Sermon Transcript
And the haughtiness of man shall be humbled, and the lofty pride of men shall be brought low, and the Lord alone will be exalted in that day. And the idols shall utterly pass away, and people shall enter the caves of the rocks and the holes of the ground from before the terror of the Lord and from the splendor of his majesty. When he rises to terrify the earth. In that day mankind will cast away their idols of silver and their idols of gold, which they made for themselves to worship, to the moles and to the bats, to enter the caverns of the rocks and the clefts of the cliffs, from before the terror of the Lord and from the splendor of his majesty when he rises to terrify the earth. But this is the one to whom I will look: Look, he who is humble and contrite in spirit and trembles at my word.
You shall have a song as in the night when a holy feast is kept, and gladness of heart as when one sets out to the sound of the flute to go to the mountain of the Lord, to the rock of Israel. And the Lord will cause his majestic voice to be heard and the descending blow of his arm to be seen, in furious anger and a flame of devouring fire. With a cloudburst and storm and hailstones. So do not fear, for I am with you; do not be dismayed, for I am your God. I will strengthen you and help you; I will uphold you with my righteous right hand.
For I am the Lord your God, who takes hold of your right hand and says to you, Do not fear, I will help you; do not be afraid, you worm Jacob. Little Israel, do not fear. The Lord of hosts, him you shall honor as holy. Let him be your fear and let him be your dread. And he will become a sanctuary and a stone of offense and a rock of stumbling to both houses of Israel, a trap and a snare to the inhabitants of Jerusalem.
And his delight shall be in the fear of the Lord.
If you can think back to your freshman English class when you talked about characters in a story, you probably had to talk about flat characters and round characters, and you talked about static characters and dynamic characters. Do you remember this, freshman English? A flat character, to refresh your memory, is a simple character, unsurprising, totally predictable. They fit some kind of stereotype. You know, they are the goon or the comic relief.
It’s C-3PO. You always know what you’re going to get from a flat character. Usually they are not the main character because they aren’t very interesting, right? There’s no mystery with them. On the other hand, a round character is much more complicated.
They often surprise you. It’s like at every turn they’re revealing another angle about themselves. They’re multi-dimensional. There’s a depth of personality, maybe a backstory. They have complex motivations, like Dumbledore.
He’s a complicated fellow, he’s super intriguing, he always surprises you. And then there are static characters and dynamic characters. Static characters stay the same throughout the story, their outlook, their perspective, it doesn’t move. They don’t mature, they don’t regress either, they just, they are who they are and they don’t they don’t move. Dynamic characters, on the other hand, they evolve through the story.
Who they are at the end is not who they were at the beginning. They’ve grown, you know, it’s Luke Skywalker, or they’ve collapsed, it’s Walter White, but either way they’ve changed. That’s the point, they’re dynamic. If we did a survey, this is my opinion, of all the characters in all the stories of all time, if we looked at fiction and nonfiction, if we looked at biographies and autobiographies and sci-fi and romance and thriller and poetry and children’s books, if we looked at all the characters, both real and non-real, I believe the God who is described in the pages of the Bible would be the most fascinating character of all time. He is so complex.
You are always surprised by what he does. He fits no stereotype completely. In fact, he embodies contradictory stereotypes at the same time. He’s both master and servant. He’s both lion and lamb.
He’s creator of the universe, unrivaled in power, but he’s also a helpless baby in a manger. There are so many different angles to him that you really never have him pinned down. At the same time, he really is static. He even says he never changes. Hebrews 13:8, Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today, and forever.
So he never matures, he never evolves, he never goes through some kind of growth to become someone else by the end of the story, which honestly then, if you consider how one, he never changes, he is static, and 2, how complex he is, it makes him even more complex. Because if somebody never changes, you would think you would eventually be able to predict their next move. We’d say, oh, I’ve seen you in this situation before, I know what you’re gonna do. But you don’t know what God is going to do. We never have him completely figured out.
This is why heaven is not going to be boring, by the way. I know I’ve said this before, but his mercies are new every morning, Lamentations 3. There’s always something new to learn about God. So, for eternity we will be totally amazed every day by something new we see in God. He will never be stale.
