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April 11 - April 22, 2019
This is me, to a T!
I didn’t have to measure up to the standards of others’ opinions because God’s opinion of me was rooted in the finished work of Jesus. In other words, even though I was a sinner, God loved me and made me righteous in his sight, so who cared what other people thought?!
they are fairly sure that God loves them, but they also want or need love from other people — or at least they need some-thing from other people. As a result, they are in bondage, controlled by others and feeling empty. They are controlled by whoever or whatever they believe can give them what they think they need.
what or who you need will control you.
the fear of man can be summarized this way: We replace God with people. Instead of a biblically guided fear of the Lord, we fear others.
Do you avoid people? If so, even though you might not say that you need people, you are still controlled by them. Isn’t a hermit dominated by the fear of man?
evangelism. Have you ever been too timid to share your faith in Christ because others might think you are an irrational fool?
The most radical treatment for the fear of man is the fear of the Lord. God must be bigger to you than people are.
Regarding other people, our problem is that we need them (for ourselves) more than we love them (for the glory of God).
the path of service is the road to freedom.
The problem is that we really are not okay. There is no reason why we should feel great about ourselves. We truly are deficient.
In the United States, a common metaphor that people use to describe themselves is a variation on covering the face in shame: we are people behind walls. “The walls are ten feet thick. Nobody can come in, and I can’t get out.” These desperate coverings isolate, but they also protect us from the gaze of other people. In practice, these walls can be built with thousands of different materials: money, fame, athletic accomplishment, jobs, and busyness. Nothing man-made, however, can truly cover shame.
Disgrace wants company.
That’s the paradox of self-esteem: Low self-esteem usually means that I think too highly of myself.
Have you wondered why certain TV shows or magazines are so popular? Don’t they offer us a brief opportunity to spy on others from behind our walls of shame? They let us see the disgrace of others, and that normalizes our own. Or they let us identify with our heroes, so we can briefly feel better about ourselves. It is as if the modern person is a peeping Tom. While the peeping Tom is looking at someone through a keyhole, he is also being watched by another voyeur, who is being watched by another, who is being watched by another.
If the gaze of man awakens fear in us, how much more so the gaze of God. If we feel exposed by people, we will feel devastated before God.
The gospel is the story of God covering his naked enemies, bringing them to the wedding feast, and then marrying them rather than crushing them.
As long as we are sinners, shame will be a familiar experience.
When we are particularly aware that we have violated God’s righteousness, that gaze will condemn us unless we confess our sins and affirm that by faith “we have been made holy through the sacrifice of the body of Jesus Christ once and for all” (Heb. 10:10).
It all sounds too familiar. Sometimes we would prefer to die for Jesus than to live for him. If someone had the power to kill us for our profession of faith, I imagine that most Christians would say, “Yes, I am a believer in Jesus Christ,” even if it meant death. The threat of torture might make people think twice, but I think most Christians would acknowledge Christ. However, if making a decision for Jesus means that we might spend years being unpopular, ignored, poor, or criticized, then there are masses of Christians who temporarily put their faith on the shelf.
We are more concerned about looking stupid (a fear of people) than we are about acting sinfully (fear of the Lord).
Fear of man is always part of a triad that includes unbelief and disobedience.
What is the result of this people-idolatry? As in all idolatry, the idol we choose to worship soon owns us. The object we fear overcomes us. Although insignificant in itself, the idol becomes huge and rules us. It tells us how to think, what to feel, and how to act. It tells us what to wear, it tells us to laugh at the dirty joke, and it tells us to be frightened to death that we might have to get up in front of a group and say something. The whole strategy backfires. We never expect that using people to meet our desires leaves us enslaved to them.
The fear of man is the sinful exaggeration of a normal experience. Let me explain. We should be afraid when physically threatened. It is certainly not sinful for your adrenaline to be flowing when you are being fired upon. But fear of man is fear run amok. It might start with the very natural fear associated with being vulnerable and threatened. At times, however, this alarm is not regulated by faith. It becomes fear that is consumed with itself and for a time forgets God. It becomes a fear that, when activated, rules your life. In such a state, we trust for salvation in others.
Being afraid is not wrong in itself. As creatures living in a sinful world we should be afraid at times. The problem is when fear forgets God.
The gospel is only available to people who know they are unclean.
Biblical guidance starts with hearing about God’s great compassion. It proceeds to examine our own hearts so that we can grow in obedience to Christ, and it ends with trusting that our God is the almighty God who is just and loving.
Anything that erodes the fear of God will intensify the fear of man.
If our culture is misguided in its understanding of God, then it will be misguided in its understanding of people who are made in his image.
“Love your neighbor as yourself” (Matt. 19:19) is considered the biblical proof text (for those who need one). When interpreted through cultural spectacles, this verse means that we must love ourselves in order to love other people. But in reality the passage doesn’t even suggest such an interpretation. Jesus spoke these words to a rich young man who clearly loved himself and his possessions too much. There is only one command in the passage, and it is “love your neighbor.”
prayer depended on God and his promises, not my own quixotic emotions.
When feelings become more important than faith, people will become more important, and God will become less important.
the first task in escaping the snare of the fear of man is to know that God is awesome and glorious, not other people.
in our relationship with God, he always says “I love you” first.
Holiness is not one of many attributes of God. It is his essential nature and seen in all his qualities. His wisdom is a holy wisdom. His beauty a holy beauty. His majesty, a holy majesty. His holiness “adds glory, luster and harmony to all his other perfections.”
if we think we are usually good, then God is usually irrelevant.
Most sins are ungodly exaggerations of things that are good.
A growing knowledge of God displaces the fear of people, and it casts out our tendency to be casual with our secret sins.
In power and judgment, and in love and faithfulness, God had no equal.
When a heart is being filled with the greatness of God, there is less room for the question, “What are people going to think of me?”
When the fear of the Lord matures in you, Christ becomes irresistible.
Jesus, the one who rescues us from hell, is also the one who speaks the most about it.
Awe is good, but awe must lead us to faith, and faith must lead to action.
The triune God delights in showing us his grandeur and holiness, and we should never be satisfied with our present knowledge of him.
Jesus did not die to increase our self-esteem.
To look to Christ to meet our perceived psychological needs is to Christianize our lusts. We are asking God to give us what we want, so we can feel better about ourselves, or so we can have more happiness, not holiness, in our lives.
God deserves praise simply because he is God.
People are most similar to God when he is the object of their affection.
This means that the essence of imaging God is to rejoice in God’s presence, to love him above all else, and to live for his glory, not our own.
the image of God in man is a verb. It is not just who we are; it is what we do.
