“Praise the LORD! Blessed is the man who fears the LORD, who greatly delights in His commandments!”- Psalm 112:1
This last weekend Leslie and I celebrated our 50th Wedding Anniversary and we had a wonderful time. Wonderful doesn’t even begin to really describe the weekend. So the best I can offer today is “Praise the LORD.”As I give thanks for the “gifts” He has given us over these years.
This Scripture above presents the fear of God as primarily an internal matter of the heart’s inclinations. It describes the shape and scale of proper Christian desire. The one who fears the Lord, then, is not merely one who grudgingly attempts the outward action of keeping the Lord’s commandments. In a sermon on Proverbs 28: 14 titled, “The Happiness of Fearing Always,” Thomas Boston summed up how fear is a matter of our longings—our loves and hatreds: “Slavish fear dreads nothing but hell and punishment. Filial fear dreads sin itself. . . . The one is mixed with hatred of God, the other with love to him—the one looks on him as a revenging judge, the other as a holy father, to whose holiness the heart is reconciled and the soul longs to be conformed.” In other words, fear of any sort is something that runs deeper than behavior: it is something in the very grain of the heart that drives behavior.
So the one who truly fears the Lord greatly delights in God’s commandments! There really is no room for the “fake it until you make” mentality that seems to permeate Christianity today because it calls on us to think of ourselves first. Duty is obedience to the commands of the Lord…thinking of Him first and how I am called to keep His commands… whether we delight in them at the time (since our fallen nature still resides in us) …but continual duty to the Lord will move us in the direction of the delighting in His commandments.
In fact, the fear of the Lord is the reason Christianity is the most song-filled of all religions. It is the reason why Christians worship together always looking to make melody about their faith. Christians instinctively want to sing to express the affection behind their words of praise, and to stir it up, knowing that words spoken flatly will not totally do in worship of our God. Knowing that our God rejoices over us with gladness and exults over even us with loud singing should makes us rejoice and exult over Him in heartfelt singing. Zeph. 3: 17- “The LORD your God is in your midst, a mighty one who will save; He will rejoice over you with gladness; He will quiet you by his love; He will exult over you with loud singing.” I have said many times it is unfortunate that many just stand during the songs and do not sing since it is one of the most appropriate of ways to express your love for God and your fear of God it also reflects our change of heart. (Besides the fact that we are commanded to sing!) When we chose not to sing in worship we are choosing not to worship Him in the way He prescribes, so is it any wonder we leave worship feeling like we are lacking something.
The fear of God as commended in Scripture for believers flows from an appreciation of God. When we struggle with “fearing God” biblically, it is always because we are focusing on something else…usually ourselves and our needs. When we are hoping to get something out of our religion we find fearing God impossible. Since we are called to give…serve…sacrifice…die, if necessary, for the glory of God…all of these call for self-denial…and self-denial then enables us to fear God the way He describes.
Consider this passage today. “Praise the LORD! Blessed is the man who fears the LORD, who greatly delights in His commandments!” If you are struggling in your faith today…ask the simple question, How am I fearing my God? Consider that question long and hard. The church has always held this to be a key characteristic of Christians. In fact, the fear of God is such an important theme in Scripture that John Owen argued, “the fear of the Lord is the whole worship of God, moral and instituted, all the obedience which we owe unto him.” And Martin Luther taught in his Small Catechism that the fulfillment of the law means “we are to fear, love, and trust God above all things.” John Murray once wrote simply, “The fear of God is the soul of godliness.”
God bless y’all today.
In His Grip,
Pastor Mike
