes all the way back to childhood learning these verses of the Bible. Here is my question: I wonder what you think of planting that in the memory of a child? Why in the world would you teach a young boy that it is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God? Why would you choose a text like that to teach a child? Would you do that?

Why would you teach that boy to associate in his mind the God you want him to love with a consuming fire? Why would you do that? Why would you teach him to remember this and to carry it with him in his soul all the days of his life? There are folks today—and I have read them—who regard teaching words like these to children as a form of abuse.

What do you think? You may say, well, I think that is going too far, but personally, as a parent, I would not teach my children that it is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God, or that our God is a consuming fire. Well, I want to tell you today I am glad that my parents did. I am glad that my Sunday school teachers did teach me this Scripture, as well as the great Scriptures about the love of God.

I need this truth in my life and so do you. If you do not have it in your life, I want you to see it in the Scripture and by the power of the Holy Spirit to get it into your life today. The place of fear in a godly Christian life. Now, I know immediately that some of us are struggling with all kinds of questions. That is why this little-understood subject that goes to the heart of the Bible is so important for us today.

Look at it again: Deuteronomy chapter five and verse 29. "Oh, that their hearts would be inclined to fear me... that it may go well with them and their children forever." Now folks, let's begin with an important distinction. It is critical to grasp that there is a fear that love removes and there is a fear that love brings. A fear that love removes and a fear that love brings.

The fear that love removes, we will be familiar with. First John chapter four and verse 18. You know this verse: "Perfect love casts out fear." There is a fear that love removes. What kind of fear does love remove? You get an example of it in the Garden of Eden. Love casts out the kind of fear that would keep you hiding from God.

When Adam sinned, do you remember what he did? He hid from God. He said, "I heard you in the garden, Lord, and I was afraid, see, and I hid." There is something to be said for this. Far better that Adam, knowing that he has done wrong, has some fear of God that causes him to hide than that he just kind of nonchalantly walks around as if nothing was the matter.

Friend, it is better to have a sense of fear that keeps you from God than to have no fear of God at all. Only the wicked have no fear of God. That is the worst possible of all conditions. It is far better to have a sense of shame over evil that you have done than to be shameless about it. But love removes that kind of fear. That is why when God comes into the garden, his love overwhelms this fear as he reaches out to Adam and to Eve and embraces them with his promise and his covenant of love.

Love casts out the kind of fear that would keep you from serving God. Do you remember the story the Lord Jesus told about servants who were entrusted with talents by a master? One of them was a lazy servant. He dug a hole and he hid his master's money in the ground. When the master came back, the servant said, "Well, I knew that you were a hard man," and he said, "I was afraid." (Matthew 25:25). Fear made me dig a hole and I hid the money, and here is what belongs to you.

Again, it is better to have dug a hole in the ground and to have hidden the money than to have spent it on riotous living like the prodigal son did. At least he was able to give it back. But the master was not pleased, you remember. A man who knew that the master loved him would have done better than bury the master's talent in the ground.

There is a fear we are saying first that love removes. Perfect love casts out fear. It casts out the kind of fear that would make you hide from God because you know your sins and feel your shame. It casts out the kind of fear that holds you back from serving God and makes you bury the talent that he has given to you, as it were, in a hole in the ground. That is how we usually think about love and fear.

Love casts out fear. We think of them as alternatives. Where there is fear, there is obviously not love, and where there is love, there obviously will be no fear. But I want you to see that as well as a fear that is removed by love, there is a fear that is brought by love.

Host: We're going to look more at that in just a moment. This is Open the Bible Weekend with Pastor Colin Smith and a message called Cultivate the Right Kind of Fear. It's part of our series on the book of Deuteronomy called Take Two: The Power of a Fresh Start. If you ever miss a broadcast in the series, come and listen online. Our website is openthebible.org. You can stream the program or download an MP3 for free. You can also listen through the Open the Bible app. That's free. You'll find it at your app store.

That is a great way to listen to Pastor Colin's teaching on demand, whenever it fits your schedule. So again, find the app at your app store or come and listen online at openthebible.org. It's all made possible because of your generosity. And as you give a gift of any amount this month, we want to say thank you by sending you a copy of Pastor Colin's brand-new 30-day devotional called Grow in Hope. This book is going to show you that hope comes from God. It's found in Christ and it's yours through grace.

