Welcome, welcome, welcome to the Providence Podcast. My name is Chris Oswald, senior pastor at Providence Community Church. Today I am going to give folks some of the content I've been working on for the men's retreat that's happening right now up in Lawrence, Kansas. I was tasked a while back with helping guys think through how to develop a greater fear of the Lord. And I've just been playing around with that, thinking through different approaches, so forth. The theme of this men's retreat is the awe and fear of the Lord. And Dov did an excellent job last night just detailing particular aspects of the fear of the Lord. And then it's my turn tonight to talk about how to develop more of the fear of the Lord.
And so, you know, I've been thinking about this and kind of, what are some of the ways that I could help guys think through this? And I'm going to present to you what is will be my approach tonight, which is also going to be part three of the Outgrowing Anxiety series that we've discussed previously. I hope you've listened to the other two.
Okay, so the question that I was tasked with is, you know, how do you develop an increased fear of the Lord? And my approach for tonight with the guys and my approach in this podcast is related to this idea that every vice is a parasite of a particular virtue. So there can only be lust because there is love. There can only be greed because there is generosity or wealth. There can only be pride because there is glory. So sometimes the way to get to the virtue is it involves sort of reverse engineering the vice. And here's what I mean by that. In particular, for the topic that I've been assigned. The fear of man is the parasite of the fear of God. So if you want to know what the fear of God looks like, if you want to know how to develop the fear of God, you can actually examine the fear of man and work your way backwards to some degree and find out kind of, well, what does it mean to actually fear God?
So what I want to lead you through is an exercise, a diagnostic exercise, just some symptoms of what it looks like when a person has the fear of man. By the way, this is all rooted. I'll get to the passage, but this is all rooted significantly and how Jesus treats the fear of man in Matthew 10:28, where he tells his people not to fear men, but to fear God. And I'll unpack that further.
But so. So I want to help you, if I can help you see what the fear of man is. And. And Help you to sort of diagnose whether or not you've got it. I think I can work backwards from there and help you to think through the fear of God. So that's the goal. And let's see if we can pull this off. Let's see if this works.
Okay, first of all, let's talk about some diagnostics. I've got four categories of kind of areas that would show that you have trouble with the fear of man. By the way, it's such a common sin that you should just assume that you do have it. But I'm going to give you some actual diagnostics here. The first category is lying. If you are concealing the truth, bending or omitting truth to preserve your image or avoid rejection, that's a sign that you are struggling with the fear of man. If you are engaged repeatedly in flattery, speaking dishonestly to gain approval or favor, or if you're apologizing unnecessarily, consistently, this is a good sign that you have the fear of man. If you are boasting, exaggerating your self worth to secure admiration, that's a good sign that what you're doing there is you're engaging in the fear of man economy. Right? If, if you are using your speech to sort of manipulate. This is a general statement. If you're using your speech to sort of manipulate perception, gain approval, avoid difficulty, and so on and so forth. Like that's all under the category of lying.
6 · Introduces the second diagnostic category: evasion, which is characterized by chronic anxiety arising from fearing man instead of God
Now the second category would be evasion. People who do not fear God, but instead fear man are kind of living in a constant state of anxiety to one degree or another.
7 · Reads Isaiah 51:12-13 to ground the connection between forgetting God and living in continual fear of man
Listen to this Passage from Isaiah 51, verses 12 through 13. God's speaking, and he says, I, I am he who comforts you. Who are you that you are afraid of? Men who dies of the son of man, who is made like grass, and have forgotten the Lord your maker, who stretched out the heavens and laid the foundations of the earth. And you fear continually, all the day because of the wrath of the oppressor when he sets himself to destroy. And where is the wrath of the oppressor?
8 · Applies Isaiah 51:12-13 to show the cause-and-effect: forgetting God as comforter produces constant discomfort and continual fear
You've got this situation where, because the individuals have forgotten their maker, who stretched out the heavens and laid the foundations of the earth, and is the comforter. If you forget the comforter, well, guess what you're going to be experiencing in your heart? Discomfort. It says that you fear continually all the day.
