Introduction – 1
For a rather lengthy period of time, I have been toying with the thought of bringing some messages on one of the great and dominant themes of Holy Scripture, one concerning which there is almost total silence in our day, a theme which was a great theme of our forefathers in their thinking and in their preaching. And it’s interesting, when one would describe one of our forefathers who was marked by unusual Godliness, they would use even this particular term to describe him. He would be described as a God-fearing man. And it’s that theme of the fear of God that I wish to set before you in Scripture in these next few Lord’s Day mornings.
One mature and very Scripturally astute man of God has said that the fear of God is the very soul of Godliness. The emphasis in both the Old and New Testaments requires no less significant a proposition. Take away the soul from the body and all you have left is in a few days is a stinking carcass. Take away the fear of God from any expression of Godliness and all you have left is the stinking carcass of Phariseeism and barren religiosity. And so in order to think our way through, at least in an introductory way to this theme, we shall this morning seek to grasp something of the predominance of this concept of the fear of God in Biblical thought. Then we shall move on next Lord’s Day morning to consider the meaning of the fear of God, the essential elements of the fear of God, and then last of all, some of the practical effects of the fear of God.
This morning then, the focus of our study will be on the predominance of the fear of God in Biblical thought. Now, one does not need a great measure of learning to be able to do what I’m going to do this morning. In fact, armed with a relatively good concordance and about an hour’s time, you could pretty well lay out the study that I’m going to lay out before you. Or if you took your concordance and looked up the word “fear,” you would notice that no fewer than 150 to 175 times there are distinct, explicit references to the fear of God. If you add to these explicit references to the fear of God all the instances in Scripture where you have the fear of God illustrated, though not explicitly stated, it is accurate to say that the references to the fear of God, both in explicit statements of the fear of God and of clear examples of the fear of God, number into the hundreds.
Now, isn’t it amazing that a theme so dominant in the Old and the New Testament, a theme which comes before us dozens and dozens of times, can be either on the one hand become so completely overlooked, or on the other hand so shallowly and so carelessly handled so that the average Christian, when you asked him what is the fear of God, he throws back at you a little cliche that he heard in Sunday school years ago: the fear of God is reverential awe. And he says, “Now let’s get on with a more important theme.” Well, I trust that after this morning, as we seek to grasp something of the predominance of this theme, that none of you will be content with a mere cursory knowledge or acquaintance of this theme, the fear of God. I hope you will not be content to just parrot a little phrase “reverential awe” and think that’s the sum and substance of the teaching of Scripture on this theme.
Now, with such a large number of references, I can only hope this morning to be suggestive rather than exhaustive. And so I’ve tried to be qualitatively selective in pulling out of the Old Testament thirteen references and out of the New Testament ten references to the fear of God. I say I have sought to be qualitatively selective. That is, rather than just select passages at random, I have tried to select those which would contribute some of the most pivotal aspects of the Biblical thought concerning the fear of God. So then, fasten your seatbelt if you will, because we’re going to move this morning literally from Genesis to Revelation, though we’re not going to stop in every book along the way.
Genesis 31 is perhaps one of the most significant passages in all of Scripture concerning this matter of the predominance of the fear of God in Biblical thought. In verse 42, we read: “Except the God of my father, the God of Abraham, and the fear of Isaac, had been with me, surely thou hadst sent me away now empty.” Notice a similar reference in verse 53 of the same chapter: “The God of Abraham, and the God of Nahor, the God of their father, judge betwixt us. And Jacob swore by the fear of his father Isaac.” God’s name is a revelation of His character. God gave an increasing understanding of who He was by the accumulation of the names by which He identified Himself and through which He revealed Himself to His people. And here one of the names attached to God as a revelation of His character is the fear of Isaac. In other words, when God is rightly apprehended, having true Biblical fear of Him is so much a part of a right response to the revelation of His character that He calls Himself the fear of Isaac. Therefore, if my apprehension of God and my comprehension of God does not lead me to fear Him as Isaac did, I have not rightly understood who God is. He identifies Himself as the fear of Isaac.
