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WEEKLY
Volume 4 Number 16
13 September 2009
A God-Fearing Heart
(Part 2)
(Message delivered by Rev Hien Nguyen at the
Worship Service, 2:00 pm, Sep 13, 09)
Text: Jer 32:37-41
Last week we learnt about God’s
blessings for those who fear Him and about what it means to fear the
Lord. Do you still remember? Briefly, God surely blesses those who fear
Him with His great mercy (Ps 103:11, 13, 17; cf. Luke 1:50), loving care
(Ps 33:18-19), guidance (Ps 25:12), provision (Ps 34:9-10), protection,
deliverance, salvation (Ps 34:7; 85:9), healing (Mal 4:2; cf. Ps 103:3;
Isa 53:5; Jer 33:6), knowledge and wisdom (Prov 1:7; 9:10; 15:33; Ps
111:10), life (Prov 14:27; 19:23), treasure and heritage (Ps
61:5; Prov 15:16), attention (Mal 3:16), pleasure (Ps 147:11), praise
and honour (Prov 22:4; 31:30). In order to be blessed, you and I have to
fear the Lord our God, which means to fear and keep God’s Word (Exod
9:20; Ps 138:2; Isa 66:2), to fear and glorify God’s Name (Exod 20:7;
Deut 28:58; Mal 2:5; Rev 15:4), to love God and obey Him (Gen 22:12;
John 14:23; Acts 5:29), to worship and serve Him alone (Ps 2:11; 89:7;
Matt 4:10; Rev 14:7), to keep His commandments (Lev 19:14, 32; 25:17,
36), to trust in Him (Ps 115:11), to humbly rely on Him: (Isa 50:10; Jer
2:13), to praise Him and thank Him (Job 1:21; Ps 22:23; Eph 5:20), to
keep His day of worship (Exod 20:8; Isa 58:13-14), to depart from sin
and evil (Job 1:1; Prov 3:7; 8:13; 2 Cor 7:1). Then, how can you and I
have a God-fearing heart?
Be Born Again with a New Heart
Except our Lord Jesus Christ, the
perfect God and Man, who did not inherit the corrupt and sinful nature
of man, the only persons who could be able to fear God and keep His Word
were Adam and Eve before their Fall. Sadly, after their Fall, sin and
death entered into the world (Rom 5:12), and human heart was enslaved to
sin. God had to destroy mankind and all the living things except Noah
and his family by the Global Flood in Noah’s days because “GOD saw
that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every
imagination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually”
(Gen 6:5). It is by God’s grace alone that Abel, Seth, Enoch, Noah,
Abraham, Joseph, Moses, David, Josiah, etc., could fear God, keep His
Word and walk with Him. God chose His people Israel, appeared and spoke
to them directly at Mount Sinai, gave them His law and promises, sent
His prophets to teach them and warn them, punished them and corrected
them; however, they kept on sinning and repenting again and again. Why?
Because “there is no fear of God before their eyes” (Rom 3:18;
cf. Ps 36:1). They have an “evil heart” (Jer 3:17), “a
revolting (stubborn) and a rebellious heart” (Jer 5:23).
Truly, “Can the Ethiopian change his skin, or the leopard his spots?
then may ye also do good, that are accustomed to do evil…The heart is
deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked: who can know it?”
(Jer 13:23; 17:19). Then, who can be saved? “Jesus beheld them,
and said unto them, With men this is impossible; but with God all things
are possible” (Matt 19:25-26). Salvation is of the Lord alone (Jonah
2:9; Ps 3:8; 37:39). All thanks and praise be to the Lord alone!
In order to have a God-fearing heart,
you and I must be born again and have a new heart from God, and that is
the gracious work of God through the Holy Spirit and His Word,
“Verily, verily, I say unto thee, Except a man be born of water and of
the Spirit, he cannot enter into the kingdom of God…Being born again,
not of corruptible seed, but of incorruptible, by the word of God, which
liveth and abideth for ever” (John 3:5; 1 Peter 1:23). Then, it is
wise for you and me to humbly commit ourselves to our Creator as the
clay in the Potter’s hands with trust and submission so that He may
create in us a new heart, “Behold, I am the LORD, the God of all
flesh: is there any thing too hard for me?... And I will give
them one heart, and one way, that they may fear me for ever…
I will put my fear in their hearts, that they shall not depart from
me” (Jer 32:27, 39, 40), and “A new heart also will
I give you, and a new spirit will I put within you: and I
will take away the stony heart out of your flesh, and I will give you an
heart of flesh. And I will put my spirit within you, and cause you to
walk in my statutes, and ye shall keep my judgments, and do them”
(Eze 36:26-27). There is no other way. We must thank God and praise Him
that it is by His grace alone that you and I can have a heart to fear
Him and to worship Him and learn His Word this afternoon; otherwise, we
would be somewhere else to do what our sinful heart desires.
Desire and Pray for a God-fearing
Heart
Even though God has given us a new
heart, our sinful nature is still with us until we are totally
transformed when our Lord Jesus Christ comes back again. There is a
conflict in our heart (Rom 7:14-25) between “God’s will and my will”:
the new nature in Christ wants us to fear and please God and do God’s
will while the old one wants us to please our sinful nature. Then, you
and I should be wise to desire to fear God (Neh 1:11) and to ask God to
unite our heart to fear Him, and God’s will alone must be done in all
things without any conflict, “Teach me thy way, O LORD; I will walk
in thy truth: unite my heart to fear thy name” (Ps 86:11).
