The Power of a Healthy Fear of the Lord

Daniel knew something that many of us have forgotten. He knew God's Word, he trusted God's authority, and he had seen God deliver over and over again. When Jeremiah's prophecy told him that the captivity would last 70 years, Daniel took God at His word. He prayed three times a day, every day, in the same spot, on his knees before God. There was a consistency to his life. He abided in God's presence, and that consistency became the foundation of an unshakable faith.

When Everything Around You Is Shifting

When Daniel heard about the law these men passed, you don't see him freak out. You don't see him run to the king. You don't see him try to orchestrate the situation. He simply went and did what he had always done. He chose to walk in faith and belief rather than in doubt and self-protection.

Maybe you need to hear that today. You're in a circumstance or situation and you're uncertain. You think the things around you are changing so fast, and you feel like you've got to do something to play this game, to be in just the right place at just the right time. But your God has never changed. He is never out of control. He is always in control. You can take a lesson from Daniel this morning: all you've got to do is consistently do what you've already been doing. Get on your knees. Tell the Lord He is in authority and He is in control. Trust Him with your life.

A Forgotten Posture

That concept is rooted in something our culture, especially our church culture, has forgotten. Daniel had a healthy fear of the Lord. He feared God.

Consider the story in Acts chapter 5. The apostles were experiencing resistance. Some Sadducees, frustrated and jealous about these followers of Christ and what they were doing, kept trying to stop them from preaching the name of Jesus. They arrested them and threw them in jail. Then, suddenly, an angel of the Lord came and released them. They got out of jail and went right back to preaching the Word. So the guard arrested them again, and the high council looked at them and said, "I think I was really clear when I told you never to speak of or teach in Jesus' name again."

Peter's response is incredible. He didn't back down. He didn't try to smooth things over. He didn't say, "We're not really hurting anybody. Can't we just get along?" No. Peter looked right back at him and said, "We must fear God rather than man" (Acts 5:29).

Proverbs 9:10 says, "The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom, and knowledge of the Holy One is understanding." This is the posture we are after as followers of Jesus. We're not combative, but we are confident in who God is, because confidence is rooted in a fear of God, a true understanding of who He is. His holiness. The fact that He is set apart. His place in history versus our place in history. His authority, His beauty, His glory, His splendor, His power versus ours. Daniel had this exact same heart hundreds of years before Peter, the same attitude toward God. There was nobody that was going to stand in his way of worshiping his God, because he knew that his God was the one, authoritative, true God. He was stronger.

"Who's Stronger?"

There was this moment when we were raising our kids. Chloe, our oldest, when she was super young, she would get fired up. She gets that from her dad. She would just get fired up, running all over the house, and we'd be trying to tell her she needed to calm down. Finally, I'd kind of get her on the couch and we'd start wrestling. She'd fight back, and I realized at a really young age that this little girl was really, really strong. She was strategic, too. Elbows would go flying, popping me in just the right spots.

Finally, as a dad, I would have to grab her with both of my arms and just hold her to get her to settle down. I'd say, "Chloe, who's stronger?" She'd go, "I am!" and she'd start kicking with everything she had. So I'd squeeze a little tighter, like a vice. "Who's stronger?" More kicking. "Chloe. Me." And finally, when her arms and legs were completely still, I'd ask one more time, "Chloe, who's stronger?" You could feel the tension release from her body. "You are, Dad."Then I'd let her go.

As I was studying this passage, I realized that story is really a picture of the fear of the Lord. We all have that in some form. It could be an older sibling, a parent, an aunt, an uncle, a coach. That mental edge someone over us has, that healthy respect. This is what Daniel had with his God, and it's what I want you to understand today: strong faith begins with a healthy fear.

Faithfulness You Can Lean On

Why fear? Why that word? How do you even build a healthy fear of God? It really comes when you understand and experience different character traits about God throughout your lifetime. Specifically, the one Daniel was most familiar with was God's faithfulness. His steadfastness. His constancy. He always delivered. He always came through on His promises. Daniel knew it. These are characteristics of God that Daniel recognized he was unequipped and incapable of fulfilling on his own, but God was always faithful.

