PSALM 89:7 FEAR THE LORD2006 Teaching by Jerry B Simmons

Teaching Transcript: Psalm 89:7 Fear The Lord

You are listening to FerventWord, an online Bible study ministry with teachings and tools to help you grow deeper in your relationship with God. The following message was taught by Jerry Simmons in 2006.

Psalm chapter 89. Now, we're going to do things a little bit different tonight in that we're not going to cover the entire psalm. In fact, we're only going to look at one verse of Psalm chapter 89 this evening and we'll pick up the rest of it next week. But the Lord's really been putting something upon my heart. And so, for those of you who know me,

you know that this message will be a little bit uncharacteristic of me. And it's not that I enjoy going through things or dealing with situations or anything like that, but I do believe that God has called us as pastors to be watchmen.

In Ezekiel chapter 3 verse 20, God was talking to Ezekiel and commanding him and telling him, look, I've set you up as a watchman. And what I tell you to tell people, you need to tell them. And if you don't tell them, hey, it's your fault. Their blood's on your head. And the result that was going to happen to them is going to happen to you because I told you to tell them.

Well, in Ezekiel chapter 3 verse 20, it says, again, this is God speaking, when a righteous man turns from his righteousness and commits iniquity, and I lay a stumbling block before him, he shall die, because you did not give him the warning. He shall die in his sin, and his righteousness, which he has done, shall not be remembered, but his blood I will require at your hand. God here tells Ezekiel, listen, I've given you a warning, I've given you a message, I've

And the guy, the righteous person who has now committed a sin, who has now run into a stumbling block, who has stumbled and fallen and will die because of his sin. He will die, yes, because of his sin. But his blood will be held to your account. Why? He says because you didn't give him the warning.

He didn't give him the warning. He says, so his blood I will require at your hand. And so as a watchman, we have the responsibility when God puts something upon our heart, a message upon our heart, that I need to give it to you directly and clearly as the Lord has given it to me. And so let's look tonight at Psalm chapter 89 verse 7. Psalm chapter 89 verse 7, it says this.

God is greatly to be feared in the assembly of the saints and to be held in reverence by all those around him. And you say, whew, that's not what I was thinking about, man, when Jerry was giving that introduction. It's not going to be as heavy or hard as I was thinking. God is greatly to be feared in the assembly of the saints, it says, and to be held in reverence by those around him. And before we go any farther, I'm sorry, I just remembered, there's some flowers here.

that are up here in the pulpit and they're for my wife Kim from Vian for her birthday. So can you come retrieve them please wife and everybody can say happy birthday. It's her birthday today. So back to serious mode. Psalm chapter 89 verse 7. Okay.

God is greatly to be feared in the assembly of the saints and to be held in reverence by all those around him. Now, the psalmist here is in the middle of the psalm and it's pulling it, you know, as he's talking about the wonders of God, the heavens are his handiwork. He talks about how mighty God is and how wonderful God is. And he comes to this verse, verse 7, and he says this interesting note that God is greatly to be feared in the assembly of the saints.

That word to fear means to tremble, to dread, to fear, to oppress, to prevail, to break, or to be terrified. This word fear, when he says God is greatly to be feared, doesn't just simply mean that you need to maybe take off your hat in respect.

It doesn't mean that you need to do some sign of dedication or a little bit of indication that, yes, I respect the Lord. Maybe a little bowing of the head or a folding of the hands. He says...

The Lord, God, He is greatly to be feared. Not just feared a little bit, not to tremble, to dread, to fear, to oppress, to veil, to break, to be terrified a little bit, but a lot, greatly, He says, God is to be feared. God is...

needs to be lifted high in our hearts and in our minds. The word he goes on to say, and to be held in reverence by all those around him, that word reverence means very similar to the same thing. It says to be fearful, to be dreadful or feared, to cause astonishment and awe, to be held in awe, to inspire reverence or godly fear or awe. The idea is God in our hearts and in our minds says,

is to be greatly, greatly feared. Now the question is, is God greatly feared in this place tonight? Is he greatly feared in your heart and in my heart? The psalmist here gives us an understanding of the attitude that we should have in approaching God.

