The fear of the Lord tendeth
to life, and he that hath it shall abide satisfied. He shall
not be visited with evil. Now, the fear of the Lord and
faith are inseparable, and it's impossible to say which comes
first, because you're never gonna believe what God says until you
care what God says. You're gonna have to fear him,
you're gonna have to respect him, you're gonna have to know
something about who he is and be in reverence of him or you're
not gonna believe a word he says. But also, you're not gonna reverence him
until you believe what he says. You're not gonna fear him until
you believe so it's really impossible to say which comes first and
it doesn't matter That's not it seems to be important to some Bible scholars and whatnot which
came first God is eternal. His blessings are eternal. Christ
is eternal. His blood is eternal And he works
mysteriously Like the song that we sing sometimes I don't know
how God put faith in me. I know he does it by this gospel.
I don't know how, why, what, but I know whom. That's what
he reveals to us is who is our salvation. If you believe what God said
in his word about you, your sinfulness,
your depravity before him, you're deserving hell the Just desserts
of your sin is eternal death If you believe that you richly
deserve hell because of your sin you truly Know that that's
the case and that your only hope is the Lord Jesus Christ That
his shed blood only can wash away your sin. I Things become
very simple like we've said before about Naaman. He had a lot of
responsibility and a lot of things on his plate as an important
military man In Syria, but the day he became
a leper everything got real simple for him Got real simple that's how it
is with the gospel You may be interested in complicated
stances on doctrinal points and issues until you see God and
believe God and fear God, and it becomes real simple. It was
real simple for Simon when he sank beneath the waves, wasn't
it? Lord, save me. That's as simple as it gets. And that's how it is in salvation.
It's not figuring out complicated stuff. It's just seeing Christ
as he is and who you are before God, and he's your hope. Of course,
there's doctrine that must be taught in order to know who Christ
is. Religion says believe on Jesus, you know, love Jesus,
live for Jesus. Nobody knows who he is. Or if
they do know, what they know is a lie. So we have to know who he is,
and that comes by doctrinal truth, teaching of him. But it's not complicated. When
it comes down to the salvation of your soul, it's not complicated. You see, you fear God, and you
believe what he says, and I can't tell you which came first. But
I know until you believe what he says about you, you're not
gonna fall on your face before him. But when he does, when you
do, when you come to know who you're dealing with, you're gonna
stop making decisions, and you're not only gonna come to him, but
you're gonna come to his feet. We see that over and over in
the scriptures. You're not gonna come bebopping
to him, popping your gum, walking down some aisle. You're gonna
come to him at his feet, and you're gonna beg for mercy. That's
the fear. That's the fear that we're talking
about right there. This is illustrated beautifully
in the miracles that our Lord performed. When the leper knew
that his hope lay in the Savior's will and not his own, what did
he do? When he realized who he was dealing
with and it wasn't up to him, it was up to the Savior, what
did he do? Listen to Luke 5.12. It came
to pass When the Lord was in a certain city Behold a man full
of leprosy what a picture of us in our sinfulness who seeing
Jesus Seeing him and of course that
just means he saw the Lord pass in that way he saw him he looked
at him But what a picture of faith When you see him with the
eye of faith, when you see him in the sense that our Lord said,
it's given to you to see, to them it's not given. He gives
eyes to see, he gives faith to believe. When he saw Jesus, he
fell on his face. That's our text. The fear of
the Lord. and besought him. He begged him. He was a mercy beggar at the
feet of God's son. Not down at the front of a church,
but at the feet of God's son saying, Lord, if thou wilt, thou
canst make me clean. And I can't read that to you
without reading the next verse. He put forth his hand and touched
him the Lord did what nobody else would ever do he touched
a leper The one who alone is able to touch God The only man
who could ever touch God and God in human flesh able to touch
a sinner and He reached forth, he put forth his hand and touched
him saying, I will. That's salvation. I will. Christ saying, I will. God saying,
I will have mercy. That's how sinners are saved. Be thou clean. It's the command
of the one who said, let there be light. It's not a decision
that sinners make. It's the creative power of God's
son. And immediately the leprosy departed
from him. What was the result of him fearing
the Lord? He fell down at his feet and
begged him. What was the result? Life. That's
our text. The fear of the Lord results
in life. That's what it said, tendeth
to life. When we use that word tend, it may or may not happen,
but it tends to be that way. It may or may not be true, but
it kind of tends to be true. That's not what this, that word
tendeth is not even there in the original language. It's saying
the fear of the Lord is life. It results in life. That's where
God brings us now. That's where he brings us in,
And as long as people have a lackadaisical attitude toward God, God hadn't
done anything for them yet, because it doesn't stay that way when
God does something. And that's the simple message
of our text. Everything about us by nature tendeth unto death. Everything. Everything we think, everything
we say, And everything we do is another toll of the funeral
bell. It's all death. Our works are
called dead works. The wages of our sin is death
and sin is our nature and our practice. Nothing we do or think or say
is anything but sin. Now, it's better for us to worship
as believers rather than to not worship God. But even our worship
is full of sin. We can't please God with it.