9 · Details the behavioral markers of evasion: avoiding hard conversations, shrinking back from witness and leadership, excuse-making, saying 'peace, peace' where there is no peace
And so there's a kind of a low grade anxiety that arises in someone with a fear of man problem. And they wind up avoiding things, evading things, evading hard conversations either about themselves or about others. They're like the false shepherds in Ezekiel, saying, peace, peace. Where there is no peace. You'll find that the person that's struggling with the fear of man has a tendency not to be bold. They shrink back from witness or leadership or openly declaring the truth. You'll see sort of a general kind of excuse making, putting off decisions, etc. There's just a general pattern of evasion.
10 · Uses Pilate's fear of the crowd as a biblical example of evasion—knowing the right thing but failing to do it because of fear of man
When Pilate was afraid of the crowds, he didn't do the right thing because he was afraid of the crowd.
11 · Introduces the third diagnostic category: aggrievement, which manifests as anger, resentment, or despondency when disrespected, overlooked, or criticized
So we've got lying, evasion. Third category is sort of aggrievement. I wanted to say anger here, but the reality is anger is just one piece of a larger category of aggrievement. When, when you find yourself disrespected, overlooked, criticized, something like that, you'll see things like anger or resentment or despondency emerge. Anger is pretty common. When Saul heard the women sing, you know, David has slain his tens of thousands. Saul has slain his thousands. David, his tens of thousands, you know, he grew angry, and that's because Saul had a fear of man problem. When Cain grew angry because God favored Abel's offering, there's a anxiety underneath that related to whether or not he is acceptable. The older brother in the prodigal son story feels like he has been disrespected and overlooked. So he's aggrieved.
12 · Expands the aggrievement category to include despondency, using Elijah's collapse in 1 Kings 19 as an example
And then there's like places like in First Kings 19. I heard some guys last night at the men's retreat talking about this passage. This is where after having a marvelous showdown with the, with the. The priests of baal, Elijah flees and just collapses and says, it is enough, Lord, I am just a man. And what he's doing there is. He's. He's doing math on, you know, what are my odds? I'm one guy. There's so many people against me there. I don't have really anybody on my team and so forth. So I wanted to say anger, but it's really more like despondency, anger, bitterness, resentfulness. If you keep finding yourself thinking about a hard thing that someone said to you, you're in an aggrieved state. So that's kind of the general category there.
13 · Introduces the fourth diagnostic category: display, which is superficial godliness maintained for optics
And then finally is display. And by display, I mean superficial godliness, thin spirituality maintained for optics. This is classic Pharisee stuff. Craving recognition for your service, serving publicly while resenting and wanting to, not to avoid hidden secret work, even Though Jesus commands that. Making worldly displays like feeling like you have a excessive concern for your beauty, for your, what kind of car you have, the clothes you have and so forth because you want to impress. These are all display oriented issues. Self promoting, you know, finding up a way to bring up how awesome you are in various ways, that's another issue. Position seeking, you know, wanting. Wanting a position that is recognized and that feels important and so forth.
14 · Summarizes the four diagnostic categories (lying, evasion, aggrievement, display) and signals a brief elaboration on aggrievement to follow
So those are the four categories I came up with just to diagnose whether the fear of man is at work in your life. These all come from various scriptures. Lying. One category, which is just generalized lack of truthful speech, evasion, which is just avoiding hard things, hard conversations, being afraid of people, afraid of being embarrassed and so forth. Aggrievement. Just like, how do you respond when you are overlooked or disrespected or criticized and so forth. Or when you are embarrassed, do you feel anger, do you feel resentment? Despondency? Lots of categories there. You know, let me lean into that one real quick.
15 · Illustrates that aggrievement manifests differently based on personality—one pastor responds with anger, another with despondency—but both responses reveal the same root problem
You know, you could get this. Two different guys who get the same criticism from a church member. I'm talking about two different pastors get the same criticism from a church member and one like blows his. He gets mad, he gets angry and he acts sinfully. And the other one like goes back to his house and like can't move for three days. He's so despondent over the criticism. It's the same deal, man. It's just personality expressions of the same problems. And so that's aggrievement and then display, you know, sort of leaning toward. And this can show up not only in your service but in like how you spend your money and what you prioritize. It can even show up in like what sins you care about and which ones you don't because you care about the ones that are public and not so much about the ones that are private, so forth.
16 · Introduces the LEAD acronym (Lying, Evasion, Aggrievement, Display) and signals the shift to the extended metaphor of lead poisoning
Okay, so that's a diagnostic. Now I arranged this in an acronym, LE A D. But I don't mean lead as in leadership. I mean L E A D as in lead as in the metal lead, the soft metal. And I'm talking about. I crafted it this way because it turns out I was having a series of reoccurring dreams on the subject.
