The Fear of the Lord 

The following is a Bible study posted on our Bible Study Group.

Hi, everyone! Happy Wednesday! It's time for another study in the incredible book of Proverbs. The more I study this book, the more overwhelmed I feel at even attempting to cover all the truths it discusses. Where do I even begin?

Thankfully, Proverbs tells us where to begin: "The fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge" (1:7) and "the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom" (9:10).

Last week, we briefly discussed what the fear of the Lord is. I think I can best illustrate it by telling you about my kids. (You can see a picture of our family here) My four little ones are fairly obedient. Probably eight times out of ten, if I ask them to do something, they'll do it. But nothing frustrates me faster than to have one or more of them disobey or even obey with a bad attitude, over and over, all day long. Even worse is when they repeatedly disobey me, but when DADDY walks in the door, they immediately do as he says. It's not fair, LOL! 

Then again, I remember when I first met my husband. You see, he's three times my size! When he sits in a roomful of people, he sits a whole head taller than anyone else. He has a booming voice. He even coughs loudly! And he's soooooo strong. I don't even seem to notice his size anymore. But I used to! I know he's a big teddy bear, but my children, at only 2 or 3 or 4 feet tall, are very wise to listen and obey when Daddy speaks! 

Are they afraid of him? Well, when they've done wrong, sure they are! They're afraid in a good way. Their fear makes them listen, makes them obey, helps them realize the consequences will be dire if they don't pay attention. (Of course, I guess they all know that Mommy is wimpy compared to Daddy, so that's why it takes a little more for me to catch their attention. Not even the dog listens as well to me....) 

God wants us to fear Him. We don't hear much about fearing God, do we? It seems to fly in the face of what we know about God. How can we fear a God who loves us, who is merciful and gracious, who is patient? Here's how -- in the same way my children, who wrestle with their daddy and give him bear hugs and smooches and cry if he's gone too long and they miss him, FEAR him when they have done wrong. (See Proverbs 15:33 where it says that the fear of the Lord is the instruction [#4148, chastisement, reproof, warning] of wisdom.)

Proverbs goes into quite a bit of detail about the fear of the Lord, describing what the fear of the Lord is, comparing it to things we can easily understand, and telling of its wonderful benefits. Let's look together at some of these.

First of all, Proverbs 2:4-5 says that we can only truly understand the fear of the Lord if we seek (#1245, search or strive) for wisdom as we would for precious silver, or search for a it as we would hidden treasure. This implies a search after God and His  wisdom that entails all our resources, all our time, all our energy. This reminds me of the great command that Jesus taught: "And thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind, and with all thy strength: this is the first commandment." (Mark 12:30) God wants all of me. 

Notice also that if we fear the Lord, there are certain things we'll hate. Proverbs 8:13 gives us a list: We'll hate evil, pride, arrogancy, the evil way, and a froward mouth. Pride (#1344) and arrogance (#1347) describe someone that mounts up, rises up and tries to be majestic. Doesn't this remind you of Satan, also called Lucifer, in Isaiah 14:12-14, where he said in his heart, "I will ascend into heaven, I will exalt my throne above the stars of God... I will ascend above the heights of the clouds; I will be like the most High"? Such pride is from the pit of hell, and Proverbs warns us that if we fear God, we will hate pride. I had to look up the word "froward" because I didn't know what it meant. It means perversity or fraud (#8419) and comes from a Hebrew word (#2015) that means to turn something over, evidently to hide it from others' eyes. If we fear God, we'll be ourselves in His eyes and in others. We won't pretend or fake or make ourselves out to be something better than we really are. We'll be humble, admitting our faults and asking for forgiveness. 