Nobody else can pull that off. You think about your favorite character in your favorite movie, you know, the one that you’ve seen 50 times and yet you still love it, you find Every time you watch the movie, right, you see something new that you kinda are able to enjoy that you didn’t notice before. But if you watch that movie, even that movie, if you watched it every day for a year, no matter how complex those characters were, you watch it 365 days in a row, you’re gonna be pretty sick of it by the end of the year. You may never wanna see that movie ever again, right? Unless of course you’re 4 years old, then for some reason you love watching the same movie every day over and over again forever.
The parents of the 4-year-old need to go to therapy because they can’t handle seeing it one more time. So we can put a little asterisk: unless you’re 4, movies will eventually get old, even the best movies, even the best characters. But looking at God will never get old. He is so complex that we will never cease to be astounded. So today We’re going to study a little bit of God’s surprising character that we see throughout the book of Isaiah and really shows up throughout the Bible as well.
Then we’re going to look at how we at least should react to God’s character, which is also a bit of a surprise. And then finally, we will see the biggest surprise at all. So we’re studying God’s surprising character, our surprising reaction, or what it should be, and the biggest surprise of all. So, first, God’s surprising character. God is both beautiful and terrible, both beautiful and terrible.
3 times in chapter 2 we read, the terror of the Lord and the splendor of His majesty. Terror, that’s terrible, right? And majestic splendor. And then chapter 8, Isaiah writes, but the Lord of hosts, let him be your fear, let him be your dread even. Then verse 14, he will become a sanctuary, great, and a stone of offense, not great, a rock of stumbling, a snare.
So he is fear-inducing. He is dreadful, but he is also a sanctuary, but also he is a stone of offense, a rock of stumbling. So, he’s beautiful and he’s terrible.
You can’t leave one or the other of those out. You can’t flatten his character. There are some Christians who only want to emphasize Bible passages which speak of God’s furious wrath, right? He’s gonna come get you. You better behave.
He’s like the evil Sheriff of Nottingham, right? He’s like this relentless oppression. You should feel weak and puny before him. He’s like the kid with the magnifying glass, like frying ants on the sidewalk, right? Like, run and hide, ants!
Run and hide! And the kid has some kind of maniacal laugh while he’s frying the ants, right? Like, muahaha! That’s how some people talk about God.
But Christians who see God like that have a hard time with verses that speak of God as a sanctuary, you know, a peaceful oasis. He has beautiful splendor. They minimize his beauty and they flatten him. At the same time, there are other Christians who want to paint God only as a cuddly Mr. Rogers You know, He will never raise His voice. He is just going to love you into obedience.
And eventually, with enough time and patience, everyone will come around to where God wants them to be, right? He doesn’t have to be wrathful because His love is just so captivating.
Those Christians have a hard time with verses that speak of God as dreadful, for example, Isaiah 8:13, or that His arm crashes with a descending blow and that He is a flame of devouring fire and he strikes with a rod, Isaiah 30. They want to ignore all that and again flatten him, make him predictable, make him tame. But the real God isn’t flat. We have to deal with who he is. He is beautiful and he is a terror.
Now, how should we react to a God like that? You might be thinking, I don’t really know what I think about that kind of God. That’s understandable. He does kind of discombobulate us, right? He pushes us off balance.
In fact, in these texts, we see 2 different and at first seemingly contradictory reactions that pop up in our hearts. So, our surprising reaction to who God is, or at least what our reaction should be to who God is, is that we should fear and we should fear not. We should fear and we should fear not. Don’t worry, it’ll get more confusing. Throughout the pages of Scripture, one of the most repeated commands is fear not.
We mentioned this during our Nehemiah series as well. Nehemiah had all these enemies, but he did not fear them. He feared not. At the same time, throughout all of Scripture, we are told to fear the Lord. Proverbs 9:10, the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom.
And in our Isaiah passages here, we see the same paradox, right? Isaiah 66, God commends anyone, verse 2, who trembles at his word.
