Fear of the Lord

Nathan Colestock

Sermon • Submitted 6 years ago • Presented 6 years ago

Proverbs 1:7

The Fear of the Lord

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Introduction

“Is he a man?” asked Lucy.

“Aslan a man!” said Mr Beaver sternly. Certainly not. I tell you he is King of the wood and the son of the great emperor-beyond-the-sea. Don’t you know who is the King of the Beasts? Aslan is a lion – the Lion, the great lion.”

“ooh!” said Susan, “I’d thought he was a man. Is he – quite safe? I shall feel rather nervous about meeting a lion.”

“That you will, dearie, and no mistake” said Mrs Beaver; “if there’s anyone who can appear before Aslan without their knees knocking, they’re either braver than most or else just silly.”

“Then he isn’t safe?” said Lucy.

“Safe?” said Mr Beaver; “don’t you hear what Mrs Beaver tells you? Who said anything about safe? ‘Course he isn’t safe. But he’s good. He’s the King, I tell you.”

This was CS Lewis’ attempt to capture what the Fear of the Lord means in his series, The Chronicles of Narnia. It resonates with us because we get it. If you’ve ever been in the zoo and seen the lions, you know that you’re glad they’re on one side of the glass and you’re on the other; you have a certain respect for their power. Preparing to meet Aslan, Lucy and Susan already develop a logical fear at meeting him because he’s a lion, and they’re teenage girls. Please with turn with to . This will be the text for our time together this morning as we endeavor to discover the marvelous truth that Fearing the Lord based on His glorious nature will radically change our life with the Lord.

The Importance of the Fear of the Lord

Biblically, the Fear of the Lord is a term used to describe the piety of those who walk closely with God, it is a description of those most richly blessed by God, is the key given to keep ourselves from sin, it is worth more than great riches, and deserving of at least the next twenty minutes of our consideration. Let’s hear some of the Word of God concerning the Fear of God:

Don’t speak too quickly

“The fear of the Lord is clean, enduring forever...”

“The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom; all those who practice it have a good understanding...”

“Blessed is everyone who fears the Lord, who walks in his ways! You shall eat the fruit of the labor of your hands; you shall be blessed, and it shall be well with you. Your wife will be like a fruitful vine within your house; your children will be like olive shoots around your table. Behold, thus shall the man be blessed who fears the Lord.”

“Come, O children, listen to me; I will teach you the fear of the LORD. What man is there who desires life and loves many days, that he may see good?”

“Better is a little with the fear of the LORD than great treasure and trouble with it.”

“The end of the matter; all has been heard. Fear God and keep his commandments, for this is the whole duty of man.”

What good news for our souls! The Fear of the Lord is good, it is beneficial for us, it is pleasant. “Blessed is everyone who fears the Lord!” Here there is not debilitating terror, not slavish groveling, not apprehension of [RK2] pain. Let’s put out of our minds the idea that Fearing the Lord is negative. Fearing God is not a bad thing brothers and sisters. We don’t have to be afraid of this command. Rather, this is great news! Fearing God does not make us resent Him, rather Fearing God brings us to appreciate Him and delight in Him and treasure Him all the more! But to light our affection for God the way Fearing Him should, we need to understand better what that little phrase means, “The Fear of the Lord.”

Senses of Fear

Let’s start with the word Fear. Fear is used in two main sense in the OT:

Scared Fear

Fear as in apprehension that something painful will happen. This is the kind of fear that makes you want to run away. For an example we could look to “Fear and trembling come upon me, and horror overwhelms me.”

This is not the kind of fear Solomon is talking about in Proverbs. Let’s just fill in the definition to the verse: The apprehension that God might do something terrible of painful to you is the beginning of wisdom. No! Not at all. God does not desire that His children fall groveling to His feet in dreadful fear He might hurt them. God is our loving Father, our Good Shepherd, Wonderful Counselor, Prince of Peace! Our God says, “All things work together for the good of those who love him...” and “I know the plans I have for you! Plans to give you a hope and a future.” We can be sure then that Solomon does not mean that we should be merely scared of our God.

Reverent Fear

The other way the word fear is used is:

Fear as in deep and profound respect. The kind of fear that means you never open your mouth to say anything bad about the object of the fear. “He who withholds kindness from a friend forsakes the fear of the Almighty."

Imagine a war veteran has returned stateside after an awful tour of duty. When he opens his mouth to speak about pain, or hardship, or suffering you can hear a pin drop in the room. No one will open their mouth to disagree or dishonor him.

