What does the Fear of the Lord REALLY Mean?

So my name, if we haven't met, is Joshua Bundy, and I am one of the pastors at Covenant. If you've been here three weeks or less, you should know I'm not the only pastor at Covenant. We have a lead pastor, Steve, who's on vacation and he'll be back this week. So if you've been praying for him, we would appreciate maybe pray for his encouragement for his, uh, uh, rest as coming off of a busy and full ministry year, he's finally been able to use a little bit of vacation. And for those of us that have been here for the last few weeks, you're well aware that we have been talking about wisdom. And this is the beginning. Of a series we're going to do through the summer where we look at Proverbs and at the book of James. So some Old Testament and some New Testament about wisdom, which really means skill for living. So like, uh, all of us recognize we could use a little bit more skill in our life. And we have, over the past two weeks, looked a little bit at how Proverbs begins with wisdom and folly. And so I want to give you the two-minute review. In case you missed one of these messages, you can go back and watch them. We give you our... Yeah, yeah, yeah. Proverbs opens with nine chapters of speeches. I'm buying time. Our slide will be there any second and you'll be able to see it. There it goes. All right. There it is. You can take your notes or remember with me here. And the rest of the book is a collection of wise sayings. Unlike other places where maybe God says something like this is the word of the Lord and it's stamped with his name, these are characteristic or pithy sayings about a wise life. It doesn't mean they always come true, uh, but they have probability in them. One way we said this was it's the wisdom of many said through the wit of one. And of course, wisdom personified as a key attribute of God yet available to humans through relationship with the Lord. This is what we looked at in the first week. Now in week two, last week, we talked about how everything flows from our heart and the heart we defined as our interior life. When the Bible uses this word, it doesn't mean only emotions, but it means the whole life. Interior life. And it turns out that the inside of us is more expansive than the outside of us. At the inside, there are many Uh, different parts like our emotions, our thoughts, our volition or will, the place where we decide things, our conscience and our allegiances or affection. So this is all part of our internal world or heart. The heart is hard to perceive. It can lead us astray. Our actions proceed from our heart condition. So Jesus will say things like, everything we say and do comes from our heart. And so the heart needs discipleship. The interior world needs the leading of God. So there's your review, your two-minute review. We're on to new material today. Today we're going to look first at Proverbs 1-7 at the fear of the Lord. And so read with me this verse. We're going to talk about character in Proverbs 1-7. The fear of the Lord. And for the next few weeks, now we're, we're turning from the introduction of wisdom and Proverbs to different character formations that are in this wisdom literature. So the first character attribute Is the fear of the Lord. Proverbs one seven says this. The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom. Beginning of knowledge. But fools despise wisdom and instruction. Let me read it one more time. The fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge. But fools despise wisdom and instruction. Now the book of Proverbs... Along with the rest of the Old Testament, we'll use this phrase, the fear of the Lord, many times.

So I'm going to read you now a short collection of other Proverbs that use this phrase, the fear of the Lord. So here's a slide with five other verses. All from Proverbs ten twenty-seven says, fear of the Lord lengthens one's life, but the years of the wicked are cut short. Remember what we said about these aren't promises. Okay. They're probabilities. The wisdom, the collected wisdom of the people of God in the Old Testament, spoken through these Proverbs Solomon collected, It's that generally fear of the Lord lengthens one's life. Okay. Now, is this every case? We know it's not every case. But the years of the wicked are cut short. Is that every case? No, of course not. But in many cases, this is what happens. Look at 1427. Fear of the Lord is a life-giving fountain. Now, you could probably say that's always true. It offers escape from the snares of death. What we haven't done yet, and we may do this summer, is teach a little bit about how some of these two-lined proverbs work. But just take this one as a simple example. The proverbs are almost all two lines. The second of which will either clarify or sharpen the first. Sometimes it contradicts and so sharpens. Sometimes it, uh, strengthens and so sharpens. But look at how this clarifies. Fear of the Lord is a life-giving fountain. Everyone would say, well, give me that. I want that. Life-giving fountain. It offers escape from the snares of death and someone might go, oh, that's how it does it. That's something I need. Is there's actually traps. A snare is a kind of hunter's trap. So there's traps in life. There's things that can ensnare you. Does anyone need escape from a snare that might lead to death, physical or spiritual? Of course.