17 · Shares the personal experience of recurring dreams about scientific receptors, which became the genesis for the lead poisoning metaphor that explains the fear of man / fear of God dynamic
I was in a lab and I was talking to scientists about receptors and antagonists and agonists and so forth. And I had just enough information in my knowledge base that for some reason that stuff just kept coming up in my dreams. And I had that dream, like maybe two or three times. And so I started like, well, I got to figure out why I'm dreaming about this. And it really. It's interesting because I think I was just trying to come up with a way of describing, a helpful way of describing what's going on in the fear of man, fear of God dynamic.
18 · Notes that the fear of man / fear of God pairing recurs throughout Scripture and that the pastor's subconscious was working to find a helpful analogy through the dream imagery
You'll see those related a lot. It's not just Matthew 10, but you'll see this related a lot, this connection between the fear of man versus the fear of God. Sometimes it's fear of man trusting God or something, but it's these two dynamics are always working. And I think my brain was kind of building something. And it was coming up in a particular dream that I kept having about this lab where scientists were explaining the idea of receptors.
19 · Explains the science of lead poisoning: lead is molecularly similar enough to essential minerals that it occupies bodily receptors, blocking the real nutrients and preventing the body from functioning properly
So as it turns out, lead poisoning. Bear with me for a second. Lead poisoning is a really good. At least I think it's a really good metaphor to explain how the fear of man interrupts causes trouble with the fear of God. Okay, so let me kind of break down some of the science. In the cells, there are these receptors, and you can think of them as little molecular locks, but only open for the right quote, unquote. Key. The thing is, is that there are substances that have enough molecular properties similar to the. That they can fool the locks in your body. Okay. And so lead is actually one of these counterfeits. There's a lot of them. Like, you know, alcohol is one, caffeine is one. They sit on particular receptors that do particular things and produce kind of slightly off responses to what your body is naturally built to do. Okay. And, you know, you can leverage this. Like, that's why, that's why medicine. It's like opioids work and so forth. But of course, if you, if you. We typically don't do a very good job measure, you know, you know, managing this kind of stuff. So lead is one of those where there's absolutely no positive reason have lead in your body. And it's unfortunately what it does is it tricks or it's just close enough molecularly to fit in these receptors that we have throughout our brain and so on and so forth. And so when that happens, the functions that those receptors are supposed to do, like learning and memory and energy, it's really a ton of stuff. Those receptors stop working because they've got lead in them. And now they like. It's just sitting in there. It's not doing anything. It's actually doing bad things, but it's not allowing your body to just do all the basic things it's supposed to do. It doesn't necessarily destroy the lock these receptors, it just fills the hole. And now you can't get the right key in there. Okay, is that the idea? That makes sense.
20 · Applies the lead poisoning metaphor to the fear of man: the fear of man masquerades as the fear of God, occupying the spiritual receptors meant for the fear of God and preventing the Christian from functioning as designed
So the fear of man is like lead poisoning. In the body, lead masquerades as calcium or zinc or magnesium. It looks close enough to the real thing and the brain lets it in. But once it enters the receptor, it blocks the true signal and fills up what was supposed to be something that is needed in your body for a bunch of different things. And it's like, well, now I've got this thing sitting in this receptor that's not doing anything. You know, calcium for instance. Like it's meant to carry your neurons or to allow the neurons to fire and learn and so on and so forth. But like over time what would happen is, if you have lead poisoning is you're getting your diet in your diet, let's say you're getting enough magnesium, zinc and calcium and so forth. But it's not getting, it's not getting to where it needs to go.
