We All Live in Awe

Well, we are talking about the fear of the Lord in this class. And the fear of the Lord is basically our recognition,! Our living in light of God's glory and the wonder of who God is.

And when we see that and when we're experiencing that, when we're feeling that, the response is awe. The response is wonder. The response is what the Bible calls fear.

And it changes the way we live. The idea last week we saw is that He is here. He is with us. He is present in all of His holiness, all of His power, all of His wisdom, all of His love.

He is here with us. He is not some sort of faraway absentee landlord. I just read in Psalm 37 this morning that the Lord is close.

The Lord is nearby. And so when we begin to see that, what happens is we begin to experience a functional awe.

It's not just a feeling of our heart that is passive, that doesn't cause anything or create anything. It's not just simply an awe that stands there and gapes in wonder, although there is a place for that.

It's awe that causes us to live differently, to shun sin, to, in faith and in hope, to obey.

It translates into action. And so the big question before us is how do we grow in the fear of the Lord? And last week we saw that we grow in the fear of the Lord when we practice the conscious presence of God, that we continually remind ourselves that God is here, that God is available, that God is relevant, that God is right here on hand to help us, to be all that He is for us.

But it's not just that, that He is here in all of His holiness. And so everything I do, I do under the gaze of God. Everything you do, you do under the gaze of God.

And we talked about how it's not only our outward behavior, it's our thoughts. He knows them all. And it's not even just our thoughts. He understands clearly our motives.

The motives behind the thoughts. He reads those. He knows those. So today we want to see that everyone, everyone, you sitting there in your seat lives in fear of something.

You live in awe of something. Something has your heart. Something has your heart, your love. Something to you is great and awesome and wonderful and glorious.

We all live in awe of something. There's no aweless, fearless person. That's a human impossibility because God created us to experience awe, to experience wonder, to give our hearts away.

And so if there was a person who didn't live in awe and wonder of something or for something, that's a human impossibility.

It would defy the very fabric of our being, of your being. So right now, as you are sitting there, as you're living your life, you are in, in every moment, you are practicing awe.

Either awe of God, fear of God, or awe and fear and giving your heart to something. So we're all born with this capacity for reverence.

This is the biggest deal. This is the greatest thing. So little dark-haired Olivia Hart, who is as cute as cute can be with her little fingers and her little nose and all her black hair.

Before long, her mom and her dad are going to start to see that little Olivia has been hardwired. God has hardwired her for awe, for fear, for something to capture her heart.

In a few years, she's going to start saying things like, That amazes me. That's amazing. That's awesome. Or, I can't believe it. Or, if I only had blank, then I would be blank.

I don't know. You're sitting there watching Cartoon Network with your children, and that's this huge platform for selling children's toys, right? And if you've seen your kids and looking at those commercials, it's all this, If you have this, that's going to be great.

Well, that's playing on this idea. If I only had this, then I would be cool or whatever. Or, she's going to start to say things like, I can't believe she has that.

That's what I've always wanted. Or, when I grow up, I want to blank. Now, we all think and we all say things like that, Because, just like Olivia, we're hardwired for that.

We're hardwired for glory. We're hardwired. Our hearts are made to be had. To be possessed. Our hearts were made to be given away.

But, we, and poor Olivia too, Just like her mom and dad and her grandparents and you and me, She's going to do something.

She's going to do the things that we have done. She's going to make a terrible exchange. That's the sad thing. She'll exchange the truth of God for a lie And worship and serve created things Rather than the creator who is forever blessed.

Amen. See, we all replace awe of God With awe of the creation. We replace the awe of the creator. So, we are meant to live in this functional Day to day, hour to hour, moment by moment Awe and wonder of who God is.

And we're going to replace it. We're going to give our hearts to something else. Because, right from Adam, All the sons of Adam, And all the daughters of Eve, We have bought into a lie.

A terrible lie. And we act on this lie all the time. It's a devastating lie. It's a dehumanizing lie. It's the biggest of all lies.

It's the very first lie that the devil told so cunningly. He just insinuated it. But sometimes that's all it takes. And it's this lie that destroys countless lives.

It's the lie that destroys families and people. It destroys children. And it leads to murder. And it leads to anger. And it leads to disappointment. It leads to regret.