And it's fear. We need to have a very healthy, a very great fear of God as we approach Him, as we draw near to Him. God, it says, is greatly to be feared.

He also adds on that he's to be feared in the assembly of the saints. And that is what we have here tonight. We have the assembly of the saints. Those who have been set apart by Christ. Those who have been chosen and dedicated by the Lord to be here tonight. You're an assembly of the saints. It doesn't mean you're perfect.

But the word saint does mean holy. It does mean set apart. And so you here are here tonight because God has set you apart and He has a plan for your life. And so the psalmist says, hey, God is to be greatly of the feared as those who have been called by Him gather together. And as we are gathered here together,

The question is, do we have a fear of the Lord? Do you fear the Lord? Is He held in reverence by you tonight? This afternoon as I was leaving my work in San Bernardino, I got called over by my boss and she said, you know, I just need to tell you something and that is I want you to dress a little extra nice tomorrow.

And I said, "Okay." She went on to explain, "Because the regional manager is going to be here in the office tomorrow. She'll be down here and so I want you to make sure all of my employees, all of those who are my responsibility, look a little bit extra nice, look a little bit dressed up, a little bit more, so that we can make a good impression." She had a very good fear of her boss. And as a result, she asked me to dress a little bit nicely.

You could imagine if I was going to meet the president today, I wouldn't be dressed in a Hawaiian shirt and blue jeans. I wouldn't be dressed, you know, in some just regular clothes that I have. If I was going to meet the president or do something with the president or meet the Queen of England or whatever, any kind of royalty, I would take great time to trim my fingernails and, you know, cut back the cuticles and all that stuff and...

Get ready to see the king. Get ready to see the president. Get ready to see the queen. I would be at my best in appearance. Now you might be thinking, but you know, that's nice, Jerry, but God doesn't care about our appearances. And that's true. That's very good. Excellent note that you made there. But he does care about our hearts.

He doesn't care about our appearances. He told Samuel, remember when he was picking David? Hey, stop looking at the outward. I don't look at the outward. I look at the heart. And so God cares about your heart and my heart. So the question is, how is our heart? How is our heart? Did you prepare yourself to meet the Lord tonight? Did you prepare yourself? Did you maybe repent of sin that's been in your life? Did you prepare yourself?

Did you get washed in the blood of Jesus Christ in preparation for meeting Him tonight? Did you have a healthy, a great fear of the Lord to prepare yourself, to get ready? Yes, He doesn't care about your outward appearance and you can come show up and that's why we don't have a dress code here. We don't have anything special. You got to be a certain way to come here. No, but what you do need to come here is a heart that wants to know God, is a heart that is open to God.

You do need that. Because when you come into His presence, it says, when you come into the assembly of the saints, that He is greatly to be feared. He needs to be held in reverence. The problem many times with you and me is that there is no fear of the Lord in our lives.

What is the fear of the Lord? We don't even really know what the fear of the Lord is. You ask someone, what's the fear of the Lord? Well, you know, I'm supposed to respect the Lord or supposed to kind of just, you know, really, I don't know, just fear. You know, it's just the fear of the Lord. You know what it means, just fear of the Lord. What is the fear of the Lord? You know, as Christians, many times we're involved in sin. We're involved in things that we know are not right. We're involved in things that the Word of God speaks directly against.

But we come here and we worship and we sit through the service and we say, Oh, great service. Praise the Lord, brother, sister, whatever. And we go on our way. We come here unaffected, unchanged by anything that takes place. You might have been cussing and swearing all day and then you come here tonight to praise Him, to worship Him, to sing out to the Lord with that same mouth, with that same throat, with that same mind.

We often are involved in things. And we come here, we come to meet the Lord, and there's no repentance. There's no change in our heart. We just think, ah, God's going to bless me anyway. And so we just come here and expect to be blessed by God. We're hard-hearted, we're lying, we're deceitful. We harbor iniquity or bitterness in our hearts. And then we come here like nothing.

