Episode Transcript
Alright, we'll go ahead and be in Proverbs 14 verse 26 tonight.
1426.
Also, if anyone wants. the wicker furniture outside, not the not the metal bench, but the wicker furniture if anybody wants it.
Feel free to take it home.
If not, I'm gonna throw it away.
Because I'm tired of looking at that wicker hanging down.
And watching it get blown over every time I come.
I saw you pick it up.
I was sitting there telling Timmy, the cat isn't blown over again.
But uh I'm ready to get rid of it and get our porch looking pretty.
So I'm gonna get us some some more furniture out there.
Proverbs 14, 26.
The title of the message tonight is a strong refuge.
And our verse tonight has a wonderful promise in it.
And that promise serves as an assurance to us in the hour of decision in our lives and also an anchor for us in time of trouble.
Let's look at that verse together.
Proverbs 14, 26.
And the fear of the Lord is strong confidence, and his children shall have a place of refuge.
We'll start off with the phrase, in the fear of the Lord.
The first thing I want us to look at is what the fear of the Lord is.
We've looked at it before, but we're going to touch on it again.
Because we have trouble with retention, don't we?
So the fear of the Lord is speaking about the reverential fear That we should have toward God.
And it may be hard for some people, I believe, to understand when the Bible talks about how we should fear the Lord.
Because the Bible says we should love God.
And then the Bible also says you can't have fear and love at the same time.
How can love and fear exist at the same time?
First John chapter 4 verse 18 says, There is no fear in love.
That could be kind of confusing.
He goes on to say, but perfect love casteth out fear.
Because fear hath torment.
He that feareth is not made perfect in love.
But the fear Solomon is talking about tonight is the type of fear that if you were raised in a good home then you would know the type of fear that Solomon is addressing when it comes to our relationship with our parents growing up.
When I was a boy, I remember feeling safe when my parents were home.
I was not afraid of my parents.
I loved my parents and I knew they loved me And I knew they were always there to help me.
So I wasn't afraid of them, but at the same time, I was afraid to disobey them.
And God loves me, and because God loved me, he put me under their authority as a child.
Because if We had to raise ourselves up, we'd all be in a mess.
So he loves us.
He gives us older people to rear us up, to teach us the things that we should as we're growing up And so he naturally puts us under their authority.
And I knew that there would be consequences if I disobeyed my parents' commands.
And that's the way it is with God, except in a perfect way and in a greater way.
Because God loves us, he gives parents authority.
And with that authority, he also gives parents sacrificial love, doesn't he?
Now no, there's always exceptions.
Sin can destroy those that natural affection in a person's heart.
I understand that.
But if you're a parent, then you know what I'm talking about.
That you have sacrificial love for your kids.
You're never going to intentionally steer your children wrong, and you'd probably give your life for your children.
And because of that, the authority that parents have over their children will always be exercised in their children's good.
The hardest challenge I believe a parent has is enforcing rules on their teenage children that their teenage children think are too restrictive.
They see other parents letting their kids go out and do things, yet their parents say, no, we don't need to do that.
Well, so-and-so gets to do it.
They think, well, my my parents are too restrictive or my parents don't know.
And the children don't realize that their parents are almost always right.
And if they see their friends doing things, though, they just don't see it.
But what if you were 17 years old?
What if you could go back in time?
You could be 17 years old and you had perfect parents.
And you knew your parents were perfect.
And you knew that your parents were right 100% of the time.
Every rule that they made was right 100% of the time, and you knew that if you obeyed that rule, it would definitely benefit you.
And if you disobeyed that rule, you would definitely pay for it.
I believe that if you knew that.
You would be greatly motivated to follow the rules and not to disobey them.
You'd be, in fact, afraid to disobey them, right?
And that's what we're talking about tonight, where we're looking at the fear of the Lord.
You would be afraid to go astray from your parents' guidance just as a sailor would be afraid to go astray from the compass on his ship.
Because he knows that compass is always right.
Even though his heart may be leading him in a different direction.
