The Fear of God

Scriputure

Text: Ecc. 12:13

Ecclesiastes 12:13 KJV 1900

Let us hear the conclusion of the whole matter: Fear God, and keep his commandments: for this is the whole duty of man.

Scriptures: Pro 16:6

Proverbs 16:6 KJV 1900

By mercy and truth iniquity is purged: And by the fear of the Lord men depart from evil.

Job 28:28 KJV 1900

And unto man he said, Behold, the fear of the Lord, that is wisdom; And to depart from evil is understanding.

Exodus 20:20 KJV 1900

And Moses said unto the people, Fear not: for God is come to prove you, and that his fear may be before your faces, that ye sin not.

Proverbs 14:27 KJV 1900

The fear of the Lord is a fountain of life, To depart from the snares of death.

Proverbs 19:23 KJV 1900

The fear of the Lord tendeth to life: And he that hath it shall abide satisfied; He shall not be visited with evil.

Deuteronomy 6:24 KJV 1900

And the Lord commanded us to do all these statutes, to fear the Lord our God, for our good always, that he might preserve us alive, as it is at this day.

Deuteronomy 10:12 KJV 1900

And now, Israel, what doth the Lord thy God require of thee, but to fear the Lord thy God, to walk in all his ways, and to love him, and to serve the Lord thy God with all thy heart and with all thy soul,

Hebrews 10:31 KJV 1900

It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God.

Jude 23 KJV 1900

and others save with fear, pulling them out of the fire; hating even the garment spotted by the flesh.

2 Corinthians 7:1 KJV 1900

Having therefore these promises, dearly beloved, let us cleanse ourselves from all filthiness of the flesh and spirit, perfecting holiness in the fear of God.

Psalm 19:9 KJV 1900

The fear of the Lord is clean, enduring for ever: The judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether.

1 John 4:18 KJV 1900

There is no fear in love; but perfect love casteth out fear: because fear hath torment. He that feareth is not made perfect in love.

These are just a few highlights. There are over 100 mentions of the fear of the Lord in Scripture. Each time it is in a positive light. Scripture seems to consider this to be a virtue. There is an overwhelming amount of context to this topic and yet when I hear us talk about the fear of the Lord we simply change the words to awe and reverence and move on. I have done so myself. Is this correct? Is that how we ought to treat it or shouldthere be something greater. I began to dig into this theme of the virtue of fear in scripture. I struggled to get a clear picture of this topic and truthfully I do not know that I yet have the picture clearly presented in my mind. But this message and theme has been on my heart for 2 weeks. I think God wants me to preach it and I can’t seems to get any other inspiration or messages while this thought consumes my thinking. So tonight, with God’s help I hope to broaden our understanding of the virtue of the fear of the Lord. I pray that God will instruct your minds with His word and give you clarity that my faltering speech could never achieve.

Tonight I want to take you on a bit of a mental journey. Not to any particular place or in any particular but to walk you through the journey my mind has taken in my study.

Fear is Good?

First I was struck with this thought and question. Fear is good? We always speak of fear in the negative. We praise those who act in ways conquering their fear. We make heroes of those who continue to stand for the right under fire, rejecting the fears that must be present in their minds. We criticize those who are fearful and we try to conquer our fears. And it is true that fear has a great many negative consequences. Fear can cause progress to stall out. I can point to times of fear in my life that have caused me to stagnate in my life both spiritually and temporally. It was not until I conquered my fear of losing everything that I found the victory that God had for me and it won’t be until I overcome fears of people, fears of getting it wrong, and fears of personal embarrassment and fears of ruining someone else life that I will be able to find a wife. Fear keeps us from progressing in our lives as we ought. So isn’t fear bad? Doesn’t all that just mean that fear ought to be rejected outright?

I came to the realization that that wasn’t quite right. You see it is not fear that is the problem. Fear is helpful in these areas truthfully. In my life it was not just a conquering of fear of losing everything that helped me to fully give in to God but rather other fears began to take priority over that fear. And while fear has held me back in interpersonal relationships that fear has also kept me from making a mistake of lifelong consequence.

My nephews illustrate the proper use of fear very well. Jayce, the older is a cautious and I guess fearful child. He did not walk until he could do so without falling down. He is very cautious on slopes and near drop offs. He has rarely fallen over. Sure he is 2, he trips and falls, but it not usual for him. He walks and runs and moves with care. He is afraid of getting hurt, but in a good way. My other nephew illustrates what happens without fear. Zayne has no fear. He is constantly covered in bruises and cuts and scrapes that we have no idea where they come from! He can’t walk yet but still has constant minor injuries. If he wants down he tries to jump out of your arms and fly to the ground no matter how high he is, how fast you are moving, or what surface you are on. He is not brave, he is reckless.

