The God of all comfort or Connecting the Dots

Introduction

Picture for yourself 2 things this morning. First picture the apostles, Peter, James, John and the rest. Don’t forget Paul either or any of the others like Titus and Timothy. Men full of boldness, God given strength, endurance and fortitude. Shouldn’t be too hard to picture as we have been going through the book of Acts. Now don’t discard that picture quite yet. Rather lets add an additional picture. One of castles on mountains, fortified cities, big, complex and expensive defensive systems that will keep your enemy at bay. Now that you have both pictures in your minds the question is what’s the common denominator between the 2? Any guesses? No? How about the fear of the Lord. Probably not your first guess yet that is exactly what our proverb is telling us this morning. In case you are wondering what that proverb is, it is proverb 14:26

Proverbs 14:26 KJV 1900

In the fear of the Lord is strong confidence: And his children shall have a place of refuge.

The title for this sermon is Connecting the Dots or God’s attribute of Comfort as found in Proverbs.

Review

-looking at the attributes of God in proverbs

-sovereignty, holiness, the 3 omni’s omnipresent omnipotent omniscience -mercy, righteousness and justice.

-work and its necessity,

-rest and its necessity

-looked at an outworking of joy

-looked at that Christ is the source of all Joy

-created a mini-series starting with looking at love being an attribute of God

- we continued in the next study with an aspect of love shown through forgiveness

-looked at the forest and the trees tying the concepts of love, hate, repeat-a-matters and forgiveness together

Exegeting the verse… sort of

As we have done quite often in the past let us read again our themed passage for this morning. Prov 14:26

Proverbs 14:26 KJV 1900

In the fear of the Lord is strong confidence: And his children shall have a place of refuge.

If you noticed our proverb this morning is quite a bit different than the previous proverbs that we have been studying. If you recall all of the proverbs fall under 3 categories. They are called complementary parallelism, antithetical parallelism and numerical parallelism. The numerical parallelism type of proverbs we have not dealt with at all for there aren’t many of them in proverbs to begin with. The other 2 methods namely antithetical and complimentary we have used exclusively as both methods are more common than the numerical. Lately we have been using the antithetical type of proverbs but as you can see our proverb today is not an antithetical type. We can actually tell the type of proverb that it is by looking at the kind of conjunction word that it uses. The conjunction word used here is the word “and”.

“And” is another one of those conjunction words that bring 2 thoughts together like the word “but” is, which we discussed at length in a previous sermon. This is where the similarities between “but” and “and” end. “But” if you recall brings 2 dissimilar if not complete opposite thoughts together. “And” however, brings 2 parallel quite often complimentary thoughts together. This is precisely what our “and” does in our proverb today. The “and” in our proverb brings together 2 complimentary thoughts that give us a much fuller, richer picture than the 2 ideas would otherwise do on their own.

Normally at this juncture we would be exegeting the verse by looking at each and every word that is in the verse. Then grapple with it to tease out its meaning. This is a good and profitable exercise which is what we did with our last study in proverbs. We were able to get 3 sermons out of one verse this way. This time we are going to use a different approach in which we will be using exegetical themes rather than exegeting every single word.

In our proverb we have 4 themes within the proverb itself. They are 1) The fear of the Lord 2) His children 3) strong confidence 4) place of refuge. Those of you who take notes put 4 dots evenly spaced out so that they form a square. On the top lefthand dot label the dot “the fear of the Lord”. On the top righthand dot label the dot “is strong confidence”. On the bottom left dot label that one “His children” and finally label the last dot “place of refuge”. Those of you who don’t just do it mentally.

Those of you who have drawn those for dots what you basically see is just 4 dots However as we go forward and as we begin to discuss the subject what you will find is not only will those dots connect with one another to form a square but also, they will interconnect to form an X pattern as well. For what you will find is that all the points are interconnected with each other for all the other points define the original point you started with. Therefore, not only does each phrase count but each phrase is dependent upon the other phrases for meaning. Let’s take a look and see how this works.

The Fear of the Lord

Since we live in the western world and we tend to do things in the western way, let us begin with the top left dot which is the fear of the Lord. Just to let you know however, we won’t be leaving word for word exegeses completely out of the picture for we need to do that in order to give a basis for the meaning of the phrases. So, our first word in our first phrase at our first dot is the word “fear” There 2 distinctive meanings to the word fear. The first definition of the word fear is an unpleasant often strong emotion caused by anticipation or awareness of danger such as starting with the word fear is a scary thought. The second definition is profound reverence and awe especially toward God. Both of these definitions come from the Merrian-Webster dictionary. Not bad from a secular dictionary. Then the question arises which one is it? This is why context is so important. If you don’t look at the context you can never really know for sure which one it is. This is where connecting the dots becomes important as we shall see as we progress.