21 · Asserts the indispensability of the fear of God for Christian growth: it is a motivational activator essential for sanctification and wisdom
So what, what's going on with the fear of man is, is that you were created to have a sort of whole being interaction with the fear of God. The fear of God is necessary for basically everything. It's a component of loving God, which I'd love to talk about more later. It's, it's. It's essentially a motivational activator and it can't be replaced. You absolutely need the fear of the Lord. You will not grow in sanctification without it. And you won't even like get wise or anything. So it's absolutely an essential thing. And what's going on when you have the fear of man is that the fear of man is like lead. It comes in and occupies these spots that are super needed that we were created for to keep our bodily machine working. It's very similar to that on the spiritual side. You were made with all of this internal architecture. You're made to sort of function on to some degree the fear of God. And you've, you're built for it. You're built to hold that. You're built for it to be a part of your heart and the heart part of your conscience and a part of your thinking and so forth. But the fear of man comes in and it's, you know, molecularly close enough masquerades as the fear of God. It's, you know, it fits in the receptor. And so then you can't Function as a Christian. Like, you can't be what you want to be, what you're called to be. You're going to be. You're not going to be able to live, you know, a victorious Christian life if all of these receptors that are made to hold the fear of God are holding the fear of man.
22 · Details the physical symptoms of lead poisoning—fatigue, mental fog, irritability, weakness, systemic decline—to prepare the analogy's application to spiritual symptoms
So, you know, when you have, like, even, like moderate lead poisoning, it creeps in quietly. A person begins to feel tired and foggy and they struggle to focus or remember things. There's irritability, mood swings. The body gets weaker and paler because we've got anemia problems. Now, lead poisoning affects almost everything. It affects your gut, it affects your bones, it affects your joints, your immune system, everything. So it's just having this constant drain on you, and it just gets worse and worse. And, yeah, your body can kind of still function, but it's really like you're running on one cylinder when you need six.
23 · Applies the lead poisoning metaphor directly to the listener: if you recognized yourself in the LEAD symptoms, you have spiritual lead poisoning
Okay, this is what the fear of man is doing to you. If you identified, when I gave the list, the L, E, A D, lying, evasion, aggravation, aggrievement, you know, display, if you're seeing yourself in those things, then you've got a small case at least of lead poisoning, of spiritual lead poisoning, which is the fear of man. And it's robbing you of your spiritual vitality. You won't believe how much better you would feel if you could just detox from the fear of man. And the fear of man will start. Sorry. When you get the fear of man out of you, the fear of God starts landing on all these internal receptors. And you would be shocked by how much different life is when this sin is dealt with and detoxified. Okay, you're just going to see big changes, massive upticks in joy, peace, rest, and so forth.
24 · Signals the shift from diagnosis to treatment and prepares to set realistic expectations about the difficulty and duration of detoxing from the fear of man
And so I want to talk about how to start doing this, how to start engaging in this detox. But the first thing I think I need to do is to manage expectations.
25 · Sets realistic expectations with pastoral care: detoxing from the fear of man will be hard, will take more than a year, and requires ongoing vigilance
Because the truth is, is that if you do have lead poisoning, it's a really big deal, and you have a hard road ahead of you to get this chelated, to get this removed and so forth. And it's a whole thing. And I'll talk about some of that as we progress. But I think the big thing is just understand that if you have the fear of man in a substantial way, it's going to take time. And, you know, the great thing about walking with the Lord God is how patient and merciful and kind he is. And through Christ, he's made an end to all of our sins. So, you know, sin can hurt us, our joy, sin can hurt us, you know, these ways. But it will never cut us off from God completely. God's always ready to help us with this. But I need you to know that it's going to be hard. You've habituated yourself into this. It's going to take time. In fact, you know, I think you just need to think about this in terms of year, more than a year of dealing with this. And then that would just be to get to some level of detoxification where you start to notice things. And then, of course, you've got to keep yourself free of this.
26 · Warns that the world system runs on the fear of man and will penalize those who opt out
Anyway, the other thing I want you to know is that the world system is designed like a motor, is the oil of the world, is the fear of man. The. The engine of the world depends on the fear of man to keep the whole corrupt system humming along. So the whole structure of the world incentivizes fear of man and penalizes fear of God. You need to understand that as soon as you start to make progress in this and become truly free or even more free, many people will not like you simply because they see that you have stopped playing along with the implicit rules that the world so desperately depends on in order to keep their corrupt system going. You understand that as you progress out of the fear of man, more people will hate you because nobody hates a former slave as much as a current slave.
27 · Reinforces the warning: opting out of LEAD behaviors will disrupt not just personal habits but entire social and economic systems, including family relationships
And so you just need to understand, like, this is going to be hard. It's going to be hard because you've developed habits. And then also the whole world system really depends on this. The entire economy to large degree depends on this. And many of our social relationships, even with our own family, depend on this. And so if you were to say, I'm done with this. I'm done living this L, E A D sort of falsehood, lying, avoiding hard things, evasion, being aggrieved, resentful, bitter, angry, provoked. When I'm, you know, threatened, living a life full of display, where you're just constantly trying to show people how good you are. If you opt out of that stuff, people aren't going to love it. So I want to moderate expectations.
