WEEK 3


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2014-0511. GOD VERSUS RELIGION | WEEK 3 Lord God, I just right now just want to lift You high in this place. I pray that Your Name will be ringing in our hearts and minds all week this week because of what we do in this place today. I pray that You will get bigger and bigger in our mind's eye as we view You this week, as we think about You, as we learn about You. I pray that when we sing out these words "we praise You" that they will take on new and greater meaning that will change us, because we do know that our whole goal in life is to glorify you and we need to figure that out today. And so we come together as a group of people hungry for You, seeking You, crying out desperately for You, and we need a word from You. So I pray that You would use Your Word this morning to get to the very places that it needs to get in our hearts and minds. And Lord, I would ask personally right now that You would protect us from the enemy who would like to stop us from seeing You big, high, and lifted up. And so I pray that You would protect us from all distractions right now and that somehow in this room Your Name would become great. And it is in Your Name we pray. Amen. Well, good morning, Calvary. I want to shout out honor to the mothers in this room this morning and say Happy Mother's Day to you. [applause] Wow, that's a step above first service. That is really cool. I did think this week, I don't plan messages around Hallmark holidays or for that matter every special interest group. You should see the mail I get: "Take next Sunday and make it such-and-such day." You know, like good things, but if you did that you would never open up your Bible and preach what God wants to say. You'd just be sort of going from thing to thing. And yet on the other hand, I thought to myself this teaching in the book of Amos is hardly Mother's Day material. If you've been with us the last two weeks, you have this wild-eyed prophet who says I wasn't called into this, don't blame me, God's having me speak these words. But he's saying some stuff that's really heavy and rather hard, and we've got to come in on this day where we go, "Mom, I love you," and this is what we've got to hear. I mean, probably someone here today that you're just here because, you know, Mom said, "Would you at least go to church with me today?" I won't ask for a raise of hands. And then you've got to hear this wild-eyed prophet go BAM! and it's like wow, now what? But then I was thinking about this and I thought about Proverbs chapter 31. You know, that whole—you'll oftentimes hear that comment made "the Proverbs 31 woman"—and in Proverbs chapter 31 it says this: Charm is deceitful, and beauty is vain, but a woman who fears the Lord is to be praised. — PROVERBS 31:30

And so today we do honor all of those women in this room who do fear the Lord, and we're going to talk about that subject of fearing the Lord a little bit later. And so that's one of those things that gets thrown out there as this question all the time is like, "I thought we weren't to be afraid, and I thought God blew into our world in love and mercy and grace, so what's this about fear?" So I'm going to answer that in a little bit. That's sort of a preview just to sort of get your mind thinking. We started a series a couple weeks ago called GOD VERSUS RELIGION and we're just going through the book of Amos, and God has a lot to say about religion in the book of Amos. This week I was looking for Mother's Day cards of all things and ran across this one Mother's Day card. It caught my eye the word religion—"You better PRAY that comes out of that carpet." So it fits with Mother's Day, right? Another thing that I'm just going to bait your attention on today is oftentimes when –1–

2014-0511. GOD VERSUS RELIGION | WEEK 3 you hear of storms and hurricanes and natural disasters and earthquakes and all, there's this preacher that shows up who starts shouting out, "This is God's judgment on America for our sins!" And everyone has been sort of conditioned to go, "Whack job!" "Crazed man!" "That's not us; that's not our church." But the question that always comes up in those moments is, "Are these natural disasters that seem to be occurring more often God's judgment on us or God's attempt to get our attention?" So here in a few moments today we're going to go after that and answer the question: Is God behind natural disasters? So just a little preview to get us started here today, but we are in the book of Amos chapter 3. We would love for you to turn there with us in your Bibles. So if you're in the Old Testament of your Bible, on the left side about half way through is the book of Psalm; start turning to your right from the Psalm. I understand it's a hard one to find. I put a little bookmark in there because I think it would be the most embarrassing thing for a pastor not to be able to find a book in the Bible. So Amos is just a few pages in the middle of that. What we've been finding these last few weeks as we've been studying this is that while this was written 28 centuries ago, it's insanely relevant for our times today. So we've been digging into this and we found out that Amos, we said that he was a keeper of Sycamore fig trees and that he was also a shepherd and so called him a fig picking shepherd from Tekoa and he came and prophesied to God's people. And God spoke a message through him to God's people that was pretty strong and one that even some of the religious elite of that day told him would you quit prophesying, would you quit talking about that, and basically sticks his fingers in his ears and says I can't hear this; I don't want to talk about this. And yet what he has to say is incredibly relevant. So it's in the midst of that that we pick up in chapter 3 of Amos, verse 1. As you know, we just open up our Bible and we go through a book of the Bible and just teach right through it, so we come to this next verse; chapter 3, verse 1 of Amos, it says this: 1

