Jeremiah 24

"The woman fled into the wilderness to a place prepared for her by God, where she might be taken care of for 1,260 days." 

Revelation 12:6 (NIV) 

The wilderness was a place of testing for God’s people; a place of thirst and hunger, an unfruitful land that could only be wandered through and YET - the wilderness was a place of safety for God’s people. It was the place where they were protected from their enemies long enough to build and train an army. It was also the place where the people learned to TRUST and OBEY. Through the daily gathering of manna, and the following of the pillar of fire, the people learned that God is faithful, and that all they need to do is TRUST and OBEY.

The wilderness was not a place of enjoyment, nor was it a place of rest - NO - they clearly understood that their rest and enjoyment would only happen for them as they entered and dwelled in the Promised Land. Seven hundred years later, they were devastated when God uprooted them from the Promised Land and placed them in captivity in Babylon. Psalm 137 describes their despair, and their struggle to praise God while being forced to live in the Babylonian “wilderness”. YET, Jeremiah 24 prophesied this forced captivity as God’s way of preserving their lives, and the lives of those who love God and are His true children. To use the common vernacular of 2014: “The wilderness sucks!”

Exodus 13, Revelation 12 and Jeremiah 24 teach that God uses the “wilderness” to keep His Old Testament people safe. Acts 8 teaches us that God uses the “wilderness” to keep His New Testament people safe! I don’t believe we are supposed to enjoy the wilderness; rather we are supposed to endure the wilderness. However enduring the wilderness can be easier to do when we reflect on the truth that the wilderness is a tool our Sovereign Lord prepares and uses to keep His people safe!

This simple children’s song has always blessed me when I realize I am in the wilderness!

"My God Knows The Way Through the Wilderness", via YouTube

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Exodus 19:1-8

"The woman was given the two wings of a great eagle, so that she might fly to the place prepared for her in the wilderness, where she would be taken care of for a time, times and half a time, out of the serpent's reach." 

Revelation 12:14 (NIV) 

The year I became the pastor at Parkdale, two good friends of mine gave me a picture to hang in my study. The picture is of an eagle soaring above the forest with the verse from Isaiah 40: “But they that wait upon the Lord shall renew their strength; they shall mount up with wings as eagles” stenciled over the picture. I don’t know how they knew, but the verse is one of my absolute favorite verses and it has always been a source of hope and encouragement to me.

SO when I read Revelation 12, verse 14 attracts my attention and I wonder what is meant by eagle wings that carry the woman into the wilderness. It is clear from the context that these wings carry her to safety; that they help her escape from Satan that ancient serpent. It appears from Revelation 12 that if God had not given her these two wings of an eagle, then she would have been destroyed, for it was God’s act of grace that saved the woman, not her own strength. I wonder what those eagle wings looked like.

In Exodus 19, the LORD tells His people that He carried them out of Egypt on eagle’s wings and it has tremendous parallels to the story of the woman, for God took the descendants of Jacob out of a lush land and put them squarely into the wilderness. Now we are told in the book of Exodus what those eagle wings looked like for the people of Israel:

those wings involved redemption (having your house covered with the blood of the Passover lamb)

those wings involved leaving the known for the unknown - as they left the only land they knew

those wings involved terror – as they realized that Pharaoh and his men had them trapped

those wings involved faith - as they had to walk through two walls of water in obedience

But over top of redemption, and departure, and terror, and faith - those eagle wings required WAITING on the LORD to act.

Oh friend, as a youngster I imagined that being given the wings of an eagle meant that I would soar above the fray, and not be touched by the pain and sorrow, and yet the Bible teaches in Exodus 19, Isaiah 40 and Revelation 12, that the wings of eagles come to us by realizing you can’t help yourself. Crying out to God and WAITING in an expectant HOPE for Him to move in power and grace, while experiencing pain and sorrow. No human journey better describes the eagle wing experience then the journey of a Christian through death. As we WAIT and HOPE and LOOK, as we go through that final valley and the evil one has us in his grip of death, oh friend, we are given the wings of an eagle and we soar above death’s grip into the Presence of the Lord.

