The Beginning of Wisdom

There are dozens upon dozens of Bible passages that refer to something that has become increasingly foreign to our modern society, something called "the fear of the Lord," or "the fear of God."  Here is just a small sampling:

The fear of the Lord is clean, enduring forever. (Psalm 19:9) 

Oh, how great is Your goodness, which You have laid up for those who fear You, which You have prepared for those who trust in You In the presence of the sons of men! (Psalm 31:19) 

Let all the earth fear the Lord; let all the inhabitants of the world stand in awe of Him. (Psalm 33:8) 

The angel of the Lord encamps all around those who fear Him, and delivers them. (Psalm 34:7) 

Oh, fear the Lord, you His saints! There is no want to those who fear Him. (Psalm 34:9) 

For as the heavens are high above the earth, so great is His mercy toward those who fear Him. (Psalm 103:11) 

As a father pities his children, so the Lord pities those who fear Him. (Psalm 103:13) 

The mercy of the Lord is from everlasting to everlasting on those who fear Him, and His righteousness to children’s children. (Psalm 103:17)

The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom—so says the Bible in three different passages, and a fourth is like it: the fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge.  That says to me that before we can make any real, substantive advance toward the worthy goals of wisdom or knowledge, our starting block must be that exalted place called the fear of the Lord.  If we don't begin with the fear of God, our wisdom is doomed to be the wisdom of man, which is not the wisdom of God at all.  Romans 1 offers these words in reference to those who trusted in worldly wisdom: "… although they knew God, they neither glorified him as God nor gave thanks to him, but their thinking became futile and their foolish hearts were darkened.  Although they claimed to be wise, they became fools … Furthermore, just as they did not think it worthwhile to retain the knowledge of God, so God gave them over to a depraved mind."

If the fear of the Lord is truly the beginning of wisdom, then these people who sought after wisdom from a different starting point became not wise, but fools.  According to God's Word, it could have had no other result.



So: The fear of the Lord—just what does that mean, anyway?

Well, most of the time, us modern folk try to soften the apparent definition of this holy fear as merely being respectful, awestruck, or reverent—all good things, to be sure.  And those aspects are certainly true and often capture the flavor of what the scriptures intend.  But there is another aspect of this word in the original languages which turns out to be precisely what you would expect: to fear means to be afraid.  And not just any old "afraid," either.  It means to be in terror or in dread.

Terrified of God?  That somehow doesn't sound right, does it?

Witness the reactions that were revealed in our two scripture passages this morning (Isaiah 6:1-5 and Revelation 1:12-18).  Isaiah, who would go on to become perhaps the greatest of all the Old Testament prophets, has a vision of God sitting on His heavenly throne.  The angels are crying, "Holy! Holy! Holy is the Lord of hosts!"  The place was shaking and filled with smoke—scary enough by itself—but the thing that utterly terrified the prophet was the fact that he was beholding the face of the Holy One, the King.  When Isaiah understands that he is seeing God Himself, he wails, "Woe is me—I am undone!"  In the face of such beautiful, terrible holiness, he is immediately aware of the stark sinfulness of his own unclean lips; it's as if his very life was unraveling before the majesty of God.

In the New Testament passage, we see the Apostle John, the one whom Jesus loved (as he called himself), and he is granted a vision of the Christ revealed in all of His fiery, shining glory.  His reaction was not to say, "Jesus, my old friend!  How Ya doin'?  It sure is good to see You again!"  Instead, he passes out in terror, collapsing to the ground as if he were a dead man.

Now Isaiah and John were not your casual Sunday-morning churchgoers.  These guys were the greatest of the great, the all-stars, the heroes of the faith.  If they were in utter, stunned mortification at their first glimpses of God in His glory, what do you think it's going to be like for you and me?  If we stand before His judgment throne clad in our filthy rags, our half-hearted obedience, and He shines forth in all of His majesty and glory, pure and holy to an unthinkable degree, don't you think we'll be scared?  I will be.  And yet, that's just what I long to see: the face of God in His glory.

One other quick reference: a story about an early experience of Simon Peter as Jesus enters the scene:

So it was, as the multitude pressed about Him to hear the word of God, that He stood by the Lake of Gennesaret, and saw two boats standing by the lake; but the fishermen had gone from them and were washing their nets.  Then He got into one of the boats, which was Simon’s, and asked him to put out a little from the land. And He sat down and taught the multitudes from the boat. 

When He had stopped speaking, He said to Simon, “Launch out into the deep and let down your nets for a catch.” 

