Life.Church with Craig Groeschel - The Last Four, Part 4: Proverbs 28:14

Episode Date: July 30, 2016

In this series, Pastor Craig Groeschel unpacks four of his favorite verses—powerful passages from Psalms and Proverbs. Great for small groups or a teaching session, these short videos let you take a closer look at these well-known verses. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Well, it's great to have you with us today. I am Greg Rochelle, a pastor of Life Church, and I want to just tell you thank you for giving 10 or 15 minutes of your day to us. If you're listening or watching, what you're doing is you're actually where there would normally be our weekend teaching. And as of next week, the normal weekend messages will be back. I'm starting a brand new message series next week. It's called I Choose. And we're going to talk about four big choices. We're going to talk about choosing purpose over popularity. Oh my gosh. You can't wait to talk about that. We're going to talk about discipline over regret. I choose discipline over regret. We're all going to have pain in life and you can either have the pain of discipline or you will have the pain of regret. We're going to choose surrender over control. Any control freaks out there? I am. I have to constantly consistently consistently. choose surrender over control. And then there are so many urgent things grabbing for our attention over and over and over again. It's so easy to give our lives to some of the things that are good, but not great. We're going to choose the important over the urgent, and that starts next week. We're doing something different right now, and this is the fourth week that we've done this. On the weekends right now, we're doing a message series at Life Church called At the Movies, and I'm actually using movie clips to illustrate teaching from the Bible.

And because we're using those movie clips, we're actually not allowed to archive them. So we can stream it live. And so if this is still in the middle of the current week, you can go to life.church and click on church online, and there's about 80 different times that will stream live. It's a really great tool to use to invite people that normally wouldn't come into church. And we've seen just tons and tons of people find faith in Christ because of this evangelistic tool. So anyway, what I'm doing in this time is a little bit different. I'm kind of

giving you a behind the scenes look into how I meditate on scripture and just talking through really mostly off my heart what God has shown me or what I'm thinking about in some different scriptures. So our church created the U-Version Bible app. It's been downloaded about 240 million times for free. What's so meaningful to me is back when I was in college, I actually was given a free Bible by the Gideons. And then it was through that free Bible that I started reading it. Matthew Martin, John. I read all the way. I got to Ephesians Chapter 2, and it was in my reading of the Bible that I actually found faith in Christ. And my life was changed by someone giving me a free Bible. So imagine how meaningful it is for me to be a part of the church that's got to give away

240 million U-Version Bible apps. I highly recommend that you use this. One of the coolest kind of tools that we have is a social end to the Bible app. I've got about 15 or 20 people that I actually follow what they're reading. They've given me permission, and I've given them permission to follow what I'm reading. So I'm doing different plans, and every day when I do it, it'll say, Craig Rochelle, finish this plan, or read this day. or it'll say, Craig highlighted this verse. And so someone can actually comment on the verse

or I can comment on what they're doing. I see what all my kids are reading. It's really meaningful. I can see what Amy's reading, my wife, and back and forth. And so also it's a good tool of accountability. If you don't do it, like, hey, why haven't you been reading? And so anyway, what I do is I highlight verses, and in the last few weeks,

I've just taken the last four verses that I highlighted, and I've been talking through them. So I'm going to do that again today. Proverbs chapter 2814 is one of the verses that I'll highlight it and I want to just kind of unpack it to you for just a few minutes. Proverbs 2814 says, Blessed is the one who always trembles before God, but whoever hardens their hearts falls into trouble. Blessed is the one who always trembles before God, but whoever hardens their heart falls into trouble. One more time.

blessed is the one who always trembles before God, but whoever hardens their heart falls into trouble. Blessed, blessed. A New Testament study, the word blessed I did years ago, blessed means more than happy. A lot of times people are pursuing happiness, but when you're blessed by God, happiness is based on circumstances, but the blessings of God, they're solely based on the goodness and the presence of God. blessed is the one who always trembles before God. When I'm reading this, I just pause and think about the words. Notice that Proverbs 28 doesn't say, Blessed is the one who occasionally trembles before God

or who occasionally fears God, but who always trembles before God. Imagine being so aware of the sovereignty, the power, the goodness, the transcendence, the awesomeness of God that we're so aware of it that we always live in the fear, the holy, the righteous fear of God. Not just sometimes, but all the time. If I'm really honest, there are times that I'm like, oh, yeah, God is the God. And what I did was just displeasing to him, and I feel this deep sense of grief and this passion to get it right.