Come here. We put on our Christian face. As soon as we step out of the door, the car door, the Christian face comes on and the Christian vocabulary comes on and all the things that we know we're supposed to be doing. And we come in here. We sit down and we say, Here I am, Lord. Bless me. I'm ready. Yeah, I know you're just excited that I got here, Lord. You should be impressed. I mean, you saw my day. It was very hard to get here. You should be impressed. I'm ready. Okay, anytime you're ready, bless me. Okay, Lord, thanks.

We come here with our filthy hearts and we expect God to bless us and praise Him because He often does. He's good and gracious. He's faithful to His word. But we need to come to God with great fear. We need to hold Him in reverence and not take for granted His grace, not continue on in our filthy ways, not continue on in the ways that we are.

Another question you might be asking is, Jerry, aren't we supposed to come to God as we are? I mean, we sing the song, come just as you are. So I just come, that's why I come this way. I just come just as I am.

That is true. Come just as you are. Jesus says that. Come just as you are. You don't have to change yourself. You don't have to do anything to yourself. Come just as you are. But the key is you need to come in repentance. You need to come asking for help to change. You can't just come here and expect God to bless you, but not desire to repent and turn from your sin. You've got to desire to change.

You've got to ask God to help you turn away from those things, renounce those things so that you can follow him. We can't just continue on like nothing. And often we do that. We just come here, continue on like nothing. And it's like, hey, you know, if I don't bring it up, maybe he won't notice. He won't bring it up either. Right. You know, I'll just kind of get away with it. We can't do that as believers, as Christians. We cannot. But we do. And when we do, what happens is we come to him.

not really wanting to change, and we're offering Him a defiled, unrepentant heart in so-called worship. God is greatly to be feared in the assembly of the saints. Greatly to be feared. And we bring Him these defiled hearts without fear. And just say, well, here's my defiled heart, Lord. No fear of the judgment of God. No fear of what would be just and true in our lives. No fear of God dealing with our sin.

God is greatly to be feared in the assembly of the saints. This evening we're here. We need to have a fear of the Lord and to realize, yes, He loves us. Yes, there's grace. But we need to have a repentant heart. Turn with me to Exodus chapter 10. Exodus chapter 10. It's the second book of the Old Testament. I'm sorry, Leviticus chapter 10. Didn't look very familiar. Leviticus chapter 10.

There's one book over there to the right. Leviticus chapter 10. As we come to Him and we're not really wanting to change, we're offering Him a defiled, unrepentant heart in our so-called worship, what we're doing is we're offering what the Bible calls profane fire before the Lord.

Leviticus chapter 10 verses 1 through 3 we find the story of Nadab and Abihu. And you say, who? Abihu. Here it is. Verse 1. Nadab and Abihu, the sons of Aaron, each took the censer and put fire in it

So Aaron held his peace.

What's the story here? What's the situation? Well, they've just completed the tabernacle. The place where God would dwell with them and meet with them. The place of significance because it was a symbol of God's presence with the children of Israel. They would be able to come and to make sacrifices and to worship the Lord, to hear from the Lord. Their sins could be forgiven.

So they would come to this tabernacle. Now, this is the inaugural ceremony, if you will. They're just barely starting. They just set it up. This is the first time they've had a chance to worship. God is doing some wonderful things. The ministry is beginning to happen with the priests. And these guys, Nadab and Abihu, the sons of Aaron, who were priests, begin to get excited. And so, as all this is happening, they see the glory of the Lord. They're excited. The fire comes down and consumes what's on the altar.

And so they say, well, let's get involved in this. Let's take part of this. And so they get their censers. They put the incense on it. They put the strange fire that God had not commanded them. And they go and they try to offer it to the Lord. But what happens is, is because it's an awesome situation where God is at work and because they had the wrong hearts and wrong motives and because they did exactly what God had commanded them not to do, they died. They were consumed by the fire as well.

Aaron, wanting to grieve, Aaron wanting to respond, was approached by Moses who said, this is what the Lord says, Aaron, by those who come near me, I must be regarded as holy. And before all the people, I must be glorified.

