What is the Fear of the Lord?
The fear of the Lord has come up a number of times in discussions recently. Honestly, I really haven’t been able to make much sense of it. According to the Psalms and Proverbs, it appears to be important and valuable. But how do I embrace something like fear, even if it seems to be for my own good? How do I practically access the relational wholeness hidden in the fear of the Lord? And how do I start on the journey into knowledge and wisdom promised by Proverbs?
Recently during a time of study, I came across Psalm 33. As I mused about it, a light started to come on. I now believe that I had been trying to understand the fear of the Lord outside the context necessary to make sense of it. In this psalm, the psalmist gives the necessary context of God’s character and our relationship with Him—and with these the beauty of the “fear of the Lord” can finally start to be seen.
There seems to be three different aspects of the fear of the Lord presented in Psalm 33 which I have broken down into three questions. The three questions to consider are:
What is the Fear of the Lord?
Who is the Lord that we fear?
How do we live within a full understanding of the Fear of the Lord?
*Note: In separating things out, we move against the necessary context, so we will return and rework the discussion showing how these aspects work together later on.
What is the Fear of the Lord?
At the heart of the Psalm are these two couplets found in verses 8-9 and 18-19. We will only probe the first one here:
“Let all the earth fear the Lord; Let all the inhabitants of the world stand in awe of him! For he spoke, and it came to be; he commanded, and it stood firm.” – Psalm 33:8-9
Some notes on verses 8-9: there are two parallel clauses which contain different verbs of exhortation. The first verb “fear” is a call to worship and obey the Lord.
“It is a call for the only appropriate and reasonable response to the absolute authority of the universe: reverence and submission. The parallel verb is even stronger: ‘be in awe’; it means to fear in the sense of being intimidated by something superior and more powerful (see Deut. 1:17; 18:22; 1 Sam. 18:15). So, not only are people called to acknowledge God as their creator, but also that acknowledgement should fill them with a fear that will prompt reverence and obedience” (Allen Ross, A Commentary on the Psalms, pg. 733).
To fear then goes beyond the sense of reverence. In fact, there is a sense that we are very much in the presence of someone who is powerful and superior. This is what the Psalmist gives us in verse 9. It is God who simply spoke, and the world came into creation. It is He who keeps it operating as designed, both in the past and now. This is a God beyond any we can imagine—He deserves to be respected, even “feared.”
This is certainly what Isaiah experienced in Isaiah 6. Prior to meeting God, he was already in a mood of reverence. But when God shows up in a vision, he is quite overwhelmed. He is overcome with the difference between himself and God. And he shakes, falls down, and worships. This righteous man sees himself as unrighteous to the point of disintegration. But God doesn’t leave him there. And that is one of the key pieces of context found in Psalm 33 which we will pick up next.
*Stay tuned next week for the second part of this 4-part series on the Fear of the Lord!