28 · Balances the hard warning with hope and aspiration: getting the fear of man out of your system will produce unbelievable improvement in how you feel, and progress as a Christian is impossible without dealing with this
And then I would say because it's so hard, I want to again, restate, you know, sort of aspirational statement. You just won't believe how much better you'll feel when you get some of this lead out of your system. Right? You just won't believe it. So it's going to be hard but it's going to be absolutely worth it. And the reality is that you just aren't going to make progress as a Christian if you don't get this handled.
29 · Signals the shift to the treatment plan and previews three categories: environmental, behavioral, and chelation (repentance)
Okay, so we've got some expectations set, we've got some aspirational reminders. It's worth it. What do we do? How do we actually start dealing with this? Well, here I would just follow what is essentially the treatment plan for lead poisoning. And I think there's probably, you know, I'm not anywhere near an expert on any of this, but it seems to me that there's at least three logical categories for dealing with something like this where there's a detoxification issue.
30 · First treatment step: environmental cleanup
And the first would be environmental. Clean up your environment so that you're not constantly being exposed to lead. I know like for instance, that the science here, I want to talk about the company you keep. I know for instance, that the science is pretty clear that time on social media is inversely correlated with happiness, especially with females. Significantly more so with females. My understanding, and correct me if I'm wrong, but that's my understanding. And I mean it's not that it doesn't exist with males, I just know it's significantly higher with females. I think it's safe to say this, if you're a woman struggling with anything related to the fear of man, anxiety, depression stuff, you should not be on social media. It's like a type 2 diabetic, like, you know, constantly going to the bakery. I'm like, nope, you're not serious about this because you're not taking the most obvious step. I think it's safely safe to say with actual data backing up this statement that if you're struggling with this, probably male or female, you need to not be. You need to watch the company you keep and disengage from systems that naturally incentivize strutting, aggrievement, deception, blah, blah, blah.
31 · Second environmental step: spend time with people who understand grace—who love you where you are but call you forward
Number two, don't keep company with people who pressure you because they don't understand grace. So one would be, don't just plug into the world system in general, especially via social media. But the second one would be you need to understand there's, you're gonna, you need to constantly be thinking about who am I spending time with and why. And one of the best kind of measurements is, is this a person who understands grace or not? Because if it's a person, if you engage in relationships where the people understand grace, then there is the God designed buffer. You need to be honest about where you are and to be loved and accepted as you are, but also called to where you need to go. So you need to think, is this a. Are these people who understand grace? You could. You could mess this up in two ways. You could spend time with people who misunderstand grace to be just pure license. You can do whatever you want forever. That's not going to help. But you also need to be careful not to be around Pharisees who are constantly signaling to you if you're less than perfect, I'm not your friend. I'm not. If the. If the relationship is identifiably transactional, you probably shouldn't be engaged in it in any meaningful way, because all you're going to get in that kind of situation is temptations to engage in these same behaviors, the lead behaviors. Right. So one of the ways environmental approach would be, okay, make sure you're not putting yourself in environments where the fear of man is sort of the unwritten rule. Try to spend time with people who understand that that's a real sin and that it's a real problem and are doing what they can to outgrow it. And probably the greatest evidence of someone that's really trying to renounce that whole set system is a person who has this kind of like massive margins of grace for people when they fail, with also an expectation of, hey, let's keep. Let's keep growing. So watch out who you're spending time with.
32 · Third step: direct behavioral repentance
And then start dealing with the behaviors themselves. Stop lying, stop flattering, stop boasting, stop trying to manipulate situations with your speech. Stop evading hard things, potentially embarrassing things, things you may fail at. Stop avoiding hard truth and love conversations. When you find yourself aggrieved in some way, whether it's you're feeling resentful or bitter or angry or despondent, you need to assume that's the fear of man. Stop and just understand what's going on here.