Hear this word that the Lord has spoken against you, O people of Israel,

And that word "hear" is the same word we hear of in the shâmaʽ where it says this, it says "Hear O Israel the Lord our God is one God." So that word hear is shâmaʽ and it means hear so as to do something about it. We oftentimes go I hear you, but are you willing to do something about it? It's one thing for your kids to be standing there and saying, "I hear you," but it's another thing for them to actually go put it into motion. And so God says hey, I want you to hear this. I want you to do something about this, O people Israel. And then He says: against the whole family that I brought up out of the land of Egypt: — AMOS 3:1

In so saying that it reminds me of some __ [break in recording]. In the time when this was written, the community, the national community was extremely important. Decisions were made within the community. In our time in America we've become very separatist people. We've become individuals and it's about me and what I do and the decisions I make and how they affect or do not affect others. In that time there was more of a thought about here we are as a community and the decisions that we make together as a family matter a lot, and so he speaks to them as a group. I just think that's helpful. I think that's important today. I think we oftentimes think of ourselves in this room as just a collection of individuals who happen to have chosen this as a church and so we like the consumables that are available here, and God says stop that, just stop that. Let's come together as a community, let's come together as a family. Let's be united, and let's begin to think together. Now obviously, the message that he's about to say to them is one that is not necessarily comfortable, and he says I'm about to come to you and I have some words that I want to speak against you. That may better be translated about you. We need to talk, God says; I want you to hear what I'm saying. I want you to do something about what I'm saying. And He says you're the people that I brought out of the land of Egypt. And you remember that whole story. If you just go back to God's people, they were in slavery in the land of Egypt for over four hundred years under these mean pharaohs who put them under conscripted hard labor, and they cried out under that. It was a weight and it was a burden that was always overwhelming, and they were –2–

2014-0511. GOD VERSUS RELIGION | WEEK 3 constantly calling out to God, "God, would you please release us from this burden?" And it reminds me of, and I mention this and I'll mention it a couple of times today, this thing that most of us have been to at one point in our life or another. We're under a difficult situation, something very, very hard, and we cry out to God. We go, "God, if somehow you would release me from this," and then we have this I would, sort of this if/and clause—if you would do this for me, I would do this. And so He reminds them, I believe, of that kind of mindset. Remember, people haven't changed all that much, and that's one of the things we keep on learning in the book of Amos. We go, "Wow, that stuff was going on 28 centuries ago? You're kidding me." People haven't changed that much and we make promises to God, and the burden of sin and the world around us and the things that are put on us by cruel dictators and cruel masters around us are weighty and heavy, and they're crying out saying, "Let us go." And God reminds them I have something to talk to you about. I want you to hear it. I want your whole community to hear about it because as a community you cried out to me and said, "God! God! Would you do something in our time about this?" And in the midst of crying out, God says I want you to listen to me because I did something for you but you forgot about it. Verse 2 He says this: 2

“You only have I known of all the families of the earth;

And then He says the words that we never want to hear in our time. We reject these words because we've sort of become a happy-clappy society, everything's okay, we're all fine. God says I will punish you. N-n-nah, that's not what we talk about in here. Well, I think we need to hear it; it's in Scripture. therefore I will punish you for all your iniquities. — AMOS 3:2

Back in Deuteronomy chapter 7 God talks to His people and He talks about this very thing. Deuteronomy chapter 7, verse 6, He says: 6

For you are a people holy to the Lord your God. The Lord your God has chosen you to be a people for his treasured possession, out of all the peoples who are on the face of the earth.

How cool is that? Verse 7: 7

It was not because you were more in number than any other people that the Lord set his love on you and chose you, for you were the fewest of all peoples, 8 but it is because the Lord loves you and is keeping the oath that he swore to your fathers, that the Lord has brought you out with a mighty hand and — and here's the keyword — redeemed you from the house of slavery, from the hand of Pharaoh king of Egypt. 9 Know therefore that the Lord your God is God, the faithful God who keeps covenant and steadfast love with those who love him and keep his commandments, to a thousand generations, — and then this is the sort of the side of it that we don't like; we like the fact that He keeps his covenant and He blesses and blesses and blesses us, but then He says hey, by the way — 10

and repays to their face those who hate him, by destroying them. — DEUTERONOMY 7:6-10

And so what He's saying to these people is I knew you, I chose you for a special purpose. And what has happened here and it's something to be noted and sort of put a little checkmark in your mind, because they're chosen, because God says I love and I've picked you out of all the peoples, not because you're anything special but –3–