Trembles. You know, a lot of times when we talk about fear of the Lord, we define fear only in terms of respect or awe, like we have reverence before God. And I’ll agree, that’s one aspect of fearing the Lord, of course, but that can’t be the only aspect. Because if God commends those who tremble at his word, he’s talking about something different than only respect and reverence and awe, right? Just like in the New Testament, Paul says we are to work out our salvation with fear and trembling, for it is God who works in you.
That extra descriptor there of trembling, like we’re shaking in our boots, that prevents us from interpreting fear of the Lord as only respect and awe. It’s more than that. Similarly, we look back at Isaiah, like Isaiah is describing God’s character and he says dread of the Lord, right? Isaiah 8:13. If we’re talking about dread, it paints a different picture than simply respect and awe.
Like, dread is not the same thing as respect. Fear of the Lord is more than respect and awe. And if we only define fear of the Lord as reverence, which is a good thing to do it that way, but if that’s the only way we define it, we miss that fear of the Lord includes real fear, trembling, dread.
However, paradox number 1, Isaiah says, and he seems to be talking about Christ when he says this, Isaiah 11:13, so probably Christ’s delight shall be the fear of the Lord. His delight shall be the fear of the Lord. So, this trembling and this dread is now described as a delight. That’s a paradox, right? Just like Isaiah 30, Isaiah describes God’s burning anger, his lips full of fury, and some people are smashed to bits by God and others sing a song and leap with gladness of heart.
So, here comes the dread of the Lord, you are trembling, but you leap with gladness of heart. That’s a strange reaction to say the least, right? It’s a paradox. And paradox number 2, Isaiah also instructs us to fear not. Isaiah 41:10, so do not fear, for I am with you.
Do not be dismayed, for I am your God. I will strengthen you, I will help you, I will uphold you with my righteous hand. For I, the Lord your God, who takes you by the hold of your right hand and says to you, do not fear, I will help you. So do not be afraid, you worm of Jacob, little Israel. Do not fear.
God’s got your hand. So, within the same book, Isaiah, right, we are told to tremble with fear and we’re told not to fear. That’s a paradox. So, putting all this together, if you’ve been paying attention, Isaiah says something like, let your delight be the trembling fear of the Lord. As the Lord approaches with his furious wrath, leap with gladness, for the dreadful one is with you.
Right? The one you fear is holding your hand, so don’t be afraid. That’s what Isaiah is saying. You want to talk about a complex character, you got it, right? God is one complex character.
Um, has your brain turned to putty yet? You’re wrestling with all this? Don’t worry, we’re not going to leave it totally unresolved. And not that we can sort out every nuance of God, but so that you don’t walk away utterly confused, let’s try to make this a little bit more clear. The most helpful explanation I have found regarding the paradox of fear the Lord but simultaneously, while you’re at it, fear not comes from John Piper, who observes, the fear of the Lord is the fear of straying from him.
The fear of the Lord is the fear of straying from him. Therefore, the fear of the Lord also expresses itself in phrases like taking refuge in God, right? Like, you could simultaneously take refuge in God and be afraid of straying away from him. Those are kind of the same thing because either way your goal is to be him. And you can see that play out in our verses that we’ve been talking about.
Isaiah 11:3, delight in the fear of the Lord, right? That now makes sense. Now, normal— like, normally we would think fear would push you away from the Lord, but delight would draw you in. But if you realize the thing that you fear is being away from him, and what you delight is being with him, then they really work together. They’re the same thing.
You have delight that you are with him, and simultaneously you fear being away from Him. Same thing, Isaiah 30, you see gladness alongside of, you know, God’s flame of devouring fire. And normally, you would think the devouring fire would push you away from God and gladness would draw you in, but if you realize the flame of devouring fire is what it is like to be away from God and gladness is what it is like to be with God, then both of them are working to draw you to God, right? Or Isaiah 8, let him be your fear, let him be your dread, like he will become your sanctuary. And again, you’d think dreading God would push you away from him and sanctuary would bring you to him.