Okay. Now look at the next one. 15:16 says, better to have little with fear for the Lord than to have great treasure and inner turmoil. So this collection of wisdom from Proverbs says you'd be better off to have just a few possessions, not a lot of money. But to have fear of the Lord than to have great treasure and inner turmoil and we all know we don't have to be rich to have inner turmoil but getting rich doesn't necessarily deal with our inner turmoil in the heart so There's wisdom here. 16.6 says unfailing love and faithfulness make atonement for sin. Now that won't be seen anywhere more true than in Jesus Christ. That unfailing love and faithfulness make atonement for sin. That's actually what Jesus came to earth to do. But look at the next line. It sharpens it or refines it. By fearing the Lord, people avoid evil. So the collection in the Proverbs, they didn't know who Jesus was yet. They couldn't say like we can that the ultimate expression of line one is found in Jesus. They knew that God would bring this about. But they did know the second line that sharpened this, that by fearing the Lord, you can't avoid some evil. So what does it take to atone for sin? Unfailing love and faithfulness. But you can actually avoid a lot of the evils of life just simply by having fear of the Lord. So this is, for the Proverbs, this is extremely important characteristic. Okay, you can avoid a lot of snares and a lot of evil and perhaps lengthen your life and certainly deepen your life if you get this characteristic called fear of the Lord.

Look at the last one. Don't envy sinners, but always continue. Those in parallel would then lead you to think like this, to think, wow, perhaps when I'm envying sinners of whatever it might be, what do you envy people of? Their position, their status, their title, their fame, their money, their ease, whatever it might be. If you're envying them, but they're in this sinful position in front of God and Perhaps the medicine for that is to continue to fear the Lord or the way that you would sharpen up that statement is that these are like water and oil. The envy of sinners is not part of fearing the Lord. Okay, so fearing the Lord would push that out. So here's just a collection for you. To get started on what Proverbs says, it says more. And in fact, the entire Old Testament What we call the Torah or Pentateuch, which is the first five books. What we call the prophets and what we call the writings, which together those three are the whole Old Testament. They all use this phrase fear of the Lord quite a lot. So we need to define it. We need to understand it. Uh, because when you hear the fear of the Lord, what do you hear from? Probably because it uses an emotion, a noun of emotion, fear, in the phrase, the first definition that we think of is that this is an emotion, right? But I'm going to show you as we define it that this is not an emotion. It's actually a characteristic. And it involves the heart, the internal world, which is more than mere emotion. So look at this. The fear of the Lord in Hebrews says, Yerat Yahweh or Yerat Elohim. Yahweh is the personal name of God of Israel. Okay. This is his personal name. Elohim is the more generic name for God in Hebrew. So it shows up both ways in the Old Testament. But the semantic range, so like the meaning bubble of this phrase, runs from respect to horror. Okay, so it can actually be used on this very wide range of meaning. This is important. It's important because there have been a lot of sermons that have been given that argue for one or the other of these definitions and pick a side. But the range of meaning in Hebrew can run from respect on one end to horror on the other. So having a great sermon that Persuade you that it means one or the other side of that definition is actually gonna be faulty and kind of harm your understanding of this phrase because if it fails to show you that this phrase can mean all of those things and more it's not doing you a good service. In most occurrences in the Bible, this is a virtue. The fear of the Lord is a virtue. Okay, so you know some of your virtues, you know some of your vices. This is one you want. On your virtue list as you're growing in the Lord is to have greater fear of the Lord. Uh, it leads to right behavior and good results. Now, some occurrences of it are negative. Like there's passages that will talk about the fear of the Lord. Someone has it and they are trembling. Okay, but modern preaching, we just don't like a lot of trembling sermons, do we? We don't, do we? We're not super comfortable with telling us, people telling us that there's a time to tremble. And so we don't really want to hear a lot about that. So what do we do? We go, oh, well, it just means respect.