2014-0511. GOD VERSUS RELIGION | WEEK 3 because I love you and I want to do this for you, in the midst of doing so they became very comfortable in that. And they felt God likes us. God's being extra special to us. And so because God's done this for us, they just sort of assume upon that favor and just expect that favor and they sort of live with that sort of glow about them that somehow God has something special for me. And in the midst of that what happens, in the midst of seeing themselves as doing pretty good, they were a people that had done a certain set of good works and they would describe themselves as saying, "I'm a pretty good person. I do basically everything that God wants me to do." And if someone called them up short and said, "Well, yeah, but hold on a second. There's a few things where you're coming up short." Their response would have been, "Hold off a minute. I certainly don't think that when I've done all these things for God that He's going to have a fit about these couple of things over here." And so they got more and more lazy about things and a lot more things began to slip. And they sort of take God lightly and God becomes less and less of a big deal and a concern of what He thinks and how He feels about it, and they become more and more—things just start to slip. We in our time would call that a slow leak, we call those a series of compromises, and it's at this point that God comes and He's speaking to these people and He's trying to wake them up and He's trying to get their attention to say, "You have depended too long on the fact that you feel you are a special class of people, that you feel that somehow you have a corner on the market of truth, that somehow you have a corner on My favor." And He says, "It's time now, step back, I want to talk to you about how I feel about these things that you're not listening to." There are things in our lives today in this room where we've just chosen not to follow God in that area and I call it selective obedience. And because these things we really like to do and everyone notices and everyone claps for us and says, "You do a good job at that" and everyone encourages us on that. And you say, "Yeah, but I struggle a little bit over here." "Oh, that's no big deal." And we pass it off and sort of push it down; we all struggle with that, no big deal, and we sort of throw it off to the side. And it's in the midst of that that God comes sliding in to say just stop folks. I want you to see me and I want you to hear me. And it's at this point in the book of Amos that God asks this list of questions of the people. I'm going to help you out. I did this the first service and they really appreciated it, so I've got to do it for you. The answers to the questions—I always hate getting the answers wrong in here, I'm going to ask you what the answer is each time—the first set of answers are "no" and the last two questions that God asks the answer is "yes." Okay, so as we read this that just gives you a little heads-up and I'll warn you when we get to the yes answers so you don't just blurt out no, because some of you have never known the right answer before and you're just thrilled now to know the right answers and you're going to blurt it out. So it's all no until I tell you otherwise. So chapter 3, verse 3—so God says hey, I'm about ready to come to you in punishment because you haven't listened, you haven't responded, you haven't heard—and He asks them questions: 3

“Do two walk together, unless they have agreed to meet?

And the answer is [Congregation: No]. Great class. You learn fast. Verse 4: 4

Does a lion roar in the forest, when he has no prey?

[Congregation: No] Does a young lion cry out from his den, if he has taken nothing? [Congregation: No] 5

Does a bird fall in a snare on the earth, when there is no trap for it?

[Congregation: No] –4–

2014-0511. GOD VERSUS RELIGION | WEEK 3 Does a snare spring up from the ground, when it has taken nothing? [Congregation: No] Okay, the next two are yes, right? [laughter] 6

Is a trumpet blown in a city, and the people are not afraid?

[Congregation: Yes] That's a siren. We hear them talk about a trumpet. I don't know, I've never heard of a trumpet blown in the city. That just doesn't really scare me too much. But He's talking about some sort of a siren that rings out; this warning, this distress call that there's a problem. I grew up in a tiny, little town and at the bottom of our street—I mean, we're talking about it was the same distance from everyone; I mean, we're talking about a couple hundred yards—was the fire station. And whenever there was an emergency call, you know, someone runs over to the fire station. I still remember where the switch was. You'd flip the switch and on comes the fire alarm and all of a sudden you see everyone jump in their cars. Now they could've gotten to the fire station faster by running, but they loved that little blue light running on their windshield, right? And they'd jump in their cars and they'd fly down there and I know they let that fire alarm ring a lot longer than it needed to because they just loved hearing that siren ring. I remember after Three Mile Island blew up and all of a sudden they started putting up all these big sirens all over the area so that if that ever happened again, there was a meltdown, there would be a siren to alert us that there was a problem. But here's the troubling part of it, I think I've probably even told you about this. Remember this winter when our pipes froze and they burst out here in the lobby because it was so cold and all that kind of stuff? Well, that for some reason set off our fire alarms here and when they did I was down in my office, which is down in that part of the basement, yeah, it's in the basement on that side of the church, and when the alarms went off someone came by and said, "The alarms are going off." I said, "Yeah. They go off from time to time." They're like, "Are you going to leave." I'm like, "No. Until I see flames I'm not too worried about it." And I think they stuck their heads in my office two or three other times and asked me if I was going to leave, and finally the third time someone texted me, "Lee, it's time to come up here to the lobby so you can see what's really happening." Yeah, so I come up and I see a flood; that's not what I expect a fire alarm to go off for. But there is something in our psyche that we hear alarms, we listen up for a moment, but there's something that's sort of, "Ah, it's probably not real. It's probably not for me. It's probably not a big deal." And we just sort of don't do anything about it. God's saying here in this questioning process there's a cause-and-effect issue going on here. This doesn't happen that this isn't happening. This doesn't happen that this isn't happening. Right? Right? Right? And He comes to this place where He says either there's a siren in a town, there's a trumpet going off trying to get your attention, are you hearing this? God's saying to His people, "People, I want to get your attention." The next thing that He says, and this is what I referred to earlier, says: Does disaster come to a city, unless the Lord has done it? — AMOS 3:3-6

That's one of those things that we said earlier can create a whole bunch of raised voices having a discussion about it. "God doesn't do that." "God's not doing that." "That's just normal weather patterns going through." You think about the New Testament where Scripture tells us that the end times, before Jesus returns, one of the signs of Jesus' return is that earthquakes will increase; a natural phenomenon and that's to somehow alert our attention that Jesus is coming back soon.

