The Fear of God
Posted on Tuesday, October 09, 2007 at 11:08 AM by David Zavadil
Months ago I mentioned that I wanted to begin a series on the fear of God. We occasionally hear phrases like, " He feared God." "He was a God fearing man." "The fear of God was in him." Maybe you, like me, have wondered about what is really meant in those type of statements. We rarely hear sermons on the fear of God, in fact it has become a forgotten topic in most churches. Yet the concept flows throughout Scripture.
To force me to go where I have been resistant, I shared with the remnant, (the name our evening service has taken), that we would study this topic for the next few weeks. My interest peaked, and now a new motivation, I begin today to move forward.
What comes to mind when you hear "the fear of the LORD," "fear God," "the FEAR (see Genesis 31:42,53)?" Do you think, "Uh oh, here comes one of those old fashioned fire and brimstone messages."? Some would probably say, "The Bible says that?" If you do a search of the ESV you will find that there are 27 verses that use the phrase "fear of the LORD," 10 using "fear of God," 34 stating, "Fear the LORD," 15 more state, "Fear God," 5 say "fear of Him" and 24 "fear Him." I could go on for a while with numbers and derivations of the phrase "Fear of the Lord." It is suffice to say that the Scriptures are replete with references to the fear of God. At least two natural questions are raised. "What does it mean?" "How can we apply this to our lives today?' These questions will be our goal for the next few weeks.
Genesis 3:8 And they heard the sound of the LORD God walking in the garden in the cool of the day, and the man and his wife hid themselves from the presence of the LORD God among the trees of the garden. (ESV)
The verse above is the first time the concept of fear, or one of its derivatives, appears in the English Bible. Adam and Eve have been created man and woman. They are placed in the garden and told not to eat of the tree in the middle of the garden. Satan enters the garden in the form of the serpent and deceives them and they eat. Now I am not going to deal with original sin or deception but I want to begin our look at the fear of God. After Adam and Eve's eyes were opened to their true nature, they realized they were naked. Hearing the voice of God in the garden they hid themselves.
9 ¶ But the LORD God called to the man and said to him, "Where are you?"
10 And he said, "I heard the sound of you in the garden, and I was afraid, because I was naked, and I hid myself."
I want to focus for a few minutes on verse 10 for I feel it has much to teach us about the fear of God. The speaker in this verse is Adam. Notice that four times he uses the first person "I" to describe his actions and his state. I want to look at these four "I" phrases.
"I heard the sound of you in the garden." The word that is translated "sound" in the ESV (kole in the Hebrew) is most often translated "voice or the sound of your voice," in the Scripture. The man and woman are in the garden after eating the apple. With new opened eyes and hearts, they hear the voice of God in a new way, the way of a sinner. The word translated here is also used to speak of thunder elsewhere in Scripture. Before the fall there was no sin, no reason for God to "raise" His voice. After the fall we see both anger and wrath. Could it be that Adam and Eve heard God's voice thundering throughout the garden? At any rate, God calls out to Adam and Adam hears him. Rather than responding, "Here I am," Adam hides. Why?
"I was afraid." Adam heard something different in God this time out. He heard the thundering, powerful voice of the Almighty God searching for him. There was the fear of a child before his father, a child who knew he had done wrong. Adam says, "I was afraid because I was naked." Often I have read this and glossed over it. Adam had not had a need for clothing prior to the fall, now he realized his physical nakedness. As I read this verse again, recently, I realized that there was also a spiritual nakedness here. When Adam and Eve ate the apple, their eyes were opened up to the knowledge of good and evil. Adam was afraid because he realized his heart, his soul, was now naked before God. God saw and knew the sin that resided deep with in, he was naked before his Father and was afraid.
Think about what we have just seen. Adam hears the voice of God, thundering in his ears. He is caught and realizes that his entire life is laid open before his maker. He is petrified. We all are just like Adam. We hear, we read the Word of God. Through the Spirit we hear in our heart of hearts the thundering voice of God and are brought to fear as we realize we are opened up before God, naked. Today we call it conviction, but it is the same. A realization that our lives are naked before God, He sees everything. The fear of God is a healthy thing, a humbling thing. This fear reminds us of the creator and the creation. It reminds us of our need for God and our love for our Father. We fear God not because He is some cosmic vigilante out to rid the earth of sinners, but because He is the Heavenly Father and we stand naked and open before Him. He sees all of our scars, all of our warts, all of our blemishes.
"I hid myself." Adam's response was the same one we all too often face. When we are confronted with being wrong, with our sin, we want to run away and hide. Much like the child who was told, "Wait until your Father gets home" runs and hides when the door opens, we, when confronted with our nakedness before God, desire to hide. Adam hid that his physical nakedness might not be seen. Isn't that funny? Hiding from the very one that created the body that now Adam was wanting to hide? How often do you find yourself doing the same thing? God breathed life into you. He called you and brought you to Himself, adopting you as an heir to the Kingdom. Yet when the Father enters the doors of our heart, we run and hide and hope he doesn't see how dirty we have become.
As we begin to study the teaching of the fear of God, we must begin with an understand of our heart. We are opened up before God, naked before Him. Ps 139:2 You know when I sit down and when I rise up; you discern my thoughts from afar. Ps 139:4 Even before a word is on my tongue, behold, O LORD, you know it altogether. The writer of Proverbs begins, 7 The fear of the LORD is the beginning of knowledge; fools despise wisdom and instruction. To begin to understand the fear of the LORD, we need to know that we are before the Almighty God. There is nothing that He does not know, nothing that can be hidden from Him. We begin with a fear because he knows more about us that we can even begin to know about ourselves. When we hear from the Word of God, in study or message, we should rightly be afraid. It is piercing, it cuts and prunes, it convicts and renders us naked before our Father. Unlike Adam, at that time we come with fear in our hearts, but with repentance to our Father seeking forgiveness and restoration. One characteristic of the fear of God that jumps out to me is this, if this holy fear does not point us to the cross, does not convict us of our sin and our need for Christ, than it is not a holy fear. We may be fearing retribution or punishment and discipline, but we are not fearing God.
Today you stand before God naked and alone. If you are not afraid, you should be. Are you going to run and hide? Run to the cross and and the cleansing blood of Jesus Christ. Put on the new self found in the righteousness of Jesus Christ (Eph 4:24).
Edited on: Monday, October 15, 2007 10:42 AMPosted in Bible Study (RSS), Fear of God (RSS)
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