The word “fear” is found over 500 times in the scriptures and in every case, it is directed at either the fear of the Creator or fear of the created. The word “of” that is in our phrase points us in the direction of what we are to be fearful of.

The next word is “the LORD” which we have been spending these last 2 1/2 years discovering the attributes of but still have gotten nowhere near the bottom of. That said we know of whom Solomon is talking about. The LORD who is the creator and sustainer of the universe. The LORD who is sovereign over everything, who knows everything and who is omnipotent. It is He to whom every knee shall bow, and every tongue confess. It is He who does all things according to the council of His will. This is the LORD that Solomon speaks of here in his proverb.

What we have so far is that we have successfully defined part of our phrase. However, we have been thus far unsuccessful in defining the first term for we haven’t been able to figure out which definition of fear we are to use. Remember our 2 definitions? Scary or absolute terror and profound reverential awe? Both definitions can apply to our word fear considering God and who He is. In the Scriptures themselves you will find both types of fear mentioned. Rev 6:16

Revelation 6:16 KJV 1900

And said to the mountains and rocks, Fall on us, and hide us from the face of him that sitteth on the throne, and from the wrath of the Lamb:

The fear that is mentioned in this text is the fear of those who are not in Christ. Those who hate God. The heathen.

The other definition of fear that we have is profound reverence and awe of God which works equally as well as it pertains to God. Scripture also gives us this type of definition of fear for Is 33:6 says this

Isaiah 33:6 KJV 1900

And wisdom and knowledge shall be The stability of thy times, and strength of salvation: The fear of the Lord is his treasure.

As we can see this particular type of fear of the Lord is profound reverential awe. The reason why we say this is because of the words his treasure. You generally don’t run from treasure but rather you run to treasure. You aren’t scared of treasure but rather delight in it, cherish it, embrace it. I haven’t heard of a man yet that says I hate treasure and I’m running from it! So, the question again is what type of fear Solomon is talking about here. The rest of the verse gives us the answer.

At this juncture we need to start drawing our lines and connecting the dots for this will help us to define our first dot. So, draw a line from the fear of the Lord dot to is strong confidence. Then also draw a line from the fear of the Lord to a place of refuge. It is necessary to do this in order to ascertain which fear Solomon is talking about. Remember there were 2 types of fear that we discussed and that is scripturally supported. Our first example that we are looking at is found in Is 8:13

Isaiah 8:13 (KJV 1900) And let him be your fear, and let him be your dread. To give this verse a little context Isaiah is warning the Jews and by extension christians, us that God is to be feared as this is in the context of the verse. So we can easily substitute God for Him as that is who Him refers to. Therefore, it can be read God is your fear and God is your dread.

The second example of scripture supporting the second definition is again Is 33:6b

Isaiah 33:6 KJV 1900

The fear of the Lord is his treasure.

Looking at the 2 dots of “is strong confidence” and “place of refuge” that we drew our lines to you would be hard pressed to use the first definition of fear because it simply does not make sense. You’re not going to be in dread or in terror or even scared of something that you are strongly confident about. Furthermore, a place of security and comfort is not something you should be in dread of. Is there a place for fear and dread as Is 8:13 speaks of? Absolutely there sure is. God is most sovereign. God is most holy. God is most righteous and most just. The depths of each one of God’s attributes that we just mentioned is far beyond our comprehension. We simply cannot comprehend the vastness of them so this should give us cause to be in dread of them. This thought should be constantly before our eyes though sadly it is not and I’m just as guilty as the next man. And yet and yet our proverb today says the exact opposite. It tells us that the fear of the Lord is a comfort for it is a refuge. It tells us that it is strong confidence even though we haven’ quite defined what s strong confidence is as of yet. So how then do we solve this riddle. How do we resolve this apparent contradiction.

