“THE FEAR OF THE LORD”

Luke 19: 1-10

An elderly woman had just returned to her home from an evening worship service and was startled to find an intruder in her house. Catching the man in the act of burglarizing her home, she yelled, "STOP! Acts 2: 38!" ("Repent and be baptized, every one of you, in the name of Jesus Christ so that your sins may be forgiven.")

As the burglar stopped dead in his tracks, the woman calmly called the police and explained what she had done. Shortly, several officers arrived and took the man into custody.

As he was placing the handcuffs on the burglar, one of the officers asked, "Why did you just stand there? All the lady did was yell a scripture verse." "Scripture?" replied the burglar, "She said she had an axe and two 38's!"

There is a story told about young Teddy Roosevelt: Mittie (his mother) had found he was so afraid of the Madison Square Church that he refused to set foot inside if alone. He was terrified, she discovered, of something called the "zeal." It was crouched in the dark corners of the church ready to jump at him, he said.

When she asked what a zeal might be, he said he was not sure, but thought it was probably a large animal like an alligator or a dragon. He had heard the minister read about it from the Bible. Using a concordance, she read him those passages containing the word ZEAL until suddenly, very excited, he told her to stop.

The line was from the Book of John, 2:17: "And his disciples remembered that it was written, 'The ZEAL of thine house hath eaten me up.'"

People are still afraid to come near the "zeal" of the Lord, for they are perfectly aware it could "eat them up" if they aren't one of His. Our Lord is good, but He isn't safe.

In our gospel lesson for today we need to keep a “fear of the Lord” mindset in order to understand Zacchaeus’ reactions and words when Jesus comes to visit Him.

Listen to Luke 19: 1-10:

Jesus entered Jericho and was passing through it. A man was there named Zacchaeus; he was a chief tax collector and was rich. He was trying to see who Jesus was, but on account of the crowd he could not, because he was short in stature.

So he ran ahead and climbed a sycamore tree to see him, because he was going to pass that way. When Jesus came to the place, he looked up and said to him, "Zacchaeus, hurry and come down; for I must stay at your house today."

So he hurried down and was happy to welcome him. All who saw it began to grumble and said, "He has gone to be the guest of one who is a sinner."

Zacchaeus stood there and said to the Lord, "Look, half of my possessions, Lord, I will give to the poor; and if I have defrauded anyone of anything, I will pay back four times as much."

Then Jesus said to him, "Today salvation has come to this house, because he too is a son of Abraham. For the Son of Man came to seek out and to save the lost."

We've  all heard the Sunday School version - but perhaps there

may be more to this story.

Zacchaeus finds himself hosting God’s only Son at His house and he is so excited, happy, and scared that he immediately promises to do a whole bunch of things to make himself right in Jesus’ eyes. You’ve met people like this that are caught up in an extraordinary moment who over-reacts.

People who are so over-the-top that they turn other people off (and miss God’s mark) that people think they’re a little bit touched in the head. They are kind of like Westboro Baptist Church responders protesting at funerals of people because they may have talked in love to/with a gay person.

The type of person who sees a sinner and begins to pile up rocks. You know what I’m talking about. People who insist on direct application of God’s Old testament fury as if Jesus has never happened, who insist that God still demands a Temple Sacrifice system. 

The answer is somewhere in the middle.

Jesus’ response sticks to message – “yes, Zacchaeus, salvation has come to your house because you are qualified to receive it,” but HE doesn’t acknowledge Zacchaeus’ “Pharisee” moment of attempting to earn his own salvation.  

Jesus has already taken care of the price and restitution of Zacchaeus’ salvation.

Zacchaeus overdoes it in his fear of the Lord. But what is the middle ground?

What is our biggest fear? Being separated from God or being with God? We have been promised that nothing can separate us from God’s Love unless we choose not to seek it.

Satan, whose name really should be “splitter,” because that is his desire to separate as many people from God as possible operates on a kind of reverse Holy Spirit and gives us at least 5 reasons to fear and keep God out of our lives.