This is the kind of fear Solomon here means. Solomon is saying, “A deep profound respect for God and who He is is the beginning of wisdom.” This kind of fear is not only good, and sweet, and pleasant, but is actually commanded by God: “You shall fear the Lord your God. You shall serve him and hold fast to him, and by his name you shall swear. He is your praise. He is your God, who has done for you these great and terrifying things that your eyes have seen.”

It’s this verse that most clearly demonstrates to us that the fear of God is based on the glorious nature of God. “He is the name by which they are to swear, he is their praise, he is the God who has done these great things...” God himself is the basis for their Fear of Him. Now, remember what we mean by Fear, not scared, but intensely, profoundly, reverent. God, in all of his infinite beauty, and magnificent power, in his inscrutable justice, his steadfast loving kindness, his atoning grace, his deep mercy, his pursuing love, his creative genius, his intense wrath, his perfect righteousness, his hatred of sin and evil, his incredible design, his sweet sovereignty, and his loving submission is glorious beyond compare. He worthy of our highest most heartfelt praise. As so supremely excellent our God is the basis for a great reverent, treasuring, fear of Him among His people.

We should warn ourselves though, lest we feel we lessen the command to fear God by understanding it as reverence. Being terrified of God would be a very easy thing for us to understand and carry out. If Aslan were only a terrible lion, it would be clear how to interact with Him for Lucy and Susan. Reverencing God is by comparison very complicated. It is a complex thing to properly fear God. We must hold his wrath and love in tension; admiring both as the gloriously righteous attributes they are in our God. We must hold his sovereignty without doubting His goodness. We must be comfortable but not casual. It’s not lessening the command by any means.

So with all this said, I will venture a definition of the Fear of the Lord:

The Fear of the Lord is a profound respect for God based on his nature which does not exclude our understanding of his terrifying wrath, nor our understanding of his unshakable steadfast love which leads us to delight in God and radically changing how we walk before the him.

Repeat this.

Simply put, the Fear of the Lord is remembering and acting always knowing that He is God and we are His and so is everything else here. Our studies, our lives, our families, our marriages, our homes, our jobs, our bodies, our health, our friends, our money, our cars, all of it! The Fear of the Lord means we live remembering who God is, in all his splendor, and that we are His possession. Consider God’s mercy, his grace, his love, his justice, his kindness, his power, his righteousness; sure God is well deserving of our reverence. We should have a profound respect for Him based on his nature which doesn’t not exclude our understanding of his terrifying wrath, nor our understanding of his unshakable steadfast love which leads us to delight in God and radically change the way we walk before Him

Why is The Fear of the Lord the beginning of knowledge?

Defining Knowledge

So, we’ve answers for ourselves with the Fear of the Lord is, but, we still have to answer for ourselves why the Fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge. In fact, we need to define knowledge. What kind of knowledge is Solomon talking about here? We should bear in mind this is the purpose statement for Proverbs where Solomon will go on to give advice on why to not commit adultery, why to stay away from evil, why and how to gain wisdom, why to work hard. There are many types of knowledge. There is textbook knowledge, which as students we are intimately familiar with…perhaps we feel too familiar with. There is relationship knowledge that comes by experience with a person. And then there is this knowledge which Solomon is about to give “that it may go well with us on the earth” and to keep us from being fools. This knowledge is knowledge about how to live the right way.

So, how is this kind of life-knowledge related to the fear of the Lord?

Relationship of Fear and Knowledge

The relationship of Fearing God, meaning reverencing Him, and knowledge is that we must reverence God, we must recognize who He is, to gain any meaningful information about our world. In other words, void of God, our greatest efforts to live well on this earth will be nothing but a grasping after the wind. It will be all in vain. Why? Why does living the right way begin with reverencing God?

Our answer comes to us most clearly in , “For from him, and through him, and unto him are all things; to whom be glory forever.” All things exist to glorify God; that is everything’s purpose. So as Solomon begins writing and endeavors to show us how to live well on the earth, he says, “you have to understand that all of this comes first from fearing your God; from recognizing who he is and reverencing Him. Only then can you understand even the first thing about how to live well here.” And living well here means glorifying God because that is the purpose for which everything was created. Everything that Solomon warns against he does so because doing them is not reverencing God and his perfections, rather it is revering evil. Adultery does not fear God because God is faithful to His people. Stealing does not fear God because he has given to each one what is their’s. Murder does not fear God because it extinguishes His image created to extol His name. Going in with sinners does not fear God because it says that we agree with them about what is right rather than God. We are to reverence God by valuing the things that he says are right and despising the things he despises. In this way we glorify God by spreading His image and character across the globe. Everything Solomon is about to say comes down to Fearing God and agreeing with Him about what is right thereby glorifying God or despising God and doing what he says is wrong thereby dishonoring him.

