0:00 [Music] I want to say a few words about the fear of God and that is from Isaiah. It's something about Jesus 0:24 that Jesus the son of God feared his father. What an example. He's speaking about Jesus in Isaiah chapter 11. There's a root from the stem of Jesse. You know, Jesse is the father of David. 0:42 And u a branch from the roots will bear fruit. That's referring to Christ. And the sevenfold holy spirit. You know in revelation we read about the seven spirits or the sevenfold holy spirit. And that seven-fold Holy Spirit is 0:56 mentioned here in Isaiah 11:2. He's called the spirit of Jehovah, the spirit of wisdom, spirit of understanding, spirit of counsel, spirit of strength, spirit of knowledge, and the spirit of the fear of the Lord. Seven characteristics of the Holy Spirit. And 1:12 then out of the seven, it says about Jesus that Jesus will delight in the fear of the Lord. He emphasizes one characteristic out of these seven. That Jesus will delight in fearing his father. 1:32 The Bible says the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom. Proverbs 9:10. So that Jesus also needed that speaks of a reverence for the father. Jesus had a reverence. The Holy Spirit came upon him and gave 1:50 him a reverence for his father. We preached the baptism in the Holy Spirit. But our emphasis is a little different from the Pentecostals who preach the baptism of the Holy Spirit. To me, the baptism of the Holy Spirit is 2:07 what's mentioned here. that gives me wisdom and understanding and counsel and strength and knowledge and reverence for God. That's the baptism in the Holy Spirit I want because then it'll make me very sensitive. It says he 2:29 will delight in the fear of the Lord. That means the baptism in the Holy Spirit it's referring to the spirit of the Lord will rest on him. Verse two, and give me wisdom and understanding and counsel, strength, and knowledge and a 2:42 tremendous reverence for God. To me, that is the primary mark of the baptism of the Holy Spirit. I know that's what happened to me when the Lord baptized me in the Holy Spirit. And I seek to live in that. I seek to live in being filled with the spirit 2:57 every day. And uh we've had some discussions on that. that you know this is part of the problem that came in one of our churches recently where the elder brothers taught people that you don't need to seek to be filled with 3:12 the Holy Spirit every day. you were filled the spirit and all you just got to do carry out and obey and it brought confusion in his own life and but he was you know there that that's what happens when a elder per when a brother who is 3:31 not called to be a teacher begins to teach. He may be excellent in another area as an evangelist may not be a teacher. That would be something like an engineer who's a first class engineer giving an instruction to a heart surgeon 3:47 how he should conduct his heart surgery. That's not his expertise. And just because God blesses us in one field maybe evangelism does not mean that you're also a teacher. You may be a good engineer but you may not be a doctor at all. A junior doctor 4:07 will know more than you. So we need to recognize our limitations. The fear of the Lord will protect us. And see what it says here. When you fear the Lord, verse three, what is one mark of the reverence for God? Fear is not being 4:23 afraid of God. It's a reverence. I prefer to think of fear of God as a tremendous reverence for God. It's very very important because it says the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom. Means it's the ABC of wisdom. 4:38 Knowledge you can get without the fear of the Lord. But wisdom, the Pharisees had knowledge and Jesus had wisdom. You see the difference? The scribes had knowledge. You could they could give you all the answers, but they 4:52 didn't have wisdom. Fear of the Lord brings spiritual knowledge and wisdom. When you have the fear of the Lord, it says in verse three, the last part, he will not judge by what his eyes see. That means he sees something and says, 5:06 "No, I won't make a judgment yet. I saw it with my own eyes." People people sometimes speak like that. I saw it with my own eyes man. I know because I saw it but one who reverence God he says yeah it could be right it could not be I may 5:24 be mistaken. There's one example that I remember from I keep using that example years and years ago when we had a conference in Bangalore in our in a public place and in the evening after the meeting was over some young people were sitting 5:40 around number of young people and they young six 10 year old boy in our church saw some smoke going up like that from their midst. It's like cigarette smoke. 