1 Sam 12:24, Only fear the Lord and serve Him in truth with all your heart; for consider what great things He has done for you.
	This is a wonderful passage that is laid before every member of the Body of Christ. Certainly it was stated by the Lord through Samuel to the tribes of Israel, but the inherent reality of it is something that we need to take to heart every moment of every day of our lives! How do we place the consideration of the Lord God Jehovah within the depths of our beings before our eyes as each decade, as each year, as each month, as each week, as each day, as each hour, as each minute, and yes even as each second passes before our conscious awareness? How much does it mean to us that we belong to God as His Chosen and Saved and Glorified children? 
	In reading these chapters, I am sure that each of us had that conscious time with the Lord that we would have chosen differently. We think that we would not have been so foolish as to desire a human king over the blessed relationship with the Only Living Lord God, Creator of all the universe and the King of our hearts and lives. I know that I have read these passages over and over again with that attitude of no way would I have been party to such an abominable act. 
And yet, when I look back on the course of my life, through those decades, those years, those months, those weeks, those days, those hours, those minutes and yes even those seconds, my searching eyes see the playing out of just how often I chose as imprudently as did these Israelites. I chose the human foolishness over the majestic Omnipotence and Omniscience and Omnipresence of my Savior and Lord.
	We need to recognize that if we do not do exactly as this verse demands from us as the children of God, then we will find ourselves deliberately turning our concentration, our focus, our deliberation, our commitment, and our hearts away from honoring and adoring the One Who has done an eternal work in our lives. Only fear the Lord and serve Him in truth with all your heart; for consider what great things He has done for you.
	The focal point of this passage is a declarative proclamation that deserves reverent and willing obedience. It sets before every one of us the manner in which we order our walk on this earth. Are we the Lord’s people, redeemed and glorified and seeking to honor Him with the every central consecration of our beings, or are we those rebellious and stubborn children who chaff and cry and argue and turn away from wisdom and good judgment, rather seeking our own feeble and miserable way in this world?
	 The key word in this contemplation is the one which is translated fear. It is actually not the one with which we are so familiar. It does not mean to be afraid of The Lord or to be concerned or apprehensive. Rather this is a word which means to show respect for or be in awe of God. It holds forth the element of a deep reflection on the deeds and the actions and the characteristics of the One so feared. 
There is, held within the depth of this contemplation, the reality that when we so fear God, we think about our relationship with Him, we consider how the actions and the thoughts and the attitudes and the demeanor that we put forth will affect Him. It is a deep and abiding rapport with Our Lord which will flavor our every action, interaction, and reaction. 
	This is the course of the fear of the Lord in the lives of those who belong to Him without any reservation or hesitation. Knowing Who He is causes us to choose to only do those things which will bring honor to Him. Knowing a measure of what He has done reinforces our determination to never disgrace or displease Him as we walk on this earth. Appreciating what He has promised to do creates in us the desire to see through into the depths of eternity the course of our walk which will only add and enhance the glory of God from within all that He has created. 
	We need to have that fear of the Lord instilled into the core essence of our beings in order that we, day by day and moment by moment, learn how to live before the Omniscient Lord God Almighty in the way that will only bring Him joy and honor and blessing and glory all the days of our so fleeting lives on this earth.
Please turn back to Deut 8:2-10, as we will be encouraged into this walk with God for the sake of His glory and His honor. That is what the Children of Israel were being so encouraged to do by the Lord through this declaration of Moses. 
	Deut 8:2-10, And you shall remember all the way which the Lord your God has led you in the wilderness these forty years, that He might humble you, testing you, to know what was in your heart, whether you would keep His commandments or not. And He humbled you and let you be hungry, and fed you with manna which you did not know, nor did your fathers know, that He might make you understand that man does not live by bread alone, but man lives by everything that proceeds out of the mouth of the Lord. Your clothing did not wear out on you, nor did your foot swell these forty years. Thus you are to know in your heart that the Lord your God was disciplining you just as a man disciplines his son. Therefore, you shall keep the commandments of the Lord your God, to walk in His ways and to fear Him. For the Lord your God is bringing you into a good land, a land of brooks of water, of fountains and springs, flowing forth in valleys and hills; a land of wheat and barley, of vines and fig trees and pomegranates, a land of olive oil and honey; a land where you shall eat food without scarcity, in which you shall not lack anything; a land whose stones are iron, and out of whose hills you can dig copper. When you have eaten and are satisfied, you shall bless the Lord your God for the good land which He has given you. 
	When we honestly look at the course of the life that we have been walking, we will see very similar measures of the work of God in our lives. We will recognize that His methods of dealing with those whom He loves have not changed. Yes, we are under the hand of His disciple all the days of our lives, but that is not for our undoing or because of some untoward sense of judgment on God’s part. No, He is working that discipline in our lives and hearts and minds in order that we will experience the complete and perfect joy of the Lord which has always been His heart of love to you and to me. 
His disciplinary action in our lives shows just how much He wants to bless us with the full measure of the incomprehensible and divine bounty of heaven. The fear of the Lord that is developed is not one of apprehension or expectation of difficulty and punishment. It is the fear that is developed in our appreciation and awe of Who He is as Our Heavenly Father, Our Glorious Savior and Lord, and Our indwelling Guide and Teacher and Revealer of His Living Word. We become enthralled with the idea that God would so love such as us that He would invest Himself fully and manifestly into the every fiber of our life here and forevermore.