Grow in Hope examines the promises that God brings hope both now and for the future. And we'd love to send you a copy of this brand-new devotional from Pastor Colin as our way of saying thank you for your financial support this month. You can give online at openthebible.org or when you call 1-877-OPEN-365. That's 1-877-673-6365 or openthebible.org. Back to the message. Here's Pastor Colin.

Colin Smith: Love and the right kind of fear are inseparable companions. Think of it like cholesterol. Is cholesterol good or bad? It is a more subtle question than to give a simple answer, isn't it? Because you know there is good cholesterol and there is bad cholesterol. If your bad cholesterol is going up, that means your health is getting worse. But if your good cholesterol is going up, you may actually be getting better.

If you run a marathon, your good cholesterol increases, I read in a survey this week. So think of fear in the same kind of way. We want less of the bad kind, we want more of the good kind. Some of us have only ever thought that there was a bad kind of fear. The only thing that we've got in our mind is "perfect love casts out fear."

We have seen love and fear as alternatives. We have never seen them as companions. We do not understand the fear of the Lord, the good kind of fear that is the mark of health in an effective Christian life. So what then is this fear that love brings? Let me give you an example here. We're going to see it across the Scriptures today. Psalm 130 and verse four. Look at this and think about it. "With you," the Psalmist says, "there is forgiveness. Therefore, you are feared."

If you're one of these folks who has it in your mind that fear is always bad and that the only thing that can be said about the relationship between love and fear is that when love comes in, then fear goes out, you will not be able to understand this kind of verse. You will just assume that the Psalmist ought to have said, well, there's forgiveness with you and therefore you're not to be feared. Don't need to worry because you're a forgiving God.

But that is the opposite of what he says. What he says is, "With you there is forgiveness, therefore you are feared." There is a kind of fear that this massive gift of love that we call forgiveness brings you into. When I experience the forgiveness of God, there is a kind of fear, a fear of the Lord, that I am brought into. There is a fear that love removes and there is a fear that love brings.

Remember John Newton in his great hymn "Amazing Grace"? "'Twas grace that taught my heart to fear, and grace my fears relieved." He understood this; it works both ways. There is a fear that is removed by love, there is a fear that love brings, and love and the right kind of fear are inseparable friends.

Someone may be saying at this point, wait a minute, we're in the Old Testament here, aren't we? Isn't it the case that the fear of the Lord is an Old Testament idea? Isn't it the case that people feared God in the Old Testament and then they kind of outgrew that, shook it off and started to love God in the New Testament, and shouldn't we be doing the same? Look with me, just so that this is settled in your mind.

Look with me in the New Testament about fearing God. I'm going to run through these Scriptures very, very quickly. But I want you to see this is New Testament. This is Christianity. It is not like there are two different messages here. The words of Mary, Luke chapter one and verse 50, the mother of our Lord, speaking of his mercy that extends to who? "Those who fear him from generation to generation." That includes us.

Matthew chapter 10, the words of our Lord Jesus to his disciples: "Do not be afraid of those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul. Rather be afraid of the one who can destroy body and soul in hell." Acts chapter nine and verse 31, a church health report—the church at its very best. Acts 9:31: "The church enjoyed a time of peace. It was strengthened and encouraged by the Holy Spirit. It grew in numbers," and then Luke says, "living in the fear of the Lord."

Philippians chapter two and verse 12, our mandate for the Christian life—this is New Testament Christianity: "Work out your salvation with fear and with trembling." First Peter chapter two and verse 17, a direct command: "Love the brotherhood of believers. Fear God. Honor the king." Fear God—direct command in the New Testament, not the Old Testament.

Perhaps at least in my mind most compelling of all is Revelation chapter one and verse 17, the experience of John the Apostle, the believer who had been closest to Jesus, the disciple whom Jesus loved, the Gospels say—the disciple who had leaned on Jesus at the Last Supper. When he sees in the first chapter of the book of Revelation the exalted Lord, John says about the Christ, "I fell at his feet as though dead."

Do you think it would be different for you? Really? And so the Savior comes to him and says, "John, do not be afraid," and picks him up. Friend, this is not a fear you grow out of, as if religions have evolved away from it. This is a fear that we grow into if we are followers of Christ like John the Apostle. We are to fear God as we love him, and we are to love him as we fear him.

Both the Old Testament and the New Testament make these things plain. We are going to be looking at loving God next week from Deuteronomy. But first, this great theme of fearing him. You cannot separate them. They are inseparable. Read through Deuteronomy and you will find it again and again and again. We will keep picking this up. It is love and it is fear, and it is fear and it is love.