The good news is that this pursuit to fear God and agree with Him to glorify Him isn’t a task defined by toil and hardship. Rather, Solomon shows us through the whole book, and the entire corpus of Scripture tells us that Fearing God and doing what He says results in great blessing and joy. We are must joyful and satisfied when we fulfill the purpose for which God made us, glorifying Him, by fearing him and agreeing with Him about the right kind of life to live. When David talks about the “path of life” which Solomon lays out through the whole book of Proverbs, and here at the beginning says is marked by Fearing God he says, “You make known to me the path of life; in your presence there is fullness of joy, at your right hand are pleasures forevermore!” Those are not the words of a man toiling in doing what is right, but the words of a man who rejoices fully in fearing God and doing what he says on the path to life! Fearing God is pleasant and brings us blessing because it means living the way God says is right which glorifies Him, which is the purpose for which we were created. So when you wonder, “How do I glorify God more?” Open to proverbs and live a life marked by the Fear of God doing what Solomon outlines as the paths of life here.

So what we’ve discovered this morning together is that The Fear of the Lord is a profound respect for God’s character and power which does not exclude understanding of his terrifying wrath, nor understanding of his unshakable steadfast love which leads us to delight in Him and radically change how we walk before Him. We’ve learned that the fear of the Lord is the beginning of all knowledge because everything was made by God for a purpose, and without reverencing God and understanding that purpose every area of study is missing it’s key. Solomon is saying that everything he is about say about life and acting righteously and how things will “go well with you on the earth” starts with a fear of the Lord.

› Repeat that.

Personal Application

So it’s time to get personal. In the time remaining I want to draw three very basic applications of what the Fear of the Lord should do in our every day lives.

The Fear of the Lord should move us to Praise God earnestly and passionately.

With the weight of glory resting on our shoulders, how can we help but reach the culmination of our affection for Him in proclaiming how magnificent he is?! We’ve seen a little bit more this morning how incredible our God is. The world is full of praise; praise for good movies, good music, good spouses, tasty food, ect. ect. ect. Our God is infinitely more praiseworthy than these things. Let us fill His earth with His praise.

Let us behold God, let us delight in him, let us find deepest joy and most supreme satisfaction flowing from the well of His goodness; for at His right hand are pleasures forevermore! And may our worship prepare us for that great day when we will hear the words of , “Fear God and give him glory, because the hour of his judgment has come, and worship him who made heaven and earth, the sea and the springs of water…here is a call for the endurance of the saints, those who keep the commandments of God and their faith in jesus.”

The Fear of the Lord should move us to do what he says.

You cannot reverence God and not obey him. This is an utter contradiction in terms. To recognize the power of God, and his hate for sin, and his glorious majesty and willfully disobey dishonors the name of God. Those who Love God will do what He commands. Let us not dishonor the name of our God by disobeying Him. Rather, let us offer ourselves as living sacrifices and be obedient to His every command.

The Fear of the Lord should cause us to live our lives with a certain gravity.

As the infinitely glorious, and beautiful, and excellent, and perfect, and powerful God the Lord is, it is not fitting that God would be someone whom we should ever deal trivially with. A correct understanding of the character of God does not let us act frivolously before Him. We should rather lead blood-earnest weighty lives recognizing our high calling and our incredible God. We should be comfortable with our God, but not overly casual.

God gave this life to us. He says that He saved us for good works which He has preordained for us that we might walk in them. He has a plan and a purpose in mind. Those of us training to be pastors, we hope to shepherd the people of God and feed them the Word of God. Those of you training to be teachers or who are already teachers, you communicate truths created by or revealed by God to students. Those of you training to be counselors, you are preparing to restore balance to personal, family, and marital contexts by application of the design of God. All of us as believers, God calls us to be salt and light, to count everything as loss, to make our bodies a living sacrifice for him, to love him with all our heart, soul, mind, and strength. This is not trivial business we are about here. This is great and weighty business we are unqualified for and unable to do apart from the grace and enabling power of our glorious God.

Let us not frivolously waste these days, but rather let us make the most of the time because the days are evil and few. Remember, we are but mortals, We are only a quick breath upon this earth and then we are gone. We have not much time here, so let us not waste it! Let us seriously consider our next steps, and consult with our God. Ask yourself, how does the weight of glory which the Lord has brought before my eyes effect how I will spend my evening, my free time, plan for my future, spend time with my friends.

I encourage you, continue the list. How does the fear of the Lord move you to plan you future, choose your spouse, act in classes, behave when you’re alone, engage in conversation, be a son or daughter or mother or father, go to work, spend your devotion time, what you wear, how you talk. Fearing God based on His nature will radically change our lives.

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