All right. If you'll remember, we're continuing in our Sweeter Than Honey series. It's been, like, really sweet just to walk through a verse or two at a time and just see together how much, like, depth and richness it can be in one or two verses of Scripture and just get to hear from other people what passages have meant to them. Anyone else enjoying the series so far? Yeah. Sweet. I'm glad to hear it. And today, as I get to kind of open up my verse for you and introduce it, we're going to be in Psalm 25. So if you have a Bible, you can flip it there. We're going to be in a few other places as well to help understand what Psalm 25:14 is saying. That's going to be our verse this morning. We're going to be in other places, but that'll be really our base camp and jumping off points so we can explore together what God's word has for us this morning. So Psalm 25:14 is where we're going to be. And as you're flipping there, and I love hearing pages of Bibles flip as you're flipping there, I want to ask you a question to consider. Have you ever met or known someone who seems to know and walk with God so personally and deeply that it kind of makes you jealous a little bit? Like, the way they speak about God, it's clear they're familiar with Him. Like, the way they talk and make decisions and react to things in their life, it makes it really clear, like they have experienced God. When you hear them pray, you're like, they pray to God, like he's really there, like he's a real person they're having a conversation with and they know Him. And you're wondering, like, man, what do they have that I don't like? God seems so real and personal and close to them. And to be honest, sometimes I feel like I maybe know more about God than I know God. Like what marks their relationship with God that doesn't always mark mine. And I had this type of experience, actually, while I was reading a biography about a man named John Patton, a missionary to cannibals in New Hebrides. It's a wild story. Now, I started this biography expecting to be wowed by his relationship with God. But what shocked me is there's something else in his biography that wowed me even more, and it was his description of his father's relationship with God. This ordinary, not flashy, ordinary dude. This is how Patton describes his father's relationship With God. Listen to this. This is beautiful, he says. Daily and often we saw our father retire to his closet and shut the door where we understood prayers were being poured out there. We occasionally heard the echoes of a trembling voice pleading as if for life. And we learned to slip out and in past that door on tiptoe, not to disturb that holy conversation. The outside world might not know, but we knew where came that happy light always dawning on my father's face. It was a reflection from the presence of God in the consciousness of which he lived. Even if everything else in religion, whereby some unthinkable catastrophe swept from my memory, my soul would wander back to those memories and hearing still the echoes of my father's cries to God, I would hurl back all doubt with the victorious appeal. He walked with God. Why not I? I don't know about you, but that's the type of relationship with God I really hunger for Veritas relationship where God is real to me and I really know and experience him and see him. And I hope that's the same type of hunger you're walking into this room with in some sort of way. Because knowing God is the purpose of our lives. And so can you imagine, like the blessing of knowing God and walking with God, the way that the heroes of the Bible and the heroes of church history and the heroes of the faith have? If that sounds like something you've always craved, here's what I'm asking you to consider along with John Patton. If others have walked with God, why not us? If they walked with God, why not I? And what if this type of relationship to God is possible for you? What if it's possible no matter what your past is, no matter what your IQ or level of education is, no matter how overwhelming your life is? See, here's the question our verse is going to answer this morning. What is the secret to a close walk with God? What's the secret? What is the secret to a close walk with God? And what I love about our verse this morning is it's just such sweet simplicity. In less than 20 words. King David, he cuts to the heart of what it really looks like to walk closely with God. And since I found this verse like, what I love about it is it's kind of just been almost like a lighthouse to me, navigating me towards God, even when the night's dark and the ocean is choppy and reminding me what it means to walk with God. And I hope it'll do the same thing for you this morning. Actually, this verse is so sweetly simple. As we get into it, David's going to kind of reveal the secret right away as we dig in. Look at our verse with me, Psalm 25:14. The friendship of the Lord is for those who fear him, and he makes known to them his covenant. And we're gonna explore what it means to be God's friend and know God's covenant in a bit. Like, what does that really mean? But for right now, it's pretty immediately