But Simon answered and said to Him, “Master, we have toiled all night and caught nothing; nevertheless at Your word I will let down the net.”  And when they had done this, they caught a great number of fish, and their net was breaking.  So they signaled to their partners in the other boat to come and help them. And they came and filled both the boats, so that they began to sink.  When Simon Peter saw it, he fell down at Jesus’ knees, saying, “Depart from me, for I am a sinful man, O Lord!” (Luke 5:1-8)

You will notice that Peter does not say, "Boy, what a catch!  You can come fishing with me any time!"  No, at his awareness of his proximity to holiness, his reaction was to say, "Please get away from me, for I am full of sins."  He was experiencing the fear of the Lord, and though he did not yet know it, he was also experiencing the beginning of wisdom.

Now, some folks have tried to dial back the import of the word—"fear," that is.  Perhaps they think that they are doing God a favor by helping out with His P.R. campaign.  "Oh, my God would never make anyone afraid of Him.  He is too gentle and loving and kind."  Wait a minute—your God?  How many of them are there?  The truth is, that without some kind of revelation of God about Himself by Himself, we are open to the tyranny of as many different gods as there are human beings living in the world.

Some have likened the way we ought to understand "fearing the Lord" to this: Imagine we have an encounter with someone we really, really respect.  If, for example, we were to be invited to appear before the president of the United States, no matter how much we happen to approve or disapprove of the current occupant of that position, we would undoubtedly be impressed, we would be awestruck, we would be reverent and respectful and polite, quite likely feeling more than just a little intimidated.

That covers most of the definitions of "fear," and in our current cultural understanding of who God is, most of us would be happy to stop there.

However, I think the following illustration may provide us with a more accurate portrayal, though: That we are indeed summoned to appear before the leader of a country, but not our own.  Instead we find ourselves kneeling before a king who is our most terrible enemy, and we find ourselves accused of trespassing in his land, and flagrantly breaking all of his laws, which in fact we have done.  This king is not only powerful and righteous—he's angry.  Now, before this king, we would not only feel respect and admiration … we would tremble; we would be afraid.  Do you think that's an unfair characterization of God?  Do you think that's an unfair characterization of us?

Several times in scripture, it is said that the carnal mind is at enmity with God; that means that, in our natural human state of understanding, we are at odds with God, that we are His enemies.  In fact, Romans 5:10 says that while we were still God's enemies, God reconciled us to Himself through the death of His Son.  Now that's some kind of amazing love, but I don't want us to miss the point here—apart from the work of Christ, we are God's enemies.

In America today, I believe we've mistaken God for someone else.  We imagine God to be a kindly old gentleman with a long white beard, who smiles benignly upon all the little children of the world, presents us with all of the good gifts we long for, and does nothing too terribly threatening when we are bad. We think that God ... is Santa Claus.  What's the worst that could happen—a lump of coal in our stocking?  The fear of the Lord is not in us.

We are all of us guilty in lesser or greater degrees of creating a God in our own image.  Some of you may recall a rather famous episode that occurred a few years back when television personality Oprah Winfrey said, "I was raised a Baptist and we were too hung up on traditional ways. I was sitting in church and heard that God is a jealous God. I asked 'Why?' Come on--let's get over it!"  She had created a God of her own imagining, a God who would not possibly be jealous, making her own sense of approval the litmus test for who could or could not qualify as "God."  In doing so, she willfully ignored the scriptures, which do in fact state many times that our God is a jealous God.  Just one instance out of the many will suffice to illustrate: Exodus 34:14, which reads as follows: "You shall worship no other god, for the Lord, whose name is Jealous, is a jealous God."  Now you are free to debate as long as you like just what the scripture means by "jealous," but one thing you can't deny is that the Bible says that God is a jealous God.  Miss Winfrey, with her careless "let's get over it," declares that the Word of God is not the source of authority for her life, but rather her own exalted sense of propriety.  The fear of the Lord was not in her.

When I became a Presbyterian deacon awhile back, I took a vow before God and the congregation, and part of the installation ceremony included this question: "Do you believe the Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments to be the Word of God, the only infallible rule of faith and practice?"  I answered "yes," as did all of the other celebrants with me—there was no other way of becoming a deacon or an elder unless you answered "yes."  I suppose there were hundreds of other Presbyterian churches across America that asked the same question that morning, and thousands of other candidates to be deacons who answered similarly.  Now do you think they were all telling the truth?  For we have reason to believe that there are some people in the Presbyterian church who apparently do not believe that the scriptures are the only infallible rule of faith and practice.  And they initiated their term of service to the church in a very singular way—by standing in front of the congregation and lying before God.  How can this be, you might wonder?  There is no fear of God within them.