The way in which we resolve this apparent contradiction is in the response. There are only 2 responses to the fear of the Lord and that is either to run away from it or run to it and embrace it. Every single unregenerate man runs hard and fast from the fear of the Lord, shaking his fist in hatred to the Lord. We looked at a couple of verses last time that show unregenerate man as hating God which were Rom 8:7 and Titus 3:3 and today we will add a 3rd verse. Rom 1:30 states that unregenerate man are

Romans 1:30 KJV 1900

Backbiters, haters of God(notice that), despiteful, proud, boasters, inventors of evil things, disobedient to parents,

He may not look like he is doing this, but he is, simply by trying to go his own way and following his own rules rather than following the way of the Lord.

The regenerate man however sees this fear and dread of the Lord and runs towards it. He embraces it. Why? because God has given him a new heart so that he can now perceive that this fear of the Lord is a treasure. In it there is a refuge. In it there is comfort. In it there is life and hope. The only fear would be being left outside the protection of God and that is impossible for God will lose none of His sheep.

The fear of the Lord has often been compared to the fear that a small child has for his father, so this is a little plug for father’s day today. Spurgeon writes this about the fear of the Lord.

“Just think for a minute, what is a child’s fear of his father? I do not mean an evil child, a child that is obstinate, but a young man who loves his father—who is his father’s friend, his father’s most familiar acquaintance. What is the fear that a well-ordered, well-disciplined, beloved child has of his own father? Well, first, he has an awe of him, which arises out of admiration of his character. If his father is what he should be, he is to that son a real model. The youth looks upon what his father does as exactly what he would like to do, and what he aims to copy. His judgment is to his son almost infallible. At any rate, if he sees reason to differ from his father, he is a long while before he brings himself to prefer his own judgment. He has seen his father’s wisdom in other matters so often that he mistrusts his own apprehension, and would rather trust to what his father tells him. He has a profound conviction that his father is good, kind, wise, and could not do anything, or ask him to do anything which would not promote his own good. So he feels a sort of awe of him—a fear of him—which prevents his questioning what his father does as he would have questioned anybody else. He is prone to conjecture that his father may have got some reason behind him that would explain what he does not understand. He would not give another person credit for having that concealed virtue, but he has such an esteem for his father—his dear father—that he fears to raise any questions about his father’s character, his conduct, or his conclusions. In fact, that character so rules his admiration, and commands his respect that he does not think of questioning it.”

Spurgeon, The Spurgeon Study Bible: Notes (Nashville, TN: Holman Bible Publishers, 2017), 834.

To continue down this tangent just a little bit more this is why it is so very important that we be good fathers and it is why the devil tries to attack fathers. It is simply because a good father is a darken mirror of the relationship between God and His children. A child who has had no father often times has a real difficulty in understanding God as Father and therefore often has difficulty in understanding what it means to be in the fear of the Lord. This is why I am so thankful for the father that I have.

Dwell and stew on this point for a while and if you get nothing else I hope you get this fact. The fear of the Lord that is the source of complete and utter dread of every creature whether he acknowledges it or not is the very source of our strong confidence. It is the very source of our comfort and refuge. This is why the picture of a child’s fear of his good father resembles the picture of a child of God’s fear of his Heavenly Father. If you’re keeping track of our diagram, 3 points are connected, and it should look like a sideways V.

His children

Now that we have the first dot explained let us proceed to the next dot. Instead of going across the page from left to right as good westerners do, we will actually be going straight down to the bottom left. This dot we have labeled “His children” So which children is Solomon referring to here? Again we need to draw some lines in order to understand who that is.

Our first line that we need to draw is a line back to the fear of the Lord. We need to draw this line simply because it is the rules of grammar. His is a processive pronoun and the pronoun must refer back to the noun in the previous phrase. In this case the previous noun is the Lord so therefore His children refer to God’s children or believers.

At this point then we have all the dots connected and all of the lines fan out from the beginning point which is the fear of the Lord which is as it should be. For all good has God as its source. But don’t put your diagram away just yet for we are not done connecting the dots

Strong Confidence

We have the first and second dots figured out which basically means we have the left side figured out. Let us therefore move to the righthand side and once again let’s be good westerners and start at the top right side. The dot that we have here if you recall is labeled “is strong confidence”.

Just as we did with the fear of the Lord, we will spend the time doing a word for word exegete of the phrase “is strong confidence” Again this is our third dot for those who are counting. However rather than exegeting in order we will start with the last word and go backwards. The reason why we are doing this is because the 2 previous words namely is and strong modify the last word. Therefore, our first word we are going to look at in our phrase is “confidence” There are a couple of different definitions of confidence. First definition is a firm trust such as having confidence in our management team to get the job done. This is the definition of confidence that is in the Hebrew. The other definition of confidence is a self-assurance arising from the knowledge of your abilities. On the surface it would look like that we should chuck this second definition since there is so much of self in that definition. After all when dealing with God, self must take second seat if not obliterated all together. Hold on a minute though cos there are some elements of this second definition that does happen to fit our proverb. So, in essence like many of the proverbs that we have looked we have a both situation here.