And that's the way it is with God.
He's right 100% of the time.
And we'll be blessed if we follow his commandments, and we'll definitely suffer harm if we don't.
It won't be immediate, usually.
But it will come.
The harm will come.
So we should be afraid to disobey God's word.
We should be afraid to defy God's authority.
Because number one, God's word is always good for us.
And number two, a good father will always punish the children who disobey him.
And that's what God will do.
Why?
Well, number one, because it's wrong to dishonor him, and we should be punished.
But number two, it's bad for us if he allows us to go unpunished, and then we go astray and we get hurt for disobeying his word.
Now, for those who live their lives in the fear of the Lord, there is a promise.
And so after we look here at What the term fear of the Lord is.
I want you to look at the very first word in this verse, and that's the word in.
Notice that it doesn't say the fear of the Lord.
Is strong confidence.
It says in the fear of the Lord is strong confidence.
The fear of the Lord will give us no confidence unless we're in it.
There is a location that's presented to us in this text.
And so now the fear of the Lord becomes a place.
That we can be inside.
You see that?
In the fear of the Lord And what is in the fear of the Lord?
And here is the great promise for our proverb tonight.
In the fear of the Lord is what?
Is strong confidence.
Now the Hebrew word translated confidence here It has the idea of the confidence that a person has when they are sheltered safe in a place of refuge.
When I was a young man and I first moved out from my parents' home on my own, I rented a little trailer house It was an older trailer house.
It was small, single-wide.
It had seen its day.
It had been painted.
It was clean.
And it did the job.
But uh I'd never lived in something so small and light and rickety in my life.
And it wasn't very long that I'd been living there when a big storm came through Athens.
And they came out on the radio and said that we were under a tornado watch.
And I remember being in that little rickety trailer.
And I remember that storm picking up, winds getting so strong, violent winds.
And I remember feeling that trailer go.
Like that with a wind.
Well, I was raised in brick homes.
And uh I I you know I I don't like the idea of my house and the wind going in the same direction.
You know?
It just don't think that that's the right good idea.
And as that home was going back and forth like that, I started thinking, you know, well let me just put this way, I did not have strong confidence in that trailer.
And I started thinking, you know, right down the road from me is my dad's shop.
And uh we it was we were closed at the time.
It was in the evening.
If I remember right, it was on a weekend in the evening.
And I remember thinking, man, why would I want to stay in this little trailer when it's shaking like this so bad by this wind if a tornado does come?
He's not going to be able to stand it.
So I thought I'll just go down the road and I'll go into my dad's shop.
Back in the day they had front end pits.
So you had a hole in the ground and that you had steps going down into.
If you were going to line align somebody's front end on their car, you'd go down into that pit.
Well, you're looking at a concrete hole in a concrete slab surrounded by steel.
I like the idea of that.
So I thought, man, I'll be safe in that building.
So I drove down the road and I went into my dad's shop and I stayed there until the storm passed over.
And I tell you what, I when I went inside that building and shut that door behind me, I felt perfectly safe.
I didn't go down into the pit.
But I thought if a tornado comes, I will.
Other than that, I just stay right here.
I think I sat in the waiting room, you know, and just waited for the uh the storm to to pass So, while I was in that building, I had strong confidence.
Now, had I sat out in the parking lot of that building.
The building would have been just as safe.
But where's the confidence at?
It's not on the outside of the building.
The confidence is on the inside of the building.
And so I had no strong confidence until I went inside it.
It's that way with the fear of the Lord.
Not once did I concern myself with that storm.
And as I had strong confidence In that building during the thunderstorm, we can have strong confidence in the fear of the Lord during the far greater storms that we face in life.
I faced a lot of things in life that were far more scary than tornadoes.
I bet y'all have too.
Far more challenging, stressful than a tornado.
Now, notice that Solomon didn't say, in the fear of the Lord is confidence.
He said, in the fear of the Lord is strong confidence.
Now, I believe it would be fair to say that the stronger the building the stronger the confidence.
Wouldn't you agree with that?