obvious. That's the type of close relationship with God we should be after. Like, what could be better than being God's friend and being in committed covenant with God? But notice those two blessings on the edges of the verse. They put all the weight on the middle. Cause here's the question the middle of the verse is answering. Who gets that type of relationship with God? Who gets God's friendship? Who gets deep, committed covenant relationship with God? Who gets to experience a close walk with God? And David's clearly not burying the lead. Look at what he says in the middle. The friendship of the Lord is for those who fear him, and he makes known to them his covenant. Who gets God's friendship? Who gets covenantal relationship with God? The one who fears God. Put simply, this is the big idea of this verse, that we're going to spend the rest of our time together unpacking. The gift of walking with God closely is given to those who fear God deeply. This gift of a close walk with God, it is given to those who fear God. The explosive secret and path to a close, intimate, deep relationship with God is the fear of God. And as I've been preparing the sermon and just reflecting on what it means to fear God, it struck me like, in some ways, this is what, more than anything else, I'm on a quest to recover, like, in my own life and in the life of the church. Like more than anything, if I looked back on my time in ministry, whether it's five years or 50, and I could say I feared God more deeply than than when I started and helped others fear God more deeply, I'd count it as a success because I've become more and more convinced church, that David's right, that the fear of God is the beating heart of a close relationship with God. It is the lifeblood of Christianity and it's the engine of godliness. So here's where we're going this morning to help unpack this a bit more. I want to put on a few different hats to help us drill down deeply into this reality of the fear of. Of God. First, I want to put on what you might call an artist hat. I want to paint a portrait for you of godly fear and what it actually looks like so you can understand it more clearly. Then I want to put on a chef's hat. I want to make you hungry for the blessings of fearing God and what happens for those who fear his name. And lastly, I don't know if gardeners have a type of hat, but just stick with the analogy. I'm going to put on a gardener's hat and propose a cultivation plan for us to grow the fear of God in the soil of our own heart. That's where we're going this morning. And we're starting with painting a picture of what the fear of God actually is. Because I think maybe you'll agree it's possible there aren't many more words in the Bible that are so important at the same time that they're, like, completely misunderstood or maybe a little confusing. Right? After all, you're like, we just sang about not fearing God's judgment. Now you're saying fear God. Doesn't God say, perfect love casts out fear? Doesn't God say, do not be afraid? Doesn't God say, he's given us a spirit not of fear, but of power? Seems like those two things are contradictory. How can David and the Bible call us to fear God at the same time he calls us not to? Well, simplest answer, of course, is that there's two different types of fear. There's the unhealthy fear that produces hiding, cowardice, distrust. And then there's the healthy fear that we're talking about that produces close, rich relationship with God. But I think that tension still surfaces and that many of us still kind of get confused about what that type of healthy fear actually looks like. It's kind of a strange word. How do I explain what this means? Do I understand what it means and see, if we can't understand or define it, how can we pursue it? We need to get fear right if we want to get knowing God right. And really, we need to get the fear of God right if we want to get Christianity right. So what does it mean to fear God? And, well, what makes the fear of God such a unique trait is that it's really the blending together of several different things that together create one beautiful masterpiece, several different colors splashed onto a canvas that display a portrait of the fear of God. So what I wanna do with the majority of our time together this morning is paint each unique color of the fear of God on a canvas for you so you can see the portrait. And if we wanna understand what David means by the fear of God in this verse, we need to zoom out and see how Scripture paints the fear of God across his word. So let's get going. Here's the first color we're gonna splash on our canvas this morning as we paint a picture of the fear of God. To fear God is to walk in humility towards God. To fear God is to walk in humility towards God. Humility is our first color this morning. We see this in Proverbs 22:4, where Solomon really clearly connects fear and humility when he says this. He says the reward for humility and fear of the Lord is riches and honor and life. See, for Solomon, fear and humility are so close, they could be on the same breath. He's saying they're so close together. They're inseparable. They can't