Only by being subject to Christ and His precious blood is our
worship acceptable to God. And we come that way. That's
what it means to come in His name. Those that gather in my
name, for my sake, in my name in the sense that
we can't even approach God apart from Christ. We come knowing
that, that even our worship, if we came with the best worship
in our heart apart from Christ, God would have to throw us in
hell. It's his precious blood that
makes us acceptable in the sight of the Lord. And notice particularly
and carefully in our text that though all we do is the signing
of our death sentence, everything we do, it all tendeth toward
death. Our text does not say doing good or doing better tendeth
to life. That's what makes sense to the
unregenerate mind. Somebody who hasn't the Lord
hasn't revealed himself and his truth to that just makes sense,
doesn't it? If doing bad is what is death
and doing good is life Not so there's two problems with that The reason it doesn't say doing
good Tendeth to life Because we cannot do good And even if we could It wouldn't be enough it wouldn't
it wouldn't cause us To be acceptable in the sight
of the Lord doing good or doing better does
not tend to live. Our works are called dead works.
And so many millions of religious people try to make up for their
evil. That's what all this is. You
know, I know I've done bad stuff, but I'm going to dedicate my
life to the Lord now. I'm going to do better. I'm going
to make up for it. Try to make up for their evil
by doing good things, but the problem is we can't do good things And if we did from now on it
wouldn't make up for our evil You don't make up for killing
God's Son what you need is mercy Life doesn't come by trying to
undo what killed us. I Life comes from the Son of
God. Life is the Son of God. He who
hath the Son hath life. Only by looking to Him, only
by bowing to Him, believing on Him, can we ever live. Come unto
me and live. And this thing of fearing Him,
tending to life, it's a lifelong thing. It's not an isolated event. It's perpetual. Throughout the
life of the believer, we fear God, we always fear God. From
the minute we fear Him, you can't unknow God. Our faith doesn't fail because
of the Lord's intercession for us. If there was any way that we
could unknow God, we would, But the gifts and calling of God
are without repentance. If faith came from you, then
you'd lose it. But it comes from God Almighty,
and He don't change His mind. We are alive before God because
by faith, by the fear of God, we are united to Christ. It's
not just an isolated experience. Romans 6, turn over to Romans
6 with me for a minute. I want you to notice the word
life throughout all this. Life, death, and life. Dead and
alive. Verse one, what shall we say
then? Shall we continue in sin that grace may abound? God forbid,
how shall we that are dead to sin live any longer therein? Know ye not that so many of us
were baptized into Jesus Christ, were baptized into his death?
Therefore we are buried with him by baptism into death, that
like as Christ was raised up from the dead by the glory of
the Father, even so we also should walk in newness of life. For if we have been planted together
in the likeness of his death, we shall be also in the likeness
of his resurrection. By his death and what he accomplished
by his death, we're dead to sin now. Not that we're not sinners
anymore, but in the eyes of God, we're not sinners anymore. And
not only that, sin does not have dominion. Look at the rest of
verse six. Knowing this, that our old man is crucified with
him, that the body of sin might be destroyed, that henceforth
we should not serve sin. For he that is dead is freed
from sin. Now, if we be dead with Christ,
we believe that we shall also live with him. This is before
God now, but also that's our manner of life too, as we'll
see going on. Verse nine, knowing that Christ
being raised from the dead dieth no more, death hath no more dominion
over him, And then neither it does us either because he died
in our place. He died as our substitute Verse
10 for in that he died he died unto sin once but in that he
liveth he liveth unto God likewise He were likewise Reckon ye also
yourselves to be dead indeed unto sin, but alive unto God
through Jesus Christ our Lord Let not sin therefore reign in
your mortal body, that you should obey it in the lusts thereof. Neither yield ye your members
as instruments of unrighteousness unto sin, but yield yourselves
unto God as those that are alive from the dead. Those who do this
are those that fear him, that believe him. and your members as instruments
of righteousness unto God, for sin shall not have dominion over
you. It didn't have any dominion over
him, and he died in our place that it might not have dominion
over us either. For ye are not under the law,
but under grace. The wages of sin is death, but
we live before God by Christ. It means two things. It means
that as far as God is concerned, we have no sin. And because of the work that
he did for us and in us, we don't want to sin. Paul said, the things
that I would, I don't do, but the things that I would not,
that's what I did. We want to live under him, it
tendeth to life in that sense too. That's the point I'm making.
It is life in that we are in Christ and he is life. Our text talks about being satisfied,
satisfaction. There is nothing in this world
that will ever satisfy a sinner. It's always more, it's always
more, more, more, more, and vanity and vexation of spirit. Our anxious fear cannot be calmed
until we know how it ends. Not just how it ends, but in
whose hands it all is. Who makes it end the way that
it does. To know that he loves me Satisfaction
to know that he died for me is to know that no charge can be
laid against me That's satisfaction of the soul and nothing else
is gonna make that happen nothing else And then in closing we can't
be visited with evil because we're in his hand No man can
pluck us out of his hand. He turns even the bad things
into good things and Paul went into harm's way, you
think about this. He said, I don't know what's
gonna happen when I get where I'm going except that it's not gonna be fun. I'm
gonna be thrown in jail or I'm gonna be killed, that's all I
know. Other than that, I don't know what the outcome's gonna
be. But he went into harm's way to preach the gospel, counting
not his own life dear unto him, because he knew that this is
not really life anyway. That though man might take his
life away from him, there's no more that they can do. And if they do, it will tend
unto life. It will result in true life.
Death for the believer results in true life with the Savior.
through his life. And so we can say like Paul,
no doubt in his heart did, the Lord is my rock. The Lord is
my salvation. Whom shall I fear? Whom shall
I fear? No evil can come unto me. Thank God. Let's pray together.