Fear of the Lord
Spring is near and early signs are already starting to show. The trees have sprouted little green leaves and flower shoots are beginning to bud. But for the past year especially, virtue signs have been springing up all around my neighborhood. You would recognize them. A little sign sprouting in a person’s yard letting the world know the family living here is “woke.” One of my favorites is “Hate has no Home Here”, usually adorned with a Marxist fist, a rainbow flag, and a peace sign. The biddable mind which planted this sign, begs the question: Is there really nothing they hate?
Surely, some things are good to hate. I hate cancer, tornados, war, and even eggplant. The list goes on and on. Are we so far apart in our views that we can’t even agree on hating something? As a dad, trying to teach his son about the Scripture, the question is not to hate or don’t hate. The question should be, “What to hate?”
Reading through Proverbs, a consistent phrase keeps hitting me day in and day out: the Fear of the Lord. Here is a partial list of the times it shows up Proverbs 1:7, 1:29, 2:5, 3:7,14:2,26,27, 15:33, 19:23, 24:21, and 31:30. An internet search of the scripture revealed 86 references! This fear issue is clearly something that needs to be understood. Now, I hate scary movies and my son is not a big fan of them either. We are still trying to get him to watch Jurassic Park and he is not going for it. So, I ask the question, is fear the same thing as fright? Let’s tackle this idea by looking at a different emotional spectrum, joy versus happiness. This might be a bit easier to digest.
Most can relate to happiness as a fleeting emotion. Something great happens, therefore we are happy, but before long we return to our status quo. Joy is different. Joy is fuller and deeper than happiness. It certainly encompasses happiness, but it is part of our sense of meaning in relation to creation. The relationship between fright and fear is the same. We may be frightened and this is an emotional response, but fear is a deep sense of our relation to something. Fear is approaching something with extreme care, because it can very quickly turn to fright and worse. With this in mind, let’s look at Fear of the Lord.
Fear of the Lord is such an ambiguous term that the Bible tries to clearly spells it out in Proverbs 8:13, “Fear of the Lord is hatred of evil”. Thus, hating evil ought to be our basic orientation when we approaching God. Now before you start playing Bible ping-pong and citing Proverbs 10:12, “Hatred stirs up disputes, but love covers all offense.” or 15:17 “Better a small serving of vegetables with love than a fattened calf with hatred.” Think about what you’re in essence defending, i.e. hating evil. Proverbs 6:16-19 even lists seven things God Himself hates.
The problem with putting an inane sign in your yard is that a sign has already been put up for you. A sign, which is accurately puts hate in its proper place. Christ carried this sign willingly upon His body and then nailed Himself to it. With a slight twist, which I do not think improper, I could argue that ‘For God so [hated evil] that He gave His one and only Son’ (John 3:16). If ‘no hate’ lives in your home, then you welcome in everything and that by definition includes evil. Teaching children to hate evil should be something we can all agree on. But as for my son, I’m sure going to try to put the fear of God into him.
Dad Devotional 