be removed. They go together. And even though humility, it's not the whole picture, it does teach us something really, really important about what fearing God actually looks like. Because when you come face to face and actually see God in his actual glory and majesty, hear me. The only fitting thing is to simply lay yourself before him in personal debasement and heartfelt submission. That's the type of humility fear produces. Genuine, humble debasement and humble submission. Let's break that down a bit. This word debasement, it just means seeing both the abundance of your sinfulness and lack of personal glory. It's what we literally just sang about. All my clothes are stained by sin. I have nothing to offer. Now, that's a word that, if we're honest, has fallen on hard times in our self affirmation. You're perfect as you are. I wouldn't change a thing. Age. But let me give you some wisdom from a couple puritans to help set our heads on straight. First is from George Swinnick, who said this. The height of God must lay man low. The height of God. When you see it, all it can do is lay you low. To fear God is to be brought low because you have seen the exalted king and you can't imagine taking his place on the throne again. You're like, I see I have no glory compared to the height of you. And the second quote is from Thomas Brooks, who said this. There are no small sins because there is no small God. There are no small sins. Why? Because there is no small God. Every one of our sinful actions that we can kind of wink at and say is not that big of a deal. Actually, in the eyes of a holy, perfect, unblemished God is a big deal. So let's put that together. When you see God's bigness compared to your smallness and God's holiness compared to your sinfulness compared to your all it can do is lead you to a fearful humility that recognizes, I have no self worth to bring before a holy God. All I can do is plead your grace. Humility means personal debasement. And second, humility means heartfelt submission. It's the type of healthy humility of God's authority over your life that leads to genuine teachability and submission to God's commands in your life. It's the type of humility you have while climbing a dangerous mountain or swimming in a rushing river. If you want to stay safe, what do you do? You surrender to the power and fierceness and even danger of the mountainside or river. Because you know it's only in humble surrender that you're going to experience and enjoy it rather than being crushed by it. To fear God is to experience the type of humility that leads to personal debasement and heartfelt submission. One of my favorite pictures of this might not come as a shock to you is the relationship between the dwarf Trumpkin and Aslan and Prince Caspian. When we first meet Trumpkin, he's a proud dwarf and he thinks he's on the throne of his life. He thinks he's figured Narnia out. He's a proud dwarf. He's like, I don't even know if Aslan exists. And to be honest, how is he gonna help us now? We gotta figure this out on our own. I don't believe Aslan's of any use to me. If he's even real, that's how he feels until the moment he actually has a real encounter with Aslan. Because when he meets him, here's how the scene goes. Listen to this. It's a longer quotation, but it's worth getting the picture. And now, said Aslan in a much louder voice with just a hint of a roar in it while his tail lashed his flanks. And now, where is this little dwarf, this famous swordsman and archer who doesn't believe in lions? Come here, son of Earth. Come here. And the last word was no longer the hint of a roar but almost the real thing. Wraiths and wreckage, gasped Trumpkin in the ghost of a voice. The children who knew Aslan well enough to see he liked the dwarf very much were not disturbed. But it was quite another thing for Trumpkin who had never seen a lion before, let alone the great lion. And so he did the only sensible thing he could have done. That is, instead of bolting, he tottered towards Aslan. Aslan pounced. Have you ever seen a very young kitten being carried in the mother cat's mouth? It was like that. The dwarf, hunched up in a little miserable ball, hung from Aslan's mouth. The lion gave him one shake, and all his armor rattled like a tinker's pack. And then the dwarf flew up in the air. He was as safe as if he'd been in bed, though he did not feel so. As he came down, the huge velvety paws caught him as gently as a mother's arms and set him right way up on the ground. Son of Earth, shall we be friends? Asked Aslan. Yes, panted the dwarf. That's what it looks like to experience the fear of God. You don't run away from him. You humbly totter towards him in complete personal debasement. You don't leave rebellious. You leave surrendered. You don't leave with a big view of yourself. You leave with a big and real view of God. So here's the question for us this morning. Does the posture of our lives show that we've met the great lion? Are we more like Trumpkin before meeting Aslan or after meeting Aslan? Like, have you been broken and brought low in life because you have finally seen the great glory of God? Have you stopped