5:59 And he went and told his mama, "Mama, mom, some of the young people in our church are smoking." That foolish mother went and told a lot of other people. Finally, the word came to me. So, one of my sons happened to be in 6:14 that group. So, I called him and said, "What is this going on there?" And he said, "Dad, it is a coil. We have a thing in uh in India there a lot of mosquitoes in outside and there's a coil called a tortoise coil which is a round 6:29 coil which you light it and it drives away the mosquitoes. It's if you look from a distance it's just like somebody smoking it was going up and they kept it there to drive the mosquitoes away while they were sitting and talking. But by 6:41 the time this foolish woman had gone around spread so much that CFC young people were smoking cigarettes and just giving you an example, he will not judge by what his eyes see. That is the foolishness of that child. The foolishness of the mother was the 6:59 next part made a decision by what she heard. So when you reverence God, you will not judge by what you have seen nor by what you have heard, but you will investigate it and with righteousness you will pass a judgment. 7:18 Verse four, and with fairness you will uh decide and then if necessary you will strike the rod of his mouth. That means you'll bring correction. But it must begin with the reverence for God that you don't automatically pass a 7:35 judgment. I have made this mistake in my foolish days. I can think of numerous times where I have judged by what my eyes saw and years by what my ears heard and I've blundered and I said, "Lord, forgive me. Have mercy." Fortunately, I 7:49 did not bring any great calamity. But sometimes serious things can happen. You know you can ruin a person's reputation by spreading a story when you say I saw it with my own eyes. What did you see? Must investigate a little more. So that 8:08 re this is the mark of reverence for God. Many of us may think we have reverence for God. But it says here he will the spirit he will delight verse three in the fear of the Lord. And as a result, he will never judge by what is I 8:24 see. So how do I know whether I fear God not or not? One way is that I don't judge by what I see. I'm cautious. I won't make a decision by what my ears hear. I'll have a reverence for God. Lord, I don't want to hurt somebody's 8:42 reputation. I want to investigate more. Find out if it is true. I I don't want a reputation as the first person who came out with that information. There's a lust in us sometimes. I want to be the first person who comes out with that 8:55 information. Like these news papers that I want to be the first to come out of some news, get rid of that lust. I don't want that. I I want to wait and be patient. And so that's one thing I want to mention. 9:14 And uh the one other aspect I want to mention is that I must recognize in the body of Christ I must be willing to have other members of the body balance out my ministry. Nobody in the world has got a perfectly balanced 9:33 ministry. And I remember that particularly when my colleague Ian Robson who's gone to be with the Lord now last year and God called us together. He was the exact opposite me of me in many many ways. It was something like Paul and Barnabas. 9:51 U he was a very gentle, gracious type of person in all his speech and he was an encourager just like Barnabas and uh he would sit long time with counseling with people and all. My ministry was very different. my ministry 10:09 was all cut and dry and we needed each other to find a balance. I needed him and he needed me and I think if either Barnabas or Paul went alone they couldn't have done what they did together and I certainly see that and I 10:27 believe that where there's a Godapp appointed choice of ministry and elders there will be a balance. Now it doesn't work out always like that because sometimes in a in our case God had specifically called us both of us together to start a completely new work. 10:46 It was the beginning of CFC 50 years ago. So it was this individ specific calling that God gave us. But then later on when churches are established we appoint elders and there may not necessarily be that type of balance but 11:00 it's a wonderful thing if there is a balance there of one and another balancing each other's ministry but it's important to recognize that Christ is building a body he's not building outstanding individuals 11:19 a body and even if you may be an outstanding elder very gifted in your particular area or speaking or whatever it is u you have to develop the gifts in the others your whole church is to 11:38 be built together and that is what is going to stand against the devil Jesus said in Matthew 16:18 I will build my church and it's against the church that the powers of darkness will not be able to prevail You may be an outstanding elder, very 11:56 gifted, very capable, powerful preacher. The devil will prevail against you. He may not prevail against you as an individual, but your ministry will not succeed. If you don't build a body where everyone is doing their part and you're willing 12:14 to step back and let them do their part, you may be the leader, but if you develop them to do their part like a good father will train his children to