>  If you let him, God will ruin your life (God will take all of you).

>  If you let him, God will ask you to be a fool for him and make you do all kinds of strange things normal people don’t do.

>  Getting “saved” (whatever that is?) is really boring and you will never have another fun day ever.

>  Even if you do come before God it’ll never last and you will be right back at all the old bad stuff quickly (old dogs can’t learn new tricks) because you are a loser.

>  Even though God is fantastic you fear you will backslide and then God won’t take you back and you will never be perfect because you never can be perfect.

(Most of these issues Jesus has covered in His teachings – our future perfection comes from His perfection and our victory over death is HIS victory over death!)

That said, very few people today fear God. Hebrews 10: 31 plainly warns, “It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God.” We should fear God. Only a fool doesn't fear God. Even for born-again Christians, the Bible warns of “the terror of the Lord” in 2 Corinthians 5: 11.

He has promised us that we are His Children so we need not worry, nor fear for His wrath. He asks us to confess and place His Son in our hearts as Savior.

Americans do not fear God anymore. Our culture is saturated with demonic influences that has deteriorated into a decadent society of pleasure-seeking, ungrateful, spoiled-brats.

Those who fear God obey God. They believe the Bible is God's Word, which hardly anyone believes these days. You'll have a difficult time finding someone who is a genuine born-again Christian today, let alone someone who tries to diligently live by the Bible because they love Jesus Christ. Even back in Bible times such people were rare. Philippians 2: 21, “For all seek their own, not the things which are Jesus Christ's.” 

It is becoming once again as it was during Noah's time before the flood, when everyone lived only to eat, drink, get married, and party (Matthew 24: 37-38). They do not fear God.

America has largely deteriorated into a drugging, boozing culture of dirty-minded television addicts, selfish pleasure-seekers, gluttons, sports-fanatics, gossipers and critics, self-righteous hypocrites, liars, marriage quitters, idolatrous celebrity worshippers, immoral ingrates, arrogant fools, SMART-PHONE IDOLATORS who have NO FEAR OF GOD BEFORE THEIR EYES.

Americans are aborting babies at the rate of 24% of all pregnancies. Old people and sick people are being offered suicide options, Nasa admits that our skies are being laced with Lithium Salts, our water is being poisoned with chemicals, and our government officials aren’t being held accountable to laws.

Politicians are giving each other huge sums of money to get along while veterans are being asked to return already earned bonuses and pay for wartime services. It’s chaotic out there, but you can’t find any fear of God out there.

Instead you find a music celebrity who says she’ll demean herself to encourage you

to vote for a certain person. Now that’s probably what happened before the flood.

“If we're the far right, they're the far wrong! Amen! They call us pro-life, they're pro-death! ... If they're politically correct, we're Biblically correct! ... You can't be both!”

As God’s people we are charged with living out the grace of Jesus Christ which was fore-ordained in Isaiah 11: 1-5:

And there shall come forth a rod out of the root of Jesse, and a flower shall rise up out of his root. And the spirit of the Lord shall rest upon him: the spirit of wisdom, and of understanding, the spirit of counsel, and of fortitude, the spirit of knowledge, and of godliness. 

And he shall be filled with the spirit of the fear of the Lord. He shall not judge according to the sight of the eyes, nor reprove according to the hearing of the ears. 

But he shall judge the poor with justice, and shall reprove with equity for the meek of the earth: land he shall strike the earth with the rod of his mouth, and with the breath of his lips he shall slay the wicked. And justice shall be the girdle of his loins: and faith the girdle of his reins.

We live in fear of God as we cultivate these characteristics:

Wisdom                 Understanding                 Counsel

Fortitude                Knowledge            Piety

Fear of the Lord

I’d rather fear God and be wrong about the world then to win the respect of the world and be separated from God. Help change Satan’s nickname from splitter to splutter in your life. Amen.