arguing with God and instead said, I surrender to your voice in my life? Now let me tell you, a real encounter with God, it changes us. You will leave lowered. It's no coincidence every time an Old Testament saint saw a glimpse of the glory of God, they fell on their face. It's no coincidence that Isaiah, who probably had the purest mouth as a prophet of God in Israel, still, when he saw God, said, woe is me, I am lost. I am a man of unclean lips. An encounter with God will leave you lowered, because the height of God must lay man low. But if you do become lowered, humble, dependent, you'll begin to experience the fear of God. And only when you start to experience the fear of God, can you, like Trump, can be invited into the friendship of God. For now, we got to keep going. There's. There's two other colors or shades to the fear of God I want to throw on the canvas for you. And here's the second one. To fear God is to be in awe of God. To fear God, it's to have humility towards God and to Be in awe of God. Look at what Psalm 22:23 says happens when you fear God. He says this. It's a charge to Israel. You who fear, fear the Lord. Praise him. All you offspring of Jacob, glorify him and stand in awe of him. All you offspring of Israel, stand in awe. And I'm afraid in a culture where we call anything awesome, from the newest show to our chili recipe, like, we've lost what awe actually is. We think it means something's cool, impressive, fun, worth seeing. But the word awe, it used to mean something greater. It used to mean being so amazed by something, it led to trembling because of its inherent majesty. It's the type of awe you get being a step away from the edge of the Grand Canyon or standing at the base of Mount Everest right before you summit it. I love how Psalm 2:10 and 11 colors this in. He describes Jesus as like power and authority. And then he gives this advice to the high and mighty rulers of the world. He says, therefore, O kings, be wise, be warned. O rulers of the earth, serve the Lord with fear and rejoice with trembling. See to be in awe of God, it's like to tremble with joyful intensity because you are overwhelmed, like, with wonder, worship, amazement. That's the type of posture we have towards God when we fear God as we should. I really love how theologian Michael Reeves puts it. He says, our delight in God isn't intended to be lukewarm. Our joy in God is at its purest a trembling and wonder filled. Yes, fearful joy. Why? For the object of our joy is so fearfully wonderful. We're made to rejoice and tremble before God, to love and enjoy him. How? With an intensity that's fitting for him. And this kind of awe, it's like such a unique emotion that I was like racking my brain. How do I illustrate this? And let me give you a very human illustration. Have any of you guys ever seen a clip of a Michael Jackson concert when he was at the height of his fame? A couple of you? Yeah, I'm here for you. So it's wild. There's one clip I watched. It's called Crowds Losing Their Minds Over Michael Jackson Literally Standing Still. And when. Yeah, when I watch it, I was like, that's what I'm talking about. Like, that's fearful awe. Here's what happens. The lights come on and Michael Jackson is just like standing there. He doesn't even move yet. And what happens is the crowds rejoice and tremble. To use Psalm 2 language, it's a Crazy scene. Maybe watch it later. Girls are like sobbing and shaking. Men are like grabbing their heads in disbelief. One person's like, michael, it's like, what is going on? People are having to be propped up so they do not fall. Cause they're shaking so hard. And it's like, it's crazy. And he's just standing there and then it like dies down and then he looks this way and the whole thing happens again and it's wild. Then he like slowly takes his glasses down. You get the picture. It's wild. There is a felt awe and trembling and overwhelming intensity the crowds feel from being in the presence of someone they think is exalted, incredible and glorious. And even if their worship and awe is misplaced, that is what it looks like. So does that describe in any way your posture towards God? Let me put it like this. Do you come into this room more ready to shrug your soldiers shoulders than bow your knees? Church I'm worried about the indifference with which our modern church sometimes approaches God, myself included. Do we know that God we're coming before the One who spoke galaxies into existence. The one whose purity is so bright we can't look at him without dying. The king who outlasts every earthly ruler and the God who holds the whole span of your life in his hands and has known the beginning and end of your story before eternity, before all creation. To approach him with anything less than awe is blasphemy. There's one more color to splash on our canvas that's gonna complete our picture of the fear of God. And it's very different from the first two. While humility and awe, I would say, come more from like this glimpse of the glory of God. This last aspect of godly fear, I think, comes from a glimpse of the overwhelming goodness of God. We'll get one of this verse has always stuck out