This is in fact an observation from Aristotle. Having no fear is not bravery but recklessness. The way we drive is tempered by fear. We fear getting pulled over and getting a ticket, but even more we fear hurting ourselves and most of all we fear hurting others. This keeps our driving in check. Those who have no regard for law, no regard for self, and no regard for others are a menace to society not brave. In Ryan’s illustration this morning, fear kept that person hanging to the rope. It kept that person alive. The fear of death was greater than the promise of wealth and that was and is a proper fear.

I guess this is all very basic, but to me it seemed to be a bit of revelation. Fear is not bad. It is in fact a great good.

Fear is an Agent of Grace

In the spiritual sense this does not change. In the book of Jude we read that as ministers we ought to endeavor to save some with fear! Next time a preacher tries to scare you don’t get all offended. He is only doing what God has recommended doing! In fact one of the greatest sermons ever preached was based on the verse in Hebrews which says “It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God”. Jonathan Edwards preached the sermon titled “Sinners in the hands of an Angry God” and in it he endeavored to terrify any sinner in his audience. He sought to make them feel the eternal flames and to make them to fear an eternity of torment apart from God so much that it would send them to their knees begging God for mercy that they did not deserve that somehow they would avoid this just punishment for their rebellion against one so holy and just. And revival swept the nation. The landscape of our country was changed because of the fear of God.

It goes even further as we are commanded to perfect Holiness in the fear of the Lord. We are to have the fear of God in our lives and that fear drives us to be holy in heart and deed. The fear of the Lord leads to salvation and holiness! Not only that this holiness of heart is in part commanded so that we are able to endure in righteousness. If our hearts are not made holy we will fail in our spiritual lives and so this fear of the Lord drives us on to Holiness because we dare not fall back into sin and fall back into a place where we will face the wrath of a holy and just God. Further yet the Bible warn even preachers to be carefull lest after preaching to others they lose their own souls.

Fear is an Agent of Righteous Living

Again, the fear of the Lord is a key underlying principle between the righteous and the sinner. Normally we think of fearing God the other way, or at least I did. The sinner fears God because in the justice of God punishment is sure to come, but the righteous have no fear of God because the righteous are those who are made right before God in salvation and are living as God asks them to live. Yet Job was perfect and upright, a man who feared God. Throughout wisdom literature in scripture the picture is plainly painted that the righteous fear God and that is why they are righteous. A fear of God causes them to act in ways to please him. Further it is the wicked who do not fear God and it is that lack of fear that makes them able to commit such wickedness. They either do not believe that God is powerful or that God notices and cares what we do. They are wicked because they do not fear God.

Fear Out of Balance

I got to this point in my study sometime this week and I knew I was missing some key point. So far I had come to understand that fear can be good. That is true. I understood that Fear of the Lord is an agent of grace driving sinners to the one chance they have, which is casting themselves on the mercies of God for forgiveness. That is true. I had also come to realize that fear is an agent of righteous living. Fear of the Lord keeps us from sin. Fear of the Lord keeps us careful in our lives. I often preach that we are careful people. We are not consumed with the line between right and wrong because we don’t even want to be near it. If anything is questionable, we reject it. We also reject many dangerous or potentially dangerous behaviors out of an abundance of caution that way we do not find ourselves suddenly teetering on the brink between right and wrong and full of habits that bring danger and temptation into our lives.

At this point in my thinking if we stopped here how then would we live? If this were the full story we would live in perpetual terror of judgement. Terrified that we might fall into sin, walking on eggshells hoping to make it through moment by moment wishing that we could avoid doing anything at all because only then we could be completely sure that we wouldn’t face God’s wrath but then again like the slothful servant who buried his talent we would be punished for that inactivity in itself is a transgression, it itself is wrong.

I John 4:18

Then a verse hit my brain like sledgehammer hitting a tower of Lego’s. All my thoughts came crashing down and I almost gave up on this sermon altogether. 1 John 4:18 says “There is no fear in love; but perfect love casteth out fear: because fear hath torment. He that feareth is not made perfect in love.”

Now what am I supposed to do with that! I spent nearly two weeks building up the idea of fear as virtue of the Christian only to realize that one of our key verses in our theology talks about casting out fear! Oh boy two weeks into a sermon and its all wrong?

Well not quite all wrong. Fear is good. I wasn’t wrong there, The absence of fear is recklessness and God did call us to live carefully, and to use wisdom. And God did tell us that fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom. He did tell us that the righteous fear God and that helps to keep them righteous and the wicked do not fear God but live recklessly according to their own twisted desires. He did tell us to preach in way that will save some with fear and He did tell us that we ought to be afraid of losing our own souls after preaching to others. Not only that We are to perfect Holiness in the fear of the Lord. Yet it is clear that only building up the virtue of fear leads to a great imbalance in our understanding. We all probably know people or religious groups who live in fear. We know instinctively and from scripture that this is not how God wants us to live.