Accordingly, as He works in our lives, guiding our every footstep, supplying our every need, manifesting His great and awesome loving kindness and tender mercies and comfort and grace, we only want to bless Him. As we enjoy all that He puts before us in the course of the flowing of time, we want to enjoin ourselves to that praise and adoration and honor in which the utmost depths of His creation propels forth the manifold blessing of Jehovah, Lord God Creator! 
Then please turn to the encouragement of Moses to all of us in Deut 10:20+21, as the true reality of our lives are put forward in terms of what our walk on this earth entails. Even as we live unto the Lord in the provision that He makes as each day unfolds, there is the focal truth that it is all to be to His glory and His praise and His honor.
Deut 10:20+21, You shall fear the Lord your God; you shall serve Him and cling to Him, and you shall swear by His name. He is your praise and He is your God, who has done these great and awesome things for you which your eyes have seen. 
	Notice the imperatives within this passage. You shall fear the Lord your God…. There will be that from our core essence which reverences and honors and esteems the Lord God Almighty. This is not a wish! This is not a choice! This is not a possibility. You shall fear the Lord your God… This will become the reality in which we deal with every consideration and inclination toward the Lord. We will do nothing other than know Him and honor Him as the course of our daily testimony of Who He is and all that He has done on this earth in our lives.
	…you shall serve Him… Again, this is an imperative command. You will serve God. Consider the reality that all that we do on this earth, no matter what our motivation or our intention in it, it will only serve the plan and the purpose of God. 
Consider the Prophet Jonah and how he tried to turn his back on the call to go to Nineveh. Yet at every turn of even his running away, God used it to promote the further knowledge and witness of the Almighty. Jonah could not escape the task that was set before him, even though he took a rather circuitous route. God was proclaimed and exalted and recognized in even the depths of the storm that was so severe that the seasoned sailors were quaking and terrified and they recognized the power of the God of Jonah. At every turn, Jehovah was seen as the exalted and Omnipotent Ruler of heaven and earth. Jonah’s experiences served to show so many the awesome splendor of turning to Jehovah and serving Him Alone.
	 …and cling to Him… What a word picture of the every decision and step of our walk on this earth. We must cling to Him. We must seek Him. We must not stray from Him. We must hold onto Him with all our heart and with all our might and with all our soul and with all our spirit. We recognize that we can do nothing on our own. 
Every time we put our foot forward without the guidance and the direction of God, trying to deal with an issue without His direct intervention, we muck it up. That does not mean that God will not accomplish all that He intends. But it means that we often lose the opportunity to see exactly how He will do all that He has ordained to be done. 
	When we are not clinging to Him with every fiber of our being, we find ourselves floundering around aimlessly in anguish and worry and frustration and dread and indecision and anything but peaceful rest in Christ Jesus. We lose that closeness in our living relationship with God which allows us to see the mighty work of God in the every movement of our spirits and our minds and our hearts. 
	…and you shall swear by His name… This is not the use of the Lord’s name in vain. It is the actual reality that we can proclaim that God is Who He says He is and that He is doing and will continue to do that which adds more and more perfect glory and honor to His name. 
We will use His name in the prayers that we offer up knowing that He will respond to each one. They may not be answered in the way that our human mind thinks they should be, but He will hear each prayer and He will react perfectly to each one. This will be according to that which will bring forth only the perfection of His Omniscient heart of love. Some times the response will be immediate, and sometimes He may wait decades, but He will bring forth the full weight of Heaven upon every prayer that is pronounced for the sake of His name and His glory.
	… He is your praise and He is your God, who has done these great and awesome things for you which your eyes have seen. This is the fear of the Lord which is the whole basis of this discussion. God is our praise. The Lord God is our very life, with the entire focus of all that we are and all that we do centered in bringing Him the praise and adoration and honor and respect and worship that is thought-filled and overflowing with the focal essence of the entirety of how much we love Him! Words are absolutely unable to express the tremendous aspect of the heart that is set in the knowledge that Jehovah, that Yahweh is our praise and our everything. 
	He has done so very much in every life that is gathered here today. It would take us countless years to fully witness unto the way that the Lord has worked in us! We will be singing His praises from the perfect choice of the gift of our parents, even with all their flaws and blemishes, to the manner in which He has directed us to the perfect spouse of His heart for us as well as how He as awesomely cared for our children and our grandchildren and our great grandchildren!
	How could we ever find sufficient time to express the every detail of how He kept His hand upon us through every mistake that we made growing up, every stupid and insidious action, some with dire consequences that He used to form and to mold and to create in us those hearts that were ready to seek Him and to call out to Him and to surrender fully unto Him as Our Savior and Our Lord? We could never sufficiently express what it means to be His child, chosen and adopted by Him for His plans and for His mighty work of love and grace and mercy and comfort in us, and through us unto those in such need around us.
	Then there is the matter of our teaching and our training as His Church, His Body on this earth. Again, to try to make every expression of how much He has invested into us and through us unto others will take all the eons of the eternal ages to come. Yet it is the fact of each one of us gathered together in His Glorious and Awesome Name. 
Lord willing, we will continue with this wondrous and stupendous testimony of the great love of God which is teaching us to so fear the Lord with all our hearts and all our minds and all our spirits when next we are together. So be it!
Only fear the Lord and serve Him in truth with all your heart; for consider what great things He has done for you. Amen.

This morning’s benediction is 1 Sam 2:2. "There is no one holy like the Lord, Indeed, there is no one besides Thee, Nor is there any rock like our God. Amen