I had some confidence in the trailer.
It was definitely better being in the trailer than outside on the porch of the trailer.
It was definitely being better in the trailer than probably in my car.
But I didn't have strong confidence in the trailer.
So what gave me the strong confidence that I had in my dad's building?
Had nothing to do with my own self-confidence.
If it was in me to be able to have strong confidence in myself, I could have had that back at the trailer house.
But the strength of my confidence that I had in my dad's building was due to the strength of that building itself.
When I considered the steel and the concrete.
And how it was constructed.
That is what gave me the strong confidence.
And why can we have strong confidence in the fear of the Lord It's the same way that we have, or that I had, strong confidence in that building.
You see, that that trailer I was in, it wasn't built to withstand tornadic winds.
Just wasn't made for it But that steel building was, at least in some degree, on some scale it was.
And like the trailer, the will of man Our will, our way of thinking that life should be, our our our self-will, and I think this is the direction I should go, or this is the direction I should go in life, versus God's will.
My will, my way of thinking, was not designed to withstand the storms of life.
It wasn't built for it.
But God's will was, when God created man, he already had a perfect will for man in place.
He already had his perfect word, his perfect will, his perfect law, he had a perfect environment for man, and all Adam had to do was remain in God's perfect will.
And if he remained in God's perfect will, there could have been no harm come to him whatsoever.
The will of God was made for man.
It's fascinating.
You think about it, you say, well, maybe man was made for the will of God.
Think about it.
Yes, we were made to do God's will.
But God's will was made for us.
Do you remember what Jesus said?
One of the Ten Commandments, remember the Sabbath day to keep it holy.
Do you remember what Jesus said about that Sabbath day?
He said the Sabbath was made for man and not man for the Sabbath.
You think about it, isn't that good?
God's commands were made for us.
He didn't think, well, I got all these commands here.
Somebody's got to obey them.
I'll make man.
Didn't go like that.
He made man, and he made a set of rules for man to go by that would put man in the absolute best position he could have. to keep him running and going and enjoying everything that God created.
And God's will is built to withstand the temptations of the enemy.
And that's why Adam fell in the Garden of Eden, because he was not in the fear of the Lord.
Adam walked in his own self-will, and when that tornado come, his trailer got knocked over.
But in the fear of the Lord is strong confidence, the Bible says.
It's the fear of the Lord that causes us to leave the rickety trailer.
Of our own self-will to seek the refuge and the strength of God's will.
You say, Brother Richard, you're talking about the safety of the will of God, but the Bible's talking about the fear of the Lord What got me from the trailer to my dad's building?
It was me recognizing this was not made for this storm, but that building was.
And so I vacate one that I may occupy the other.
And in a spiritual sense, that's called repentance.
It's we're we're walking a certain way in life according to the dictates of our own will.
And then we finally realize That my will is like that rickety trailer.
It's not gonna hold up.
It's not gonna hold up in life.
It's not gonna hold up in death.
It's not gonna hold up in eternity And so I vacate self-will that I may occupy God's will.
And it's the fear of the Lord. that causes me to vacate that I may occupy.
Just like it was the the the the the fear of of that tornado that caused me to vacate the uh the trailer to occupy the building.
Now, not everybody had access to my dad's building that day.
There may have been some other people in that area that felt a little unsafe too.
But they couldn't get my dad's building.
They didn't have a key.
But I had a key.
To everybody else, that building would have been locked But I had a key.
Why?
Because of my relationship with my father.
That's why I had a key.
And I could freely enter that building because I was his child.
And so this proverb not only assures us of the strength of the refuge that can be found in the fear of the Lord.
But it also assures us that God gives us full access to that confidence.
He assures us that full access has been granted to us.
Why?
Because of our relationship to God the Father, seeing that we are his children through faith in his Son.
Solomon said, there is strong confidence in the fear of the Lord, and his children shall have a place of refuge.
Isn't that good?
See, I could have thought, hey, there's a steel building down the road.
It's got a front end pit in it.