33 · Personal testimony: the pastor realized his aggrievement over a stranger's insult versus his indifference to the Lord's name being taken in vain revealed a fear-of-man problem
I remember years ago, I got really poorly treated verbally by someone, and it was a random stranger. And I thought about it all day and stewed on it all day. And then I realized through the Holy Spirit's grace that every day just about I hear my Lord's name taken in vain, and I don't think about it twice, you know, and it was this coming to terms, coming to Jesus kind of moment where I realized, you know, whatever I say, my theology is whatever I say about the glory of God and so forth, here's the reality. I hear people say foul things about the God of the universe constantly, and it just slides off my Back like, you know, like nothing. But if an angry stranger at a stoplight yells at me, I'm more aggravated by that than I am by these cursings of the Lord. And that was a moment where I had to realize, well, hold on a second, that's entirely screwed up. And that signals something isn't right.
34 · Application continued: when you catch yourself in display behaviors—performing for others, spending to impress—stop and renounce it
So anyway, just notice, okay, lying, evading, aggrievement, display. Display is like when you catch yourself performing for others. Stop it, renounce it, and so forth. When you are thinking about purchases and so forth, make sure you've got some handle on why you're doing what you're doing, why you're spending the money you're spending, so forth. And just be aware of the tendency to perform good works, to flex, to look like somebody in front of others. And then of course, one of the great sort of countermeasures for that one in particular, just to embrace quiet service where people don't know that you're doing stuff and serve the Lord.
35 · Transitions to the chelation metaphor: in medical lead poisoning, chelating agents grab the lead and remove it from the body
Anyway, okay, so I've given you kind of some set, some expectation setting, aspiration. It's definitely worth it. Think about your environment. Don't be around people who would provoke and who depend on the fear of man to sort of function in their little setup. Start looking for these behaviors and repenting of them. And that gets us to the next thing, which is in the. And again, I just read this stuff, so I don't know if I'm saying this word right, but in lead poisoning in particular, there's a thing called chelation therapy where. And that's just like the Greek for claw, I believe. Anyway, it's. The idea is we do have a few chemicals that we can use to put in the body that are just so full of negatively charged ions and they almost act like magnets for iron. And so you can take this medicine, it's going to cause problems because you're pulling iron through your kidneys. There's a whole consequence to this, but there is actually like a scrubber that you could use, a chemical scrubber that you could use in your body to get rid of lead.
36 · Applies the chelation metaphor: the spiritual chelating agent is repentance
Well, the spiritual equivalent of that is repentance. Remember first John 1:8:9. If we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us, but if we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and cleanse us from all unrighteousness. And my sense of that text is that repeatedly confessing your sins not only gets you right with God as to the particular sin you had just Committed, but has a larger progressive sanctification work on you that begins to get to the root issues of some of these behaviors that you're confessing and repenting of.
37 · Application of the chelation metaphor: keep confessing LEAD behaviors
And so, you know, in lead poisoning, you've got these chelating chemicals that grab the iron or grab the lead, I'm sorry, Actually, they grab iron too. These will take all the metals out of your body, even the ones you need, but it'll grab all the metals and you excrete them. Well, in the spiritual side, if you just keep repenting when you catch yourself in the le a d behaviors, keep repenting, keep confessing, keep knowing that God forgives you. And what will happen over time is, is that the blood of Jesus cleanses us from all unrighteousness. He will. He will keep cleaning you up. Okay, so when you see yourself exhibiting those behaviors, just keep a short leash, keep confessing, just keep talking to the Lord about it.
38 · Introduces the nutrient replacement step and notes where the metaphor breaks: in physical lead poisoning, you cannot displace lead by taking more calcium
And the final thing I'd point you to is what you think of as nutrient replacement. Now, this is where the science of my metaphor doesn't quite work perfectly, because in the case of lead poisoning, it's filling in the receptors for a bunch of different minerals and metals like zinc, iron, magnesium, and calcium. And in the medical side of this, you can't just take more calcium to flush the lead out. It doesn't work that way. The lead's really locked. That key is real stuck in that lock. So. But in the spiritual world, you can just keep in taking the fear of the Lord, which is what's being blocked with the fear of man. You can just keep taking in the fear of the Lord, attempting to grow in the fear of the Lord, and it will have some displacement effect on you.
39 · Clarifies that nutrient replacement (taking in the fear of God) cannot be the only strategy
Now, I don't think you can rely on only this. I don't think you can say, well, eventually, when I have enough fear of the Lord, I'll stop doing these led behaviors. That's not. No, deal with the behaviors, repent of the behaviors, try to put yourself into better situations, and simultaneous to all that, start actively feeding on truths related to the fear of God.
