Start Growing Spiritually

Hey, my name is René, I'm one of the pastors here. So good to be back. I've been away for most of this new year, as you may know, visiting missionaries that TLC supports on Easter Island, which was very cool and also in Guatemala. And in two weeks during the annual World Outreach Weekend that you just heard Mark talk about, we're going to take you to these places via video.

And we chose these places specifically to see what our mission partners are doing among indigenous people. You know, so many times people have this stereotype of missionaries as destroyers of indigenous culture and agents of Western imperialism. And sadly, that's a caricature that's proven true at times in Christian history. But I want to show you how the indigenous cultures are actually being preserved and revitalized by our ministry partners, even as the gospel is spread. I really think you're going to love it. That's two weeks from now.

But right now, why don't you grab your message notes that look like this? They're buried in there somewhere with all the other inserts in the bulletin this week. Start is the name of our New Year's series. And what we're doing in this series is this. Every year around the New Year, a majority of Americans make New Year's resolutions. Right? And we want to support you in that.

And so what we've been doing is going to the Book of Proverbs in the Bible to see what the Book of Proverbs has to say about some of the most common New Year's resolutions. Like, I am going to make better choices this year. Proverbs has a lot to say about that. Last weekend, Val just hit it out of the park with a message on, I'm going to master my mouth. I'm going to be better with my words this year.

And this weekend, we are talking about a biggie. We are talking about a resolution that I think is probably very common among all of us here. In fact, some of you are here in this room, it being early January, because you made this resolution on December 31. And the resolution is this. This year, I am going to start growing spiritually. I am going to make 2018 a better year in terms of my spiritual growth than 2017 was.

I want to grow closer to God. I want to be a better person. And so many of you said to yourself a couple of weeks ago at the New Year, I am going to read the Bible more. I'm going to pray more. I'm going to do my daily devotions every single morning. I'm going to volunteer at church. I'm going to go on a mission trip. I'm going to try harder to quit all my bad habits. And that is exactly the wrong way to grow spiritually.

Now, there's nothing wrong with reading your Bible, praying, doing your daily devotions. In fact, I want to do all those things more this year. But if you start there, I can almost guarantee you that there will come a point this year when you're going to be so discouraged, because all those things are going to turn into boring, dull routine. You will go dry, and you will fail.

Because before you get to those items on a checklist, you've got to have something underneath all those things, grounding all those things. And that's the key to spiritual growth and health that we are going to talk about this morning. Let me just give you kind of the big idea of this message, and then I'm going to color it in for the next few minutes.

The key to your spiritual growth in 2018 is not achievement, but astonishment. It's not achievement. I'm going to read the Bible more. I'm going to pray more. I'm going to do my daily devotions more. If you start there, it's just not going to work. It's not achievement, but astonishment. And to explain what I mean, what I'm going to do is look at a phrase that comes up in the book of Proverbs again and again and again.

And you hardly hear pastors these days talk about this phrase, because it's a tough phrase. It's a weird phrase. It is a phrase that is hard for us to understand, and yet it is the key to your spiritual health and growth. And the phrase is this, the fear of the Lord. Say that with me. The fear of the Lord. This is one of the main themes of the book of Proverbs. You need to live in the fear of the Lord. That is the beginning of all wisdom. That's the beginning of all spiritual insight.

If you want to grow spiritually, Proverbs says you've got to start with the fear of the Lord. Now, probably you hear that term. I hear that term, and I think that's really weird, because it sounds like be scared of the Lord, right? Are you scared of the Lord? I'm scared of the Lord. Are you scared of the Lord, sister? Because I am certainly scared of the Lord. Is that what it means? Not exactly, but how do we know what it means?

Well, as always, when you come across something potentially confusing in the Bible, you have got to look at the context, the literary context. Look at how this phrase is used again and again in the book of Proverbs. Let's look at just a few of the verses. Like, for example, Proverbs 28:14, in the King James version, it says, "Happy is the man that feareth always." What? I don't normally associate fear with happiness.