God says, look, for those who want to come near me, for those who want to approach me, for those who want to dwell with me and have fellowship with me, I must be. Not I will hope to be or eventually be. I must be. God demands that we regard Him as holy. He's set apart. He's far above us. He's way beyond us. He is holy and pure and righteous and true.

He says, for those who come near me, I must be regarded as such, as holy and righteous and pure. I must be set apart in their mind, in their heart. Not just same old, same old. Not like anybody else or the worship of any other God. I must be set apart. I must be glorified and lifted up before them in their hearts. I must be regarded as holy. They must think of me as the greatest thing ever. They must be passionate about me.

passionately in love with me, I must be regarded as holy, pure, perfect, and set apart. If you've been reading with us through the Bible in a year, as we've been going through Leviticus, we find time and time again God referring to the law of the clean and the unclean.

And God had very specific things that the children of Israel were allowed to do and were not allowed to do so that they could have fellowship with Him. And if they would do something like touch a dead animal, they would be defiled or unclean and they would have to be unclean for that evening. They'd have to wash. They'd have to do the ceremony to cleanse themselves, to purify themselves, to again set themselves apart and make them different from the rest of the world. To cleanse them from that defilement.

In many different situations. And time and time again, he says, that's unclean, don't do that. That's unclean, don't do that. That's clean, you can do that. Eat this, that's clean. Don't eat that, that's unclean. So on and so forth. If you do come in contact with unclean or do something that's unclean, there's some penalties. There's some separation that takes place so that you can be sanctified again. That you can be set apart again. And then you can be clean. Then you can come back in with your family. Then you can come back into the camp. There's...

These guidelines or these laws that God had set up. He was very specific on how his people came to worship him. He was very specific on who could come near and who could not come near. In Leviticus chapter 20 verse 26, God tells the people, and he tells them this over and over again, "...and you shall be holy to me, for I the Lord am holy, and have separated you from the peoples, that you should be mine."

God tells him, look, you shall be holy to me. You shall be set apart to me, for I, the Lord, am holy. You should be holy, because I am holy. Sound familiar? Yeah, this is just in the Old Testament stuff. You say, man, this is a lot of the law. Where's the New Testament? Where's the grace in all of this?

1 Peter 1, verses 15 and 16 says exactly the same thing. Peter says, but as he who called you is holy, you also be holy in all your conduct because it is written, be holy for I am holy. Peter here reminds his readers, reminds you and me, hey, you need to be holy. I need to be holy. We need to be set apart. We need to regard him as holy and coming to worship him.

Because that's what God said. He said, by those who come near me, I must be regarded as holy. I must be set apart in their minds and in their hearts. He goes on to say, and before all the people, I must be glorified. Again, no choice, no option here. I must be glorified.

We come in, we waltz right in, we say, here I am, Lord, bless me. You know, I've had a really rough day and traffic was bad. I really need to be blessed, Lord. Just bless me. I'm ready whenever you want. I'm here, just bless me. I don't care what kind of day you've had. He's first. You don't waltz in here and say, Lord, I'm here, bless me. We come in here and say, Lord, I'm here to glorify you.

Who cares about my day? It's not about me. I'm not even important. You're important, Lord. I'm here to glorify you. That's why I'm going to sing. That's why I'm going to worship. That's why I'm going to hear from the word and allow you to speak to me because you need to be glorified. But for all the people, I don't need to be glorified. I don't need to be lifted up. I don't need to be...

focused on. You need to be focused on, Lord. It's about you because you're set apart in my mind, in my heart. You're set apart in my life. You are the most important thing. We must say, I'm here to glorify you. I'm here to serve you. I'm here to bless, worship, and praise you. And it's not about me. He says, before all the people.

I must be glorified. It's not an option. God must be lifted up. God must be glorified. We need to have, as the psalmist said, a great fear, a great reverence for God. Now, I pray that you know me well enough to know my heart in this. That it's not up to me to make any decisions or to come to any conclusions about your life.