40 · Grounds the replacement principle biblically in Matthew 10:28: Jesus commands replacement—do not fear man, rather fear God
So again, replacement is seems to be the main plan for the biblical prescription for dealing with the fear of man or getting the fear of God. These two seem to be a replacement mechanism is sort of the main prescription. So again, Matthew 10:28, do not fear those who kill the body, but cannot kill the soul. Rather fear him who can destroy both soul and body in hell. So see how Jesus is saying, like, get rid of this fear and replace it with this other Fear, right. That's the broader context in general for how the Bible would have us handle the fear of God versus the fear of man. There is a displacing function.
41 · Clarifies that replacement alone is insufficient—mere intellectual exposure to truth about God will not displace the fear of man
I think that the problem that I've seen with, you know, in my own life or even with other Christians as I've walked with them through this, it. This cannot be. It's the only function. There is some way in which the activities associated with the fear of man have to be repented as sins, which they are. And there has to be constant confession and then also theological growth. I think probably one of the ways maybe that this is making sense to me as I'm talking about it, is we can't think that the solution to this is just mere exposure to Bible truths about God. It's practicing Bible truths about God. And when you admit that something's a sin that you're doing, that's an expression of the fear of God. Right? But it's an expression. It's just not an intellectual thing. So this gets back to the. Learn the truth, love the truth, live the truth. And I would definitely apply that to this.
42 · Generalizes the Matthew 10:28 principle: the replacement formula works with any variable
Jesus is just teaching a general replacement theory here. You swap out the fear of God. It replaces the fear of man, and you can use it in a negative sense for anything. Do not fear the disapproval of man. Rather, fear the disapproval of God. It doesn't have to be your safety. Do not fear being excluded by man. Fear being excluded by God. The formula works, you know, with all kinds of variables inserted into it. And then you can also just turn it, you know, into positive language. Jesus is saying it here negatively, but the positive is also true. Like, do not look to man as your source. Look to God. Do not love the approval of man, love the approval of God. Stuff like that.
43 · Warns against the gnostic error of thinking the solution to the fear of man is to stop caring about reputation altogether
Okay, so one final statement on this subject, and that is, is that you. You. There are certain things that you might get wrong as you're figuring this out. I'm just trying to give you some. Some shortcuts. One time sometimes you'll hear people like, who are having a money problem, like a greed problem, say, I don't care about money now. Like that they think that not caring about money is the solution. And no, it's not that. It's just trusting God with your money. And so a lot of what's going on with the fear of man in our world is just fear of rejection, fear of, we love our reputation, we love being liked and so forth. And I've seen a lot of people go wrong by saying, oh, so then the Way to repent of that is to not care at all about what people think of me and only care about what God thinks. Nope, that's not right. That's not how the Bible handles this. It'd be more like this, God, I trust you with my reputation. I trust you with my reputation. It's not God, I don't care about my reputation. It's God, I trust you with my reputation. I'm not going to engage in lad behaviors to build my reputation. I'm not going to engage in le a d sins to build my reputation. I trust you with my reputation. And I don't need to sin if I just trust you. So when you're working through this, don't become like some kind of gnostic caricature who no longer cares about some of the basic things that are motivating your fear of man. No, the fear of man is just your chosen instrument of means to get good things that are usually good that you want. And what we don't want you to do is we don't want you to renounce the desire for those good things that dehumanizes you. You were made to desire good things. They're supposed to be ordered and they're supposed to be submitted to the Lord. So don't hyper correct into, oh, I have all this concern about reputation and what people think of me, and now I don't care at all. And I'm some weirdo on the edge who just doesn't care about anything anymore, you know? No, like, you should care about your reputation. The Bible's clear on that. But you should trust God with your reputation. You see the difference?
44 · Closes with pastoral request for prayer, invitation to use the content with others, and benediction
Okay, well, I hope that's helpful. And if any of you listen to this in the next few hours, pray for me as I share this with our guys. And, you know, maybe some of you will listen to this and you'll be able to have this conversation with your. With your man, with your men later on this weekend or next week. All right, thanks so much for listening. Hope this serves you. May God. God bless and keep you, and I look forward to worshiping with you tomorrow morning.