Maybe you've seen the movie Inception. And the whole point of that movie is, Can we get an idea? Can we sew an idea into this person's head To get him to do what we want him to do?

It's the whole idea of trying to plan a thought In this character's head. And one of the characters in that movie says, What is the most resilient parasite? Bacteria?

Virus? Virus? An intestinal worm? An idea? Resilient? Contagious? Once an idea has taken hold of the brain, It's almost impossible to eradicate.

An idea that is fully formed, Fully understood, That sticks. It's right there somewhere. And so in the Garden of Eden, The devil planted a lie.

He sowed a lie. And it's a lie that sticks right here. Right here, in our heads. And it's there. And what's the lie?

It's a very simple one. And it's this. You can have life without God. You can have life without God. Life can be found somewhere outside the Creator.

There's hope for peace. There's hope for joy. Rest, contentment, satisfaction. You can find it somewhere in the creation. And so we, from the first to the last, Have believed it.

And Christians, we are recovering from it. It's part of our growing sanctification That this lie, And all of its many fingers, That has its fingers all throughout our life, We get rid of it.

We cut each one of those things off. We all, But we all stumble back into it. We all live in it Until God saves us from that delusion. And how we do need to be Saved from the delusion.

That I can be happy. I can find rest. I can find ultimate joy. I can find contentment. I can find life Somewhere other than God. So, you were made to live in the fear of the Lord.

You were made to live in the wonder of God. You were made to live in the presence, In the conscious presence of God. In awe of God. And so, if you give your heart, And your fear, And your life, To some created thing, Then it's not going to lead anywhere good.

It's like putting diesel In an engine that runs on gasoline. One time, Probably more than one time, Someone, When I worked at the lumber yard, We had gas cans, And we had diesel cans.

And sometimes, People put diesel into the gas cans, And gas into the diesel cans. And then you take the cans, And you pour them into the, Into your forklift. And, A lot of times, The thing will run just for a little bit, And then it starts to, Get really clunky.

And it's smelling, And it's bad, And you're like, What's happened? And everyone starts pointing their fingers, At everyone else, And you know, It's this great mystery, You don't know what has happened. That's what it's like.

Our life will run for a little bit, When it's fueled by awe of something else. It will run for a little bit, But pretty soon it starts to, It starts to fall apart.

It's not going anywhere good. And so, If you put creation, Where the creator needs to go, You're already headed for real trouble. And it gets worse than that, Because at the most fundamental levels, We all somehow end up replacing, Awe of God with awe of, Who?

Who? Self. See, Behind all the other idols, Is the ultimate idol. It's the idol of self.

Love. So think Adam and Eve in the garden. The devil went fishing one day. And he went fishing with some great bait. What was it?

Well, It wasn't the odor, It wasn't the allure of the fruit. The fruit did look good. God didn't create anything ugly. It looked good. It looked tasty. But that wasn't the bait.

The bait was this. God knows that when you eat of it, Your eyes will be opened, And you will be like God. So the woman saw that the tree was good for food, And it was a delight to the eyes, And that the tree was also desirable for gaining wisdom.

And she took some and ate it. So what was it? This fruit, The devil was saying, Is the pathway to instant promotion. Instant promotion.

You're going to go from creator to being like God. You get to be in the middle. So, What the devil offered Eve was God's place.

What the devil offered Eve was, Eve, Being God's creature, Could be like God. She could be at the center, And God could take the peripheral. She could know and experience the glory of being God, Or like God.

And remember what I just said, We all give our hearts away to something. We're all made to live in awe, To live in this wonder. And so, She did it.

She traded that wonder, And that awe, That fear, For God. And she traded it for herself. And so, With just a single lie, Now Eve could give her heart, To Eve.

And Adam, Could give his heart to Adam. They would be like God. Now that's what sin does to all of us. It replaces the worship of God, With the worship of self.

It replaces awe of God, With awe of self. It replaces submission, To God, With self-rule. It replaces gratitude, With demands.

Places gratitude with demands. See, Gratitude is a function of a creation, Of something receiving something. You don't ever see God saying thank you.

Because he doesn't have anything to be thankful for, Because he's the giver of all good gifts. But, So think of that. I wonder how thankful you are.