Most of us know what strong means so we won’t look into it too much. However when we join it with the word we just discussed we discover that the word strong enhances the word confidence. It isn’t just confidence its a strong confidence almost an immovable confidence.

The last word in our phrase is the verb “is” The word “is” is a form of the verb to be. Think on the significance of that when we put back into our text. It’s not just that you have strong confidence when you are fearing the Lord. Rather enveloping yourself into the fear of the Lord you find the very essence of strong confidence itself. In other words, you cannot know strong confidence without knowing the fear of the Lord. There are of course many imitations, but they are not the real strong confidence because they do not emminate from the fear of the Lord that only God can give. Let us then draw our line from the dot “is strong confidence” back to the dot that is the “fear of the Lord” Thus we have 2 lines there

The only thing we haven’t defined yet is which definition of confidence is correct. If you recall, we mentioned that there are 2 possible definitions that fit the term strong confidence, and they are: a firm trust or boldness. So which one is it? As we stated before the Hebrew does help us a little here for the Hebrew word for confidence in this case is also translated firm trust. However, if we look at it through the first dot which is the fear of the Lord we get a much better picture of what’s going on. Lets go back to our definition of the fear of the Lord. We said that God is most sovereign and most omnipotent. God is most holy. God is most righteous and most just. We can also add to that list that God is most loving, most compassionate and merciful. Therefore, we know that God will keep His promises to the letter so that in that fear of the Lord there is a strong confidence, a strong and firm trust that God will do what He said He will do and there is nothing that will change that. This of course comes out in a lot of different ways. You can view it through your standing with God as a child of God. You can look through it in how you approach your life and how you spread the gospel amongst other things. There could be several sermons preached on these topics alone.

The interesting thing is however is that the first definition of confidence feeds into the second definition of confidence. In other words, by having yourself immersed in the fear of the Lord where firm trust is found you will then have boldness. You will have boldness to proclaim who God is. You will have boldness to live by faith, and you will have boldness of the assurance of your standing in Christ. But without that immersion in the fear of the Lord you will not have the boldness that comes with it as we clearly see in the book of Acts that we have been studying. It is the boldness that the apostles had that we mentioned in the beginning of our study.

Place of Refuge

The final dot that we will be looking at is “a place of refuge” As you all know refuge is a place of shelter and a place of rest. It is a place where your worries are left behind and a place where you can feel your mind at rest. It is a place where your enemy cannot get you. It is a place of security and comfort. What we often picture is a strongly fortified castle on the top of a mountain. This is the kind of place we mentioned in the introduction. Many people picture a home as a place of refuge and often wish that their home was. The church should be a place of refuge though sadly often it is not. The only true place of refuge is in Christ Himself.

The term refuge is found over and over again in the psalms since the psalms is the most numerous place where the word refuge is found. I’m sure that you can think of many examples such as Psalm 91:2

Psalm 91:2 KJV 1900

I will say of the Lord, He is my refuge and my fortress: My God; in him will I trust.

which closely parallels our proverb today. Oddly enough the word refuge is found only once in the NT. The only place it is found is Heb 6:18

Hebrews 6:18 KJV 1900

That by two immutable things, in which it was impossible for God to lie, we might have a strong consolation, who have fled for refuge to lay hold upon the hope set before us:

The “we” that is being referred to here are believers since the writer includes himself in the group have a strong consolation or really a strong confidence. It is us who have fled for refuge for in that refuge is the hope that is set before us. Of course, it is never good to take a verse out of its context so we shouldn’t do that either. What the context of our Hebrews verse is, is that what God promised to Abraham were fulfilled in Christ. This then is our hope, our refuge. That God will fulfill His every promise, that He is true to His word and that He saves to the uttermost. His wrath will not be upon you as a child of God for He loves you with an everlasting love. What better refuge can there be than that? Is there not great comfort in that? This then is the final line drawn in our diagram which will make the square. It is the line that connects the dots of strong confidence and a place of refuge. This then is our refuge and our refuge is Christ.