Or look at Proverbs 19:23, "The fear of the Lord leads to what? Life. And then when you have the fear of the Lord, then one rests what? Content, untouched by trouble." It's almost like this is saying this is the fear that drowns out all other fears. Or look at Proverbs 14:27, "The fear of the Lord is," what does it say? A life-giving fountain. What kind of fear is life-giving and not life draining?

Now, already it's a little confusing, but let me just make it a little more mysterious. Look at the riddle of the fear of the Lord in the whole Bible. On one hand, we're told to fear God 100 times in the Bible. It's not just in Proverbs. Fear the Lord is all over the place in the Bible, yet God keeps telling people to fear not whenever he appears to them. What am I supposed to do with that?

Over and over, fear the Lord, fear the Lord, fear the Lord. Then when God shows up, he says, ah, don't fear. What does that mean? What does it mean to fear the Lord? This is so super important. If the Bible says something once, it's important. If it repeated something 10 times, you know this is really important for me to know. It repeats this over 100 times. So this is a phrase that we really need to figure out, especially since the Bible says, as we will see, that to fear the Lord is the beginning of all spiritualism, that if you want to grow spiritually, you've got to start with the fear of the Lord, whatever that means.

Well, the book of Proverbs talks about three aspects of the fear of the Lord that we're going to look at today. And I think it's going to blow your mind. I think it's going to change the way you look at this phrase. It's going to challenge you. It's going to invigorate you. It's going to comfort you and encourage you. But most of all, it'll become the engine that is going to propel you into amazing spiritual growth this year. But you've got to know all three of these things that we're talking about.

We're going to take three different aspects of it so you can kind of triangulate out the meaning. Does that make sense? So jot these down. What does it mean to fear God? Number one, it's about living in awe. It's about living in awe. Here's what I'm talking about. Look at what Proverbs 28:14 says. In fact, let's read this verse out loud together. Let me hear you. "Blessed is the one who fears the Lord always, but whoever hardens his heart will fall into calamity."

OK, so fearing the Lord, we know that this cannot mean mere terror or kind of anguished anxiety here, because the fear of the Lord, whatever it is, is linked with the word blessed, which means happy. In fact, literally the word blessed means blissed out. Bliss and blessed come from the same root in English. So what kind of fear makes you blissed out? And more than that, it says if you don't have this, if you harden your heart, if you don't feel this, if you're not feeling goosebumps in this way, then that leads to bad things.

So what kind of fear exists, the absence of which is detrimental to your whole being as a human being? Well, check this out. A woman named Lani Shiota, a professor at Arizona State University, argues that awe is a fundamental part of being a healthy human being. She's done a lot of TED Talks and so on on this journal articles. She was part of a team that did the very first empirical scientific research on awe.

And among many other things, she shows how when you feel awe, it's actually measurably good for you. It reduces inflammation. It balances out your hormone levels. It dramatically reduces depression. It makes you measurably happier. In her research, she asked people, tell us about a time that you remember feeling a sense of awe. And she says most people talked about nature, things like panoramic nature views, national parks, and sunsets, and the northern lights.

So let me ask you the same question that she asked these people. Just right now in your head, think about some time that you were someplace that you saw something where you really felt awe. Maybe around here, Yosemite, right? Maybe you came through tunnel view, and it was a gorgeous day. And all of a sudden, you saw the Yosemite Valley, and it just took your breath away, and you just didn't want to stop looking at it.

Or maybe you were visiting relatives somewhere in the Midwest or the South, and suddenly you saw a lightning storm, the likes of which we never have here. Do you remember last year, we had one lightning storm? Do you guys remember that? On our street, everybody went out into the street, and they were looking up into the sky, even though it was raining. It's like, look at the lightning, because we never get it here, right?