to me as strange. Look at one of the strangest, most wonderful verses in the Bible, Psalm 133 and 4. It says, if you, O Lord, should mark iniquities or sin, O Lord, who could stand? But with you, there is forgiveness that you may be feared. And when you read that, you're like, wait a minute, forgiveness that you might be feared. Isn't that the opposite of what you'd expect? Wouldn't it be like forgiveness that you may be calm, that you may be like. There's just this weird. It doesn't make sense. How can this be the case? But here's what the psalmist is getting at. The last color of paint on Scripture's portrait of godly fear. Is this a heartfelt love for God? And how can that be the case? Well, it's because of this when you actually start to get what God has done for you in the cross of Christ and who he is blotting our sins away, pouring out his wrath on his son out of utter grace. Love, unlike anything, starts to flow in your heart so deeply that now the thought of ever doing something that would create distance between you and God is unthinkable. And you fear any loss of the love of God because it has quieted your heart, it satisfied your soul, it blesses every needy sinner, and you're saying, God, do whatever you want, but do not take me away from you. There's a story in the Old Testament where David, who wrote this psalm, takes a census he shouldn't have. And God gives him a few options for the punishment. He says, would you like to be have a plague come? Would you like there to be pestilence, or would you like me to judge you? And David says, let me be judged by you because I don't want to be in the hands of my enemies. He's saying, I would rather still have you and be judged by you and have relationship with you than anything else. That is the type of love for God we're talking about. And it's really this love most of all that makes a godly fear different from worldly fear, because it's the fear of a son and not a servant. A servant's afraid of their master. You know, they obey them out of duty, but a son obeys because he loves his dad and obeys him out of the light. You know, I described the relationship that John Patton's father had with God earlier. But there's also this beautiful gem in this biography where he describes his own relationship with his dad. And this is what he says. He says, if anything we did was really serious and required to be punished. He retired first to his prayer closet, and we boys got to understand he was laying the whole matter before God. This was the severest part of the punishment for me to bear. I could have defied any mere penalty, but this spoke to my conscience. And we loved him all the more when we saw how much it cost him to punish us. And in truth, he never very much had that kind of work to do on any one of the 11 children. For we were ruled by love. Church. That's what it is to fear God. To be ruled, but ruled by love. To be so terrified of displeasing him because you Love him and you know his love for you and you hate the thought of grieving his heart or not having his face upon you. Now veritas, with all that said, we can look back at this canvas and see this picture of what fearing God looks like and to just tie it all together in one sentence. This is the type of fear. David's saying is the key to a close walk with God. Fearing God is a posture of humility towards God, awe of God and love for God. And here's what I think we all need to hear. In our modern consumeristic age, when we think God owes us something, we need to hear this. There is a right way to approach God and a wrong way to approach God. God has told us who he will draw near to and it's those who come before him with this posture of humility, awe and love. That's the only type of posture that's fitting because that's the type of posture the one true God deserves. In church, if we have a closeness to God property, can we consider maybe somewhere we have a fear of God problem? That's the problem. But at the same time, here is the Hope of Psalm 25:14 and why it's such a beautiful verse. If fear is the secret to a close walk with God, that means it is possible for anyone to have a close walk with God. You don't have to be a certain age to fear God. You do not have to have a certain measure of influence or power to fear God. You don't have to have a certain IQ to fear God. You don't need to have a certain number of good things you've piled up to impress God. To fear God, you just need to see him as he is and respond accordingly. You just have to bow low and humbly receive. This isn't so much about doing as it is about seeing. It's about seeing God as He actually is and thinking about what that means for our lives and what happens if we see and fear God like this, if we are people that walk in humility, awe and love for God. Well, David tells us at the beginning and end of the verse, doesn't he? We get the friendship of God and we get the covenant of God. He says the friendship of the Lord is for those who fear him and he makes known to them his covenant. Now, for just a moment, I kind of want to put on the chef's hat and just whet our appetites for walking with God like this. What does it