Your thanklessness, Could very well be like an echo, A shadow, Of, Thinking, You're God. Do you make a lot of demands, On people, On situations, On circumstances, On the world.

Is your position one of gratitude, Or demands? It replaces faith, With self-reliance. Vertical joy, With horizontal envy.

Because now, What has happened is, Instead of being one God, Now there's billions of gods. Isn't there? Or people acting like gods. There's billions of gods, Floating around, And we're all competing for worshipers.

Aren't we? If I'm God, You guys should be worshiping me. But vice versa is true. If you're God, Everyone needs to be worshiping you. So we're all competing for worshipers.

And it replaces rest, In God's sovereignty, With a quest for personal control. So, I want to control the circumstances.

I want to decide what happens in my life. And I'm offended when something happens in my life, That I hadn't planned. And so instead of resting, That God is sovereign, Now I'm going to try to get as much control as possible.

I'm going to try to gain, And use my sovereignty. And so we live for our glory. We live for our rules. We live to serve our agenda.

And so we curse whatever gets in the way. And we hate having to wait. And we get upset when we go without. And we strike back when we feel like we've been wronged.

And we do all that we do to satisfy our pleasure, Our cravings. And we envy those who have what we think we deserve. And we pout.

And we complain. And we judge. In a word, We live for ourselves. Awe of self. A functioning fear of me.

For my glory. I'm the most important person in this situation. 2 Corinthians 5.15 Christ died for all, So that those who live might no longer live for themselves, But for him who died for them.

What's the DNA of sin? I live for myself. I'm the biggest deal. When I look at the class picture, The first person I look at is me.

And when you're telling a story, You know what I want to do more than anything? Not listen. I want to tell you what I have to say. Because I'm the most important.

And so that's the battle going on right now in our hearts. There's a battle for worship. There's a battle for awe. It's happening in our hearts. It's happening in our families.

It's happening in our church. It happens at work. And the war goes on. And you see it played out in a thousand different ways. We replace awe of God with awe of self.

And it leads to ruin. It leads to strife. It leads to misery. It leads to all sorts of personal problems.

Let me just give you some examples. Jim was disappointed. He had set his eyes on that promotion for years. He wanted to be promoted.

And he had done all the right things. And he had got in with all the right people. You see, he had it all planned out. He knew the way forward. And he had done everything right.

He played the game well. But then the promotion went to someone else. And so now how does he feel? You tell me. How does he feel?

Disappointed. Will? Angry. Discouraged. Disillusioned. Disappointed.

And now all he wants to do is quit. And finally something happened one day. And he says, that's it. They're not going to treat me like that. And he quits. Now he's been out of a job for 18 months.

And he has no idea what to do. So what was at the bottom of that? To put it very simply. Big. Important.

Worthy. Jim. Little. God. Not there. God. Not caring. God. Janice was so hurt.

She had been a loyal friend. She had had Sue's back again and again. They had been close as close can be. And she, they talked for hours. They were like sisters.

They were going to be best friends forever. Then one day Sue said, I'm moving. I'm moving. Sue had known for six months that she was moving.

But she never told Janice. And when Sue told Janice, it's like everything went black. She was stunned and she couldn't breathe.

And something clicked in Janice. Something that said, I'm never going to be hurt again. I'll never share my heart again.

I'll never make close friends again. And now she's lonely. But she's safe. She's built a wall around her heart.

And she never goes out of that wall. And no one can get in. It's all polite smiles. It's all yes. Fine. Thank you. I'm doing well. Thank you. But in the inside, all she does is pout.

And complain. And judge other people. And she knows better now. She's not going to be tricked again. Again, what is that?

Big, important Janice. Little, small, irrelevant God. Then there's George. George just can't take it anymore.

He is so angry. No one is going to disrespect him like that. Especially not his son. And it's my house. My rules.

My way. Whatever it's going to cost. He's going to respect me. Now I don't have a teenage boy yet. But I don't think that attitude is going to end anywhere pretty.

And so here's George. Here's Janice. Here's Jim. They're all living in functional awe of themselves. Functional worship of themselves. The biggest person in their life is them.

The most important thinking is theirs. The most important power and control is what they have. And they're hurt. They're the disrespected.

