Should You Fear God? Series

I heard about a young boy that went off to one of these extremely expensive universities, and the bills were coming in monthly to these parents and they were struggling to keep their head above water. One day his mother received a letter from him and he said: “Dear Mom, I’m writing to inform you that I have flunked all of my courses. I had an accident and totally wrecked my car. I owe the clothing store in town $2,000.00 and I have been suspended for the next semester because of misconduct. I am coming home, prepare Dad.” His mother wrote a letter back to him that just said this “Dear Son, Dad is prepared, prepare yourself.”

Peter writes from Rome (1 Peter 5:13) to the believers in what is now know as modern-day Turkey (1 Peter 1:1), an area of around many square miles. Peter writes to believers who are facing a testing of their faith. Just on the onset of a severe persecution from Nero (Peter is probably writing around 62-63 AD), modern-day American Christians struggle with identifying with the believers in Peter’s day. Most of us are afraid of the recent economic downturn where the retirement accounts of Americans have lost $2 trillion in the past 15 months. This is very different crisis that the believers in Peter’s day were experiencing. In present day Mosul, Iraqi (the third [3rd] largest city in Iraqi), dozens of Christians have been killed the past two weeks. Al-Qaeda is being blamed for this persecution. Christians have lived in Mosul for centuries. Recently, the archbishop of the area was conducted and murdered. Consequently, 1,000 families have left the area in order to hide. This is the kind of severe trial Peter addresses.

“And if you call on him as Father who judges impartially according to each one's deeds, conduct yourselves with fear throughout the time of your exile, 18 knowing that you were ransomed from the futile ways inherited from your forefathers, not with perishable things such as silver or gold, 19 but with the precious blood of Christ, like that of a lamb without blemish or spot. 20 He was foreknown before the foundation of the world but was made manifest in the last times for the sake of you 21 who through him are believers in God, who raised him from the dead and gave him glory, so that your faith and hope are in God” (1 Peter 1:17-21).

The more precious the price paid to rescue you from a life of sin, the more horrible and fearful it is to take that price and make it a permission for sinning. Imagine a girl who is kidnapped from her wealthy father. The kidnappers demand a huge ransom and the father liquidates all his assets, selling his house and his possessions right down to his wife’s wedding ring. He brings all that he has to the appointed place and sets the ransom down in a field and walks away. Soon the daughter walks out and gets the ransom and takes it back to the kidnappers. Then she puts her arm around one of them and as she walks away looks over her shoulder to her father laughing and hollers, “Sucker!” We would all say that the girl committed a fearful and treacherous act. Peter is warning us against the horrible danger of trying to do that with the ransom of God. He knows that there are people who try take the ransom of God from sin—the blood of Jesus—and turn it into a means of sinning. The very ransom that verse 18 says was paid to free us from a futile way of life some people try to use to fund that very life of sin.

The Bible commands you to: 1. Set Your Hope on Christ (1 Peter 1:13); 2. Be Holy (1 Peter 1:15) and now… 3. Fear God (1 Peter 1:17). For the first commandment, “Set Your Hope on Christ,” I doubt that anyone had their defenses up. For the second commandment, “Be Holy,” the receptivity was still pretty high because we believe that God is holy. For the third commandment, "Fear God,” I assume almost universal suspicion for what I am about to say. Fear of God just isn't in the acceptable air we breath today. It’s not part of the culturally correct—which means mainly psychologically correct—view of the healthy, satisfying religious life. So what I want to plead with you is to recognize that growing deeper and stronger as a Christian comes not by choosing to embrace only those biblical teachings you are already comfortable with and already easily understand You don’t grow that way. Rather you grow deep and strong by also embracing the teachings you are not comfortable with and that are hard to understand with the confidence that God has not taught us anything false or harmful in the Scriptures