But if you realize the thing you dread is being away from him, if that’s the dread of the Lord, is being outside of him, and then And the sanctuary is being with him, then it makes sense, right? Outside of the sanctuary is terror that you are genuinely afraid of and you tremble, and that drives you into the sanctuary who is God. If you run away from God, you will find he is a terrible dread. If you run to God, he is your delight, he is your sanctuary. Another way to say that is that God is both the storm and the shelter from the storm.
The terror of the storm is what it’s like not to be in the shelter, right? So don’t run away from the shelter because then you’ll be out there in the terror of the storm. Inside the shelter, you’re, you’re totally safe and there’s nothing to fear at all. And so you can have both simultaneously. Now, if you didn’t know, the idea that God is both the storm and the shelter from the storm is problematic for some people, maybe many people.
As I’ve mentioned before, I really try to listen to and hang out with atheists, hear what they’re saying about God. I wanna dialogue, listen, learn, help if possible. So here’s their objection. To the idea that God is both the storm and the shelter from the storm, right? It’s like God is the shelter from God.
They say if God is the shelter from God, that’s basically the same as like when a mob boss goes around to different shop owners and the mob boss makes the shop owner pay for protection from the mob boss, right? Like if God is shelter from God, then he’s the mob boss who provides protection from himself, right? Like the shop owner was doing fine, but along comes God who says, if you don’t give me half your profits, I’m going to burn down your store. But if you give me half your profits, then I will protect you from me, right? I am the storm and you need protection.
But I offer shelter from the storm in me. And the atheist says, hey, how about just don’t be the storm? And then we won’t have to worry about getting any protection. Just stop being the storm, then we’ll be fine. How about that?
And that’s a great point. That’s a great question. That’s why I love hanging out with people who ask questions like that, ’cause it makes you think. And that’s why I’m grateful for other voices throughout church history like C.S. Lewis.
C.S. Lewis says, God cannot give us a happiness and peace apart from himself because it is not there. There is no such thing. We can’t be a happy shop owner if we are just on our own. There is no happiness or peace there.
There is only happiness and peace with God. The metaphor of the mob boss coming to the shop owner is flawed because it assumes the shop owner was getting by just fine until the mean mob boss showed up, but that, that is not our situation. We were not just fine, so the metaphor does not apply, right? C.S. Lewis observes like humans have tried it without God.
We attempted to be on our own, and we just call that train wreck, uh, human history. There’s just a few problems that have ensued as we have tried it on our own, right? War, corruption, greed, scandal, oppression, to name a few problems. And those problems all came about because we’ve tried to look for happiness outside of God, and it does not exist. Again, God cannot give us happiness and peace apart from himself because it is not there.
There is no such thing. So if the shop owner asked, why won’t you just leave me alone so I can be happy? The answer would be, if you are alone, you will not be happy. You will fall into war, corruption, greed, scandal. That’s why.
There is no happiness apart from God. It does not exist. And if God loves you, and He does, then He will use everything at His disposal to drive you to the only source of happiness, which is Himself. To make it more practical for you, instead of this metaphorical shop owner stuff, I’ll give you a real-world example. The clearest place where I’ve seen the fear of running from God driving someone into the sanctuary of God where then they do not fear is when I hang out with addicts, recovered addicts, or maybe recovering addicts, ’cause I don’t know if you’re ever fully recovered.
I don’t get to do this much anymore, and I miss them, ’cause addicts, recovering addicts, they are my favorite people because they totally grasp their only hope is God. And they really root their identity in him in a way that a lot of the rest of us really struggle to do. Probably because the rest of us still think there is some percentage of hope outside of God on our own. And so our identity isn’t as rooted in God usually for a lot of us. So to prove that to you, if a minute ago when I quoted C.S.
Lewis and I said there is no happiness outside of God, if you disagreed with C.S. Lewis and you thought, you know, actually I think there’s a little bit of happiness outside of God, at least some, and for me maybe a lot because, you know, I don’t really think of God very often and I think I’m doing pretty okay, like I’m not super sad, I don’t have depression, you know, things are— life’s turning out okay. So I think there is some happiness outside of God. If you thought that when I brought up the C.S. Lewis quote, you’ve proved my point, right?
