If you grew up going to Sunday school, like I did, you know that King Solomon was among the wealthiest and wisest people of all time. In your early teenage years, you may have giggled at the staggering number of wives and concubines that Solomon had. Maybe that was just me, though. I was super immature. As an adult, you have probably wondered how someone with so many wives and concubines could have possibly been rich or wise. I’m fairly certain that every married man has thought that a time or two. Maybe just me, though. I am still kind of immature.
In the book of Ecclesiastes, King Solomon goes on a quest
for meaning. We’ve all been there, right? One of the most important questions a
person can ask is: “Why am I here?” or some version of that. Like many of
us, Solomon sought for purpose in a great number of things. He tried chasing
happiness. He attempted to find contentment in his accomplishments. He amassed immeasurable
wealth and an insane number of women, too. Solomon looked for meaning in books
and learning. Solomon even tried the “eat, drink, and be merry” approach to
life.
All of it was vanity.
Like the giant family-sized bags of chips at the
supermarket, so much about life promises to fill us up. But when we buy into
it, we rip it open to find that the promises were mostly hot air. They were
empty and we are unfulfilled. This is what is meant by the word vanity. Emptiness
was what Solomon found.
One has to read through all of the trial-and-error of the
book to see what Solomon discovered. The first admonition from the king is to “remember
now thy Creator in the days of thy youth...” (Ecclesiastes 12:1). In so doing,
one has his entire life to live for the Lord and Savior, King Jesus. But it is
the end of the book, the last two verses, that deal with our topic for the
month.
“Let us hear the conclusion of the whole matter: Fear
God, and keep his commandments: for this is the whole duty of man. For God
shall bring every work into judgment, with every secret thing, whether it be
good, or whether it be evil” (Ecclesiastes 12:13-14).
After trying everything else “under the sun,” King Solomon found
that the purpose of a person is to fear God and keep His commandments. He then
tells us the reason for such a conclusion is that God will judge every work.
That is, every work, of every life, throughout all of time. Period. Each and
every person will stand brutally open before the God of the universe, and
although believers will not stand in condemnation (Christ took that), their
lives will still be put to the flames to see what – if anything – is left.
It is this fear of the Lord, of being uncovered completely before Him, that drove Adam and Eve into hiding. It is this fear that the Bible writers mention time and again as the foundation for knowledge and wisdom. The King James version of the Bible uses the exact phrase, “the fear of the Lord,” twenty-seven times. I won’t list all of them, but I do want to point out some of the times it is used as a qualifier or descriptor.
- Job 28:28 – the fear of the Lord, that is wisdom…
- Psalm 19:9 – the fear of the Lord is clean, enduring for ever…
- Psalm 34:11 – …I will teach you the fear of the Lord.
- Psalm 111:10 – The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom…
- Proverbs 1:7 – The fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge…
- Proverbs 8:13 – The fear of the Lord is to hate evil…
- Proverbs 9:10 – The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom…
- Proverbs 10:27 – The fear of the Lord prolongeth days…
- Proverbs 14:26 – In the fear of the Lord is strong confidence…
- Proverbs 14:27 – The fear of the Lord is a fountain of life…
- Proverbs 15:33 – The fear of the Lord is the instruction of wisdom…
- Proverbs 16:6 - …by the fear of the Lord men depart from evil.
- Proverbs 19:23 – The fear of the Lord tendeth to life…
If the fear of the Lord is this important, it seems very
much like believers ought to both know what this means and what it looks like.
Understanding what it means is a fairly simple endeavor. John Gill, in his
commentary on Proverbs, writes that “fear is an awe and reverence of the divine
Being, joined with love to him, trust in him, and a desire to serve and worship
him in a right manner.” Adam Clarke, in his text on the same, writes, “The fear
of the Lord signifies that religious reverence which every intelligent being
owes to his Creator.”
In order to understand what the fear of the Lord might look
like when lived out, one can go all the way back to the book of Exodus. In Exodus
1:8, the Bible tells us that a new Pharaoh came on the scene and decided to
cull the Israelites to keep their numbers down. In verses 15 and 16, the king
of Egypt decreed that the midwives should murder all of the sons that were
born. “But the midwives feared God, and did not as the king of Egypt commanded
them, but saved the men children alive” (Ecclesiastes 1:17).
What caused these women to save the babies? Dennis Prager
points out, “The Torah does not say the midwives saved the babies because they
could not bear to harm them, nor does it say the midwives saved the Hebrew
babies because they loved God. They saved the babies because 'they feared God'”
(Prager, 2018, p. 10). The Pharaoh was a big deal, but God was bigger
still. To defy Pharaoh could mean death, but the women were willing to face
that because they feared God more.
It is as if the midwives were able to peer through time and
see Jesus say, “fear not them which kill the body, but are not able to kill the
soul: but rather fear him which is able to destroy both the soul and body in
hell” (Matthew 10:28). Dennis Prager goes on to make the case that the only way
to be unafraid of powerful people and governments is to be even more afraid of
God (Prager, 2018, pp. 10-12).
It was the fear of God which “gave the midwives the strength to carry out what is, as far as we know, the first recorded act of civil disobedience in history” (Prager, 2018, p. 11). There may come a time when American Christians have to stand up and tell our government that we are more afraid of God than we are of laws and politicians. But the time is now when we must say things like:
- The fear of the Lord compels me to tell others about Christ.
- The fear of the Lord compels me to treat my family according to Scripture.
- The fear of the Lord commands me to love my neighbor, regardless of sexuality, economic standing, or skin tone.
- The fear of the Lord demands that I crucify myself, flee youthful lusts, and become more like Jesus.
Every person in Scripture that caught a glimpse of God fell
to his face like he was about to die. Adam and Eve hid from Him. A healthy
and reverential fear of the Lord will absolutely change how we act and interact
in this world. In fact, Abraham lied about his wife because they were in a
place where no one feared God (Genesis 20:11). Basically, no fear of God is
equated with no morality.
If Christians are going to redefine the word fear, perhaps we had better start by recapturing a healthy fear of the Lord. Do we reverence Him like we should? Do we live our lives in a worshipful and appropriate way? Do we understand that while He is love, He is also the judge of all the earth?
What kind of impact would it make on your friends and family if you feared God more than anything else in your life? May we all begin to live in the fear of the Lord today. May He
bless it by giving us wisdom and allowing our efforts to be salt and light to
those around us.
Reference:
Prager, D. (2018). Exodus: God, Slavery, and Freedom - The Rational Bible. Regenery Faith.
No comments:
Post a Comment