They're the victims. They're the righteous. They're the one day we'll be vindicated. See, they painted themselves like they're God.

And we could go through a lot more. We could go through the frustrated and the loner and the afraid and the envious and the hopeless. And each of the situations are different. Their responses are different.

But at the bottom, they're all believing that lie. That you're the one at the center. You can have life somewhere outside of God. And primarily you can have it right here in yourself.

God isn't great. God isn't here. God isn't holy. God can't be trusted. That's what all their reactions say. So just think.

We're not going to go into this. But just think of what a difference it would make in Janice and George and Jim's lives if they were thinking about what we talked about last week.

Or if they were thinking about what we talked about the last four or five weeks before that. Of God's holiness and God's greatness and God's love and God's wisdom and God's presence.

Their responses would be totally different, wouldn't it? The same bad things would have happened to each one of them, maybe. Or maybe not.

But their responses would be totally different. So, the question is, how does this affect me?

Or how can I tell if I just want to go deeper into my own heart, into your own heart? I want to give you some principles to look at yourself, to examine yourself, to think about your situations.

Because just like George and Janice and Jim, you're in situations. Where you are being tempted to trust in your own resources. Tempted to think you're the most important one.

And maybe you're already doing those things. And so the question is, how do you uncover those replacements? How do you see where you're buying the lie?

You're believing the lie. Well, the first principle is this. Your emotional life is a window into what has your heart. Your emotional life is a window to what has your heart.

Your emotional life shows you what has captured you, what has caught you. And that could be God, and that could be a lot of other things. But your emotional life is a window to what's going on inside.

Your emotions reveal your true thoughts. Your emotions reveal your true beliefs. Your emotions reveal your true desires, your true hopes.

Not the things that you say that you hope for. Not the things that you smile and talk about necessarily at church. Or when you know you're supposed to give the right answer.

But your emotions show what really has your heart. So your emotional highs. Your emotional lows. The things that make you so happy.

The things that make you so sad. They're rooted in what has captured your heart. Captured your awe. It shows you what your functioning fear is.

And so if I live with money as my God. In awe of affluence. Do you have to be rich to live in awe of affluence? No.

No, not at all. You can be rich and not be in awe of affluence. And you can be dirt poor and live in the awe of affluence. But if you live in awe of affluence.

You'll be impressed with displays of money. So just think about that. If you were living in awe of God. You would be impressed when God shows his power.

And God shows his might. That would do something to your heart. That would thrill you. That would be like, yes, I want that. But when you're living in awe of affluence. Then you're going to be drawn to.

Oh, look at what they did. It's going to be a big deal to you. It might drive you to envy. It might drive you to jealousy.

But either way, your heart is going to go out in some way. You'll be impressed with displays of money. You'll dream about having a lot of it. You'll always want more of it.

And so if you're living in awe of money. You're living in awe of what it can do for you. And what it can give you. And the protection and security it can give you.

Then what's going to happen when you lose your job? How are you going to feel? Now, how are we all going to feel if one day the boss says, sorry, we've got to let you go?

Are we all going to feel bummed out? Sad? Like, oh, that's no good. We're all going to feel that to some degree. But the person who's living in awe of money, how are they going to feel?

Terrified. We all might know a little lightning bolt of fear. But we'll quickly subdue it by faith. But we're going to be terrified. What else are we going to feel?

Hopeless. Why? Because what happened to my hope? It's gone. How else am I going to feel? Angry.

You're going to have this deep existential, like down to your very core, frustration. With the world.

With the universe. With God. It's going to cut right to the quick. And I'll get depressed instead of just getting sad. And I'll get anxious instead of just being mildly bothered.

I'll feel like a loser. I'll classify myself as a loser. Just because I don't have a job. Because losers and winners are decided by how much money you make.

And now I've just fallen into the loser category. So you see, when I'm living in the fear of God. And functional faith that God is here.

God is great. God is holy. God is loving. God is wise. That liberates me from all of that. Now I'm not saying that we don't struggle with it.

That we don't feel any of it. What I'm saying is it doesn't control us. It doesn't master us. It doesn't get the upper hand. So when God has my heart, I'm liberated from the roller coaster of created idols.

Created gods. Now that's the first principle. The second principle is we replace God when we forget him.