May His precious Name be praised!

"Eagles Wings", Hillsong, via YouTube

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2 Corinthians 5

Rescue those being led away to death; hold back those staggering toward slaughter. If you say, “But we knew nothing about this,” does not he who weighs the heart perceive it? Does not he who guards your life know it? Will he not repay everyone according to what they have done?

Proverbs 24:11,12 (NIV) 

We can see clearly from the account of the two thieves on the cross, that the FEAR of God makes the difference between trusting in Christ Jesus for salvation, or going to eternal damnation.

We can see clearly from the account of God meeting the people on Mt Sinai (the beginning of the Old Covenant people), and the account of God killing Ananias and Sapphira (the beginning of the New Covenant people) that the FEAR of God has a sanctifying result in the lives of God’s children. 

But do we realize the truth that Paul shares in 2 Corinthians 5:11, that the FEAR of the Lord is what compels him to work at persuading others to trust in Jesus for salvation? This passage is the clearest passage on what we call the bema seat of Christ. Bema is the Greek word translated judgement seat in verse 10. The truth that is being taught, is that Paul took the Gospel to the world because he believed that he would be held to account by Christ Jesus for what he did to change the eternal destinies of those unsaved people around him. 

There is much discussion about this truth, with arguments as to whether this is a place of reward and punishment or just a place of various levels of rewards. We don’t know for sure either way, but we do know that Paul described his attitude towards meeting the Lord at this place of judgement, as an attitude of FEAR. Jesus is Lord! He is the master that distributes the talents and then summons His servants for an accounting (Matt 25:14-30). Solomon knew about this judgement seat, and amazingly used it in a Gospel context, in the book of Proverbs. 

We have been given a task of RESCUE, a task of HOLDING people back from destruction! Think of your family, your classmates, your neighbours, your fellow workers - what is their eternal destiny? If you say, “well I knew nothing about it”, will not the Lord who knows everything hold us to account? Yes He will! So let us FEAR the Lord and persuade those around us to trust in Jesus for their salvation.

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Acts 5:1-16

"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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Romans 7

"Now the Lord is the Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom."

2 Corinthians 3:17 (NIV) 

These days we have entered into a new season: it is called spring, although it doesn’t seem like it some mornings. Parkdale’s leadership seems to be in a season of sorrow these days. As shepherds over the Lord’s flock here at Parkdale, we share in His work and we share in His sorrow. Lately there have been a number of lambs of God making decisions to turn from the Lord and live in sin. Not large numbers of people, nor specific genders, nor specific ages - all over the map actually. As the men and women who love these people watch them turn from the Lord and embrace a life of sin, the overwhelming emotion is sadness and mixed in with the sadness – perhaps even part of the reason for the sadness - is the knowledge that we are unable to change their minds. It is part of the wisdom in the parable of the soils, that the type of soil determines the fruitfulness of the seed.

So we watch people we love, who either because of an unholy familiarity with the Word (the path), or because of underlying hardness or bitterness (the rock), or because of worry, pleasure or troubles (the thorns) – we watch these people turn from the freedom they have in Christ and run into the arms of the slave master called sin. They think that living a life for Christ, in the power of His Spirit, in the light of His Word, is restrictive and stifling. And yet the paths they are choosing will chew them up into little pieces and spit them out.

Romans 7 lays out the struggle that each Christian faces. It is laid out logically as only Paul could, and should warn each of us of the very battle that rages within our hearts. Yet whenever I turn my mind towards these situations, while I am praying or discussing, or confronting, I start to feel helpless. Then I remember God’s conversation with Cain, recorded in Genesis 4. God was not helpless at all, and yet what He did was warn Cain – he didn’t make him do anything - He warned him. And then I think of the parable of the prodigal. God the Father let the son go. Not only did He let him go into a life of sin, Luke 15:12 teaches that God gave him the means to indulge in his sin.