mean to have God's friendship? What does it have to Have God's covenant. Let's explore those first with friendship. Those who fear God, David says, get the friendship of God. And here's what that means. God will personally confide in you and reveal himself to you. This word for friendship, if you look down in your Bible, it says also like. It could be translated secret counsel. And it refers to like this word for secrets between close friends being taken into someone's confidence. Someone saying, I want to share something with you I haven't shared with anyone else. And when we really think about it, like, that's the essence of friendship, isn't it? Someone giving you the chance to know them deeply, personally, intimately, uniquely. It's like when I survey all my friendships, the people I've counted closest to me are the ones who have let me in their lives in a personal way, right? Like friends who open up their hearts to me, their joys, their fears, their tragedies who let me in. And in a way we can only start to comprehend, that's what God is saying he will do for those who fear him. David's claiming God will give those who fear his name the gift of not just knowing about him or hearing about him, but knowing him deeply, personally, closely. Now, the interesting thing is the way God does this isn't an audible voice or a dream or a vision. It's something better and more lasting. It's by opening our eyes to actually understand and love and know him through his Word. See, church. It's only by the word of God that we come to know God. But here's the reality we need to remember. God's Word reveals who he is to some and conceals who he is to others. That's pretty profound when you think about it. Like God's Word, it reveals who he is to some and at the exact same time conceals who he is to those who don't. That's why David prays in Psalm 119, open my eyes that I might behold wondrous things in your law. He's like, hey, the wicked have the same access to your law that I do. But they don't get it. They don't know you. They're closed off to you. They don't love your word. It hasn't changed them. He's saying, God, if I'm gonna know you, if I'm gonna have your friendship, I need you to open my eyes to see you and encounter you in your Word. And Veridas, I can say without a doubt, the people I know who walk with God most closely, who know the friendship of God are people who have had their eyes open to see God in His Word, who cling to it, who find it sweeter than anything else, who are ruled by it. People who know God closely know God's Word closely. There's a direct correlation. The friendship of the Lord is for those who fear Him. And the key secret to actually meeting God through His Word and encountering him is not intelligence or a degree or working at a church or being a pastor. It's fearing God. God gives his friendship to those who fear him through His Word. But as incredible as that blessing is, David goes on. He says, if you fear God, you do not just get God's friendship, you get God's covenant. And if God's friendship means God reveals Himself to you and confides in you, knowing God's covenant means he'll be faithful to you and you'll experience him in your life. See the covenant? You're asking, what is this covenant? What's the covenant that God's people know? I don't believe David's referring to one specific covenant in the Old Testament, like the covenant with Moses or with David. I believe he's referring to what ties all the covenants together, which is this God's faithfulness to his people and his commitment to every single one of his promises. David's looking back at the history of God's people and seeing at every point when God's people were needy and weak, that God was steadfastly faithful and loving and kept every one of his promises. That's always how our God has been. He has always been bent on pursuing a people and saving them for himself. And that's why for centuries theologians have taught that the many covenants in the Old Testament, they're all pointing to and revealing one ultimate covenant of grace. God's commitment to love, pursue, save and keep his promises to his chosen people, people. So when David says God fearers know God's covenant, he means God fearers experience the steadfast love and faithfulness to God over and over and over again in their lives. They taste and see that the Lord is good. And David is looking back and he's seeing that that's the case. God promised Abraham and made a covenant with him that he'd make him a great nation and bring him to a land to bless the nations and his people to a land. And God did what he said, said God promised Moses he'd deliver Israel out of bondage and bring them to the promised land. And God did what he said. God promised David he wouldn't just make him a king, but establish his throne. And that's what he said and did. And now we get to look back and see ultimately God promised through all this story of the Old Testament that all these covenants were leading to one glorious new covenant of grace where God would blot out the sins of his people and dwell with them forever. And God did what he said. See, David's looking at all these