Or maybe here, it was the first time you ever saw really big waves. Do you remember that? I do remember. I remember growing up in San Jose, coming over here to the beach one winter when I was just a little kid. And our mom probably shouldn't have let us, but there was a storm somewhere, even though it was a beautiful day here. And we went out to Seabright Beach, Castle Beach, as we called it. And gigantic waves were just breaking right on the sand, just slapping the sand. Kaboom!

And I ran up to the edge of the water, and I remember being completely filled with fear, rightly so. I remember thinking, these waves, this water could kill me. And I was just petrified, as I should have been. And at the same moment that I was petrified, I thought to myself, and there is no place on earth I would rather be right now. Do you know what I mean? That mixture of terror and delight.

And you know how little kids are? I was maybe eight or nine years old, and I just started dancing. I just started moving around, just like I was in some sort of crazy worship service, just like I am so afraid, and I'm so happy to be alive right here, right now. That fright and absolute exhilaration at the same time, that is so good for you to feel.

But here's the bad news. You are not always standing in front of gigantic waves of the Pacific Ocean, are you? You're not always seeing the northern lights. In fact, Professor Sciota says, in our modern world, we are always in front of screens, or in our cars, or inside buildings. And awe, she says, is in desperately short supply. And I would say, yes, but you and I can always stand in awe of the wonder behind all wonders.

The power behind all powers. You know, you could be a patient in a care facility, knowing you will never see the Grand Canyon again, or Yosemite again, or the Pacific Ocean again, and still know the wonder behind all wonders. The awe behind all awe, because he's always present.

Yesterday, I was at the memorial service for George Peelens, an amazing man, kind of a local legend. He was the director of the Pajaro Rescue Mission for many years. And before George passed away at nearly 90 years old, I mean, everything in his body was just falling to pieces. He was having internal organ failure, and going blind, and this vibrant spirit just living in this shell of a body.

But I remember a couple of times I called him when he was on hospice, just waiting to die. And I'd asked him, how are you doing, George? And he'd say, every time, working on my book. What book is that, George? The blessings of being a Christian. He worked on this every day. They had the rough draft of his book at the memorial service yesterday.

And on page after page, the heading of his chapters was written in really giant letters, because George's eyesight was failing. And even to write like that, he had to use a magnifying glass and write with big letters. And the headings of the chapters were things like, I am adopted into God's family. I am loved by the creator of the universe. George was blind. George was stuck at home on hospice. George was existing in a shell of a body. But his heart and his soul were full of wonder and awe.

And this is the blessed fear of God. And when you've got that, you are blessed. And when even with a healthy body and good eyes, you harden your heart and you don't feel the goosebumps anymore, that leads to calamity. Because when Christians are hypocrites, it's because there is no fear of God. And when Christians do stupid stuff they know they shouldn't do, it's because there is no fear of God.

And when we as churches ignore the plight of the refugees in Jordan or elsewhere in the world and don't care for the poor, it's because there's no fear of God, because we've gotten calloused and hardened to the wonder and the awe and the terror. Now, a man named Sinclair Ferguson defines the fear of God this way, the kind of the mixture of emotions. He says, "It is that indefinable mixture of reverence and fear and pleasure and joy and awe which fills our hearts when we realize who God is and what he has done for us."

Now, maybe you say, well, that's great, but why even use the word fear? Why use the word fear at all? Why doesn't the Bible just call it wonder or reverence or awe? That would make it a lot more comfortable for me. Well, jot this down in the margins of your notes somewhere. I think it's because fear is revealing. Fear is revealing.

Psychologists have said for years that if you really want to understand yourself, follow your fears. Follow your nightmares, because your fears reveal what you value the most. For example, if your greatest fear is rejection, literally you've got nightmares about it getting laughed at, then probably what you value more than anything in life is pleasing people. Looking good in the eyes of others.

If your greatest nightmare is losing your money, then you're probably living for your money. If your greatest nightmare is losing your job, then you're probably living for your job. Your greatest nightmare, your greatest fear, is a sign of what your heart most desperately wants. And so when the Bible says to fear the Lord, really what it's saying is make him the love of your life.