As Christians, we replace him when we forget him. And remembering in the Bible is more than just a cognitive bringing to put it into your memory.

Remember me, God. That prayer is put me in your presence and act upon what you see here. Draw me into your mind and act upon what you see here.

And so when we forget the greatness and the glory of God, that always leads to replacing him. And so Janice and Jim and George, they're all hooked on something else.

They're all living in fear of something else. The problem is they don't know it. They don't see it. They haven't realized that they have forgotten God. You see, it's not a formal theological problem.

It's not a confessional problem. It's not a problem that if you can sign the confession of faith that you're immune from, you very well could have a theology that puts God at center.

You could very well have a worship that says we want a God-centered worship. But at the same time, when the rubber meets the road, you don't remember it.

It doesn't weigh anything on you. You don't put it in your mind and then act upon it. And when you do that, when there's no fear of God there, nature abhors a vacuum.

So all sorts of other fears rush in. And a thousand replacements come in. So just to say this, forgetting God always leads to replacing God.

The first one was look to your emotions. The second one was forgetting God always leads to all replacement. You were made to live for something.

And you are going to live for it. The third principle is this. Horizontal addiction. Horizontal addiction replaces vertical awe. So we have two directions here.

We have horizontal. We have vertical. Me and God. Me and all the creation. When I don't have vertical awe, what ends up happening is horizontal addiction.

Horizontal obsession. Obsession. Now, let me ask you. What does addiction look like? What does addiction look like?

What does it feel like? What is it like to be in the grips of an addiction? What does it feel like? What does it feel like? What does it feel like? What does it feel like? Yeah. Now the desire is a need. I need to have it.

Not just it would be nice to have. I need it. What else? Nothing else matters. Just this one thing. Yeah. Your world shrinks down to this one created thing.

You guys have seen that picture. I haven't read the story attached to it, but you've seen the picture of that like grandma and grandpa or mom and dad strung out on heroin and their four-year-old kid in the back or grandson in the back in the car seat.

Someone took a picture of them like. Their world got shrunk down until grandkids fell out. Now no one else matters except for heroin.

What else is it like? Bondage. Bondage. The word addict is the Latin word for slave. Just to let you know.

An addict was a slave. It's bondage. I have to have it. I need more of it. And what's the other key thing?

What always happens with addiction? Once I get it? Will? Well, once you're stuck in it, your body reacts.

Yeah. By sometimes sending pain. Yeah. And you can throw more addicted around. Like, you know, casual.

Yeah. But serious addiction is a big deal. So you react negatively. Let's just put it that way. Like, biologically, you react. Your body reacts to something you're physically addicted to.

Something that you're mentally, spiritually addicted to. You are going to react negatively when you don't get it. I need more of it than I had last time.

I need more of it than I had last time. I need more of it to get the buzz than I had last time. And I'll do anything to get more of it. And I can't function without it.

So listen to Paul Tripp. I am deeply persuaded that much more often than we think, true worship is replaced by obsession.

When my heart is enamored with the stunning glory and utter unchangeability of God, when I am living in conscious awe of Him, I have no need to look vigilantly for life day after day.

It produces contentment and satisfaction. So when I don't have vertical awe, what I do is I go on a hunt until I find something that I think will replace God.

And that thing becomes an obsession. Where I have to have it. Now my mind is all centered around it. Where my whole life gets organized. I reorganize my whole way, my whole heart, my whole life, my whole thinking around this one thing.

That's what it means to be obsessed. Obsessed. So you've heard of people who are obsessed of some sort of celebrity. Right? They start, maybe they're sort of normal.

I don't know. I don't see how they could be. But maybe they're somehow normal. And then what happens is something captures their heart. The celebrity. And then they start stalking them. And they start doing everything.

They lose their job. They do all this stuff. Their whole life gets organized around this one obsession. This one fascination. This pursuit of life day after day.

And at best, the buzz is short-lived. Because it's short-lived, I have to go back again and again. And because it doesn't satisfy me, I need to get more of it than I had last time.

You see this again and again with all sorts of things. You see it again and again with pornography. It starts here, but pretty soon it gets to the worst of the worst.

Because this no longer does it. I have to have the bottom, the worst. So, George had to have respect.