Well, look at this. Okay, it is misleading to say that it always means fear. It's misleading to say that it always means respect. You just, you can't do that to someone else's language. It's not fair. What they meant when they said it is what they meant when they said it. So for you to redefine that as a 21st century English speaker wouldn't really be fairer. Awe is a candidate for translation because it connotates veneration of the sacred like worship. And awe, you usually use it in a very positive way today, but think of the word, and I'll use this today, awful. Okay, awful. To be full of awe such that something is startling or terrifying or causes you to tremble. There's a relationship between those words because awe also has a broader meaning than just awesome guys. So in the end, it's a character trait. Fear of the Lord is a character trait. Of those who believe that God is able and certain to do what he said he would do. Now, today I'm not going to tell you all the things God said he would do. You've got to read more of your Bible to see that. But God said many things he would do, including loving and blessing and caring for his people and also some pretty terrifying things that should cause us to tremble. If we remain as enemies, like destroying those who are opposed to God. So there's many things God says he would do. When you believe that God is able and will do the things he said he would do, You've taken a step into the fear of the Lord. This awe, respect, spectrum. Now the character trait that we've been talking about is more than one emotion or it brings about more than one emotion. Okay, when you have this character trait that you believe God will do what he said, if that's applied to people who the Proverbs call fools, the Proverbs has some character, uh, Groupings that we can really enjoy talking about. One of them is the fool. The fool says in his heart, there is no God, but the Proverbs have hope that the fool could still come around. Because wisdom will beckon the fool and say come to my house, eat at my table. Mockers are a little bit farther from God than the fool because they mock and slander God in his ways. Not hopeless, but they're getting awfully close to the edge. And the simple are like uneducated. Uh, maybe they just really haven't had a fair shake in life. They don't know they're unilluminated, whatever. And the hope for them is that they would get some knowledge and wisdom. And that it would cause them to become godly people. But an initial response for someone in those groupings in Proverbs might be terror. It might be the emotion of terror when you realize God has said things. I fall into the category of the warning and he's actually able and will do what he said that can cause initially an emotion like terror but for the wise and any who mourn their sin Like, they believe God, but they're also repentant and sorry for how they've broken God's law. This emotion will move. It'll move from initial fright or terror or trembling. Through repentance and into a kind of awe, reverence, and thanksgiving that is more pure and light and delightful and hopeful. And this is most perfectly and particularly true in the gospel of Jesus. No.

Now, I need to stop here and just ask, like, are you getting this? Does this land, does it make sense? If you go back to reading fear of the Lord in your Bible as if it is, it only means terror. And that, like, godly, happy people don't have it or can't have it. You're really missing what the Scripture says. And if you think that it only means respect... And that you'll never have to mourn your sin or tremble at the thought of having offended or broken the law of a holy God. You're really missing what the scripture has for you on that end too. So we need to see the spectrum. Now here's an example. Uh, I didn't get this one on a slide. So you're going to have to write this down. Pay attention to this scripture reference. This is Acts nine thirty-one I want you to have this one. In your, uh, when you open up again, all the verses that you know about fear of the Lord, I want this one near the top. When you think about what does the Bible say about fear of the Lord, think of Acts 9.31. Okay, so here's Acts 9.31. I'll read it to you. Then the church, so the first thing that we notice is that this isn't the Old Testament, it's the New Testament. The church is in the world now. The church throughout Judea, Galilee, and Samaria, where is that? It's Israel. Judea is the region around Jerusalem. Galilee is north where Jesus was raised and grew up and did his ministry, and Samaria is sandwiched in between. Judea, Galilee, and Samaria, the church in that reason enjoyed a time of peace and was strengthened.

Now you tell me, is peace good? Yes or no? Yes, one person wants it. Anybody else? You want peace? Say amen. Amen. You want strengthening? Say hallelujah. Hallelujah. Now listen to this. Living in the fear of the Lord and encouraged by the Holy Spirit, the church increased in numbers. This is Acts nine thirty-one You got to have this in your fear of the Lord lexicon. Okay. They're living in peace and In strengthening in the fear of the Lord, which is not just an emotion, it's a state or characteristic of And they're being encouraged by the Holy Spirit and the church increased in numbers. Now notice two factors. This is so important. About these people and about the kind of peace they experienced, two factors about the church in Acts nine The first one is this. These are many of them the same people that were at Pentecost when Peter preached the first gospel sermon. And what happened, if you remember in your Bible, at the first gospel sermon given at Pentecost, Is Peter leads the people through this history of Israel to the point where Jesus is crucified, unjustly murdered, and the people finally realize we did that. And what did they say? To Peter and the apostles who are speaking in their languages, they say, cut to the heart. They say, what must we do to be saved? Now you're telling me there's no trembling in that. You're telling me there's no terror in recognizing that my sin put the holy and perfect Son of God, Messiah of Israel, on the cross? That there's no fear in that? But what happened to them? Peter says to them, repent, believe the good news. Be baptized in the name of Jesus for the forgiveness of your sins. Receive the gift of the Holy Spirit. And they do, many do, thousands do. They move from fear of the Lord that is terror to a fear of the Lord through repentance that brings peace and strengthening and encouragement by the Holy Spirit.