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2014-0511. GOD VERSUS RELIGION | WEEK 3 Do you recognize how often we're seeing in our news right now that there are earthquakes? I just saw this week huge predictions of Oklahoma and they're expecting these huge earthquakes in Oklahoma and we're like, "Yeah, yeah, whatever." Mexico City, I think it was—was it this week or last week—was rattled by a pretty decent sized earthquake? Yeah. We know in our news cycle you'll hear about it loud for a day or two and then it's as if it never happened and we're on to the next thing. Our Bible has been very clear. In fact, the predictive prophecies of the Bible have all come true; that when He says there's going to be earthquakes before my return we ought to stop and go hey, I'm listening. I'm all ears. I'm noticing. I'm aware. This ought to cause me. And God says I am going to do these things—does a siren not ring, does a natural disaster not happen—so as to get your attention? God says I'm trying to get your attention to draw your eyes back to me, and I will do whatever it takes to get your attention back on me. Because what God's people went through in Israel was this ongoing cycle over and over; they'd get it right, they'd get their attention back on God, and then they'd begin to slip, slip, slip until they'd get to this place where they're down at the very bottom and they'd start screaming out, "God! Help!" And you think about another time when we read in the Bible of a natural storm where there was a cry out for help. Mark chapter 4, and you're very familiar with the story but it's worth repeating because there's a couple of things in this story that actually draw our attention along the subject that we're talking about. Mark chapter 4 and I'm going to start reading at verse 35. Jesus gets on a boat with His disciples to go over to Galilee and that's one of those lakes because of where the land was formed there and the mountains rise up, storms can come up on that lake pretty fast. It's interesting when you're looking at the lake it doesn't look that big and you just sort of hardly think that it can do this, but it's verifiable that that happens on this lake, and verse 35 of Mark chapter 4 says this: On that day, when evening had come, he [Jesus] said to them, “Let us go across to the other side.” 35

— so going across that lake — 36

And leaving the crowd, they took him with them in the boat, just as he was. And other boats were with him. 37 And a great windstorm arose, and the waves were breaking into the boat, so that the boat was already filling. 38 But he was in the stern, asleep on the cushion. And they woke him and said to him, “Teacher, do you not care that we are perishing?” 39 And he awoke and rebuked the wind and said to the sea, “Peace! Be still!” And the wind ceased, and there was a great calm. Isn't that a great, great thing to know that we worship a God who is in charge of the universe; who is in charge of what's around us and He'll bring calm to rough seas. And some of us are going through some of those rough seas right now and we cry out to Him, "Jesus, come help me!" And He does and He brings peace in our lives. There's some of us going right now I need that peace, I want that peace; those are words that I want. So in that moment Jesus speaks to the waves and the waves die down, and it is a reminder to us that the God of the universe has control over all of the elements of the universe. When He speaks to the waves they calm down. When He speaks to the storms He is the one who brings the hurricane, He's the one who brings the tornadoes, He's the one who brings the flood, and Amos is saying do you not notice when these things happen that God is trying to get your attention? That, I believe, is one of the reasons why there is this quick just marginalizing anything that's ever said when the message comes out, "Could this be God trying to get our attention?" "Oh, knock it off. Only the quacks talk like that." And yet we look here—Jesus himself calms the storm, but I want you to capture what happens next because you go that's great that He calmed the storm, but what happens next it says this, verse 40: 40

He said to them, “Why are you so afraid? Have you still no faith?”

— listen to verse 41 — 41

And they were filled with great fear and said to one another, “Who then is this, that even the wind and the sea obey him?” –6–

2014-0511. GOD VERSUS RELIGION | WEEK 3 — MARK 4:35-41

So it's at that moment that they recognize God is powerful. He is over the wind and the sea and there is no hurricane, there is no flood, there is no tornado that will not respond to His voice. They are under His control. And so it's at that moment they realize how powerful He is. If there is something that I wish I could somehow help all of us including myself wrap our arms around today is how big God is, and become overwhelmed at the power of God. We have a tendency to try to create God in our image and try to bring Him down to our own size. And that is why what I want to talk to you about next and what Amos says next is so hard for us to wrap our arms around, and so just flipping back to Amos, as we get back to Amos after he says this: Does disaster come to a city, unless the Lord has done it? In other words, God trying to get our attention using one more method to say wake up. And then he says this: 7