covenantal promises of God and saying, this is who you are to people who fear you. You're faithful, you keep your promises. You are set on being gracious to us. We can't even outrun your intentions to do us good. And even when it looks like the path we are walking was towards brokenness and failure and defeat, you were guiding us the whole time exactly where you were wanted us to go. I, I think the richest description that I just have thought about time and time again of this type of covenantal promise keeping love of God. It's found in the most famous psalm in the whole Bible, Psalm 23, where David says this at the end, Surely your goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life and I shall dwell in the house of the Lord forever. Now this word falcon, it's really better translated pursue or hunt down. And I love that because David's really saying, your goodness and mercy shall track me down, hunt me and pursue me all the days of my life. This is what God chases his covenant people down with, his goodness and mercy, his character. And I love how strong that language is. Cause it's almost like it's like a horror movie in reverse. Like in a horror movie, a villain chases the victim down with unrelenting focus. He inevitably catches them in the end. You know how those stories go. But people who fear God, they live in a reverse horror movie. Like your life might start with pain and brokenness, but the dominant theme of your life is God's unrelenting pursuit of you, turning every tragedy of your life to good, comforting you with his presence along the way, and all along leading you through the valley of the shadow of death to a better ending than you could ever imagine or dream of. For those who fear God, you can't outrun the love and goodness and grace of God. It will always catch you in the end. And that's the one time that's a good thing. So Veritas, if we want the friendship of God and the covenant of God, if we want to know God personally and experience God's faithfulness, here's the challenge of the passage to us this morning, we need to pursue the type of heart that fears God. Because now we fully understand the big idea we looked at at the beginning. The gift of walking with God closely is given to those who fear God deeply. So how do we fear God deeply? The last thing I want to do now is put on my invisible gardener hat and I'd give you what I'd call the Psalms. Cultivation plan for your heart like. Just like you would need a cultivation plan for your soil to nurture a seed, you need a cultivation plan for the soil of your heart to nurture the fear of God. So how do we break up the hard soil of our hearts that so often does not fear God like we should, so the fear of God can grow? I think the psalms give us several wise instructions, but I want to give you three of them that I think give us a well rounded picture of what cultivating our hearts to fear God looks like. And here's the first one. Beg for a heart that fears God. Beg for a heart that fears God. Psalm 86:11 says this. Teach me your way, O Lord, that I may walk in your path. Unite my heart to fear your name. See, the first step in cultivating a heart that fears God is recognizing you even need God to fear God. Ironically, fearing God starts with a simple recognition. You can't do it on your own. If you want the fear of God, there is no other way to do it than getting on your knees and begging God to help you fear him more deeply. So does Psalm 86:11 describe your prayers at all? Do we ever ask God for a heart of humility towards him, awe of him and love for him? Or do we ask for things from God much more than we ask for the fear of God? What if unite my heart to fear your name? Like what if that became a common cry on your lips, on my lips, on the lips of this church? God, unite our hearts as one to fear you. That's what we want to be about. We want to be humble towards you and awe of you. We want to love you more than anything else. And I can't imagine a more important prayer to God than this. And I also can't imagine a prayer God would more delight in answering than that. A room of people saying, God, lead me to have a bigger view of you. We need to fear you, to walk rightly with you. God's going to love to answer that prayer of his people. So could we pray, unite my heart to fear your name. Could we beg God to have a heart that fears him? And what could God do in us if that became a prayer in our lives? So we start by acknowledging our dependence on God for the fear of God, begging Him for it. But here's the second step. According to the Psalms, we then study what will magnify our fear of God. We study what will magnify our fear of God. Psalm 111:2 says this. Great are the works of the Lord studied by all who delight in them. You've heard it from the stage several times from several different people. But what gets your attention, gets your affection. And here's another way you could say it. What gets your fear gets your focus, gets your fear. And if you want to cultivate a fear of God, you need to preoccupy your mind with God, like to soak in the pure waters of his attributes, his works for his people, his truths revealed in