do the job. I mean all of you fathers, you don't want your children to sit back and not develop any 12:34 skills. You want your children to develop skills and you train them from young and and a day comes when you see your child able to do that without your help. You say great I've done a great job as a father. He can do for example if you're in 12:51 practical work like carpentry or building houses or something like that and you train your young son to come up also in doing that. Isn't it a great job when one day you can send let him go to work and you don't even have to go. He 13:04 takes care of it because you have trained him. Are we doing that same thing in the church with the spiritually training younger brothers to share the word maybe in little house groups in the beginning so that they can develop or 13:21 training them to speak to the teenagers and youngsters till they grow up to become elders in the church. If you're doing that, we're doing a great job. But if you're making yourself indispensable that you're the great master of everything and you finally 13:37 when you die that the whole thing collapses because you never trained anybody. A good elder is one who is trained others to take over and made himself almost unnecessary because others are doing the job. That's what Jesus did. And it's a master great 13:54 example that our savior has shown us that he selected 11 people and poured himself out on them. Spent hours and hours with them. That's not mentioned so much in scriptures. It says in John says that if I were to write 14:12 down all the things that Jesus did, you know, it's amazing what he says. The whole world, this last verse of John, the whole world will not be able to contain the books if I wrote down in detail all 14:29 that Jesus did. It's amazing verse what all he must have taught them and spend the dimes when he was alone with them. So much information he gave them and blessed them and guided them and corrected them. such a lot 14:47 and he'd done such a wonderful job with that with 11 people. He turned the world upside down and started a work that has lasted now for 2,000 years. I said that's the type of work we need to do too because we have the same Lord 15:03 in our midst. We don't want to do a work that just disappears when we die. No. When you read the history of the Christian church, so many great movements. Martin Luther was a tremendous man of God. I wondered whether I would have 15:21 stood against all the popes and the entire Roman Catholic Church and risked my life to stand up for the truth of justification by faith. I don't agree with Martin Luther and everything. He baptized babies and taught that the body of Jesus is in the 15:38 bread he broke. him. But the man had such boldness to stand for the truth to proclaim the justification by V. Even though he risked his life, they wanted to kill him. But where is the Lutheran church today? I wouldn't join it. The church that he 15:57 started and then a couple of hundred years later, God raises up the Lutheran church became the Anglican church in England. that died and God raises up another man called Wesley, mighty man of God who turned England upside down 16:16 and uh what a mighty man he was. And he had some wonderful co-workers with him like Fletcher and others great saints. But I wouldn't join the Methodist church today. What you see is a decline coming in 16:35 the early brethren assemblies like George Müller and some godly men there. But I've been in the brethren long enough to know that it's not the same today. So what I say is we see that the work seems to die out 16:53 after some time. So we always need to have another generation coming up who are gripped by the same values that we have been gripped by. And you are a successful elder in your church. If you have made yourself dispensable in 17:13 the beginning you're indispensable. The church cannot go without go on without you. But a few years have gone by and you can leave. Somebody else can do the job. See second Timothy. I just want to show you two verses in 2 17:29 Timothy and then we'll close. First of all, 2 Timothy chapter 2 verse two. Paul tells Timothy the things which you have he starts with you therefore my son. Timothy had a unique respon 17:47 relationship with Paul. He was a rare Paul says I have nobody like him. He's unique. And one Timothy was worth many of others Paul's co-workers. So we have to look for people in our church who are somewhat gripped by some of the truths. 