And yet the ditch seems even more full of people on the other side who proclaim that their love for God excuses them from any fear of divine retribution, and truly they believe it. They recklessly live in direct disobedience to the will of God thinking that somehow a holy and just God will ignore their reckless disregard for His will simply because they claim to Love Him. It is of course obvious that they do not love God but further their idea of fear having no place in the life of the Christian has gone to such an extreme where they abuse the grace of God to their own peril.

Perfect Love binds us, soul, body and mind to Christ

So now after two weeks of study I have come to this point in mind. To me it seems as though I have thoughts like Lego’s scattered around. Some need rejected, but many have a place. It seems that before me are two foundations. The one is the fear of the Lord as a virtue and the other is that perfect love casts out fear. I have a foggy idea what the picture is supposed to look like and like an arch has two foundations but yet one cohesive structure I know that the foundations and these thoughts fit together to make one cohesive truth. Not because I trust my thinking but because I know that God is the author of Scripture and both of these foundations and these ideas come directly from His word. Lets see if we can put this mess together in less than 5 minutes!

Let us turn to St. Augustine for some help in assembling this mess. He preaches a lengthy sermon on this passage in I John that helps to bring clarity to this seemingly discordant music of God’s truth. He observes that God is the author of all scripture and that though much of the wisdom literature was written by David and John written by John, it is the same Holy Spirit that moved on these men to write what they wrote. It must then be a beautiful harmony made between these ideas and not a discordant contradiction. He goes on to say “How are we to understand, or how to distinguish? Mark, my beloved. There are men who fear God, lest they be cast into hell, lest haply they burn with the devil in everlasting fire. This is the fear which introduces charity: but it comes that it may depart. For if thou as yet fearest God because of punishments, not yet dost thou love Him whom thou in such sort fearest. Thou dost not desire the good things, but art afraid of the evil things. Yet because thou art afraid of the evil things, thou correctest thyself and beginnest to desire the good things. When once thou hast begun to desire the good, there shall be in thee the chaste fear. What is the chaste fear? The fear lest thou lose the good things themselves. Mark! It is one thing to fear God lest He cast thee into hell with the devil, and another thing to fear God lest He forsake thee. The fear by which thou fearest lest thou be cast into hell with the devil, is not yet chaste; for it comes not from the love of God, but from the fear of punishment: but when thou fearest God lest His presence forsake thee, thou embracest Him, thou longest to enjoy God Himself.”

But let me disagree with the wording of Augustine just bit if I may. The fear of the Lord that we are left with, the fear that endures forever, that chaste or pure is fear of losing the good things but not fear of Him forsaking us rather fear of us forsaking Him. Let me illustrate it as the eternal law of God is shown. The law Paul teaches is a schoolmaster to bring us to God. We could not get to God without the law and yet when we come to faith by the law we no longer live under the bondage of the law but we rather live in faith. Yet the law has not departed. The eternal moral law of God has not ceased to exist in our lives simply because we have faith, it has ceased to be our guiding principle in the face of something greater. And yet that law does continue to work with faith in our lives. If we begin to leave the path of faith we run immediately across the law as a guardrail to keep us on the road of faith. So it is with fear and with Love. We would not come to love God without first a fear of God and yet as we draw nearer to God we find that fear beginning to be replaced by love and there is that glorious moment when that fear of God is replaced by perfect Love for God! And yet it is not that the fear of God has ceased to exist but rather we have ceased to walk in its paths. We now walk in Love which is inside the bounds of fear and that fear works with the Love of God, so that if we begin to leave the perfect love for God, the fear of God will Keep us! But the torment of fear is utterly destroyed by perfect love, entirely cast out! But the carefulness brought by that fear still exists. There is now a fear of losing that which we gained rather than a fear of punishment to come. The carefulness now exercises itself in love rather than fear. But again if we leave our perfect love for God the fear will return to drive us back to loving God. So it is that the fear of the Lord is a virtue but it is a virtue to bring to perfect love not to torment us into obedience but to bring us to the obedience that flows from love. The fear is necessary and it is good and it continues but it must be put in its place and that is done in perfect love. I John 4:17-19

1 John 4:17–19 KJV 1900

Herein is our love made perfect, that we may have boldness in the day of judgment: because as he is, so are we in this world. There is no fear in love; but perfect love casteth out fear: because fear hath torment. He that feareth is not made perfect in love. We love him, because he first loved us.

and also we can only Love Him when we have first feared Him.

Augustine of Hippo, “Ten Homilies on the First Epistle of John,” in St. Augustin: Homilies on the Gospel of John, Homilies on the First Epistle of John, Soliloquies, ed. Philip Schaff, trans. H. Browne and Joseph H. Myers, vol. 7, A Select Library of the Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers of the Christian Church, First Series (New York: Christian Literature Company, 1888), 516.