More on this book
Community
Kindle Notes & Highlights
Read between
November 7, 2018 - January 27, 2019
I simply had to be aware of God’s opinion of me.
“Fear” in the biblical sense is a much broader word. It includes being afraid of someone, but it extends to holding someone in awe, being controlled or mastered by people, worshipping other people, putting your trust in people, or needing people.
We replace God with people. Instead of a biblically guided fear of the Lord, we fear others.
if you need others to fill you, you are controlled by them.
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 task God sets for us is to need them less and love them more.
The meager props of the self-esteem teaching will eventually collapse as people realize that their problem is much deeper. The problem is, in part, our nakedness before God.
Kierkegaard points to a deeper fear: the eyes of God. 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.
Fear of people is often a more conscious version of being afraid of God. That is, we are more conscious of our fear of others than our fear of 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.
Do I love others in the name of Jesus, or am I more interested in protecting myself from them?
We stand ultimately under his penetrating, holy gaze. When we are particularly aware that we have violated God’s right-eousness, 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).
We are more concerned about looking stupid (a fear of people) than we are about acting sinfully (fear of the Lord).
Paul was not a people-pleaser. He was a people-lover, and because of that he did not change his message according to what others might think. Only people-lovers are able to confront. Only people-lovers are not controlled by other people. Paul even indicated to the Galatians that if he were still trying to please men, he would not be a servant of God (Gal. 1:10). That is how seriously he took the fear of man.
He knew Jesus’ teaching from the Sermon on the Mount, “Let your ‘yes’ be ‘yes,’ your ‘no’ ‘no.’” But sin made truth irrelevant at that moment. Fear of man is always part of a triad that includes unbelief and disobedience.
The objects of worship may change over time, but the heart stays the same. What we do now is no different from what the Israelites did with the golden calf. When the Israelites left Egypt, they felt very vulnerable and needy (and were hard-hearted and rebellious). Even though they had witnessed the power of God, they felt afraid. They felt out of control. Their remedy was to choose an idol over the true God. By doing this they were both opposing God and avoiding him.
Just in case God was not enough, they started to follow other gods. They thought idols would give them what they wanted or felt they needed. They wanted a god they could control and manipulate. They wanted nothing above themselves, including God. God, they thought, would not be able to keep pace with their desires, and so they looked for blessing and satisfaction in something they felt they could control. They wanted to do it their way rather than God’s. That is the height of rebellion.
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 way to eliminate shame associated with sin is to admit sin, be confident that God forgives sin, and engage in battle against it.
The gospel is only available to people who know they are unclean.
Anything that erodes the fear of God will intensify the fear of man.
When feelings become more important than faith, people will become more important, and God will become less important.
With God reduced in our eyes, a fear of people will thrive.
Yet if our use of the term “needs” is ambiguous, and its range of meaning extends all the way to selfish desires, then there will be some situations where we should say that Jesus does not intend to meet our needs, but that he intends to change our needs.
Since there is no room in our hearts to worship both God and people, whenever people are big, God is not. Therefore, the first task in escaping the snare of the fear of man is to know that God is awesome and glorious, not other people.
The day is coming when everyone will bow before God in the fear of the Lord.
in our relationship with God, he always says “I love you” first.
The problem we encounter in our quest to know and fear the Lord as he ought to be feared is that we have three prominent adversaries. The world, our own flesh, and the Devil conspire to elevate other people (or what we can get from them) over God.
We must hate the evil and ungodly assumptions of the world, we must hate our own sinful nature, and we must hate Satan. To accomplish these tasks demands the most powerful resources we have: the Word, the Spirit, and the body of Christ.
A growing knowledge of God displaces the fear of people, and it casts out our tendency to be casual with our secret sins.
the person who fears God fears nothing else.
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.
Daily stops in the court of the Lord cure the fear of man.
God’s commands to love, listen, bear burdens, or wash feet do not imply that we have psychological needs for these things. Perhaps we can say that we need to give them, but Scripture doesn’t suggest that we must have them to make us feel better about ourselves.
The most basic question of human existence becomes “How can I bring glory to God?” — not “How will God meet my psychological longings?” These differences create very different tugs on our hearts: one constantly pulls us outward toward God, the other first pulls inward toward ourselves.
a Christian father who takes time to play soccer with his children is imaging the God who spends time with his people. A child who sets the table or cleans the dinner dishes out of obedience to Christ is imaging the servant God and thus glorifying him. Or a worker who does mundane work with the desire to serve Christ is imaging the Son who has worked on our behalf.
Self-serving needs are not meant to be satisfied; they are meant to be put to death.
The greatest need of all humanity is that God be acknowledged and worshipped as the Holy One of Israel.
To be true reflections of God’s holiness, we must look at Jesus, the true image of God. We are offspring who aspire to be like our Father. So we watch the Father in action. We imitate his holiness.
you must realize that your own sins, no matter how big, are not bigger than God’s pleasure in forgiveness.
The temporal and sinful is never the standard for the holy.
This is what God gives to those who have come to know Christ through faith: The shamed are covered and glorified. They no longer have to hide from the gaze of other people or the gaze of God. They are seen from the perspective of eternity. To them, Jesus says, “Come, come.” The threatened are comforted and glorified. They are comforted because they know that their husband is the sovereign King over all the earth. Will there be suffering? Yes. He will allow refining suffering to come to his bride, but it will be suffering that will lead to good. It will teach his bride to trust in him alone. As
...more
When we are inclined to take matters into our own hands, the Psalms teach us to trust God. When we would insulate ourselves from pain, they teach us to trust God. Instead of vowing that we will never again move close to another person, we learn to trust God. Instead of extinguishing hope, the Psalms teach us to trust God and, as a result, be filled with jubilant expectations for the coming of the kingdom. You could say that the Psalms improve our quality of life.
The Psalms were worthy of inclusion into Scripture because David was a representative of the Divine King. He asked for judgment against his enemies because they were enemies of the true God. It was the glory of God that was David’s mission, not his own vindication. To be more specific, King David spoke on behalf of the greater king, King Jesus. The enemies of which he spoke are those of Jesus; the sufferings of which he spoke are those of the Messiah. This means that we should read each psalm at least twice. The first time we can allow it to speak for us. The second time we listen to it as the
...more
Love for enemies is the pinnacle of Christian obedience to God. As the Sermon on the Mount indicates, it is easy to love people who love you. But it demands a powerful work of God’s Spirit to love those who are committed to harming you.
Remember, (1) the flesh has a sinful bent toward self-interest. It is committed to the question, “What’s in it for me?” (2) Satan is a liar and divider. Notice that the most explicit biblical teaching on spiritual warfare (Eph. 6) is found in the book that emphasizes unity. Satan’s most prominent strategy is to fracture and divide. And (3) the world tries to institutionalize these tendencies.
Only a church that is united in love can truly display God’s glory to both spiritual powers and the world, and only a church united can stand against Satan’s efforts to divide.