But if I'm really honest, it's way too often I don't live in that ongoing righteous, good and healthy. fear of the Lord. Blessed is the one who always trembles before God. And I think the trembles before God, that's a great picture of just the fear of the Lord. In fact, scripture teaches that the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom. And a lot of people, you know, kind of get freaked down about that, like the fear of God. I don't want to be afraid of God. And it's not this like, I'm afraid he's going to get me, but there's this real sense that he is the creator and I'm the creature. He is magnificent and glorious and powerful, and he does not exist to serve me. I exist to serve him.

And there's this right standing. I know who he is, and I submit myself completely to him. Blessed is the one who always trembles before God. What's interesting today is the way people kind of want to pick and choose the characteristics of God. A lot of people say, well, I want his love, but I don't want the wrath of God. I want his mercy, but I don't want his judgment. I want his blessings, but I don't ever want to be disciplined.

And just as I'm thinking out loud, sometimes I wonder if there's too much familiarity with God. You know, he's the man upstairs. You know, Jesus is my home body. You know, God and me, we're cool and all that kind of stuff. And, you know, I understand because we can't approach God with boldness and he is a friend to see him as that. But at the same time, he is a righteous judge. He is the king of kings. He is a king of glory. He is above all. He is omniscient. He is omnipresent. He is all powerful. He's ever present. He is all knowing. He was there before the world existed. He is already in tomorrow. He is God.

Blessed is the one who always, not just every now and then, but it always is aware of who God is and trembles before him. Think about how holy God is, that we cannot look at upon him in his purest essence and live. That's how holy he is. Bless is the one who always trembles before him. And then the verse goes on to say, but whoever hardens their heart falls into trouble. Whoever hardens their heart falls into trouble. This is a scary thing to me

because I know there have been different times in my life where my heart has grown cold toward God or my heart had been hardened. And what's really, really scary is, I see this all the time just as a pastor and working with people, is that whenever we live with sin and rationalize it out and say, well, it's not that big of a deal, well, we justify it, well, you know, I'm only doing this because this is my one little thing. God really understands, God doesn't care. What happens is, in a sense, we're hardening our heart. Our heart's not soft to God in this area, and we're putting up a little wall, almost like a brick. And if you imagine, if we do this enough, well, I'm not going to obey God here. I'm going to do whatever I want here. I don't really care here. And, you know, surely, God didn't mean that for today here. Essentially what we're doing is we're putting up bricks and we're breaking the intimacy and the fellowship and the communication with God and over time we're not as sensitive to his voice. And suddenly, you know, we see people that used to be really close to God.

They're not even sure they believe in God today. We see people that used to be really passionate about serving Jesus doing crazy, stupid, ungodly, unrighteous stuff today. What happened? They fell into trouble. Their heart was hardened. And they felt. into trouble. There's another verse I just put in my notes that is a verse that's always grabbed me. Psalm 36, verse 1 and 2 from the New Living Translation says, sin whispers to the wicked deep within their hearts. Imagine the sin whispering, whispering, whispers to the wicked deep within their hearts. They have no fear of God to restrain them. In their blind conceit, they cannot see how wicked they really are. I remember the first of the first of the fact that they

first time I read that verse, they have no fear of God to restrain them. I thought about all these other people. They have no fear of God to restrain them. They cannot see how wicked they really are. But in my own life, I never want to read God's word onto someone else. I always want to be sensitive to what he says for me. What if, what if, since I don't always tremble before God, what if I'm the one that doesn't really have the fear of God to restrain me? What if, in my blind conceit, I don't know how wicked I really am? Because the reality is, the more, I recognize the holiness of God, the more I see the dreadfulness of my own sin. The more I see the dreadfulness of my own sin, the more I recognize the glory of his salvation. The more I recognize the glory of his salvation, the more I want to truly please Him. The more I truly want to please Him, the more in a righteous way I tremble before him. The more I tremble before Him, the more I have wisdom. The more I want to surrender to him. Why?

Because He is God, and I am not. is the one who always trembles before God, but whoever hardens their heart falls into trouble. So Father, today I pray especially for anyone whose heart may have grown a little bit cold toward you. Maybe God their heart has been hardened. Maybe God my heart has been hardened. May we be sensitive to what the voice of your spirit would show us. I pray God that our hearts would always be soft. We pray that your word would soften it, your presence would soften us. The fellowship we have with other believers as we worship you would soften our heart toward you. God, may we be people who always, not some of the time, but always live in the righteous

fear of a holy God. Not afraid you're going to get us, but a reverent awe, worship, fear of you because you are the Creator Supreme, the only one worthy of our praise, the God of the universe. May we be in our place before you and glorify you in all that we do. God, I pray today that there would be those who are blessed because they always tremble before you. God, if our hearts are hardened, we pray even now by the power of your spirit you'd soften it, that we would always be faithful to follow your will. We pray this in Jesus' name. Amen.