Old Testament Christianity: Fear

Old Testament Christianity: The Fear of God


Psalms 111:10
The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom;
A good understanding have all those who do His commandments.
His praise endures forever.

The fear of the Lord. It’s the beginning of wisdom, and who here doesn’t want to be wise? Who wouldn’t want to be wise? There are other promises to those who fear God.

Psalms 34:9
Fear the Lord, you his holy people,
    for those who fear him lack nothing.

Psalms 34:19
How abundant are the good things
    that you have stored up for those who fear you,
that you bestow in the sight of all,
    on those who take refuge in you.

You will lack nothing; there will be abundant good things. Wisdom and understanding!
I think that perhaps this Fear God thing might be valuable to understand.

So what does it mean to fear God?

Now as we begin to examine this idea of "The Fear of the Lord" can I start with a question, that question being:
 "Is there a difference between The Fear of the Lord and Reverence?"

This is what I tried to figure out. And I started out with the first thing I could think of. I pulled down my concordance; I looked up the passage and checked to see what the word fear meant in the original Hebrew.

It means reverence… and fear. And I’m no Hebrew scholar, but as far as I could tell it didn’t mean either/or, it meant both.

So what does that mean for us?

Let’s start with the obvious: Define reverence for me.

Reverence is defined by thefreedictionary.com "A feeling of profound awe and respect and often love; veneration"

Now, define fear for me:
Miriam-Webster defines it as: an unpleasant often strong emotion caused by anticipation or awareness of danger


You must understand that yes, reverence was a huge part of the culture of Israel. If you’ve ever attended a Passover Seder or studied the laws of ritual cleanliness that the priests had to hold themselves to you should understand that people did not approach God lightly. They couldn’t, not just because of all of this ritual surrounding them, constantly reminding them of God’s presence in their lives but if they forgot then the ground would open up and swallow whole families.

And not to discount the importance of approaching God with reverence but as I studied the Old Testament and the New I began to realize that the idea of Fearing God went deeper than simple reverence.

When God descended on Mt Sinai the Israelites did not think to themselves “Oh this is a holy moment. Please Lord let me see Your glory.”
They said “Oh. My. God. Moses, you have to go up there. I’m not going up there. I am hiding under my mattress and not coming out until its back to normal again.”

Normal for the Israelites was following a pillar of fire through the wilderness, eating manna that fell from heaven and drinking water that came pouring out of rocks on voice command so I don’t think their idea of normal was my idea of normal. But that’s off topic.

Now I think the thing that divides the fear of God from reverence is the realization that there are consequences for our actions. That God is holy and perfect and just and all-powerful and cannot stand in the presence of sin; that there is no place for rebellion in the kingdom of the creator of the universe.

And that should make us tremble even as we rejoice, because we as Christians know that when God looks at us he does not see David Harmon, or Jessica Whitcomb, or Lily Harmon, or Anna Ent. He sees Christ.

"Of course He's good. But He's not safe. He's not a tame lion!" – Narnia, about Aslan


Now here’s a question for you: Is any of this still relevant? I’ve spent a great deal of time talking about the Old Testament, the Israelites who were under the old covenant of the Law. We’re under the new testament of Jesus’s blood which tore the veil between us and God and allows us to enter into His presence without the need of blood sacrifice or well groomed human mediator. On one hand we have verses like this:

James 2:19 (NLT)
You say you have faith, for you believe that there is one God. Good for you! Even the demons believe this, and they tremble in terror.

Philippians 2:12
12 Therefore, my dear friends, as you have always obeyed—not only in my presence, but now much more in my absence—continue to work out your salvation with fear and trembling,

And the other contains these:

1 John 4:18
18 There is no fear in love. But perfect love drives out fear, because fear has to do with punishment. The one who fears is not made perfect in love.

Hebrew 4:16
16 Let us then approach God’s throne of grace with confidence, so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help us in our time of need.

Now is God dangerous? In a way, yes. Not like the ground is going to open up and swallow you dangerous but to any one of us that still has a portion of their lives devoted to the worship of themselves He’s going to want that gone. If there is any selfish part of you then He’ll want to remove that. We call Him healer but sometimes it seems like Surgeon is the more accurate title.
For He will cut out the dead and decaying parts of our souls and allow life to grow in its place, and He break bones again so that they can grow back stronger and in the right form.
So is God safe? No, not really. But He makes us beautiful. He makes us wise. He makes us courageous.
What does fear cause us to do? Well it triggers the fight or flight response, and as Christians we have a very unique fight or flight response. We can either flee from the presence of God or fight to draw nearer. In Exodus the Israelites hid in their tents while Moses went up to the mountain

Psalms 22:23
23 You who fear the Lord, praise him!
    All you descendants of Jacob, honor him!
    Revere him, all you descendants of Israel!

Psalms 5:7
7 But I, by your great love,
    can come into your house;
in reverence I bow down
    toward your holy temple.

Psalms 9:20
20 Strike them with terror, Lord;
    let the nations know they are only mortal.