You know, you need to face that with the Lord and say, Lord, this is my life. This is what I am. This is who I am. It's not about me. But let me ask you a question because it happens week in and week out. Do we have a reverence, a fear for the Lord?

Do we hold him high in our minds? As we come to the assembly of the saints, is there great fear in our hearts? Do we prepare ourselves to worship him, to meet with him, to hear from him? Or do we continue on and offer our defiled hearts in our so-called worship? Not willing to change, unrepentant in our heart, do we have a great reverence and a great awe for the King of Kings and Lord of Lords? Do you fear the Lord this evening?

James, in talking about faith, said, You say that you have faith. Well, that's great. But I'll show you my faith by my works. And he proved to us there in the book of James that faith without works is dead. And we can say all the things we want. Oh, I have a great awe. I have a great reverence for the Lord. I have a great fear of the Lord. But what really will demonstrate if that is true or not

will not be the words that you say, but the lifestyle that you live, the way that you act. Do we have a great fear in our worship of God and our coming to the assembling of the saints? Let me ask you another question, and please do not be offended. Again, it's not up to me, it's between you and the Lord. But the question is, if we have a great fear, a great reverence for the worship of God, for meeting together with God, then why are we week in, week out, coming in,

halfway through the worship service. Why are we coming in late to meet with the Lord? Because we have a great reverence and awe? Well, hey, sometimes things happen and I understand that. And it's not, again, not up to me anyways. Hey, you come here whenever you want, but please watch your heart. Why are you here 15, 20 minutes, 10 minutes, 5 minutes when God says, look, this is what time service starts. You want to meet with me? Come meet with me.

Lift God up in your hearts. Have a great reverence. Have a great fear for Him that you come to meet with Him with that heart, with that attitude, that nothing else is more important. Nothing else even compares. Lord, You're the most important thing. I'm going to go meet with You. I'm going to prepare my heart on the way. Lord, forgive me for my sins. Forgive me for my wrongdoing. Forgive me for my heart and heart. Cleanse me. Prepare me to worship You. Lord, give me a great fear for You.

That I would be able to draw close. Lord, because you demand, you say, that great, great fear is to be in those, or to be in the assembly of the saints. There should be a great fear of God. God is greatly to be feared in the assembly of the saints. And to be held in reverence by those who come near him. Do you desire to come near to the Lord? Let me encourage you to greatly fear him.

To fear the Lord. The Bible says in the book of Proverbs that the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom. The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom. A great verse and I'm sure many of us know it, but again, what does it mean? Well, what does it mean to fear the Lord and how is that the beginning of wisdom? And you might be able to answer that or you might not. But what does it mean to fear the Lord and what does it mean that it's the beginning of wisdom? You know, many times when I was much younger and living with my parents,

12, 13, 15, 16, you know, all those ages, those fun, great ages. There was many opportunities, and I did get into a lot of trouble, but there was opportunity to get into much more trouble than I got into. And many times, the thing that would keep me out of that trouble would not be my wisdom. I wouldn't sit and think, you know, if I make this choice...

Five years from now, how am I going to feel about that? What am I going to think about that in the next ten years? Is it really going to benefit me? Is it really going to help me? You know, you see someone on the street, someone offers them drugs or whatever, and they say no, and you say, well, that's a smart kid, man. They've got some wisdom there. They say no, they don't want to wreck their lives. When really what might be going on behind the scenes, the same thing that happened to me, is I've got a fear of my father. Hey, if he finds out, what's he going to say? What's he going to do? How am I going to be punished? How am I going to be reprimanded?

The fear of parents will help children say no to peer pressure. It will help them say no to the things that are wrong. Not that you beat your kids or anything like that, but hey, there needs to be discipline. My dad used to always say, hey, you can discipline your own life, but if you don't want to discipline your life, I'll be happy to discipline you. And that's how it was. If you want to discipline your life and do what's right, then that's fine. If not, hey, I'll discipline you and I'll help you do what's right.