Make God the one thing your heart's desperate to get a hold of. Make God the core of your identity, because that rearranges your heart. And that gets us to point two. Fearing God is about choosing a perspective, a perspective on life, a context, a worldview. Back to Lonnie Sciota and her research on awe. She says the best thing about awe is it makes you feel small. Right? You see a lightning storm. You see the stars at night. You see these redwood trees that live 2,000 to 3,000 years. And you feel so small.

And she says that is a good thing, because it shifts your attention away from yourself, and your needs, and your wants, to others, and to the greater good. Look at this next verse. And let's read this out loud together again. This is Proverbs from chapter 9, verse 10. Let me hear you. "The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom, and the knowledge of the Holy One is insight."

How is the fear of the Lord the beginning of wisdom? The beginning of wisdom? Well, because the fear of the Lord gives you perspective, because it tells you, you are not the center of the universe. You know, there's an exercise we do here around here sometimes that I really find helpful. And it's this. You take your finger-- everybody take your finger like this-- and point up. And out loud say, God. And now point to yourself and say, not. Not.

Some of you are like, I don't want to do that again. So let's do that again. Ready? Here we go. God, not. Try it again. God, not. And now point to somebody else. You can point to me. Go, God. God, not. Let's try it again. God, not. That is so liberating, isn't it? And that's the perspective you get when you fear God. And the root of almost every problem we have is when we get that mixed up and we go, God.

And we start approaching life and God with such arrogance. I know best. I'm the general manager of the universe. But when your perspective is skewed like that, what it leads to is just trouble. But you know what happens when we get that perspective right? God, not. God, not. You stop fearing other people.

In a couple of weeks, I'm going to show you this whole film that we made last week about the people that we visited in Central and South America. But let me just introduce you to one guy, Walter Chuc. Walter is a Mayan that we met high in the mountains of Guatemala, over 8,000 feet high in a village called Todani Capan. Walter went to prison for seven years. He was a felon. And he found Christ shortly after he went to prison.

But prison there, inside the prison-- guards are kind of outside. Inside the prison, it is run by the gangs, run by the gangs. Gangs sneaking knives, gangs sneaking guns. He said at one point, the gangs snuck in grenades. And they eliminate their enemies-- knives, guns, grenades, choke holds, whatever they want to use. And he said, so every single day, Walter told me just a couple of days ago, he said, I lived in fear every day that I would die.

And this wasn't like some paranoid anxiety. It was actually reality, because he's locked up with murderers who have no conscience. How in the world do you get through life when you got that kind of fear? He said, the only thing that relieved me of my anxiety was practicing the presence of God, reminding myself every day, God is with me. And God is even more powerful than these gangs. If God wants to preserve my life, he will. And if I die here in prison, he's still going to be with me, even through the valley of the shadow of death.

He said, I sensed the nearness of God with me every day, and I'm so glad I did. And that's legit. Do you see what he's saying? Only the fear of God could overcome the fear of man in that situation. And while Walter's story may seem extreme, the same thing applies to you and me. Do you fear man more than God? Do you fear what people are going to think about you? Do you fear other people's opinions of you? The cure of fear of man is to fear God. God, not.

Now, let's get very practical. What does fearing God look like in daily life? Look at Proverbs 3:5–6. "Trust in the Lord with all your heart. Lean not on your own understanding, and all your ways submit to him, and he will make your paths straight." Trust is what the fear of the Lord looks like externally in actual practice. Trust just means you're saying to God, you are the general manager of the universe and not me. God, not.

And so I don't just look at you like a lucky rabbit's foot to get what I want. I'm just going, God, I just trust you because you are God and I'm not. I trust you to do your will in my life and I will yield myself to that whatever it is. Some of you know if you've been coming here even a few weeks, I love to quote Tim Keller, a pastor in Manhattan, New York, a lot. He's a great pastor, but he says when he was a teenager in youth group at a church, that's when his life changed.