We are saved by faith through grace! Faith comes from hearing, and hearing from the Word of God. Acts of faith come from a person’s heart. Friends, let us speak the Word to them, then let us pray that God would give them a heart of faith. Let us seal our prayers with tears and WAIT and WAIT and WAIT, while believing what our Lord told us in Matthew 18:14: “In the same way your Father in heaven is not willing that any of these little ones should perish.”

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Ecclesiastes 11:9 thru 12:7

"But the other criminal rebuked him. "Don't you fear God," he said, "since you are under the same sentence?" 

Luke 23:40 (NIV) 

Three men are dying!

One of them is our Lord Jesus - fully man and fully God, dying in our place, for our sins, dying under the curse of the Law, at the hands of Gentiles for crimes He did not commit. The other two men are dying for their own sins, dying under the curse of the law, at the hands of Gentiles for their own crimes. One of those two looked at our Lord and believed in Him and was saved. Not saved from physical death - NO - but saved in the sense that our Lord told that he would be in paradise after physical death.

Both men were criminals, but one was saved. One went to Paradise and one went to Hades. Both men had the same opportunity, both of them had the same honour, and yet only one of them had the faith to trust in the Lord and be saved.

FEAR made the difference! The one who was saved asked the other, “Don’t you FEAR God?” The one who was saved knew he was dying and he knew something else – he knew that he was going to face God after death and he was afraid. This FEAR moved him to an act of faith. This FEAR is the FEAR that our Lord spoke to us about in Matthew 10:28: “Do not be afraid of those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul. Rather, be afraid of the One who can destroy both soul and body in hell.”

Be afraid. Be very afraid and then you will have the faith to flee to Christ and be saved. Be bold, and strong in your own ability to stand before God, and you will scorn Christ and die in hell.

In 1748, a man named John Newton experienced this FEAR of the Lord, and he was saved. He penned the hymn "Amazing Grace" and the second stanza testifies to the power of FEAR: “’Twas grace that taught my heart to FEAR, And grace my fears relieved; How precious did that grace appear The hour I first believed.”

Oh friend do you remember the hour you first believed?

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Hebrews 12:18-29

"The fear of the LORD is the beginning of wisdom, and knowledge of the Holy One is understanding." 

Proverbs 9:10 (NIV) 

How do you define the FEAR of the LORD?

A good friend of mine and I have an ongoing discussion about what the FEAR of the LORD is. I will always bring up the first part of this verse and say, “You could be the most brilliant person in the entire world, but if you don’t understand that God made you, and that He holds your life in His hands, then you are dumber than the dumbest person.” He will always end up saying, “I think FEAR of God is about respect - not FEAR as we experience fright. FEAR is negative, and respect is a positive emotion.” He is older than me, so I always let him have the last word.

The Bible gives us a definition of the FEAR of God in Hebrews 12:28: “let us be thankful, and so worship God acceptably with reverence and awe”. The verses before this verse contrast the FEAR, the abject terror that Moses and the people felt at Mount Sinai, with our experience in Christ. And what a wonderful experience we have; the heavenly Jerusalem, thousands upon thousands of angels in joyful assembly, God, the Judge of all the spirits, the righteous made perfect, the Mediator of the New Covenant, and the sprinkled blood of Christ that makes us perfect!

What a wonderful experience we have in Christ, and yet the text tells us that we still need to LISTEN; we still need to FEAR. What is New Covenant FEAR? The worship of God in reverence and awe, this is FEAR of the LORD. Do I draw near to Him in the attitude of reverence and awe? Do I see Him as He really is, or do I treat Him like He is one of my human friends? Oh friend, He is the Holy One. May we draw near to Him in reverence and awe this day.

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