We all realize that we're born sinful and that sometimes we continue to sin even when we don't want to (Romans 7:15-25). However, God seems to think that sin is a choice that we willfully make. First of all, Proverbs 1:29 says that some people do not choose the fear of the Lord. The word "choose" here (#977) means to try something. Proverbs 3:7 says that we are to fear the Lord and depart from evil. The word "depart" (#5493) means to turn off. To me, turning off means an action on someone's part, like when the kids are told to turn off the bathwater because the tub is getting too full. They can CHOOSE to turn it on or off (but they might not like the consequences if they CHOOSE to disobey). We also must either CHOOSE to depart from evil or choose to be wise (#2450, intelligent, skillful) in our own eyes. We must consciously choose who is smarter -- us or God! Proverbs 16:6 again says that by the fear of the Lord, men depart from (same word, #5493, choose not to do) evil. And again, Proverbs 14:27 says that the fear of the Lord is a fountain (#4726, source) of life, to depart (same word) from the snares of death. By actively choosing to fear the Lord, we choose life instead of death. (Some of us pro-lifers should put our "choose life" bumper stickers INSIDE our houses, where WE'LL be reminded to choose life personally by obeying God's commands.)

So, in summary, I think that the fear of the Lord means to choose to obey His commands, with an awareness of the consequences if we don't. 

There are almost too many benefits to the fear of the Lord for me to list them all. Briefly, Proverbs 10:27 says that the fear of the Lord will prolong (#3254, add to) our days. Proverbs 15:16 compares the blessings of having only few possessions with the fear of the Lord to having great treasure but a lot of trouble (#4103, confusion, great agitation and uproar). Proverbs 19:23 says that he who has the fear of the Lord shall abide satisfied (#7649, satiated, filled to satisfaction). He will not be visited with evil. Proverbs 22:4 says that by humility and the fear of the Lord are riches and honor and life.

My favorite benefit is found in Proverbs 14:26, which says, "In the fear of the Lord is strong confidence; and his children shall have a place of refuge." It reminds me that obedience to the Lord gives me a refuge, security, and assurance when times are scary. Happily, my obedience extends to my children, who will have a shelter where they can scurry when bad times come. As a mom, this gives me great peace in a world filled with terror and evil.

Let's close this discussion with a practical application for each one of us. Proverbs 23:17 says, "Let not thine heart envy sinners: but be thou in the fear of the Lord all the day long." Just this evening, my children asked if they could play in our front yard. Because of traffic, I warned them to stay in the front yard, within the protection of our fence. A neighbor boy came riding by in his really cool toy 4x4 truck. All my kids pressed their noses through the chain-link fence, ooh-ing and ahh-ing over his truck. However, only a moment later, the little boy steered it wrong and had a minor crash. (Note: He wasn't doing anything wrong -- he had permission to be out there -- so maybe this is a poor comparison.) But because my children "feared" me and stayed within the protection of the yard the whole time they were outside, they were spared from getting hurt. 

God wants us to fear Him "all the day long." The word "day" here (#3117, literally from sunrise to sunset) implies that we are to live as conscious of the Lord's presence from the moment we get up, through all our activities of the day, and until we go to sleep at night. I can only conclude that if we want to have the fear of the Lord, we must "renew our minds" (Romans 12:1-2) by studying His Word daily and CHOOSING to obey it, moment by moment, no matter the activities in which we're involved. This is yet another reason I'm going to continue to nag you :-) to be reading from Proverbs every morning. I can think of no better way to begin renewing your mind. As David says in Psalm 119:11, "Thy word have I hid in mine heart, that I might not sin against thee." Again, in Psalm 119:97, he says, "O how I love thy law! It is my meditation all the day." 

I hope you've enjoyed this rather long study. I'm learning bunches and bunches, and I hope you are, too. Let's be praying for each other, that we'll not just be "hearers" of the Word, but that we'll also be "doers." 

With love in Christ,

~Anne

P.S. One of my biggest worries is that I'll make the book of Proverbs look too difficult to study and too hard for you to understand. I want you to realize that this wasn't hard to study at all! You can do this!!! First of all, I looked up the word "fear" in my Strong's Concordance. I wrote down every time "fear of the Lord" was used in the book of Proverbs. Then, next to the references, I wrote a brief summary of what the verse said. Then I looked up the meanings of specific words in those verses, using the Strong's reference numbers and looking up those numbers in the Hebrew dictionary in the back of my Strong's Concordance. That's it! It's easy to do (although rather time consuming), and I want you all to know that YOU can do it, too! By the way, just so you could see my scribbly, rather hard-to-read notes for this week, I've uploaded a picture of my notes and you can see it (and even print it, if you want) by clicking here. 


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