“Moses said to the people, “Do not be
afraid. God has come to test you, so that the fear of God will be with you to
keep you from sinning.”
Exodus 20:20
In an effort
to make God more approachable, many have dedicated an unbalanced amount of time
and energy depicting Him to be a loving, merciful, caring God who oozes with
forgiveness. In Exodus 20, the children of Israel are gathered at the foot of
Mount Sinai as the presence of God came down and rested on the mountain.
Thunder and lightning filled the skies and smoke covered the mountaintop:
“When the people saw the thunder and
lightning and heard the trumpet and saw the mountain in smoke they trembled
with fear. They stayed at a distance and said to Moses, “Speak to us yourself
as we will listen. But do not have God speak to us or we will die.”
Exodus
20:18-19
Scripture
tells us that the people remained at a distance while Moses approached the
thick darkness. This is the same God that you and I worship today! However, there
was a holy fear of God that gripped the children of Israel that has been lost
on many of us today. He was not revealed to them as a loving, merciful, caring
God oozing with forgiveness. Instead, He was revealed as a fire, holy, just and
righteous, all powerful, worthy of reverence and worship.
What does it
mean to fear God? To unbelievers, the fear of God is commonly associated with
the idea of judgment. To believers, it carries with it the idea of reverence or
awe. Nevertheless, any definition of the fear of God must include an
understanding of how much God hates sin coupled with a fear of His judgment of
sin.
Moses told the
children of Israel that “the fear of God will be with you to keep you from
sinning.” This is an important revelation from the passage. Sometimes we
deceive ourselves into believing that there are things we can do to keep us
from sinning. We tell ourselves things like: “If I go to church enough it will
keep me from sinning”; “Listening to only praise music will keep me from
sinning”; “Reading my Bible everyday will keep me from sinning”; “If I go to
enough accountability classes it will keep me from sinning”; “If I isolate
myself from bad things it will keep me from sinning”; “If I wear Christian
T-shirts or tattoo a scripture on my body it will keep me from sinning.”
I would
venture to say that many of you have tried those things and still found
yourself in sin! Why? None of those things will keep you from sinning. Moses told
the children of Israel that it is the fear of God that you carry with you that
will keep you from sinning. The question is “Do you carry with you the fear of
God?”
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