“For the Lord God does nothing without revealing his secret to his servants the prophets. 8 The lion has roared; who will not fear? The Lord God has spoken; who can but prophesy?” — AMOS 3:6-8

You may remember that at the very beginning of chapter 1 of our study together He said there the lion has roared1 and now He says again the lion has roared. It's as if we start the conversation—we split up into three weeks so we think it's three separate talks—but it's one conversation and as Amos is talking he says to the people the "Lion has roared" and then he begins to talk to the people outside of God's people and he says hey, you're all held accountable. And then he begins to talk to God's people and he says hey, you're held accountable, even more accountable because you're God's Chosen People and you're in possession of the truth. How can you have possession of the truth and not do something with it? And then he comes to the end and he says hey, the lion has roared—God is trying to get your attention right now. He's speaking loud to you. These sirens have gone off. These disasters have happened to somehow cause your attention to be piqued, to go, "What is going on here?" And Amos wants to assure them this is God trying to get your attention. And he says, the phrase there when he talks about this, "who will not fear." It's part of our conversation that we don't fear anything, and we certainly don't want to have to fear God. We love to talk about one side of God's attributes—about the love of God, the mercy of God, the grace of God—and we believe in that. We preach that. We revel in that. We're so incredibly thankful for that today, but sometimes we do that to the exclusion of talking about the fear of God because we don't understand the fear of God. We don't want to be scared of God. That's—this becomes the subject that's hard to get our arms around, so my thought process is if you look through your Bible you'll see this phrase, "the fear of the Lord" all over the place. Probably the one that comes to your mind the quickest is Solomon saying the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom.2 You may remember Solomon saying if you take everything there is in the world and you sum it up, he basically says the sum of all that I've learned and everything I've gained—and you remember all the wisdom that he had— if I put all of that together he goes, I boil it down to basically two things: Fear the Lord and obey His commands.3 And if you read through the Psalms, throughout the whole Scripture, it's just over and over and over this concept of the fear of the Lord, and yet it's something that we shy away from because again, we don't really want to think 1 2 3

And he said: “The Lord roars from Zion and utters his voice from Jerusalem" – AMOS 1:2

"The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom" – Psalm 111:10 Now all has been heard; here is the conclusion of the matter: Fear God and keep his commandments, for this is the duty of all mankind. – ECCLESIASTES 12:13

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2014-0511. GOD VERSUS RELIGION | WEEK 3 of God in those terms. We want God to be our personal vending machine. To give us what we want when we want it, and to try to make us feel better about ourselves and about our world around us and to make things go better. So, in talking about this subject of the fear of the Lord, what I want to do is say okay, what could I say to today that would help us understand it in a way that would be helpful so that it doesn't become something that we just want to reject flat out? Something that really helps us understand it, and it was in the midst of just looking through a ton of verses—and there are and you should study those on the fear of the Lord—that I came to Exodus chapter 20. And it's Exodus chapter 20 I find what I consider to be a foundational principle to this thought process of the fear of Lord. I've marked it in my Bible and I might encourage you to mark it in your Bible; Exodus chapter 20. Let me set the scene here because you're familiar with the scene there. The people had been released from Egypt and that's a glorious thing and they're thankful. And you may remember as they come across the Red Sea and they're wandering through the desert they finally end up at Mount Sinai, and they had been there for some time. Chapter 19, verse 1 says when all—what I'm about to share has happened—it says they were there the third new moon after the people of Israel had gone out of the land of Egypt.4 Do you know how long that is? I don't either. I get the feeling that it's not too awfully long; it's however many cycles till you get a new moon, but they'd been there for three of those. And so there they stand at the base of Mount Sinai, God's about to give the law and in the course of God arriving there at Mount Sinai to give the law, you have this awe-inspiring situation where you have thunder and lightning and smoke coming out of the mountain. And if you've ever been in the middle of a thunderstorm, you know how unsettling that can be when all of a sudden SNAP! And BOOM! And then this echo and a tree moving and winds picking up and all of a sudden you get to this place where you're just very uncomfortable and unsettled. And this is the situation they're in when God gives the law to the people, The Ten Commandments; this is how I want you to live, here's how you live in the best kind of way, do this and live, God says. And in the midst of that, I want to take you to chapter 20, verse 18, it says: 18

Now when all the people saw the thunder and the flashes of lightning and the sound of the trumpet and the mountain smoking,

And again, I don't think this was just like fireworks going off at the end of a ballgame where the team won. I think this is an awe-inspiring, overwhelming, disconcerting moment. It says: the people were afraid and trembled, and they stood far off 19 and said to Moses, “You speak to us, and we will listen; but do not let God speak to us, lest we die.” I want you to hear what Moses says to the people because I think this will help us understand; because you recognize here the fear of the Lord. I mean, this big, awesome, all-powerful God who has never sinned, cannot allow sin, who has the best way for His people to live and He wants His people to somehow grasp how huge and the gravity behind how He wants them to live. Now they're going keep Him away from us. Keep Him away from us. This is a God who comes near, this is a God who wants to come near, this is a God who wants to have relationship with us, this is a God who sends His Son Jesus so that we are no longer afraid of Him, and Moses responds to the people: 20