Then turn over to the book of Exodus where we have the record of Moses’ problem in seeking to administer single handedly the entire nation of Israel in terms of the many needs that would come up that needed some judgment of a mature mind. And you remember the suggestion made by Jethro, Moses’ father-in-law, that he share this oversight; that he was not up to it doing it by himself. And so they’re going to select men that will be used as Moses’ representatives to help make judgments with regards to the specific problems that would arise in the life of the nation of Israel. When the requirements are given for those who will fill this role as judges in Israel, Exodus 18:21 says, “Moreover thou shalt provide out of all the people able men, such as fear God, men of truth, hating covetousness; and place such over them, to be rulers of thousands, and rulers of hundreds, rulers of fifties, and rulers of tens.” Of all the requirements that could be thought of for men to administer justice in so mighty a nation as this nation had now become, set at the very pinnacle place of importance is that they must be men who fear God. Whatever other qualities they have or may not have, if they are not men whose primary characteristic is the fear of God, they are not qualified for this significant role of the administration of justice and the solving of problems within the nation of Israel.
Then turning over to Exodus 20, we have another very pivotal reference. For in this chapter, God is stating the whole end for which He is giving this unusual revelation of His mind and will in the Ten Commandments and doing it in the manner in which He did. You remember, there was thunder and lightning on top of the mount, and God Himself drew near that mountain in the giving of this revelation. And here in verse 20, we have a statement as to why God is so revealing Himself to His people: “And Moses said unto the people, Fear not [that is, don’t be afraid with that carnal dread and fear]: for God is come to prove you, and that His fear may be before your faces, that ye sin not.”
If you were to stand off at a distance and see the lightening flashing off the top of Mount Sinai; you were to see the decent of the cloud and hear the rumbling of the thunder and stand there full of natural dread; if you were to turn to someone and say, “What is all this? Why is God bringing about all this phenomena in the physical realm?” The answer would be: He’s doing this to rid you of carnal fear and to teach you holy fear. The whole end of His drawing near in this way is that His fear may be before you. We see then the great significance of this concept when in this verse the fear of God is set before us as the primary reason for this unusual manifestation of the presence of God upon Mount Sinai. And the parallel passage to this is found in Deuteronomy 4:9-10:
“Only take heed to thyself, and keep thy soul diligently, lest thou forget the things which thine eyes have seen, and lest they depart from thy heart all the days of thy life: but teach them thy sons, and thy sons’ sons; specially the day that thou stoodest before the LORD thy God in Horeb, when the LORD said unto me, Gather me the people together, and I will make them hear My words, that they may learn to fear Me all the days that they shall live upon the earth, and that they may teach their children.”
“The whole end,” God says, “for which I drew near to you and gave this revelation is that you might learn My fear.” Therefore, to be exposed to this revelation of God for this unfolding of His mind and not to learn His fear is to miss the whole purpose for which all of this was given. It’s a pretty central issue then, isn’t it? So much of the whole Old Testament revelation clusters around the given of the law. And the whole purpose of the giving of the law was to teach His fear. To miss, then, what the fear of God is is to be utterly blinded to much of what God is saying in this great section of His holy Word.
Now then, we turn to the book of Job. We turn here from God’s dealing with a nation to teach them His fear to a description of an Old Testament saint, one of whom God speaks, not like the Pharisee who boasts of his own attainments in supposed grace, but one of whom God speaks and boasts of the attainments in grace. And how does God describe the piety of this man Job? Chapter 1, verse 1: “There was a man in the land of Uz, whose name was Job; and that man was perfect and upright [there was the outward expression of his life. What was the inward soul of that life?], and one that feared God, and eschewed evil.” The first few words are a description of his outward bearing. This is, as it were, the body of a Godly man. And then He tells us that the soul of that Godliness was that He feared God.
This thought is underscored again in verse 8: “And the LORD said unto Satan, Hast thou considered my servant Job, that there is none like him in the earth, a perfect and an upright man, one that feareth God, and escheweth evil?” The soul of his external piety was this inwardness of the fear of His God. Verse 9: “Then Satan answered the LORD, and said, doth Job fear God for nought?” He says, “Ah, yes, you say that the fear of Your name is the soul of his Godliness, but he has some other motive other than Your glory.” Then the whole story unfolds as God is going to vindicate His claims on behalf of His servant Job. So we see, then, that the essence of Job’s piety and God’s estimation of all true piety is that it is suffused with this fear of God.