Can I get an amen? This is what the movement of the fear of God can do for your life. If you don't have it, get it. Now, the second, I told you there was two factors. That was just one. The second one is this. In Acts nine thirty-one the context, why were they growing in numbers and so peaceful and so encouraged? Because the great murderer... An arrestor and pursuer of Christians named Saul, who is later to be known as Paul, the apostle, walked on the road to Damascus Where he had papers to arrest more Christians and had an awful experience. I told you I'd use the word again. Write it down. A-W-E dash F-U-L-L. Awful. Spell it different so that you remember it. Paul's walking down the Damascene road and suddenly this light from heaven and not a vision, not a mirage, but a meeting with Jesus raised occurs on the road. And Saul is blinded. He's struck blind by this incident. You're telling me that Saul didn't have any trembling at losing his sight? You're telling me that when he said, who are you, Lord? And the voice of Jesus answered, it is I, it is Jesus, whom you are persecuting. Why are you kicking against the goads? What Jesus means is, why are you such a stranger? Stubborn Bible reader, Paul and Saul. You're telling me that that guy wasn't trembling? His friends knew there was a voice but didn't hear what it was said. Paul goes blind into the city and there he's laying up for a couple of days not taking food and not drinking anything until a gospel Christian preacher comes and shares with him the message of Jesus, calls him to repentance and baptism, and suddenly scales fall off his eyes and he can see again. Okay, this guy then goes to Jerusalem and is like, can I hang out with all of you Christians? They're so worked up. They're like, can we trust him? They're so worked up about it. They're like, and then some of the Jews try to kill him. They're like, you better get out of town for a little while. Let's talk later. But they're so encouraged. They're so blessed and full of peace and strengthened. That the greatest enemy of the church who was partly responsible for the first martyrdom of Stephen has repented. He's moved from the fear of the Lord in terror through repentance to a fear of the Lord that brings great peace. If you don't have it, get it. Experiencing the fear of the Lord then can bring about great peace for you too. I want you to look at Psalm 139 with me for a moment. This is a favorite of Christians.

And I want you to see how the fear of the Lord could lead to peace for you, how it could lead to peace for the faithful. But it might still leave the mocker or the fool in great terror. Look at the scripture. This is a famous passage about how no matter where you are, God can find you and he's with you. Let me read it. Where can I go from your spirit? Where can I flee from your presence? If I go up to the heavens, you are there. It's like God's home territory, right? But if I make my bed in the depths, you're there. If I rise on the wings of the dawn and settle on the far side of the sea, even there, your hand will guide me. Your right hand will hold me fast. If I say, surely the darkness will hide me and the light turn into night around me. Even the darkness will not be dark for you. The night will shine like the day for darkness is as light to you. Amen. Every Christian in the room say amen. Amen. It's a great comforting psalm. There's so much more in it. But I, I want you to think about this with me for a moment. About what it feels like to be pursued by a God who can't be thwarted. He can't be shaken off your trail. You recognize, right, that the inability to escape someone is the plot of most horror movies. You recognize this, right? Many of us have had a nightmare, at least once, of always running and never escaping. Anybody been there? Oh, it's a terrible way to wake up. You've been running and running, your feet don't move, you're slipping, you're sliding, you're like, this isn't like me, I'm a fast guy. If there was a bear, you know, I'd be the first one out. My buddies would be in trouble. I'm a fast guy. This isn't like me. You know what? This isn't exactly a proverb. This is a wisdom saying. Parents become morning people the same way that someone running from a bear becomes a racer. There's certain things in life that change you. Kids make you turn you into a morning person, an early bird. A bear will make you run your best forty ever. And yet in the dream, the horror of it is you can't move. Okay. So think about this psalm through that light. Think about this. You may have reflected on how creepy it is that we have festal legends that Of tundral elves who maintain lists on each of the world's children. Bifurcated for naughty or nice behavior. With the chief of this Gelid ministry, even knowing when you are sleeping, he knows when you're awake. In the wrong context. You see, the inescapability of a person is only comforting if that person is perfectly trustworthy. And the illumination of every secret of your heart is terrifying to anyone who has something to hide. Something serious that they don't want to be found. But being found and fully seen is a great comfort to those who have been overlooked, forgotten, or discarded. And it's also comforting to the repentant who seek to come into the light. So this psalm becomes a litmus test of the fear of the Lord. Where are you at on the spectrum? If this is a creepy God to you, you're still somewhere back near the terror stage. And the more comforting this becomes to you, the more you want his presence, his illumination in your life, it becomes an encouragement. Now imagine with me for a moment how the fear of the Lord might apply to our hearts.