18:03 Everybody may not be like that. But if you find one person like Timothy, work with him. Find two even better. And what does he say? the things which you have heard from me in the presence of many witnesses. Timothy, you're the 18:19 second generation, entrusted to faithful men who are the third generation who will teach others who are in the fourth generation. Timothy is the second generation. He tells them to entrust it to faithful men the third generation who will teach the 18:33 fourth generation. Look at the burden Paul had that what I have started should not die with me. It should not even die with the second generation. It must go all the way to a fourth generation and then I hope they will carry it on for 18:44 centuries to follow. That must be our burden. We can't look after centuries. But to have a burden at least this must go on to this next generation must be trained that I when I withdraw the people will do it exactly like I have 18:58 taught them. Not everybody not of all of Paul's co-workers are like that. You have one person like that. And if you get one person like that that's a tremendous thing. Imagine if there's one brother like you who can take the responsibility in your 19:11 local church. What a tremendous thing. You're cripped thoroughly and you're willing to pour out your life to build the church and you got one brother who will do that in your church. You can say like Simeon, Lord, let your 19:23 servant depart in peace now because my eyes have seen your salvation. And then he tells Timothy, please remember this is in chapter 4, the time will come, verse three, and we are in that time now when people 19:42 will not endure healthy doctrine, but they'll want to have their ears tickled. All these folks who go to the internet to listen to all types of preachers to have their ears tickled and they accumulate themselves teachers 19:57 in accordance to their own selfish desires and they will turn away their years from the truth and will turn aside to all type of false stories. Christendom has reached that stage today. So what should you do Timothy? It's for 20:15 all of us today. Verse two, it's a powerful word. Every one of you, I would say 2 Timothy 4:2, preach the word, be ready in season, out of season, reprove, rebuke, exhort 20:32 with great patience and instruction. You won't be popular. If you keep on telling people, you're sitting on God's lap and God loves you and he cares for you and don't worry, he'll always take care of you. You keep on preaching that, you'll become very 20:46 popular. But you may not build a church. Preach the word. Be ready in season, out of season. Reprove. In season, out of season is when you feel like it. When you don't feel like it. Have you ever preached when you don't feel like it? 20:59 Paul told Timothy, "Do that." Don't say, "I don't feel like it." There's no such thing as not feeling like it when you're an elder. when you when you feel like it and when you don't feel like it, preach the word and with great patience and ex 21:11 reprove, rebuke, exhort. Yeah, I encourage them once in a while also, but reprove, rebuke, exhort. I'm just reading scripture inspired by the Holy Spirit because the time is coming when they will not want to even 21:30 listen to the truth before that before they come to that stage. Protect them. protect them. Definitely encouragement is needed. Encouragement is a tremendous power. So we should not I believe the word you know uh let me just close with 21:49 that. Hebrews chapter 3, it says um if you read the King James version, you you probably have it in your phones. 22:08 King James version, Hebrews 3 verse 13, exhort one another daily. The NASB says, "Encourage one another daily." Which is right. It's a wonderful thing that God has chosen a Hebrew word, no sorry, a Greek word 22:27 which can be translated as exhort or encourage. And I say, what does that mean? That means I got to do both. I have to exhort and encourage. God selected a word 22:45 which can be translated either way which means both are needed. So if you're the you prefer to exhort you need some challenge brother you need to encourage also and there are other people who only keep on encouraging they 23:00 need to be challenged to brother you need to exhort somebody. So if there's a balance in the eldership there's exhort the person who encourages is the one who will be the most popular elder without a doubt most the every 23:15 church I've seen the person who encourages becomes very popular but if you're not worried about popularity you're worried about building the church you'll find the one who exhorts is the one who's more needed and encouraging 23:25 too because people get discouraged very easily so there's a balance in this exhorting and encouraging and if you find your church has been hearing exhortation, exhortation, exhortation, exhorting you day after week after week 23:36 after week, brother, it's time to give them some encouragement. But if you find your church is just sloppy and lazy because all they hear is encouraging everything. You're all sitting on the lap of God and everything's okay. God's wonderful. 23:47 He'll take care of you, they need some powerful exhortations. So you need to be sensitive. What is your church listening to? Exhort and encourage. Amen. Okay, we'll pray. Our father, thank you for your word which gives us a balance 24:06 to lead your church forward. Help us all we pray in Jesus name. Amen. [Music]