At this point you may be wondering so where is the attribute of God discussed in our proverb this morning? We’ve been sitting here for a half an hour trying to ascertain what it is. Of course, we have mentioned a number of attributes when we looked at the fear of the Lord but all of those we have already covered. This then is where we find the attribute of God in our opening text this morning. It is found in the word refuge and within the word refuge is comfort. Comfort is the attribute of God that is in our proverb and we will spend the rest of our time looking into it.

So what does comfort mean? In our case this morning it definitely doesn’t mean something like this room is comfortable or that’s a comfortable chair. We all know for a fact that being a true follower of Christ is rarely a comfortable thing to do. Rather what is meant by comfort is consolation, the relieving of grief or distress. God is in the business of giving us comfort that is the type of comfort that relieves our distresses and griefs because God is the God of comfort. Paul makes this abundantly clear when states this in 2 Cor 1:3-9 It’s worth the read just to show how comfort works

2 Corinthians 1:3–9 KJV 1900

Blessed be God, even the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of mercies, and the God of all comfort; Who comforteth us in all our tribulation, that we may be able to comfort them which are in any trouble, by the comfort wherewith we ourselves are comforted of God. For as the sufferings of Christ abound in us, so our consolation also aboundeth by Christ. And whether we be afflicted, it is for your consolation and salvation, which is effectual in the enduring of the same sufferings which we also suffer: or whether we be comforted, it is for your consolation and salvation. And our hope of you is stedfast, knowing, that as ye are partakers of the sufferings, so shall ye be also of the consolation. For we would not, brethren, have you ignorant of our trouble which came to us in Asia, that we were pressed out of measure, above strength, insomuch that we despaired even of life: But we had the sentence of death in ourselves, that we should not trust in ourselves, but in God which raiseth the dead:

In other words what Paul is saying here is that God gives us comfort in trials so that we in turn can be a comfort for those who are also in trials or in anything that we encounter in life. It isn’t just that God sends comfort to us, but He is the very source of comfort as we can see in the passage we just read. Not only here but elsewhere do we see that one of the attributes of God is comfort. It is one of the few that is actually named as an attribute of God. John 15:26

John 15:26 KJV 1900

But when the Comforter is come, whom I will send unto you from the Father, even the Spirit of truth, which proceedeth from the Father, he shall testify of me:

As you can see the Holy Spirit is given an additional Name of Comforter and if you recall in the ancient world someone’s name was often derived from his personal traits, or his attributes and we certainly have that instance here. But you may object and say well that’s just the Holy Spirit that has that name and He is only part of the Trinity. While it is true that He is part of the Trinity the Holy Spirit is still God. Just as much as the Son is God and the Father is God so therefore saying that God is comfort still stands. Besides there is just as much comfort that comes from God the Father and God the Son. All 3 are in one accord on all things for They are One.

Consider for a moment what a blessing that is! Us who are in the fear of the Lord as our proverb puts it. Us who are His children as our proverb also says or as Peter says in 1 Peter 2:9

1 Peter 2:9 KJV 1900

But ye are a chosen generation, a royal priesthood, an holy nation, a peculiar people; that ye should shew forth the praises of him who hath called you out of darkness into his marvellous light:

It is to us that we have been given the comfort of forgiveness not just in part but the whole as the hymn says. To us it has been given the comfort of a new heart, a new heart of flesh that is to be molded into the image of Christ. To us it has been given the comfort of His presence always. Just like His presence was with the 3 men in the fiery furnace so too will He be with us. Not only is His presence with us but His smile is upon us as He looks to us through the righteousness of Christ which has been placed upon us. Not His wrath that we so richly and rightly deserve but rather His loving approval. Not that we have done anything for as Phil 2:13

Philippians 2:13 KJV 1900

For it is God which worketh in you both to will and to do of his good pleasure.

Rather it is God’s loving approval of His work in us.

Do you not see dear christian the wonderful blessing this comfort truly is? Knowing that God is working everything that happens is for your good. God leaves no stone unturned for your salvation, and He leaves no stone unturned for your sanctification. God will always do what is best for you and that in itself is great comfort.

Thus, then is our box complete. Each dot is connected to the other and all of it intertwined. Within each dot and each connection, we see God and His comfort for His children. In the center of the fear of the Lord is the Lord and there is His comfort there. In the center of strong confidence is the Lord and His comfort. In the center of His children is God and His comfort for them. In the center of refuge is God and His comfort is in refuge. May we never forget the comfort that is in the fear of the Lord and run to it and not away. Let us also remember to share that comfort with others.