He said, I remember how it happened. He said there was a woman who was teaching in youth group that day, and she told the group, she said, think of God's creation and what it reveals about God. And here's the illustration she gave. She said, if the distance between the Earth and the sun, which is 92 million miles, was the thickness of a single sheet of paper, then the distance between the Earth and the nearest star would be the thickness of a 70-foot high stack of paper, and then the diameter of just our little Milky Way galaxy would be a stack of paper 310 miles high.

And our little galaxy is really just a speck of dust in the part of the universe that we can see with our telescopes. And the Bible says the Lord is the one who upholds all of that with one finger of his right hand. And then she asked the youth group, is this the kind of person you invite into your life to be your assistant? You're a consultant? You know what consultants are? I got this definition. Consultants are people you pay, and then you ignore what they say unless they are saying something you already agree with. That's what a consultant is.

Is that who God is to you? Then you don't have fear of the Lord. Is God your consultant, or is he your Lord? Trust is what the fear of the Lord looks like in real life when you go, God, whatever you want. Now, maybe you're going, well, how can I do this? That sounds good, but how do I get myself to the place where I can trust God like that? It seems so abstract so far, right? Well, I think the key to all of this is the last point.

Point number three, it's about being astonished by his grace. It's about being astonished by the grace of God. Now, let me explain it this way. Do you remember the first time you went on a roller coaster? In fact, anybody here remember the first time you ever went on the giant dipper at the boardwalk? Anybody remember that? Probably about at least half of us here, right? I remember this so well. I was so afraid of going on the giant dipper.

I'd been on other roller coasters, but there was something about going on a creaky wooden roller coaster built in the 1920s. And I was like, are you kidding me? And I didn't go on it-- to my shame, I guess. I didn't go on it till I was 16. And I only went out then because my friends were like, you are going on the roller coaster. And I was terrified. I was like, no, I don't want to go on that thing. I'm going to die.

And I remember looking down this first hill thinking, this is it. Lord, take me now. I was so afraid. And then when it ended, the exhilaration I felt at surviving that ride was unparalleled. And I realized what intensified my exhilaration was the fear I felt before I took the ride. The terror actually produced incredible joy. Once I survived. Does that make sense?

And this is something of what you see in the Bible when people come into contact with God. They start out so terrified. And then they're blown away when that awesome and terrible and powerful God shows tenderness toward them. Just one example. In the book of Isaiah, chapter 6, the prophet Isaiah has this vision of the throne room of heaven, right? He sees God. He sees all these angels. What does he say? Does he say, whoa, it's God. What's up? You know? Big fan of your work. Love your stuff. Butterflies are like your best idea.

No, he says, whoa, unto me. For I am an unclean man. I'm a man of unclean lips. And I live among a people of unclean lips. And my eyes are seeing the King, the Lord of glory. He's like, I'm going to be fried to a crisp by the holiness of God. And then God has an angel come to him and say to Isaiah, behold, your sin is atoned for. And then God says, hey, I got a mission. I wonder who I can send.

And Isaiah is so filled with awe and exhilaration and wonder at the fact that he's in the presence of a holy God. And his sin has been covered atoned for that he goes, God, here am I. Send me. I just want to be in your presence. I want to do whatever you ask. I just want to be your servant. His terror intensifies his exhilaration. And you see the same thing, the same pattern right here in the book of Proverbs.

I want you to watch this. First of all, there's a verse where it says, Proverbs 20:9, who can say I have kept my heart pure? I am clean. I am without sin. Who can say that the implied answer is obviously nobody, right? We're all sinners. We're all like Isaiah before a holy God. So what can be done about it? How do we get clean? Well, Proverbs 16:6 says, by steadfast love and faithfulness, iniquity is atoned for. And by the fear of the Lord, one turns away from evil.

This is such a rich verse. But steadfast love means absolutely flawless, total, unconditional love. And faithful means total holiness, like without fault. So it's just said nobody has ever lived like that. And yet now it says, with unconditional perfect love and faithfulness, that's how sin is atoned for. So when did steadfast, total, pure love and faithfulness ever atone for sin? Well, God did it on the cross.