Moses said to the people, “Do not fear,

You've got to be kidding! How can you say that? And then he's going to turn around and say don't fear, but fear. Catch this in verse 20: for God has come to test you, that the fear of him may be before you, that you may not sin.” — EXODUS 20:18-20

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On the third new moon after the people of Israel had gone out of the land of Egypt, on that day they came into the wilderness of Sinai. 2 They set out from Rephidim and came into the wilderness of Sinai, and they encamped in the wilderness. There Israel encamped before the mountain. – EXODUS 19:1

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2014-0511. GOD VERSUS RELIGION | WEEK 3 Let me just say what I think this simply is here, the fear of God, is He wants to have relationship with us so in that way He doesn't want us to fear Him. He doesn't want us to fear, He wants us to come close to Him but He wants us to understand that this is a big deal to obey Him and that we need to fear Him and understand that He will come to us and He will deal with us in punishment if we don't take Him seriously. I was talking to a student many, many years ago, it's the only thing I remember that student saying, but she made a statement that really impacted me. She said to me, "I just never wanted to disappoint my daddy." I just remember thinking at that moment how cool, how cool that this girl cared so much about what her daddy thought that her whole life she wouldn't want to do anything that would disappoint him. And that's where we come at this moment. We have such a relationship with God, Jesus Christ, through His grace and His mercy and His redemption, that it now becomes our heart's desire going, "I don't want to disappoint Him." And God says here this whole issue of fear is so that you will know that if you go there, there is punishment. Not to be punitive but to draw you back, to keep you from going over the edge, to get your attention, to wake you up, to call you back. Here are some of the other verses in Scripture. Proverbs chapter 16, verse 6, says this exact same thing: Through love and faithfulness sin is atoned for; — so you just hear this forgivingness, you hear of love, you hear faithfulness — through the fear of the Lord a man avoids evil. — PROVERBS 16:6 (NIV & RSV)

Luke chapter 1, verse 50—because there's some who say, "Well, the fear of the Lord is in the Old Testament because He was big, bad God there." Same God in the Old Testament as the New Testament; don't let anyone separate that from you, but you go and check and see if this subject of the fear of the Lord is in the New Testament. Luke chapter 1, verse 50: From generation to generation he is merciful to those who fear him. — LUKE 1:50 (NET)

Book of Acts, chapter 9, verse 31; as the church is starting to grow so someone said well, where's that all fit into it? Listen to what it says, the church was seeing some peace, this was after that whole Ananias and Sapphira thing [see Acts 5] and the people see, wow, oh, this is sort of scary. God's takes care of sin. God deals with it. And the church there responds to that and in the midst of that the church was seeing peace and was being built up, and it says: 31

. . . And walking in the fear of the Lord and in the comfort of the Holy Spirit, it multiplied. — ACT 9:31

You see, when we get this bigger view of God and we recognize who He is, we begin to realize that our sin is extremely offensive to Him. If it's not, then mercy doesn't mean much; so that's the flip side of this. Mercy means a whole lot more because we recognize how big a deal our sin is to Him. And so the question that we have lying before us right now is as He talks to these people He says I am coming to you in punishment. The lion has roared. I have done everything; I've rung the siren, I have made the earth do some crazy things to try to get your attention. And God is saying one last time through the prophet of Amos: You're not listening. Wake up. Hear me. Turn from your ways. You have become okay with your sin. You have said I am privileged. My salvation is secure. We preach that here. We believe that you can't lose your salvation here. We believe that you are chosen people. That's what 1st Peter says5—a holy people called by God to an incredible service and an incredible purpose in life. 5

But you are a chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, God's special possession, that you may declare the praises of him who called you out of darkness into his wonderful light. – 1 PETER 2:9 (NIV)

