"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 (NIV)
When a Holy God descends unto the earth, sinful humans experience FEAR. Moses tells the people that God appeared in this frightful way to help them; that what God was doing was causing FEAR so as deter His people from sin. Put another way: the FEAR of God in a Christian’s life is what keeps us from sinning! Oh you say, “Come on John. Why would you ever be afraid of God?”. All I can say to you is that when I am not afraid of God, I choose to sin. When we are afraid of God, we work on being holy.
When the FEAR of God permeates our being, our behaviour changes and the light of the Lord shines brighter and brighter through my life and when the FEAR of God permeates our being, the gospel has power, and people come to the Lord! Acts 5 proves to every Christian, that the Lord God still deliberately causes the FEAR of God to fall upon His people, in order to keep us from sin. The benefits to the early church of the presence of the FEAR of the Lord are listed for all of us to read. God choose to punish these two who dared mock Him, by lying to the Holy Spirit, in the most public way possible, and in the most severe way. He did it deliberately in order to cause His children to FEAR Him, in order to bless them by keeping them from sin. The Holy Spirit is God, and whenever sinful humans encounter our Holy God, there is FEAR.
In CS Lewis’s classic Narnia series, the children begin wondering why they are afraid of such a good lion named Aslan who is a figure of Christ and one child says: “He is a good lion, but he is not a tame lion!” God is a good God. He is love. He is good all the time, but God is not a tame God, and His children always benefit from FEARING Him.
To know God, is to FEAR God.
To FEAR God, is to tremble at His Word.
If we don’t tremble at His Word, it shows we don’t FEAR Him.
If we don’t FEAR Him, it shows we don’t know Him.
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