I mean, that's a perfect place.
I could have left my trailer, driven down there, and got out there and been like Miss Ann and Alice trying to get in the side door this evening.
We let them in.
But they would have been out there shh trying to I'd have been out there trying to get in And thank God, because of my relationship with him through his son, he gives us access.
He gives us a place of refuge. that at any time in our life when we realize we're going the wrong direction and we realize our self-will isn't going to cut the mustard By his grace, we can always vacate.
We can always change our mind.
We can always repent and see our self-will for the rickety trailer that it is that it is.
And we can always know.
That when we come back to God, the door's not going to be locked.
He will give his children a place of refuge.
I think back about the prodigal son.
He was a prodigal.
But not only was he a prodigal, you know what else he was?
He was a son.
And because he was a son, as far away as he went, as bad as he acted, as disrespectful as he treated his parents.
When Daddy saw the boy coming home, he fell on his neck and kissed him.
He had a place of refuge.
He didn't have a place of refuge when he was feeding the swine.
He didn't have a place of refuge when his life fell apart away from his father.
But because he was a child, He was able to vacate the place he was in that he may come back to the family where he had strong confidence.
And we may not be walking in the fear of the Lord right now, but as believers in Christ, we have access to it.
As I was determined that that treather was not a safe place for me, so in my life I've determined that I don't want to live my life in the shelter of my own self-will.
I hope you feel that way too, because I know it won't hold when the storm comes.
Today I enjoy living in a well-bick, well-built brick home.
And unlike that little trailer, you know what I do when the bad storms come now?
Even when there's a tornado warning, you know what I do?
Well now I tell you, there's a difference between men and women.
When when there's a tornado coming, the woman will go to the center of the house where it's safe.
The man will go step outside and watch.
Isn't that what we do?
That's what men do.
But now if it's at nighttime and that happens Do you know what I do?
I just sleep right through it.
It don't bother me.
Sleep right through it.
I know if we get an F4 or an F5, I know it'll take me on to heaven.
But we don't usually get those.
And I know for the past 58 years that house has been standing there and hadn't lost a hadn't lost a brick yet.
And so I sleep right through them.
And let me tell you, there's no place I'd rather be in life than walking in the fear of the Lord in the center of God's will.
No place.
Because as long as I'm following the will of the Lord.
Now y'all listen.
As long as I and know that I am in the will of the Lord.
That I know there is nothing that can happen to me outside the will of the Lord.
I'll repeat that again.
As long as I know that I am in the will of God.
Then I know there is nothing that can happen to me outside the will of God.
And if something happens to me in the will of God, then it is for my good and for God's glory.
When Job first started his trial, his fiery trial in the book of Job.
It is so amazing how confident he was Naked came I from my mother's womb, and naked shall I return.
The Lord gives, the Lord takes away.
Blessed be the name of the Lord.
You know why Job had that strong confidence?
He said, the Lord gives.
The Lord takes away.
He knew all of it was the Lord's doing Do you know when you don't have that strong confidence?
When you know what you're doing, when you know it's your mess up, your foul up.
That's when you don't have the strong confidence.
But when you because if it's something you did to bring that on you, it's not always going to be for your good or for God's glory.
But if you know it's something that God did while you're in the will of God, walking in the fear of God Then you know it's always going to be for your good ultimately, even though it may hurt in the beginning, and for God's glory ultimately.
And that is some strong confidence to have when the storm comes.
Father, we thank you so much for your precious word.
Thank you, Father, for letting my voice get through this tonight.
Thank you, Father God, for the comforting, reassuring truth that we see here in this text.
Thank you for always giving us access.
That we may have the strong confidence, Lord.
And Father, if we're sheltered in the will of God, walking in the fear of God, and the storm comes And the storm takes a you who came and took it away.
And we can give you thanks and say, blessed be the name of the Lord.
As the soldier said, when his plane landed or crashed, he said, God is good.
What a wonderful place to be, even when you don't like the place you're in.
We thank you for that ability in Jesus' name.
Amen.