His whole life began to be organized around getting respect. And he was so angry that his son wouldn't give it to him. And so, what did he do? He thought about it all the time. He thought about how he could get it.

He thought about how he had done everything right in order to get it. He thought about, maybe I've done something wrong here. And if I can just change this, then I'll get it. And we can do that very same thing. Not only with respect.

Maybe just peace and quiet. I just want peace and quiet. So, if I can do this with my kids, if I can organize this with my life, if I can do this, then maybe I will be able to get peace and quiet. But when I don't get it, just like Will said, I'm going to react negatively to that.

So, George and we become people obsessed. And we can't let it go. And it starts driving our life. So, obsession, addiction is, to some degree, a fear of God issue.

It's probably at the very bottom, a fear of the Lord issue. It's an awe issue. That's the third. The third principle is horizontal obsession replaces vertical awe.

The fourth principle is this. And this is something we've already talked about. The number one thing that we are obsessed about is ourselves. ourselves.

Ourselves. And so, if you can see in my life, or you can see in your life, if I can see in my life, oh, this is a place where I'm obsessed with something.

Respect. Peace and quiet. Some sinful thing. If you can see that, what you need to do is look harder at that.

And see what it says about your, your, your idol, idol of self. Your awe of self. What, why is this thing such a big deal?

The reality is, is this is, that thing is the way that you're going to save yourself. That thing is going to be the way that you show your wisdom.

You show your goodness. You have life. You get life for yourself. It's the thing, way of worshiping yourself. Awe of God means I live in God's story.

It means I live in God's world. It means I live before God. I live for his big kingdom. That will extend from sea to sea. And whose, whose rule will never end.

I live for that kingdom instead of my little kingdom. That just has room for one person. And I'll trust his wisdom. And I'll trust his grace.

And fear of God humbles me. It puts me in my place. This isn't my story. I'm not the author. I'm a character in it.

And I'm not even the most important character. But when I'm at the center, then the big important thing is my story. And I have to, and life has to serve me.

Life has to submit to me. And it has to work the way I want it to work. And it has to deliver what I demand. And just let me ask you, if that's how you're living, is that really going to work?

No. It's not going to work that way. Because the world out there, the real world that we all live in, it's not my world.

It's not going to give me what I demand. It's not going to submit to me. It's not going to work the way I want it to work. It's not going to serve me. Because I'm not at the center.

God is the one who's at the center. The lightning asked where it should strike. And it asked him. It doesn't ask me. And so God's not going to offer me his throne.

And God's not going to bend to my will. He's not going to get up off and say, okay, you can run the universe. And so we're asking this big question of how do I grow in the fear of the Lord?

And today's answer is we have to realize that we have this real ingrained tendency to replace God's glory with our own. We substitute all for God with all of self.

And it's going on in our lives. It's going on right now. And it's a problem that is so big that we need a Savior. That we can't save ourselves from it.

Because of course we can't save ourselves from it. Because we are the problem. And if we are the problem, then we can't save ourselves from the problem. And so we needed a Savior.

And we need Jesus to rescue us. The law isn't enough. Knowing what's right and what's wrong, that's not enough. Knowing the Bible isn't even enough.

If the law and the Bible were just enough to deliver us, then God would have sent us a book instead of a Savior. But he sent us a Savior. And that book tells us about the Savior. That we might believe in him.

So Jesus is our Savior. He died for all that glory stealing that we did. For all that going up to God's throne and trying to elbow him off to the side.

Thinking, I deserve the highest place. I deserve the best place. And he rose again to give us a new life. And he sent his own spirit. The spirit of Christ. Into our hearts.

To fight that battle with us. To help us in this battle. To bring us out of our little kingdom and into his big kingdom. And so, I hope today's been something that you can think deeply about.

But I hope, I don't want to leave you there just with despair. I want you to realize that God is in pursuit of the fear of the Lord in your heart. It's not like he's just sitting back passively waiting for this to happen.

The Holy Spirit is coming to your life to give you the fear of the Lord. Remember Isaiah chapter 11. The spirit of the Lord is the spirit of the fear and the knowledge of God. He comes to bring us the fear of the Lord.

And so, the bad news is that we have a deep problem. And the good news is that we have a great Savior. We're dismissed. Thank you.