Deuteronomy 10:12-22

12 “And now, Israel, what does the Lord your God require of you? He requires only that you fear the Lord your God, and live in a way that pleases him, and love him and serve him with all your heart and soul. 13 And you must always obey the Lord’s commands and decrees that I am giving you today for your own good. 14 “Look, the highest heavens and the earth and everything in it all belong to the Lord your God. 15 Yet the Lord chose your ancestors as the objects of his love. And he chose you, their descendants, above all other nations, as is evident today. 16 Therefore, change your hearts and stop being stubborn. 17 “For the Lord your God is the God of gods and Lord of lords. He is the great God, the mighty and awesome God, who shows no partiality and cannot be bribed. 18 He ensures that orphans and widows receive justice. He shows love to the foreigners living among you and gives them food and clothing. 19 So you, too, must show love to foreigners, for you yourselves were once foreigners in the land of Egypt. 20 You must fear the Lord your God and worship him and cling to him. Your oaths must be in his name alone. 21 He alone is your God, the only one who is worthy of your praise, the one who has done these mighty miracles that you have seen with your own eyes. 22 When your ancestors went down into Egypt, there were only seventy of them. But now the Lord your God has made you as numerous as the stars in the sky!”

Fear serves as an important alarm system, warning or preparing us for impending danger. Yet fear can also paralyze and cause us to freeze when we should fight or flee. During these uncertain times it’s easy to focus on our fears instead of our Father. But not all fear is unhealthy, at its base fear can be divided into two camps, that which is helpful and that which is harmful. Fear will either be your friend or foe, and it’s here in Deuteronomy 10:12 that we discover the kind of fear God wants us to have. As God’s chosen people were nearing the end of their 40 year journey through the desert, as a result of doubt and disobedience, we see Moses preparing them for his death and departure, as well as their entry into the Promised Land. Part of the preparation to enter this land filled with milk and honey, where they could settle down and prosper, involved Moses instructing the people on how to live and how to love. It’s here that Moses impresses upon them the need to fear the Lord, mentioning 7 times that they are to fear the Lord. After reminding them of their previous rebellion and God’s power to fulfil His promise, Moses starts in verse 12 with the question “and now, O Israel, what does the Lord require of you?” As he answers the question Moses reminds us of a right respond to God in light of all that He has done for us? Note that our response starts first not with our actions, but with our attitude. We are to have a proper attitude toward the Almighty, because attitude always affects our actions. We can work on becoming more loving and holy. We can study God’s word to know Him more but it will all fall short and fail if we don’t have a right attitude toward God. If our attitude is faulty we will fail to remain true to God and we will start to see Him and His word as a burden instead of as a blessing. Just as Moses called God’s children to look at their attitude, so I to invite you to examine your attitude toward the Almighty. How do you look at God? Because how you see God will determine how you serve God. Moses calls us to have an attitude of fear, which first requires us to have an accurate understand of what it means to fear the Lord. The fear of God is an awesome respect or reverence growing out of the greatness and power of God. In order to revere God rightly we need an accurate understand of His nature. In Job 37 we learn about God and the reason why He should be held in reverence, because of Who He is: “He is clothed in dazzling splendor. 23 We cannot imagine the power of the Almighty; but even though he is just and righteous, he does not destroy us. 24 No wonder people everywhere fear him. All who are wise show him reverence”Our attitude should be one of reverence and respect. It’s why Isaiah would later be filled with fear when God came before him, Isaiah 6:5 “Woe to me!” I cried. “I am ruined! For I am a man of unclean lips, and I live among a people of unclean lips, and my eyes have seen the King, the LORD Almighty.” How we revere Him will also be how we respond to Him, its why in verse 8 we see Isaiah saying yes to serving, “Then I heard the Lord asking, “Whom should I send as a messenger to this people? Who will go for us?” I said, “Here I am. Send me.” It’s also why the people of Israel could not go upon Mount Sinai, because God’s powerful presence had transformed it into holy ground upon which they could not tread. Perhaps no one has captured the character of God better than C.S. Lewis in his Chronicles of Narnia, in which he, like John in Revelation 5, portrays the Lord as a lion. The lion is a fierce figure that provokes both fear and fascination, might and majesty. In his book C.S. Lewis says: “As the Lion passed by they were terribly afraid He would turn and look at them, yet in some queer way they wished He would.” Naturally one would be nervous meeting a lion! The question was asked to one who knew this Lion well, “Is He safe?” I find the answer both wise and startling: “Safe? Who said anything about safe? Of course, He isn’t safe. But He’s good. He’s the King, I tell you.” Our motivation for fear grows out of an understanding of who God is, because an understanding of the character and attributes of God motivates respect and reverence. Do you fear the Lord? Is the fear of the Lord what motivates you in all that you think, say and do? Are you fearful or flippant in your attitude to the Lord?

Matthew 6:24-34

²⁴ “No one can serve two masters. Either you will hate the one and love the other, or you will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve both God and money ²⁵ “Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or drink; or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothes? ²⁶ Look at the birds of the air; they do not sow or reap or store away in barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not much more valuable than they? ²⁷ Can any one of you by worrying add a single hour to your life? ²⁸ “And why do you worry about clothes? See how the flowers of the field grow. They do not labor or spin. ²⁹ Yet I tell you that not even Solomon in all his splendor was dressed like one of these.³⁰ If that is how God clothes the grass of the field, which is here today and tomorrow is thrown into the fire, will he not much more clothe you—you of little faith? ³¹ So do not worry, saying, ‘What shall we eat?’ or ‘What shall we drink?’ or ‘What shall we wear?’³² For the pagans run after all these things, and your heavenly Father knows that you need them. ³³ But seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well. ³⁴ Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own.

A proper perspective not only reminds us of our real provision and purpose but it reprioritizes our:

• Priorities – 

We need to keep first things first. We need to keep God number one. And to get there, we must refocus our priorities. Pursuing God’s kingdom means making it our central priority and passion, not just one of our points. It’s when we live life to please Him, when we put Christ in the place of Preeminence. Are you majoring on what matters, kingdom living or minoring on miniscule matters? Loving the Lord is not something that we check off a list it’s our life. Pleasing God isn’t just a premise its practical, but we waste lots of opportunities to worship because we are asking the wrong question: We ask, “what does God want me to do with my life?” But what if we asked “what does God want me to do today, right now?” Practical obedience asks for that which pleases God in the present.  When we worry about the future, we fail to be productive in the present, and when we lack productivity today, it is a sure prescription for real worry tomorrow. Ask any student that puts off their homework! This doesn’t mean that we don’t plan, no it goes back to the purpose what is the driving desire, what is the motivation me or the Master, Fear or the Father? Jesus isn’t saying, “Don’t plan for the future; He’s saying, “Don’t worry about the future.” Are you seeking His kingdom above all? This is not a prescription for a problem free life but a life free from the waste of worry. Yes, life is a journey filled with curves, construction, and sometimes collisions, we drive through difficulty and have to deal with detours, high hills, and sudden stoplights but when we journey with Jesus it doesn’t have to be filled with fear. So how are you going to spend today, on self or service, in worry or worship?  Are you going to be tied up in the temporary or engaged in the Eternal? Trusting God doesn’t mean that the things that cause us worry will disappear, trusting God means their influence on us will. Because trusting God, means putting our lives into perspective, God’s perspective. So today, I leave my tomorrow in His hands.