So, we should choose to love the Lord and serve Him and obey Him, not out of fear ultimately,
but out of love.
The Bible says that perfect love casteth out fear, because fear hath torment.
He that feareth is not made perfect in love.
So, the way that things work is that it starts with fear.
The fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge.
The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom.
The fear of the Lord is the beginning of understanding, but it's not the end.
Fear is the beginning.
We get saved because we don't want to go to hell, okay?
That's fear.
We obey the Lord because we don't want Him to discipline us.
That's fear.
But as we grow in our Christian life, we think less about God punishing us and we're less
motivated by, "Oh man, I better go to church or God's going to punish me.
I better go out and do this or I better not sin.
I better read my Bible."
It becomes less about being scared and it becomes more about, "I love the Lord.
I love reading my Bible.
I love the Lord Jesus Christ.
I love soul winning.
I love the Lord."
And even when we do things that we don't want to do, let's say we're feeling tired or we
just don't feel like getting out of soul winning, we say, "You know what?
But I love the Lord.
I don't want to let him down.
I want to please him.
I'm going to go out there and do this."
Or, "I love the lost and I want to make sure that everybody gets a chance to hear the gospel."
So you start out in an immature walk with God, be more fear based, and then you grow
into something that's more love based.
Because think about it, your children that are constantly getting in trouble because
they're, you know, immature and foolish, you know, then it's more fear based because they're
constantly getting spankings and getting busted and getting in trouble.
But as your children grow up, they should get to a point where they're not getting in
trouble very often because of the fact that they've learned and grown into doing the right
things.
Then it's not out of fear, it's out of love.
"Hey, what can I do for you, Mom?
What can I do for you, Dad?
How can I help you?
How can I be a blessing to you?"
So the problem, though, is that a lot of modern Christianity, they've just completely eliminated
the fear part.
They just want to go straight to just love, love, love.
So what you have is these complete baby Christians, carnal Christians, that are in the flesh that
have all kinds of sin in their life, and they're like, "Whoa, whoa, I don't want to hear anything
about fear, man.
He that feareth is not made perfect in love, man."
Talk about the love.
You know what?
Why don't you get the garbage out of your life, you know, cleanse your hands, you sinners,
and purify your hearts, you double-minded, the Bible says.
You got to draw an eye to God and He'll draw an eye to you.
So they don't want to hear about the wrath of God.
They don't want to hear about the fear of the Lord.
Look, the Bible is filled with the fear of the Lord, the wrath of God, punishments, chastisement.
So you can't just throw that out.
That is the vehicle that gets us to a mature Christian life where we can be made perfect
in love.
And none of us is all the way to that destination where fear plays no role.
Now if we were perfect Christians, then yeah, we'd get to a point where fear plays no role.
It would just all be love-based.
But look, you start with fear, you grow into more and more love, and you get to a point
where it's about the love of God.
But even someone who's a very mature Christian, they're still going to need a little bit of
the fear of God every now and then because we're not perfect.
We're still in the flesh.
But see, evangelical Christianity today wants to just ditch the fear, ditch the hard preaching,
ditch the anger, the wrath, all those things, and just go straight to love.
And you know what?
That's just not going to work.
That's like saying, "Well, forget arithmetic, forget geometry, forget trigonometry.
I'm going straight to calculus, man.
That's how spiritual I am.
That's how mathematical I am.
I'm just going all the way."
No, you can't get there without first learning, addition, subtraction.
Look, the fear of God is the addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division of the Christian
life.
Calculus is doing things purely out of love.
How many of you made it all the way to calculus?
You got through pre-calculus and you got into calculus.
We've got a smart crowd here tonight, a lot of people here.
We've got a lot of mathematicians here tonight.
But let me tell you something though, the majority didn't even get there.
Well guess what?
The majority aren't going to get to this point where they don't need a constant hard preaching
either.
The majority of us need what?
Hard preaching all the time.
We need hard preaching.
We need to be reminded of the fact that our God's a consuming fire.
We need to grow into being love-based.