Scripture. Like have we. I love that it has this Word studied because it acknowledges. Yes, it takes work to know God, to walk with God, to learn more about God. But we all study something in life. Have you studied the lives of the relationships of famous celebrities more than the Word and works of God? Could you outline every person who's been with this person in the news, but not even start to flesh out the story of Scripture? Can you talk for hours about your favorite sports teams, players, stats and news, but you can't even muster a few sentences about what you've been learning about God? How can we hope to fear him if we barely know him and have barely pursued Him? And I'm convinced, like, have we even scratched the surface of knowing the depth and glory of our infinite God? I don't think so. So study what will magnify your fear of God. Examine your habits. What am I paying attention to? What gets the most of my attention? And pledge to pursue the knowledge of God more than the knowledge of anything else? Because the study of God is the one subject. Or rather than mastering it, he masters you and he will lead you in the fear of God. So we have the first two steps. Beg for a heart that desires to fear God and study what will magnify your fear of God. But the Psalms give us one more instruction in our cultivation plan, and we can't forget it amongst all that we've been talking about, and it's this. Let the Gospel draw you to the fear of God. Even though it might not initially make sense, I believe nothing stirs up our fear of God more than actually remembering the good news of the Gospel. Remember the passage in Psalm 31:30 we looked at Just a little bit ago. If you, O Lord, should mark iniquities, O Lord, who could stand but with you there is forgiveness that you may be feared. What if cultivating humility, awe and love comes from an unbroken look at the cross more than anything else? What will stir our hearts to fear God's name? Seeing what God has actually done in the face of Jesus Christ and the glory of his cross that reveals his love and his justice and his power and his wisdom all at the same time. And in a minute, when we take communion, that's exactly what I'm going to encourage you to do. Look at the broken body and speak spilled blood of Jesus. Look at the perfect Psalm 25. Man who feared God perfectly, who had the friendship of God and covenant of God perfectly, and through his death in our place extended it to us so that God haters could become God fearers. Look often at the cross of Christ and you will find fear of God. Start to stir in your heart. Beg for a heart that fears God. Study what will magnify our fear of God and and let the gospel draw us to the fear of God. And as you pursue that plan, cling to the promise of Psalm 25:14 that the blessings of God's friendship and covenant are waiting for you and for all who fear his name. And that gets me really excited because that really is the type of church that I hope to be in. Like a church marked by Psalm 25:14, a church not known for its number of attenders or screens or pastors, but for the number of people who have a close walk with God. And I hope that's what we're all hungry for. Like, don't you want to gather with people who really fear God, People who really tremble at his word, people who really bow in awe at his gracious character, people who actually worship like they believe God is real and glorious. Veritas. If we're a church that starts to gather just to enjoy a polished place performance, a motivational talk, to feel good about ourselves and go home, let's just close this whole thing down because that's not worth the time and effort. But if we're a church that gathers to pursue closeness to God, if we are a church that wants to walk in the fear of God because we have a passion to know his friendship and his covenant, like man, it's game on for the type of walk with God we could have as church. And I want that more than anything else. And I hope you do too. Will you pray with me, Lord? This is one of those realities. When we examine the fear of God and what it calls us to, deep humility, deep awe, deep submission, deep reverence, deep respect, deep love. God, we see how far short we fall, God, the ways we have magnified other things and made you small. The times that we have not reverenced your name as we're called to board. I pray that right now, as we take the cup and drink the wine or the juice, Lord, that it is what would motivate us to fear your name rightly. Lord, as we look at the cross of Christ, as we look at his broken body and shed blood for us, would the gospel draw us to fear you? To say, what kind of God is this who is so lofty and exalted, but it came so near to save sinners and turn God haters into God fearers? And God, would you unite our hearts to fear your name? I can't pray that enough. Lord, unite our hearts to fear you. Cause when we fear you, we have a close walk with you. And when we have a close walk with you, we live the life we were meant to. A life lived in your presence, enjoying you and glorifying you forever. We love you, Lord. We ask one more time, unite our hearts to fear your name. Amen.