To keep you from sinning

Moses said to the people, “Do not be afraid. God has come to test you, so that the fear of God will be with you to keep you from sinning.” (Exodus 20:20)

 

Most people don’t like to be interrupted from others. But good people think listening to them is important. Satan would love to hate good words and have a soft ear to bad words. Satan became a bad spirit because he abandoned to be obedient when he heard God’s command. God gave the Ten Commandments to the people of Israel who had left the Egypt under the lead of Moses. The people heard and saw unusual phenomena; thunder, lightning, sound of bugle and mountain smoke. When they saw the scene, they stood in the distance and were terrified of death. And they asked Moses to speak on behalf of God.

 

Now, I remember the words of James 1:19, “~ Everyone should be quick to listen, slow to speak and slow to become angry.” Because anger hinders the fulfillment of God’s righteousness. A man’s success depends on whether he implements God’s righteousness. To do so, we need, above all, a gentle attitude toward others through the love of God. That is the love of Christ, consistent with the righteousness that God demands.

Sadly, however, most people don’t like to listen, are busy talking themselves to others, and are good at getting angry. I don’t know how much friendlier they are in the way against God’s righteousness. Because of such a bad humanity, Christ had to suffer a lot instead of man on the earth. To say more fundamentally, Christ came to the world to save such the poor men. It’s very difficult to describe in words people’s contradictory images of spirit. It was Messiah, who had been waiting so long by them, but the people did not even recognize Messiah, who came into the world. Furthermore, they criticized and ridiculed Messiah, and crucified Him as a worse prisoner than the murderer. And they were also proud of themselves as if they had done something heroic. What people need to be wary of is more of their own inner nature than their external enemies. Rather than attacking me from the outside, Satan comes in and acts on me.

When the people of Israel came before God, they could not help but be astonished. Unspeakable surprises arise from differences in existence. What is God, and what is man? God is the Creator, and man is a kind of creature like an earthenware made by Him. People who do not recognize the relationship between God and man talk nonsense like these, “You’re funny, do not make me laugh!” “If there was God, could the world do this to be cruel?” “Why on earth does God make me so hard?” Those who speak that way would have no faith in God at all. But it’s hard to let the so-called believers in Jesus talk nonsense like those. For example, these are the words by them; “You said prayers would come true, but why does God not listen to my prayers?” and “God is in my hands, because he responds to all my prayers.” Are these words right or wrong? It’s confusing to think quickly and not understand. For it may look like good wording from a person of good faith. But they are never words of right faith. Those are senseless words that play God, that the believer should not dare to say.

To fear God means to serve him with faithful fear. The fear can be a terror to the faithless, but they act in defiance of the fear in faith, not knowing they are on the road to self-destruction. God’s presence with man does not give a negative fear, but a grace, a hope and a blessing to the believer. And the fear of God brings wisdom and brilliance to men. Know this the Lord’s true intention for man is not to sin by testing and making him fear God.

 

Testing is something that everyone would not like, but we need testing because it is a process for acceptance, development, and success. The Lord gives you the test but not the one you can’t handle. He is testing for your profit. A person is the happiest man in the world, who lives by serving God through overcoming sin. If you give your whole life as a slave to the worldly wealth and lust, your body and spirit will be abandoned forever with nothing on the table.

(Written by Koonoh, Pastor of JDO Presbyterian Church in Korea, on Jan 12th 2020)