And this is not just a modern problem; in my research for this sermon, I came upon an article from The Presbyterian Journal written in 1960 that illuminates this very issue; that is, lying when you take an oath before God.  I quote: "This is so direct a violation of sincerity, that it is astonishing to think how men can set their minds at ease in the prospect, or keep them in peace after the deliberate commission of it.  The very excuses and evasions that are offered in defence of it are a disgrace to reason, as well as a scandal to religion.  What success can be expected from that man’s ministry, who begins it with an act of such complicated guilt? How can he take upon him to reprove others for sin, or to train them up in virtue and true goodness, while he himself is chargeable with direct, premeditated, and perpetual perjury?"  End quote.

If you have no fear of God, then you cannot possibly perceive your need for a Savior.  If you have no awareness of God's unrelenting holiness and your own abject sinfulness, why did Jesus have to die?  If the God you worship is marshmallow soft, with no provision for a final eternal justice, then the Cross of Christ loses all meaning.  In today's progressive society, though, we have insulated ourselves from every sense of the fear of the Lord that might disturb or threaten our fragile self-esteem.  "God loves everybody," you have heard people say.  "God's love is unconditional," say others, including those who fill pulpits.  When some unrepentant scoundrel dies, someone will inevitably say, "Well, at least he's in a better place," and we nod our heads solemnly, afraid to even hint that there might exist someplace else where he's at.

While it's true in a certain sense that God does love everybody—after all, scripture says that "He makes His sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the just and on the unjust," and days of health and laughter and friendship and beauty are available to all—the notion that God loves everybody unconditionally in regards to salvation is simply not true.  God saves people on one essential condition: that the blood of Jesus Christ has been applied to your sin, and His record of perfect obedience credited to your account.

Do I say this because that's what I feel God must be like?  Do I say this because I want it to be true about God?  No, if it were up to me, I probably would have voted for Santa Claus.  Instead, I am compelled to take my stand on something far sturdier than my own foolish musings: the Word of God.  And not just any abstruse part, either, but a red-letter passage, the very words of Jesus Himself.  "I am the way, the truth, and the life.  No man comes to the Father except by Me."

God has chosen to reveal Himself through the scriptures.  The holy Creator of all that is has created for us ... a Book.  Is it hard to understand?  Kind of.  Is it boring?  Sometimes.  Do people have different interpretations of it?  Yes.

But one thing the Bible offers us is this: It is what God has declared about Himself.  He has not left us to our own imaginations about what He is like.  He has said that He is jealous, like it or not.  Redefine "jealous" if you will, but do so at your own peril.

He has said that certain actions are forbidden—we call them sins.  If you want to argue that we have outgrown our old parochial taboos, you may, but you do so at your own risk, for what He has said, He has said.

If you believe that the Bible is not the true revelation of God, then we're talking about a whole 'nother kind of problem, and this sermon probably doesn't apply to you.  But then your god, if you still have one, is probably a product of your own wishful thinking.  The fear of the Lord is likely not in your eyes.

Now, I offer a word of balance: the fear of the Lord is not the end of wisdom.  Let me say that again: the fear of the Lord is not the end of wisdom; it is the beginning of wisdom.  The end of wisdom, I would propose, is love.  1 John 4:18 says this: "There is no fear in love; but perfect love casts out fear, because fear involves torment…. he who fears has not been made perfect in love."

You could visit ten thousand churches this morning and hear sermons about God's love.  Some of you are wishing right now that this was one of them!  But one of the disadvantages of only filling a pulpit once every six weeks or so is that you need to choose a topic; you don't have a chance to build upon what's gone before, line upon line, precept upon precept.  And the fear of the Lord is a subject not all that palatable to our modern American, politically correct, inoffensively bland religious culture.

God is love, to be certain!  I rejoice in God's love, for His love for me has been the most important thing, the hallmark of my entire life.  But before I understood His love, I was afraid of His justice, for He had already opened my eyes enough to see that I was a sinner, and that He was holy.  I was a lawbreaker, and He was the judge.  I deserved Hell, and He was the One who could rightly send me there.

Thank God for Jesus, for His sacrifice on the Cross, for His obedient life that I now count as my own obedience, for the great exchange which He initiated, which He accomplished, and which He will ultimately fulfill.  He has become, by His own will, my friend.  And yet, when I finally see Him face-to-face, I will most certainly fall dead at His feet, blinded by His brilliance, deafened by the angels crying, "Holy!", struck mute because there will simply be no words to say.  And it will be up to Jesus to say, "Be not afraid," and it will be God who wipes the tears from my eyes, because there will be tears.  Tears for my half-hearted efforts to love Him, tears for my wasting of so many days, tears for the choices I made that showed how little I feared Him.

The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom.  Fear the Lord, you His saints!  For as the heavens are high above the earth, so great is His mercy toward those who fear Him.