THE FEAR OF THE LORD
When the psalmist saw the transgression of the wicked his heart told him how it could
be. “There is no fear of God before his eyes,” he explained, and in so saying revealed to
us the psychology of sin. When men no longer fear God, they transgress His laws
without hesitation. The fear of consequences is not deterrent when the fear of God is
gone.
In olden days men of faith were said to “walk in the fear of God” and to “serve the Lord
with fear.” However intimate their communion with God, however bold their prayers, at
the base of their religious life was the conception of God as awesome and dreadful. This
idea of God transcendent rims through the whole Bible and gives color and tone to the
character of the saints. This fear of God was more than a natural apprehension of
danger; it was a nonrational dread, an acute feeling of personal insufficiency in the
presence of God the Almighty.
Wherever God appeared to men in Bible times the results were the same - an
overwhelming sense of terror and dismay, a wrenching sensation of sinfulness and guilt.
When God spoke, Abram stretched himself upon the ground to listen. When Moses saw
the Lord in the burning bush, he hid his face in fear to look upon God. Isalah’s vision of
God wrung from him the cry, “Woe is me!” and the confession, “I am undone; because I
am a man of unclean lips.”
Daniel’s encounter with God was probably the most dreadful and wonderful of them all.
The prophet lifted up his eyes and saw One whose “body also was like the beryl, and his
face as the appearance of lightning, and his eyes as lamps of fire, and his arms and his
feet like in colour to polished brass, and the voice of his words like the voice of a
multitude.” “I Daniel alone saw the vision” he afterwards wrote, “for the men that were
with me saw not the vision; but a great quaking fell upon them, so that they fled to hide
themselves. Therefore I was left alone, and saw this great vision, and there remained no
strength in me: for my comeliness was turned in me into corruption, and I retained no
strength. Yet heard I the voice of his words: and when I heard the voice of his words,
then was I in a deep sleep on my face, and my face toward the ground.”
These experiences show that a vision of the divine transcendence soon ends all
controversy between the man and his God. The fight goes out of the man and he is
ready with the conquered Saul to ask meekly,
”Lord, what wilt thou have me to do?” Conversely, the self-assurance of modern Christians, the basic levity present in so many of our religious gatherings, the shocking disrespect shown for the Person of God, are evidence enough of deep blindness of heart.
Many call themselves by the name of Christ, talk much about God, and pray to Him
sometimes, but evidently do not know who He is. “The fear of the Lord is a fountain of
life,” but this healing fear is today hardly found among Christian men.
Once in conversation with his friend Eckermann, the poet Goethe turned to thoughts of
religion and spoke of the abuse of the divine name. “People treat it,” he said, “as if that
incomprehensible and most high Being, who is even beyond the reach of thought, were
only their equal. Otherwise they would not say ‘the Lord God, the dear God, the good
God.’ This expression becomes to them, especially to the clergy, who have it daily in
their mouths, a mere phrase, a barren name, to which no thought whatever is attached. If
they were impressed by His greatness they would be dumb, and through veneration
unwilling to name Him. Tozer – Knowledge of the Holy -51-
By TOZER
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