This is the nature of our relationship with God. John Bunyan, the great Puritan preacher, the writer of *Pilgrim's Progress*, wrote a marvelous book on the subject of the fear of God. And he says this: "Godly fear flows from a sense of the love and kindness of God to the soul. Godly fear flows from a sense of the love and kindness of God to the soul."

There is an awe that flows out of the experience of the love and the kindness of God in Jesus Christ. There is a fear that is removed by love, but there is a fear that love brings you into. The fear of the Lord. And it runs all the way through both the Old Testament and the New Testament.

The church today desperately needs to rediscover the fear of the Lord. I believe that, don't you? David Wells has described, I think very perceptively, the plight of Christianity in our times. And he's used this word: he says what has happened in our culture is that God has become weightless in the lives of even believing people.

He puts it like this: he says the God who is declared and the God who is worshipped by many today seems to be to them less compelling than football or fashion. He seems to be less attractive when it comes to the end of the day, as it were, than money or sex. Taking up this theme, Philip Ryken, I think, says this well: "It is this weightlessness of God," he says, "that more than anything else explains the failings of the evangelical church. It is because God is so unimportant to us that our worship becomes irrelevant, our fellowship becomes loveless, and our witness becomes timid. We have become children of a lightweight God." You resonate with that? See that in the culture?

And now here, Deuteronomy chapter five and verse 29, God is saying, "Oh, oh, that their hearts would be inclined to fear me." That they would have the kind of fear that love brings. Why? "So that it may go well with them and their children forever."

Host: And that is where we're going to pause today's message here on Open the Bible Weekend with Pastor Colin Smith. The message is called Cultivate the Right Kind of Fear. It's from our series from the book of Deuteronomy called Take Two: The Power of a Fresh Start. If you ever miss a broadcast in the series, you can come and listen online at openthebible.org. There you can stream the program or download an MP3 for free.

You can also listen if you have the Open the Bible app. That's free. You'll find it at your app store. Or you can order a copy of this series on CD. Ask about Take Two: The Power of a Fresh Start when you call us at 1-877-OPEN-365. That's 1-877-673-6365 or you'll find ordering information online at openthebible.org.

Well, Open the Bible is listener-supported. It's your financial generosity that allows us to bring you Pastor Colin's teaching whether you listen on the radio, online, through the app, or however you've connected with this ministry. And as you give a gift of any amount this month, we want to send you a copy of Pastor Colin's new 30-day devotional book called Grow in Hope. And Colin, what's one thing that you'd like people to take away from this book?

Colin Smith: Well, it would be very practical because every Christian knows what it is to go through dark times when we feel discouraged, we're down, we don't know how to move forward. And when these times come in your life, you need to know how to handle your own soul, how to encourage and strengthen yourself. David, of course, speaks about this. He knew what this was like.

In Psalm 42, he speaks to himself. He says, "Why are you cast down, O my soul? Why are you in turmoil within me?" And then he says, "Hope in God." So I hope what people will take away from this is that they'll be helped and encouraged in being able to speak to their own soul in the way that David did in Psalm 42 and to find hope in God, because there is hope in God for every circumstance of life and it comes to us in and through the Lord Jesus Christ.

Host: Well, we'd love to send you a copy of this brand-new 30-day devotional from Pastor Colin called Grow in Hope. It's our thank you for your financial support this month. You can give online at openthebible.org or when you call 1-877-OPEN-365. Again, that's openthebible.org or call 1-877-673-6365. For Pastor Colin Smith, I'm Steve Hiller. Thanks for listening and I hope you'll join us next time. Open the Bible Weekend is a listener-supported production of Open the Bible.

Colin Smith: At Open the Bible, we are grateful for like-minded organizations committed to sharing the Gospel around the world. And to that end, I'd like to commend the work of Global Fingerprints. In the book of James, God calls us to help orphans in their distress. That's a clear command, but it is not always clear how we should obey it. And this is where Global Fingerprints comes in.

Through Global Fingerprints, you can sponsor a vulnerable child to help meet their physical needs and ensure they hear the Gospel of Jesus Christ. I want to commend Global Fingerprints to you. They're focused on equipping the local church to care for children, and where there is no church, they help to plant one. If you'd like to help a vulnerable child, you can find more information on Global Fingerprints at our website openthebible.org/gf. That is openthebible.org/gf.