Fear and Delight

9 And he charged them: "Thus you shall do in the fear of the LORD, in faithfulness, and with your whole heart: - 2Ch 19:9 ESV

28 And he said to man, 'Behold, the fear of the Lord, that is wisdom, and to turn away from evil is understanding.'" - Job 28:28 ESV

11 Come, O children, listen to me; I will teach you the fear of the LORD. - Psa 34:11 ESV

10 The fear of the LORD is the beginning of wisdom; all those who practice it have a good understanding. His praise endures forever! - Psa 111:10 ESV

7 The fear of the LORD is the beginning of knowledge; fools despise wisdom and instruction. - Pro 1:7 ESV

5 then you will understand the fear of the LORD and find the knowledge of God. - Pro 2:5 ESV

Have you, like me struggled with this phrase, “The fear of the Lord?” For years I have grappled with this idea and have spent lots of time pondering all the things I have been taught about it. Mostly, what I have often been told is that the fear of the Lord is Awe as we look at His majesty. That made sense. If God is good and loving, what is there to fear? But that answer seems to not satisfy me or carry the intent of the authors. Or God in Job’s case. There has to be more.

The more time I spend with this concept, the more I feel like there is something really important missing in our understanding and I believe it is killing the Church today. When Dvid and Solomon talked about the fear of the Lord, it was the root of wisdom and knowledge. It is certainly meaningful to understand the awesome power and majesty of the Lord, but when we fall short of fear, we also fall short of respect for who He is. He is just and Holy. He will judge the world in righteousness. Someday we are going to stand before Him in judgment. We know that Jesus has saved us and has taken our judgment upon Himself. We know that He removes our sins from us as far as the east is from the west, but unfortunately, we do not respect what it means that we will stand in judgment and that not everyone who says “Lord, Lord” will enter the Kingdom.

28 And do not fear those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul. Rather fear him who can destroy both soul and body in hell. - Mat 10:28 ESV

21 "Not everyone who says to me, 'Lord, Lord,' will enter the kingdom of heaven, but the one who does the will of my Father who is in heaven. 22 On that day many will say to me, 'Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name, and cast out demons in your name, and do many mighty works in your name?' 23 And then will I declare to them, 'I never knew you; depart from me, you workers of lawlessness.' - Mat 7:21-23 ESV

These should be a sobering thing to read. It is for this reason that I feel we have lost the fear of the Lord and often stumble around in folly. We know God is powerful. We know He is kind and gracious. He is love. But, if we miss that He is also perfectly righteous and perfectly holy, we will walk around in a false sense of security. It is the understanding of the fear of the Lord that keeps us mindful of who He is in every regard. It does make us confident in His love, but it also makes us leery of straying outside of Hs will, not because He is waiting for us to slip up so He can catch us, but because it requires being clothed in His righteousness to stand in His presence.

Our sin is always destructive. There is no way to continue life as usual and still abide in the presence of Jesus. It is only as we become aware of His absolute perfection that we understand what it is that we have been called to. I am not saying that if we sin, we are out. Obviously, Jesus, John and Paul had a lot to say about this. What I am saying is that once we lose the fear of the Lord, His majesty and His authority lose their place of awe in our conscious thinking. We walk in foolish ways that deny His power in our lives. We stop participating with Him in our sanctification. This is a dangerous place to live.

You ask me why I am writing about this, it is because I feel like I have spent too much time living in this cheap understanding of the fear of the Lord. I have not weighed many of my words and actions in the light of the fact that one day I will stand before a holy God and my actins will be judged. I have spent too much time living as if everything is good when often, it is not. The Lord has been challenging me on several false beliefs and assumptions that I have been living under. The reality is I have been living as if the grace of God was cheap and devaluing how costly it was. I have been living as if I don’t owe Jesus every breath I take and every effort I give.

The fear of the Lord is the only safe place to live, not because the Lord wants us living under the cloud of judgment every moment, but He does want us aware that we will stand before Him one day and we are going to hear one of two things. “Well done good and faithful servant, enter the joy of your Lord.” Or “Depart from me, I never knew you.” If we are in Christ, we will hear well done, but we cannot assume that we are not in Him if we are not living a life pleasing to Him. We may make it into Heaven, but at great peril of seeing everything that we are dragging with us consumed by the fire.  

10 According to the grace of God given to me, like a skilled master builder I laid a foundation, and someone else is building upon it. Let each one take care how he builds upon it. 11 For no one can lay a foundation other than that which is laid, which is Jesus Christ. 12 Now if anyone builds on the foundation with gold, silver, precious stones, wood, hay, straw-- 13 each one's work will become manifest, for the Day will disclose it, because it will be revealed by fire, and the fire will test what sort of work each one has done. 14 If the work that anyone has built on the foundation survives, he will receive a reward. 15 If anyone's work is burned up, he will suffer loss, though he himself will be saved, but only through fire. - 1Co 3:10-15 ESV

This is the greatest reason that I can think of to walk in the fear of the Lord. Everything that we give our lives too will be tested. It will have to survive the fire. If we build on the wrong foundation, or we build from our selfish desires, it will not survive the testing. We will be before the Lord empty handed, like the servant who received on coin from the hamster and then hid it so he wouldn’t lose it. He was cut off and his coin was given to another, along with the reward that was to be his for being faithful and diligent with what the Master had entrusted to him.

I have wasted too much time building my own kingdoms. I have experienced the Lord challenging the work I am doing, knowing that much of it will not pass the test of the fire. I am not saying that the Lord was not in any of the work I have done. Much of it was motivated and directed by Him. Unfortunately, much of the time I have had false and wrong motives. I have loved the people the Lord has brought into my life. I have immensely enjoyed the places He has led me. I have also let my motivation become human recognition, reputation, fear of man, fear of failure, attempts to earn love and honor. Those things will not survive the fire.  

What I am learning most though is that we cannot understand or receive the love of the Lord if we do not rightly understand the fear of the Lord. It is only when we understand the fear that we can receive this love, because we understand all He has done to show Himself faithful and trustworthy on our behalf. It is only when we truly understand what He can do that we can appreciate what He has done. We can receive His love because we can see it clearly, without the corruption of our natural sight.

I am getting tired of trying to earn what the Lord wants to freely give. I am tired of being under the pressure of my own failures and expectations. I want to live in a place where the love of the Lord flows freely between Him and me and that that love, with full recognition of His awesome might flow freely from me to others.

It is time to start living from this promise We can only begin when we understand all the reasons that we are to fear the Lord.

3 Trust in the LORD, and do good; dwell in the land and befriend faithfulness. 4 Delight yourself in the LORD, and he will give you the desires of your heart. 5 Commit your way to the LORD; trust in him, and he will act. 6 He will bring forth your righteousness as the light, and your justice as the noonday. - Psa 37:3-6 ESV