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2014-0511. GOD VERSUS RELIGION | WEEK 3 And we're like, "Yes!" And we talk about the fact that He's forgiven you and He loves you, and He keeps calling you back to Himself and you go, "Yes, I needed that today. I needed that love to be poured all over me." And we believe that with everything in us. But God says I would not be doing you any favors if when you continue to choose to do things your own way, you continue along that path. We've done it with our children; when they're little we look at them and we go, "Isn't that cute?" And we laugh at their sins. They get a little bit older and we've been trained to call it stage or a phase that they're going through. They get even a little older and we go, "Well, you know what; they'll learn, they'll figure it out, they'll come along their way. They get a little bit older and we say, "You know what; they're pretty much a good kid. You know, I don't want to push them away." And so we don't call them on it. In fact, we think to ourselves that that would be a little bit too uncomfortable for me. I just want this place to be a happy place. And so we ignore things. And by the time they get in high school they're doing some crazy stuff that we know is going to send them on a trajectory for their life that we don't want them to go on that's going to bring harm to them, and yet we find ourselves saying, "I can't saying anything. When I was in high school I did even worse than that and I'd be a hypocrite to say anything." So we don't say anything. They become adults and we begin to walk through life and we go get a ticket for the theatre. I don't know about you, but at $12 or $15 a piece I just sort of gulp deep. I'd rather go out and eat that kind of money and go out to dinner than sit in a movie theater when I can get it three months from now for a buck; that just sort of galls me. But you know we've heard about this great movie and everyone's going to see it and our friends want to go to see it and all, and they've just been telling us how amazing it is and we go in there and we sit down and we're about 20 minutes into this thing and they're taking the Lord's Name in vain and they're just saying just some raunchy stuff, and the F-bomb is being dropped every 30 seconds and we're sitting there just, I mean, just sort of thrown back in our seats, but we can't find ourselves able to step out of the theatre because we're not sure what our friends will think. They're running a competition at work this month. The top salesman gets a certain reward and the commissions are there. This reward is something that the whole family will enjoy, and you've been telling the family all about it all month long and they're all excited and they're rooting you on, "Dad! Dad! You can sell one more thing. You can get there." So it's the end of the month and you're filling out all your forms and doing all the paperwork when all of a sudden you realize you're one sale away from being the top salesman and winning that award for your family, and you're sitting there pulling out your hair discouraged, disappointed, going how did this happen? I thought I had it; I was sure. I've been telling them that we were way over the top of anyone else; when all of a sudden you realize that there's actually a sale that's going to becoming through in the next week or so. It's in the new month but if you predated that, because after all, I mean, you worked on it before now and so it's not really a lie. And we begin to justify it in our heads and we write that down and we lie about the dates so that we can win the competition so we can get that special gift that the whole family has been looking forward to because, after all, we don't want to disappoint the kids do we? You go from this personal moment to this rational moment; maybe it's a little less convicting. Fifty million babies just snuffed out before they can live here on this earth. We sort of shrug and go, "What can I do about it?" We see marriage redefined and we don't even like to say anything now about it because that just wouldn't be politically correct to even comment on it, and no one likes what I have to say about that. Or even this week the Supreme Court coming out on public prayer in the public arena and we're even celebrating this week that that went through and that they protected prayer, and yet you step back and you go, "Wait a minute, the decision was 5 to 4; 4 said no to it." And God says I want to wake you up. I've been trying to get your attention, but because you think, "I've done pretty good; here's my list. These little things are not that big of a deal." You see, that's what your kid thought. And that's what you thought about your kid. And I have to say this as I close out here, I throw this out, I have heard this innumerable times in my ministry; a parent has come to me and said, "My daughter, she was such a good girl. She went to college and she's not walking with Jesus anymore." And it's a heartbreak at that moment because you wanted more for them than that. You trained them to do more than that, and now they're not there.

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2014-0511. GOD VERSUS RELIGION | WEEK 3 How often I've heard my son, he was like so on the right path. I remember when he was in high school and he got baptized here. In fact, the pastor baptized him and then he even said at that time he really felt like maybe he was being called to go do something like missions or something like that. And now the stuff he's doing since he's gone to school and—." In fact, they'll tell me at that moment, "He called the other night," and through tears they will spit it out and almost fearful to tell me the pastor that, "He told me he doesn't even believe in God anymore." How could that be? And many of you know the pain of that and we talk about that with a child, but some of you have a mate that has gone down that path. Some of you have a mother that has gone down that path. Some of you have a friend that went down that path. Some of you have someone that brought you to this church who's no longer here that's gone down that path. And you're going how could that be? And I have to tell you, it's not because they read some great book that convinced them that Christianity is not truth, you'll rarely find that to be the case. For a kid it's not that they went to that secular university and they were preaching evolution to them, or that godless professor who was taking them down this philosophical path. You know the question I ask of the mom and dad at that moment? I ask them, "Are they living in sin?" Here's what happens and it happens to each one of us and that's why this message is so incredibly important and why it's so incredibly heavy and why it's so incredibly opposed in this room right now. Everything inside of you is screaming to head for the bathroom right now. Hear me: When we start saying I like this sin and I'm protecting this one sin, it's my sin of choice, I'm saying I will do selective obedience. I'm going to obey in these areas, but this one's mine and God, you can't have this area. And you all know we've been talking about this long enough, sin separates us from God, and here's what happens is that sin becomes more and more important to us and we become more and more protective of that sin and we dig in on that sin more and more. And the power and the Spirit of God is hanging over us convicting us and it's happening in this room right now, some of you know exactly the sin that you're protecting. You're a great person; everyone around here thinks you're amazing. You're off the charts. You just know that they'd be so disappointed if they knew this. It doesn't matter what they think. This isn't about pleasing man, that's where it all went wrong. We were so busy trying to please everyone around us. We were trying to please our kids. We were trying to please our employer. We were trying to please the people around us and not say certain things to keep them happy. We didn't have a healthy fear of God, and at this moment God speaks to you and it's at that moment that you have to choose between your sin and God, and it's at that moment the easiest thing for your son, your daughter, your friend, your neighbor to do is say this thing of God, He doesn't exist. I will say I'm an atheist and I don't believe Him so as to protect my sin. And that's why, church, we need to be so ruthless when we see sin in our lives to root it out. And that's why the Scripture over and over says we need to have the fear of God. We need to be at this place where we say I don't want to disappoint my Daddy. I'm going to end with a quote. It's a guy you've probably heard of many times; his name is Oswald Chambers. Listen to what he says about the fear of the Lord: The remarkable thing about fearing God is that when you fear God you fear nothing else, whereas if you do not fear God you fear everything else. — OSWALD CHAMBERS