Submit to the Control of the Holy
Spirit
The Holy Spirit is able to produce His
fruit of “love, joy, peace, longsuffering, gentleness, goodness,
faith, meekness, temperance” (Gal 5:22-23) as well as “the fear
of the LORD” because He is “the spirit of wisdom and
understanding, the spirit of counsel and might, the spirit of knowledge
and of the fear of the LORD” and He is able to make you and
me “of quick understanding in the fear of the LORD” (Isa
11:2-3). The original Hebrew term of “quick understanding” is ruwach,
which has 11 occurrences and the KJV translates as “smell” eight
times, “touch” once, “quick understanding” once, and
“accept” once. If you and I have a very good sense of smell we can
detect bad smell or sweet smell quickly. How about our spiritual sense
of smell? Is it sensitive enough to detect God’s holy presence wherever
we are so that we may fear Him and prove “what is acceptable unto the
Lord” (Eph 5:10) and “abstain from all appearance of evil” (1
Thess 5: 22)? The Holy Spirit is able to make our spiritual sense of
smell sensitive. Shall not we wisely submit ourselves to His control?
Read and Meditate on God’s Word
with a Teachable Heart
God commanded the leaders of His
people to write and read His Word so that they might learn to fear Him
and keep all His words, “And it shall be, when he sitteth upon the
throne of his kingdom, that he shall write him a copy of this law in
a book out of that which is before the priests the Levites: And
it shall be with him, and he shall read therein all the days of
his life: that he may learn to fear the LORD his God, to keep all the
words of this law and these statutes, to do them: That his
heart be not lifted up above his brethren, and that he turn not aside
from the commandment, to the right hand, or to the left: to the end that
he may prolong his days in his kingdom, he, and his children, in the
midst of Israel” (Deut 17:18-20). Reading the history of Israel, we
see that those kings who honoured God’s Word, read it and treasured it
were good and God-fearing kings like David, Hezekiah, Josiah, etc, but
those who ignored God’s Word were compromising, backsliding or very
wicked. We have also witnessed in the church history that when God’s
Word was not honoured, read, taught, or preached at home, churches or
seminaries, the people’s spiritual life was inclining to compromise,
Catholicism, modernism, liberalism, ecumenism, and apostasy. All the
true revivals in church history always started with a revival of reading
God’s Word. That is why God commands you and me to keep His Word in our
hearts and teach His Word to our children, “fear the LORD thy God,
to keep all his statutes and his commandments, which I command thee,
thou, and thy son, and thy son’s son, all the days of thy life; and that
thy days may be prolonged…And these words, which I command thee this
day, shall be in thine heart: And thou shalt teach them
diligently unto thy children, and shalt talk of them when thou
sittest in thine house, and when thou walkest by the way, and when thou
liest down, and when thou risest up” (Deut 6:2, 6, 7). Dear friends,
those who arrogantly dare to doubt, question, criticize, modify,
misinterpret, mistranslate, or twist God’s Word can never have a
God-fearing heart. To have a God-fearing heart, you and I must have a
Word-honouring heart. We must read God’s Word with a reverent and
teachable heart. When we read and hear God’s Word, let us tremble at His
Word (Isa 66:2) as God is speaking directly to us. Then we can learn to
fear the Lord and grow in His knowledge and His fear day by day.
Live in God’s Holy Presence
God rebuked His people, “Fear ye
not me? saith the LORD: will ye not tremble at my presence…?” (Jer
5:22). If you and I have a quick and sensitive sense of God’s presence,
we shall acknowledge His holy presence wherever we are, not only at our
devotion, family worship, congregational worship, Bible study but all
the time at home, at work, at school, at play, and in the streets as
well. Let us practise living, walking, speaking, singing, working,
playing in God’s holy presence. Then we shall be kept pure from sins,
temptations and worldliness. When Joseph was sold to Egypt, far away
from his own people and his loved ones, he feared God and kept himself
from sins, and God was with him, saw him through all his trials and
highly promoted him in His good timing. Shall not we wisely fear God to
enjoy His presence and all His blessings for those who fear Him? “I
have set the LORD always before me: because he is at my right hand, I
shall not be moved” (Ps 16:10) and “But if we walk in the light,
as he is in the light, we have fellowship one with another, and the
blood of Jesus Christ his Son cleanseth us from all sin” (1 John
1:7).
Conclusion
Dear friends, it is so vital for you
and me to have a God-fearing heart while we are living in this world
full of compromise, ungodliness, sins, snares, temptations, deceits,
false isms and apostasy. May God grant you and me a God-fearing heart
and unite our heart to fear Him. May God help us read and keep His Word
with trust and reverence, submit ourselves to the control of the Holy
Spirit, and practise living in God’s holy presence wherever we are,
moment by moment until our Lord Jesus comes, “Wherefore we receiving
a kingdom which cannot be moved, let us have grace, whereby we may serve
God acceptably with reverence and godly fear” (Heb 12:28). Amen.
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