Jesus loved you and me so perfectly and stayed faithful to God so perfectly. And atoned for our sin in our place so that we can stand before a holy and awesome God and hear God say to us, just like he said to Isaiah, behold, your sin is atoned for. And when we get that, when our heart isn't hardened to that, it just enraptures us. It just captures our imaginations. It just captures our heart.

And you see, this is why I say the key to growing in your spiritual life is not achievement, but astonishment. The fear of the Lord is the beginning, because it's kind of like this. One time I took our youngest son, David, on a surprise trip to the Grand Canyon when he was only 11 years old. We left the place we were staying in Phoenix and drove four hours and got there as the sun was coming up. It was a beautiful, pristine view.

And you know, you can't really see it when you're driving up there. You have to get out of the car, walk up to the edge, and suddenly, boom, there's the vista, right? It was so cool to watch his reaction. An 11-year-old boy who's never seen it before, and he was like, you know, I guess this is gonna be kind of a pretty hole in the ground. And he walks up to the edge, and he just goes, wow, wow, wow, wow. That's the only word he said for like the next two minutes, just whoa, wow, wow, wow, wow.

And I said, hey, you wanna go for a hike for a couple of hours down in the, let's go! And he was so full of energy, and you gotta understand, at 11 years old, he was not the most outdoorsy, athletic child. This is a child who would have asked for a ride to his room if we could have fit the car into the house. You know how many times I had to say, David, get up, keep walking on this miles-long hike into the Grand Canyon? Zero! I never had to tell him, come on, keep moving.

He bounded into that canyon, add up again, because with every turn, there was a new vista. As the sun rose, the colors changed. He was propelled by wonder. And the same exact effect applies to the disciplines of your spiritual life. If like George Phelan's, your eyes are open to the awe of God. You want to read the Bible, because it means exploring the depth of that relationship. You want to pray, because you're standing before a terrible yet tender God.

You're enthused about inviting others to be part of this journey with you, because it's about supernatural delight and wonder. And all those things are not just wrote items on a New Year's resolution checklist. Reading the Bible and praying and serving, they become steps into the canyon. Now this is not some experience you have one time. Some emotion that you have once that changes everything. In fact, it's not even primarily an emotion. Emotion is sometimes an effect of this.

But you can't walk around just God-buzzed all the time. That's unrealistic, right? What it is is a perspective that you work into every moment. In fact, look at that proverb at the bottom of your notes that says, Proverbs 23:17, don't envy sinners, but always what? Continue to fear the Lord. This is key, you continue to remind yourself of this perspective. You keep reminding yourself, God not. God not.

I'll close with this. Tomorrow's Martin Luther King Jr. Day here in America. His most famous speech is the "I Have a Dream" speech. But probably the second most famous is what they now call the "I Have Seen the Mountain Top" speech. Dr. King preaches this in a church in Memphis the night before he is assassinated. And it's eerie because he says in this speech, I know I will not live a full life.

He says because we've been hounded by assassination threats, assassination attempts, he says though we try to increase security, I know that I won't have the gift of longevity, he says. You're eerie. But then he says, but I'm happy today. He says, I'm not fearing any man, for mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord. What are you afraid of? Saying, I fear God is saying mine eyes have seen his glory. And so I fear no one else.

And let's get that perspective right now. Would you pray with me? God, I just ask that you would help us not to harden our hearts. And if there's been some calluses, help them to be scrubbed off right now. Help us to stand in awe in reverent fear and wonder, to realize that you're perfectly holy, that you're awe-inspiring, and yet you atoned for our sin through Jesus Christ. God, may we be motivated by awe of that to grow in you. And we pray this in Jesus' name, amen.

You know what I'd love to do in the moments we have left? Let's just respond to God and worship. We are going to close with two songs. The first one is one for you to meditate on, to help you establish this perspective. And then the second one will be one we invite you all to sing together and worship the Lord.