Ingredients: Part 2b
And then the third thing: the most profound experience is the recognition that God is here. The most profound word: God. The most profound fact: God is. The most profound transforming experience: God is here. And that’s what I’m driving at. It’s interesting–and I want to support this now from Scripture–that in most of the instances where the fear of God is described for us in Scripture, it’s described in a context of the realized presence of God. Some of you, I trust, will remember last week when I was trying to describe this fear of reverence and awe, I went to Jacob and his vision, and he said, “Surely God was in this place and I knew it not.” Moses at the burning bush said he was afraid to look upon God. Isaiah, in Isaiah 6, said, “Woe is me, I’m undone. I’ve seen the Lord.”
If you trace out these illustrations of the fear of God, the fear of reverence, the fear of awe, the fear of veneration, you will find that almost exclusively they are set in a context where men are experiencing the realized presence of God. God is there, and they know He’s there, and they are in His presence, and they know it. In Exodus 3, Moses sees that bush burning, and he turns aside to examine it, and God speaks out of it. And when he recognizes God is there speaking out of the bush, it was then that he covered his face and wouldn’t even look upon it. At that point, all Moses knew of God–it wasn’t the God who is up there and out there somewhere, but He’s all that He is right there in Moses’ presence. God is all of this right there, so he hides his face.
The same way with Jacob. He awakes from his dream, and when he reflects upon it, he says, “This is none other than the house of God. How dreadful is this place.” Why? “Because right here God is and I’ve been in His presence. How dreadful is this place.” It’s made dreadful because the dreadful one was there. Even that fear of terror has this thought in it, for you remember in Genesis 3:10, Adam answers to the Lord when He says, “Where art thou?” He says, “I heard Thy voice, and I was afraid.” You see, as long as Adam could think of God as being out there somewhere, he wasn’t gripped with that sense of terror and dread. But he says, “When I heard Thy voice, and I knew that all You were and are, you were right here in close proximity to me, so I was afraid.”
Now, what does this tell us? It tells us that the second essential ingredient of the fear of God is this pervasive sense of His presence, not only right concepts of His character but taking all that He is and bringing it here in this very place where I sit, where I stand in this moment. Now I’ve tried to establish the general principle from these passages, but now let’s zero in on what’s probably the most sustained and concentrated passage which teaches this truth. If you were asked to select one, what immediately comes to your mind? What passage in Scripture most clearly describes a man who has right concepts of the character of God (His immensity, majesty, and holiness), but it’s couched in the context He’s all of that right here, and He’s filled with a pervasive sense of the presence of God?
I hope you’re thinking Psalm 139. If you weren’t, I hope you will be in the future. Now remember what we’re trying to establish is the second essential ingredient of the fear of God. Without this, there will be no fear of God. Notice how the Psalmist begins (thinking of the omniscience of God, that is, the fact that He knows all things):
“O lord, Thou hast searched me, and known me. Thou knowest my downsitting and mine uprising, Thou understandest my thought afar off. Thou compassest my path and my lying down, and art acquainted with all my ways. For there is not a word in my tongue, but, lo, O LORD, Thou knowest it altogether” (vv. 1-4).
Now, up to this point, the Psalmist is giving what we might say a description of bare omniscience. He’s describing what he knows about the character of God as an all-seeing, all-knowing God. But how is he thinking of that? Is he thinking of it in terms– and I want to use an illustration that I hope will bring this into focus–is he using it in terms of what we might say about one of these U-2 planes with special cameras that can take pictures from 60 to 80 thousand feet that would show the color or the shape of your car on the ground all these miles below, or some of these photographing satellites? And it’s amazing the detail they can show from 100 miles up. There’s not a detail they cannot see from a distance.
Now, is that the concept David has? God is this great immense all-knowing, all-seeing God, and He’s up there, out there somewhere. And everything I do, like the great eye of the orbiting spy satellite, He sees it; He knows it. Is that the concept? No, for notice the transition in the next verse: “Thou hast beset me behind and before, and laid Thine hand upon me.” Now granted, God has no hand. He’s using a figure of speech, what they tell us is an anthropomorphism. God has attributed to Himself certain characteristics of men. He doesn’t actually have hands and eyes and feet. But in order to convey to us His ways and what He’s like, God does this. Now, David says, “The God who has searched me, the God who knows me, who understands my thoughts, who knows every word. He knows and understands [not like the orbiting spy satellite from miles away], but because His hand is upon me.” Now notice how this thought is developed:
“Such knowledge is too wonderful for me; it is high, I cannot attain unto it. Whither shall I go from Thy spirit? or whither shall I flee from Thy presence [not just knowledge, but presence]? If I ascend up into heaven, Thou art there [he doesn’t say, ‘You will see me.’ He says, ‘Thou art there’]: if I make my bed in hell [or in the grave], behold, Thou art there. [He says, ‘If I go as high as a man can go in this direction, Thou art there. If I go as far as a man can go in this direction, Thou art there.’] If I take the wings of the morning [apparently a poetic picture of jumping on the first rays of the sun as they break up over the horizon and shoot out over the sea], and dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea; even there shall Thy hand lead me, and Thy right hand shall hold me.”
You see what he’s doing? Do you catch this? He’s not talking about bare omniscience (God knows everything), or some bare kind of heartless, formless, personalityless omnipresence (God is everywhere). No, “Wherever I go, God is there as the personal God whose hand is upon me; whose hand holds me; whose hand covers me.” And then he even traces this all the way back in a beautiful poetic imagery in verse 13: “For Thou hast possessed my reins: Thou hast covered me in my mother’s womb.” It was in the darkness of that period before he was ever born He says, “Thy hand did cover me and envelop me. I was not only enveloped in my mother’s womb, but I was enveloped in the tender protecting hand of my God.”
Then he goes on to develop these thoughts until he says his head’s going to split. Verses 17-18: “How precious also are Thy thoughts unto me, O God! how great is the sum of them! If I should count them, they are more in number than the sand: when I awake, I am still with Thee.” Do you catch that strain of emphasis? Thy presence, Thy hand with Thee. What’s he saying? He’s saying, “O God, the thought that has just pervaded me and that I carry with me in every circumstance and situation is that all You are as that all-knowing, all-seeing, all-powerful, all-gracious God, you are to me right here.”
Therefore, the fear of God to David comprised this great second element: a pervasive sense of the presence of God. And it’s this that will create that awe, that sense of wonder, that sense of reverence, so that the thought of disobeying such a God, the thought of grieving Him by walking contrary to His will is unthinkable to the man who walks in His fear. That’s why Scripture says, “The fear of the Lord is to depart from evil.” For if I’m living in the sense of the immediate presence of this great God, I will not dare to fly into the face of His holy commandments and laws. How often have we been tempted to do something–you children, maybe you were going to take some forbidden object, and just the presence of your sister or brother walking into the room–and suddenly you stopped what you were doing and started fiddling around like you never were going to do it.
If the presence of another creature who has no power to judge you for your action–the worst they can do is squeal on you, but they have no power to judge you–if their realized presence radically changes your moral and ethical conduct, what happens to the man who knows he’s always in the immediate presence, not just of one who can observe and squeal on him but the one before whom he is accountable for all that he does. Will that have any ethical and moral implications? I’ll say it has ethical and moral implications, and we’ll look at a couple of them in a little bit.