Okay, we've learned a lot about it, but we talked about the heart and the internal world. So if you are among the repentant and the wise, like if you're not one of the fools or the mockers, imagine how developing this character trait might disciple your heart and result in greater peace and encouragement from the spirit of God. Okay, let's apply it. Last week, we talked about parts of your heart like these emotions, thoughts, volition, affections, and conscience. So we got a chart for you. And I want you to think about the problems that arise with these emotions. Has this issue that emotions are always real, but they're not always true. That means you're really experiencing them. But they're not always telling you the truth about a situation. Thoughts. Anybody have an internal voice that guides your life, right? You're allowed to admit it. We have narratives. We say things to ourselves. We have self-talk that's also not always true. Desire and choice of our volition can be selfish. Or even evil. It needs direction and order. Our loves get all out of order. That's why our allegiances and affections get so messy. Our loves get out of order and our conscience can become polluted or hardened. It can need purification. So look at what happens when we apply the fear of the Lord to these many dimensions of the heart. The fear of the Lord as we've been describing it refines and stabilizes our emotions. In part, by providing new thoughts, a divine narrative. God says something about his world and something about you through the gospel of Jesus. There's an external truth, a divine truth, and evaluation that comes from God to put your thought world in order. There's also the fact that God and the fear of the Lord will bound many choices. And what I mean by bound is there's certain things God will say, you don't go there. We don't do that. And there are other areas where he would say, you're free to go there, but let me guide you. Okay, let's guide how you do it. Affections, your idolatry will be unmasked the more you experience the fear of the Lord, your secret gods. Orders and purifies your loves. The conscience, the fear of the Lord sensitizes the conscience. It grows moral awareness. This is why there's hope for the simple and hope for the fool and even hope for the mocker. So who do you think needs this development? Do you think it of yourself?

Um, one short story. In the great Lord of the Rings epic by Tolkien, there are hobbits. And they're simple folk, not to say they're completely without knowledge, but they have a simple life in the shire. And they, the thing they think about the most, the order of their loves is second breakfast. So they have breakfast, but they're thinking about the next one, and they want it before lunch and in between a couple of tea times. This is the beginning of the story. Now you go through the long story arc and they meet wizards and trolls and they eventually throw this ring to melt in the fires of Mordor and they return to the Shire and you would think, well... They're going back to the same place to enjoy breakfast again, but they aren't. They find this shire is polluted by this sharky. He's the fallen Saruman. And now the hobbits are without the wizard. They're without Aragorn. They're without all the mighty heroes. They've all left and all that's left of the little people who were once simple. And they rise up and they purify the shire. They rise up in rebellion and they fight for themselves. They are not the same men and women that they were. This is what happens when exposure to real fear, to true fear, Life-changing terror in the world moves a person through formation into new character. But for us who are not companions of the ring, the primary development of the character trait of the fear of the Lord comes through worship. This is our journey of how we arrive. Is by remembering and saying to God over and over the things that are true about him that he said are true about him. Okay, so look at this. Considering the greatness of God. His attributes, his holiness, power, and presence, his knowledge, his permanence, his great love for his people. Through worship that might be in meditation or silence, Through physical bowing and prostration, through song and more, these fix in our hearts the character trait that reveres God, yes, that's the wrong apostrophe, and his esteem above all other things. Okay, this is what fixes it.

And I want to read one passage to end. Just one passage of worship. Of Jesus. And this passage has it all. The fear of the Lord. Potential for trembling. And certainly the awe and respect and honor of a mighty savior. I turned around to see the voice that was speaking to me. And when I turned, I saw someone like a son of man. Dressed in a robe reaching down to his feet and with a golden sash across his chest and the hair on his head was white like wool as white as snow. And his eyes were like a blazing fire. His feet were like bronze glowing in a furnace and his voice was like the sound of rushing waters. In his right hand he held seven stars, and coming out of his mouth was a sharp, double-edged sword. His face was like the sun shining in all its brilliance. When I saw him, I fell at his feet as though dead. And then he placed his right hand on me and said, do not be afraid. I am the first and the last. I am the living one. I was dead. And now look, I'm alive forever and ever. And I hold the keys of death and Hades. Amen, Lord Jesus. Let's pray. God in heaven, we appeal to you to give us a right character, to see you rightly, and to fear you. In a way that would lead us from terror and trembling through repentance and into love and peace and security. We pray that the pursuit of our lives by you would become a beautiful and comforting truth. We pray that you would pursue us through the heavens and the depths and across the sea and in every place until finally our hearts relent and turn to you. We pray that you'd purify our minds, that you would set our internal heart aright through discipleship, through the gospel of Jesus Christ. We pray that you would make us men and women who are transformed and formed. Formed to live in this world that you've given us with greater steadiness and peace and joy and power by the spirit. And we pray that you would bring that life to every heart that needs it today. We ask this in the name of Jesus, the Son of Man and Son of God. And together we say, Amen.