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February 10 - March 23, 2021
The normal prescription for building your self-worth on the opinion of others is to love yourself more; love yourself so much that it will hardly matter what others think. In other words, treat the disease of narcissism with more narcissism.
Seeking to bolster our self-esteem by making us more self-referential and more self-conscious is only making us more vulnerable and thin-skinned.
As the fear of the Lord grows, it outgrows, eclipses, consumes, and destroys all rival fears.
The fear of the Lord is the only fear that imparts strength. This is an especially vital truth for any who are called to some form of leadership, for the strength this fear gives is—uniquely—a humble strength. Those who fear God are simultaneously humbled and strengthened before his beauty and magnificence. Thus they are kept gentle and preserved from being overbearing in their strength.
But let us call these two faults by name: softness and harshness. Concerning the former, Zech. 11:17 says: “O shepherd and idol, you who desert the flock.” Concerning the latter, Ezek. 34:4 says: “With force and harshness you have ruled them.” These are the two main faults from which all the mistakes of pastors come.13
Some are natural rhinos: strong and thick-skinned, but not gentle. Others are more like deer: sweet and gentle, to be sure, but nervous and flighty. The fear of the Lord corrects and beautifies both temperaments, giving believers a gentle strength. It makes them—like Christ—simultaneously lamblike and lionlike.
It is clear that Spurgeon was teaching a lesson he himself had learned when he shared with his congregation this story of the English Reformer Hugh Latimer: It was bravely done by old Hugh Latimer when he preached before Harry the Eighth. It was the custom of the Court preacher to present the king with something on his birthday, and Latimer presented Henry VIII with a pocket-handkerchief with this text in the corner, “Whoremongers and adulterers God will judge”; a very suitable text for bluff Harry. And then he preached a sermon before his most gracious majesty against sins of lust, and he
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Where the final appearing of the Lord in glory fills believers with an unprecedented joyful fear of the Redeemer, it fills unbelievers with a new level of dread at their Judge.
That day will usher in a new age in which both the sinful fears of unbelievers and the right fear of believers will crescendo. Both sorts of fear will climax and become eternal states—an ecstasy of terror, on the one hand, and delight, on the other.
Those earlier generations wanted to impress on believers that to be in the presence of God will give us not a tepid happiness but a quaking, fearfully overwhelmed, ecstatic pleasure.
Yet, even now the Spirit is enlivening believers. From the moment of regeneration, when he breathes new life into a soul, the Spirit’s work is to move us from spiritual lethargy to vivaciousness, where we share Christ’s own vitality and delight in the fear of his Father. And that work is precisely all about growth in the fear of the Lord. To fear the Lord is to be more alive; it is for our love, joy, wonder, and worship of God to be more acute and affecting. For when we rejoice in God so intensely that we quake and tremble, then are we being most heavenly.
we cannot simply will ourselves to love God more; the love of sin can be expelled only by the love of God.