Lord God, I want to talk to You on behalf of this community, the Calvary community, on behalf of this family. We need to draw together and we need to be a family; we need to support each other. I talk to you on behalf of this community; I know that we have come up short. I know that we have sinned and we need Your forgiveness. As a community we have not confronted each other. In fact, we've even encouraged each other and said, "Yeah, we're all sinful. It's okay. It's cool." Because we're afraid of our own sins having the spotlight shown on. We've chosen to ignore the things going on in our world today, nationally, and as a result the freedoms that we enjoy are being challenged. And here in America You are being systemically removed from every – 11 –

2014-0511. GOD VERSUS RELIGION | WEEK 3 aspect of our lives. And so we ask for forgiveness nationally for that. We would ask that You would forgive our sin and heal our land. We pray that You would forgive our sins as a community and heal our church. I pray that You would forgive our sins as a family and heal our families. Forgive our sins individually, the ones that we're calling out for right now and help us to repent, to turn from them. We want to see You for who You are. When we lift up these songs of praise that just lift up praises to a God who is so good we don't want to disappoint You. Abba, Father, God. We're in awe of You. We love You. We love Your power, that You can bring peace to our lives through Jesus. Help us to live our lives pure and holy before You. We come to You as Isaiah did saying Woe to me . . . a man of unclean lips and I live among a people of unclean lips.6 Lord God, we come before You repenting and drawing close to You, and Lord God, I pray that it will change me. I pray that it will change our families. I pray that it will change this church, this community. Lord God, be glorified by a group of people right now who have soft hearts saying, "Yeah, let it be me, Lord." Who are saying no to certain things, who are making changes in their lives even as we speak because we're repenting and we're saying I want to come near to you, God. Thank you for coming near to us. Thank you that in the midst of this You just say I love you, and come because I love you. Thanks, Lord, for doing that. Lord, we're going to give our gifts to you right now, and we confess there again that we have been more concerned about the fear of man. We've been concerned that if we didn't give certain things to our kids what our friends would think or what even our kids would think. We've been afraid that if we didn't go to certain activities and certain parties and on certain vacations people would see us in a different way. And we did so at the expensive of giving back to You and saying You're first in our lives. We've said it with our mouths that You're first in our lives, but we live something totally different. So Lord God, as we pray and even give our gifts, I would pray that they wouldn't be out of fear, that they wouldn't be out of guilt, but just out of a pure heart going, "We love you, Jesus, the most and You're first in my life." So be glorified. Use these gifts to minister to a whole lot more people. We ask in Jesus' Name, Amen. VIMEO: https://vimeo.com/94863939

UNLESS OTHERWISE INDICATED, SCRIPTURE QUOTATIONS ARE FROM THE HOLY BIBLE, ENGLISH STANDARD VERSION (ESV). COPYRIGHT © 2001 BY CROSSWAY BIBLES, A DIVISION OF GOOD NEWS PUBLISHERS SCRIPTURE QUOTATIONS MARKED (NIV) ARE TAKEN FROM THE NEW INTERNATIONAL VERSION (NIV) HOLY BIBLE, NEW INTERNATIONAL VERSION®, NIV® COPYRIGHT © 1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 BY BIBLICA, INC.® USED BY PERMISSION. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED WORLDWIDE. SCRIPTURE QUOTATIONS MARKED (RSV) FROM THE REVISED STANDARD VERSION OF THE BIBLE, COPYRIGHT © 1946, 1952, AND 1971, THE DIVISION OF CHRISTIAN EDUCATION OF THE NATIONAL COUNCIL OF THE CHURCHES OF CHRIST IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. USED BY PERMISSION. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. SCRIPTURE QUOTATIONS MARKED (NET) ARE TAKEN FROM THE NET BIBLE®. COPYRIGHT ©1996-2006 BY BIBLICAL STUDIES PRESS, L.L.C. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. COPYRIGHT © 2014 – LEE WIGGINS – ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

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And I said: “Woe is me! For I am lost; for I am a man of unclean lips, and I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips; for my eyes have seen the King, the Lord of hosts!” – ISAIAH 6:5

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