You believe that there is hope outside of God. Those of us who are not recovering addicts believe incorrectly there is some amount of of hope outside of God. And you just proved it because you argued with C.S. Lewis in your head. But addicts know differently.
Addicts know the truth because they have chased the road away from God all the way to the end. They saw where it led and it burned them. And now they know God is it. God is it, so I need to stay with him. And this is what they’ll tell you, they fear falling back into their addiction, they fear running away from God, and they might actually tremble about it, they get into a situation that could trigger a relapse and they are immediately on the phone with their sponsor and they’re like literally sprinting in the other direction.
Because they’re afraid, right? Why do they fear falling away from God like that? Because they know how much it hurts to be away from him. They’ve been there, they felt it. They know there is no such thing as happiness apart from God.
They know that’s a myth. They know C.S. Lewis is right, that God can’t give us happiness and peace apart from himself because it is not there, it does not exist. So they They run from that idea of being away from God. They run from that back to sanctuary, back to sobriety, back to where God is.
So they both fear and they fear not. They fear being away from God. They know it only results in dread. They know there is only misery out there and they are terrified at that. At the same time, in the shelter, They’re wrapped in God’s embrace, and nothing the world throws at them really bothers them.
They don’t get worried about stuff, they don’t stress, they have a settledness about them, they’re real, they’re transparent, they’re humble, they don’t hold anything in this world too tightly. They fear not. They’re like, I got God. I’m good. I’m really good.
There’s no fear. It’s beautiful. It’s what we should all do. Most of us just haven’t been burned bad enough yet to get there. Or maybe we don’t view the world that way because we haven’t seen God as good as He really is, which brings us to our last point, the biggest surprise of all.
The biggest surprise of all. We’ve talked about God’s surprising character. He’s beautiful and full of terror, terrible. We talked about our surprising reaction. We fear and we fear not.
And now we talk about the biggest surprise of all. Jesus feared so we may fear not. Jesus feared so we may fear not.
If God’s character was not complex enough already, as the story of the Bible unfolds, we see God in the person of Jesus step out of His own sanctuary and into His own dreadful fear so that we who are outside and trembling might come inside and be fearless. Jesus Christ in the Garden of Gethsemane, was He doing all right that night? No, right? He was troubled and full of sorrow. He is overwhelmed to the point of death because He knew He was about to leave the shelter of God’s embrace and go out into the terror.
He is sick about it, which is how all of us should feel when we are considering being away from God. Right? We should feel sick. We should feel sorrow to the point of death. But when we’re thinking about being away from God, that is the fear of God.
It’s like, I know what it’s like to be away from you. I don’t want to be away from you. Contemplating being away from you is wrecking me. Jesus is losing it because he’s going to be away from God. That’s the fear of God.
For Jesus, the cross is coming. But in Jesus’ case, He isn’t going to be away from God because He ran away from God. Jesus is going to be away from God because we ran away from God. And Jesus is going to bear the dread of God, the terror of God in our place, so that we can be in the shelter of God forever.
If you are going to compare God to a mob boss, just like take that analogy all the way, right? One, like we said before, the shop owner was making a mess of the world on his own and needed someone to step in because there was no happiness by himself. But 2, with this point, God, if He is the mob boss, He is the one paying for protection of the shop owner himself, right? The shop owner doesn’t pay the mob boss, the mob boss pays the mob boss, if you’re really forcing the analogy. God is the most complex, intriguing, mystifying, surprising figure in all of history.
He’s unclassifiable.
Whether you’re looking at fiction or nonfiction, there is no one like God anywhere.
If you feel yourself drawn to him today, lean into that. He is real, and the more that you lean into him, the more captivating and irresistible he becomes.
Let’s pray.
Father, you are magnificent.
You are so intriguing and amazing and unclassifiable, and we stare at your beauty.
We want more of you, Lord. We’re astounded by you. You are always surprising.
Father, I pray that all of us would run to you. I pray we would fear being away from you and we would run to you where we would have no fear. I pray that we would surrender our lives to you as you surrendered our lives for us. I pray that we would surrender our lives to you, Lord. May we do those things today and tomorrow and always.
We pray those things in Jesus’ name. Amen.