That's the fear of the Lord, guys. Listen, we need to understand that just like a child goes, hey, I have the fear of my parents, I don't want to get punished. What are they going to say if they find out or if this happens or whatever? And so they make the right decision, not necessarily for the right reason. It's not because of their wisdom or they thought about it or that's what they want. But they had the fear of their parents. The same thing is true with the fear of the Lord. We live by God's standards out of fear for Him.

I mean, he's saying, Jerry, that he's going to strike me down any moment. Hey, he has the right to. It's okay to say that, okay? He has the right to. Now, God's gracious. He is loving. But we need to have a fear of the Lord. The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom. It helps us walk in the right path. It helps us stay close to Him because there's a fear of wandering away.

I'm sure that you've experienced in your heart the wandering that takes place, the desire to do things that are not right, the desire to stray away from the things that you know to be right, that you know to be good, that you know to be true. There's that desire, that continual battle that rages within us. And so we need to have a healthy fear of the Lord to keep us close to Him, to keep us doing what's right, to keep us drawing near to Him.

We live by God's standards when we have a healthy fear of the Lord. We cannot just continue in sin and expect there to be no judgment. We can't. We must repent. Yes, God says He will forgive your sin. But He says repent. He says repent. Turn from it. Stop doing it. Turn around 180 degrees and walk away from it.

Repent. Change. You say, but I've tried. I can't change. You need to come to the Lord on your knees and ask Him to change you. You need to ask Him to deliver you, to free you from the bondage of sin, to free you from this divided heart that continually seeks after its own things, to give you a new heart. Not a heart of stone like we currently have, but a heart of flesh. Because that's God's promise. That's what He tells Ezekiel is the new covenant. He'll give us a new heart.

and another new heart, and another new heart, and another new heart. But we need to have a fear of God and come to Him with a repentant heart desiring to change. If we don't, our story will be much like the story of Samson. Great man of God, strengthened by the Lord, powerful. The Spirit was upon him. He could do wondrous, awesome things for the Lord. So much potential, but he had no regard for holiness.

He had no regard for the commands of God. And in the end, he had to pay for it. We cannot continue in sin and expect there to be no judgment. We must fear the Lord. We must realize that yes, he forgives. We need to repent. We need to confess. We need to ask him to change us. God says, look, be holy because I am holy. Turn with me to James chapter 4. James chapter 4 says,

Psalm 89.7 said, God is greatly to be feared in the assembly of the saints and to be held in reverence by all those around him. You and I this evening as we're here, we need to understand that there needs to be in our lives, in our heart, a great fear, a reverence for God, for who he is, for his holiness.

We must come to Him, not with our defiled hearts, but come to Him having prepared ourselves and said, Lord, please forgive me for my heart. Forgive me for my sin. Lord, I want to repent and change my ways. Lord, I don't want to continue on offering you profane worship. But there's consequences. If we don't, the Lord says, and He gives us these warnings for a reason. He doesn't just warn us for, you know, the fun of it. He says, look, think of Nadab and Abihu.

who continued to offer me that which I had commanded them not to. They continued to come to me with their profane fire. And the same thing can be true in our lives many times. There's no fear of the Lord in us.

So what must we do? What do we do? James chapter 4 verses 7 through 10 tells us this. Therefore, submit to God. What must you do? The first thing you must do is submit to God. What does God say? What must you submit to? The recognition of

That I'm a sinner. That I need a Savior. The recognition that He is Lord and I'm not and I got to worship Him and it doesn't matter how I feel or if I like it or what kind of day I've had. He is God. I worship Him. I serve Him. He is the one that I live my life for. It doesn't matter how I feel about it. It doesn't matter if I like it. He is the one. He says, submit to God.

Acknowledge that He is Lord. Recognize Him as Lord. Live as if He is Lord. He goes on to say, resist the devil and he will flee from you. The sin, the bondage, the things that we're continually straying away in, he says, submit to God, number one, and then resist the devil. That's 180 degrees. Turn your back on it. Resist. Resist. And turn away from your sin. Verse 8, draw near to God.

