Fear of the Lord – To Clean or Hearts and Minds
( Part 1)
After hearing the teaching from Ray last Sunday, I wanted to do some more study on the importance for all believers to “Fear the Lord”. There are so many places in the Bible that have this important phrase, but it is found many times in Proverbs. So Proverb 1:1-7 reads;
“1 The proverbs of Solomon the son of David, king of Israel:
2 To know wisdom and instruction,
To discern the sayings of understanding,
3 To receive instruction in wise behavior,
Righteousness, justice, and integrity;
4 To give prudence to the naive,
To the youth knowledge and discretion,
5 A wise person will hear and increase in learning,
And a person of understanding will acquire wise counsel,
6 To understand a proverb and a saying,
The words of the wise and their riddles.
7 The fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge;
Fools despise wisdom and instruction.”
Let’s break this intro to Proverbs down into a few basic questions. First, Who is the Lord? God is the one who is the creator of all people and creatures of this earth. The vegetation and life down to the smallest level are part of His domain. The movement of the seas, rivers, sun, moon, stars and the clouds and winds are His to command. As we have read the early chapters of Genesis many times we know that “God saw all that He had made, and beholds, it was very good.” 1:31. God is self-sufficient, thus needs nobody to exist. He was there before time began. He is eternal and no one can compare to our almighty God. So to fear God is the beginning of getting to know Him personally.
Second question; The fear of the Lord… So what does that mean? Back in the time of Exodus, the people of Israel had spent much time in the wilderness and finally got to camp out near Mt. Sinai. There they got the commandments from the Lord that were given to Moses. They had seen the great mountain flash lightning and heard the sound of thunder and the sound of trumpets. They were afraid and stayed away from the mountain lest they be killed, since God had warned them not to come too close. Then Moses delivered the basic 10 commandments given by God. They were terrified and only wanted to hear the voice of Moses and not God. For the Israelites and believers, being frightened or fearing God is a necessary reaction to the sin that will be punished if one continues to commit it day after day.
But this was not the “fear of the Lord” that is being proclaimed by King Solomon in Proverbs. Fearing God is to have respect and a sincerely thankful heart because He loves and loved us enough to have sent Jesus to be a sacrifice for our destructive nature. We fear God because we respect and cherish what He has done for all of mankind ( no matter where we were born, the language we speak, or the color of our skin). Our love that we are to show our God and to others is not displayed by the external things like possessions we acquire or the designer fashion labels we may desire. But it comes from the transformation of our hearts and is displayed by our deeds that are pleasing to God and ultimately brings glory to Him. This transformation is a lifelong process as we worship, learn from his Word and fellowship and show our faith in the way we treat and respect others and so much more. Words in the gospel of John say it so well…. John 13:34-35 “A new command I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another. By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another.”
We will look at a couple of more questions next week to further explore the fear of the Lord. If you have some of your own thoughts provided by the Holy Spirit and you want to share, please do. We can all learn from other believers whose wisdom is shared.