Daniel's fear of the Lord led him, in a situation where the threat was imminent, to do what he had always done, because he knew there was nothing man could ultimately do to him. What did verse ten tell us about Daniel? It says he went home and knelt down as usual, just as he had always done.

Dwight L. Moody said, "Most of the world begins the day looking toward the world and hoping to get something from it. But the Christian believer looks to the Lord and his promises, and he enters each new day by faith. Our outlook determines our outcome. When we look to the Lord for his guidance and we look for his help, we know that our outcome is in his hands." He also said, "Real, true faith is man's weakness leaning on God's strength. Better yet, man's weakness transformed into God's strength."

Another author put it this way: "A believer who knows how to kneel in prayer has no problem standing in the strength of the Lord."

I don't know how that hits you today. I don't know if you've ever truly thought about what it means to fear God. To get in His Word and abide in His presence, not because you're trying to check a box, but because there's a healthy fear that if you don't, you might actually start living your life without Him. God has invited you into a meaningful relationship, and that's our mission here at Connection Church. We want to be a part of that invitation, but you've got to do your part. It begins with a healthy fear of the Lord. That's why I confess my sin, because I recognize that God judges sin. He's faithful to judge it. He's always consistent in it because He is a God of justice. That's part of who He is. My fear of that leads me to say, "I don't want to continue in my sin."

The Lion's Den and the Glory of God

Daniel's faithfulness to God gets him thrown into a lion's den. Once he prays to God, the rest of the story tells us that he essentially violates this law the king decreed. The king is nervous because he loves Daniel, but the law can't be revoked. So he takes Daniel and has him thrown into the lion's den. The entire evening, the king is troubled by what happened. He sees what these men did, but he has to follow through. He can't sleep. The next morning, he wakes up early, runs to the lion's den with its stone rolled over the opening, pulls it back, and calls out, "Daniel, are you in there?" Daniel responds, "Yeah, hey man, listen. God sent an angel to shut the mouths of the lions, and I am completely unharmed."

God's faithfulness, again, in Daniel's life. And the king makes a declaration at the end of the chapter. In Daniel 6:26-27, he says, "I decree that throughout my kingdom everyone should tremble with fear before the God of Daniel. For He is the living God. He will endure forever. His kingdom will never be destroyed. His rule will never end. He rescues and saves His people. He performs miraculous signs and wonders in the heavens and the earth. He has rescued Daniel from the power of the lions."

Why does the king bring the concept of fear back? Because he recognizes the authority and power that God has, even over the kings of this world.

And so Daniel prospered during the reign of Darius and the reign of Cyrus the Persian. Similar to the other stories we've seen in this book, through captivity, through the fiery furnace, and now through the lion's den, God allows these situations to happen for one purpose alone: His glory. It's so that a king and a nation would turn to Him. He is the King. And you see that happen through different rulers of Babylon and now through Darius and Cyrus the Persian. Daniel's night in the lion's den reveals something about Daniel, yes, but more importantly, it revealed and ended in the glory of God. That's what it has always been about, and it's what it will always be about.

What School of Faith Are You From?

My question for us this morning is this: what school of faith are you from? Not where were you raised, but where are you right now in your faith journey? For Daniel and his friends, it was this: "Our God is able to deliver us, but even if He doesn't, He is still God." That's the school of faith. You saw it with Daniel's friends in the furnace, and you see it with Daniel again in the lion's den.

How much do you trust your God? That's the real question today. If a lion's den, figuratively speaking, was in your future, what would you do? Take your circumstances right now. Take your situation. Put them on the table. Do you trust God? What are you currently worried about? What do you have trouble releasing, the thing that keeps you awake at night? What do you know about God that you could lean on and rely on during these times, rather than allowing those situations in your life to overtake your thoughts?

Here's what Daniel knew: God had always been faithful. That's the principle you and I need to learn to rest on. God is faithful. Always.