And he will draw near to you. Cleanse your hands, you sinners, and purify your hearts, you double-minded. Lament and mourn and weep. Let your laughter be turned to mourning and your joy to gloom. Humble yourselves in the sight of the Lord and he will lift you up. This is the attitude that you and I must come to this place with.

Number one, Lord, I submit to you. I give you my heart. If there's anything that's not right, Lord, forgive me. Change me. I repent of it. I turn my back. I resist the devil. And I want to follow you, Jesus. Lord, I want to draw near to you, God. Because your word says that you'll draw near to me. Lord, cleanse my hands. Purify my heart.

And James says, you double-minded. What does it mean to be double-minded? To be double-minded is if you say, oh, I'm sick, I need to go to the doctor. You go, you get a prescription, and you say, oh, this is it, this is what can change my life, this is what will make me better, but then you don't take it. That's double-minded. Yes, on the one hand, you know, yes, I need help, I need the medicine, but on the other hand, you don't take it, you don't follow through.

He says, look, purify your hearts. Cleanse your hands. Be double-minded. You say, yes, I want to follow the Lord. Yes, I want to walk with the Lord. Yes, I'm here to worship Him. But in your heart, what happens when you leave this place? Nothing. Back to the same old, same old. Double-minded. One mind here, put on the Christian hat, and then put on the regular hat once you leave. There's that double-minded, that double standard, the double life that we often live. He says, cleanse your hands. Purify your hearts. Verse 9, lament, mourn, and weep.

There's a place for us to lament and mourn and weep, to fear His name, to understand, hey, it's not grace, grace, grace, I can just take advantage of God however I want to and come to Him and expect to be blessed. I need to have a great fear for the Lord. I need to lament. I need to mourn. I need to weep over my sin, over my heart. I need to repent from my lifestyle, from the heart that I have and the evil wickedness that I enjoy. He says, let your laughter be turned to mourning and your joy to gloom. There is a

a place in our lives for mourning, for sorrow. We need to have it in regards to sin, in regards to our heart that is continually straying away. Instead of being callous and saying, oh well, you know, I just fell again, oh well. We need to mourn. We need to weep. We need to be sorrowful because we're continually walking away from the Lord. He says, humble yourself in the sight of the Lord.

Humble yourself. Humble yourself. Lament, mourn, weep. Bring yourself on your knees before Him and allow Him to lift you up. He will lift you up, but you have to allow Him to. You have to humble yourself. You have to confess your sin. You have to be sorrowful about your sin. He will lift you up. He will restore you. He will draw you close. It says draw close, draw near to God, and He will draw near to you.

So draw near to Him, but do it with the right heart. What must we do? Number one, we must draw near to worship Him. But we must come with a repentant heart. We must ask God to give us a fear of the Lord that we would fulfill Psalm 89.7, that He would be greatly feared, that we would prepare ourselves, that we wouldn't offer profane fire and defiled heart, but we would offer a heart that's been humbled.

A heart that's mourned and wept over sin. A heart that desires truly to repent and to walk with Him. So we must draw near. We must ask God to give us the fear of the Lord and we must repent. As He shows us things, as He lifts us up, we must repent and turn from our ways and allow God to change us. God is greatly to be feared in the assembly of the saints and to be held in reverence by all those around Him. Let's pray.

Heavenly Father, as we are here before you this evening, God, I pray that you would help us to learn what it means to fear the Lord. God, I pray that you would help us to set you apart in our hearts and in our minds. Lord, that you would be regarded as holy by us. Lord, that we would hold reverence, God. That we wouldn't draw near to you offering our defiled hearts, Lord. Our same old callous heart, Lord, involved in sin and not caring.

But Lord, I pray that you would impress upon us a mourning, a sorrow for our sin, for our wanderings away from you. Lord, as we look to you, as we draw near to you, we thank you, Lord, that your word says you'll draw near to us. But God, help us to do it with the right heart. Help us to do it with the right attitude. Lord Jesus, we're nothing. You're important. We're not. We're not here to be blessed, God. But Lord, we want to bless you. So Lord, help us to worship you. Help us to praise you.

In Jesus' name, amen.