Fear The Lord

Made For A Mission-Fear God

4-6-08 2 Samuel 12:1-12 and Acts 5:-11

Think back for a moment when you were growing up. How many of you had a person in your family that you had a healthy dose of fear and respect for just because of the way the person carried himself or herself? In our family, it was Aunt Helen. It did not matter if you were her child or one of the cousins, when Aunt Helen spoke, you listened and not only did you listen, you did what she told you to do.

She had a way of saying, “it you don’t get in here I’ll bust ya.” I never quite new what “I’ll bust ya”, meant but I did know, I did not want to be the first one to find out. I feared Aunt Helen, and to this day I love her dearly, and she has been my second mom since I was 11 years old. My fear of Aunt Helen helped keep me from making some bad decisions.

Fear is one of the emotions God has given us to protect us. Yet as we search the Bible, we find the only thing we are commanded to fear is God. The bible tells us in Proverbs 1:7, the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom. If God is love why are we to fear God? God is not only love, God is all Powerful, God is Just, God is Awesome, and God is worthy to be praised. God tells us that because God loves us, God will discipline us for wrong behavior. Is there anybody here that ever got a good whupping, because your mom or dad cared about how you behave? Love and discipline go together.

We have changed God from being awesome and frightening into being more of an old grandfather who is just begging us to do the right thing or pointing his finger saying you better stop. As a result we think we can lock God up in a room and check him out on our schedule. As much as we like to think we can fool God, we forget the word of God teaches, the eyes of the Lord are in everyplace, looking at the good and the evil that we do. Part of how well we carry out our mission is going to depend on how much we truly fear God.

Let’s continue with our series of David the King. David had been walking on his roof one night and spotted a beautiful woman bathing. He found out she was Bathsheba, the wife of Uriah one of his trusted servants who was away in the military fighting for David. It didn’t matter to David, because he wanted to satisfy his sexual lust for Bathsheba. She came to the palace that night, they had sex and she went home. A few months later she found out she was pregnant. She sent word to David to help her out.

David sent for Uriah to come home from the battlefield. David wanted Uriah to go home and have sex with his wife Bathsheba. Uriah came but didn’t go home. David tried twice to get him to go home, but Uriah would not enjoy his wife while his fellow soldiers were risking their lives. David sent Uriah back to the commander of the army with a note saying, “put him on the front line of battle, and then draw away from him, so that he gets killed in action.”

Uriah is killed. Bathsheba mourns for her husband. Then David calls Bathsheba back to the palace to be his wife. He looks great in the eyes of the people in that he is going to marry a pregnant widow whose husband was killed in battle for his country.

David was convinced he could cover his tracks. He was convinced that God was not going to do anything about the situation. He was convinced that he could sin and get away with it. He even thought he could continue on in his relationship with God with their being no consequence. But the last verse of chapter says “but the thing David had done displeased the Lord? Have you ever been there, in which something you did, you know in your heart displeased the Lord.”?

Now there are times when tragedy comes into our lives simply because we live in a fallen world. People are killed by drunk drivers, not because of some sin in their lives, but because when drunks get behind the wheel somebody else dies. There are difficulties that come into our lives because of poor choices that we make. You go off on your boss, you will be fired and find yourself in a severe financial crisis.

There are difficulties that come into our lives because we are under a Satanic attack in which the enemy is seeking to discourage us from following God’s will for our lives. All kinds of things go wrong at the same time, when we’re doing our best to live for the Lord. There are also difficulties that come into our lives, because God is disciplining us for our behaviors. That’s the one we find in this passage in 2 Samuel 12.